Part 7

For about a quarter of a minute the Super-girl looked again at the Hoodoo. And then with the air of one who takes a great decision, she gave the ugly chin a playful tap and said: “I believe the long gallery at Homefield is the very place for you, my friend. You may not be a thing of beauty, but at the far end I am sure you would be a joy for ever!” She made then such fine play with her stick-eyeglass, that Miss Banks was put off the map altogether. “And a real live curse given in, I think you said?”

William bowed a grave affirmative.

It was clear that Miss Blue Blood was intrigued. She folded, unfolded, refolded her stick-eyeglass; she looked the Hoodoo up, she looked the Hoodoo down, standing three paces back in order to do so. “Before I really decide”--addressing the monster in a voice of warm caresses--“I must get my father to come and look at you, my dear. He’s wiser than I in these matters. You might kill all the pictures in the long gallery.”

At this point William bowed again with exceeding deference. But here was not the end. The stick-eyeglass lit on the bowl of Lowestoft, which the Sawney who was turning out to be not quite such a sawney as he seemed, had picked up in his recent travels in Suffolk.

“I like that. What a charming piece!”

Mr. Half-Sawney held the charming piece to the light for Miss Stick-eyeglass to gaze upon.

“Yes--really quite charming!”

Their heads were so close while together they bent over its beauties, that June, without wishing real harm to either, could have found it in her heart to hope that the bowl might fall from the hands of William and break into a thousand pieces.

“What is the price?”

The bowl was turned on to its base while the young man glanced at the mystic code which had been traced by the hand of S. Gedge Antiques.

“Six guineas, madam,” she was most deferentially informed.

“I collect Lowestoft. A charming piece. It will go so well with my others. Will you kindly send it to 39b, Park Lane?”

“Certainly, Miss Babraham.”

The amazing Miss Babraham opened a vanity bag, took out a sheaf of notes, and chose six which, with the smile of a siren, she handed to William, who received them with one more bow from his full height, and proceeded to write out a receipt.

Somehow this transaction was altogether too much for June. Flashing one long last glance of immeasurable venom upon the stick-eyeglass who, all unconscious of the deadly passions it had aroused, had now returned to elegant and final contemplation of the Hoodoo, the niece of S. Gedge Antiques withdrew hurriedly to the scullery sink, filled a bucket of water, and proceeded with a kind of contained fury to scrub the floor of the larder.

XVIII

WHEN William came in to dinner there was music to face. But as there was no sure ground at the moment for real battle, the music opened _pianissimo_. It began with a few rather pointed enquiries.

“Had a rather busy morning, haven’t you?”

“I don’t think it has been anything out of the way,” was the non-committal answer.

“Done any business?” The question was casual, but June fixed him with her eye.

“Oh, yes!” So light and airy was the tone that business might have mattered nothing. “I’ve sold the Lowestoft bowl.”

“Uncle Si’ll be pleased, I expect.” She found it terribly difficult to keep a sneer out of her voice, but you never know what you can do till you try. “Fetch much?”

She knew perfectly well, of course, the price it had fetched.

“Six guineas!”

“Isn’t that a pretty good profit on what you paid for it at Saxmundham?” said June, with the precision of the born head for affairs.

“I got it for thirty shillings at Saxmundham, but of course that was at a sale.”

“Seems a fair profit, anyway.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Will you get any?”

“Oh no!” said William, trying to spear a pickled walnut in a glass jar.

“Then I think it’s an infamous shame that the whole of that six guineas should go into the pocket of Uncle Si.”

With a polite shake of the head, William dissented. “But don’t you see, I couldn’t have bought it unless the master had given me the money, and also marked the catalogue.”

“It was your brains that bought it. And your brains sold it, too. I think you ought to see that Uncle Si is simply living upon them.”

“No, no, Miss June,” said William staunchly. “Please don’t forget that it is the master who taught me everything.”

June declined to argue the point. She knew it was no use. For the hundredth time she was up against his fixed idea. Besides, there was something else to talk about.

“To whom did you sell that beautiful bowl?” Her voice was that of the dove.

“I sold it to a Miss Babraham,” said the Sawney in a voice of perfectly stupendous impersonality.

“To a Miss Who?”

She had caught the name quite clearly, and not for the first time that day, but there was a kind of morbid fascination in toying with a subject which was really without significance, and could lead nowhere. All the same she pined for an insight into the workings of the mind of this strange young man who was such a baffling mixture of the over-simple and the highly gifted.

“Her name is Miss Babraham.”

“Who is she when she is at home?”

She tried hard to imitate a detachment which was a little uncanny, yet knowing all the time that she was making a sad hash of the performance. The trick seldom comes easy to the daughters of Eve.

“Who did you say she was?”

“Her father is Sir Arthur Babraham.” The impersonality of William made her writhe.

“Oho!” said June, still trying her best to rise to William’s level, and fully conscious that she was failing miserably. “One of the big bugs, eh?”

It was vulgar, she knew, to speak in that way. Among the things she had learned at the Blackhampton High School was a due and proper regard for baronets. Miss Preece, its august headmistress, would have been shocked, not merely by her tone, but also by her choice of words. But High School or no High School, the intrusion of Sir Arthur Babraham suddenly made her see red. She must be vulgar--or burst!

“What you’d call one of the smart set, I suppose?” said June abruptly breaking a long and rather trying pause. “Well, I don’t think much of her stick-eyeglass, anyway.”

Terrific disparagement of Miss Babraham, her works and her belongings was intended, yet to the queer creature seated opposite who by now was almost ready for the tapioca pudding, which had been so carefully prepared for him, it did not seem to imply anything at all.

“You take no stock of smart sets, I dare say,” said June, with growing truculence. “You’ve never heard of them, have you? China tea sets are more in your line, aren’t they?”

That was real wit, and people far less clever than this Sawney--a contradiction in terms and yet the only word which seemed to describe him after all!--must have seen the force of it. But not he! He solemnly rose and collected the plates, and then fetched in the tapioca pudding for all the world as if there was absolutely no point in the remark.

“Who did you say that tall girl was?” said June, returning mothlike to the flame, as she helped the Sawney very substantially to his favourite dish.

“Miss Babraham!”

“And who did you say her father was?”

“Sir Arthur Babraham!”

“And what might _he_ do for a living?”

This was not ignorance. It was mere facetiousness. She knew quite well that no Sir Arthur Babraham since first invented by that ridiculous monarch, King James, had ever done anything for a living. But it was good to feel how such a “break” would have hurt Miss Preece.

“He’s one of the richest men in England,” said William, dipping his spoon into his tapioca with an impersonality which approached the sublime.

June knew that. There was the daughter of Sir Arthur Babraham to prove it.

“One of Uncle Si’s best customers, I suppose?”

“Doesn’t often come here. But he has wonderful taste.”

“In daughters?” said June sardonically.

“In everything. Only last night I read in the paper that there isn’t a better judge of pictures living.”

June merely said “Oh!”

“He’s one of the trustees of the National Gallery, you know.”

“Oh!” said June.

“And owns a very fine private collection of the Dutch School.”

“Does he?” It was June’s turn now to be impersonal; in fact, it was up to her to let him see that it would take more than Sir Arthur Babraham and a private collection of the Dutch School to impress her.

“I suppose his daughter is what you’d call rather _fetching_?” She had once heard the word on the lips of the admired Miss Banks at a charity bazaar.

But in William’s opinion it was not adequate to the occasion.

“To my mind,” he said, and his voice fell, “she’s a non-such.”

June stepped midway in the act of bestowing upon him a second helping of tapioca.

“She’s a what?” she demanded fiercely.

“A museum piece, Miss June.” His enthusiasm was restrained but none the less absurd. “She’s hallmarked. She walks in beauty.” A blush, faint yet becoming, slowly overspread William’s delicately tinted complexion.

June snorted. Had it been within the province of eyes to slay, this Gaby would have had no use for a second helping of tapioca.

“Glad to know that!” said June, homicidally. “As you are so set on beauty, you must have had an interesting morning.”

A disgracefully impersonal silence was William’s only answer. The deadliness of the observation seemed completely lost upon him. But was it?--that was the question for gods and Woman. Such a silence might mean anything.

“I suppose you’d say she had wonderful taste?”

“Miss Babraham?”

“No, Joan of Arc,” said Woman, venomously.

“Her taste is very good indeed--that is, in some things.”

“In hats, I suppose.”

“I meant in old china,” said the impersonal one. “I’ve never known her to make a mistake in old china.”

“That’s interesting.” It was a weak remark, but June had seldom felt less conversationally brilliant.

Silence again. A third helping of tapioca was politely declined. June then pushed across the cheese. William removed its cover, and disclosed an extremely meagre piece of Leicestershire.

“Please may I give you a little?” he asked, with his inimitable air.

“There’ll be none for yourself if you do. Besides, I don’t want any. No thank you.” She remembered her manners, although that was not easy just now. “I’ll go out presently and buy some more. I’d quite forgotten the cheese.”

“Please--please take this tiny piece.”

“When I say no, I don’t mean yes,” said June, tempering strength of character with calm politeness. “I can’t imagine Miss Babraham eating a piece of Leicestershire cheese in a dirty overall--can you?”

The remark was so irrelevant that it verged upon the grotesque. Heaven knows from what malign impulse it sprang. No girl in her senses would ever have made it. Giant Despair and the Hag Desperation must have been its sponsors.

It was quite open to William to follow the line of least resistance and ignore the question. A William less true-blue, a William less a gentleman right through to the core might without dishonour have done so. But this was a William of a nobler clay.

“Miss June, your overall isn’t dirty.”

The rich sincerity of these six and a half little words seemed gravely to imperil the whole sublime edifice of his impersonality.

He was contradicted flatly for his pains; yet she knew in her heart that whether the overall was dirty or whether it was clean, the renegade was already half forgiven.

“What did you think of her dress?” This new on-rush of irrelevance was despicable, but she seemed quite to have lost control of herself.

“It was perfect. To my mind, nothing is more becoming to a tall lady than a dress of soft dark blue silk.”

Dyed-in-the-wool idiot! As though it was not his clear and obvious duty never even to have noticed whether Miss Babraham wore a dress of soft blue silk or a muslin with spots or a grey alpaca, or just a plain serge coat and skirt. Times there are when the stupidity of the human male has really no limit.

“Must have cost a pretty penny,” said June acidly.

William shook his head, and boldly affirmed that it couldn’t be bought for money.

“That’s just nonsense,” said June tartly. “There isn’t a dress in the world that couldn’t be bought for money.”

“What I really mean is, to have a dress which looked like that, you would also have to buy the wearer,” said William the amazing.

June expressed a ripe scorn by vehemently beginning to clear the table. High time, certainly. They had been discussing cold mutton and pickled walnuts and tapioca pudding and Leicestershire cheese and things and women for one solid hour by the Queen Anne clock, a real antique, in the middle of the chimneypiece, for which S. Gedge had lately refused the sum of forty guineas.

XIX

IN the course of the afternoon, June found herself immersed in the crisis of her fate. It began with a desire to own a dress of soft blue silk. This, she well knew, was insane. In the first place, she was still in mourning for her mother; in the second, she must hoard every penny of her slender means; in the third, was William’s conviction that the success of a dress depended upon its wearer.

Not a shade of excuse could be found for this vaulting ambition. But it was fixed so firmly in the centre of her mind, that when she set out soon after three to order the cheese she could think of nothing else. The grocer was at the end of the street and two minutes did her business with him. And then in the toils of imperious desire she marched boldly down to Charing Cross and took a bus to Oxford Circus.

A yearning for a dress of blue silk was upon her like a passion. It was madness and yet it was very delicious. What could a blue silk dress avail when at any moment she was likely to be cast adrift? That thought hit hard as she sauntered slowly along the Street of Streets gazing wistfully upon its long array of too-fascinating drapers’ windows.

Her store of worldly wealth was nineteen pounds and a few odd shillings. It was as certain as anything could be that she was about to enter upon the most critical period of her life, and this was all she had to tide her over. But do what she would to act like a reasonable being she was now at the mercy of a demon more powerful than common prudence. She was haunted by a passion for a blue silk dress and no matter what happened to her afterwards she must satisfy that craving.

It was a rather thrilling business to rake these forbidden windows in quest of a thing it was sheer madness to buy, yet within one’s power to do so. Why was she going to buy it? Because she wanted it so badly? Why did she want it so badly? That was a question she could not answer.

Had she been really pretty this folly might have seemed less amazing. But she knew she was plain. At least, she always felt and always passed for plain at Blackhampton. But her pilgrimage along Oxford Street which, in the middle of a bright afternoon of early October, seemed the Mecca of fashion, beauty and good taste went some way to change the attitude she had taken up in regard to her personal appearance.

Plain she might be, her clothes might be severely provincial, their hue depressing, but she was clearly informed by the sixth sense given to Woman that she was not wholly unlooked at. It was nice to feel that such was the case; indeed, it was stimulating, yet so deeply was she occupied just then with large affairs that she didn’t think much about it.

After many windows she had seen, she found herself drifting with the tide into a store of regal aspect. Here she was received by young women, elegant and gracious, with a courteous charm that made a search for five yards of blue silk fabric in its least expensive form a perfectly simple and yet delightful adventure. Moreover, it brought in its train a great idea. Was it necessary, after all, that domestic servitude should be her lot? Might it not be possible to become one of these smart and pleasant ladies in their very attractive clothes?

Expenditure of spirit, anxious care, went to the final purchase of four and a half yards of cotton silk material, more cotton than silk, at eight and elevenpence three farthings a yard; and then the new thought gained such a hold upon her, that before leaving the store she took an inventory of her person in one of the huge mirrors which made the place so enchanting. Standing boldly in front of the great glass, surveying herself with a curiosity that was half fear, she went over her “points” as might an Eastern merchant who buys a slave.

She was taller than she supposed. That was thought the first. And if she wore shoes with high heels, as so many girls did, she could look still taller. She could pass for slender, that was her second thought; and her chest was something to be proud of. She might not have much in the way of grace, and she might lack style, yet she didn’t lack dignity. Her features were irregular, and there was no denying their freckles, but seeing her frontispiece this afternoon, with its fighting chin and determined eyes, the full effect was rather striking. But when all was said it was her hair that was important. This she had always known, but in the strong and subtle lights of the best mirror into which she had ever gazed, it ministered considerably to the sum and total of her charms. Perhaps her friend, Mr. Boultby the druggist, had not overshot the mark when he compared her hair to the Empress Eugenie’s, and said it ought to be painted by an R. A.

A mop of russet gold hair was little enough for a girl who stood in her particular shoes. She felt that as she gazed upon it; felt it besides with something akin to resentment. But even a self-criticism, cool and stern, must allow that she made a better showing in Mr. Selfridge’s mirror than could have been expected. She was far from being beautiful, but that hair in its subtle-tinted abundance saved her somehow from being ordinary. And to-day she looked very much alive with the bloom of youth and health.

Four and a half yards of blue material under her arm, she went out into Oxford Street, feeling rather better equipped for the battle of life. She drew back a pair of shoulders that were really not so bad, and defiantly lifted a chin that had looked uncommonly square in the mirror. It was good to feel that she had underrated herself. She must learn to dress in the London way, and then she might be able to hold her own.

Walking slowly back to Oxford Circus, head higher now, she began quite to like this new idea of becoming a shop assistant. At the worst, it would be a far easier and more dignified way of life than domestic service. So much was she engaged by it, and so great the pressure of her thoughts that at first she didn’t notice that a man was following her.

The knowledge overtook her by degrees. Stopping to look in various windows, each time she did so brought a vague feeling that the eyes of a man were upon her. She crossed the Circus, but the feeling was still there; and at the corner of Berners Street, without quite knowing how, surmise entered the region of fact. Moreover, she even contrived to learn the style of man he was.

Out of the tail of an eye, as she stood by the edge of the kerb, she saw that he was pale and dark, neither short nor tall, that he had a slight moustache, and wore a hat of peach coloured velours. His presence gave her an odd feeling; in fact, it might be said to frighten her just a little, although there was certainly no reason why it should in broad daylight. But she had an idea that he was going to speak to her and that he was seeking an opportunity to do so.

Hastily she moved on, determined to give further shop windows “a miss” for the present. However, she had not gone far when it occurred to her that she was in need of a cup of tea, and that it would be very pleasant to have one.

Just across the road was an A. B. C. shop. The fear of pursuit still upon her, the sudden dash she made for this bourn was so ill-timed that her sovereign faculty of keeping her head in a crisis was needed to save her from being run over by Bus 13, which was going to the “Bell” at Hendon.

With quite a sense of adventure, she went to one of a row of vacant tables at the far end of the shop. She ordered a small pot of tea, a scone and a pat of butter. And then she realized that a pale, dark man, neither short nor tall, with a slight moustache, and wearing a hat of peach-coloured velours had followed her in, and was just about to take a seat at the table next her own.

XX

JUNE was not a timid girl. She had no lack of courage; and now that a chance had been given her to reason things out, a feeling akin to fear promptly yielded to mere annoyance. And even that emotion took wings when she had had time to glance at the hat of peach-coloured velours. Its owner looked harmless enough. He was a man of thirty, or perhaps a little more; he wore a well-cut black jacket, a pair of rather baggy trousers of a light grey check, a silk collar, a flowing bow tie, a diamond ring on the little finger of the left hand. The general effect of what to June was a decidedly interesting personality was somehow to fulfil her preconceived idea of an artist.

As soon as the man felt the gaze of June upon him, he swept off the hat of peach-coloured velours with a gesture at once easy and graceful, fortified it with a smile at which it would have been impossible to take offence, and said with a slight lisp,

“Miss Graham?”

“I am not Miss Graham,” said June calmly. She always prided herself upon her self-possession. Just now it seemed to help her considerably.

The man carried off his question with such an air of tact that it must have ranked as a bona fide mistake had not June been aware that he had crossed the road and followed her into the shop. Rather strangely, as soon as he took it upon himself to speak to her, the lingering sense of vexation gave way to curiosity. The mere look of the man had the power to excite an immediate interest, but June was careful to keep strictly upon her guard.

He ordered a bottle of ginger beer, and when the waitress had gone for it, he turned to June and said, with the companionable air of an old friend: “It’s funny, but you are exactly like a girl I used to know.”

“Why funny?” asked June bluntly.

The nature of the question, and the look of June’s keen eye made the man smile a little. Evidently she was a bit of a character. It appeared to stimulate him.

“It’s always funny when you mistake someone for someone else.”

“Is it?” said June, warily.

“Don’t you agree,” he said, with a laugh that sounded decidedly pleasant.

“It’s a thing I should never think of doing myself.”

“You are lucky.” He was amused by her bluntness. “I wish I had your good memory.”

The tea arrived, and June poured it out in a spirit of thankfulness. As soon as she had drunk half a cup, which was reviving, she forgot all about her annoyance in a new feeling of exhilaration tempered by quiet amusement.

“You are most remarkably like a Scotch girl I used to know in Paris,” said the man, taking up the thread of conversation, after having drunk a little, a very little, ginger beer.

“Am I?” said June, coolly.

“She was an artist’s model. Sometimes she used to sit for me.”

“Are you an artist?” said June, allowing herself to become interested, for the reason perhaps that she simply could not help it.

“Of sorts,” was the answer. “I studied several years in Paris before the war.”

From the moment he had sat down at the next table and June had been able to get a clear view of him she had somehow known that art was his calling. He looked an artist so emphatically that there would have been something fatally wrong with the cosmos had he turned out to be anything else.

In spite of a determination to be cautious indeed, she was not equal to the task of repressing an ever growing curiosity. Art had lately come to have a magic meaning for her.

“What kind of pictures do you paint?”

“Portraits and the figure chiefly.”