Part 16

The Burpenfield Club, called after Lady Burpenfield, who had given five thousand pounds to the original fund; was one of the residential clubs or hostels provided for girls who came from good middle-class homes in the country but were compelled, by economic conditions still artfully adjusted to suit the male, to live in London as cheaply as possible. Two fairly large houses had been thrown together and their upper floors converted into a host of tiny bedrooms, and there was accommodation for about sixty girls. For twenty-five to thirty shillings a week the Club gave them a bedroom, breakfast and dinner throughout the week, and all meals on Saturday and Sunday. It was light and well ventilated and very clean, offered an astonishing amount of really hot water, and had a large lounge, a drawing-room (No Smoking), a small reading-room and library (Quiet Please), and a garden stocked with the hardiest annuals. The food was not brilliant--and no doubt it returned to the table too often in the shape of fish-cakes, rissoles, and shepherd’s pie--but it was reasonably wholesome and could be eaten with safety if not with positive pleasure. The staff was very efficient and was controlled, as everybody and everything else in the Club was controlled, by the secretary, Miss Tattersby, daughter of the late Dean of Welborough, and perhaps the most respectable woman in all Europe. The rules were not too strict. There were no compulsory religious services. Male visitors could not be entertained in bedrooms, but could be brought to dinner and were allowed in the lounge, where they occasionally might be seen, sitting in abject misery. Intoxicants were not supplied by the Club but could be introduced, in reasonable quantities, into the dining-room when guests were present. Smoking was permitted, except in the dining and drawing-rooms. There were a good many regulations about beds and baths and washing and so forth, but they were not oppressive. In the evenings, throughout the winter months, fires, quite large cheerful fires, brightened all the public rooms. The lighting was good. The beds and chairs were fairly comfortable. Dramatic entertainments and dances were given two or three times a year. All this for less than it would cost to live in some dingy and dismal boarding-house or the pokiest of poky flats.

What more could a girl want? Parents and friends of the family who visited the Burpenfield found themselves compelled to ask this question. The answer was that there was only one thing that most girls at the Burpenfield did want, and that was to get away. It was very odd. You were congratulated on getting into the Burpenfield when you first went there, and you were congratulated even more heartily when you finally left it. During the time you were there, you grumbled, having completely lost sight of the solid advantages of the place. The girls who stayed there year after year until at last they were girls no longer but women growing grey, did stop grumbling and even pointed out to another these solid advantages, but their faces always wore a resigned look.

There was, to begin with, that institution atmosphere, which was rather depressing. The sight of those long tiled corridors did not cheer you when you returned, tired, rather cross, head-achy, from work in the evening. The food was monotonous and the dining-room too noisy. Then, if you were not going out, you had to choose between your little box of a bedroom, the lounge (usually dominated by a clique of young insufferable rowdies), or the silent and inhuman drawing-room. Moreover, Miss Tattersby, known as “Tatters,” was terrifying. Very early, Miss Tattersby had arrived at the sound conclusion that a brisk rough sarcasm was her best weapon, and she made full use of it. You felt the weight and force of it even in the notices she was so fond of pinning up: “Need residents who have First Dinner take up _so_ much time ...”; “Some residents seem to have forgotten that the Staff has other duties besides ...”; “Is it necessary _again_ to remind residents that washing stockings in the bathrooms ...”; that is how they went. But this, after all, was only a pale reflection of her method in direct talk, and some girls, finding themselves involved in an intricate affair concerning a pair of stockings or something of that kind, preferred to conduct their side of the case by correspondence, in the shape of little notes to Miss Tattersby hastily left in her office when she was known to be out. Many a girl, after a little brush with “Tatters,” who was immensely tall and bony and staring, and looked like a soured Victorian celebrity, had faced the most infuriated director at her office with a mere shrug. The confident Burpenfield manner in commercial life, of which we have seen something in Miss Matfield in Angel Pavement, was probably the result of various encounters with Miss Tattersby.

But what Miss Matfield, who was cursing the place all over again as she left Miss Morrison and went upstairs to her room, disliked most about the Burpenfield was the presence of all the other members, whose life she had to share. There were too many of them, and their mode of life was like an awful parody of her own. The thought that her own existence would seem to an outsider just like theirs infuriated or saddened her, for she felt that really she was quite different from these others, much superior, a more vital, splendid being. Those whose situation was not at all like her own only annoyed her still more. There were the young girls, all rosy and confident, many of whom were either engaged (to the most hopelessly idiotic young man) or merely filling in a few months of larking about, trying one absurd thing after another, while their doting fathers forwarded generous monthly cheques. Then there were the women older than herself, downright spinsters in their thirties and early forties, who had grown grey and withered at the typewriter and the telephone, who knitted, droned on interminably about dull holidays they had had, took to fancy religions, quietly went mad, whose lives narrowed down to a point at which washing stockings became the supreme interest. Some of them were frankly depressing. You met them drooping about the corridors, kettle in hand, and they seemed to think about nothing but hot water. Others were mechanically and terribly brisk and bright, all nervy jauntiness, laborious slang, and secret orgies of aspirin, and these creatures--poor old things--were if anything more depressing, the very limit. Sometimes, when she was tired and nothing much was happening, Miss Matfield saw in one of these women an awful glimpse of her own future, and then she rushed into her bedroom and made the most fantastic and desperate plans, not one of which she ever attempted to carry out. Meanwhile, time was slipping away and nothing was happening. Soon she would be thirty. Thirty! People could say what they liked--but life was foul.

There was still half an hour before dinner, and, after tidying herself, she sat on her bed trying to repair a ladder in a second-best pair of stockings. She was interrupted by a knock at the door and the entrance of an extraordinary figure. It had a greeny-brown face and was dressed in what appeared to be Oriental costume, and the general effect was that of a seasick Arab chieftain.

“Help!” cried Miss Matfield, but only to her visitor. “What is it? Who are you? It can’t be you, Caddie.”

The green face never moved a muscle, but a careful voice came from it, and the voice, though muffled and lacking its usual variety of tones, was undoubtedly that of her neighbour, Miss Isabel Cadnam, otherwise “Caddie.” She had put a mud pack on her face and had wrapped her head in a towel.

“And you haven’t to smile or anything,” she announced cautiously, “or it’ll crack. But I’ve come to ask you a favour. Are you in to-night? I mean you’re not dressing or anything grand? Well, can I borrow your shawl, the reddy-black one? You promised to lend it to me, if I wanted it terribly some night.”

Miss Matfield nodded.

“Well, this is the night. A great do. My dear, Ivor’s got tickets for a new cabaret, dance and supper place, opening night to-night, and we’re going. Marvellous!” The face did not move, but the eyes rolled and flashed their appreciation.

“All right, you can have the shawl, Caddie,” said Miss Matfield, lazily rising to stretch out a hand for it. That is all you have to do to find anything in a Burpenfield bedroom. “It sounds marvellous. But I thought you’d had a row with Ivor, parted for ever for the umpteenth time and all that. Why, it’s only last Friday you spent hours and hours telling me about it.”

“We made it up this morning,” the green mask replied, rolling its eyes. “Started over the telephone, too, my dear. Ivor tried to explain and then I tried to explain and then about forty people in the office went off the deep end, so I said I’d meet him for lunch. We met. And there you are. And now we’re going on the razzle.”

“Lucky you!”

“I will say that for Ivor. He can be terribly, terribly stupid, almost stupider than anybody I know, except those foul brutes at the office--honestly, my dear, they _are_ the limit--but the minute we’ve made it up, he always has tickets for something amusing. Free list, you know.”

“I believe he waits until he has the tickets, then rings you up that morning and makes it up,” said Miss Matfield. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“What a perfectly loathsome idea, Mattie! What a foul mind you have! Still, he might do that. Rather sweet of him, really, when you think about it. Well, I shall have to fly. I’ve got to get this stuff off. I’ve been wearing it for hours and I feel I shall never be able to smile again. Thanks for the shawl, and, my dear, I’ll take the greatest, the very greatest care of it, and you shall have it back in the morning.”

“Have a good time,” said Miss Matfield, with no particular enthusiasm. “Give my love to Ivor.”

When her visitor had gone, she gave a little impatient shake, sat down again, but threw the stocking on one side. Caddie was really rather a silly creature, but nevertheless she contrived to have quite an amusing, even exciting time. Ivor, a goggly-eyed young man who was with a firm of publicity people, was even sillier than she was, and Miss Matfield admitted to herself at once that she could not possibly endure a single hour of his company, but he pleased Caddie, took her out, quarrelled with her, made it up, took her out more luxuriously, created a continual excitement. It was possible to envy Caddie’s state of mind while despising her taste. Miss Matfield’s ripe mouth, which hardly needed lipstick, took on a discontented curve. It was a pity that silly young men did not amuse her, for there were plenty of Ivors about, whereas there were very few real grown-up men about, men who could make her feel she was still a mere girl. She was beginning to like, definitely to prefer, middle-aged men--and admitted as much to her intimates--but the trouble was that the really nice attractive ones were nearly always terribly domesticated, up to the neck in wives and families, and had hardly more than an occasional faint gleam of interest to spare for a Miss Matfield. The middle-aged men who were interested were always the awful ones, with swollen faces and little boiled eyes, dreary rotters. Mr. Golspie? No, he wasn’t as bad as that, wasn’t quite that type. But quite impossible, of course. Quite absurd.

The gong went clanging below, and as it sounded, a head popped into the room. “You’re in, aren’t you, Mattie?” it said. “Come on, then. I’ve got some _News_. Very exciting.”

This head, which was decorated with a thick shock of fair hair, horn spectacles, a freckled and turned-up nose, and a wide and amusing mouth, belonged to Evelyn Ansdell, who had had a room close to Miss Matfield’s for the last two years, and who was one of the very few friends she had made at the Burpenfield. She was a slap-dash, untidy, scatter-brained sort of girl, younger than Miss Matfield, and though she had all manner of minor faults, she had the two outstanding virtues of being good-hearted and extremely entertaining.

The two girls went down to the dining-room together and were fortunate enough to get a little table to themselves. There, amid the chatter and clatter that went with the mutton stew and the prunes and custard, Miss Ansdell broke the news, in a series of shrieks and gasps.

“I’m nearly dead,” she began, impressively. “No, really nearly dead. I’ve been ringing up parents like mad for the last hour and a half. Don’t I sound hoarse? Honestly, I’ve been screaming and screaming down the telephone.”

There was nothing novel about this. Miss Matfield knew all about Evelyn’s parents. They were a queer pair, and had been separated for the last four or five years. Mrs. Ansdell roamed about the country, sometimes trying her hand at odd things, while Major Ansdell, no longer in the army but now the representative of some mysterious imperial organisation, roamed about the whole world, completely disappearing for months on end. Now and then, each of them descended upon London and the Burpenfield, and by some odd chance it frequently happened that their London visits coincided, and then Evelyn had to work desperately hard to make sure that they did not arrive at the Club together. Evelyn herself, who had once been sent flying between them like an amused shuttlecock, did not take sides, except perhaps in certain minor differences, but preserved an amiable detachment, not unlike that of a good old referee. Everything was complicated by the fact that all three of them were rather eccentric. All this was strange to Miss Matfield, whose parents adored one another in their dull elderly fashion and were, anyhow, far too sensible and too busy for such alarms and excursions; but the actual novelty of it had passed. So she merely prepared herself to listen to yet another instalment of the Ansdell family row saga.

“It all began with a letter from mother,” Miss Ansdell continued, excitedly. “It came this afternoon. My dear, the maddest letter. But the point is, mother’s going to run a shop, selling antiques. I forget the name of the place, but anyhow she’s actually got the shop and it’s a marvellous place, all oak beams and bow windows and all that, and rich motorists stopping every minute. That’s not so crazy as it sounds, because mother does really know about antiques and old embroideries and things like that, and could make anybody buy anything if she wanted to. And she wants me to go and live with her, and help her in the shop.”

“Oh, Lord!” Miss Matfield groaned. “But you’re not going, are you? She’s wanted you to go before, hasn’t she?”

“Yes, but this is rather different. Quite different, in fact. It really would be rather fun helping her in a shop. I’d much rather do that, swindling the rich motorists, than go on with this secretary rot. You know how I loathe typing and shorthand. And this time she wants me very badly--her own little darling girl by her side sort of thing--you should have seen her letter. So I rang her up--trunk call, my dear, and I’m absolutely broke--to know all about it, and honestly it does sound rather marvellous. Lovely shop, nice old town, lots of nice people, and a car--you have to have a car in this antique business. I must say--even though I know what mother is--I must say it sounds rather marvellous.”

“It does,” Miss Matfield admitted, grudgingly.

“But wait a minute, wait a minute, Mattie, my dear. That isn’t all the excitement. Oh, no! Before I rang off, mother gave me a message to father about some money. He’s in town, you know. So I rang him up and then, after I’d given him the message, I told him what mother had suggested. Well, you should have heard him. I thought every minute I should hear him going up in sheets of flame. Then he was very quiet, and I knew he was going to be pathetic. He can do it even better than mother. If he really gets going, I’d agree to anything--while he’s there. And he said he had a plan he’d had in his mind for months, been thinking about nothing else, and that he’d have mentioned it before only he thought I was so happy here at the Burpenfield. He’s going away again very soon on this Empire rot, and he wants me to go with him as his secretary. He’s going to America--Montreal and Toronto and those places--and then on to Australia, and I’d go everywhere with him. What do you think about that? He said he’d been thinking about it for ages, but I believe he’d invented the job five minutes before, just to do mother in the eye. And now they both want an answer at once. Isn’t it crazy?”

“Completely mad.” But why did nothing like that ever happen to her? “What are you going to do?”

“My dear, I’m going to take _one_ of them. Wouldn’t you? But which, I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Let’s get our coffee,” said Miss Matfield. “Then we can talk about it afterwards.”

This was a blow. Whether Ansdell went off to Canada and Australia or joined her mother at the antique shop, she was lost to the Burpenfield. Another decent and amusing one gone! Something exciting happening to somebody else, as usual! And Miss Matfield was so busy feeling sorry for herself that if her advice had really been demanded over the coffee, she would not have found it easy to give it. Miss Ansdell, however, like many people who ask to be advised, apparently only wanted a listener, for she never stopped talking herself and when she put a question, promptly answered it without giving her friend time to frame a reply.

When they came up from the dining-room, they saw a tall figure standing just inside the entrance hall. “I believe it is,” Miss Ansdell gasped. “Yes, it is. It’s father. Oh, help!”

And Major Ansdell it was. Miss Matfield had met him, just for a few minutes, two or three times before. He was still a handsome, soldierly looking man, though quite elderly, and was immensely courteous in the Roger de Coverley style to all Evelyn’s friends. But there was in him an extraordinary theatrical strain. Quite frequently he behaved as if he were the hero of some old-fashioned melodrama; and was very emotional, very rhetorical, and absurd. He was quite capable of talking just as men talk in bad stories in popular magazines, and Miss Matfield had sometimes wondered whether it was because he had read a great many bad stories or because the stories were nearer the truth than one thought and were worked up, on the fringes of Empire, out of men like Major Ansdell.

Miss Matfield hung back and saw the Ansdells greet one another and then go upstairs, obviously to Evelyn’s room. There was no talking to Major Ansdell in a public room; he was far too fond of a scene and was not at all shy. Miss Matfield went into the lounge, to smoke a cigarette, and spent an envious ten minutes glancing through one of those illustrated weeklies that seem to be produced simply to glorify that small section of society which works only to keep itself amused. It showed her photographs of these demigods and goddesses racing and hunting in the cold places, bathing and lounging in the warm places, and eating and drinking and swaggering in places of every temperature. By the time she had finished her cigarette, Miss Matfield quite understood the temptation to start a revolution, and told herself that these papers simply asked for one. Then she too went upstairs to her room.

She had not been there more than a few minutes when Evelyn Ansdell burst in, crying: “My dear, mother’s on the phone. Do go in and talk to father until I come back. If you don’t, he’ll come down and do something absurd. I’ll be as quick as I can.” And off she went.

Evelyn’s bedroom seemed almost entirely filled by her father, who welcomed his daughter’s friend--and Miss Matfield felt herself thrust into the part of daughter’s friend at once--with his usual grave and elaborate courtesy. He was, she felt, enjoying himself, and was probably the only man who ever had enjoyed himself visiting the Burpenfield. He addressed her as “Miss Mattie,” having heard Evelyn refer to her as “Mattie,” and Miss Matfield did not feel like correcting him. This only made everything more absurd. It was like taking part in a charade.

“I think you know why I’m here, Miss Mattie,” he began, in deep vibrating tones. “I want to persuade this little girl of mine to go overseas with me, to help me with the great work I am doing and to be by my side.”

She nodded and made a vague affirmatory noise. It was all she could do, but then he did not want anything more.

“A father has his feelings, Miss Mattie. We don’t hear much about them. He keeps them to himself. He hides them, buries them,” he continued, with fine emotional effect, clearly enjoying himself. “An Englishman doesn’t like to make a display of these things. It’s part of the tradition--the great tradition--of our race. If we suffer, Miss Mattie, we like to suffer in silence. Isn’t that so? The Britisher--now, just a moment. I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“I do. You’re going to say that you don’t like that word ‘Britisher.’”

“I don’t like it much, I must say,” Miss Matfield confessed.

“I knew you didn’t. I didn’t at one time. I detested the term. I wouldn’t have it at all. But my work, my travels up and down the Empire have taught me better. We must have something that describes not an Englishman, not a Scotsman, or a Canadian or an Australian, but simply a subject of the great Empire itself, and the only word for that is ‘Britisher.’ Don’t resent it, Miss Mattie. It stands for a great ideal. And I say that the Britisher doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. But he feels deeply. He may have his work to do, taking him away from his home into the loneliest places, and be glad and proud to do it.” Here the Major made a fine gesture and came within an ace of wrecking his daughter’s toilet stand. So he sat down on the edge of the bed, where he looked enormous and rather like the White Knight in _Through the Looking Glass_.

“You’re my little girl’s friend, aren’t you, Miss Mattie?” he asked. Miss Matfield said she was, and added that she would be very sorry to lose her.

“I understand that, I understand that,” and he reached over and patted her lightly on the shoulder. “She’s a very lovable child, isn’t she? And you can understand a father’s feelings. I have my work to do, Miss Mattie, and I have many acquaintances, friends if you like, in all parts of the world, but fundamentally, at heart, I’m a lonely man--yes, a lonely man. Evelyn’s my only child, and I want her companionship, I want her by my side, unless of course I should be called upon to visit places where one’s womenfolk couldn’t be taken. If it were a question of our tropical possessions, that would be different, quite different. I don’t like to see a white woman, especially a young girl, in such places. They’re for men, for us rough fellows who like to clean up some backward part of the globe. If you’ve any influence with her--and I’m sure you have, and a very good influence too, a steadying influence naturally, being older----”

“Thank you, Major Ansdell,” said Miss Matfield drily. “You make me sound about fifty. It’s not very complimentary of you.”

“A thousand apologies, my dear Miss Mattie,” cried the Major gallantly. “I know very well you’re under thirty, a mere girl, and a very charming one, I assure you. But Evelyn’s a mere _child_, you see, isn’t she?”

Miss Matfield said nothing, but thought that some of the child’s antics and talk might possibly astonish him.