The Black Cabinet (18 page)

Chapter XXXIII

Chloe went back to Hatchelbury Road and flung her arms round Mrs. Rowse's neck.

“I've got to run away again. I do wish I hadn't. I'm sure no one will ever be as nice to me as you've been.”

Mrs. Rowse looked grim.

“I don't hold with running away. Once, may be, if a gel was really put to it—a step-mother that drinks, or such like—; but to make a habit of it is what I should call unsettling and likely to lead to worse. You go back to your friends, Miss.”

“The people who are looking for me are not my friends,” said Chloe. “They're horrible, nefarious evil-doers, ever so much worse than a step-mother that drinks. And if any of them come round here and want to know where I've gone, you won't tell them, will you?”

“The biggest blab in the world can't tell what she don't know. But now that we're talking, let me tell you one thing.” The voice became very severe, but the bulging eyes rested on Chloe with reluctant indulgence. “I won't say that I'm not sorry you're going, but I won't say that I
am
sorry either. You're a gel that turns young men's heads. And when I see Albert's head getting all ready to turn—well, I won't say I'm sorry you're going.” Chloe flushed.

“Oh, Mrs. Rowse!”

“I don't say that you've any intentions that way.”

“I don't ever want to turn anyone's head,” said Chloe. “I like people. I can't help it; I do like them; I'm made that way. And when I like them I want to be friends with them. I just hate it if—when they get silly.”

“Gels can't be friends with young men,” said Mrs. Rowse with extreme dogmatism. “There's too much human nature in the way.”

Michael came for Chloe in his car at nine o'clock. She took the seat beside him, and he told her rapidly and cheerfully that he had put in some A.I. staff work, and that everything was satisfactorily arranged. Yes, he'd found a room for himself. No, Mrs. Moffat was not furious, but quite properly delighted to have Chloe instead of himself.

“I've told her she's to bite the nose off anyone who comes there and asks for you. She's a frightfully efficient chaperone. My young sister stayed there with me once, and she said she'd never been so looked after in her life. Then there's Monody—you'll like Monody.”

“Who's Monody?”

“Oh, a ripping chap—a bit mad, you know, but one of the best. He does those frightfully good caricatures in ‘The Eight-hour Day.' He's a raging Socialist of course.”

“I shall learn to sing ‘The Red Flag' after all!” said Chloe.

Mrs. Moffat received them with a manner which blended mourning for the departing Michael with suspicion of Chloe as a substitute. She thawed a little on perceiving that Chloe did not make up and had not the golden hair which owes its origin to dye; but the thaw was not sufficient to make the mental atmosphere at all comfortably warm.

“I knew she'd hate me,” said Chloe in a little voice as she and Michael followed Mrs. Moffat up the stair. As she said it, Michael felt her bare hand just brush against his; he caught it in a warm, reassuring grasp, and felt it tremble a little. They walked up as far as the landing like that, and Chloe was comforted.

On the landing, Mr. Monody, very long and thin and like a caricature of himself—such an odd, sharp, turned-up nose; and such little, blinking eyes under a thatch of colourless hair.

Michael hailed him with a shout, whereupon he at once dropped the portfolio he was carrying and stood by, rumpling his hair, whilst Mrs. Moffat, Chloe, and Michael retrieved his scattered drawings. Michael, on his hands and knees, effected an introduction.

“This is Monody. He's always doing this sort of thing. Monody, this is Miss Dane. You know—I told you.” Then in a stage whisper to Chloe, “I say, I forgot to ask you if you wanted to be Miss Dane here—Dene or Green will do just as well if you'd rather.”

Chloe gurgled with laughter. She heard Mr. Monody remark with perfect gravity, “Too many names spoil an alias. I should stick to Dane if I were you.” And, before she could recover, he was gone, running down the stair at top speed, whistling the Hymn to the Sun from the Coq d'Or.

Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn received Chloe next day with a marked absence of enthusiasm.

“I think,” Chloe told Michael in the evening, “in fact, I'm sure, that she's suddenly realized that she doesn't know anything about me, and that she never even asked me for a reference. I know that she went and rang up the real secretary of the N.Y.S. thing. She was perfectly priceless about it. She looked at me in the most suspicious way, and said the whole thing was very strange, and how did I account for it.”

“What did you say?”

“I put it to her quite firmly that I couldn't possibly be responsible for what people said to her on the telephone. I said I'd told her all along that there was some idiotic mistake. And that was that. She was peeved. Michael, I'm afraid my job is fading before my eyes. You'll have to find me another.”

“All right,” said Michael, “I will. I burnt those letters this morning.”

“You did?”

“Yes, it took about a gallon of petrol; but it's done.”

“Ouf!” said Chloe. She drew a long breath and slipped her hand for a moment into Michael's arm. “You don't know, you really don't know, what a frightful relief it is. How did you get time off?”

“Ah!” said Michael, “that's what I was going to tell you about. I don't drive cabs any more: I only collect dividends. From to-day I'm a full-blown partner. And we're going to dine and do a show to celebrate the event.”

It was next day that Chloe lost her job. Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn paid her, thanked her coldly for her assistance, and intimated that she had now made other arrangements. Chloe was both angry and dejected when she came out into a deluge of rain and found Michael waiting for her. He did his best to console, but found her in a thorny mood.

“I hate looking for jobs. I
hate
people who snork and say, ‘What experience have you had?' And I simply
loathe
people who ask me for references.”

Michael blundered badly.

“I suppose it's natural they should want them,” he began.

Chloe stamped her foot in a puddle; the muddy water flew up and drenched her ankles.

“What's the use of their asking me for references when I can't give them any? What's the good of references anyhow? If I was an unscrupulous adventuress, I should have lots of perfectly lovely ones,
beautifully
forged so that no one could
ever
find out. So that's how much good references are. I tried to explain that to one woman, and she turned pale magenta and opened her mouth like a fish. Hateful people!”

“I thought you liked people.”

Chloe's April smile flashed out suddenly.

“I do—when I'm not in a raging temper.”

Mrs. Moffat really thawed that evening when Chloe came home “sopped”—the expression was Mrs. Moffat's own. And when she discovered that she had nothing to change into, sympathy and conversation became the order of the day.

“You're fair
sopped
. Now whatever could Mr. Michael have been thinking of to let you get that wet?”

“It was raining,” said Chloe, “and I stamped in a puddle. It felt frightfully nice at the time because I was just blazing with fury; but afterwards I was sorry, because there's something discouraging about having one's ankles wet. Oh, Mrs. Moffat, how frightfully kind! Will you really lend me a dressing-gown and dry my things for me? I haven't got any clothes because I ran away. I expect Michael told you.”

Mrs. Moffat ran out of the room and returned at top speed with a crimson flannel dressing-gown and a pair of solid black felt slippers. Chloe snuggled into the warm flannel, while Mrs. Moffat went down on her knees and held the slippers one at a time for the little cold feet.

“You won't hate having me here any more, will you?” said Chloe—“not after being so frightfully nice to me. I told Michael you'd hate me for turning him out. He said you wouldn't; but I knew you would. But you won't go on doing it now, will you?”

Mrs. Moffat, still kneeling, looked up and saw Chloe's mouth tremble, and the tears come into her eyes. She laid her hands on Chloe's knees.

“He loves you true.”

If Chloe was taken aback, she didn't show it. She pushed aside a wet curl, looked wide-eyed into Eliza Moffat's plain, sharp face, and asked as a child might have done:

“Does he?”

Mrs. Moffat nodded, swallowed, and repeated with emphasis:

“He loves you
true.
”

“How do you know?”

“It doesn't need knowing—not for anyone that's got eyes and ears, and their seven senses. And it doesn't need telling neither, though he told me sure enough with his own lips in this very room. ‘Lizzie, you'll be nice to her?' he says. But I says to him, ‘What 'ud your pore ma say, the way she brought you up and all?—you to be bringing goodness knows who into a respectable house like mine, and asking me to mix and meddle in goodness knows what! No, Mr. Michael, I says I'm not the woman, and this isn't the house, for goings on.' But he turns round and says to me solemn-like, ‘Lizzie, I love her true,' he says.”

Chloe twisted round in her chair, dropped her head on her hands, and burst into a passion of weeping.

Chapter XXXIV

The business of looking for a job began again; also the business of wearing out shoe-leather. Chloe was on her way home, and had just become aware of a hole in her right shoe, when she was overtaken by Mr. Monody with a portfolio under each arm. He looked vaguely at her without salutation; but as he continued to walk by her side, she imagined that he had recognized her. It was in the middle of a rather difficult crossing that he suddenly addressed her in a voice which was well calculated to penetrate the roar of the traffic:

“What attracts me to you so strongly—”

At this intriguing juncture Chloe had to flee before a motor bus. She reached an island and looked back, panting. Mr. Monody and his portfolios were intact. Next moment they were beside her, and the road being clear, Chloe ran across to the pavement and trusted him to follow. He did so, and instantly resumed speech:

“What attracts me to you so strongly is the fact that you have run away.”

Chloe looked up with dancing eyes.

“How frightfully nice of you!” she began. But Monody was not looking at her. He strode along, presenting a jutting profile and talking with rapid intensity; if he had not been carrying two portfolios he would certainly have waved his arms.

“I've spent my whole life running away,” he said.

“I'm a little tired of it,” said Chloe, and received a momentary glance of reproach.

“There is only one damnation,” said Mr. Monody; “and that is accepting the accepted. The minute you do that, whether it's in religion, or art, or life, you're dead and damned—buried, you know, under a neat grassy heap of conventions, with something symbolic in stone at your head and feet. You've got to run away if you want to keep alive. You've got to be revolutionary if you're not a born cauliflower.” For a moment the sharp profile was replaced by the misty gaze which seemed to see, not Chloe, but something a good many aeons away. Chloe certainly felt herself to be a mere speck, just one little speck floating with millions of others in a vague and speculative mist. It was not at all comfortable.

“What is history?” said Mr. Monody.

Chloe ceased to be a speck, and became Chloe again.

“It's generally dull: and it ought to be so exciting,” she said.

Monody frowned. It was quite obvious that he expected to do all the talking himself.

“History is the statement and re-statement of one tragedy. Dynasties, and wars, and politics, and politicians are just so much clutter. The real thing is the continual appearing of ideas—lots of them, streams of them, vigorous, vital, dynamic. What happens all through history? The same old crime, the same
damned
crime. Nobody wants 'em, nobody can do with 'em; they're alive, they're uncomfortable, they're disturbing. Take them away, and smother them up and bury them deep—everybody's ready to lend a hand. If you want to save an idea alive, you've got to run away with it—the wilderness, you know; every one's hand against you, and yours against every one; fighting like blazes all the time till your idea is strong enough to fend for itself. Then a few things get smashed.”

They reached Mrs. Moffat's doorstep as Mr. Monody paused for breath. Chloe felt rather dazed and, for once in her life, at a loss for words; Mr. Monody seemed to have used them all up, for the time being at any rate. He now began to walk up the stairs in front of her. Half way up he dropped one of his portfolios, and they both descended to the bottom to pick up the scattered drawings. As they knelt in the dark hall on either side of the open portfolio, Monody began to talk again.

“I began,” he said, “by running away from my name. My parents cursed me with the deplorable name of Adolphus. They meant well of course—parents always mean well. To them it had a rich, fruity sound; it suggested something in the City—something rich and fat and Adolphian. I ran away from it.”

He picked up the portfolio, and this time remembered to stand aside and let Chloe pass him. When she had nearly reached the top, she heard him coming up behind her three steps at a time. She turned to meet the misty gaze.

“I say, you
are
Michael's girl, aren't you?”

Chloe burst out laughing.

“What would you do if I said ‘No'?” she said.

“I don't know,” said Mr. Monody. “I want to make a sketch of you. Shall we say to-morrow at ten?”

“I don't think—”

“To-morrow at ten,” said Mr. Monody firmly. He went into his room and shut the door.

Chloe ran downstairs again, still laughing, and penetrated into Mrs. Moffat's kitchen. Mrs. Moffat was making apple dumplings, but she allowed Chloe to stay; she even let her make a dumpling for herself and mark it with a large, irregular C.

“It's frightfully difficult to get a good initial in dough, isn't it?”

“It all comes with practice,” said Eliza Moffat. “Not that I've ever tried,” she added.

“'M,” said Chloe, sucking the dough off her fingers. “Is Mr. Monody mad, Mrs. Moffat?”

Eliza Moffat looked up sharply.

“Mad?” she said. “I don't call the likes of him mad, nor I don't hold with shutting them up neither. Who's been telling you such things?”

“Oh, I don't know. He seems odd.”

“Odd's one word and mad's another,” said Mrs. Moffat, opening the oven door and putting in a tray of dumplings. “Now, say a gentleman was to take the kitchen chopper and bash his wife with it—I'd give in to his being mad. Or a young lady what tries to throw herself off of a crowded bus in the middle of Hammersmith Broadway—well, I'd say likely enough as she was mad, pore thing; for who's it going to help a-throwing of yourself from buses when all's said and done? That's what I calls mad. But if a gentleman likes to write poetry, who's he a-harming of?”

“Does he write poetry?”

“Strews it all about the floor. And what I say is, it's a crool shame to shut the pore things up so long as they're harmless and don't go throwing of themselves down off buses and such like.” She banged the oven door with decision.

Chloe gazed at her, fascinated.

“Do tell me some more,” she said. “Did a girl really throw herself off a bus in Hammersmith Broadway? Was she hurt?”

“Not her,”—Eliza Moffat sounded a little disappointed—“fell on a perliceman she did.”

“How perfectly thrilling!”

“Fell on a perliceman what was holding up the traffic, and knocked him flat. There he was, one minute throwing a chest, and holding his hand up, and looking as if he'd bought London; and the next minute down she come and knocked him flat.”

“Good gracious!” said Chloe.

“Mr. Moffat's sister seen it,” said Mrs. Moffat. After a pause she added: “Their banns was called on Sunday.”

It was that afternoon that Chloe saw Emily Wroughton. Emily was coming down the street towards her, holding up an umbrella against the incessant rain; she held it much too high, and a steady cascade descended upon a limp black ostrich feather, and from thence to a sagging shoulder.

As soon as Mrs. Wroughton saw Chloe, the umbrella came down like an extinguisher, and she scuttled into a side street. Chloe caught her up easily enough, and took her by the drier arm in friendly fashion.

“Why on earth do you run away from me? I'm the one to run—I'm going to too, in a minute. But I did want to say,”—here she squeezed the bony arm impulsively—“I did just want to say ‘Thank you.'” Emily, having failed to keep the umbrella between her and Chloe, let her mouth fall open, and said, “Oh!” She sniffed also, and her nose began to get pink. “It was ripping of you to give me the chance of getting away. I don't believe I ever thanked you. I—I was horribly frightened really, you know. But afterwards I thought how absolutely topping it was of you.”

Emily said “Oh,” again; her mouth stayed open; the tears began to run down her nose. “I shall have to tell Leonard,” she said in a miserable whisper. “I shall have to tell Leonard that I've seen you.”

“All right,” said Chloe quite cheerfully. “Tell him I've got a nice post in a detective's family, and that we shall all be frightfully pleased to see him any time he likes to drop in.”

Emily produced a handkerchief and took three little dabs at her face—left eye, nose, right eye. Then she gave a rending sniff, and said:

“Oh, Miss Dane, have you really? Oh, I'm so glad! But please, please,
please
don't tell me any more, because I shall have to tell Leonard what you've said.”

“But I want you to. You go home and tell him that the detective is most frightfully anxious to meet him. I
do
hope he'll come and see us.”

“Don't tell me the address,” said Emily quickly.

Chloe laughed and shook her arm lightly.

“Why don't you stamp your foot at him and tell him to go to Jericho? Just try some day, and see what happens. I believe he'd go off pop like a burst tyre. Anyhow, if he wants to know where I am—”

“No, don't tell me!” Emily put up a protesting hand.

Chloe gave her another little shake.

“Tell him to ask at Scotland Yard,” she said, and ran back along the way that she had come.

If she had looked behind her when she came to the corner, she would have seen that Emily was no longer alone. Wroughton had come out of a house near by and joined her. When he had listened to half-a-dozen tearful sentences, he, too, ran to the corner round which Chloe had disappeared and, turning it, proceeded to follow her at a safe distance.