The Black Cabinet (3 page)

Chapter V

Michael wrote that night to his mother:

“Darling Mum,—

“I'm feeling so virtuous that I must blow my own trumpet. Instead of skulking in by-ways, I boldly accosted the Tank in the High Street—absolutely walked into her very jaws and said, ‘How d'you do?' And of course she asked me to tea. After a frightful struggle with myself, I went; and we looked at school albums for two solid hours, sitting side by side on the sofa. There were some perfectly appalling photos of you. My hat! What clothes women wore in the nineties! I'm glad you don't look like that now—only please don't shingle your hair, or I shall go back to Africa, and never come home any more.

“I've practically made up my mind to put Uncle Horace's money into the firm I'm working for now. I like 'em better than the other people, and you do get to know the ropes a bit when you're behind the scenes. I shall carry on as cabby for a bit longer though. As I shall probably
never
have any more capital than this, I'm going to be horribly cautious. It was frightfully decent of the old fellow to think of me.

“By the way, there was a most awfully pretty girl at the Tank's—an old pupil like you, but a little more recent. At present I feel as if I should fall hugely in love with her if I was to go on seeing her. Don't be alarmed. My old horror takes the road on Tuesday, so that only leaves Monday for me to get into mischief. I don't suppose I shall see her again, and perhaps it's just as well. I haven't felt so romantic since Lillah Blake gave me the chuck when I was eighteen. There's something for you to have heart-throbs over. Calm yourself by remembering that I shall be out of danger by the time you read this.

“Tons of love,

“Michael.”

On Monday evening Chloe Dane left the house with the green railings half an hour later than usual. She had stayed behind to finish a dress which had been promised without fail by Monday night. She was glad to get out into the air after sitting still for so many hours.

The shops were shutting in the High Street. That was a nuisance, because she really had planned to do some shopping. She stood for a moment, hesitating, outside Baker's. They were still open, but it was such a shame to rush in at the last minute and delay some girl who was putting stock away. Chloe knew how it felt to be kept back at the last moment after a long day's work. She moved on; and as she did so, some one behind her said:

“How do you do, Miss Dane?”

Chloe stopped, swung round, and saw Michael Foster.

“How did you know it was me? “

“I—well, I just knew it was,” said Michael.

They stood, looking at each other; Michael; very angry with himself because he felt shy and tongue-tied; Chloe amused.

“I'm going home,” she said.

Without a word Michael began to walk down the High Street beside her. Chloe's amusement became tinged with embarrassment. What was one to do with an almost totally strange young man who, like Felix, kept on walking?

“I'm going away to-morrow,” he said at last.

“Are you?” said Chloe. She looked up at him suddenly with laughing eyes. “I do hope Toto is quite well. Why do you keep me in suspense? You must know that I'm simply longing for news of him.”

“Toto will live for ever,” said Michael gloomily. “And so will Mrs. Howard. However, I shan't have to live with them—that's one comfort. To-morrow I drive them to London and shed them, also, I hope, for ever. Er, Miss Dane, do you ever go to the pictures?” Michael turned bright red as he jerked out the last sentence.

“Sometimes.”

There was a pause.

“Miss Dane—I say, would it be awful cheek? I mean, if you weren't doing anything else, would you—would you come to the pictures this evening?”

Chloe bowed to Bernard Austin who was glaring mournfully from the other side of the street—she had refused him for the sixth time about a week before—; then she smiled at Michael.

“I'd like to awfully. Rose Smith who lives with me is going with her fiancé. They wanted me to go too; but I was going to be tactful and mend stockings at home. I do loathe mending stockings and being tactful,—don't you?”

“I can't mend stockings—at least—well, I did in a sort of way when I was in Africa. And my mother was most frightfully rude about them when I came home, and scrapped the whole lot—perfectly good some of them were too.”

“Can't you be tactful either?”

“I don't know. I wasn't very tactful just now. But I say, will you really come to the pictures?” Chloe considered. She liked Michael Foster; she liked him a good deal; and he was leaving Maxton next day. It was perfectly safe. “Rose will probably scold, but I don't care,” she thought Then she said aloud:

“Yes, I'll come. I'm just going home to tea. You'd better come with me and meet Rose and her fiancé.”

Rose did just raise her eyebrows when Chloe walked in with a strange young man; but the tea party in Mrs. Jones' sitting-room, lent for the occasion, was a cheerful and friendly one. As they walked to the cinema, Chloe asked:

“Were you long in Africa?”

“Two years. I didn't like it, and my mother simply hated my being out there. I didn't get demobbed till two years after the Armistice—I was in Palestine and Egypt. And then I was crocked for a bit. And then I went to Africa orange farming. I hated it like poison.”

“Why?”

“I don't know—I did. I like people. I loathed the veldt, and Kaffirs, and waiting for orange pips to grow into forest trees. And when a great-uncle I'd never seen left me his little all, I threw my hat in the air and came home—”

“And spent it?” There was horror in Chloe's tone; she looked at him severely. “How could
you?”

“I didn't—not much. I bought my car, and ran round having a good time for a bit. Then I made up my mind to go into the motor business. I like cars better than anything, really; and I've got one or two ideas of my own that I want to work out. But of course you can be most awfully had, so I thought I'd get to know the ropes a bit before I parted with any of Uncle Horace's money. I shall probably go into the firm I'm driving for.” He laughed. “It's quite good fun, and I've learnt a thing or two.”

“It must be lovely driving people like Mrs. Howard,” said Chloe.

“They're not all like that. After all, you meet people you can't stand almost anywhere. There's a man here now that I simply bar; I'm always running across him.” He broke off, and Chloe said: “You'll be glad to leave Maxton.”

“I don't know.” His tone was strictly noncommital. “I shall probably butt into him in town.” He frowned, and then laughed. “I can't think why I began to talk about him. It's a frightful mistake to talk about people you bar.”

Two hours later they walked home together.

Edward Anderson and Rose had dropped behind. Michael did not say a single word until they turned into the quiet street where Rose and Chloe lodged. Then he burst into speech:

“Do you believe in telling the truth?”

“I always tell the truth,” said Chloe. She laughed because Michael was so solemn. “I was very nicely brought up—by Miss Tankerville. She'd be simply horrified at your asking such a thing.”

Michael went on being serious.

“I don't mean telling lies or—or untruths in the ordinary sense. I mean, this is such a beastly conventional world, and we're all brought up to behave in a conventional way; one can't really speak the truth bang out; but sometimes one would like to frightfully. That's what I meant.”

“There's a game where you have to speak the truth,” said Chloe. “Last time I played it, one girl left the room in tears, and a man I used to know rather well has never forgiven me, and probably never will. It doesn't always answer.” She paused. Discretion bade her pause, but curiosity urged her on. She turned innocent eyes on Michael, and added, “Of course it depends on what you want to say.”

Michael said nothing. He also was wrestling with discretion.

They reached the street lamp by Mrs. Jones' door, and stood there. Rose and Edward were not in sight.

“You see,” said Michael, suddenly finding words, “I've only seen you twice, and it sounds such awful cheek if I say what I should like to say.” He became furiously red and plunged on. “If we weren't all so frightfully conventional, I should say I like you better than any girl I've ever met, and I'd like most awfully to be friends,
and
see you again; only of course you'd think it most frightful cheek if I did.”

Chloe's laugh shook a little.

“You—you haven't said it, of course.”

“No, but I'd like to say it. Would you—would you be angry if I did?”

“Furious!” said Chloe. “Absolutely furious, of course.”

“Then I won't say it; but—I say, you'll remember that I would have liked to say it, won't you? And—and if you ever want anything done you, or anything like that” He broke off.

Rose and Edward came slowly into the circle of light.

Chapter VI

“Chloe, how could you!”

“How could I what?” Chloe lit the gas as she spoke, and turned round laughing. She knew quite well what she would see—a serious, reproachful Rose, full of concern and good advice.

“Chloe, you know very well. How could you pick Mr. Foster up like that and bring him back to tea?”

“Poof!” said Chloe, blowing her a kiss. “Rose, you're not a chaperone yet. And if you think I'm just going to sit down and let you come being married over me, you little know your Chloe.”

“It's just because I do know you,” said Rose. She checked a tendency to dimple, and looked severe instead. “Chloe, you oughtn't to do things like that, and you know it.”

“That's what all the sermons say. Rose, I believe one could make quite a hit with potted sermons if one was a parson. That sentence of yours would make a topper. If you come to think of it, that's all sermons ever do say: ‘You know you oughtn't to.'” She made a face. “I suppose being a parson's daughter will out. After all, what have I done? Asked a perfectly nice man to tea and gone to the pictures with him, accompanied and chaperoned by you and Edward. And the Tank introduced him to me—even if she did feel rather bad about it. And—and anyhow, he goes away to-morrow, and I shall never see him again.”

“You just wait and see,” said Rose.

On Tuesday evening Chloe and Rose went home together. Michael Foster had left Maxton; but a man stood where Michael had stood the night before, and waited as he had waited for Chloe to come through Miss Allardyce's green door. It was an old man this time. It was, in fact, Mr. Mitchell Dane. He waited until the girls came out, and then walked behind them the length of the High Street. Scraps of conversation reached him—Rose's name from Chloe, and Chloe's name from Rose—laughter.

At the foot of the High Street he crossed over, and watched them turn into Basing Street. He stood looking after them for a moment, and then went back to his hotel.

Next day was a busy one in the work-room. Finishing touches were being given to the dresses for the County Ball which would take place that night. Miss Allardyce was much flustered, and kept changing her mind about everything.

“The flowers higher up, Miss Smith. Oh, no, no, no, not there! Lower down, and an inch or two to the right. Miss Dane, that bodice is too low. Oh dear, oh dear, it really is too low! But the time to alter it—where is it? It can't be done—and yet—”

“I could put a fold of net,” said Chloe, “but it's just as you pinned it on her, really.”

“Yes, yes, put the net!” said Miss Allardyce distractedly, and then, ten minutes later, declared with her hands at her head, but it would never,
never
do, and that Chloe must take it off again, “And oh, how thankful I shall be when to-day is over!”

Rose and Chloe were thankful too when the last of the dresses had been sent off by a special errand boy. Rose was going to the ball with Edward Anderson, and was in a state of pleasurable anticipation which she tried to conceal because Chloe, who had no frock to wear, must play at being Cinderella and stay at home.

“Oh, Chloe, I
wish
you were coming,” she said for about the fiftieth time.

“So do I,” said Chloe frankly. “But go in a window curtain or one of Mrs. Jones' antimacassars, I won't and can't. Just think of Monica's face if I arrived in an antimacassar! I'd love to do it—just walk artlessly up to their party, and say how shy I felt, and ‘
Dear
Lady Gresson, I
may
stay with you, mayn't I?' Rose, I believe I really could make an antimacassar dress if I gave my mind to it.”

“You haven't got a ticket,” said Rose.

“It's just as well, isn't it?”

“There's a parcel for you, Miss Dane,” said Mrs. Jones in the hall as they came in.

“For me?” Chloe pounced on it. Parcels were few and far between. “It's a box—a dress box!”

She ran upstairs with it, burst into their room, lit the gas, and was cutting the string before Rose overtook her.

“What is it?”

“I don't know. Cut the string! Cut all the knots! Rose, it's a dress box—but who, who on earth could possibly be sending me a dress, unless Ally's gone clean off her head and addressed one of her atrocities to me by mistake? Oh'h'h!”

The string was cut, and the paper was off. The box that was revealed was not one of Miss Allardyce's boxes. It bore the name of a famous firm—a firm so famous that Rose and Chloe clutched each other and gazed at it in petrified silence. Chloe was the first to recover.

“Either it's a practical joke,”—the words came whispering—“or else we've just walked straight through Mrs. Jones' front door into a fairy story, and at any minute—at
any
minute—the pumpkin arrive.”

“Open it, Chloe,” said Rose. “Perhaps it's full of old newspapers.”

“Perhaps it isn't. Chloe,
do
open it!”

“One,” said Chloe—she put her hands on the lid—“Two,”—she lifted it an inch—“Three,” She flung it back. White tissue paper crossed by white ribbons. She untied them with shaking fingers; the paper crisped and rustled as she pulled it away; there seemed to be reams and reams of it. And then—

“It is the fairy story! It
is
!!” said Chloe, with the last thin sheet in her hand. The colour sprang to her cheeks. “I believe we're asleep. I don't believe it's real.” She was looking with unbelieving eyes at the silver tissue of her dreams.

It was Rose who lifted the shining frock and held it up—a fairy tale dress, a dream dress, simple with the simplicity that is of great price. They both looked at it. Chloe began to laugh very softly and irrepressibly.

“How—how ripping! Rose, there are shoes to match! And the sort of stockings you read about! And—and—”

“Who
can
have sent it?” said Rose with a gasp. Chloe snatched the frock from her, pinched it to see if it was real, and held it up against the light, “I don't care who sent it. I don't care if it turns back into rags at midnight. I don't care for anything else in the world as long as I can just wear this lovely, lovely thing. And—and—oh, what a pity Michael Foster's gone away!”

“Chloe, here's a note.”

Chloe tore it open, the silver dress over her arm, and exclaimed in astonishment:

“Lady Gresson! It can't be—it simply can't—I don't believe it.”

“What does she say?”

“She says”—Chloe's voice was bewildered in the extreme—“she says:—

“‘My Dear Chloe,—

“‘It will give us great pleasure if you will join our party to-night. We will call for you at nine o'clock. Will you accept the frock and shoes from an old friend?

“‘Yours affectionately,

“‘Olivia Gresson.'

“She's never been mine affectionately since I went to work for Ally,” said Chloe. “Oh, Rose, how topping of her—how simply topping! There's a postscript to say she's got my ticket.” She threw the silver dress on to the bed, and hugged Rose vehemently. “I don't believe a single word of it—it's a lovely, lovely dream. And oh, ducky, ducky dear,
don't
wake me up till the ball is over!”