The Story Of Louie Part 19

PART II

SUTHERLAND PLACE

I

Richenda Earle could have told Louie Causton that an allowance of three hundred pounds a year, paid in quarterly instalments, only permits of a sunny little bedroom and a charming sitting-room in Lancaster Gate on certain terms, of which terms a dipping sooner or later into reserves of capital is certainly one. It is true that Louie still had capital of which she knew nothing. She did not yet, for example, count her wardrobe as capital, nor reflect that if its present standard was to be maintained money must be set apart for the purpose of maintaining it. She did not yet count her time as capital, nor write off the days she cla.s.sed as days of "looking about her" as so many obligations against the time when looking about her would no longer serve her turn. She did not count her health as capital, nor her wild, resilient spirits, nor her "placeableness" at a glance among those whose possession of some capital may be a.s.sumed. All she reckoned as capital was the hundred odd pounds she had placed in a small but sound bank of her stepfather's recommendation, and (she had vaguely heard of such things) such additional credit as the Captain's name might command. But perhaps it is enough to say that she had this conception of the potency of the Captain's name.

Nevertheless, her second week's bill at Lancaster Gate was enough to cause her to send for her landlady, and to ask that person whether she had not a single room anywhere empty that might combine the prettiness of her present quarters with the convenience of having all her belongings within a single door. She was conscious of reasonableness, almost of magnanimity, when she remarked that she didn't mind going up another flight of stairs. The landlady had such a room, but pointed out its lack of cupboard-s.p.a.ce and the number of Louie's dresses.

That, Louie replied, did not matter; she intended to sell a number of the older dresses; and her things were carried upstairs.

Her idea in selling the older dresses was that thereby she might add another thirty pounds or so to her balance; the half-dozen she thought she could spare had cost thrice that amount. The wardrobe dealer who waited upon her offered her five pounds for them. Louie thanked her, told her that she had thoughts of going into a business so lucrative herself, and bade her good-afternoon.

She had come to London at the beginning of September; before that month was out she had decided to leave Lancaster Gate. For some reason or other her quarter's allowance had not arrived, and she wrote to Chaff about it. Chaff promised to look to the matter. She wrote also to Richenda Earle, stating the kind of lodging she required, and asking whether Richenda knew of such an one. To this last letter she had a reply by return of post. Richenda proposed the house of her married sister, which was in Sutherland Place, Bayswater. Without prejudice to her choice, Louie took a walk along Sutherland Place, and received an impression of a quiet street with milk-carts drawn up by the kerb and virginia creeper covering the houses with crimson. As she pa.s.sed the door Richenda had specified, the door opened, and a squarer and older Richenda came out with a string bag in her hand. That, Louie thought, would be Mrs. Leggat, the wife of the estate-agent's clerk.

A week later Louie moved into Mrs. Leggat's first floor-front-bed-sitting-room. That night she counted her money. The result of her calculations caused her to jump up, as if she had thoughts of seeking some occupation or other that very night. Her quarter's allowance had still not come. Then Mr. Leggat, a lumpy-headed man with rabbit teeth and a Duke of Wellington nose, came in to fix a gas-burner for her, and she fell into talk with him. He wiped his hands ceaselessly on an old rag as he talked. He told her it was a pity that Rich had not stuck to her book-keeping; he himself would have been head clerk by this time had he had her thorough practical grounding instead of having had to knock about the world and fend for himself; and he asked her what sort of a villa-building-site Rainham Parva would, in her opinion, make. He added that it was nice to have "the rooms" (he used the plural) let to somebody they knew something about, and then, having omitted to shake hands with her on coming in, did so before going out, and evidently accounted their introduction complete. He came back presently for a pair of pincers he had forgotten, left her a Carter Paterson card for her window in case she should have need of one, said that one of these Sundays they must all go round to the Earles in Westbourne Grove to tea, made a pun on the words Earle and Lord, and went out again. An hour later Louie heard him tiptoeing discreetly past her door on his way upstairs to bed.

Louie was resolved, however, to put a stop to the "Earle and Lord"

business once for all. She was a Causton, not a Scarisbrick, in Sutherland Place.

She felt herself to be already on the verge of a new life that was--let us say amusing--precisely in proportion as it was different from any life she had ever known. She must be--if the word may pa.s.s--amused; she told herself so, clinching the argument by adding that it was far better to laugh than to cry. She had promised Richenda that she would call and see her Mr. Weston at his Business School in Holborn; and this might be--well, amusing. She went without loss of time. She took the Oxford Street bus one morning and alighted at the door of the School.

She mounted three floors of narrow, old-fas.h.i.+oned stairs, asked a fair, perky boy, who somehow managed to make a good suit of clothes look cheap, where she should find Mr. Weston, and presently found herself introducing herself to a thin and melancholy-looking man with a spa.r.s.e and colourless beard, a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, and a gentle and hopeless voice. This was "the Secretary Bird," then. He shook hands slackly with her, placed a chair for her in one of the bays of a sort of =E= that was lined with books of reference, and she listened to his soft, dispirited voice and to the clicking of typewriters in an adjoining room. He thanked her for "all her kindnesses" to Richenda, whatever these might have been, and presently a skimpy little woman in green plaid, with eyes that peered quizzically behind spectacles and "destined spinster" written all over her, tiptoed for a moment at the end of the bay of books, uncertain whether to approach. Then the fair, perky boy who made good clothes look cheap also came up. Mr. Weston said: "Excuse me--yes, Miss Windus?" Louie saw that she was interrupting the morning's work. She rose.

"I daresay we shall see one another again," she said. "Good-bye."

And, outside on the Holborn pavement again, she said to herself with decision: "Thanks--but no Business Schools for me!--Poor Richenda!"

Three weeks later she became a student at that very school.

There is no puzzle about it. Some things come no less unexpectedly that they are more than reasonably to be expected. To put this as briefly as it can be put, she had merely discovered that an affair of atmosphere had become an affair of fact. That was all--nothing more, nothing less. But that was no reason why she should not be amused.

The natural thing for young women in such circ.u.mstances to do is to seek their mothers. If Louie did this natural thing a little unnaturally--well, she did it unnaturally, that was all. The row, scene, or whatever it was going to be, had better be got over; then she could proceed to amuse herself. She had wired that she was coming; the Captain had met her at Trant station; but she had had nothing to say to the Captain.

The Captain, however, had had something to say to her. At first his mumbling into his moustache had not penetrated to her intelligence; she had only heard broken repet.i.tions of "Dear old Mops--only for a week or two--knew you weren't without--meant to write, but dashed awkward thing to explain by letter, and was coming up in a week in any case--if she stuck fast he'd see what could be done----"

"Eh?" Louie had said at last. "What's that, Chaff?"

Chaff had repeated his mumblings. At the end of them she had gathered that the needy Captain had borrowed the quarter's allowance that had been entrusted to him for despatch. Louie had merely given a little preoccupied laugh and patted his hand.

"All right, old boy; don't worry," she had said.

A sample or two of her conversation with her mother must answer for the rest. For quite twenty minutes the Honourable Emily's head had been buried in the sofa-cus.h.i.+ons, and the Trant coal-and-blanket charitable account had lain where it had fallen from her hand--across her cheek.

"That's all," Louie had ended with hard composure.

"Oh--oh----" the mother had moaned.

"And as I say, I won't marry him."

"Oh--you must--you must!"

"Why? Because Uncle Augustus will say I must?"

"Oh--you must!"

"I'll go and see Uncle Augustus."

"Oh, you mustn't--you mustn't!"

Then, in an interlude, the reasons why everything must at all costs be kept from Lord Moone had been brokenly explained. In another interlude a few minutes later Louie had invented a fict.i.tious name.

"That conveys nothing to me," Mrs. Chaffinger had moaned. "What is he?"

Louie had invented a station in life to fit the name. Her mother's face had disappeared behind the coal-and-blanket account again.

"And this--this!--is your study of horticulture!" she had half faintingly wailed.

"Yes. Yours was art, wasn't it?"

Then Mrs. Chaffinger's querulous despair had shown a weak, vindictive gleam. Both p.r.o.nouns had been a little emphasised as she had retorted:

"I married your father!"

It was only a flicker. Her head had gone into the cus.h.i.+ons again.

"That didn't last very long," the devilish girl had commented.

"I married your father, I say--for your sake," had come from the cus.h.i.+ons.

"That's one of the differences. There are others. If you're thinking of wiring to Uncle Augustus I'll wait; if you're not, I'll go."

Lord Moone had been wired for. He had wired back: "Impossible"; but a second wire had brought him over post-haste the next morning. The situation had been explained to him; the peer had walked away for a few moments; Louie had thought she had heard something about "our d.a.m.nable women"; then, coming back, Lord Moone had abruptly convened a Committee of Ways and Means. Words like "Impossible ... once in a lifetime quite enough ... secrecy ... the Continent for a few months ... inst.i.tution," had been used; and at one other alternative Louie's eyes had become hard and chill as ice.

"Thank you," she had come harshly in. "As you say, all these things may be possible. I decline them all."

Then Lord Moone, whose habit of ordering ma.s.ses of men probably misled him into thinking that the ordering of one young woman who says "I won't" was a comparatively simple matter, had made his p.r.o.nouncement.

"Very well," he had said. "Then as head of the family I order that your allowance shall be stopped till you come to your senses. You hear that, Emily?"

"You mean you'll starve me out?" Louie had said, with dancing eyes.

Like her father, she came up to time as long as she could stand.

"I mean what I've said."