She had her talk with Violet.
There was the slightest shade of wistfulness in Violet's gentleness.
"I wish we'd made you happier, but I really believe quiet is what you want most, and things aren't ever very quiet here – especially with Pam. I simply love having her, but I'm not sure she is the best person for you, just now."
"I don't feel I know her very well. I mean, I'm not at all at home with her. She makes me realize what a stranger I am to the younger ones, after all these years."
"Poor Alex!"
"You're much more like my sister than she is, and yet a year ago I didn't know you."
"Alex, dear, I'm so glad if I'm a comfort to you – but I wish you wouldn't speak in that bitter way about poor little Pamela. It seems so unnatural."
Violet's whole healthy instinct was always, Alex had already discovered, to tend towards the normal – the outlook of well-balanced sanity. She was instinctively distressed by abnormality of any kind.
"I didn't really mean it," said Alex hurriedly, with the old fatal instinct of propitiation, and read dissent into the silence that received her announcement.
It was the subconscious hope of rectifying herself in Violet's eyes that made her add a moment later:
"Couldn't Barbara have me for a little while when you go up to Scotland? I think she would be quite glad."
"Of course she would. She's often lonely, isn't she? And you think you'd be happy with her?"
"Oh, yes," said Alex eagerly, bent on showing Violet that she had no unnatural aversion from being with her own sister.
But Violet still looked rather troubled.
"You remember that you found it rather difficult there, when you first got back. You said then that Barbara and you had never understood one another even as children."
"Oh, but that will all be different now," said Alex, confused, and knowing that her manner was giving an impression of shiftiness from her very consciousness that she was contradicting herself.
As Pamela's claims and her own ceaseless fear of inadequacy made her increasingly unsure of Violet, Alex became less and less at ease with her.
The old familiar fear of being disbelieved gave uncertainty to every word she uttered and she could not afford to laugh at Pam's merciless amusement in pointing out the number of times that she contradicted herself. Violet always hushed Pamela, but she looked puzzled and rather distressed, and her manner towards Alex was more compassionate than ever.
Alex, with the impetuous unwisdom of the weak, one day forced an issue.
"Violet, do you trust me?"
"My dear child, what do you mean? Why shouldn't I trust you? Are you thinking of stealing my pearls?"
But Alex could not smile.
"Do you believe everything that I say?"
Violet looked at her and asked very gently:
"What makes you ask, Alex? You're not unhappy about the nonsense that child Pamela sometimes talks, are you?"
"No, not exactly. It's – it's just everything…" Alex looked miserable, tongue-tied.
"Oh, Alex, do try and take things more lightly. You make yourself so unhappy, poor child, with all this self-torment. Can't you take things as they come, more?"
The counsel found unavailing echo in Alex' own mind. She knew that her mental outlook was wrenched out of all gear, and she knew also, in some dim, undefined way, that a worn-out physical frame was responsible for much of her self-inflicted torment of mind. Sometimes she wondered whether the impending solution to her whole destiny, still hanging over her, would find her on the far side of the abyss which separates the normal from the insane.
The days slipped by, and then, just before the general dispersal, Pamela suddenly announced her engagement to Lord Richard Gunvale, the youngest and by far the wealthiest of her many suitors.
"Oh, Pam, Pam!" cried Violet, laughing, "why couldn't you wait till after we'd left town?"
But every one was delighted, and congratulations and letters and presents and telegrams poured in.
Pamela declared that she would not be married until the winter, and refused to break her yachting engagement. She was more popular than ever now, and every one laughed at her delightful originality and gazed at the magnificence of the emerald and diamond ring on her left hand.
And Alex began to hope faintly that perhaps when Pamela was married, things might be different at Clevedon Square.
Then one night, just before she was to go to Hampstead, she overheard a conversation between Cedric and his wife.
She was on the stairs in the dark, and they were in the lighted hall below, and from the first instant that Cedric spoke, Alex lost all sense of what she was doing, and listened.
"…they're wearing you out, Pam and Alex between them. I won't have any more of it, I tell you."
"No, no, my dear old goose. Of course they're not." Violet's soft laughter came up to Alex' ears with a muffled sound, as though her head were resting against Cedric's shoulder. "Anyhow, it isn't Pam – I'm delighted about her, of course. Only Alex – I wish she was happier!"
"And why isn't she? You're a perfect angel to her," said Cedric resentfully.
"I'm so sorry for her – only it's difficult sometimes – a feeling like shifting sands. One doesn't know what to be at with her. If only she said what she wanted or didn't want, right out, but it's that awful anxiety to please – poor darling."
"She always was like that, from our nursery days. You never could get the rights of a matter out of her – plain black or white – she'd say one thing one day and another the next, always."
"That's what I find so difficult! It's impossible to do anything for a person like that – it's the one thing I can't understand."
"Pack her off to Hampstead tomorrow," Cedric observed gruffly. "I will not have you bothered."
"Oh, Cedric! I'm not bothered – how can you? She'll be going next week, anyway, poor dear, and it may be easier for her to be herself with Barbara, who's her own sister, after all. But I don't know what about afterwards – when we get back."
"You'll have quite enough to think about with Pam's wedding, without Alex on your hands as well. Violet," said Cedric, with a note in his voice that Alex had never heard there, "when I think of the way you've behaved to all my wretched family – "
Alex did not hear Violet's answer, which was very softly spoken.
She had turned and gone away upstairs in the dark.
XXVI
August
Was it, after all, only for Cedric's sake that Violet had kept her at Clevedon Square – had shown her such heavenly kindness and gentleness?
Alex asked herself the question all night long in utter misery of spirit. She had craved all her life for an exclusive, personal affection, and had been mocked with counterfeit again and again. She knew now that it was only in despair at such cheating of fate that she had flung herself rashly to the opposite end of the scale, and sought to embrace a life that purported detachment from all earthly ties.
"I will have all or none" had been the inward cry of her bruised spirit.
Fate had taken her at her word, this time, and she had not been strong enough to endure, and had fled, cowering, from the consequence of her own act.
Tortured, distraught, with self-confidence shattered to the earth, she had turned once again, with hands that trembled as they pleaded, to ask comfort of human love and companionship. Violet had not condemned her, had pitied her, and had shown her untiring sympathy and affection – for love of Cedric.
Alex rose haggard, in the morning. She wanted to be alone. The thought of going to Barbara in Hampstead had become unendurable to her.
It was with a curious sense of inevitability that she found a letter from Barbara asking her if she could put off her visit for the present. The admirable Ada had developed measles.
"Good Lord, can't they send her to a hospital?" exclaimed Cedric, with the irritability of a practical man who finds his well-ordered and practical plans thrown out of gear by some eminently unpractical intervention on the part of Providence.
"I'm sure Barbara never would," said Violet, laughing. "Poor dear, I hope she won't catch it herself. It'll mean having the house disinfected, too – what a nuisance for her. But, Alex, dear, you must come with us! I'll send a wire today – mother will be perfectly delighted."
"Couldn't I stay here?" asked Alex.
Cedric explained that the house would be partially shut up, with only two of the servants left.
"I shouldn't give any trouble – I'd so much rather," Alex urged, unusually persistent.
"My dear, it's out of the question. Not a soul in London – you forget it's August."
"But, Cedric," said Violet, "I don't see why she shouldn't do as she likes. It will be only till Barbara can have her, after all – I suppose Ada will be moved as soon as she's better, and the disinfecting can't take so very long. If she wants to stay here?"
"I do," said Alex, with sudden boldness.
"You don't think you'll be lonely?"
"No, no."
"After all," Violet considered, "it will be very good for Ellen and the tweeny to have somebody to wait upon. I never do like leaving them here on enormous board wages, to do nothing at all – though Cedric will think it's the proper thing to do, because his father did it."
She laughed, and Cedric said, with an air of concession:
"Well, just till Barbara can take you in, perhaps – if you think London won't be unbearable. But mind you, Alex, the minute you get tired of it, or feel the heat too much for you, you're to make other arrangements."
Alex wondered dully what other arrangements Cedric supposed that she could make. She had no money, and had never even roused herself to write the letter he had recommended, asking to have her half-yearly allowance sent to her own address and not to that of the Superior of the convent.
But on the day before Cedric and Violet, with Violet's maid, and Rosemary, and her nurse, and her pram, all took their departure, Cedric called Alex into the study.
She went to him feeling oddly as though she was the little girl again, who had, on rare occasions, been sent for by Sir Francis, and had found him standing just so, his back to the fireplace, spectacles in hand, speaking in just the same measured, rather regretful tones of kindliness.
"Alex, I've made out two cheques one to cover the servants' board wages, which I thought you would be good enough to give them at the end of the month, and one for your own living expenses. You'd better cash that at once, in case you want any ready money. Have you anywhere to keep it under lock and key?"
Cedric, no more than Sir Francis, trusted to a woman's discretion in matters of money.
"Yes, there's the drawer of the writing-table in my bedroom."
"That will be all right, then. The servants are perfectly trustworthy, no doubt, but loose cash should never be left about in any case – if you want more, write to me. And, Alex, I've seen old Pumphrey – father's man of business. He will see that you get your fifty pounds. Here is the first instalment."
Cedric gravely handed her a third cheque.
"Have you a banking account?"
"I don't think so."
"Then I'll arrange to open one for you at my bank today. You'd better deposit this at once, hadn't you – unless you want anything?"
"No," faltered Alex, not altogether understanding.
"You will have no expenses while you're here, of course," said Cedric, rather embarrassed. Alex looked bewildered. It had never occurred to her to suggest paying for her own keep while she remained alone at Clevedon Square. She gave back to her brother the cheque for twenty-five pounds, and received his assurance that it would be banked in her name that afternoon.
"They will send you a cheque-book, and you can draw out any small sum you may need later on."
"I don't think I shall need any," said Alex, looking at the other two cheques he had given her, made payable to herself, and thinking what a lot of money they represented.
"You will have a thorough rest and change with Barbara," Cedric said, still looking at her rather uneasily. "Then, when we meet again in October, it will be time enough – "
He did not say what for, and Alex remembered the conversation that she had overheard on the stair. With a feeling of cunning, she was conscious of her own determination to take the initiative out of his hands, without his knowledge.
They did not want her, and they would want her less than ever, with all the approaching business connected with Pamela's wedding in December. Barbara did not want her, self-absorbed, and unwearingly considering how to cut down more and yet more expenses.
Alex had made up her mind to go and live alone. She would prove to them that she could do it, though they thought fifty pounds a year was so little money. She thought vaguely that perhaps she could earn something.
But she gave no hint of her plans to any one, knowing that Violet would be remonstrant and Cedric derisive.
Obsessed by this new idea, she said good-bye to them with a sort of furtive eagerness, and found herself alone in the house in Clevedon Square.
At first the quiet and the solitude were pleasant to her. She crept round the big, empty house like a spirit, feeling as though it presented a more familiar aspect with its shrouded furniture and carefully shaded windows, and the absence of most of Violet's expensive silver and china ornaments. The library, which was always kept open for her, was one of the least changed rooms in the house, and she spent hours crouched upon the sofa there, only rousing herself to go to the solitary meals which were punctiliously laid out for her in the big dining-room.
Presently she began to wonder if the elderly upper-housemaid, Ellen, left in charge, resented her being there. She supposed that the presence of some one who never went out, for whom meals had to be provided, who must be called in the morning and supplied with hot water four times a day, would interfere with the liberty of Ellen and the unseen tweeny who, no doubt, cooked for them. They would be glad when she went away. Never mind, she would go very soon. Alex felt that she was only waiting for something to happen which should give her the necessary impetus to carry out her vague design of finding a new, independent foothold for herself.
A drowsy week of very hot weather slipped by, and then one morning Alex received three letters.
Cedric's, short but affectionate, told her that Violet had reached Scotland tired out, and had been ordered by the doctor to undergo something as nearly approaching a rest-cure as possible. She was to stay in bed all the morning, sit in the garden when it was fine, and do nothing. She was to write no letters, but she sent Alex her love and looked forward to hearing from her. Cedric added briefly that Alex was not to be at all anxious. Violet only needed quiet and country air, and no worries. She was looking better already.
Alex put the letter down reflectively. Evidently Cedric did not want his wife disturbed by depressing correspondence, and she did not mean to write to Violet of her new resolution. She even thought that perhaps she would continue to let Violet believe her at Clevedon Square or with Barbara.
Her second letter was from Barbara. It was quite a long letter, and said that Barbara had decided to leave Ada at a convalescent home and take her own much-needed summer holiday abroad. Would Alex join her in a week's time?
"What do you think of some little, cheap seaside hole in Brittany, which we could do for very little? I wish I could have you as my guest, dear, but you'll understand that all the disinfecting of the house has cost money, besides forcing me to go away, which I hadn't meant to do. However, I'm sure I need the change, and I dare say it won't do you any harm either. We ought to do the whole thing for about fifteen pounds each, I think, which, I suppose, will be all right for you? Do ring me up tonight, and let's exchange views. I shan't be free of a suspicion as to these wretched measles till next week, but I don't think really there's much danger, as I've had them already and am not in the least nervous. Ring up between seven and eight tonight. I suppose Violet, as usual, has kept on the telephone, even though they're away themselves?"
Alex knew that she did not want to go abroad with Barbara. She nervously picked up her third letter, which bore a foreign post-mark. When she had read the sheet of thin paper which was all the envelope contained, she sat for a long while staring at it.
The nuns in Rome, with whom she had spent the few weeks previous to her return to England, had sent in their account for her board and lodging, for the few clothes she had purchased, and for the advance made her for her travelling expenses. The sum total, in francs, looked enormous.
At last Alex, trembling, managed to arrive at the approximate amount in English money.
Twenty pounds.
It seemed to her exorbitant, and she realized, with fresh dismay, that she had never taken such a debt into consideration at all. How could she tell Cedric?
She thought how angry he would be at her strange omission in never mentioning it to him before, and how impossible it would be to explain to him that she had, as usual, left all practical issues out of account. Suddenly Alex remembered with enormous relief that twenty-five pounds lay to her credit at the bank. She had received her new cheque-book only two days ago. She would go to the bank today and make them show her how she could send the money to Italy.
Then Cedric and Violet need never know. They need never blame her.
Full of relief, Alex took the cheque-book that morning to the bank. She did not like having to display her ignorance, but she showed the bill to the clerk, who was civil and helpful, and showed her how very simple a matter it was to draw a cheque for twenty pounds odd. When it was done, and safely posted, Alex trembled with thankfulness. It seemed to her that it would have been a terrible thing for Cedric to know of the expenses she had so ignorantly incurred, and of her incredible simplicity in never having realized them before, and she was glad that he need never know how almost the whole of her half-year's allowance of money had vanished so soon after she had received it.
She telephoned to Barbara that night, and said that she could not go abroad with her.
"Oh, very well, my dear, if you think it wiser not. Of course, if you don't mind London at this time of year, it's a tremendous economy to stay where you are… Are the servants looking after you properly?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, do just as you like, of course. I think I shall get hold of some friend to join forces with me, if you're sure you won't come…"
"Quite sure, Barbara," said Alex tremulously. She felt less afraid of her sister at the other end of the telephone.
She went and saw Barbara off the following week, and Barbara said carelessly:
"Good-bye, Alex. You look a shade better, I think. On the whole you're wiser to stay where you are – I'm sure you need quiet, and when once the rush begins for Pam's wedding, you'll never get a minute's peace. Are you staying on when they get back?"
"I'm not sure," faltered Alex.
"You may be wise. Well, come down to my part of the world if you want economy – and to feel as though you were out of London. Good-bye, dear."
Alex was surprised, and rather consoled, to hear Barbara alluding so lightly to the possibility of her seeking fresh quarters for herself. Perhaps, after all, they all thought it would be the best thing for her to do. Perhaps there was no need to feel guilty and as though her intentions must be concealed.
But Alex, dreading blame or disapproval, or even assurances that the scheme was unpractical and foolish, continued to conceal it.
She wrote and told Violet that she had decided that it would be too expensive to go abroad with Barbara. Might she stay on in Clevedon Square for a little while?
But she had secretly made up her mind to go and look for rooms or a boarding-house in Hampstead, as Barbara had suggested. As usual, it was only by chance that Alex realized the practical difficulties blocking her way.
She had now only five pounds.
On the following Saturday afternoon she found her way out by omnibus to Hampstead. She alighted before the terminus was reached, from a nervous dread of being taken on too far, although the streets in which she found herself were not prepossessing.
For the first time Alex reflected that she had no definite idea as to where she wanted to go in her search for lodgings. She walked timidly along the road, which appeared to be interminably long and full of second-hand furniture shops. Bamboo tables, and armchairs with defective castors, were put out on the pavement in many instances, and there was often a small crowd in front of the window gazing at the cheaply-framed coloured supplements hung up within. The pavements and the road, even the tram-lines, swarmed with untidy, clamouring children.
Alex supposed that she must be in the region vaguely known to her as the slums.
Surely she could not live here?
Then the recollection of her solitary five pounds came to her with a pang of alarm.
Of course, she must live wherever she could do so most cheaply. She had no idea of what it would cost.
It was very hot, and the pavement began to burn her feet. She did not dare to leave the main road, fearing that she should never find her way to the 'bus route again, if once she left it, but she peeped down one or two side-streets. They seemed quieter than Malden Road, but the unpretentious little grey houses did not look as though lodgers were expected in any of them. Alex wondered desperately how she was to find out.
Presently she saw a policeman on the further side of the street.
She went up to him and asked:
"Can you tell me of anywhere near here where they let rooms – somewhere cheap?"
The man looked down at her white, exhausted face, and at the well-cut coat and skirt chosen by Barbara, which yet hung loosely and badly on her stooping, shrunken figure.
"Somebody's poor relation," was his unspoken comment.
"Is it for yourself, Miss? You'd hardly care to be in this neighbourhood, would you?"
"I want to be somewhere near Hampstead – and somewhere very, very cheap," Alex faltered, thinking of her five pounds, which lay at that moment in the purse she was clasping.
"Well, you'll find as cheap here as anywhere, if you don't mind the noise."
"Oh, no," said Alex – who had never slept within the sound of traffic – surprised.
"Then if I was you, Miss, I'd try No. 252 Malden Road – just beyond the Gipsy Queen, that is, or else two doors further up. I saw cards up in both windows with 'apartments' inside the last week."
"Thank you," said Alex.
She wished that Malden Road had looked more like Downshire Hill, which had trees and little tiny gardens in front of the houses, which almost all resembled country cottages. But no doubt houses in Downshire Hill did not let rooms, or if so they must be too expensive. Besides, Alex felt almost sure that Barbara would not want her as a very near neighbour.
She was very tired when she reached No. 252, and almost felt that she would take the rooms, whatever they were like, to save herself further search. After all, she could change later on, if she did not like them.
Like all weak people, Alex felt the urgent necessity of acting as quickly as possible on her own impulses.
She looked distastefully at the dingy house, with its paint cracking into hard flakes, and raised the knocker slowly. A jagged end of protruding wire at the side of the door proclaimed that the bell was broken.
Her timid knock was answered by a slatternly-looking young woman wearing an apron, whom Alex took to be the servant.
"Can I see the – the landlady?"
"Is it about a room? I'm Mrs. 'Oxton." She spoke in the harshest possible Cockney, but quite pleasantly.
"Oh," said Alex, still uncertain. "Yes, I want rooms, please."
The woman looked her swiftly up and down. "Only one bed-sittin'-room vacant, Miss, and that's at the top of the 'ouse. Would you care to see that?"
"Yes, please."
Mrs. Hoxton slammed the door and preceded Alex up a narrow staircase, carpeted with oil-cloth. On the third floor she threw open the door of a room considerably smaller than the bath-room at Clevedon Square, containing a low iron bed, and an iron tripod bearing an enamel basin, a chipped pitcher and a very small towel-rail. A looking-glass framed in mottled yellow plush was hung crookedly on the wall, and beneath it stood a wooden kitchen chair. There was a little table with two drawers in it behind the door.
Alex looked round her with bewilderment. A convent cell was no smaller than this, and presented a greater aspect of space from its bareness.
"Is there a sitting-room?" she inquired.
"Not separate to this – no, Miss. Bed-sitting-room, this is called. Small, but then I suppose you'd be out all day."
For a moment Alex wondered why.
"But meals?" she asked feebly.
"Would it be more than just the breakfast and supper, and three meals on Sunday?"
Alex did not know what to answer, and Mrs. Hoxton surveyed her.
"Where are you working, Miss? Anywhere near?"
"I'm not working anywhere – yet."
Mrs. Hoxton's manner changed a little.
"If you want two rooms, Miss, and full board, I could accommodate you downstairs. The price is according, of course – a week in advance, and pay by the week."
Alex followed the woman downstairs again. She was sure that this was not the kind of place where she wanted to live.
Mrs. Hoxton showed her into a larger bedroom on the first floor, just opening the door and giving Alex a glimpse of extreme untidiness and an unmade bed.
"My gentleman got up late today – he don't go to 'is job Saturdays, so I 'aven't put the room to rights yet. But it's a nice room, Miss, and will be vacant on Monday. It goes with the downstairs sitting-room in the front, as a rule, but that's 'ad to be turned into a bedroom just lately. I've been so crowded."
"Will that be empty on Monday, too?" asked Alex, for the sake of answering something.
"Tonight, Miss. I let a coloured gentleman 'ave it – a student, you know; a thing I've never done before, either. Other people don't like it, and it gives a name, like, for not being particular who one takes. So he's going, and I shan't be sorry. I don't 'old with making talk, and it isn't as though the room wouldn't let easy. It's a beautiful room, Miss."
The coloured gentleman's room was tidier than the one upstairs, but a haze of stale tobacco fumes hung round it and obscured Alex' view of a short leather sofa with horsehair breaking from it in patches, a small round table in the middle of the room, and a tightly-closed window looking on to the traffic of Malden Road.
"About terms, Miss," Mrs. Hoxton began suggestively in the passage.
"Oh, I couldn't afford much," Alex began, thinking that it was more difficult than she had supposed to walk out again saying that she did not, after all, want the rooms.
"I'd let you 'ave those two rooms, and full board, for two-ten a week!" cried the landlady.
"Oh, I don't think – "
Mrs. Hoxton shrugged her shoulders, looked at the ceiling and said resignedly:
"Then I suppose we must call it two guineas, though I ought to ask double. But you can come in right away on Monday, Miss, and I think you'll find it all comfortable."
"But – " said Alex faintly.
She felt very tired, and the thought of a further search for lodgings wearied her and almost frightened her. Besides, the policeman had told her that this was a cheap neighbourhood. Perhaps anywhere else they would charge much more. Finally she temporized feebly with the reflection that it need only be for a week – once the step of leaving Clevedon Square had been definitely taken, she could feel herself free to find a more congenial habitation at her leisure, and when she might feel less desperately tired. She sighed, as she followed the line of least resistance.
"Well, I'll come on Monday, then."
"Yes, Miss," the landlady answered promptly. "May I have your name, Miss? – and the first week in advance my rule, as I think I mentioned."
"My name is Miss Clare."
Alex took two sovereigns and two shillings, fumbling, out of her purse and handed them to the woman. It did not occur to her to ask for any form of receipt.
"Will you be wanting anything on Monday, Miss?"
Alex looked uncomprehending, and the woman eyed her with scarcely veiled contempt and added, "Supper, or anything?"
"Oh – yes. I'd better come in time for dinner – for supper, I mean."
"Yes, Miss. Seven o'clock will do you, I suppose?"
Alex thought it sounded very early, but she did not feel that she cared at all, and said that seven would do quite well.
She wondered if there were any questions which she ought to ask, but could think of none, and she was rather afraid of the strident-voiced, hard-faced woman.
But Mrs. Hoxton seemed to be quite satisfied, and pulled open the door as though it was obvious that the interview had come to an end.
"Good afternoon," said Alex.
"Afternoon," answered the landlady, as she slammed the door again, almost before Alex was on the pavement of Malden Road. She went away with a strangely sinking heart. To what had she committed herself?
All the arguments which Alex had been brooding over seemed to crumble away from her now that she had taken definite action.
She repeated to herself again that Violet and Cedric did not want her, that Barbara did not want her, that there was no place for her anywhere, and that it was best for her to make her own arrangements and spare them all the necessity of viewing her in the light of a problem.
But what would Cedric say to Malden Road? Inwardly Alex resolved that he must never come there. If she said "Hampstead" he would think that she was somewhere close to Barbara's pretty little house.
But Barbara?
Alex sank, utterly jaded, into the vacant space in a crowded omnibus. It was full outside, and the atmosphere of heat and humanity inside made her feel giddy. Arguments, self-justification and sick apprehensions, surged in chaotic bewilderment through her mind.