Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

  ‘Oh! So she’s a little Spitfire, too!’ cried the red-faced gentleman, but Ella had now left him, and was pretending to busy herself with some bottles in a cupboard beneath the surface of the bar.

  Well! Of all the cheek! Of all the blooming nerve! Of all the cool calculating impudence! Her resentment was concentrated not so much upon the present offender, as upon the absent Mr. Eccles, for his underhand and unforgivable action in putting her in such a position. So he was sending Spies now, to come in and look her over! She had not the slightest doubt that she had been talked over and over with this red-faced man, who was apparently an old friend, and that Mr. Eccles had slyly sent him in to form a second opinion. Otherwise why should he as a stranger have gone out of his way to come to ‘The Midnight Bell’? The whole thing was as clear as day, and never, never had she been so angry. Well, he had overreached himself this time, and wouldn’t she just let him Have it! Let him wait till she saw him to-morrow! She didn’t care a hang for his beastly money, and she would let him have it as he had never had it before from anyone, with his beastly Religion and gossiping!

  The whole of this episode was over in two or three minutes (the red-faced gentleman, also furious because she was not going to play, leaving a few minutes afterwards with a very sarcastic ‘Good Morning, Madam,’ and an exaggerated raising of his hat) – but the memory of it stayed goadingly with Ella all day. A thousand schemes for revenge upon and retaliatory humiliation of Mr. Eccles went through her brain, but it was not until the evening that fate seemed to play into her hands, and oddly enough through the instrumentality of Bob.

  It was getting on for closing time in the crowded bar when Bob, who, she noticed, had been in very good spirits all the evening (there was no mood of Bob’s she did not notice) – asked her if she would like to come to the pictures and tea with him to-morrow afternoon.

  ‘You’re free all right to-morrow afternoon, aren’t you?’ asked Bob.

  ‘I should say I am,’ said Ella, and indeed, she was so overcome and delighted at the rare prospect, that for a moment or two she quite forgot that she was engaged to meet Mr. Eccles at the usual time and place to-morrow afternoon. When she remembered this she at first had a great shock, for she realized that it was too late to get a letter to him in time, and she could not find it in her heart, richly as they might deserve it, to let anyone down like that. On the other hand she equally could not find it in her heart to relinquish this precious opportunity to know Bob better (she had half a mind to confide some of her perplexities to Bob) – and she at last alighted upon the reckless expedient which alone would meet the case – she would send Mr. Eccles a telegram.

  A telegram! She had once sent one for the Governor, but never one on her own behalf, and she was appalled by her own temerity and extravagance. But no sooner had the idea got hold of her, than she was intoxicated by its potentialities and nothing else would do. You could be as curt and excuseless as you cared in a telegram, and she could not help feeling that it would Show him as nothing else might. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that barmaids could send telegrams as well as anybody else, would it? – and what would haughty Sisters-in-Law think of telegrams from despised underdogs arriving at the house in the morning? In fact the more she thought about it the more she revelled in the luxurious thought, and she began to frame the brief words she would use.

  She slept badly that night, staying awake into the small hours, thinking about her telegram, and sensing the silent proximity of the telegraphically innocent and sleeping Bob in the next room. At a quarter to three she heard him get up for a drink of water from his jug (a habit of his with which she was familiar in the dark quarters of the night, but her secret knowledge of which was never likely to be mentioned or come to light), and it seemed at least an hour after that before she dropped off herself.

  In the morning she hastily slipped out just before the house opened, and despatched the wire.

  ‘DON’T MEET TO-DAY AFRAID ENGAGED.’

  was what it rather crudely ended up as, for although she had innumerable other abrupt and wilfully mystifying alternatives, she had not definitely fixed upon any single one, and she was in such a hurry that she got in a panic and wrote down the first thing that occurred to her.

  The morning dragged by slowly enough, and yet was insidiously pervaded by the excitement and pleasure of the afternoon jaunt ahead (though Bob, of course, had said nothing more about it, as it was his pose to appear blasé in matters such as this); and at three o’clock she hastened up to her room to get ready.

  She dressed herself with a care and attention verging upon, but not overstepping, the ostentatious boundaries of the ‘Nines,’ and decided that she looked rather nice. In fact the fantastically hopeful notion actually entered her head that perhaps she was quite an attractive girl after all, and hadn’t realized it. For after all there was Mr. Eccles, who had said that she was beautiful, and here was Bob taking her out (and did men ‘take you out’ unless they thought you were ‘attractive’?), and even that red-faced Horror had said that he admired Mr. Eccles’ good taste. In which case perhaps Bob himself might be coming to ‘see’ something in her! What a thought! No more Mr. Eccles, no more India, no more vulture-like craving for dying people’s money – no more puzzling doubts or anything – just supreme and everlasting happiness! For of course she would throw over the whole world for Bob. But this was nonsense, and that was Bob calling her from below. It would never do to make him impatient by keeping him waiting.

  They were in great spirits as they set off, and although they were pressed for time and could not see the second feature film all through, a keenly enjoyable afternoon was spent. Madame Tussauds was the cinema Bob had chosen, as being the nearest and most luxurious, and after the pictures they went to tea at a little restaurant over the road. No Lyons’ or A.B.C.’s for Bob, whom Ella reproached for being so extravagant. But she could not help taking a certain pride in the thought that Bob could do things in style as well as Mr. Eccles, and she wished Mr. Eccles could see them now.

  Over tea Ella summoned up all her courage, and half for the sake of confiding in someone, and half to see what effect it would have on Bob, shyly announced that he might be Losing her before long, and told him about India. This she did with a certain naïve satisfaction in the mysteriousness and impressiveness of foreign travel and India in connection with herself, and treated the matter rather as though it was very nearly decided. Bob showed the liveliest, and, as usual, scrupulously courteous surprise and incredulity, but alas, his heart was not touched at the thought of her departure, and any lingering foolish hope that he might be beginning to ‘see’ something in her, was dispelled. But this was stale news, and as usual she did not let it interfere with her pleasure in his company, or her general delight in an intimate and charming winter’s afternoon.

  Another surprise awaited her directly they got back. She went up hastily to dress in her room, and was staggered to find the brown envelope of a telegram propped up against an ornament on the mantelpiece. That it was a reply from the man she had deserted this afternoon she instantly realized, and as she tore it open she marvelled at the quickness and force of his return blow.

  ‘WHY ME NOT MEET WRITE PLEASE.’

  Ella was at first inclined to smile at the inverted, indeed the rather pigeon-English, manner of this message with its twisted ‘why me not meet?’ – rather as though Mr. Eccles had mysteriously decided to adopt a disguise, and with his hands crossed and his eyes screwed up was telegraphing from a hiding-place in Chinatown. But she soon saw that there was nothing to laugh at, and that she had received something uncommonly like an ultimatum. There was something querulous, rather than pathetic, in the ‘why me not meet?’ and peremptory in the ‘write please,’ which informed her that he somehow knew she was up to something and was not going to stand any nonsense. And why had he sent a wire, when a letter would have served the purpose? Just to show her that he could send wires as well as herself. There was going to be trouble next time t
hey met.

  But if he had one upon her, he also did not know that she had one upon him in that disgraceful happening in the bar yesterday morning, and she was not afraid of him. In fact she would rather welcome a battle.

  Besides she had India and other things up her sleeve now. With those behind her, Mr. Eccles was not the same formidable man.

  Unless, of course, all those things failed her. Then where would she be?

  CHAPTER XXVII

  ON MONDAY THE most sinister and outlandish thing happened in the universe – the day failed to dawn. Between half-past six and seven, when Ella usually turned on her pillow and thought of rising, it might have been between half-past two and three in the morning, for all the light that showed through the blind. Baffled and perturbed, she rose and looked out of the window, to discover that the whole invisible world was wrapped in a dense black-brown fog. Relieved in some measure by her previous experiences of this vile but scientifically explicable London phenomenon, she hastened to light the gas, and busy herself with dressing. But there is nothing in the world so depressing, so insidiously fear-inspiring, as gas-light at a time of day at which gas-light is not proper, and she felt hopeless. Besides which, the air was damp and freezing cold. She heard Bob’s alarm clock going off in the next room and a little later his footsteps across the room as he went to shut the window and make his own discovery of the gloom-stricken and afflicted day.

  Things were no better when she got downstairs. It was colder than ever, and she had to switch on weirdly unfamiliar lights wherever she went in the blackness and frigid silence surrounding everything.

  ‘Letter ’ere for you, Ella,’ said the Governor, up early, and puddling about without his collar, and blowing steam into the frozen air. ‘Nice sort of a day – ain’t it?’

  ‘Ta, Governor. Yes – ain’t it awful?’

  From India! – there was no mistaking that handwriting. She had pictured herself receiving this letter a hundred times already, but never with her teeth practically chattering with cold in the unearthly illuminations of a dense fog. And what news did it bear? She put it on a shelf as she went on with her work, as she had to wait till the Governor was out of the way before she opened it. Was sunny India destined to be her salvation from fogs and the bleak cold monotony of London? Or was it all off, and had she to continue her dreary life without the inspiration even of this hopeful excitement? She would know in a minute.

  At last the Governor disappeared and she tore it open.

  ‘5 Amprey Gardens,

  N.W.3.

  ‘Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry regrets not having been able to write before and wishes to say that she is now suited. She hopes Miss Dawson has been put to no inconvenience.

  ‘E. SANDERSON-CHANTRY.’

  So it was all off. . . . Oh well – that was that. She must take it bravely. And with distant memories of ‘Bustah! Bustah!’ and the hostile maid, and the stormy man, perhaps it was just as well.

  But she wished she hadn’t got the news in this dreadful fog. And again she could not help feeling snubbed by the brief and cruelly impersonal wording of the note. They didn’t seem to think you had any feelings or longings – those above. They didn’t treat you as a human being. Besides it was never nice, to learn that somebody else had been preferred to you, and to be coolly told so – with the underlying implication that you were not quite a first-rate article, and might as well know it. Whatever the circumstances, no one likes to think they are a second-rate article.

  And what a score for Mr. Eccles – though of course he would never know he had scored. She had only that enigmatic five hundred pounds to fortify her in her contest with him now, and it looked as though she had been getting above herself.

  India was Off – that was the burden that lay on her soul all the long dark day. She wished she had not told Bob about it, as she now had to tell him that it was Off. He was sympathetic, but had his own thoughts to attend to, and she could see he had no true comprehension of the desolation of a fog-ridden world in which India was Off.

  The fog improved not at all as the day wore on, and at eleven o’clock, when the house was opened and the people came in, the struggling electric light was burning everywhere, and it was neither day nor night. Rather it seemed, as you saw one wretched customer coming in after another from the abysses of mystery outside, that the gods had at last convicted human nature of its crimes and had thrown them all into a vast cold dungeon away from the light of day for ever.

  A frightening thought. She wondered whether Bob ever had such thoughts as these. As he moved near her, in his strong yet modest way, he seemed constitutionally unassailable by fear. She was afraid she would not be able to keep her desolate longing for Bob at bay, if this fog went on. His nearness, his strength, his quietness, and the gentle look in his dark eyes, were disturbing her nervous system. In the terror and coldness of the dungeon you so desired to cling to someone you loved – and the passionate desire to take Bob out into a passage there and then, and to cling, for strength and consolation of her misery and weakness, to the desperately attractive man, made her heart sink achingly.

  But she frequently had attacks of Bob when the weather was bad. In the afternoon the fog lightened a little to the colour of curry – the curry she would have had if she had gone to India – which was Off – but at night it was as black as ever. A black day and night.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  HER PLAN WAS to keep calm. She had one up on him, and if there was going to be any trouble she at any rate was not going to make a fool of herself. This was her decision as she left the house at five past three, and walked along to meet Mr. Eccles at Great Portland Street Station at a quarter past.

  She had not seen him for nearly two weeks since their peculiarly unfriendly interchange of telegrams. She had written him a brief note saying that she would ‘explain’ when she saw him next (though she had no idea how she was going to ‘explain’ without quarrelling with him), and she had had a briefer letter back saying that he was confined to the house with a chill, and was staying indoors till the weather was better. But, shortly after the fog, came snow, and after the snow, mud and rain, and then more snow, and it was days after dreary days before she got another note fixing a meeting.

  In those intervening days she had had time to cool down from her first rage and resentment at him for her humiliation at the hands of his red-faced friend; and in her general gloom, in no way lightened by sundry trips in the foul weather over to Pimlico (where enigmatically and maddeningly still no Change had occurred, the wretched suffering man still mulishly refusing to do what benign sophistry urged was Best for him) she almost felt she could marry Mr. Eccles out of hand. If only to solve her puzzles, and get away for good and all from the slow, mournful influence of Bob. For she had never anticipated this long stretch of bad weather, and Bob was getting on her nerves – at times to a pitch which she felt she could not stand.

  So she had got to be wise and cool, and perhaps marry a nice gentleman with money.

  She was there before the time, but he was standing there waiting for her. He was looking depressingly like himself – she had somehow hoped that he would have changed for the better in the long interval – and there was the same quizzing, although now perhaps slightly aggressive, look in his eye, as he stood watching her as she came up, and then raised his hat.

  ‘I’m not late, am I?’ she said.

  ‘No. You’re not late,’ said Mr. Eccles, and looked up at the sky. ‘I believe it’s going to rain.’

  ‘Oh – I think it’ll hold off,’ said Ella. ‘Where are we going?’ And they decided to walk down Great Portland Street in the direction of the Corner House where they would have tea.

  ‘How’s your cold?’ said Ella, politely and ingratiatingly as they set off. ‘I was very sorry to hear you’d been bad.’

  ‘I think it is going to rain,’ said Mr. Eccles, looking up again at the sky, but with an innocence of eye which did not divert the mind from the fact that he had purposely and po
intedly (though she could not quite see the point) ignored her polite question. Oh – how well she knew his ways and could read his soul! Quite apart from his grudge about the broken appointment, which he was dying to get off his chest, she could see that this was one of his yellow days and he was all out to take it out of her in any case. But she had decided to keep calm and so gain the advantage.

  ‘Oh – I don’t think it is, is it?’ she said with studied and model restraint.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Mr. Eccles, and promptly began to put up his umbrella.

  Now if there was one thing which Ella detested more than another in Mr. Eccles it was his umbrella – or rather it was not the umbrella she objected to so much, as having to walk along with him when he had it up. For although she would often have much preferred to walk outside of it in the rain, he was unable, in chivalry, to keep it all to himself, and included her rather grudgingly by slanting it over in her direction. This had the objectionable result (described already) that the tip of the furthest spoke kept on coming plomp down on to the top of her head, every half-dozen paces or so, with a sort of methodical springy poke which she could not mention in view of the fact that she was accepting his umbrella hospitality, but which nearly drove her out of her senses, as well as making her feel that it might at any moment go into her eye and put it out. She had had bitter experience of this umbrella from Mr. Eccles, who was a very keen umbrellaist at the smallest drop of rain, and she could not feel that it was going to help her to keep her temper now.

  However, up it went, and they had hardly gone twenty paces before she felt the first tentative little plomp on her head – the first drop as it were, in the shower of plomps which she knew was about to descend upon her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you haven’t told me about your cold yet.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’ he said. ‘You seem very interested about my cold.’ (Plomp.)