The Story Of Louie Part 51

So, as Evie Jeffries had seen Louie's home, Louie was now to see hers.

She went reluctantly, by bus, changing at the bottom of Park Lane.

For days she had not seen Jim; she did not want to see him now.

Therefore, though go she must, she would not sit down; she would not lift her veil; she would be in and out of his house again as quickly as ever she could. She pa.s.sed the Marble Arch, and at Lancaster Gate got down and walked. She reached Jim's vast and tomblike house.

At the word "Consolidation" the man who opened the door said: "This way, please," and led her along a low-lighted hall, round a staircase the outspread double wings of which resembled some huge alighting architectural bird, and along a narrower pa.s.sage to the library. At the touch of a switch the room broke into a softly masked glow of light. "Please to sit down," said the servant; but Louie stood by the great writing-table, looking towards the door. Evie had taken stock of her dwelling; Louie looked only towards the door of Jim's library.

Then, as the door was opened, she pushed up her veil after all. Jim came in.

He placed a chair for her; she still refused to sit. She continued to stand even when it appeared that the papers she had brought would require some examination. As she stood, a bell, not unlike that of a m.u.f.fled telephone, sounded for a moment and then ceased. It was followed by a tap on the door.

"Come in," said Jim, without looking up.

Evie Jeffries entered, dressed as if for a State ball.

Even had Louie not seen her face, the touch of her hand would have told her what had happened. Evie was back again exactly where she had been; the only difference was that she now hated Louie the more that she had abased herself before her. Many times on that other Sat.u.r.day afternoon Louie had begged Evie to go; now she longed to fly herself.

After another minute Jim put it into her power to do so. He rose and returned the signed papers.

"Thank you," he said, and added, turning to Evie, "I don't know whether Miss Causton's had supper?"

Evie's face lighted up as artificially as if there too a switch had turned up masked lights.

"Yes; won't you let me have them lay a tray for you, 'Miss' Causton?

It won't be any trouble," she said.

"No, thank you," said Louie. "Please don't come to the door, Mr.

Jeffries."

He came, however.

"Good-night," he said, as the door was held open for her to pa.s.s out.

"Good-night," said Louie.

She remembered afterwards that she noticed, out in Oxford Street again, a sandwichman bearing an illuminated board with the announcement of some concert or entertainment upon it. Pasted across the device was a strip of paper with the words "To night" upon it. The date was the sixteenth of May. At midday on the day following, Louie, coming out of Mr. Whitlock's room, saw Jim advancing as if to come in.

He saw her, stared hard at her for a moment, paused irresolutely, and then turned abruptly and walked away again. She watched his back, shaped like a church-door, but bowed as if with a load too great for him, disappear in the direction of his own room. He had made no attempt to conceal the deliberate avoidance. She half expected, though she knew not why, that he would send for her presently. He did not.

She was infinitely glad. Something, she was perfectly sure, had happened between him and his wife. It was the first time he had not sought her aid. Had he, now that it was too late, told her? Had he realised that it was too late to tell her? Had he, realising this, determined to take his last risk and to tell her nevertheless? Or had something happened that had at last unsealed his eyes so that he now saw with a clearness as merciless as that of Louie herself?

Louie could not tell. She only saw his face again, the face of a man suddenly old as he realised his defeat, and his disappearing back, hunched under a burden that was crushing him at the last.

--_b_

"If I were you, Miss Causton, I should leave early to-night," said Mr.

Whitlock that afternoon.

Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.

"Oh, if you _want_ to make it a matter of conscience! But Mr. Jeffries is giving a party to-night, and both Sir Julius and I will be leaving early."

He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left her. Louie resumed her work.

It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been worked over before and needed little attention; or at all events it got little. At five o'clock Louie gathered the sheets together and put them into the drawer of her table. As she did so some object at the back of the drawer knocked. She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of chloroform.

"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.

"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you put me a little beside myself for a day or two. Much better not to have things like that lying about; to have 'em's sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it away now."

But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought her a cup of tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer again. The girl began to talk. She was Ivy Warner, the operator who would talk to her "boys"

over the telephone if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always admired the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a word would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be carrying on a flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under the eye of Mr. Stonor himself.

"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her cup of tea.

"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three winners to-day, one at thirty to one, a gift; like to see him? He's coming up this evening," Miss Warner replied. "I'd a chin with him a quarter of an hour ago; dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's bringing a friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost afraid to introduce him; and Daisy says she really must give her steady a show to-night.

Know anybody?"

Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had never done before.

She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again she had the hunger to go somewhere, to see lights, hear music, smell the cigarettes of men.

"Do you care to take me?" she said.

Ivy was surprised. "You?"

"Oh, not if I should spoil sport----"

"Rather not! Do come! What a lark! I'll get on to Harold again now.

You really mean it?"

"Yes."

"Good egg!" cried Ivy, glad to make up her party and to improve her relations with her business superior at the same time. "I didn't really want Daisy, you see. Of course they do talk loud at the Troc, but Daisy's just a _ti_ny bit ... well, a perfect stranger had the cheek to come up to our table and speak to her the last time----"

Ivy ran jubilantly off to ring up Harold again.

Louie told herself it was a stupid thing to do; she was getting into the habit of loitering about late at night, heedless of Jimmy. But she had promised, and would go. If she didn't she would only be mopishly thinking, and, after all, she would be no more out of place with Harold's dashing friend than Evie Jeffries would be in another place much about the same time. Perhaps the dasher for Evie and Jim's guests for herself would have been more fitting, but no matter. She would be a dasher too. She wondered how Ivy was describing her dashing self to Harold over the telephone.

At seven o'clock she made herself ready and left the Consolidation with Ivy.

She retained no very clear recollection afterwards of the gaieties of that evening, but the little she did remember arrested her a little.

She had a confused impression of the lights and tables and pilastered walls of the Trocadero as of a bright beckoning vista, stretching before her as the white road stretches before the knapsacked and stout-booted walker. She knew that many girls went that way.... The air was heavy with the smell of coffee, smoke, dishes, scent; Harold's friend was a Hebrew "killer," and reminded her of Miss Levey; noisily he claimed the privilege, which Harold noisily disputed, of paying for everything; and the waiter contemptuously accepted a tip of a sovereign from him. Perhaps he was the same cavalier who had resented Daisy's loudness; at all events he appeared to find in Louie's quietness another--or perhaps the same--meaning; and Louie had to move her chair and to change her att.i.tude at the table. Afterwards they went to the Alhambra; it was Ivy who cried out at the sight of two cabs and refused to go unless they all went together. At the Alhambra Louie was afraid she was rather a wet blanket; she declined to "take a walk round" and remained seated in her stall; but Harold's friend was fickle as well as dashing, for by-and-by she had a glimpse of him with another lady, who had not dined with them at the Trocadero. She wondered how Evie Jeffries had got on--or "got off," to use an expression of Kitty Windus's.

Suddenly--perhaps it was this thought of Evie elsewhere that did it--she got up, sought the cloakroom, and walked out of the place. She went home, once more quietly and steadily thinking of that vista of lights and cigar smoke and laughing mouths and gilded pilasters--the way so many girls went.

The row she expected with Ivy in the morning was not a moment delayed.

It began in the lift in which they both happened to ascend together.

"Good-morning," said Ivy stiffly. "I hope you got home in good time last night."

Louie waited until the liftman had clashed the doors to behind them; then, "I'd a headache," she said.