He would not enter them again unless she were there herself.
He hoped that he had not done Elsie any harm: the practises had only taken place six times with interludes of a week, and it had never occurred to him that any one would dream of coupling their names together. The bare idea of it was painful to him. Still, he quite saw what Onoria meant. An unmarried man, even of his age, could not be too careful, and he hoped the whole thing would blow over and not bring any further trouble to any of them.
Onoria was quite genial and they smoked several cigarettes together and discussed whether it was any use taking Prendergast to the vet. for a tonic or not. They came to the conclusion that it was not.
Then Peter went home.
It was quite true that he meant to be careful, very careful indeed; but the person of whom he meant to be careful was Onoria.
CHAPTER VI
Peter Gubbins had always taken great care of his broken heart.
In a place like Little Ticklington full of marriageable women, it was a very important asset.
It played the part of a chaperone. No one could expect to marry a man whose heart was as steadily and obviously broken as Peter’s.
It had never occurred to Peter to marry any one but Onoria.
He had a pleasant income for a single man, reinforced by certain small cheques for his articles.
He lived well under his income and his cheques went into the garden. As he often romantically said (when there was no danger of Onoria overhearing him), his ideas literally created flowers.
He would never have confessed it even to himself, but he knew he was a great deal better off as he was.
If he had had his heart’s desire, he would never have been able to get rid of it afterwards, and this was equally the case with the few quiet twinges in the direction of domesticity which had assailed him since.
There was nothing in Elsie Andrews which led Peter to change this opinion.
At first he thought her a nice, quiet little girl; then when she shot up into long skirts, and grew half a head taller than Onoria, he thought of her as a sensible young woman, who never said things before you did, and did not know what you had not told her.
Elsie made no effort, conscious or unconscious, to attract Peter, and Peter (like many not very attractive men) was very suspicious of efforts made to attract him.
Elsie was simply there in a pleasant, non-committal way, like a table napkin or a bottle of ink. She was useful in the garden and sympathetic at the piano; Samson liked her.
Peter Gubbins did not very often grasp new subjects, but when he did his mind played upon them with the effect of a magnifying glass. It excited him to be told that he had compromised Elsie; he had never compromised any one before, and he was not quite sure what it involved.
Was he expected to act upon it? Or would it automatically react upon him? Would the Andrewses mind? If they did, what form would their minding take?
Fortunately there was nothing in writing. He remembered that he had once sent Elsie a picture post card of a waterfall when he was away on a holiday, but there had been no space upon it for anything but the briefest allusion to the weather.
He hunted up old copies of an excellent magazine for which he had often written, “Answers to Gardeners,” to see if upon another of its pages under the heading of “Questions of Etiquette” there might not be some case which would throw light upon his own.
But no one seemed to have gone quite so far. There was a suggestion that no man should propose to two girls at the same time, a feat of legerdemain perfectly foreign to Peter’s tastes; but nothing was said as to the circumstances in which you are morally bound to propose to one.
Peter wished to continue to meet Elsie but he did not wish to be morally bound.
He gave the matter a great deal of quiet study and reflection, but he did nothing to precipitate the event of seeing Elsie again; he felt that if they met by chance it would rob their meeting of any dangerous intensity which it might otherwise have.
The meeting took place at the Post Office precisely a week later.
Elsie was standing with her back to Peter reading the notice of an oratorio which was to be performed at a neighbouring Cathedral town. Peter bought three ha’penny stamps and a packet of post cards before anything striking happened.
Then Elsie turned round and gasped “Oh, Mr. Gubbins!”
Peter kept his head and paid for the post cards before he answered her.
“Oh, it’s you, Elsie, is it?” he remarked guardedly, having counted his change. “Have you ever heard the Messiah?”
Elsie said she hadn’t, balancing first on one foot, and then on the other.
She didn’t know whether to go out of the Post Office into the street where anything might happen, or to remain in the shelter of the Post Office where it would be more difficult to get away if anything did happen.
“Do you want any stamps?” Mr. Gubbins asked kindly. Elsie flew to the counter and bought six, then she opened her purse and found she had already purchased a shilling’s worth.
Eventually they got into the street.
“It must be splendid,” said Elsie, referring to the Messiah. “Only I believe Onoria said it wasn’t, so of course it can’t be. Have you ever heard it?”
“Oh, time and time again,” said Mr. Gubbins lightly. “It is one of my favourite entertainments, the Messiah. As a young man I went regularly to hear it every Christmas Eve at the Albert Hall. I only gave it up after an attack of tonsillitis I had one winter—I may have told you about it? I date all my throat trouble from then.”
He had told Elsie about it several times, but as she merely murmured sympathetically, he told her about it again.
After he had finished he came back to the Messiah.
“How would you like to go and hear it at the Cathedral?” he enquired. “The organist is a friend of mine—he is going to get the soloists from town, and I expect he’ll have got quite a good chorus together. The Dean is allowing him to have it in the Cathedral.”
“Like it!” exclaimed Elsie. “Oh, frightfully, but you see Mother and Father hate music, except bands on the beach, and Onoria says local renderings of oratorios should be put down by law.”
“Well!” said Mr. Gubbins with unflinching courage. “Opinions differ about oratorios of course. How would it be if I took you myself? I daresay we could arrange something about it.”
Elsie looked at him as if he had suggested an expedition to Central Africa. It was a most inspiriting look. Mr. Gubbins found it so, and a lukewarm desire to do something desperate took possession of him.
But he meant to be very careful about it. He stage-managed this plunge into the Forbidden Land with infinite precaution.
As human plans go it was perfect; there was nothing unarranged for except Fate. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were to be told part of the truth.
Elsie was to break to them that she was going to hear the Messiah at Mellingham. Mr. Gubbins did not suggest a downright lie to Elsie, but when he said, “I daresay they’ll suppose it means with Onoria?” he paved the way for a leakage in accuracy of which Elsie took full advantage.
Onoria was not to be told anything at all.
Elsie was to leave the Station of Little Ticklington by a one o’clock train, and Mr. Gubbins by a one-thirty.
The journey took half an hour.
Elsie was to wait for him in a baker’s shop opposite the Cathedral; she could have a bun and milk while she waited.
They were to come back in the same train but in a different compartment.
Short of an unfavourable interposition on the part of Providence, they were safe.
But those who rely upon Providence to remain inactive in their favour should not tempt it by displaying any activity of their own.
Miss Bretherton, without consulting Onoria beforehand, arranged for her to take six pupils to the Messiah, whether she liked it or not.
She sprang this shabby trick upon her subordinate on the actual morning of the performance.
Forty girls, in white dresses with blue sashes, upon one side and twenty men in a variety of semi-evening clothes upon the other had scarcely sung through the first chorus a trifle raggedly (first choruses are apt to be a trifle ragged) before Elsie and Peter became aware of Onoria’s eyes.
They knew they were Onoria’s eyes although she was sitting at some little distance to the right of them, much as those who looked upon the Medusa’s head must have been conscious that it was her head before they turned into stone. No fate so happy awaited Peter and Elsie—if they had been turned into stone they could have stared back. As it was they twitched and trembled under Onoria’s ruthless gaze, conscious with a cowering intensity of their flesh and blood.
Peter sank from terror to terror, till from the lowest depth of cowardice, in which he contemplated leaving Elsie to her fate, he rose to a state of rage. He became as savage and determined as a very timid animal at bay. He would not be caught. That was what it came to. He set his lips firmly together—Onoria or no Onoria, he would simply not be caught. It was a free country and no one could stop you if you ran away fast enough. Of course there was Elsie; Elsie wept.
“Stop crying!” he hissed at Elsie with a snarl.
Elsie swallowed a sob abruptly and retreated into a large pocket handkerchief.
The people sitting next to her thought she had a sensitive musical temperament and admired her for it. They did not know what kind of a temperament Peter had, but they did not admire him nearly so much.
The six girls, followed by Onoria with the face of an awakened Fury, advanced down the aisle.
“We must get out of this!” said Peter hurriedly.
He grasped Elsie firmly by the arm and dragged her after him.
Onoria saw the action, and said “Elsie!” out loud in the Cathedral over the six girls’ heads. Several people turned round. Elsie stiffened into instant obedience, but Peter’s clutch of manly terror was greater than Elsie’s power of womanly resistance. He had her out of the Cathedral and half way to the Railway Station before she could turn round.
Onoria could not run after them. She had her dignity to preserve, and the six girls to return intact.
Peter and Elsie had nothing to think of but their personal safety. They preserved this by the skin of their teeth, and by getting, without tickets, into a train destined for London.
They sat gasping and staring wild-eyed at each other, incapable of further speech even if they had dared to give utterance to what was in their hearts, in the presence of a clergyman, a market gardener, and two elderly ladies who looked at them as if they thought that people in such a hurry must have done something wrong.
When Elsie had got her breath again, she began to cry in gulps, as if she were swallowing tabloids without water.
Peter stared desperately out of the window. He was trying to make up his mind to the idea of never going back to his home, and he was remembering Samson and the sweet peas. Oh, how wise cats were! Samson was never involved in any social contacts beyond the point of a torn ear!
How gladly Mr. Gubbins would have let his ear be torn (in moderation) to escape from the weeping heap of femininity opposite to him!
What nonsense it was for a man to be expected to defend women, when they were always either the danger itself—like Onoria—or could melt out of it into a mist of tears—like Elsie?
Every one in the railway carriage was sorry for Elsie. No one was sorry for Mr. Gubbins. Indeed, the clergyman was beginning to be highly suspicious of him. He was not at all sure that he was not, for the first time in his well-chosen career, confronted by a Social Evil.
Several of our most prominent daily newspapers, during the early autumn before the opening of Parliament, had taken up the subject of the White Slave Traffic.
Mr. Gubbins looked ferocious, Elsie sobbed on.
The clergyman leaned forward and said tentatively, as it was surely his duty to do, “I am afraid this young lady is somewhat distressed?”
Peter Gubbins rose to the occasion; a flash of inspiration shot through him.
“She’s just had a tooth out,” he explained with unswerving duplicity.
Elsie stopped crying. She could not believe that Peter Gubbins had told a lie like that at a moment’s notice.
With the natural depravity of women, she had never admired him so much before. She gave a watery smile of affirmation.
The market gardener said sympathetically:
“Shock to the nerves, that’s what it is! I had an aunt once that had a tooth out, she never got over it. Had hysterics she had, one after the other, and died that day fortnight.”
“This,” said Mr. Gubbins, without moving a muscle of his face, “was only a wisdom tooth. They come out easier.”
CHAPTER VII
Miss Strickland had great self-control, and she needed it. When her amazed eyes rested upon Elsie and Peter Gubbins, she could hardly believe them. Disobedience and deceit united for purposes of pleasure had never so flaunted themselves before her in the whole course of her career. For a week she had believed Elsie and Peter to be crushed. Crushed as flat as a black beetle under the heel of a self-respecting cook.
For a moment she was almost too astonished to be angry. How had they dared? They who in general dared so little—to rush upon the knife?
But her surprise was swiftly reinforced by anger. She was in a consecrated building and the oratorio had begun—so she remained perfectly still although her figure became charged like an electric battery. All the six pupils of Miss Bretherton received small invigorating shocks from it.
They knew something was wrong—and not with them. After all the Messiah was not going to be such a bore as they had feared.
They followed the direction of Miss Strickland’s eyes and arrived at Elsie and Peter.
The opening chorus might have been a Salute to Adventurers. Solemnly and gloatingly the pupils gazed at the desperate couple. Peter and Elsie felt all these hostile eyes converging upon them, and they saw nothing else.
The tenderness of the massed violins in the Pastoral Symphony (they were not quite tender enough, but it is difficult for amateur violins to be tender, and it is even more difficult for them to be sufficiently massed) did nothing whatever to soften the atmosphere. It would have been as useful to try the effect of Handel’s music upon terriers in a rat hunt.
The hunt went on from end to end of the Messiah. It was conducted in silence by seven pairs of eyes, led by Miss Strickland.
The girls ought to have been upon the side of the rats. They had no quarrel with Elsie Andrews, who had left School before their time, they knew Mr. Gubbins by sight and were without personal claims upon him even in the realms of fancy. All of them disliked Miss Strickland, and yet none of them refrained from the pursuit of the stricken quarry.
They could barely wait for the unearthly shrieks of the Hallelujah Chorus, the separate clauses of which went off like corks from a bottle, before they knelt for a respectful and non-committal moment in the direction of the Altar, and proceeded to bear down upon the delinquents through the main aisle of the Cathedral.
They thrilled with ecstasy at the resonant and piercing voice of Miss Strickland when she said aloud in the sacred building “Elsie!” In another moment they would have been upon the culprits had not a remorseless family of nine interfered between them and their prey.
Breathless, they hacked their way to the door, only to see Elsie and Peter arm-in-arm disappearing round a corner.
Then Miss Strickland reined them in.
She said with perfect self-control and extreme unfairness, “I don’t know what you girls are hurrying for. There is plenty of time to catch the train. Please walk at your usual pace and in your usual order.”
Miss Strickland never spoke twice. She had only once said “Elsie.” When this command failed, her lips and her heart had simultaneously closed.
She had made a mistake in tactics. She saw in a flash, too late to rectify her action, that she should have called “Peter!” not “Elsie!” Peter had had the strength to deny her claim upon Elsie, but he would never have had strength to deny a direct command made to himself, in a Cathedral. Onoria knew theoretically that it is always wisest to tackle the strongest of two culprits first. It was indeed her invariable and most successful practise, but her heart had betrayed her, she had struck out at her Beloved—and her Beloved had in consequence got clean away.
Onoria pulled herself together when she reached the street, and made no more mistakes.
Her duty was to her pupils, and she did it.
Methodically, though with a heart on fire, she arranged their return tickets and marshalled them into the train. If Elsie and Peter had been on the Station, Onoria would have seen them but she would not have noticed them.
She put her charges into a third class carriage marked “Ladies Only,” took a corner seat by the window, and proceeded to bone “the Messiah” for the delectation of her pupils.
Her trained ear had after all enabled her to listen to it sufficiently for her to be capable of stating its faults.
Onoria had no great passion for Handel at the best of times and the average grasp of a Local Orchestral Society is not the best of times for Handel, but on this occasion she was vitriolic.
The girls heard her with awe.
Somebody was catching it, even if they were great and dead. They would have preferred to see Elsie and Peter catching it because they were alive and lived at Little Ticklington, but they could not have everything.
Destruction always appeals to the young, and on the whole they had a far better time than they had had any right to expect at an oratorio in a Cathedral.
Miss Strickland saw them safely back to their respective homes. Two of the girls were boarders and these she dropped at the School gates.
Then she turned hastily homewards.
Samson was at her door. He was a gloomy and outraged cat, wet by the autumn mist and deprived of his invariable tea, with Mr. Gubbins’ share of cream, and a fire-warmed knee to rest up against afterwards.
He did not so much miss Mr. Gubbins as actively resent him. He miaued coarsely. Miss Strickland subdued a temptation to hit him sharply on the head with her umbrella.
It was quite open to her to hit him and it would serve Peter right. But Miss Strickland was a just woman; she reminded herself that the soul that sinneth it shall die.
Samson was not an accessory either before or after the fact, and it was a fact which had postponed his tea, and to which he would therefore have definitely refused his consent if consulted.
She opened the door and Samson flew past her and consumed loudly and without hesitation Prendergast’s neglected dinner.
Prendergast had not wanted his dinner, and he did not want it now, but still less did he wish to see a low cat indulging itself with his sacred rites. There had always been a state of armed neutrality between the two animals: neither was strong enough to wholly destroy the other, so they wisely avoided combat, but they were not friends.
Prendergast growled feebly from his basket, and gazed at his mistress expecting her instant and effectual intervention, but Miss Strickland sank down on a chair beside him with all her things on and her hands in her lap.
Bridget had let the fire go out and Prendergast shivered sharply to remind Onoria to relight it. What had she come home for if not to relight the fire and restore comfort? But still she did not raise her eyes—she murmured “There, there,” and “Poor old Prendie—” but her mind was not on him. She was sitting in a curiously bowed position, as if something within her was refusing to fight.
Samson finished the last mouthful of Prendergast’s meal, wiped his whiskers ostentatiously in front of the basket and disappeared lightly through a back window. He was quite willing to eat a meal in Miss Strickland’s house but he had no intention of giving her the benefit of his company in return.
A person who kept a moribund pug in a basket was hardly the kind of society a cat of Samson’s standing in the neighbourhood would care to choose as a friend.
Miss Strickland did not notice the defection of Samson; she did not for a long while notice anything. There was an inward drama in her heart which held her whole attention.
Something implored her to let her pride go, and keep her friends. It told her that she was getting old and had few earthly ties, that Elsie was dearer to her than she knew, and even Peter was a treasured habit left over from the richer years, and that if she used her anger too ruthlessly against them she would be condemning herself to perpetual loneliness.
One cannot make new ties at fifty-three, too much of life has gone, too many hopes have passed into too many memories.
One cannot explain oneself to new friends, and they cannot know how the early generosities and charms of our characters have staled and wearied with the weight of time.
They do not excuse our scars or realise our finished struggles. How can they dream that our egoism was once a winged idealism set to reach the stars? That our irritability was a vivacity of intellect condemned to a provincial vocabulary, that even our dogmatism is but an old loyalty stiffened into bad temper?
It is in middle age that we most need the mercy of a contemporary, and the memory of a friend.
Onoria really wanted Elsie to be happy. She didn’t want her to grow up into a dull, lonely old woman with a pet animal. But it was hard to give her up to Peter.
If Peter had only been a man! It wasn’t, Onoria assured herself, that she minded about her old relation to Peter. After all she never had valued it; still he was the only man it would have been any use Onoria’s minding.
She despised Peter, and the worst of it was that Elsie, whom she loved, cared more for this Peter whom Onoria despised than she did for Onoria’s opinion of him. That was the sting of stings.
Onoria had laid out Peter on the dissecting table of her wit over and over again before Elsie, and Elsie had connived at these spiritual post-mortems without a qualm, and all the while she planned this hideous treachery!
Miss Strickland looked facts in the face: if she gave in, Elsie and Peter would come back to her. They would come gladly into her sphere again. There would be no bitterness and no reproaches. They would just—all three of them—settle down.
But there would be one difference, one fatal difference to Onoria’s pride. They would both of them know that they had got the better of her.
They would give her love and even respect, but it would never be “glad, confident morning” again.
If they wanted something else which Onoria disapproved of their having, they would combine to get it.
They might marry or not—Onoria was above the petty sting of wincing at the legal ceremony—but they would combine—that was what she winced at.
She must choose once and for all. There are moments in life when choice is within our own hands—though they are very rare—when we can decide with the finality of an earthquake or a volcano what we intend to do with our future. Pride pushed Onoria into resistance and love drew her towards surrender.
Love urged that she would be glad to see Elsie happy, that she could not want to hurt Elsie, that nothing but not hurting Elsie really mattered. Love is always immoral. It slays pride, it urges that law is only a letter and possession a bitter illusion of the senses, and that only Freedom—the freedom to serve the beloved—counts in the eternal scheme of things.
Love ignored Peter Gubbins and how necessary it was to give him a lesson; it made specious excuses for Elsie’s flagrant treachery; it said “She only deceived you because she didn’t want to hurt you—she only disobeyed you to be happy, and after all that is what you want, isn’t it? You want Elsie to be happy?”
Miss Strickland wavered under the pressure of love; but she only wavered. Righteousness and self-respect rose up afresh in her. Self-respect at the touch of which Love always dwindles out of sight and Righteousness which so often consists in carrying out our own will, in an imagined connection with the Deity.
“I shall do right, whatever it costs me,” Onoria said to herself at last, and she did not know that she might as well have said, “I shall do what I like, whatever it costs anybody else.”
It would have meant precisely the same thing.
CHAPTER VIII
It was at this point in her meditations that Prendergast moved. He wanted attention and at last he received it. Miss Strickland made up the fire and brought him a little warm milk with a dash of brandy in it. Prendergast responded to the stimulant and began to wander restlessly about the room. He could not make up his mind what he wanted. He moved about vaguely and stiffly as one who is practising the art of walking. His desires broke in him; and Miss Strickland, with a divine patience gratified in turn and without hurry, each of his passing fancies.
No one who knew Onoria Strickland as she was to the world, to her pupils, or even to her friends, could have believed in this tender, ministering Onoria, carrying out with anxious solicitude the whims of an old dog.
She did not leave Prendergast till he had finally decided on a return to his basket. When his feeble snores told her that he was at rest, she groped her way to the mantelpiece for matches, and tidied herself for going out once more.
Miss Strickland had never in her life looked untidy and she was not going to begin now.
She had decided to make an appeal to Elsie’s parents.
Hitherto she had considered parents unreasonable and obstructive people who paid the piper and considered themselves entitled to call for inappropriate tunes.
Miss Bretherton and Miss Strickland together railed and laughed in turn at the delinquencies of parents—their ineffectual hankerings, their odd explosions of indignation and their ineradicable faith in the production of figs from thistles.
None of them knew what their children were really like, and all of them thought they did. Nevertheless, Providence had provided parents with a little brief authority, and there were moments when it came in very usefully.
It had flashed through Onoria’s mind, at the first instant when she saw her will defied by the truant couple, that perhaps Mrs. Andrews might be able to do something with Elsie.
Miss Strickland did not know the Andrewses very well. She often said that they were like glass to her and that she could read them like a book; but Mrs. Andrews only came to tea with Miss Strickland once a year; and Miss Strickland returned her call within a fortnight.
She had met Mr. Andrews twice, and they had had on both these occasions acrimonious disputes on politics.
Mr. Andrews described Miss Strickland as a “strong-minded female for whom he had no manner of use,” and Miss Strickland said Mr. Andrews was “nothing but a hen-headed old grocer.”
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were eating their supper when Miss Strickland was announced.
They were not surprised that Elsie was late as they neither of them knew how long oratorios lasted; but they were frightened when they saw that Miss Strickland was alone.
Mrs. Andrews exclaimed at once, “Where’s Elsie? Has she been run over?” and Mr. Andrews said, “Nonsense, Mother! Of course not. Where is the child, Miss Strickland? We hold you responsible you know! We hold you strictly responsible!”
“I don’t know,” said Onoria firmly.
She took an armchair and faced the questioning parents with her usual deliberate self-assurance. “That is what I came to ask you.”
“But surely—” Mr. and Mrs. Andrews began together. “Surely you took Elsie to the oratorio?—she said, didn’t she, she was going this afternoon over to Mellingham?”
“I was,” said Miss Strickland, “at the oratorio in Mellingham this afternoon, and so was Elsie, but she was not with me.”
“Well I never!” said Mr. Andrews. “Fancy her going off like that all by herself! It’s certainly time she was back. Girls are so independent nowadays.”
“She was not alone,” Miss Strickland said significantly.
Mr. Andrews leaned forward, “Who was she with?” he asked truculently.
“She was with Peter Gubbins,” said Miss Strickland, leaning back in her chair.
If she had intended to create a sensation she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams; but the incredible part of it was the type of sensation she had created. She had expected shame, indignation and alarm. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were quite obviously pleased.
Once more Onoria was confronted by the inexplicable nature of parents.
They did not wish to show their satisfaction too plainly, but the tone in which Elsie’s mother said, “Well I never!” was one of flattered maternal pride, and Mr. Andrews, when he had drawn a long breath, exclaimed, “I never would have thought it!” in much the way in which he would have greeted a smart trick of the trade.
“You can never tell with the quiet kind,” Mrs. Andrews continued reminiscently. “I was like that myself as a girl, I never went out of my way to attract anybody, and as to mentioning it at home—well—I’d have been ashamed! I just let things take their course as it were—and here I am! Dear me!”
“Shouldn’t you say Peter Gubbins was a warm man?” enquired Mr. Andrews, ignoring this revelation of his wife’s tactics. “I’ve always understood he had a tidy little sum put by.”
“I couldn’t possibly tell you,” said Miss Strickland, who had, during this outburst of vulgarity, recovered her secret poise. “To tell the truth, the idea of Elsie’s having arrived at any notion of matrimony had not occurred to me. I merely thought that it was unfortunate she should appear in public unchaperoned with a man who is old enough to be her father, but who is not her father.”
“Oh, well, you know,” said Mr. Andrews, “young people will be young people, won’t they Mother? And we all know Peter Gubbins about here. Peter Gubbins is as safe as the Bank of England. I don’t call fifty old for a man.”
“Appearances,” said Miss Strickland coldly, “are never safe. I had not intended to mention it, but I see I had better put you in command of all the facts.
“Peter Gubbins has been in the habit of meeting Elsie at my house, in my absence, without my knowledge or consent.”
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews looked at each other. Mr. Andrews whistled.
“Dear! dear!” said Mr. Andrews after an awkward pause.
“I’m sure we’re very sorry, Miss Strickland. Elsie oughtn’t to have done it, I allow, but if you won’t mind my saying so, you should have thought of it before! What I mean to say is—it’s a little late in the day, isn’t it—for you to mind what Peter Gubbins does?”
“It’s only natural,” interposed Mrs. Andrews, “for him to take to a young girl like Elsie. We each have our turn, you know, Miss Strickland, and then we have to stand aside and let the young ones have theirs! It’s hard lines I know, but there it is——”
“You quite misunderstand me,” said Onoria, who had turned brick red under this last onslaught of a parent’s imagination.
“What Peter Gubbins does, or what he fancies, is, and always has been, a matter of perfect indifference to me. In this case, my sole concern has been Elsie and the compromising position to which such clandestine meetings give rise.”
It was a good sentence with a swing that took the wind out of Mr. Andrews’ sails. Still, Miss Strickland would have preferred to fling the vulgar truth upon the table. She wanted to say:
“My dear good people, I’ve refused Peter Gubbins dozens of times, and Elsie is merely taking my leavings, if she does take them, but that seems to me no good reason for carrying on behind my back!”
But education takes from us our most effective weapons. It would have been ill-bred to make this statement, and Miss Strickland, though she never minded being rude, did not wish to appear ill-bred; and in spite of the excellence of her sentence she knew that the Andrewses, still believed that Elsie had cut her out.
“Since you are not alarmed at Elsie’s having failed to return at the termination of the oratorio,” she said, rising to her feet, “or at the fact that she has apparently vanished into space with Peter Gubbins at eight o’clock at night—there is nothing further to be said. I can only congratulate you on the strength of your nerves.”
“It is a little late,” Mrs. Andrews admitted. “Still——”
There was a sound at the garden gate; a moment later a loud knock heralded the telegraph boy.
Mr. Andrews put on his glasses and read out loud: “Missed train after oratorio—too late to return—staying with Aunt Anne—Elsie.”
“Her Aunt Anne,” explained Mr. Andrews with restored satisfaction, “is a clergyman’s widow, who lives at Clapham. Elsie won’t come to any harm staying with her Aunt Anne—Peter Gubbins or no Peter Gubbins.”
“Probably he’s come home,” said Mrs. Andrews comfortably. “He never was much of a gadabout. I’m sure we’re just as grateful to you, Miss Strickland, for coming in to tell us what you knew. You couldn’t have been kinder if you’d been a parent yourself.”
“Thank God I’m not!” Miss Strickland energetically and rather shockingly declared (though in a sense it would have been more shocking had she wished to be a parent). “If I were I should hardly take my responsibilities as lightly as you do.”
“I shall write to my sister to-morrow,” said Mr. Andrews with dignity, “and my wife will write to Elsie.”
Miss Strickland walked to the door. Her last hope had flickered out with the mention of Aunt Anne at Clapham. A situation occupied by Aunt Anne was impregnable.
Onoria knew herself outwitted by the ponderous stupidity of facts.
It was a cold, foggy evening, the streets of Little Ticklington were badly lighted and empty.
It seemed a long way home. A curious stifling sense of dread overtook Onoria. She told herself sharply that when a thing has already happened it is silly to be afraid of its happening again.
Nevertheless she hurried, as if she might by hurrying escape what was to overtake her.
Bridget had lit the gas in the hall, and the fire in the drawing room burnt brightly.
Prendergast lay a little on one side in his basket.
He was not snoring as he usually did. Miss Strickland leaned over him anxiously. He did not open his eyes or turn his head to look at her, and then she saw that he never would again. He had made up his mind what he wanted.
A wild impulse to rush across and tell Peter Gubbins shook Miss Strickland.
Nobody else loved Prendergast, but Peter had loved him. He had loved him nearly as much as he loved Samson.
Miss Strickland looked down with quivering lips at the obese form of the dead pug. He was all she had in the world, and he had taken this opportunity to slip out of it.
Miss Strickland was a fighter. She was a very fine fighter and up till this moment no wave of disaster had ever been beyond her power to surmount. But you cannot fight the memory of a dead dog.
Prendergast overwhelmed Miss Strickland. She sank on the floor beside his basket sobbing as if her heart, which was already broken, could break again.
“They might have left me this!” she said between her sobs.
She spoke as if Elsie and Peter between them had killed Prendergast, although she knew that this was nonsense.
CHAPTER IX
Peter Gubbins had the type of mind which invariably sees danger in the most unlikely places.
He apprehended it from every wayside flower. Nothing was too trivial or too transitory for Peter to snatch from it in passing a whiff of disaster.
He never mounted a tram without expecting to break his leg, and he never ate a meal in a strange place without anticipating typhoid.
And yet the mere sound of Onoria’s voice had driven him helter skelter towards the abyss of matrimony.
He raced from the Cathedral to the Station as a man flees from a burning building: his one idea was not to be caught by Onoria. Even if he had envisaged Onoria’s face at one end of the race and matrimony at the other, it is probable he would have continued running in the direction of matrimony. The true coward can only see one danger at a time, and falls light-heartedly into any other which lies in the opposite direction.
It says a great deal for Peter Gubbins’ heart that even in that awful moment of panic he dragged Elsie after him.
It was not till they were safe in the train that he began to wonder how on earth he was going to get rid of her.
The chief obstacle to murder has always been the disposal of the body—and the problem of rescue is very similar to it; but it is easier to dispose of a victim than to dispose of a sacred charge; villains, not knight errants, escape the due reward of their deeds.
Peter wished with a burning longing that he could deposit Elsie in the Cloak Room at Paddington Station, even if it involved his paying twopence a day on her for ever.
After the tooth episode it was wonderful how Elsie cheered up.
She had found in Mr. Gubbins a prop and stay and that was all she wanted. A flower grows without the support of a stick—but its carriage depends on being tied to one.
Elsie held her head up, and her mind (which if timorous was always practical) turned to Aunt Anne at Clapham.
They had a late tea in the Station and sent off Elsie’s telegram; and then they took a taxi to Clapham.
They could have gone as conveniently and more cheaply by train, but a taxi appealed to them both, as more buccaneerish.
Peter enjoyed feeling buccaneerish until they reached the Common; then he began to tremble before the idea of explaining things to Aunt Anne. He knew that he had done right, but he was aware that flight and guilt are to many people synonymous; and few men like to explain that they found it safer to run away.
Elsie with incredible finesse relieved him of this difficulty. She said she thought it would be better if he left her at the door, and came back next day. “You’ll have time then,” she explained, “to think things over, and I know authors and people think of their plots better alone. Whatever you decide is sure to be wonderful, and Aunt Anne will be more likely to listen to me if you’re not there.”
Peter gave a sigh of relief. “Yes—yes,” he agreed, “perhaps the explanation had better come from you direct. I know from personal experience that the way to tackle a difficult situation is easier to me if I am left alone face to face with it, as it were. Perhaps this is merely because I am a man. Onoria would say so—but roughly speaking, I should say that women have the same gift.”
“I don’t know if it’s a gift,” said Elise modestly, “but I can’t say anything if other people are there—and I can’t say much if they aren’t; but I’ll do what I can.”
Aunt Anne required a good many explanations. She had never received a niece before at seven o’clock in the evening without a tooth-brush.
It would have been difficult for her to grasp that the survivors of earthquakes are denuded of this effective article of toilette, and she knew that Little Ticklington was not an earthquake district.
She followed every explanation given by Elsie with—“Still I can’t quite see, dear, how you have arrived without your night things. I am very glad to see you, of course, but it all sounds so precipitate.”
It was on the edge of this precipice that Elsie fell asleep.
She wisely kept Mr. Gubbins for breakfast. When they were eating kidneys and bacon—after porridge, but before marmalade—she confessed to her Aunt Anne that she had not only run away from the oratorio because Miss Strickland did not like oratorios, but because Mr. Gubbins was with her and Miss Strickland would have liked his presence even less than an oratorio.
Aunt Anne laid down her knife and fork and gazed at Elsie—the mystery was solved. It had been a mystery—it was now simply a crime. Aunt Anne had not understood before why Miss Strickland should object to certain parts of the Bible set to music. She was herself doubtful of Opera, even if it had not been so expensive; but sacred music was surely both educational and devout, and not even very interesting. It was unreasonable for a high school teacher to object to such a performance—but a young man!
Her gaze was awful, and Elsie shuddered under it, and swallowing her tea too hurriedly, choked.
When she had stopped choking, Aunt Anne said portentously, “Is Mr. Gubbins a young man, Elsie?”
Elsie said that that depended on what you meant by young; she had known him for years and years, and he had grey hair and wore spectacles.
“Spectacles,” said Aunt Anne solemnly, “do not prevent youth though they may disguise it. Grey hair is neither here nor there. Am I to gather that there is some understanding between you and this—this Mr. Gubbins, Elsie—perhaps unknown to your dear parents?”
Elsie wriggled and twisted. “They wouldn’t mind him,” she murmured forlornly. “At least I don’t think so. Of course we understand each other in a way. I play his accompaniments.”
“Elsie, you are hedging!” exclaimed Aunt Anne majestically. “I must see this young man for myself.”
Elsie was not really hedging; if she had seen a hedge she would most certainly have taken shelter under it, but she was not aware of the exact danger her aunt supposed her to be avoiding.
She felt that there was something ominous in the air connected with Mr. Gubbins, and she wriggled to appease it.
The idea of marriage conveyed nothing personal to Elsie. Marriage was merely something that happened to other people—with a cake. She helped herself to marmalade and hoped that Peter Gubbins would blow over.
Her aunt pursed up her lips and said, “This is dreadful!” but as Elsie refused to fall into the trap of asking what was dreadful, she could not follow it up in any way, except by telling Mary, the parlour-maid, to show Mr. Gubbins, when he arrived, into her dead husband’s study.
The study of a dead clergyman is not usually an invigorating spot.
Aunt Anne was a massive lady and she sat between Peter and the door. All the windows were closed as if on purpose. Even if Peter had had the courage to try to escape it would have been very difficult. You cannot get out of dead people’s rooms briskly without appearing heartless; besides he had not the courage.
Peter was not as surprised at Aunt Anne’s attitude as Elsie would have been, but he was more frightened.
He saw in Aunt Anne’s eye that matrimony had fallen upon him like a bolt from the blue.
You cannot put bolts back into the blue when they have fallen, and you could not dislodge the idea of matrimony from Aunt Anne’s mind once it had taken root there. If young people would go to oratorios together they ought to be married—she saw that quite plainly, even without the lawless journey at the other end, which made the prospect, as she explained to Peter, “simply compulsory.”
“You see,” she explained, “Elsie arrived here literally without a tooth-brush—need I say more?”
Peter assured her that there really was no need. It contained the case against them in a nutshell.
On the whole he was not averse to being frightened into marriage with Elsie. One or two things had to be made perfectly plain before he would consent to it. One was that they should not go back to Little Ticklington on any account, and the other that the marriage should take place as quietly as possible without wedding guests. They might have relatives, but not friends.
It was all terribly uncertain and disintegrating, but it was not as terrible as having to face Onoria.
Peter’s own plan had been the idea of going abroad alone, assisted by Thomas Cook.
Of course it was a very dangerous plan, open to obvious disasters at practically every turn, still Cook’s was a most reliable agency, and many people had been known to return alive from trips to the Continent. He could take a hot water bottle, Keating’s, and a small medicine chest. But marriage would be less complicated, and it would have the advantage of including Elsie.
Peter proposed to Elsie quite easily. He simply said, “On the whole, I think the best way out for both of us is to be married. For a long time I have been feeling Little Ticklington too restricted for me mentally. One needs to be nearer the great pulse of life—not too near, of course! I thought somewhere in the suburbs—Chiswick, for instance—there are some nice little houses in that direction, or Turnham Green.
“I could cultivate sweet peas there, and yet attend literary causeries in London. Of course it’s a great upheaval for both of us, especially at my age, but looking at it all round, it appears to me the wisest course to take—what do you feel about it?”
Elsie nodded, she wasn’t looking at it all round. She was seeing that it involved her not having to meet Onoria just yet.
She said, yes, she thought it was the best plan, if Peter didn’t mind.
Peter said, “You must take the rough with the smooth.” Of course he had not contemplated such a step for many years, but he thought if they were very careful and took things quietly they might be able to manage.
He understood from Aunt Anne that you wrote to the Bishop’s Chaplain for a license, and did not have to see the Bishop.
The conversation came to an abrupt pause, their eyes met guiltily, and they looked away from each other.
What were they going to do about Onoria?
Peter hummed and Elsie twiddled her fingers. Onoria never allowed these physical mitigations of self-control to take place. It was a great relief to them.
They decided—in silence—to do nothing. It was as if they had been married already.
Peter said he had one or two little things to do, and left her.
Aunt Anne came in and wept on Elsie’s neck; and they decided to go out and do a little shopping.
Everything went quite smoothly. Elsie’s parents came up to town and were very pleased when they discovered that Peter had six hundred a year in trust funds without counting what he made by his articles.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews privately thought that marriage from Clapham was absurd, but Peter was unexpectedly firm upon the subject.
He simply asserted that at Little Ticklington no such marriage would ever take place.
He would marry Elsie at Clapham or he would not marry Elsie at all.
Mrs. Binns (Peter’s former housekeeper) brought Samson up to town in a basket. Samson would not speak to Peter for several days, but he ate heartily.
It was the night before the wedding that Peter and Elsie heard of the death of Prendergast.
Mrs. Binns had bought Peter a China dog as a wedding present and it put it into her head.
Elsie and Peter concealed their emotion until they were alone, then they gazed at each other in sympathetic anguish—they could no longer keep silence about Onoria.
“Oh!” said Elsie, “if only we could give Onoria another pug. Perhaps she would see then that we aren’t really doing anything to upset her—and besides she wouldn’t mind so much if she had something—you know what I mean—something of her own to fall back upon.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself,” agreed Peter. “Between you and me, Onoria never had quite the subtlety for cats—Samson would never look at her—but dogs she knew through and through. I think she would appreciate our getting her a dog. It might heal any little breach that our—our coming together—may have appeared to cause.”
They bought a pug puppy directly after the marriage—on the way to Chiswick. (Peter had always understood honeymoons were dangerous, so they had decided to avoid one.)
It was an expensive animal and it relieved their feelings very much.
Onoria would have returned it to them, had she not discovered on opening the basket that, with their usual inefficiency, they had sent the poor little creature to her in a most deplorable condition.
First it had to be fed, and then a carbolic bath was more than indicated, and after Onoria had spent several hours over the puppy with a fine tooth comb and a large bath sheet, she began to feel that it would be cruelty to send it back. It was obvious that neither of the Gubbinses could take proper care of a dog.
Onoria never altogether lost touch with Peter and Elsie. She told them what she thought of them when she acknowledged the pug; but letters do not carry sound. They became used to the idea of what Onoria thought of them; it seemed less significant at Chiswick.
Onoria spent a night with them every now and then, and once a year they visited her for a week-end at Little Ticklington.
Of course it was not the same thing. Onoria was just the same and the Gubbinses were not really very different; but they were more critical of Onoria.
They did not stand up to her before her face, but they stood up to her behind her back quite easily.
When Onoria got the better of them in argument, as she invariably did, they would wait until she was out of earshot. Then they would smile and say to each other with the secret consciousness of superior achievement,
“It stands to reason that an unmarried woman like Onoria can’t understand things as we do. She hasn’t had the experience.”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
A few obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. When multiple spellings occurred, majority use has been employed.
A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public domain.
[End of The Victim and The Worm by Phyllis Bottome]