 Chapter 9 The Call to Arms On the morning of the following Thursday I was seated on the steps of the caravan, busy peeling potatoes. It was not a gay scene at which I gazed as I dug the eyes out of the slippery, astonishingly naked-looking vegetables. My fingers were wet and stained and stiff with the chill wind of a fickle English june, and behind me the voice of the brunette implored me to shut the door. I banged it too with a will, glad to cut off that audible reminder of haggots from my consciousness. The further end of the waist was sacred to a dealer in scrap iron, who lurked in a little shed of corrugated iron, beside the dismal heap of his stock in trade. There were shattered drainpipes red with flaking rust that looked like the stocks of some giant plant, of which the piled wheels with their mangled spokes and encrusted hubs seemed the skeleton blossoms, while the drift of pots and pans in every tone of brown and orange, where the scattered seeds, a heap of tightened vegetation, petrified by the fiery lava of some distant disaster. From the high road came the scream of the electric cars and the clanging of their bells as they swung round the corner. Beside me the harsh grass whispered softly, and here and there a paper bag made spasmodic efforts to get a little further in the world. There is nothing so demoralizing to any landscape as a paper bag, unless it is orange peel. And of that we had plenty, but I loved the glowing note it made as it winked from the trodden grass. A sky of pure cold blue arched behind the rooftops, blotted by gold white clouds, with trails of gray cirrus dragged across them in places like ragged curtains, and in the strong sunshine the blocks of distant flats glared of deep, tawny red. As I set gazing at all this Peter came towards me over the waist-ground, carrying a string-bag bulbous with blue-papered parcels and exuberant with lettuce. Sitting down on the step below me without a word he took off his cap and let the cool wind sift refreshingly through his hair, then turning his head swiftly with one of his half-shy movements that always reminded me of a young animal. He rubbed his forehead against my hand, a proceeding resented by the company's kitten, which was nestling in my lap. You're a stunning person to come back to, Princess, he said. How did you get on with the shopping? Oh, all right. I was quite in the fashion. All the best people round here carry a string-bag. I wonder why. String-bags have always seemed to meet such limp things, with no proper self-respect. All the dear ladies, their shopping done, were scurrying home to prepare for the husband's return from the office. What is the office, the husband's all go there daily, not mark you to an office, but the office. I imagine it some vast hall of industry, lined with desks, a husband bending over each. Yes, like Stationers' Hall, I remarked. Didn't you have entered at Stationers' Hall on your pencil-boxes when you were young? I did, and I always pictured it a great temple with a sort of tunnel running through it, and the pencil-boxes piled on trucks were run through this tunnel in at one door and out at Tother. This was being entered at Stationers' Hall. I once asked one of these little wives what the office was, continued Peter dreamily. She replied with strange bitterness that it was a place where he was often unaccountably detained in the evening, rather exclusive to call it the office, but then in suburbia they are exclusive. I expect they keep a special providence, whatever that may be. The suburbs are the home of mystery, not what they seem. For instance I believe it incorrect to conclude that Parsons Green is entirely the resort of clergymen, or that Jews refuse to reside in East Ham. The abbey is where we hope to go when we die, and Hammersmith is where the life-models live, I murmured thoughtfully, and Bedford Park, like the blonde's hair, is too good to be true. Ah, well, said Peter, it won't do for me to idle my time away like this. I must arise and see to that blow-lamp. Haggit wants the old paint burnt off the garden seat that the heroine always sits on. He wants it repainted, virgin white. Something was certainly wrong with the blow-lamp. The flames roared out in a plume of yellow a foot long. But this was corrected with the aid of one of my hatpins, and the flare reduced to a hardly visible breath of blue. It was curious how directly he turned it against the surface of the iron. The flames sprang into yellowness again, spreading out in a luminous fan and whistling like gas-jet. Peter scraped away busily at the melting paint that fell curling to the ground, making a heap of sticky green shavings. The smell of burning paint being rather powerful, I departed with my potatoes to cook the dinner for the brunette, Peter, Bert, Myrit, and myself, we being the only caravan dwellers besides the Haggits, who fared more sumptuously and apart. That afternoon it being early closing day for the shops, we were giving a matinee performance of the bells of Chimehurst, which was described on the bills as a rustic comedy. Peter of Wimperus was generally chun-premier, but in the bells of Chimehurst he was cast for the villain. We never were able to understand the plot of the rustic comedy ourselves. The church bells burst into appeal whenever anything of particular interest occurred in the life of the heroine, which seemed a somewhat unusual arrangement. Haggit himself, in a Czech suit, a top hat, and a fawn ulster, played the bluff old English Squire, whilst poor Peter was doomed to propose to me, in tartan trousers and his shirt sleeves, to the accompaniment of a merry peal from the obliging bells of Chimehurst. Comic relief was provided by the part of the village washerwoman, played by the blonde. The old English Squire had a flirtation with this lady over her wash tub, and humor of an exceedingly elementary sort was obtained by the shaking out in his face of various garments not usually displayed in polite society. It was all very vulgar, very silly, and essentially moral. Virtue, in the person of the elocutionist, returned from America in a dinner-jacket, and a Homburg hat triumphed completely, and villainy, in the person of Peter, committed suicide, flad trousers and all, to the last bright peal of those officious bells. Any subtlety of interpretation would have been wasted on plays and audiences. But there was not even good cloak-and-dagger acting. The women frumped about the stage and skirts that sagged at the back, talking in a sustained squeak, and the men were even more hopeless. It had been amusing enough when I first started, but by now I was sick to death of it. As we stood in the wings before our first entrance, Peter, who had been listening to the aforesaid flirtation scene, with a coarse smile on his face, turned to me. Let's do ourselves proud, Princess, he whispered. Let's hurl ourselves into the spirit of the thing, and make it as absurd as we can. I must run off the rails somehow this afternoon. He whistled the humorous under his breath, and the memory of the days on board the chuff caught at me, and made the old imp of adventure raise its head. Our eyes met, and we laughed gaily at each other. We were both fae, as the Cornish saying has it. A state of things always supposed to lead to tears before nightfall. The only wonder is that we had borne the haggot menage without going fae as long as we had. For it was a seething mass of incongruous elements bound to explode sooner or later. Only the desperate need of the various members of the company had made such an artificial state of affairs possible at all. I gripped Peter's hand in the shadow of the wings, and I too whistled the humorous softly. Prudence had fled. And it was to the lilt of Dwarzak's music that I stepped on to the stage. End of chapter 9 Chapter 10 of the Milky Way This Librebox recording is in the public domain. The Milky Way by F. Tennison Jesse. Chapter 10 Being Fae To use Peter's expression we certainly made things hum that afternoon. He proposed hand on heart in the best Adelphi manner, and I refused him with an Assyrian gesture of outflung arms and averted head. We burlesked our actions and gagged freely. We were not allowed to act well, then we would at least act as badly as possible. A feeling of tension spread through the whole company. For some time now both the blonde and the brunette had treated me to covert unpleasantness. But tonight the hidden things lifted unabashed heads. The wires of diplomacy were stretched beyond bearing point. Already they gave a discordant note. Soon they would snap utterly. Partly the friction had arisen from the fact that I had always been given juvenile lead. A position formally held by the blonde. Which accounted for her dislike. But Ginny's glowerings puzzled me more. For being dark she always played heavy lead. Though owing to the smallness of the company she was what is called the chambermaid. I.e. was cast for the small character parts as well. Up till this afternoon I had endured the unpleasantness fleximatically. But now sick of the whole sordid affair I felt reckless and cared for nothing. Between the acts I saw Haggett looking thunderously at me. The blonde muttered inarticulately as she flounced past. Burt Merritt seemed absolutely dazzled and hung on my every movement. Which caused the brunette to whiten beneath the grease paint. While an ominous little pulse beat in her thin cheek. It was not that the women were jealous of my influence with the audience. The puzzled shop lads and their sweethearts were at a loss what to make of my performance. And applause was a tentative, gusty thing. That faded away as though alarmed at itself. But whether applause came or not Peter and I were the dominant figures on the stage. The very fact that the members of the audience did not know how to take us added to the arresting quality we seemed to give off like an aroma. It was appallingly inartistic of us. The performance became a medley of jarring notes. Nothing kept in key. There was no unity of atmosphere. But Peter and I enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. The audience became demoralized. The play ended amid a tornado of hisses, claps, and cat-calls. And as Haggett rang down the curtain I slipped away to the dressing room. Rather to my surprise none of the other women came to remove their makeup. And just as I had finished changing from the bridal gown I had worn in the last act to the old silk shirt and tweed skirt of everyday life, there came a knock at the door. I opened it to find Haggett standing outside. He was removing his makeup and the mingled Vaseline and dark grease paint made him look like a negro in the act of being melted down. Miss Lovell, he said. I had waged successful war against the deer of the profession. Kindly go back to the stage. Mrs. Haggett wants to speak to you. I found the stage in semi-darkness. The footlights having been put out, and the top lights turned low. The hall lay in deep shadow. Only the first few rows of empty benches gleamed faintly. Several people stood about the stage. Mrs. Haggett composed, but with an effect of effort, and breathing heavily through her nose. Peter, with his chin up and his hands in his pockets, and the elocutionist, in an attitude suggestive of the last phase at Santa Elena. While Ginny, the brunette, was endeavouring to console Mrs. Devere, who crouched hysterically heaving on the ground. Her husband, Augustus, the tragedy-lead, glowered beside her, looking down on the wide back of her neck, with a weary impersonal scrutiny. Everyone stood in a pool of shadow cast by the top lights. And as the flames blew about in the draft, the shadows wavered like breathing creatures. They were the only moving things there except the convulsive shoulders of Mrs. Devere. It was a curious rigidity about everyone that struck me as I advanced, giving me that unmistakable feeling of something having happened. She or I must go, sobbed Mrs. Devere, and the brunette echoed her viciously. What is it? What's happened? I whispered to Peter. I can tell you what's happened, Miss Lovell, said Mrs. Haggett grimly. The ladies of this company have given me a manifestor that they don't want you to stop here any longer. I don't quite understand, said I, while Peter gripped my hand in the shadow of the projecting wing. There some people came in strangled accents from the heap on the boards, who come along and do the la-di-da, and keep themselves to themselves, but aren't above snatching the bread from a hard-working artist who's always been top dog with the public, and me, a mother, too. With rising wrath I turned to Mrs. Haggett. It is evidently no good asking Mrs. Devere to explain, said I. Perhaps you'll tell me how I've snatched bread from anyone. It's no use saying anything with these people littering the place, replied Mrs. Haggett contemptuously. Augustus, take your wife home and tie her jaw up. Bert, you fetch Mr. Haggett to me, and Ginny at best go back to the caravan. Everyone obeyed her, and she and Peter and I waited silently on the dim stage till Haggett appeared, looming portentously through the gloom. He took his wife's bat hand in his hands, and stroked it gently, murmuring, Keep calm, my little woman, don't distress yourself, while he fixed me with his beady, dark eyes. Fact is, Miss Lovell, he said, The company's jealous of you, and I don't blame them. You're not the sort we want here. We don't want a pretty girl, and we don't want a clever girl. And we don't want a girl who can act. For why? Because it don't match the rest of the company. I talk straight to you, Miss, because you've always played straight by me, and hid out from the shoulder when you de-mind. And I admit you knock spots off the other women. That's just what I object to. I'd like a whole company of your sort well enough, but it can't be ad. So I can't have all my company made to look cheap, see? I did see. There was sense in what he said. I was out of focus there, and made all the others seem out of focus, too. If I had been a show-a-lay pretty girl, to whom the youths of the audience would have brought round nosegays wrapped in paper, greasy from their hot hands, it would have mattered less. But I was not. Probably the audience thought me a frump, with my plain frocks and my mouse-colored hair swaved in close plaits round my head. But all the same I made the other women look haggard and lacking in freshness. Neither they nor I seemed in our right places, and so no definite effect was arrived at. You wish me to leave? I asked Haggett. That's the size of it, he admitted. Of course, as it's without notice you'll have a week's wages. It'll cause less ill-feeling if you don't appear again. But there's no call for you to leave till to-morrow. He was a just man in his way, was Haggett. I put away my property gowns in the dressing-room, and then crossed to the caravan. Peter was waiting for me by the steps. Don't go in for a minute, he said eagerly. I must speak to you. I don't know whether I'm glad or sorry this has happened. But what will you do? I don't know, haven't the vaguest idea. Why, Peter, what is the matter? I had touched his arm and found he was trembling violently. What's the matter, he replied, setting his jaw angrily. Can't you guess I'm dying to knock Haggett's teeth down his fat neck? The man's a criminal. To turn a girl like you off into the world with fifteen shillings. I've more than that. I've saved quite three shillings lately. Oh, Peter, I'm so tired. Thank heaven I haven't to act again tonight. But I must make arrangements about little John, and there's my packing to do. And, Peter, don't worry about me. There's a deer. He took my hand and suddenly bending his head, kissed it. The action coming from the boyish Peter. Who was never anything but the good comrade. Touched me. So few men know how to kiss one's hand. And Peter did it perfectly. As ill luck chose, the caravan door swung noiselessly open at that moment. And the brunette appeared on the threshold. The burnished glow of the evening sun lay over the wasteland, and tinged Ginny's face and figure with a coppery iridescence. Behind her the dimness of the caravan was faintly illuminated by a forlorn candle-flame. And the result of the conflicting lights was to eliminate all shadows. And make of Ginny an avenging fury. Without warning she broke into speech. Think you're coming into my caravan, do you, you hussy? Me, as has always been an honest, respectable girl, to have to put up with the likes of you, carrying on with two men at a time, and hugging and kissing under the very door. I heard no more. For Peter flung the cloak he was carrying round me, muffling my ears with it. But from the white-hot anger of his face I knew she must be saying things unrepeatable. Drawn by the clamour of her voice, Haggit and the elocutionist came hurrying from the other caravans. What's all this, stormed Haggit? I can't have this sort of thing. Ginny, hold your tongue this moment. I had shaken off the cloak, and I wheeled round on him. You asked me to leave tomorrow, Mr. Haggit, I said. I will leave now. Nothing could induce me to stay another night with a person who has said such things as Ginny. Please tell her to come down, and I will pack my things. Then I will go. Haggit looked intensely relieved, and Ginny sullenly descended the steps. Peter laid his hand protestingly on my arm. But shaking him off, I went into the van and closed the door. My hands trembled as I put my few belongings together in my little bag. And when I had finished, I laid my face on its cold American cloth side, and burst into a passion of tears. I felt I could never meet Peter again, never bear the smile of fellowship in his frank eyes. That unutterable woman had smirched the one thing that had made life worth living. The friendship with someone honest and gentle. Someone of fine but strong fiber, on whom I could lean, and whom had often, in his turn, went on me. My cheeks burned with shame as the few words of Ginny's I had heard beat back and forth through my brain. It seemed impossible not to be sullied by the mere fact that such things had been said to one. Picking up my little bag, I opened the caravan door, and saw Haggit waiting by the steps. He presented me with fifteen shillings in an envelope, and stopping me as I was about to put it in my pocket, he insisted, like the man of business that he was, on my counting it shilling by shilling. Then I handed him back half a crown. That's for little John's milk, Mr. Haggit, and for Emily's fare when she brings her to me, I said. I can't take her goodness only knows where this evening, but I will send for her as soon as I can, probably to-morrow. Please let Emily have entire charge of her. And when I send, will you make sure to hand my card with the address on it to Emily, so that she can show it to people when she wants to know the way? In fact, you'd better see that she pins it on to little John's clothes. Mind, I've always got the milk in the sealed bottles, and I trust to you to let Emily do the same. Mr. Haggit pocketed the half crown and nodded portentously, and I held out my hand. Good-bye, Miss, he said, as he shook it. I'll see that Emily's allowed to do right by the little one. And I'm sorry Ginny should have spoke as she did. She'll be sorry for it presently. She knows you're as straight as they make them, but, well, she was jealous of you-know-oo, and at her dander up. Haggit and I parted without malice, and after farewells and many carefully repeated injunctions to little John and the changeling, I went down the wasteland towards the trams. By the heap of scrap iron stood Peter, in the full blaze of the evening sun, that made the rusty metal glow like fairy gold, and edged his tumbled hair with prismatic light, giving him more of the fawn look he had when I first saw him in the glow from the stoke-hold. I held out my hand, and he took it. Good-bye, Peter Piper, I said, and good luck. I expect we shall run up against each other some time. Oh, I expect so, he agreed, eerily. Till then, Princess. The lightness of his tone and the carelessness of his whole bearing hurt me more than anything that had happened. Taking my hand away, I nodded brightly and walked on to hide the welling tears, which threatened to humiliate me. Round the other side of the scrap iron I came on the elocutionist, who was holding a paper bag. Miss Lovell, take it. It's sandwiches. You may need them. Oh, Miss Lovell, farewell, and may you never want. If it's any comfort to you to know that my art is unchangeably yours. Why, Burt, I exclaimed in a maze. But you're walking out with Ginny. Was walking out, he corrected. But how could I contempt myself with the candle when I had seen the star? Your beams, Miss Lovell, shone into my art and put her out. Seeing the elocutionist was in the grip of one of his dramatic situations, I spoke sternly. Listen to me, Burt. You are talking silly nonsense. You don't really care for me at all. And you do care for Ginny. I wonder at you behaving in such an unmanly way. Haven't you been paying attention to Ginny for months? What are men's laws against the sacredity of passion, demanded the elocutionist. You make me quite sick. Don't talk stuff out of penny-novelettes to me. Go back to Ginny and ask her to forgive your absurd behavior. And she will, though it's more than you deserve. The starch was nearly gone from poor Burt by now. And he looked at me limply. But made one more effort to keep up his pose. Is it nothing to you that a man offers the devotion of his old life to you, he demanded? I don't ask anything of you, Miss Lovell. Nor ever would. Except to be allowed to adore you. Does it mean nothing to you that you spurn it? Nothing whatever when it belongs to someone else. Come, Burt, you're a good boy, and you've always been nice and obliging to me. Now do just one last thing to please me. Anything, Miss Lovell, my life is at your service. That's just what I don't want. Promise me to go back to Ginny and make it up, will you? Since you ask it, yes. It is but a broken art I have to offer her. But it shall be done. Thank you, Burt, and thank you for the sandwiches, too. We shook hands, and I watched him go back across the Wasteland. The pride of conscious virtue in his gate, already happy in his new pose. Then I climbed on to the top of a tram, and let it take me to Hammersmith. I lent against the unsympathetic back of the tram seat, and bit my lip to keep myself from crying, absurd as he was with his theatrical devotion. There was no denying that the elocutionist had minded my departure more than Peter. The changeling had clung to my arm in a frenzy when she realized I was going away without her. Even Little John, as though some sympathetic pressions told her of my desertion, grew red in the face with weeping, and I was confronted with the fact that, apparently, it was only the mentally deficient who regretted me. I felt very lonely, far lonelier than when I had landed from the chuff, and found Barbra's flat deserted, for then I had had Peter. I am afraid I must have cried a little, for when I made my way to the district railway station at Hammersmith Broadway, I had to blink very hard to see where I was going. My mental vision must also have suffered from mistiness. For arrived at the booking office, I took a ticket to the temple, for no better reason than that I thought it sounded a nice name. And after all, since I had nowhere to go, I cannot see that it mattered much where I went. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of The Milky Way The sleeper-box recording is in the public domain. The Milky Way by F. Tennyson Jesse, Chapter 11 Where the bus went On the temple platform I ran into Peter, who was alighting from the next carriage. Steady old girl, he said, gripping me firmly by the elbow. For the Lord's sake, don't cry. I—I'm not crying. Oh, Peter, I thought—I thought— Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Oh, Viv, you are an utter little goose. He picked up my bag as he spoke, and then I noticed that he was already carrying a bundle. Peter, you haven't left Haggots. And it's all through me. I shall never forgive myself. Never. Haggots, said Peter cheerfully, was not so bright and beautiful that it broke my heart to leave. By the way, what a brown study you were in, not to see me get into that tram. Hello, this gentleman in uniform very kindly wishes to relieve us of our tickets. Give him yours. And now, as we emerged into the cold riverside air, where are we going? I don't know, I replied. I haven't thought about it. What I was thinking was that he had called me Viv for the first time, and I laughed a little as I realized he didn't know that he had. When in doubt, take a bus, observed Peter. The only question is, what bus shall we take? A nice reliable bus, not a skittish young thing that will coquette with a lamppost. You observe that buses carry their ages legibly marked upon their persons. I'm glad we don't. Fancy when we got to thirty. We won't take a very young bus, like four or five, because it couldn't reasonably be expected to know where it was going. We'll choose a staid old thing somewhere in the sixties. Mightn't it be suffering from senile decay, asked Peter anxiously? So it might. We'll choose the divine middle age. We finally settled on a bus that had attained the age of forty-something, according to the big white label that decked its front. We handed the conductor a shilling, saying, two as far as you go, and pocketed the change without counting it, because Peter said the only way to travel was to trust the Providence and the uniform. We forgot to look at the tickets and find out where we were going, so to this day the destination of that bus remains a mystery. And I only know that it was somewhere on the Surrey side of the river. Dust had fallen when we alighted, and we wandered down gray little streets with growing disgust at our surroundings. That bus has played us false, announced Peter. I see no card advertising apartments for a single woman, which is what I want to find you. You will be reduced to a temperance hotel, and wire blinds are so depressing. Temperance hotel. This doesn't look to me the kind of locality for a temperance anything. Let's try this street. It looks quiet. It was. It consisted of shuttered warehouses, and was cut off in its prime by the river. Peter and I looked for a few moments at the stretch of gleaming mud between us and the brown gray of the sluggish tide, then turned to retrace our steps. As we did so a half-open door with a notice on it caught my eye. Waxworks, a penny, I read aloud. Do let's go in. We pushed open the door and found ourselves in a narrow passage, made narrower still by a kitchen table and chair. Evidently this was the receipt of custom, and the receiver had gone to his supper. Laughing at the adventure and pretending we were going to meet bogies round the corner, we started to mount the stairs. They were frail as matchwood, and in places had given way utterly, while it was long since the banisters had seen better days. A dim strange smelling-house it was. The pallet wallpaper hanging in clammy strips from the blotched walls, and it was with quite an exciting flutter of the heart that I led the way into the first room. A large bed stood at the far corner, and in it lay a waxen woman propped by pillows, her waist held by a smug-looking man in a blue-surge suit and fair wig, who stood beside her. At the foot of the bed smirked two more waxen ladies, who displayed a lively interest in the proceedings. A label round the neck of the man of the party announced that he was James Bates, the Canningtown Poisoner, and that the women were his three wives, to whom he had administered strychnine. I clutched Peter's arm. It was also gruesome in that darkening house. Shall we not go any further, asked Peter? I must know the worst. Lead on, I declared, peering over Peter's arm in mock terror as we advanced into the next room, which had a barricade some three feet high across it. Unsuspectingly we looked over that barrier, and, sick to the soul, I staggered against Peter in good earnest, burying my face on his shoulder. There had been a short time before a crime known as the Ternum Green Murder. A man had bought a grocery business from a young married couple, and to escape payment had murdered them and their baby, and buried the corpses in the garden. In the back room of this riverside house the scene of the disinterment was portrayed with revolting accuracy. There, among fragments of sacking and piled earth, showed the upturned waxen faces in which decay had been horribly imitated. They are scattered in different places for the limbs of the child. It's all right, Fiv. It's only wax figures, you know. Damn the brutes and their foul imaginations. Buck up, old girl. Pull yourself together. Take me away, Peter. Take me away. We'll go this minute, he assured me, drawing me to the door. The dark had come swiftly, and the stairs disappeared into impenetrable darkness. Peter shut the door of that dreadful room behind us. Listen to me, Viv, he said. The stairs aren't safe, and you must wait here while I go on and open the front door to make more light. Peter, I can't be left alone here. Peter. I don't see what else to do, Viv. I set my teeth hard. Just as you think best, Peter. But oh, don't be long. I'll be as quick as I can. And I'll talk to you all the time, he promised, beginning his cautious descent. Every time a stair creaked, my heart leapt in terror. But he attained the ground floor in safety, and I heard him tumble over the table. Then came a frantic rattling of the door handle. What's the matter, I called? The proprietor's been in gone, and locked the door, shouted Peter, with forced cheerfulness. We shall have to yell. Going into the room on the ground floor, he beat heavily on the shuttered windows, and the blows re-echoed through the empty house. Peter. Peter. Come back. I can't bear it, I cried. Brighto, we must lean out of the upstairs windows. These are all boarded up. So were all the front-room windows, only in the back-rooms, looking over the muddy waste of the ebbing-tems, could we open the casements. I don't know how long we shouted, turn and turn about. It seemed ours. We might as well have been in a desert. If any people did hear our cries, they were evidently of that class which leaves ill alone. The moon was shining wandily into the room when we looked at each other, with our hopelessness confessed in our gaze. Let's eat the sandwiches, said I. As he swallowed the last crumb, Peter squared his shoulders. Things might be worse, he announced. At least there's a bed for you. Do you imagine I could sleep in that awful bed, I cried? Why not? Don't be silly and fanciful. I'll turn the wax lady out, and you just be thankful to the gods for giving you a nice warm bed with a pillow and a counterpane on it. Peter was as good as his word, and pulling the wax lady ruthlessly out of bed, he bundled her and her fellows into the chamber of horrors, and shut the door on them. There, he said cheerfully, there'll be company for each other. He shook up the pillows as he spoke. If you imagine, said I, that I'm going to have the bed and the pillows and the counterpane, you're very much mistaken. You jolly well take one pillow and the counterpane, or I won't go to bed at all. Rott, said Peter. I mean what I say. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them. But I am dead tired and longing to go to bed, and unless you'll agree to my terms, I can't. So it'll really be very selfish of you if you refuse. We had a healthy quarrel, but I won, and Peter retired to his little room, the only other empty back room, with the quilt and one pillow, while I disposed myself with my coat over me, and thought how fortunate and appropriate it was that it should be a blanket coat. Then I lay quietly, but with damp brow and clenched fists, striving to keep myself in hand. I had always thought that I was afraid of nothing except black beetles. Now I discovered that, though real danger stirs the blood, and is the most gloriously exhilarating thing on earth, unreal danger almost frightens the soul out of one. I discovered, too, that next to jealousy fear is the worst thing in the world. Was that the noise of a slow heavy footfall from that ghastly room? Or was it merely the thumping of my own heart sounding in my ears? The rats scurried over the ceiling and through the walls, dislodging little showers of plaster as they went. But them I did not mind. Rats were, so to speak, human. One rat ran out into a square of moonlight on the floor, and sat up, busily cleaning its soft face and round naked ears. But when I made a slight movement, it shot across the shadowy floor, like a trout through a pool. Presently I fell into a troubled sleep, from which I awakened suddenly, with every pulse in my body, beating like an electric hammer. For a few moments I lay quite still, not daring even to turn my head on the pillow. It may sound ridiculous in cold daylight, but I was enveloped by a suffocating sense of something evil. I have never felt anything like it since. I don't think men and women still in the flesh and subject to the kindly impulses of human nature could give off such an atmosphere of undiluted wickedness. I received the impression, how far the thing was possible I leave to psychologists, that all the evil that had produced the crimes commemorated in that house was concentrated there, without any of the human attributes that, at other times, the criminals must have had. I had never given much thought to evil, knocking about the world as I had done. I had naturally been struck by the kindness and innate rightness of the people in it, and being, I suppose, an un-moral person myself, who just did things because I felt like doing them. Good and bad was a point of view that had never occurred to me. One just tried to play the game, which I suppose consists in keeping a stiff upper lip oneself, and not letting other people down, and thought no more about it. But now, in this terrible riverside house, the very air seemed so malignant that I could hardly breathe it. Suddenly a sound as of a foot shuffled softly forward came from the other end of the room. I suppose the door moved in the draft, and I let fly one piercing scream. Peter was with me in an instant, and I flung myself at him, sobbing wildly. He sat on the edge of the bed holding me, and presently my terror became articulate. Peter, they are there, by the door. The people you shut in the other room. Peter, I can't bear it. Don't leave me. Hush, Viv, do hush, dear. There's no one there, really. Nothing shall hurt you. Would you rather come into my room? Yes, yes, anywhere. Oh, Peter, take me away. He picked me up and carried me into his little room, and when I was quieter he fetched the rest of the pillows and arranged them against the wall. I settled down on them, and he sat beside me, holding my hand until I fell into a dreamless sleep. The pallor of a London dawn was in the room when I awoke, feeling stiff and cramped. Peter fast asleep lay along the boards, one arm outflung, while his head had slipped onto my lap. I sat and looked at him in the wan light, smoothing the fair tumble locks away from his forehead. He seemed such a boy asleep. There was something absolutely childlike about the curve of his thin cheek and the sweep of his lashes, which I always told him were wickedly long for a mere man. He stirred a little as though troubled in his sleep, and bending over him I saw wet drops or glistening on those absurd lashes, and I caught a few muttered words. Viv, said Peter. Viv, oh darling, don't. Don't, Viv, my darling. As I raised my startled head I felt a scorching blush mount in my face, and I sat very still. There seemed something almost dishonorable in having heard that unconscious of owl, from one who, when awake, hid so well what he now laid bare. I felt as though I had listened at a keyhole to what I was not meant to hear. The very innermost Peter had spoken. It was a revealing of naked soul to soul. And startled, abashed, mine drew back. He had called to me from his dreams, and it should be only a dream, Viv, who heard him. Affection, trust, protection, loyalty—all those I could give him. The gifts of a good she-comrade, who is a being half-mother and half-man-friend. But more than that I felt it was not in me to give. I stayed as quiet as possible to let him have his sleep out. The dawn light flowed into the room like water. And not until the gray pallor of it had given way to a bleak yellow, did Peter wake. When he opened his eyes he first stared blankly, then with recognition. And I was able to meet his look as calmly as though I had been the unknowing Viv of the day before. He sat up as quickly as his cramped limbs would allow him. Good heavens! I couldn't think where I was. Viv, I've been pillowing my horrid heavy head on you. Why didn't you kick me off? You must be all stiff. Not a bit. I'm only just awake myself, I lied. Oh, Peter! What a horrible, horrible night it's been. He laid his hand lightly on my skirt, where it was still warm from his head. Then looked at me with a sudden smile. Well, I don't know that I altogether agree with you, Princess," he said. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of The Milky Way This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Milky Way by F. Tennyson Jesse Chapter 12 The Babes in St. John's Wood Shortly before seven, as we discovered by my watch, which I had managed to redeem from the pawn shop, we heard the proprietor come to unlock the door. We waited quietly in the ground floor room, while he did so, and the moment his back was turned, we slipped out without his being any the wiser. He must have received the shock of his life when he found what his wax figures had been doing in the night. Peter and I made up a little story about him. We decided he got religion, and related his awful experience from a soapbox. We partook of coffee and bread at a stall on the embankment before we felt fit to face the world again. And it was through idly commenting on the peculiar raw sienna color of the coffee that a bright idea struck me. It occurred to me that it was about the time of year, when my old friends Joe Nash and Chloe Callender, who used to be fellow students of mine at Colorosi's, were want to be at a little studio flat over a stable in St. John's Wood. And I thought they might perhaps be able to find me work as a model. Peter was charmed with the idea. I could see that he was feeling me a great responsibility, which was exactly how I felt about him. It's all very well for me, but what are you going to do, I demanded. Ah, I've got an idea too, quote Peter. Tell me. Not till it comes off. Then I will, even if it doesn't. Are your friends really nice girls? They're stunning girls. And oh, Peter, they have a bathroom. If you knew how I am dying for a big bath. I said Peter intend to lavish six pence on the luxury in question at the establishment of the LCC. But first we will take a bus. And that the bus may in its turn take us to St. John's Wood. I fear we shall have to demean ourselves by finding out whether it is going there. We did, and it was. And presently I found myself, Peter beside me, walking through that wedge of a graveyard in St. John's Wood, where the leaves were still young and fresh on the slim, dusky barked trees, and the sunlight flickered in swaying rounds and crescents over the dank old tombstones. Then we came out into the quiet little street, with its houses that have seen better days, where Joe and Chloe lived. Most of the houses washed a dark cream. And with broken-nosed cupids, or a curly-mane lion or so, upreared among the weeds, and the strange bits of wreckage, such as big-faded blue wheels and brown earthen drain pipes that littered the front gardens. Through a little guichet in a big wooden door, painted a stained weather-beaten peacock color, I led Peter across a yard where a few gleaming straws fluttered on the cobbles. While a row of stable doors rounded proclaimed the place a muse, on the top half of a narrow door in one corner, a beaten copper plate proclaimed that here was the Hencoupe Studio, for such is the name irreverent friends have given the little flat, and Joe and Chloe have succumbed to it, even to the extent of the copper plate. I had always liked Joe Nash and Chloe Gallender, but as I flung myself onto the bosoms of their friendly, though paintsmeared overalls, I knew that they were the passion of my young life, and I told them so in appropriate language. They replied, We also have loved you from your childhood up, and rocked you in your cradle. You shall eat the egg of peace with us, and then have your bath. Please, you must have breakfast, too, Mr. Wimperous, said Chloe in her best little girl manner. Which on Chloe is one of the sweetest things I know. We always have an egg for a friend, and a friend of Vives is a friend of ours, if he will be. Peter was, in his own words, open to an egg, and we all sat down to breakfast, while we three women kind, talked at once. You're just in time, said Chloe. We're giving a dance next week. A dance? How peerless. But I've nothing to wear. Oh, that's all right. It's adrency. That means fancy dress, I explained to Peter. When we all lurked together as students, we had a lot of portmanteau words. Prill means pretty foul, and it is a nice crinkle your nose in discussed word, isn't it? Ah, but our most useful word was cuxt, said Joe. I always maintain that that word fills a long felt want in the English language. Don't tell me. Cuxt, murmured Peter thoughtfully. I have it, he shrieked. And how right you are. Think of the clumsiness of always saying, mixed company. Exactly. And it's so useful. One says, do you bathe cuxt or that's not a story to tell in cuxt. And we will dance cuxt at the drency, Peter, said I. And I hope you won't think my dancing is prill. Peter, do you realize you've never waltzed with me? And I jumped up and started twirling round the room, waving my egg spoon. Joe picked up a concertina and began to play the eaten boating song. And the next moment Peter and I were dancing together. Chloe seized the lay figure and joined in, and the startling unsuitability of its blank face and stiff wooden limbs to Chloe's soft, childish figure and loosened hair made me cast Peter from me, whereupon Joe flung the concertina into the property cradle and we all resumed our eggs. Peter melted gracefully away soon afterwards to the LCC baths, I suppose. And then Joe ran on the hot water for me, and Chloe, who is, so to speak, the wife, while Joe plays the man of the house, sprinkled the petals of a big, freshly picked rose all over the top of the water. I lay in the big bath and a blissful dream, while the rose-leaves made the steam fragrant as incense, and the tremors of the waxen company faded from my mind. And slowly but surely my discovery about Peter, that disconcerting sentence murmured in his sleep, slipped away as well. It is so fatally easy to ignore what one does not wish to admit. A kindly rosely floated against my chin, and, ducking, I caught it between my lips and held it there. Oh yes, life was good, while there were still friends and breakfasts and a big bath and roses and a platonic. Here I nibbled the rose-leaf impatiently, for I had an uneasy notion that really and truly there are no such things as platonics. Turning my gaze to the past I looked ruefully at the friendships, so pleasant at first, so apparently platonic, that had all flared up in the usual manner. When a whole crowd of us were at coloroses, we had been great on platonics, and the only ones that did not end disastrously were of that order which we called Gilded. If you went in for those you were entitled to put PGP after your name, which stood for Professor of Gilded Platonics. This meant that a girl and man were great friends, danced principally with each other at the studio parties, went to Fontainebleau and Versailles on Sundays, and discussed everything in heaven and earth, but more particularly love, theology, their friends, and themselves. I have heard Gilded Platonics described as, Say what you like, but no touching. This all sounds the merest platonic friendship, but the gilding, though difficult to put your finger on, was always there. It could not be called by so harsh a name as flirting, and yet I don't quite know what else it was. Neither party had a right to feel aggrieved when the other became engaged, yet aggrieved he or she always was. I wasn't a PGP myself because the gilding didn't appeal to me, and the consequence was that, while no hearts were seriously damaged on either side where this relaxation was permitted, yet all my platonics came to a bad end. If my friendship with Peter were going the same way, the thought of having to make Peter miserable was too much for me, and I choked, and a heave of bathwater made me swallow the rose leaf like a pill. Come out of that! Are you dead? shrilled Josephine through the keyhole. Coming, I called, and it was then that I told myself I must have dreamt the whole thing, and anyway there was nothing in it, and of course Peter cared for me only as a friend. I sang myself into my clothes and joined the others in the studio. Towards evening Peter came in to tell us he had found himself an attic in Bloomsbury. That, apparently simple commodity, only exists for girls between the covers of those books where, so to speak, no heroine is complete without it. In real life it is a thing only a man can procure. I have raked Bloomsbury for an attic, a nice romantic attic, where I could watch sunsets and starve. But when the landlady didn't look suspiciously at me, there was always something that made me look suspiciously at her. We all five spent a quiet evening at the Hencoupe, doing monotypes on the backs of old etching-plates with our thumbs and stiff oil-paint. The fifth of us was a very important person, the black cat Nell, commonly known as the Nelephant. She was more curious than beautiful, standing like a lynx, too high on overdeveloped hind quarters, and one of her ancestors must have been a manx, for her tail was only an inch or so long. If you felt it you found it was composed of short joints like a bamboo. And every now and then she surprised her world by adding another joint in the night. But the Nelephant's hands were the most curious thing about her. For just by the little toe on its own, that all cats have, there was another very big one, like a thumb. And the positively human look this gave the Nelephant when she sat up at table was uncanny. When she walked she merely looked club-footed and made a noise like the clatter of high-heeled slippers. Peter induced her to do a monotype by dint of rubbing her paw on the prepared zinc plate. But though he contended when he had polled the print, that the quality thus attained was most interesting, we declared its only value was as an example of the Bertalon system. It was a delightfully silly evening, and Peter was gayer than I had known him since our meeting on the chuff, before Haggis had drained all the light-heartedness out of him. Chloe, in a bright blue silk kimono, and the depths of a tapestry armchair, looked the prettiest thing on earth. Very few people are really pretty, though many give an illusion of it. But whether you admired her particular type or not, there was no denying Chloe had an exquisitely finished prettiness. She is a slim, milk-white, sweetly sulky-looking creature, with china-blue eyes set in a pale, small oval face, and very fair hair, so fine that it goes in a silky cloud like that of a Fra Angelico's angel, a being she resembles as far as looks go. For there is something suggestive of the pure light colors of the primitives in the almost excessive fairness of her skin, and in the pale but definite marking off from it of her fair, thin brows and delicately folded lips, the angelic quality shows too in the close modeling over her small bones and the fine lines of them from the chin to the close-set ear. Everything about her is pretty. The childish poses of her slim figure, her heirs of petulance, her pouting underlip, just a shade too full for the upper, which, with the powdering of freckles across her nose, gives the note of individuality to what would otherwise be a physique too perfect to be interesting. She always makes me feel I want to pet her and keep her from anything disagreeable. And between us, Joe, who is big and plain and brown-eyed, and I had already withdrawn her from two unfortunate entanglements, with much loss of blood, so to speak. We made silly jokes and cocoa so stiff that the spoons nearly stood up in it. And as we sat sipping it, I brought forward the question of what I was to do next. Stay here till something turns up, said Chloe and Joe. But to that I demurred. Such a nuisance, yawned Chloe. Fives going to be poor and proud, as usual. So banal of her. Well now, how would this do, said Joe at last? It would mean you're going into the country. But I know you wouldn't mind that. Mind, I'd sell my soul for a mess of red earth. Well, then, listen to this. The Culver Gang. You remember Ted Culver and his sister, long-haired survivors of the eighties? Rather, they went in for being Bohemian or something, didn't they? I often wonder what that is. I called on a woman once, who took liqueur in her tea, and she said, I'm afraid you'll think me very Bohemian. Well, press on. Ted and his sister don't go in for liqueurs any more. They've discovered nature. Not human, the other kind. They are being vegetarians or pantheists or something down in Cornwall, with others like themselves, and they're going to paint a series of nature pictures. You'd think most decent pictures were that, but apparently these are going to be something extra-specially natural. And is the model to be, well, extra-specially O-naturel? Oh, they're having a pro down for that. But I'm commissioned to find them someone who's an unmodern, wooden-emphy type, to droop over boulders and twine-round trees in appropriate attitudes, and some art muslin. Now, would you like to go? If so, I'll write tomorrow morning and suggest it. It needn't tie you to going if you find anything better in town. And I suppose even you aren't too proud to stay with us while you look for something. You're a practical angel, Joe. Do right. It can do no harm anyway. This seemed all that could be done at present as far as my plans were concerned. But there was still Peter to be thought of. And when we had finished our cocoa and the fire was dying down, and he had said good night, I went with him as far as the half-door into the yard. And you, Peter, I asked him, taking him by the lapels of his coat, as we stood together at the foot of the ladder-like stairs that ascended from the dim wilderness of Sax and Tarnus. I've got my idea, you know, Viv. The one I told you about. At least I said I wouldn't tell you about it till I knew more myself. Just as you like, Peter. Only I can't help worrying over leaving you alone in London like this. Will you promise me one thing? What is it? You must promise first. Please, Peter. I say I can't. It might be something I couldn't possibly do. You don't trust me? Don't be a little silly. Of course I do. Then why not promise without knowing? Because it might be something divinely idiotic and criminally altruistic on your part that I couldn't take advantage of. Oh, no, it's quite a prosaic little thing. But don't, if you'd rather not. Only I had but you would, for me. Oh, I say, Viv. All right, I promise. Now what is it? Only if your idea is some time in coming off, and things get bad, that you'll make use of my watch. I'm going to leave it with you in case. I shan't want it, you see, with all my expenses being paid. My dear child, I'd so much rather not. You might want it, one never knows. My dear child, you're much more likely to want it than I am. But hang it all. It's your watch. Peter! I beg your pardon, Viv. It was an ungenerous thing to say. But I'd so much rather it was my watch, and I was lending it to you. Oh, the eternal masculine. But you promised, Peter. I know I did, damn it all. Look here, Viv. Shall we say you keep the watch, and if I really need it, I swear to write and ask you for it. No, thank you. You wouldn't like to ask me for it when you were actually needing it. You take it now when you're not, then you'll use it when the time comes. A watch isn't a thing to tell the time by, you know. I passed the chain over his head, tucking it away under the soft, turned-down collar of his shirt. The touch of the flannel reminded me of something else I wished to say. And do remember, when you've washed your things, always to air them thoroughly. Your landlady will put them in front of the fire if you ask her nicely. You know, if I hadn't aired them over my oil-stove at Haggitz, you'd have had Tomain or Pneumonia, or whatever the thing is, beginning with a fee that one gets when one's caught a chill. Oh, my dear Viv, I can't go making a fool of myself before my landlady. I registered a resolve to go and make love to Peter's landlady myself before I left town, and so did not press the point of the clothes-airing. As I buttoned Peter's coat across his chest, he suddenly caught both my hands and held them. Viv, he began. Viv! Oh, what's the good of words when I can do nothing for you? I'd like to build you a little gold shrine and put you in it, and burn candles and red lamps and incense in front of you. No, I wouldn't. Your shrine ought to be a wayside one, with a big halo hat to keep the rain off you, and wild flowers all a-growing and a-blowing before you. Oh, Viv, I'll write such divine nonsense to you some day, and you shall make pictures for it. But you must go home to bed now, my dear, I said, all the more prosaically, because his words made an odd little glow of something that was not exactly pleasure run through me. He gave a short laugh, then very slowly raised my hands and kissed them, one after the other. Bless you, Viv, he said. You make me understand what is meant when we're told the angels are sexless. The thing that has always appealed to me about heaven, I remarked thoughtfully, is that there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. It almost counterbalances there being no more sea. By the way, have you noticed the joys of heaven seem mostly negative? The kingdom of heaven, said Peter, very gravely, is within us, which means it's as much here and now as the outside world, and is one with it, like body and soul. And marrying should be one of the joys of both. There are still some things you've got to learn, Viv. But Joe and Chloe are wanting to get to sleep, and I'm very sleepy too, and you ought to be. Oh, Peter! Well, what were you going to say, Viv? Nothing. At least it was silliness. It's only that, when you talk like that, about the things that matter, like the kingdom within us, I tremble lest you'll get some very hard knocks as you go through the world. And it makes me want to protect you so much. And one is so impotent. Now you must go, and mind you go straight to bed. Good night. We stood looking for a moment into the moonlit courtyard. From their stalls came the stamping of horses, and the good smell of hay was in the air. Peter drew a long breath, then turned to shake hands. Good night, Viv, he said. Remember me in your dreams. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of The Milky Way The Milky Way by F. Tennyson Chessie Chapter 13 We Increase and Multiply The following day Chloe and Peter went off hand in hand to fetch Little John, as we had come to the conclusion that it was better not to let any of the members of Haggot's company know my address. Peter, very brushed looking, appeared at the hen coop to collect Chloe, a pink rosebud in his buttonhole. Also obedient to my wish he was wearing my watch, so that in any crisis he could rush straight way to a pawn shop and deposit it. For as I had pointed out it would be a great pity if a job came his way, and for lack of capital he could not seize upon it at the instant. The watch is lying against my heart, which is beating in time to its tick, he assured me. So I hope it doesn't gain, because it would be very sad if I were to become fast. It was always said of our set at Colorossi's, I remarked thoughtfully, that we were so charming because we were rapid without being fast. But as a matter of fact that watch loses. I hope it doesn't follow that my heart will get lost, said Peter anxiously. You don't think it would be safer if I handed it over to you in exchange for the watch? I do not. By the way he continued, this rose is for you. It's the pink flower of a blameless life. My career has been described by a friend of mine as a blameless past, capable of misconstructions, I replied, bending to sniff the rose. Your little nose is all over pollen, said Peter. Yes, that's why it's pink, not your nose, but the rose, to match your past. It is not my past we should be considering now, but your future. Peter, do tell me while Chloe's getting ready, what is your idea? Oh well, I suppose I'd better. It's very simple. Journalism. I have always understood that to be the refuge of the destitute. Peter, how exciting! But how about your other writing? That will have to wait. Poems and things don't make money. I did try very hard at popular fiction once. I began a newspaper foyaton, but it wasn't a success, because I lost control of myself so. It started beautifully, with the heroine drawing forth her watch, warm from her waist. But when it pressed on to the velanesce, dropping her mazowaty-colored eyes to the floor with a sickening thud, I had an idea it wouldn't do. And when the villain slank away like a whipped cream, I felt all was over between me. And so you broke it off? What was it called? Night's errant without the K. No one knew why, but it was. There was an arch duchy in it, and an arch duke, and all sorts of arch people. There was an English cathedral charwoman with one blue eye and one brown, who was the head of a secret society. And there was a pure young English girl, and a muscular curate called Jack. And there was a man of the world with a past and a rare smile. A bloated aristocrat, an iron-jawed financier, several murders, and some aeroplanes. It was a sort of William Whitely in the way of poyatons. It must indeed have been strangely handsome. But Peter, tell me, how are you going to set about journalizing? Call at the offices, I suppose. It'll be pretty beastly. Would you like me to come too? Or I could do some of them for you. I might even get a job myself, which would keep me up here with you and Joe and Chloe. It's worth trying, anyway. How splendid if we could get on to the same paper, wouldn't it? Hello, here comes Miss Callender. What on earth is she doing? Chloe was holding the protesting elephant upside down on one arm, while with the other she tried to calm the creature's large hands that were splayed fiercely in protest. I'm practicing how to carry the baby, explained Chloe. I've never done such a thing in my life. Oh, dear, I know I shall have no control over it. It indeed, I exclaimed, little John is a lady, if you please, and would never demean herself by carrying on like the elephant. Besides, you got her on the wrong arm, on your left, Chloe, and take care to support her head. Here the elephant gave a scream of rage and clattered loudly from the room on her superfluous toenails. Chloe straightened her holland gown and drew some gloves over her scratches with an outraged expression. I trust I know one end of a baby from the other, she said loftily. Now, Mr. Whimperous, if you're ready, I am. And with an air as of people leading a forlorn hope, they departed. Joe and I spent the afternoon in making me some much needed pyjamas out of an old silk background. That was rather faded in places, but quite sound, and of a lovely peach bloom color. We had no machine, and as we sat leaping up the seams, at colorossies one did everything by leaps, generally screaming leaps. One leapt screaming on to the tram-cars. One's brush leapt screaming over the canvas, etc. As we sat leaping up the seams hand over fist, we talked. It was the kind of talk you are supposed to indulge in when you are brushing your hair at night. Viv, I'm worried, began Joe. I want your help. My help? It's about Chloe, I suppose. Oh, of course, how do you think she seems? Prettier than ever, if that were possible, and with still more of that look as though she'd just mislaid her halo and a pair of wings for a moment. Yes, but I don't mean her looks, I mean herself. Doesn't she strike you as being rather over-strung? No continuity. She always rather flitted from flower to flower, but I've noticed that it's more so. And she has that expectant little look and way of humming to herself that she always has when she's more or less thinking herself in love. She's living on her nerves, said Joe, and this time it isn't a healthy excitement, not that Chloe's to blame. She means no more harm than a butterfly, and sees none. But that very fact makes her reckless. A man, of course. Of course, and he's got two wives already. My dear Joe. Well, he divorced the first one, and I should think by the way he's going on he wants the second one to divorce him. And I don't intend Chloe to be the excuse. Oh, it's unthinkable. Chloe. Oh, how can he? Oh, I don't say he means any real harm. He's carried off his feet by her looks. Only, you know, men can have the best of intentions overridden by the worst of impulses. I'm so awfully afraid he'll lose his head. And then if Chloe's in a sympathetic or a reckless mood, what mightn't happen? He's coming to the dance? Yes, and the music and dancing and lights and things. You know what I mean. Chloe's susceptibility to atmosphere. Yes, I know. We must keep as much of an eye on her as we can. That won't be much. By the way, it's Morris Purvis, the painter. His thing was the splash at the New English last year. Oh, you were away. Yes, but I heard about it. And I've heard about him, too. Joe, what is there to be done? Well, I've got a plan for the dance, but it depends on you, Viv. Chloe's to be a masked folly, and her dress is copied from our old property one. The one with the rough and the tool skirts, you know. And I thought if we freshened that up, you could wear it. And masked with your hair covered, no one would know which was which. Can you still imitate voices like you used? Yes. And so I thought if he's going to be strenuous, I'm to manage its to me and not to Chloe. Oh, Viv, it sounds awful. I feel a mean pig. I suppose I ought to let her take care of herself. You're only a kid, when all said and done, though one forgets it when one isn't looking at you. But you know how absolutely mastered by her moods she is, while you always give the impression of having some steady, central point. However things ebb and flow round you. It isn't that Chloe would knowingly not play the game. But the emotions of the moment mean such a lot to her that she wouldn't let herself stop to think. Don't you worry about me. I'll do my best at the dance, Joe. We must wash and iron the rough next thing we do. Let's sort out the things now. We rummaged in the recesses of the property box, sorting skirts from tights, and finally brought together the component parts of the folly costume, all rather in need of a friendly iron and some attentions from a needle. Joe and I were busy supplying these when I heard on the cobbles of the courtyard the footsteps I had been eagerly awaiting. There they are, there they are, I cried, jumping up from my cross-legged position on the floor. There is my little John. Now you shall see how peerless she is, Joe. I ran to the stairs and scrambled down them in time to receive little John from Chloe's arms at the bottom. Chloe looked slightly flushed but triumphant, while most of little John's face was obscured by the round black disc of a rubber comforter. Where did she get that, I demanded. I never allowed her to have such a thing. It's a frightful germ carrier and will spoil the shape of her mouth. Peter, you know I never allowed it. Be thankful it is what it is and not a gag or a bow string, replied Chloe energetically as she led the way up the ladder. Oh, Viv, never has friendship been strained as ours has this day. Why did she cry, I asked absently. I had removed the comforter and was enthralled by the fact that little John was too pleased to see me again for resentment. Her usually placid, not to say profoundly immobile countenance, was dimpled and puckered with smiles and she gurgled duly. Cry, repeated Chloe. Did she cry? No, she yelled. She howled. She shrieked. She outdid the trams and the hood of a motor paled before her. In the buses everyone looked at us as though we were murdering her and one woman said, poor little thing, wonderful how they always know who's their friend. When it came to a policeman advancing towards us as we waited to change buses, I took a dive into the nearest likely shop and bought this. And the only wonder is we didn't deposit little John under the counter and leave her there. Did it cry then, my poor precious, said I? And now she behaves like a saint in a painted window, observed Peter disgustedly, as though to make us outliers. I suppose it was being rent from the changeling, she presented. If she went on like that when you left, they must have been pleased to see the last of her at Haggis. Oh, how was the poor changeling? Don't, said Peter. Why, I asked startled. There's nothing wrong, is there? Oh, no, except that the changeling, having got fond for the first time in what can hardly be called her life, her existence, rather, of two other human creatures, has now lost them and feels lost herself. When she first saw us coming, she was sitting on the step of your old caravan with the infant on her lap. And when she caught sight of me, she thought the person with me must be you. She jumped up and ran past me to Miss Callender. And then her face went all dead suddenly, if you know what I mean. And then she must have guessed, heaven knows how, that we'd come for the kid. For she made a dash back to the caravan, stuck little John inside, slammed the door, and stood against it. I felt about as comfortable as a celluloid dog running after an asbestos cat across hell. Well, and then? Well, we were there to get the kid and knew it was as much as our place was worth to come back without her. We got her. The changeling gave us sort of a howl and did a bolt somewhere. I found Haggett and asked him to comfort her a bit, give her jam, fruity, or something. It was rather like asking the Dome of St. Paul's to be kind to one of the bits of Mosaic. In silence I deposited little John in the property cradle which I had prepared for her. Why, oh, why hadn't I a little money? Then I would look after the changeling forever and ever, and the changeling would look after little John, and we should all be happy. My joy in having my baby again, my anxiety about Chloe and thought of my own plans, were all overridden by the mental vision Peter's account had conjured up. Still silently I helped to get the supper, while Peter and Chloe lay in opposite armchairs and took a well-earned rest. When we began the meal, the late evening sun was shining in at the little square-pane, deep-silled window looking into the yard. It shone on the pale purple plumes of a branch of wisteria in an earthenware jar. Found out a corner of the polished walnut cradle, and gleamed round the edges of Chloe's little Cinquecento head as she sat on the sill. Giving her a prismatic halo and making her face and slim-curved forward neck, a delicate half-tone from which the blue of her shadowed eyes gained in depth. She was soon talking gaily, although I knew the serio-comic tragedy of the changeling had touched her quick imagination at the time. But whereas Peter, for instance, found no escape from the depression of seeing suffering, save in work or time, Chloe, in sheer self-defense, put all thought of it behind her as soon as she could. Joe was as admirably absorbed in little John as even I could have wished, and sat where she could keep a watchful eye on that infant's once-more placid and sleeping countenance. I talked of nothing and thought of the changeling. It was thus that we were all employed, with cocoa drinking as a common occupation, when there came the sound of a step-down. We all started rather nervously, saving little John, who remained abstracted and unperturbed. Then Peter jumped up and, opening the door, went on to the landing and peered into the dimness. I followed him. There, nearly at the top of the ladder, and crouched against it, was the changeling. Through the bloom, her white, frightened wedge of a face, gazed up at us like the face of someone rising for the last time in a flood. I gave Peter a gentle shove, and he disappeared quietly into the studio. Then I knelt down and stretched out my arms. It was a shock to see the change in his face, as if he had never seen it before. It was a shock to see the changeling half-winch at my approach. I stroked back the stiff bleached hair, talking to her gently and very slowly, in the way I had found she understood best. And for a few moments she stayed in her crouching position on the ladder. Then she came swiftly up and hurled herself at me, talking very fast and doubtless expressing much to herself. But as always with her, in moments of excitement, intelligible words there were none. I drew her to her feet and into the studio, where Peter had told the others of the new turn in our affairs. And I found Joe ready with a cup of cocoa. The changeling marched straight over to the cradle, looked within, gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and came and sat beside me on the window-sill. All the time she drank her cocoa and devoured her bread and jam, she kept up a little stroking of my sleeve or skirt, until her meal over, with the abruptness characteristic of her, she was suddenly fast asleep, her head tipped back against the sill, and a smile on her half-opened mouth. My eyes met Joe's with a question in them, and she and I held a consultation in her bedroom, lest the disconcerting wits of the changeling should gain alertness with sleep. You can't turn her away, said Joe. No, of course I can't. But I can't plant her in little John and myself on you. I must find new quarters. Rats! We can squeeze her in here. There's the hayloft I'm allowed to use whenever I want it. She can have that. We'll fix her up a bit. Don't talk nonsense, Viv. What is worrying me is how she got here. I hope Peter or Chloe didn't give away your address at Haggis, because if so, they may be after her. We didn't, said Peter from the doorway, against which he was reclining. She must have followed us. Goodness knows how. Had she any money? I don't know. Oh, yes, she would have had nearly all that half-crown I left with Haggit for her. But even so, how she had the intelligence is what beats me. It's simply uncanny. Oh, Peter, the poor changeling. I'm glad, glad, glad she's come. As I spoke I thought of the journey accomplished much as a dog achieves across unknown country, those wonderful voyages of which one hears. I thought of the desperate half-frightened cunning with which she must have crept on to buses after Peter and Chloe, always managing to keep out of their sight, until at last, after a long waiting, that must have been one of pure nervousness. In the yard or the storeroom at the bottom of the ladder, she had crept up to me. Late that night as I lay in my impromptu bed in the little box-room, where all the old canvases were stacked, I felt very happy. I was certainly collecting a family in my course through life. There is a German fairy-story which one meets in many slightly differing forums in the old books for children, which tells of a youth, generally the dullard of his family, who attains a magic goose with feathers of fine gold. Everyone who touches the goose, or who even touches the man who first laid finger on it, or those behind him, becomes helplessly stuck in a long procession. My progress through life seemed of much the same nature, though I think I must have been my own goose and certainly not a golden one. There would now be both the changeling and little John for Peter and me to support as well as ourselves, and the thought gave confidence. For as Peter had said to me in the courtyard that evening, as he went away, Providence might see fit to give one a bad time oneself, but would certainly never desert such helpless innocence as the changeling and little John. It's really a sort of selfish insuring of ourselves, said Peter. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of The Milky Way The sleeper-box recording is in the public domain. The Milky Way by F. Tennyson Jesse Chapter 14 A Flutter in Fleet Street On the following Monday morning, which I have often thought since was a tactless time to choose, Peter and I began the pilgrimage of Fleet Street. First, we went down it on the top of an omnibus, because Peter said you couldn't hope to be any good in a place until you had grasped the atmosphere of it. And at the sight of the offices of famous papers whose names stood out in huge gilt letters across the dingy brickwork, even I, who had no pretensions to journalism beyond an idea of drawing fashion plates, felt a rising thrill of excitement. Then Peter started going into the offices at one end of the street while I began at the other, and after two days fruitless work we met in the middle, outside the last shrine of journalism unvisited by either of us. We decided to attack it hand in hand, but we first had to go back to the hen coop with various sweets and pastries Joe had commissioned us to buy for the Drenchy that night. Laden with paper bags we made our way back to St. John's Wood, and found the studio in wild confusion. Backgrounds heaped in a pile preparatory to being draped on the walls. The two model thrones stacked one on top of the other, and the floor won litter of lilac bowels and dog daisies. Joe, her head tied up in a silk handkerchief, was screwing tea leaves amongst everything with more impartiality than judgment. Chloe was nowhere to be seen. Where's Chloe, I asked, as I began to spread potted shrimp sandwiches, which were to be optimistically labelled caviar. Buying floor-powder and things, with Morris Purvis, answered Joe rather shortly. Later, washed and brushed, having snatched a bread-and-buttery kind of lunch, Peter and I prepared to depart once more, but Joe called me back. Viv, swear you'll turn up in time for this evening. You won't let anything stand in the way. I'm worried to death about Chloe and this Purvis creature. Somehow I believe things will come to a head tonight, and I look to you to save the situation. You simply mustn't fail us. I promise you I'll be back in time. Come along, Peter, we shall have to fly. We flew, on a number thirteen bus, as Il Oman and the arrangements of the London General Omnibus Company would have it. And on the way we compared our experiences of Fleet Street. Mine had been fairly simple. Almost everyone had been kind, but nothing had resulted. I had nearly always attained the editors, because their underlings were so good-natured and took so much trouble over me. From what I had seen of Fleet Street I could say with truth that the spirit of rivalry and grudging of which one hears simply does not exist. At least among the poor underdogs like oneself. It was the upper dogs, the plump and inordinately worried potentates who sat ensconced in vast leather arm-chairs, who were the unpleasant people, either smoking in my face and not opening the door for me, or far worse, being too civil in that odious, what a charming little girl you are, kind of way. Whenever Peter had penetrated as far as an editor, which was not often, nothing more than an invitation to leave his name and address had resulted. Save in the precincts of one Sunday paper, where Peter had offered to write his reminiscences of clergy he had met, and was asked if instead he knew of any safe scandals in society. The editor had added with a genial smile, blood's what we want. Now as we went together up the flight of steps leading to the great glass-swing doors of the weekly drum, we felt that our last chance had come, and it was with a quickly beating heart that I approached the commissioner, who, metal-bedect, loomed from a kind of hutch in the hall. He was a dear man, and I believe it was owing to his kindly offices that we were at length admitted to the innermost shrine of the weekly drum. It was a large comfortable room lined with books and boasting the inevitable scarlet and blue turkey carpet. A little man in big spectacles and with a mop of gray hair swung round at us on a revolving chair as we entered. Then he got up and pushed a steadier variety forward for me. When we were all seated he looked from one to the other of us. The babes in the wood read Evivi, he remarked, with apparent irrelevance. Well, well, I mustn't waste my time. What do you want? We began Peter and I together, then stopped. Ladies first said the little man. Now then, Miss, he referred to a slip of paper in his hand. Miss Lovell. Lord Lovell, he stood at his castle gate, combing his milk-white steed. How does it go on, that old song? Ah, well, to business. We want work, if you please, said I. One or tether of you, or both? Both if possible, if not one. And what have you done up till now, in the two or three years that have elapsed since you left your cradle? I've done a great many things, said I, drawing myself up and wishing I hadn't such a farthing face, and didn't look so like a little boy. I belong, as we say in Cornwall, to be a painter, and I illustrated a book last winter for Harriet and Dale. But they went bankrupt, and so I went in a cargo boat where I met Mr. Wimperous, and he took me to a travelling theatre. And now I've left there, and Mr. Wimperous has left too, and I'm living with some painter friends in their studio. But of course I can't go on sponging on them. Dear me, murmured the great man, and Mr. Wimperous, what is he doing? He's writing in an attic in Bloomsbury, but as we are great friends we thought it would be nice if we looked for work together. You've no idea how disheartening it is, doing things by yourself. And I am sure that the young man here has great ambitions, and is only by way of marking time, said the editor shrewdly. Tell me, sir, do you wish to settle down to Bleat Street? I think it might be a jolly useful school, replied Peter, after a second's hesitation. While you're preparing some epic-making work, eh? asked the editor. I know you're kind, and you, Miss Vivian Lovell, are you a genius too? Oh dear no! I'm just going to make pictures for the great work. But you see one can't do even that unless one can make enough to live on. Do you think we should be any good on your paper? Well, you see, the editor confided. Things don't happen like that in a newspaper office. I wish to goodness they did. It's the great complaint one has against life, that it's so little like the books. If Mr. Wimperous here could only shut us all up between the covers of a novel, I should be able to say to you, pray join the staff at once at a salary of five quid a week each. As things are, I can't. Why, good heavens view, you lost lamb, he cried savagely, shoving his jaw at me in a spasm of anger. What good are you, with your big gray eyes to us? You'd be taken in by anyone who spun you any kind of a yarn. Stop, though, I'm not sure your big gray eyes mightn't be some good in getting a story out of people who won't melt to an ordinary reporter. He stared at us thoughtfully then. I'll tell you what I'll do, he said at length. You've heard of the Murford Mystery? Somebody whose motor-car has gone over a precipice into the sea and drowned them? I asked ungrammatically. Ah, but has it? That's the question. We've good reason to think that it's all a blind, and that Mr. Murford, as he calls himself, is in hiding somewhere. The police are after him on a charge of getting money under false pretenses. You find him and get us a scoop on it, and I'll see what I can do for you. There was an awful pause. I felt as though I'd been bitten to find a rock's egg or a philosopher's stone. Peter stood up and, thrusting his hands into his trousers' pockets, rattled the two half-penis he kept there for the purpose. Right-o, we'll have a shot, said he. Well said. You're the right stuff, said the editor. Off you go. Oh, stop a moment. He, in his turn, dived into a pocket from which he retrieved a sovereign, which he held out to us. Expenses, you know, he said. Quite the custom, I assure you. Editors are a much maligned race, I cried, as Peter and I emerged into Fleet Street again. And now, how to find Mr. Murford? That was the question. How indeed. What we want, said Peter, is a clue. The best detectives always begin with a clue. Let's buy a paper and get up to date anyway, I advised. When we had bought it, we went and sat in the temple gardens to read it. What was known, however, did not amount to much. A Mr. Murford, apparently a man of means, had, a few months ago, appeared at the manor house of Fengate in Gloucestershire. He lived in a lordly way and had no profession beyond making himself liked, in which he seems to have thoroughly succeeded. One morning he had gone out alone in a new car, which was discovered next day in a shattered heap at the foot of a cliff in Somerset. Of the man who had been its occupant nothing was to be found except his cap, which lay in a rock pool. The village and neighbouring gentry were much distressed, until the chief constable made the discovery that the water at that part was never over two feet in depth and that no currents set there. The local tradesman, whose bills had all been running on, came forward with a tale of all Mr. Murford owed them. And as Peter said, already Jernelie's phrases seemed to trip off his tongue. The matter assumed a different complexion, a more brunette complexion, he added. What an egg for us if we could only find him, I sighed. I wonder if there's a portrait of him anywhere. Turn that page and see. He did, and there was, one of those blurred photographs which, while destroying detail, seemed to bring out all salient characteristics more strongly. The man showed plainly as a long-jawed fellow with a dome-like brow and a short black mustache over a flexible mouth. His rather high cheekbones caught a light. A very definite type announced Peter. I stared at the picture in silence, or somewhere at the back of my memory, the thought that I had seen the face before was pricking at me. Could it be merely that, as Peter said, it belonged to a type? Suddenly I gave a crow of excitement. Oh, Peter, I know him. What stupendous luck! It's Edgar Murdock. Viv, explain yourself. You make my brain real in its socket. Who is Edgar Murdock, and why is he Mr. Murford? I don't know why he's Mr. Murford, but I'm sure it's Edgar. Why, he used to clean the boots and read Marcus Aurelius. Viv, I don't want to have to shake you in public. Do explain. Whose boots? Ours, fathers and mine. We were lodging one summer at a queer old tumble-down place called Secrecy Farm. I believe priests and cavaliers or someone used to hide there. Isn't it a gorgeous name, Secrecy Farm? And Mrs. Murdock ran the farm, which was practically moribund, and her son Edgar did the boots and other things, of course. He was about sixteen and awfully clever in a way one felt would never come to anything. Mrs. Murdock was a bleak sort of woman, and only lived for him. But funnily enough, she was very fond of me, and was awfully kind to me. How odd, said Peter, it seems that the next thing to do is to go to Secrecy Farm. Where is it? In London. It all sounds like a new Arabian night. Proceed, fair damsel. It's Hampstead Way. Let's take a bus. On the bus we laid our plans. Peter was to sit behind a bush on the heath while I went to the farm and asked for Mrs. Murdock. Then my own intelligence, which, unluckily, has never been of the detective order, was to guide me. We broke into the editor's sovereign for our bus tickets, a lordly proceeding that seemed to annoy rather than impress the conductor. That little unpleasantness over, and our plans laid, I sat busy remembering all I could about Mrs. Murdock. She had been a hard-working, bright-eyed woman with a mouth like a rat trap, and a wonderful passion for her son, so strong that it showed in spite of herself, in the softening of her whole look when it fell on him. She had worked like a man on the farm to give him more time for his education. He attended a second-rate sort of private school, and every half penny she could lay by was to be devoted to the same cause. Her Edgar was to be somebody in the world, and don't you forget it. She herself could neither read nor write, and Edgar had to make out the accounts for her. And he had turned out badly after all. Poor, harsh fond Mrs. Murdock. I broke off in my musings to bid Peter Glantz at my watch. It was already four o'clock. I should have to be back at the hen coop by eight at the latest, if I meant to change in time for the drense, and help in the last preparations. I wondered a little about Mr. Purvis, whom I was to pursue with such a watchful eye that night, even as I was now hoping to pursue Edgar Murdock. I felt myself singularly unfitted for either task, and I was not sure that such a jack-of-dreams as Peter would be much help. The fact of the matter was that fate had cast us in this affair for the part of the Sherlock Holmes, and by nature we were nothing more sloop-like than a Watson.