Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

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Elsie Summerhays was one of those women who are never quite sure either of themselves or of life. She had a conscience that was always standing in front of a mirror and scrutinizing its own reflection, and possibly Elsie’s conscience would have found itself less bothered and bewildered if the mirror had remained the same.

But mirrors change, and Elsie had found the mirror of her consciousness to be a distorting-glass, and her dark and earnest eyes had reproached it, for even as a child Elsie had suffered from too much earnestness. She took people and things so seriously; she had ideals, and a very questionable taste in hats. She was one of those women who are doomed to exploitation, for a cynical world—while exploiting Elsie—would always be able to convince her that she was doing her duty.

Her father had exploited her, that Jordan Summerhays, writer of indifferent novels in which the essential vanity of the man had betrayed itself. He had made of Elsie a secretary, a typist and a drudge in an age when all the world’s drudges are revolting. Jordan Summerhays having been a very vain man, his womenfolk had had to pay for his vanity, for he had gone about displaying himself to the public while his women had washed his shirts for him at home. At all costs he had insisted upon being known as a good fellow, a man ready with a drink or a dinner, generous, jocund, a temperamentalist. He had kept Mary Summerhays in the dark as to his financial status, or rather he had boasted to her as he had boasted to his public.

“Must make a show, Mary. Don’t you worry.”

And then Mr. Jordan Summerhays had died quite suddenly, and the flimsy curtain of his vanity had been torn down. He had left his widow the furniture in No. 7, Spellwood Terrace, a pile of old manuscripts, an indifferent typewriter, hypothetical royalties and about two hundred and thirty pounds in cash.

Elsie was laying the breakfast table. Her father had been dead six months, and though a magnanimous coterie had passed round the hat in memory of a flamboyant fool, the inevitableness of the disaster had challenged Mary Summerhays and her daughter. No. 7 would have to go, and with it most of the furniture, and Mary Summerhays was betaking herself to a bed-sitting-room in Pulteney Street, off the New King’s Road. With equal inevitableness Elsie was chasing a job, and feeling bewildered about it. Her mirror had a cracked and disturbing surface.

Elsie’s laying of the breakfast-table was like everything else she did—a very serious business. She hovered over it, gave final and delicate touches to a plate and the marmalade dish, and yet did not notice that she had forgotten to put a loaf of bread on the trencher. That was Elsie all over. Probably she would have noticed the omission if the postman had not climbed the three steps to the door of No. 7, and slipped something through the letter-box. The postmen who visited Spellwood Terrace did not play gaily with brass knockers, but, belonging to a labour-saving generation, their activities were casual and surreptitious.

Elsie heard the footsteps and the rattle of the metal shutter, and she hurried into the passage. When you had been waiting for a month on the edge of necessity you were apt to feel a little breathless when the postman called. Previously there had been bills, quite a number of unexpected bills, feathers dropped from the tail of the dead Summerhays. Elsie saw something white lying on the door-mat. She went and picked it up.

The envelope thrilled her. She knew at once that it was a letter from the agency that was attempting to join Elsie to a job. She carried it into the little dining-room, and sat down on the sofa; she looked at the envelope, just a little flushed. She hesitated, then with flurried fingers she tore open the envelope, and spread the sheet.

She read:

Dear Miss Summerhays,

We have arranged for you to interview Mrs. Pym at Grosvenor House at four o’clock to-day. Mrs. Pym requires a travelling governess and companion for her daughter. Your knowledge of French and Italian should be helpful. We hope the interview will prove satisfactory.

Elsie ran a hand through her none too tidy black hair. It was pretty hair, but Elsie was so serious about other things that she forgot to be sufficiently serious about her hair. She was greatly excited, and then in the midst of her excitement she became conscious of a terrible omission. She had forgotten to wash and whiten the three steps outside the front door.

Those steps were Elsie’s heritage and her shame. She had inherited the cleansing of them from the small maid who had been discharged after Mr. Jordan’s death. As a rule Elsie would deal with those steps very early in the morning, and before the eyes of the vulgar would observe the sacramental act, for both Elsie and her mother retained a faded pride that scented itself with lavender.

Well, the steps could go hang on this particular morning. She went to the foot of the stairs and cried the news.

“Mother, I’ve just had a letter from the agents.”

A door opened above, and Mary Summerhays’ grey hair showed over the stair rail.

“They are giving me an interview to-day with a Mrs. Pym.—Oh, bother, the kettle’s boiling over!”

She was a long-legged and rather loosely-knit thing, and she dashed up the stairs to pass her mother the letter, and dashed down again to deal with the ebullient kettle. Also there were two eggs to boil, and Mrs. Summerhays disliked a hard egg, which meant that Elsie stood the kitchen clock on a corner of the dresser by the gas-stove and timed her eggs to a second.

Mary Summerhays carried the letter downstairs with her and, putting on her glasses, stood by the window to read it. She was one of those quiet little women with a face like a wise child’s, and if her rather tired grey eyes reproached life, it was in silence. For thirty years she had had to bear with Jordan Summerhays’ social sensationalism, and she had wondered often how a man could be generous to everybody save the people at home. But she had understood that her husband’s humanism had been a public virtue, a gaudy wrapper for the shop-window. Self-advertisement does not begin at home.

Mary read Elsie’s letter. Yes, the news sounded very promising. It suggested that if Mrs. Pym and Elsie pleased each other, Elsie would have to go abroad. Mrs. Summerhays looked out of the window, and her eyes were a little sad, for it occurred to her that Elsie would have to do the pleasing, largely because her father had always pleased himself.

Then Elsie came in with the teapot and the eggs. Her darkly serious face was animated. She was a pale girl, black and white, but this morning her skin seemed to glow.

“Isn’t it splendid, mother?”

Mrs. Summerhays looked at her daughter as one woman sometimes looks at another. She had ceased to care much about life, but she cared very much for Elsie.

“It sounds very promising. You’ll be expected to go abroad, it seems.”

“Isn’t it lucky about my languages!—Well, really, what an ass I am!”

For she had turned to cut the bread and discovered the absence of the loaf. And once again, but only momentarily so, the loaf was forgotten. She went quickly to her mother and kissed her.

“Yes, I know what it means. But if I get a decent salary I shall be able to send you something. And I may have time to try my hand at short stories.”

Mrs. Summerhays coloured up like a girl. She was a little inarticulate on such occasions.

“Oh, I can manage.”

Elsie, looking a little breathless and bright about the eyes, dashed off to collect the loaf from the bread-pan in the larder, and her mother sat down by the tray and placed the letter gently on the table. Elsie was a lovable creature, a little too lovable perhaps for a world that was absorbed in its own affairs. And what sort of woman was this Mrs. Pym?

Elsie, watching her mother remove the top of her egg, made a sudden confession.

“I feel so—so strung up.”

“I expect you do, dear.”

“The interview’s at four. Let’s go and sit in the park this afternoon. It’s a lovely day. Grosvenor House! Rather imposing.”

Mrs. Summerhays understood.

“Yes, we’ll go and sit in the park.”