Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 23

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It was part of the innocence of Elsie that she should have asked herself that question—“What is the matter with Sylvia?” for people who are both sensitive and short of money may have to refrain from asking such questions. Before accepting this situation Elsie had not demanded references from Mrs. Pym as to Mrs. Pym’s moral status and temper, nor had she asked that she should be supplied with a report on Sylvia’s character. The impertinence of any such piece of self-protecting curiosity would have been obvious and final.

Probably, Elsie had never heard of sadism, nor would she have associated such emotional obliquity with a child. She knew nothing about the heritage of Pym, or that Sylvia’s father had not been able to prohibit in himself certain craves that make a man socially discordant. She was equally ignorant of the cheap tissue that had been used in the make-up of Diana Pym, or that Mrs. Pym’s mother had suffered from lack of inhibition and an imaginary thirst. Mrs. Pym herself had indulged in a screaming and congested childhood. What she had wanted—that she would have, and at the age of fifteen she had wanted one thing so fiercely and unrestrainedly that the shocked and alarmed “Head” of a very notable school for young gentlewomen had sent Miss Diana home in a hurry.

Hence—Sally and all the implications that were contained in Sally, who, true to her heritage, had been expelled discreetly from a preparatory school for pouring paraffin over a pet enemy and attempting to set the other child alight. Hence, also, Elsie’s two predecessors, both vanquished by this little sadist, one in three weeks, the other in three months. Hence, a certain liberality on the part of Mrs. Pym, who, having to consummate her adventures with this piece of human dynamite attached to her, was ready to be accommodating to the woman who was paid to relieve her of a part of the problem.

Mrs. Pym would pay for what was worth while, and after one very distracting fracas in Paris she had been quite nice and explanatory to Elsie.

“Yes, that’s always been our trouble, Sally’s temper. I’m just a bit light-tempered myself. Sally and I explode each other, and that’s just it. I shouldn’t lose my temper with the kid, but I do. I know she wants a firm hand, Miss Summerhays, and a kind one. I think you are just the sort of woman to manage her. You’re calm and serious.”

She had taken Elsie out to visit the Galeries Lafayette and had bought Elsie two new frocks.

“Just you keep cool with her. Don’t let her get you riled. Yes—I know, I look a bit absurd in a pulpit. By the way, when would you like your money?”

Elsie had been touched by the presentation of those two frocks. Probably, Mrs. Pym wasn’t a bad sort of woman, a little over-smart and meretricious, but not without generosity, and Elsie, in her innocence, had responded to the gesture.

“Oh—I only want a little ready money by me. I think I’d like to let my salary accumulate, and then I can ask you, can’t I?”

“Of course. You can have a cheque.”

“That will suit me admirably. You see, my mother wasn’t left very well off, and I—want to help.”

Mrs. Pym had reported the successful issue to Miss Sybil Gasson.

“Oh, yes, the two frocks did it. I wonder that damned kid hasn’t cost me three mink coats. I really think she’ll manage to get some sort of control. She’s so dashed serious about it.”

Miss Gasson, whose views upon life were both sybaritic and sardonic, replied that the seriously-minded people were so essential to the fabric of society.

“The importance of being Ernest, my dear.”

But Mrs. Pym had never heard of the play. She liked her drama farcical and well frocked, something that screamed and waggled legs.

“Yes, high brow and all that. What are we going to do to-night? What about the Folies Bergère?”

But Miss Gasson had not been feeling like the Folies Bergère. That sort of stuff could be so very like cheap pottery.