The Black Cabinet (14 page)

Chapter XXVI

At nine o'clock next morning Chloe rang the bell of Miss Marcia Hayman's flat, and had it opened to her by the kind of cook who is nearly extinct.

“Good morning,” said Chloe; and instantly a high, worried voice called from somewhere inside the flat:

“Mrs. Western, is that Mrs. Marsh? Tell her to be sure not to tilt my mirror like she did last time.”

Mrs. Western nodded the head with the neatly parted grey hair.

“We was expecting the charwoman,” she explained.

Chloe dived at the opening.

“Yes, I know. But she's ill—she can't come. I've come instead. I've got a note from her.”

Mrs. Western's round, rosy face took on a subtle change of expression.

“Step inside,” she said. Then, taking the note, she left Chloe standing in the hall and disappeared through a half open door on the right.

Chloe heard voices; Mrs. Western's and the high, worried one; snatches of words, “In the hall—I'd better see her—hope she won't break things—so careless”; and on the last word Miss Hayman came out from what was evidently the dining-room. A table-napkin hung down over one arm, and she had the pinched features and the worried look which went with the worried voice.

“Oh, good-morning,” she said, and blinked at Chloe out of pale blue eyes that had pink rims and sandy lashes. Her bobbed hair, a couple of inches too long, was grey, with sandy streaks in it. “Er good-morning. Are you—er, experienced, and er, very careful? I hope—I mean, things do get broken so dreadfully, and—er, the paint is all quite new.” She paused with a bewildered look, rubbed her pale, thin nose with her forefinger, and without waiting for an answer to any of her questions, half turned and began to call, “Mrs. Western! Mrs. Western!”

Chloe said firmly, “I'm very careful.”

But Miss Hayman only rubbed her nose again, and, murmuring
“
Mrs. Western will show you what to do,” drifted back into the dining-room, dropping the table-napkin as she went.

Chloe plunged into the mysteries of charing.

It is a fact that some women really like house work. Chloe discovered herself to be one of them. So nice to see things coming clean; so nice to find confusion, and leave order in its place; so really amusing to polish beautiful furniture until it shone like dark water. It was hard work of course; but Chloe's youth and strength, which had fretted in idleness, rejoiced at the very hardness.

There was a half-way break when she and Mrs. Western drank tea and ate bread and cheese in the spotless kitchen. Mrs. Western ate the cheese from the point of a knife; Chloe took it in her fingers. Each had a secret thought on the subject. Chloe's, “How dangerous. I've never seen anyone do it before”; and Mrs. Western's, “A likely girl; but, lor, what a bringing up, to eat cheese with her fingers!”

Chloe was very grateful for the cheese, and polished with new zest and efficiency. At one o'clock Mrs. Western paid her half-a-crown, and she put on her coat and hat.

When she emerged into the hall, she was aware of Miss Hayman at the telephone. As it had been fitted into the angle of the wall between the hall door and the dining-room, it was impossible for Chloe to leave the flat without disturbing a lady who looked as if she would be rather easily disturbed. She drew back into the kitchen therefore, and waited whilst Miss Hayman's high-pitched voice made every word of her conversation audible.

“No! Not really?” she was saying with most tearful intensity. “How
could
she? Oh, my dear Leila, that's
rather
strong language. But, of course—yes, yes, my dear, I know—to have your secretary go off at a moment's notice just because her fiancé—oh, Leila, don't! Yes, yes, to be sure, all those lists to be checked. Are you sure you can't put your hand on anyone? No, I'm afraid I don't—that is—no, no, I don't know anyone who would take it on at a minute's notice.”

Chloe came into the hall with a rush.

At the other end of the line Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn was aware of a confused exclamation, after which the line went dead and she said “Damn!” several times with a good deal of emphasis.

Miss Hayman left the receiver dangling, and blinked aghast at Chloe. A young person, a charwoman, rushing out on one, interrupting! What was the world coming to? Bolshevism—sheer Bolshevism! She blinked at it and rubbed her nose.

“I'm so sorry,” said Chloe, breathless and ingratiating, “but I couldn't help hearing what you said. But do you, does anyone want a secretary?”—Miss Hayman gasped—“I couldn't help hearing—I couldn't; you, you've got such a splendid telephone voice. And I do want a secretary's job frightfully badly.”

A secretary's job—a charwoman! It was really very confusing. Miss Hayman caught Chloe's smile, and really saw her for the first time.

“It's not for myself,” she said. “It's my friend, Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn. She's getting up the big ball for the N.Y.S.Z.K.U.—you must have heard of it—the ball, I mean—the papers full of it—Royalty going and all. And to-day, at the eleventh hour, her secretary—I mean Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn's secretary—she's the Honourable Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn, you know, and—dear me, where had I got to?”

“You'd got to the secretary,” said Chloe firmly. “What did she do?”

“Failed her—failed us at the eleventh hour! I'm so interested in the N.Y.S.Z.K.U., you know. Yes, she's failed us. And there are all the lists to check. And, as Leila says, with the ball to-morrow, how can she fill her place?”

“She's quite forgotten who she's speaking to,” thought Chloe. “I must have that job—I
must
.”

“I think I could do it—I do really,” she said aloud. “If you'll call up Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn and tell her I'm coming, I'll go and see her at once. Just ring up and tell her that I'm here, and that I'm sure I could help her out.”

Miss Hayman turned meekly to the telephone, her impressions of a Bolshevist charwoman had given place to an insistent actuality. Chloe, smiling, sparkling, with the manner and voice of her own world, impressed her as being competent, as being, perhaps, just what Leila wanted.

“I don't—I don't think I know your name,” was her only protest.

Chloe picked out her second Christian name and altered one letter of her surname.

“Mary Dene,” she said.

Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn had a much larger and more opulent flat than her friend Miss Hayman. She was also a much larger and more opulent person. She came into the room where Chloe was beguiling a five minutes' wait by gazing at some very up-to-date furniture, a long way after Heppelwhite. The chairs and table combined grey, unpolished walnut with scarlet paint. One might have said, “Heppelwhite in a nightmare.”

Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn was quite as up-to-date as her furniture. She wore a black marocain garment that ended just below the knee and resembled a chemise that was a good deal plainer than chemises are wont to be. Beneath it one divined the sternest control of a figure naturally too generous for the fashion. Her dark-red shingled hair had the appearance of having been kept under a glass case until just the moment before; the most bridled imagination could not have pictured any disturbance of its perfect wave. Nevertheless, Mrs. Llewellyn was plainly in a state of distraction. She carried a sheaf of papers in one hand, and held a fountain pen in the other.

“Miss Green?” she said.

“Dene,” said Chloe.

“What does it matter? Are you from Miss Hayman? Are you the secretary she told me of? Are you the secretary she told me about?”

“I am,” said Chloe, and nerved herself for a glorious game of bluff.

She might have spared herself the trouble. Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn thrust the papers and the fountain pen upon her, took her by the arm, and said in a deep contralto voice:

“Thank heaven! Come along and get to work on these lists at once. No, not in here—they'll be laying lunch. My
devil
of a secretary failed me because her fiancé had had a motor smash—and the ball's to-morrow! I'll give you lunch, but you can put in half an hour first.”

Talking all the time, she ushered Chloe into a room that contained a littered writing-table. When she had explained very rapidly what Chloe was to do, she departed, stopping at the door to say:

“For goodness sake get the names right, Miss Green.”

“Dene,” said Chloe politely but firmly.

Chloe got back to Hatchelbury Road at half past ten. She was exhausted but joyful. She met Mrs. Rowse's gloomy disapproval with a flood of light-hearted chatter:

“I've simply written my fingers off—after scrubbing too, you know. And I've mugged up the proper way to address everybody out of Debrett—thrilling! Aren't titles lovely, Mrs. Rowse dear?—written out full on envelopes, you know. The Viscountess Kafoozlum; The Marquis of Carabas; The Lady Capadocia Mount Ararat. It's like a lovely, muddled dream of history, geography, and the best fairy tales. But I wish I'd got a spare hand.”

“There's lots that don't hold with titles nowadays,” said Mrs. Rowse heavily. “Albert don't for one. And I've kept you a cup of tea—but it's stewed.”

“Angel!” said Chloe. “Why doesn't Albert hold with titles?”

“Me and Mr. Rowse don't trouble ourselves—there's only a drain of milk, but you can take two lumps of sugar. Albert's young, and what I've noticed is, young people always want to set the world to rights—gels are as bad as boys. Now I'll lay you've run away because you think you know better than some that's lived twice as long as you have.”

Chloe nodded.

“Lovely hot tea!” she murmured. “May I have three lumps of sugar? I want one to crunch.”

“And my advice is, you eat humble pie, and go back to your friends.”

“What?—when I've just got a job? Never!” said Chloe. She crunched the lump of sugar with decision. “And look here, I haven't told you half how exciting it is. Prepare for thrills, real thrills”—she made a noble gesture with the empty cup—“I'm going to be Cinderella for the second time in my life. I'm going to the ball.”

A gleam of interest sparkled for a moment in Mrs. Rowse's disapproving eyes. It was instantly subdued.

“Lor, how you do run on!—and time we were all in our beds.”

“Albert isn't in,” said Chloe firmly. “And you know you wouldn't dream of going to bed whilst he's out. I expect his club is having a frightfully exciting time settling just how they'll share everything out when we're all Communists. He's going to teach me to sing ‘The Red Flag' so as to be all ready. I shall tell him I've been simply wallowing in titles all day; and to-morrow I'm going to mingle, absolutely
mingle
with an effete aristocracy. He'll be frightfully shocked! Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn is going to lend me a nice, plain black dress. I do hope it'll cover my knees, because the one she had on didn't cover hers, not really. And I shall see all the people come in—the ball is at The Luxe. And I'm to have a little table in the vestibule and take all the tickets. And every fiftieth person gets a prize—the prizes are lovely! I'm looking forward to it most awfully.”

“I don't hold with balls,” said Mrs. Rowse in ad tone of unrelieved gloom.

Chapter XXVII

Chloe looked at herself in the glass in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn's spare room, and shook with laughter. The room was emerald green: carpet, floor, walls, ceiling, and furniture. The bedstead had gold knobs and a black eiderdown with gold dragons on it. Chloe was the only other black thing in the room.

She gazed at herself in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn's nice, plain black frock, and fell back against the emerald bedstead gurgling:

“It's perfectly, perfectly square; and I expect she paid guineas, and guineas, and guineas for it.”

The frock had, in fact, every side equal to every other side. It just touched Chloe's knees coyly. There were no sleeves. Two other Chloes could have squeezed into its ample width. Chloe whisked round, saw her back, and went into fresh convulsions.

“What on earth would Ally have said to this?” she made a face at herself in the glass. “Cinderella up to date! Pouf! I don't like it very much. The shoes at least fit me. But the frock! Oh, I do hope to goodness I shall never weigh thirteen stone to fill it—and it would certainly take thirteen stone to fill it. Now have I got
all
the ink off my fingers?” She took a hurried look at them, remembered that she had been given ten minutes to dress, snatched her coat from a fantastic chair, and waved good-bye to her reflection.

A door opened. Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn was calling her:

“Miss Green! Miss Green!”

“Dene,” murmured Chloe automatically, and fled.

The Gold Room at The Luxe was empty when Chloe came into it. Its floor, the best dancing floor in London, shone like water, and like water, took and threw back the reflection of the gold dome and golden walls. Chloe felt like a little black fly in a room that had come straight out of an Arabian Night's Entertainment.

“I'm
really
Cinderella, and I haven't got any business in this fairy story—that's why I feel queer,” she decided, and made haste back to the table where she was to sit and take the tickets.

The lounge of The Luxe, like the Gold Room, has a note of oriental extravagance. In the day-time it is even a little ridiculous, with its ceiling a brilliant blue, its couches upholstered in sapphire velvet, and its great, gilded pillars. But at night and as a setting for a ball, the brilliant background has its effect.

Chloe's table had been set in the lounge, just where the great double archway lined with mirrors gives access to the Gold Room. She felt very small and insignificant as she sat there waiting for the people to arrive. A momentary wave of depression crept over her. It wasn't nice to feel so small and alone. She would rather be Cinderella in the kitchen at Hatchelbury Road than here at The Luxe in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn's horrible dress, with that lovely dancing floor so near—she could see part of it reflected in the mirrors that lined the archway. Presently she would see other people swing by to all those tunes which make you feel as if you could dance to the end of the world and beyond it.

“Idiot!” said Chloe to herself. “Stop it this moment! You're going to have a most exciting evening, and see everybody who is anybody. Only I do wish they'd roll up—I do hate waiting for people.”

Twenty minutes later she was breathlessly taking tickets, assisted by a young lady from the booking office, whose golden hair, general efficiency, and remarkable flow of conversation fairly staggered Chloe. Whilst checking off the first fifty tickets, she informed her that she lived at Tooting with a widowed aunt, and found it rather slow, and if it wasn't for her boy—

“After all what I say is this—twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven—if a young lady—no, you've given me two together—what was I saying? Well, after all, it comes to this, if you've got a boy you like, and you go out with him in the evening, it doesn't matter so much where you live—thirty-nine, forty—Aunt's a bit dull; but I'm not there much, and there's something in being able to say that you live with your people. You know what I mean, dear; it gives you a sort of standing. Here, we're just on fifty. Have you got that badge all ready? I wouldn't mind having one of those prizes myself—would you? Fifty!” she announced, and nudged Chloe with her elbow.

Chloe picked up a little gilt badge from a pile her left, and handed it across the table to the dark, sallow young man who had just given in his ticket.

“What's this?” he said, and stared; he had dull, unhappy eyes.

Chloe explained:

“Every fiftieth guest gets a prize. The prize will be drawn for after supper. The badge entitles you to draw for one.”

“Oh,” drawled the dark young man. He looked discontentedly at the badge, stuck it in his button hole, and strolled through the mirrored archway into the room beyond.

“Lord Algernon Du Pré,” said the young lady from Tooting—“and I don't think much of him, nor any reason to either, if all they say about him's true. I don't suppose it is though, for there's nothing that people won't say. Only last Sunday my boy told me that a young lady we both know—Florrie Summers her name is, and she's cashier Watson and Lobbs'—well, she'd told him—my boy, Ernie West, you know—she told him that she'd seen me with her own eyes driving in a motor car with a gentleman that no girl
would
be driving with if she thought anything of herself at all. ‘All right, Ernie,' I said, ‘you can believe her, you can believe me. It's not for me to say why she should be set on getting you to believe lies about me. But if you take up with her, you're done with me—and I hope you won't live to regret it.'” The stream of words flowed on without break, though the voice occasionally dropped to a faint, sibilant whisper. During the arrival of seven or eight hundred guests Chloe learned that “a girl might just as well be dead as not keep up her proper pride,” and that once you let a gentleman friend get the upper hand, he is apt to behave as if his word was law, “which it isn't and never will be—not with me.”

Chloe gave out her gilt badges to every fiftieth person who presented a ticket. She had just given one, and Connie Cross at her side was remarking that she wouldn't be seen dead at a pig fair in the dress worn by the recipient, when suddenly she felt her heart stand still.

There was a lull in the arrivals. The lounge had cleared, and she could see the whole length of it. At the far end a man was standing alone, a tall man with his back to Chloe. Her heart jumped, and went on, beating hard. Why had she thought for a moment that the man was—was—? He turned, and her heart stopped again.

It was Martin Fossetter. Two women and another man had joined him. They all came forward together, talking and laughing.

With a whirl of her hand Chloe swept all the gilt badges on to the floor. She knelt behind the table picking them up whilst Connie took the tickets. And, kneeling there, she heard Martin speak:

“My luck's clean out—no prize for me,” he said. He laughed, and passed on.

Chloe came up scarlet, her hands full of the little gilt badges.

“My! How easily you do flush!” said Connie Cross.

Chloe stared through the archway, watching the dancers. Presently Martin came into view. He was dancing with six-foot of elegance in a wisp of white ninon, the tallest, slimmest creature Chloe had ever beheld. The couple turned, and by looking into the mirror she could follow them a little farther—Martin's dark eyes with the look devotion in them; and then, as they turned again, the tall woman's face, small and white above her white dress, with big blue eyes looking out mistily from under a straight-cut fringe of hair as fine and flaxen as a baby's.

“Know who that tall woman is?” said Connie Cross at her ear—“Here, you'll want another badge in a minute; there are a lot of people coming late— They call her a beauty, but what I say is, what's the good of all those extra inches unless you're going to be a mannequin; then, I grant you, it does give you a pull. But in any other line what's the good of it? And I don't know that gentlemen admire it so much after all—Ernie doesn't, for one. Why I pointed her out to him in the Park one Sunday, and what d'you think he said?” She giggled in anticipation, and patted her hair. “Why, he said she put him in mind of a line to hang clothes on—sarcastic, wasn't it?” She thrust a plump left hand under Chloe's eyes! “That's his ring—not that we're engaged; but I wear it. You see I was engaged—not to him—and when you've worn a ring for a year, your finger feels sort of funny without it. Alfred Mendelbaum, the other one's name was—in a jeweller's business, so of course the ring was a better one than Ernie's—but, I couldn't stand him being so jealous.”

“Was he?” said Chloe absently. Her eyes were on the mirror.

“
Was
he! Why, I couldn't so much as look the side of the road where Ernie was without having a scene.” Her voice went on unceasingly.

Chloe watched the mirror. Martin came into it again, Martin and the tall woman.

“Who is she?” she said, turning suddenly to Connie.

“I said to him, ‘Take back your ring!'—who?—her?—didn't I tell you?—I thought I did—about Ernie and the clothes line. That's Lady Alexander St. Maurice. You wouldn't think he'd be so sarcastic to look at him.”

The figures danced out of the mirror and were gone. Chloe dug her nails into the palms of her hands. The curtain that had fallen between her and Danesborough had been torn in two. Through the rent she saw Martin and the letters; Mr. Dane's endorsement, “Two letters from Lady Alexander St. Maurice”; that blotted signature, “Your broken-hearted Judy.”