LITMIR.BIZ

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id="ulink_2df31256-3516-5860-92ff-b5e6f4f750fe">Chapter Six.

       Table of Contents

      Hunting the Flat.

      Leaving the workmen to carry out the necessary decorations at Pastimes, Charmion and I adjourned to London to buy carpets and curtains, and a score of necessary oddments. We found it a fascinating occupation, and grew more and more complimentary to each other as each day passed by.

      “Charmion, you have exquisite taste! That’s just the shade I had chosen myself.”

      “You have a perfect eye for colouring, Evelyn. I always know that your choice will be exactly my own.”

      Sometimes we saw the humour of these self-satisfied compliments, sometimes we were so busy and engrossed that we accepted them open-mouthed. I suppose in every mind personal preference is magnified into the standard of perfection, and all the arguing in the world will fail to convince A that he is—artistically speaking—colour-blind, or B that her drawing-room is a bazaar of trumpery odds and ends! All the more reason to be thankful that we agreed. We were convinced that our taste was unique; but supposing for one moment that it was bad, we should at least share a comfortable delusion!

      The oak entrance hall was to be ornamented with old delft. The curtains and chair coverings were to be of the same shade of blue. The parquet floor was to be supplied with rugs of warm Eastern colours. Exactly the right shade of violet-purple had been found for the drawing-room, and I should be ashamed to say how many shops we ransacked for the chair coverings, until at last we found the identical pattern to satisfy our demands. Certainly I should be ashamed to confess what we paid for the piece. Charmion was appallingly extravagant! That was another discovery which I had made in the last days. It seemed as if she found a positive satisfaction in paying abnormal prices, not with the purse-proud bombast of the nouveau riche, but rather with the almost savage relief of a slave who shakes off a few links of a hated chain. I was a little alarmed at the total to which our purchases amounted; but I comforted myself with the thought, nothing new would be required for a long, long time, and that, if I found my income running short, I could always retire to my flat, and live on a figurative twopence under Bridget’s clever management.

      Charmion had heard all about the flat by this time, and had hurt my feelings by treating the whole proposal as a ridiculous joke. She made no attempt to dissuade me—had we not agreed never to interfere in each other’s doings?—but she laughed, and said, “Dear goose,” and arched her fine brows expressively as she asked how long a lease I proposed to take, “Or, rather, I should say, how short?”

      Now I had myself inclined to a short lease with the option of staying on, but opposition stiffened my back, and I there and then decided to go and look at several possibilities which I had hitherto put aside as impracticable because they had to be taken for a term of three to five years. Bridget would go with me—dear, lawless, laughter-loving Bridget, who entered into the play with refreshing zest. Bridget had the real characteristic Irish faculty of looking upon life as an amusing game, and the more novel and unorthodox the game was, the better she was pleased. “Sure it’s your own face! It’s for you to do what you please with it!” was the easy comment with which she accepted my proposed disguise. She undertook to do most of the work of the flat without a qualm, and shed an easy tear of emotion over the sorrows and difficulties which it was to be my mission to reduce. “Oh, the poor creatures! Will they be starving around us, Miss Evelyn, and the little children crying out for bread?”

      “N–not exactly that,” I explained. “I want to work among gentlefolk, Bridget—poor gentlefolk, who suffer most of all, because they are too proud to ask for help. But they will probably be short of time, and service, and probably of strength, too, and when I get to know them, they will let me help them in these ways, though they would not accept my money—”

      Bridget looked sceptical.

      “I wouldn’t put it past them!”

      I laughed, and dropped the subject.

      “Oh, well, time will show. Meantime you understand, don’t you, Bridget, that they are not cheerful places that we are going to see? Cheerful positions in London mean big rents, and I mean to live among people who have to count every penny several times over, and try hard to make it into a sixpenny bit. You and I will have sunshine and light at Pastimes—you won’t mind putting up with dullness for part of the year?”

      “What would be the good of minding? You’d go, whether or not, now you’d got your head set!” returned Bridget bluntly. She added after a pause, “And besides, we’ll be getting our own way. I’m thinking we shall be glad of the change. It’s not as much as a thought of your own will be left to you, with Mrs. Fane by your side.”

      “You are entirely wrong, Bridget, and it is not your place to make remarks about Mrs. Fane. Please don’t let me hear you do it again.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” murmured Bridget, turning instantly from a friend into an automaton, as was her custom on the rare occasions when I hardened myself to find fault. The words were submissive enough, but her manner announced that she had said her say, and would stick to it, though Herself, poor thing, must be humoured when she took the high horse. As usual, I retired from the conflict with a consciousness of coming off second best!

      The next day I told Charmion that I was “engaged,” and true to our delightful agreement, she asked no questions, but quietly disappeared into space. Then, with a ponderous feeling of running the blockade, I put on wig and spectacles and the venerable costume which had been provided for the occasion. Appropriately enough, it had originally belonged to an aunt—Aunt Eliza, to wit—who had handed it to me in its mellowed age, to be bequeathed to one of my many protégées. It was brown in colour—I detest brown, and it cordially detests me in return—and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat accentuating the curve of Aunt Eliza’s back, while the skirt showed a persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last button of the horror and surveyed myself in the glass, I chuckled sardonically at the remembrance of heroines of fiction whose exquisite grace of outline refused to be concealed by the roughest of country garments. Certainly my grace did not survive the ordeal. What good looks I possessed suffered a serious eclipse even before wig and spectacles went on, and as a crowning horror, a venerable “boat-shaped” hat (another relic of Aunt Eliza) and a draggled chenille veil.

      Bridget was hysterical with enjoyment over the whole abject effect, but I descended the stairs and passed through the great hall of the hotel with a miserable feeling of running the blockade. Suppose I met anyone! Suppose anyone knew me! Suppose—I flushed miserably at the thought—Charmion herself was discovered sitting in the hall, and raised her lorgnon to quiz me as I passed by!

      I need not have troubled. Not a soul blinked an eye in my direction. If by chance a wandering glance met mine, it stared past and through me as though I were impalpable as a ghost. My disguise was a success in one important respect at least—there was no longer anything conspicuous about me; I was just a humble member of society, one of the throng of dun-coloured, ordinary-looking females, who may be seen by the thousand in every thoroughfare in the land, but who, as a matter of fact, are not seen at all, because no one troubles to look. By Bridget’s side I passed through the streets of London as through a desert waste.

      Half an hour’s journey by tube brought us to the first of the flats on my list. It was also the first specimen of its kind which Irish Bridget had ever seen, and the shock was severe. I found myself in the painful position of expecting “a decent body” to live in a kitchen two yards square, with a coal “shed” under the table on which she was supposed to cook, and to sleep in a cupboard, screened in merciful darkness, since, when the electric light was turned on, the vista seen through the grimy panes was so inimitably depressing that one’s only longing was to turn it off forthwith!

      “Preserve us! Indeed, if it was to die in it we were trying, it would be

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