Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (46 page)

What were they to do? Were they to get breakfast themselves? If so, were they to get it at once, or wait till the half-past and see if the girl turned up? Should they get Robert a cup of tea to go on with? Should they tell Robert? Should they beguile Robert? Should they go out and send a wire to the girl’s address? Should Bella go out and send the wire, and Marion get the breakfast? Or should Marion go out and send the wire, and Bella get the breakfast? Should they cease bothering about the girl, and do all the housework themselves? Should they go out and try and get Mrs. Brackett to come in for an hour or two? Was it wise to have that awful woman in the house again? Was it not unwise to turn from possible aid in a crisis? Should Bella go out for Mrs. Brackett while Marion got the breakfast? Or should Marion go out for Mrs. Brackett while Bella got the breakfast? Would Mrs. Brackett come? Hadn’t they better go to the Registry Office for a new servant altogether? But wasn’t Mrs. Brackett better than a new servant at this juncture because she was familiar with the house? Hadn’t they better see if the girl turned up? . . .

In other words, what in God’s name
were
they going to do? Running about the kitchen and the house, and looking out of the windows down the street, and putting on the kettle, and finishing their dressing, their minds and conversation revolved around the crisis, and they swore that they would keep calm.

From this turmoil a line of action finally evolved. They prepared Robert a reasonable breakfast, and Marion took it up to his room. She yelled at him that the girl was delayed, but would be coming later. His grave eyes gave no intimation as to whether he had been deceived by the semi-falsehood or was resigned to the truth, and she left it at that. Then she got ready to go out for Mrs. Brackett.

At the front door she departed from Bella with a kiss, like
a last messenger to the lines from a beleaguered outpost, and Bella was left in charge. It was then half-past ten.

An hour later Marion returned. Bella had only to look at her to see that she was transfigured with important tidings.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘She’s coming at five o’clock,’ said Marion.

‘Well, that’s something,’ said Bella. The moment was too great for any further display of relief.

‘Now I must lie down,’ said Marion. ‘I’ve been hurrying too much.’

Bella did what housework she could, and when Marion rose they began to get lunch together.

As there was no proper food in the house, and so the questions arose as to whether they should go out to buy food, what manner of food they should go out to buy, which of them should go out for it, whether there was not enough in the house after all, whether there was
time
to go out for it in any case, why Marion had not got some while she was out before, and so on and so forth – the getting of lunch had as wearing effect upon the nerves as the pursuit of Mrs. Brackett. At the very last moment they decided not to go out for any food, and they poached some eggs.

And so it went on all day. At five Mrs. Brackett, true to her word, came. She cooked them an evening meal, she cleared up the house, she re-established order in every way, and she promised to come to-morrow, and continue exactly as before the change.

Much as they disliked her, and inferior as she was to the little treasure they had for some mysterious reason lost, they had to admit that she had turned up trumps on this occasion.

And then, three or four days later, as they were sitting talking peacefully just before going to bed, a curious thing occurred. Jenny underwent a horrible metamorphosis. From a perfect little treasure of a girl who for some reason (probably illness) had failed to return, she was converted, in a moment, into a black scheming little devil of all evil. As they talked they discovered that in their hearts they had never liked her, but
not until now, when they had returned to the solid Mrs. Brackett, did they realize what danger they had been in, and how insane they had been to engage such a painted, saucy, specious, common little factory thing like that. How could they be surprised that she had run away? It was a good thing she had not taken anything with her, and they might very well find that she had when they looked things over. Indeed, it was more than likely that she belonged to some gang of thieves, and had been sent by them to look over the house. They could hardly credit that they had not seen through her. However, it was no use regretting anything now. They had Mrs. Brackett back, after all. They had every admiration for Mrs. Brackett. She might have her faults, but you could
rely
on Mrs. Brackett. And what more could you ask, in these days, than a servant to rely on?

Thus they talked, and flattered themselves with hopeful thoughts, and went to bed once more unconscious of their long-drawn-out sorrow and helplessness. And so they would go on and on, day after day, and perhaps year after year, in the same tormented way – and never, oddly enough, have anything but a kind of horror of the thought of the day when they would not be able to get up and go on, but would have perforce to lie and be patient, and then, of a sudden, while all the world moved and suffered around them, become startling waxen images which did not move or suffer.

C
ONCLUSION

‘
ALL THROUGH A
glass of port,’ Jenny, the girl of the streets, had said. She had said it in jest, but who shall decline to surmise that she had stumbled upon the literal truth?

If Jenny had not taken that first glass she would not have taken the second, and if she had not taken the second she would not have taken the third, and if she had not taken the third she would not then and there have resolved to abandon
herself to the pleasures and perils of drink. And if she had not done that, she would not have become involved in the events which lost her her job, and set her going down the paths of destruction.

Probably there was never any doubt of Jenny’s social destiny, but can it not at least be said that that glass of port unlocked her destiny? Her ignorance, her shallowness, her scheming self-absorption, her vanity, her callousness, her unscrupulousness – all these qualities – in combination with her extreme prettiness and her utter lack of harmony with her environment – were merely waiting and accumulating in heavy suspense in the realms of respectability to be plunged down into the realms where they rightly belonged: and a single storm, lasting no longer than six hours, achieved this.

From the sheer nervous wear and tear of that calamitous and climactic night Jenny never survived. Being what she was, how could she? Her story, from her brief moment of revival in whisky that morning, is another story altogether, but it deviated, as has been seen, in no way from that which the sardonic world in general (hearing of a run-away servant girl spending the night and drinking whisky and having lunch with a strange gentleman friend) would have predicted.

At half-past eight that morning, at the **** Hotel, Paddington, there was a knock at their bedroom door, and a stout woman, incongruously dressed as a maid, brought in a large breakfast tray for two, and laid it on the bed without a word.

Jenny, lying over on her side, was very sleepy, and for a moment actually could not recall where she was or with whom she had spent the night. She succeeded in remembering, however, without opening her eyes to look. ‘You pour it out,’ she said.

After a while she sat up, and, taking her first sip at the tea, began to revive. She even had a little toast and marmalade.

He was in a wretched state of depression, and could eat nothing. She could see that he repented last night’s dissipation, and she had suffered too much in that way herself
not to feel sorry for him. He gulped and gasped at the hot tea, and looked ahead of him.

‘You’re feeling sorry now,’ she said, smiling. ‘Aren’t you?’

She always rather enjoyed this moment of the morning, after she had spent the night with a man. Being able to lie on in bed, without regrets of any sort, while he, full of remorse and with passion spent, had to rush off back to his work, filled her with an indolently indulgent, one might almost say a maternal feeling towards him.

‘Oh – I’m all right,’ he said.

There was a pause as she buttered her roll.

‘Have you got to get back to business?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I got to be there at half-past nine.’

‘Married?’ she said.

‘Ah! . . .’

‘I’ll bet you’ll tell
her
a fine story when you get back, won’t you?’

He grinned, revealing the gaps in his yellowed teeth.

A moment later he gulped off the rest of his tea, and got out of bed. He was a simply dreadful sight in his shirt, and she tactfully lay back and looked at the ceiling.

‘You know I said last night I’d seen you somewhere before? . . .’ she said.

‘Yes?’ He was washing his face in cold water at the washing stand now.

‘I’ve remembered where it was.’

‘Oh?’ He went on washing his face.

‘I know your name.’

‘What?’ He turned round and looked at her with his face dripping. This had clearly alarmed him.

‘I said I know your name. Your Christian name at any rate.’

‘I bet,’ he said, hiding his nervousness by drying his face. ‘Go on. What is it?’

‘It’s Andy,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it?’

She saw how afraid he was, and she despised him for it.

‘Eh?’ she said.

‘How do you know that?’ he said, now drying his hands.

‘You were in a car accident with me, weren’t you?’ she said.

He stopped drying his hands, and looked at her, for an awestricken moment, in the face. Then he went on drying.

‘Well – what about it?’

‘We ran over a man on a bike – didn’t we?’

‘Well – what about it?’

‘And you drove on – didn’t you?’

‘Well – what about it?’

‘Oh – nothing. Bit funny meeting you again like this, though.’

‘Yes. I suppose it is.’

What a funk he was in! Why did these little men always imagine they were going to be blackmailed when they went with women? It would serve him right if he was. In fact, on second thoughts, that was rather a good idea. She had never tried blackmail.

‘Did the police ever get on to that accident?’ she said.

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘I expect they’d still give a lot to know, wouldn’t they?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh – nothing.’

There was a silence as he began to climb into his trousers.

‘You’re not trying to blackmail me by any chance, are you?’ he said.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘But I do think you might give me that extra quid – to make up the fiver. I know you’ve got it on you.’

‘Well, you can get it out of your mind – see? I’ll bring in a policeman here, if you’re not careful.’

‘So’s I can tell them about that accident?’

He did not answer. He was trembling all over.

‘You’re getting rather excited, aren’t you?’ she said.

He went on dressing in silence. As he put on his waistcoat he took out a pound note and flung it on the bed.

‘There,’ he said. ‘That do you?’

‘Very nicely. Ta.’

She thought him a pitiable fool to have lost his nerve to the extent of giving in to her demand, but she was pleased with the success of her little ruse, and felt nothing but kindly
indulgence towards him again. Poor little wretch. How oddly had she got the better of him in the long run of years!

He had now got on his hat and coat, and was looking round the room to see whether he had left anything behind.

‘Ain’t you going to kiss me?’ she said.

‘I’m in a hurry, I’m afraid.’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come and kiss me good-bye.’

With an air of impatience he strode over to the bed, and kissed her.

‘Thank you,’ said Jenny, smiling at his childishness. ‘I only hope you’ve enjoyed yourself, dear.’

He went straight out of the room, and a moment later, as she picked up the pound note, she heard his brisk footsteps receding down the pavement outside. Then the sound was lost in the roar of a passing ’bus, and he was swallowed up for ever in the great world of London.

E
LLA

A
T FIVE O’CLOCK IN
the afternoon, when the turbulent and desperate traffic, coursing through the veins of the West End, announces the climax of London’s daily fever, a thing occurs in Oxford Street, which, though unknown to the great majority, and barely perceptible by the senses of anyone in that overwhelming noise, is all the same of great ulterior significance. The bolts on the inner sides of the doors of the public-houses are slid back, and any member of the public is at liberty to enter and drink.

In most cases advantage is not at once taken of this liberty. Indeed, it may be said that only the chronically dissolute are instantaneously alive to the opportunity; and the places generally remain gloomy and empty for at least a quarter of an hour. All the same, there they are open.

By a curious instruction of the law, Oxford Street does not receive impartial treatment at five o’clock. On one side of the street only – the north side – may the houses open their doors. On the other side they must remain dumb and lifeless until half-past five. And the same dispensation applies not only to the buildings on either side of the road but to the entire districts north and south of Oxford Street. Thus it is that Oxford Street, for this area of London at this time of day, constitutes a river of furious traffic dividing an arid from a flowing land – a fact of which an enormous number of its citizens are unconscious, but of the profoundest moment to the chronically dissolute aforementioned.

Among the hundreds upon hundreds of taverns sliding back
their bolts in the favoured domain, was ‘The Midnight Bell’ – a small, but bright and cleanly establishment, lying in the vicinity of the Euston Road and Warren Street. Though it had no wide reputation, all manner of people frequented ‘The Midnight Bell.’ This was in its nature, of course, since it is notorious that all manner of people frequent all manner of public-houses – which in this respect resemble railway stations and mad-houses. Nevertheless, a student of the streets, conceiving ‘The Midnight Bell’ as the nucleus of a London zone less than half a mile in diameter, could not have failed to have been impressed by the stupendous variety of humanity huddled within the region thus isolated by the mind’s eye. The respectable, residential precincts of Regent’s Park, the barracks and lodging-houses of Albany Street, the grim senility of Munster Square, the commercial fury of the Euston and Tottenham Court Roads, the criminal patches and Belgian penury of Charlotte and Whitfield Streets, that vast palace of pain known as the Middlesex Hospital, the motor-salesman’s paradise in Great Portland Street, the august solemnity of Portland Place itself – all these would crowd in upon each other in the microcosm thus discriminated – a microcosm well-nigh as incongruous and grotesque as any that the searcher might be able to alight upon in the endless plains of cement at his disposal.