Part 3

That night when she perceived this gave her one of her worst hours. She had allowed herself--and she saw now how foolish she had been to do so--to look upon the work at Hortons as the permanent occupation of her life. How could she have done otherwise? It suited her so exactly; she loved it, and everybody encouraged her to believe that she did it well. Had not Mr. Nix himself told her that he could not have believed that he could miss the magnificent James so little, and that no man could have filled the blank as she had done? Moreover, in the third year of the war James had been killed, and it would take a new man a long time to learn all the ins-and-outs of the business as she had learnt them. So she had encouraged herself to dream, and the dream and the business had become one--she could not tear them apart. Well, now she must tear them apart. Mr. Nix was dismissing all the women.

With teeth set she faced her future. No use to think of getting another job--everywhere the men were returning. For such work as she could do there would be a hundred men waiting for every vacancy. No, she would have to live always with Aggie. They would have enough to live on--just enough. Their brother allowed them something, and an aunt had left them a little legacy. Just enough with a perpetual sparing and scraping--no more of the little luxuries that Fanny's pay from Hortons had allowed them. Certainly not enough for either of them to live alone. Tied for ever together, that's what they would be--chained! and Aggie growing ever more and more bitter.

Nevertheless she faced it. She went back to Hortons with a smile and a laugh. Her gentlemen and ladies did not know that she was looking upon them with eyes of farewell. Miss Lois Drake, for instance, that daring and adventurous type of the modern girl about whose future Fanny was always speculating with trembling excitement, she did not notice anything at all. But then she thought of very little save herself. "However she _can_ do the things she does!" was Fanny's awed comment--and now, alas, she would never see the climax to her daring--never, never, never!

She said nothing to Aggie of her troubles, and Aggie said nothing to her. The days passed. Then just before Christmas came the marvellous news.

By this time all the girl valets had been dismissed and men had taken their places. They would congregate in the hall of a morning, coming on approval, and Fanny would speculate about them. Mr. Nix even asked her advice. "I like that one," she would say; "I wouldn't trust that man a yard," she would decide. Then one day Albert Edward came. There was no doubt about him at all. He was almost as good as the late lamented James. Handsome, although short--but Fanny liked the "stocky" kind, and with _such_ a laugh! Fanny delighted in his jet-black hair cut tight about his head, his smiling black eyes, his round, rosy cheeks. She admired him quite in the abstract. He was far too grand for any personal feeling.... At once, when he had been in the place two days, she allotted him to Mrs. Mellish's maid, Annette, _such_ a handsome girl, so bold and clever! They were made for one another.

Albert Edward was valet on the second floor; he shared that floor with Bacon. Fanny did not like Bacon, the one mistake she thought that Mr. Nix had made.

Well, just before Christmas the wonderful hour arrived.

"Fanny," said Mr. Nix one evening. "Do you realise that you're the only woman left in a man's job?"

"Yes," said Fanny, her heart beating horribly.

"Well," said Mr. Nix, "you're going to continue to be the only woman unless you've any objection."

"Oh, Mr. Nix," said Fanny, "I'm sure I've always tried----"

"Yes, I know," said Mr. Nix, "that's why I want you to stay--for ever if you like--or at any rate so long as I'm here."

"Oh, Mr. Nix," said Fanny again. Tears were in her eyes; the familiar green staircase, the palm and the grandfather's clock swam before her eyes.

It was Aggie, of course, who killed her happiness almost as soon as it was born.

"And what about the demobilised men?" Aggie had asked with her cold, acid smile. "I should have thought that if there were any jobs going a patriotic girl like you would have been the first to stand aside."

Fanny's heart seemed to leap into the air and then fall--stone dead at her feet. Men! Demobilised men! She had not thought of that. But for the moment th e only thing she could see was Aggie's spite--her old, eternal spite.... She felt the tears rising. In a moment they would break out.

"You would like to spoil it if you could!" she cried. "Yes, you would. It's what you've always done--spoilt everything. Yes, you have--since we were children. Any little bit of happiness...."

"Happiness!" interrupted Aggie; "that's what you call it? Selfishness! cruel selfishness, that's what some would name it."

"You don't care," cried Fanny, her words now choked with sobs. "You don't care as long as I'm hurt and wounded--that's all you mind!... always ... tried to hurt me ... always!" The tears had conquered her. She rushed from the room.

She escaped--but she was haunted. It was not because Aggie had said it that she minded--no, she did not care for Aggie--it was because there was truth in what Aggie had said. Fanny was precisely the girl to feel such a charge, as Aggie well knew. All her life her conscience had been her trouble, acute, vivid, lifting its voice when there was no need, never satisfied with the prizes and splendours thrown it. In ordinary times Fanny surrendered at once to its hideous demands--this time she fought.

Aggie herself helped in the fight. Having succeeded in making Fanny miserable, it was by no means her intention that the silly child should really surrender the job. That did not at all suit her own idle selfishness. So she mocked at her for staying where she was, but made it plain that having given her word, she must stick to it. "You've made your bed and must lie on it," was her phrase.

Fanny said nothing. The light had gone from her eyes, the colour from her cheeks. She was fighting the sternest battle of her life. Everywhere she saw, or fancied she saw, demobilised men. Every man in the street with a little shining disc fastened to his coat was in her eyes a demobilised man starving and hungry because she was so wicked. And yet why should she give it up? She had proved her worth--shown that she was _better_ than a man in that particular business. Would Mr. Nix have kept her had she not been better? Kind though he was, he was not a philanthropist.... And to give it up, to be tied for life to Aggie, to be idle, to be unwanted, to see no more of Hortons, to see no more--of Albert Edward. Yes, the secret was out. She loved Albert Edward. Not with any thought of herself--dear me, no.... She knew that she was far too plain, too dull. She need only compare herself for an instant with Mrs. Mellish's Annette, and she could see where she stood. No, romance was not for her. But she liked his company. He was so kind to her. He would stand, again and again, in her little hutch and chatter, laughing and making silly jokes.

She amused him, and he admired her capacity for business. "You _are_ a one!" was his way of putting it. "You'd be something like running a restaurant--business side, you know."

How proud she was when he said these things! After all, everybody had something. Annette, for all her bows and ribbons, was probably poor at business.

However, she included Albert Edward in the general life of Hortons, and refused to look any closer. So day and night the struggle continued. She could not sleep, she could not eat, everyone told her that she was looking ill and needed a holiday. She was most truly a haunted woman, and her ghosts were on every side of her, pressing in upon her, reproaching her with starving, dark-rimmed eyes. She struggled, she fought, she clung with bleeding hands to the stones and rafters and walls of Hortons.

Conscience had her way--Fanny was beaten. The decision was taken one night after a horrible dream--a dream in which she had been pursued by a menacing, sinister procession of men, some without arms and legs, who floated about her, beating her in the face with their soft boneless hands....

She awoke screaming. Next morning she went to Mr. Nix.

"I'm afraid I must give you my notice, Mr. Nix," she said.

Of course he laughed at her when she offered her reason. But she was firm.

"You've been terribly good to me, Mr. Nix," she said, "but I must go."

She was firm. It was all that she could do not to cry. He submitted, saying that he would leave her a day or so to reconsider it.

She went into her hut and stared in front of her, in stony wretchedness. That was the worst day of her life. She felt like a dead woman. Worst of all was the temptation to run back to Mr. Nix and tell him that it was not true, that she _had_ reconsidered it....

All day she saw Aggie in her green stuff dress, her eyes close to the paper, the room so close, so close....

In the afternoon, about five, she felt that she could bear it no longer.

She would get the hall-boy to take her place and would go home.

Albert Edward came in for a chat. She told him what she had done.

"Well," he said, "that's fine."

She stared at him.

"I want you to marry me," he said; "I've been wanting it a long time. I like you. You're just the companion for me, sense of humour and all that. And a business head. I'm past the sentimental stuff. What I want is a pal. What do you say to the little restaurant?"

The grandfather's clock rose up and struck Fanny in the face. She could have endured that had not the green and white staircase done the same. So strange was the world that she was compelled to put her hand on Albert Edward's arm.

Behind the swimming, dazzling splendour of her happiness was the knowledge that she had secured a job from which no man in the world would have the right to oust her.

III

THE HON. CLIVE TORBY

He was now the only son of old Lord Dronda; his elder brother had been killed at Mons early in the war. He had been aware of his good looks ever since he was a week old. Tom, the elder brother, had been fat and plain; everyone had told him so. He did not mind now, being dead. Clive was the happiest fellow possible, even though he had lost an arm late in '17. He had not minded that. It was his left arm, and he could already do almost everything quite well without it; women liked him all the better for having lost it. He had always been perfectly satisfied with himself, his looks, his home, his relations--everything. His critics said that he was completely selfish, and had horrible manners or no manners at all, but it wa s difficult to underline his happy unconscious young innocence so heavily. Certainly if, in the days before the war, you stayed with his people, you found his indifference to your personal needs rather galling--but "Tom looked after all that," although Tom often did not because he was absent-minded by nature and fond of fishing. The fact is that poor Lady Dronda was to blame. She had educated her children very badly, being so fond of them and so proud of them that she gave in to them on every opportunity. She was known amongst her friends as "Poor Lady Dronda" because, being a sentimentalist and rather stupid, life was perpetually disappointing her. People never came up to her expectations, so she put all her future into the hands of her sons, who, it seemed, might in the end also prove disappointing. The favourite word on her lips was, "Now tell me the truth. The one thing I want to hear from my friends is the truth." However, the truth was exactly what she never did get, because it upset her so seriously and made her so angry with the person who gave it her. Tom being dead, she transformed him into an angel, and told sympathetic acquaintances so often that she never spoke of him that his name was rarely off her lips. Nevertheless she was able to devote a great deal of her time to Clive, who was now "All Her Life."

The results of this were two: first, that Clive, although retaining all his original simple charm, was more sure than ever before that he was perfect; secondly, that he found his mother tiresome and, having been brought up to think of nobody but himself, was naturally as little home as possible.

He took up his abode at Hortons, finding a little flat, No. 11, on the second floor, that suited him exactly. Into it he put his "few sticks of things," and the result was a charming confusion of soda-water syphons and silver photograph frames.

He very happily throughout the whole of 1918 resided there, receiving innumerable young women to meals of different kinds, throwing the rooms open to all his male acquaintances, and generally turning night into day--with the caution that he must not annoy Mr. Nix, the manager, for whom he had the very greatest respect. The odd thing was that with all his conceit and bad manners, he was something of a hero. He had received both the M.C. and the D.S.O., and was as good an officer as the Guards could boast. This sounds conventional and in the good old Ouida tradition, but his heroism lay rather in the fact that he had positively loathed the war. He hated the dirt, the blood, the confusion, the losing of friends, what he called "the general Hell." No one was more amusing and amiable during his stay out there, and, to be Ouidaesque again for a moment, he was adored by his men.

Nevertheless it was perhaps the happiest moment of his life when he knew he was to lose his arm. "No more going back to jolly old France for me, old bean," he wrote to a friend. "Now I'm going to enjoy myself."

That was his rooted determination. He had not gone through all that and been maimed for life for nothing. He was going to enjoy himself. Yes, after the war he would show them....

He showed them mainly at present by dancing all hours of the day and night. He had danced before the war like any other human being, and had faithfully attended at Murray's and the Four Hundred and the other places. But he did not know that he had very greatly enjoyed it; he had gone in the main because Miss Poppy Darling, who had just then caught his attention, commanded him to do so. Now it was quite another matter--he went simply for the dance itself. He was not by nature a very introspective young man, and he did not think of himself as strange or odd or indeed as anything definite at all; but it was perhaps a little strange that he, who had been so carefully brought up by his fond mother, should surrender to a passion for tom-toms and tin kettles more completely than he had ever surrendered to any woman. He did not care with whom it was that he danced; a man would have done as well. The point was that, when those harsh and jarring noises began to beat and battle through the air, his body should move and gyrate in sympathy just as at that very moment perhaps, somewhere in Central Africa, a grim and glistening savage was turning monotonously beneath the glories of a full moon. He danced all night and most of the day, with the result that he had very little time for anything else. Lady Dronda complained that he never wrote to her. "Dear Mother," he replied on a postcard, "jolly busy. Ever so much to do. See you soon."

Young men and young women came to luncheon and dinner. He was happy and merry with them all. Even Fanny, the portress downstairs, adored him. His smile was irresistible.

The strangest fact of all, perhaps, was that the war had really taught him nothing. He had for three years been face to face with Reality, stared into her eyes, studied her features, seeing her for quite the first time.

And his vision of her had made no difference to him at all. He came back into this false world to find it just exactly as he had left it. Reality slipped away from him, and it was as though she had never been. He was as sure as he had been four years before that the world was made only for him and his--and not so much for his as for him. Had you asked he would not have told you, because he was an Englishman and didn't think it decent to boast--but you would have seen it in his eyes that he really did believe that he was vastly superior to more than three-quarters of the rest of humanity--and this although he had gone to Eton and had received therefore no education, although he knew no foreign language, knew nothing about the literature of his own or any other country, was trained for no business and no profession, and could only spell with a good deal of hit-and-miss result.

Moreover, when you faced him and thought of these things, you yourself were not sure whether, after all, he were not right. He was so handsome, so self-confident, so fearless, so touching with his youth and his armless sleeve, that you could not but wonder whether the world, after all, was not made for such as he. The old world perhaps--but the new one?...

Meanwhile Clive danced.

He flung himself into such an atmosphere of dancing that he seemed to dance all his relations and acquaintances into it with him. He could not believe that everyone was not spending the time in dancing. Albert Edward, whose official name was Banks, assured him that he had no time for dancing.

"No time!" said Clive, greatly concerned. "Poor devil! I don't know how you get along."

Albert Edward, who approved of the Hon. Clive because of his pluck, his birth, his good looks, and his generosity, only smiled.

"Got to earn my living, sir," he said.

"Really, must you?" Clive was concerned. "Well, it's a damned shame after all you've done over there."

"Someone's got to work still, I suppose, sir," said Albert Edward; "and it's my belief that it's them that works hardest now will reap the 'arvest soonest--that's my belief."

"Really!" said Clive in politely interested tone. "Well, Banks, if you want to know my idea, it is that it's about time that some of us enjoyed ourselves--after all we've been through. Let the old un's who've stayed at home do the work."

"Yes, sir," said Albert Edward.

It did indeed seem a shame to Clive that anyone should have to work at all--that nice girl Fanny, for instance, who was portress downstairs, or that poor old decrepit-looking thing who was night-porter and opened the door for Clive at four in the morning.

He told Fanny what he thought. Fanny laughed. "I love my work, sir," she said; "I wouldn't be without it for anything."

"Wouldn't you really, now?" said Clive, staring at her.

Dimly he perceived that these months after the Armistice and during the early months of 1919 were a queer time--no one seemed to know what was going to happen. The state of the world was very uncomfortable did one look into it too closely; even into the chaste and decorous quarter of St. James's rumours of impending revolution penetrated. People were unhappy--had not enough to eat, had no roof over their heads, always one thing or another. The papers were beastly, so Clive gave up looking at them, save only the _Sporting Times_, and devoted his hours that were saved from dancing to a little gentle betting, to wondering whether Joe Beckett would beat Goddard, and when he had beaten him to wondering whether he would beat Georges Carpentier, and to playing a rubber or two of auction bridge at White's, and to entertaining the ladies and gentlemen already mentioned.

He was not, during this period, worrying at all about money. He very seldom saw his old father, who never came up to town and never wrote letters. Old Lord Dronda, who was now nearly seventy, stayed at the place in Hertfordshire--he loved cows and pigs and horses, and Clive imagined him perfectly happy in the midst of these animals.

He had an ample allowance, but was compelled to reinforce it by writing cheques on his mother's account. She had, when he lost his arm, given him an open cheque-book on her bank. There was nothing too good for such a hero. He did not naturally think about money, he did not like to be bothered about it, but he was vaguely rather proud of himself for keeping out of the money-lenders' hands and not gambling more deeply at bridge. Luckily, dancing left one little time for that--"Keeps me out of mischief, jazzing does," he told his friends. He had, in his room, a photograph of his father--an old photograph, but like the old man still. Lord Dronda was squarely built and had side-whiskers and pepper-and-salt trousers. He looked like a prosperous farmer. His thighs were thick, his nose square, and he wore a billycock a little on one side of his head. Clive had not seen his father for so long a time that it gave him quite a shock to come in one afternoon and find the old man sitting under his photograph, a thick stick in his hand and large gaiters above his enormous boots. He was looking about him with a lost and bewildered air and sitting on the very edge of the sofa. His grey bowler was on the back of his head.

"Hullo, Guv'nor!" Clive cried. Clive was a little bewildered at the sight of the old man. His plan had been a nap before dressing for dinner. He had been dancing until six that morning, and was naturally tired, but he was a kindly man, and therefore nice to his father.

"I'm delighted to see you!" he said. "But whatever are you doing up here?"

The old man was not apparently greatly delighted to see Clive. He was lost and bewildered, and seemed to have trouble in finding his words. He stammered and looked helplessly about him.

His son asked him whether he'd have any tea. No, he wouldn't have any tea--no, nothing at all.

"The fact is," he brought out at last, "that Dronda's to be sold, and I thought you ought to know."

Dronda to be sold! The words switched back before Clive's eyes that figure of Reality that recently he had forgotten. Dronda to be sold! He saw his own youth coloured with the green of the lawns, the silver of the lake, the deep red brick of the old house. Dronda to be sold!

"But that's impossible, father!" he cried.

He found, however, that a great deal more than that was possible. He had never possessed, as he had been used sometimes proudly to boast, a very good head for figures, and the old man had not a great talent for making things clear, but the final point was that the Income Tax and the general increased expenses of living had made Dronda impossible.

"Also, my boy," Lord Dronda added, "all the money you've been spending lately--your mother only confessed to me last week. You'll have to get some work and settle down at it. I'm sorry, but the old days are gone."

I'm quite aware that this is not a very original story. On how many occasions in how many novels has the young heir to the entails been suddenly faced with poverty and been compelled to sit down and work? Nine times out of ten most nobly has he done it, and ten times out of ten he has won the girl of his heart by so doing.