The Pretty Lady Part 28

Calling Marthe, and taking the latch-key of the street-door, he went to his chemist's in Dover Street and bought some pota.s.sium bromide and sal volatile. When he came back Marthe whispered to him:

"She sleeps. She has told me everything as I undressed her. The poor child!"

Chapter 32

MRS. BRAIDING

G.J. went home at once, partly so that Christine should not be disturbed, partly because he desired solitude in order to examine and compose his mind. Mrs. Braiding had left an agreeable modest fire--fit for cold April--in the drawing-room. He had just sat down in front of it and was tranquillising himself in the familiar harmonious beauty of the apartment (which, however, did seem rather insipid after the decorative excesses of Queen's room), when he heard footsteps on the little stairway from the upper floor. Mrs. Braiding entered the drawing-room.

This was a Mrs. Braiding very different from the Mrs. Braiding of 1914, a shameless creature of more rounded contours than of old, and not quite so spick and span as of old. She was carrying in her arms that which before the war she could not have conceived herself as carrying. The being was invisible in wraps, but it was there; and she seemed to have no shame for it, seemed indeed to be proud of it and defiant about it.

Braiding's military career had been full of surprises. He had expected within a few months of joining the colours to be dashing gloriously and homicidally at panic-stricken Germans across the plains of Flanders, to be, in fact, saving the Empire at the muzzle of rifle and the point of bayonet. In truth, he found that for interminable, innumerable weeks his job was to save the Empire by cleaning harness on the East Coast of England--for under advice he had transferred to the artillery. Later, when his true qualifications were discovered, he had to save the Empire by polishing the b.u.t.tons and serving the morning tea and buying the cigarettes of a major who in 1914 had been a lawyer by profession and a soldier only for fun. The major talked too much, and to the wrong people. He became lyric concerning the talents of Braiding to a dandiacal Divisional General at Colchester, and soon, by the actuating of mysterious forces and the filling up of many Army forms, Braiding was removed to Colchester, and had to save the Empire by valeting the Divisonal General. Foiled in one direction, Braiding advanced in another. By tradition, when a valet marries a lady's maid, the effect on the birth-rate is naught. And it is certain that but for the war Braiding would not have permitted himself to act as he did. The Empire, however, needed citizens. The first rumour that Braiding had done what in him lay to meet the need spread through the kitchens of the Albany like a new gospel, incredible and stupefying--but which imposed itself. The Albany was never the same again.

All the kitchens were agreed that Mr. Hoape would soon be stranded.

The spectacle of Mrs. Braiding as she slipped out of a morning past the porter's lodge mesmerised beholders. At last, when things had reached the limit, Mrs. Braiding slipped out and did not come back.

Meanwhile a much younger sister of hers had been introduced into the flat. But when Mrs. Braiding went the virgin went also. The flat was more or less closed, and Mr. Hoape had slept at his club for weeks.

At length the flat was reopened, but whereas three had left it, four returned.

That a bachelor of Mr. Hoape's fastidiousness should tolerate in his home a woman with a tiny baby was remarkable; it was as astounding perhaps as any phenomenon of the war, and a sublime proof that Mr.

Hoape realised that the Empire was fighting for its life. It arose from the fact that both G.J. and Braiding were men of considerable sagacity. Braiding had issued an order, after seeing G.J., that his wife should not leave G.J.'s service. And Mrs. Braiding, too, had her sense of duty. She was very proud of G.J.'s war-work, and would have thought it disloyal to leave him in the lurch, and so possibly prejudice the war-work--especially as she was convinced that he would never get anybody else comparable to herself.

At first she had been a little apologetic and diffident about her offspring. But soon the man-child had established an important position in the flat, and though he was generally invisible, his individuality pervaded the whole place. G.J. had easily got accustomed to the new inhabitant. He tolerated and then liked the babe. He had never nursed it--for such an act would have been excessive--but he had once stuck his finger in its mouth, and he had given it a perambulator that folded up. He did venture secretly to hope that Braiding would not imagine it to be his duty to provide further for the needs of the Empire.

That Mrs. Braiding had grown rather shameless in motherhood was shown by her quite casual demeanour as she now came into the drawing-room with the baby, for this was the first time she had ever come into the drawing-room with the baby, knowing her august master to be there.

"Mrs. Braiding," said G.J. "That child ought to be asleep."

"He is asleep, sir," said the woman, glancing into the mysteries of the immortal package, "but Maria hasn't been able to get back yet because of the raid, and I didn't want to leave him upstairs alone with the cat. He slept all through the raid."

"It seems some of you have made the cellar quite comfortable."

"Oh, yes, sir. Particularly now with the oilstove and the carpet.

Perhaps one night you'll come down, sir."

"I may have to. I shouldn't have been much surprised to find some damage here to-night. They've been very close, you know.... Near Leicester Square." He could not be troubled to say more than that.

"Have they really, sir? It's just like them," said Mrs. Braiding. And she then continued in exactly the same tone: "Lady Queenie Paulle has just been telephoning from Lechford House, sir." She still--despite her marvellous experiences--impishly loved to make extraordinary announcements as if they were nothing at all. And she felt an uplifted satisfaction in having talked to Lady Queenie Paulle herself on the telephone.

"What does _she_ want?" G.J. asked impatiently, and not at all in a voice proper for the mention of a Lady Queenie to a Mrs. Braiding.

He was annoyed; he resented any disturbance of the repose which he so acutely needed.

Mrs. Braiding showed that she was a little shocked. The old hara.s.sed look of bearing up against complex anxieties came into her face.

"Her ladyship wished to speak to you, sir, on a matter of importance.

I didn't know _where_ you were, sir."

That last phrase was always used by Mrs. Braiding when she wished to imply that she could guess where G.J. had been. He did not suppose that she was acquainted with the circ.u.mstances of his amour, but he had a suspicion amounting to conviction that she had conjectured it, as men of science from certain derangements in their calculations will conjecture the existence of a star that no telescope has revealed.

"Well, better leave Lady Queenie alone for to-night."

"I promised her ladyship that I would ring her up again in any case in a quarter of an hour. That was approximately ten minutes ago."

He could not say:

"Be hanged to your promises!"

Reluctantly he went to the telephone himself, and learnt from Lady Queenie, who always knew everything, that the raiders were expected to return in about half an hour, and that she and Concepcion desired his presence at Lechford House. He replied coldly that he was too tired to come, and was indeed practically in bed. "But you must come. Don't you understand we want you?" said Lady Queenie autocratically, adding: "And don't forget that business about the hospitals. We didn't attend to it this afternoon, you know." He said to himself: "And whose fault was that?" and went off angrily, wondering what mysterious power of convention it was that compelled him to respond to the whim of a girl whom he scarcely even respected.

Chapter 33

THE ROOF

The main door of LECHFORD HOUSE was ajar, and at the sound of G.J.'s footsteps on the marble of the porch it opened. Robin, the secretary, stood at the threshold. Evidently she had been set to wait for him.

"The men-servants are all in the cellars," said she perkily.

G.J. retorted with sardonic bitterness:

"And quite right, too. I'm glad someone's got some sense left."

Yet he did not really admire the men-servants for being in the cellars. Somehow it seemed mean of them not to be ready to take any risks, however unnecessary.

Robin, hiding her surprise and confusion in a nervous sn.i.g.g.e.r, banged the heavy door, and led him through the halls and up the staircases.

As she went forward she turned on electric lamps here and there in advance, turning them off by the alternative switches after she had pa.s.sed them, so that in the vast, shadowed, echoing interior the two appeared to be preceded by light and pursued by a tide of darkness.

She was mincingly feminine, and very conscious of the fact that G.J.

was a fine gentleman. In the afternoon, and again to-night--at first, he had taken her for a mere girl; but as she halted under a lamp to hold a door for him at the entrance to the upper stairs, he perceived that it must have been a long time since she was a girl. Often had he warned himself that the fashion of short skirts and revealed stockings gave a deceiving youthfulness to the middle-aged, and yet nearly every day he had to learn the lesson afresh.

He was just expecting to be shown into the boudoir when Robin stopped at a very small door.

"Her ladyship and Mrs. Carlos Smith are out on the roof. This is the ladder," she said, and illuminated the ladder.

G.J. had no choice but to mount. Luckily he had kept his hat. He put it on. As he climbed he felt a slight recurrence of the pain in his side which he had noticed in St. Martin's Street. The roof was a very strange, tempestuous place, and insecure. He had an impression similar to that of being at sea, for the wind, which he had scarcely observed in the street, made melancholy noises in the new protective wire-netting that stretched over his head. This bomb-catching contrivance, fastened on thick iron stanchions, formed a sort of second roof, and was a very solid and elaborate affair which must have cost much money. The upstreaming light from the ladder-shaft was suddenly extinguished. He could see n.o.body, and the loneliness was uncomfortable.

Somehow, when Robin had announced that the ladies were on the roof he had imagined the roof as a large, flat expanse. It was nothing of the kind. So far as he could distinguish in the deep gloom it had leaden pathways, but on either hand it sloped sharply up or sharply down. He might have fallen sheer into a chasm, or stumbled against the leaden side of a slant. He descried a lofty construction of carved masonry with an iron ladder clamped into it, far transcending the net. Not immediately did he comprehend that it was merely one of the famous Lechford chimney-stacks looming gigantic in the night. He walked cautiously onward and came to a precipice and drew back, startled, and took another pathway at right angles to the first one. Presently the protective netting stopped, and he was exposed to heaven; he had reached the roof of the servants' quarters towards the back of the house.

He stood still and gazed, accustoming himself to the night. The moon was concealed, but there were patches of dim stars. He could make out, across the empty Green Park, the huge silhouette of Buckingham Palace, and beyond that the tower of Westminster Cathedral. To his left he could see part of a courtyard or small square, with a fore-shortened black figure, no doubt a policeman, carrying a flash-lamp. The tree-lined Mall seemed to be utterly deserted. But Piccadilly showed a line of faint stationary lights and still fainter moving lights.

A mild hum and the sounds of motor-horns and cab-whistles came from Piccadilly, where people were abroad in ignorance that the raid was not really over. All the heavens were continually restless with long, shifting rays from the anti-aircraft stations, but the rays served only to prove the power of darkness.

Then he heard quick, smooth footsteps. Two figures, one behind the other, approached him, almost running, eagerly, girlishly, with little cries. The first was Queen, who wore a white skirt and a very close-fitting black jersey. Concepcion also wore a white skirt and a very close-fitting black jersey, but with a long mantle hung loosely from the shoulders. Both were bareheaded.

"Isn't it splendid, G.J.?" Queen burst out enthusiastically. Again G.J. had the sensation of being at sea--perhaps on the deck of a yacht. He felt that rain ought to have been beating on the face of the excited and careless girl. Before answering, he turned up the collar of his overcoat. Then he said: