Twopence Coloured Page 5

  Was her luggage in that van? Was there anything save ticketed perambulators, kit-bags, fishing-rods, hold-alls, packing cases, other people’s gloriously initialled trunks and bicycles? Was there (should she ever be lucky enough to see her poor belongings again) the likelihood of ever impressing one of those callous porters with the need of getting them to the cloak-room? No, there was not. But the young man was standing by, with the same patience, though he showed no signs of speaking to her. He had no sense of beauty in distress, had this young man.

  A moment came when Jackie could stand this no longer, and she went up to him.

  “Can one get a porter here, do you think?”

  “Well. I think you can. Yes,” he replied. This was uttered with just a trace of sarcasm, but he immediately rectified it. “I think I’ve got one. Will you come on me?”

  “I can’t see mine here…. Oh yes, there they are. The two of them. All the time.”

  “Which? The J.M’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the two J.M’s please, porter. Over there….”

  (“Thanks awfully” … said Jackie.)

  But the young man was not listening. “No. Not the A.D.C.F.’s please. The J.M’s.”

  “The J.M’s, sir?”

  “Yes. The J.M’s.”

  They were walking down the platform, behind the man, in silence.

  “Julia Marsden?” suggested the young man, by way of conversation.

  “No,” said Jackie. “Mortimer.”

  “Janet?”

  “No,” said Jackie. “Jacqueline.”

  “Jacqueline Mortimer, in fact?”

  “Yes.” There was a silence.

  “Any more?”

  “Yes. A beastly one. Rose.”

  He seemed to think about that. “Yes. I don’t like that,” he said.

  This cross-examination was stimulating her beyond measure, and it was with the utmost misery that she drew nearer to the barrier, where he would for certain leave her, and where she would be cast alone again into the outer world.

  “Do you know where one can get some tea here?” she asked.

  “Yes. We’ll have it together, shall we?”

  “Oh yes. Let’s,” said Jackie, and if there were not tears of gratitude in her eyes as she looked up at him, there were in her voice.

  VI

  It was after they had each received checks for their luggage at the cloak-room, and were walking back across the station again at a rapid pace (set by the elder), she holding his little case and he grasping her suitcase, that he altered her existence again, and set her heart throbbing with joyous, trembling potentialities. He had asked her where she was going in London, and she had replied, “West Kensington.”

  “Oh, West Kensington?” he said. “I’m coming over that way on Monday.”

  “Oh — are you?”

  “Yes. I’m playing at the King’s.”

  Jackie did not quite understand this allusion at first, but something of its awe-inspiring implications crept into her soul as she answered vaguely:

  “The King’s?”

  “Yes,” he said, and looked at her. “Hammersmith,” he added, as though to make himself clear.

  “Oh,” said Jackie, and then the truth filled her. The man was an actor, and all her troubles were at an end. That she would have not the slightest difficulty in using this man for her own ends, that she had found her protector, that all her problems had been solved by the calm will of Providence, and that nothing remained to be done save the exquisite preliminaries and fixing of the details of her immediate attack, Jackie was brimmingly confident. And he was coming to West Kensington! This all was, in fact, too felicitous to bear thought, and with joy she decided to eke it out, as it were, and put it away from her until tea, when she would pick it up again and handle it slowly and luxuriously. She therefore changed the subject.

  He took her to a little tea-shop nestling high in a building overlooking the thronged thoroughfares outside the station. A crow’s nest of a tea-shop, in fact, above a roaring yellow ocean of traffic — climbed up to by endless wooden stairs, and enlivened by blue-curtained windows and blue neat waitresses, and as warm and grateful to the senses as the sparkling tea and oozing toast provided were to the taste. And here, after a little (and very noticeably thawed) conversation, Jackie lingered deftly, but at last led round to the subject nearest her heart.

  “Did you say you were coming to West Kensington next week?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you say you were Playing somewhere there, or something?” asked Jackie, finding this not quite so easy as she had thought it would be.

  “Yes. ‘The Devil’s Disciple.’ The King’s. Why?”

  “Oh,” said Jackie, as though this had just struck her. “So you’re a ——” There was a pause.

  “Nactor?” he suggested.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I suppose I am. Why, though? Are you?”

  “Oh no; I’m not. I just thought how interesting, that’s all.”

  “How, exactly,” said her friend, who appeared to take everything at its face value, “interesting?”

  “Oh, just interesting. That’s all.”

  He did not reply to this, but busied himself with pouring out the tea. And in the long silence that followed Jackie knew that she was up against it, and must speak now or never.

  “Tell me,” she said. “What would one do if one wanted to become one?”

  Her manner of saying this implied much more detachment than personal interest, but there was sufficient of the latter quality to cause her companion’s eyes to come up and meet hers with some seriousness.

  “’Tor or ’Tress?” he asked.

  “’Tress‚” she said, and laughed.

  “Do you want to become one, then?”

  “Yes.” Jackie laughed again.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that, Miss Mortimer.”

  Now Jackie had been prepared for some sort of rebuff like this. She had sufficient shrewdness to recognize and allow for the mystery-mongering and priest-hood of a professional, and although she had hoped for better things from this young man, she was not surprised. Nevertheless, she liked him less.

  “Why?” she said softly.

  “Well, I don’t think you’d be at all happy.”

  “Oh — but I’m prepared for that. I know the hardships.”

  There was a silence.

  “How do you know them?” he asked.

  “Oh,” said Jackie, “I know them.”

  “But how?”

  “I can imagine them, then,” protested Jackie, quietly.

  At this point he offered her a cigarette, which she took, and he lit a match. His hand was firm as he held it out for her, but her lips were not.

  “And the hardships are a sort of added attraction?” he suggested.

  Now this was the truth. But Jackie would not let him see that. “Of course not,” she said. These soft, slightly constrained, cigarette-lighting moments, Jackie did not find unpleasant, and she was confident of getting all she wanted from him before she was through. But he apparently was aware of the dangers of intercourse of this kind, and he changed its tone.

  “I say,” he said abruptly. “Where on earth are you going to-day?”

  “I’m going to West Kensington. I’m going to stay with an old nurse there.”

  “An Old Nurse?”

  “Yes. An Old Nurse.”

  “A Holiday with an Old Nurse?”

  “Well — sort of. I might go on to stay with friends later. But I’m wanting to set up on my own, if I can. You see, I’m by myself. My father’s died, you see, and I’ve got to do something.”

  “Do you mean you’ve got to earn your living?”

  “Well — yes. You see, that’s why I want to do — what I told you about.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “I say,” said Jackie, who after a fairly serious “I see” like that thought she had better play her best
card and win hands down. “Will you help me?”

  “With all the pleasure in the world,” he said, with great sincerity, but she detected something mocking in this glib assurance.

  “I mean over That?”

  “But that would n’t be helping you.”

  “Oh yes, it would,” said Jackie, softly leading back to the quietudes of discourse.

  “Why don’t you learn to type or something? Secretary and that sort of thing. You‘d do just as well, and work less, probably.”

  “I can type, as a matter of fact. I’Ve only just learnt. But that’s nothing in itself. And I’m not going to spend all my time in a stuffy office.”

  “How do you know it’d be stuffy? They might be freshair fiends.”

  “Oh — it would‚” said Jackie.

  “It’s not proved, anyway. But if you could do it at home, would you?”

  “Yes. I rather love typing, as a matter of fact. But who’s going to give me typing to do?”

  “I’ll give you some, if you like. I’ve got a book.”

  “Really? What sort? …”

  “A Book by Me.”

  “Really?” Jackie was shocked out of her own preoccupations by this. “Do you write, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, do you — publish them?” Jackie blushed.

  “Yes.”

  “How frightfully interesting. What sort of books are they?” Jackie was still blushing.

  “Sort of books on Sociology.”

  “Really?”

  “The kind of things in which the Italics are always being Mine,” he said. Jackie laughed.

  “And Sincerest Thanks are due to Tireless Energies of people, in forewords,” he said. There was a silence.

  “What’s your name, then?”

  “Gissing.”

  “Gissing? No relation to ——”

  “Yes.”

  “The?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Richard,” he said firmly, and looked at his watch. “I say, I ought to be going soon.”

  “Oh — must you?”

  “Is there any special time you want to arrive at West Kensington?”

  “No. You see, I said I probably would n’t be there till about seven. I meant to have a sort of look round in London before going on. I did n’t think of a fog and all that. I thought I might have a jolly afternoon by myself.”

  “Oh dear. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve a date in Piccadilly. Let’s walk across Buckingham Palace way. The fog’s not so bad, and you’ll get your look round after all. Then I’ll see you to your train.”

  “Oh yes. Let’s.”

  “And you’re going to have your luggage sent for tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” said Jackie. “That’ll be all right — won’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It will.”

  In a few moments they were out in the street. Mr. Gissing walked at the same rapid pace as before, and there was the same arrangement with respect to the suitcase and attaché-case. They talked about nothing in particular for some time, and then another surprise came.

  “Have you never been up here before?” he asked.

  “Yes. I have been up once. My father brought me up for a week. He was always coming up and down. He was an artist.” Jackie brought out this last fact with some small pride, and as a measure of minor self-defence against the talents and achievements of her companion; and she watched the results in his face.

  “An artist?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Jackie.

  “Punch,” added Jackie….

  “Oh! I see light,” said Mr. Gissing. “Your father was Gerald Mortimer.”

  “Why? Have you heard of him?”

  “Yes. Rather. I remember him well.”

  “Why? Did you know him?”

  “No. Not really. I met him at a dinner once, that’s all: and we walked most of the way home together.”

  “Good Heavens,” said Jackie….

  The prestige which he had now acquired in her eyes was boundless. For if he was not old enough to be her father, he was old enough to have known her father, on equal terms, and yet young enough, if so he wished, to be her own lover, though the thought only entered her mind to be dismissed. And the blending of these two things, like the blending of youth and sorrow in his face, captured her imagination marvellously.

  They walked on for some time in foggy silence after this, and soon he told her (they were entering Pall Mall) that they were n’t far now. And at this news Jackie, who was becoming extremely breathless (for he walked very fast), became also extremely nervous, and wondered what she could say to him before he departed. For that he would immediately depart, and mercilessly at that, on reaching the point he had fixed upon, she already knew enough of his character to appreciate. She, of course, was all for observations on the Smallnesses of the World, after all; and coincidences, and funninesses, and who-would-have-thoughts. But there was something steady in his grey eye, and purposeful, if not vindictive, in his walk, which forbade the slightest indulgence in sentiment of this kind before it was uttered. She therefore said nothing, and tremblingly trusted that he himself would open the subject of their next meeting. This he did.

  “Well, when do I see you again?” he asked. Not a scrap of “may” about it. Pure “when.” And yet Jackie took this all in the course of things, and was content — delighted. At any other time Jackie would have very possibly resented such treatment — she did indeed resent it when thinking it over in bed that night — but he overbore her at the moment. Moreover, in the space of a few minutes, he was about to drop her in the middle of a vast, thronged, unknown, hooting, electriclit, dark-rumbling metropolis, and leave her to shift for herself; and this fact naturally blunted the finer points of her pride. It is revealing of her state of mind that until this moment she had been utterly unaware and forgetful of her surroundings, and ‘her business in them. It was with a sudden shock that she remembered where she was — London — and the mystery of her presence there. And fear of this mystery, and also his ever more hurrying stride, emboldened her reply.

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” she said, “I’ve a sort of idea.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re coming to Hammersmith next week, are n’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you staying anywhere? You said you’d have to get rooms.”

  “Yes. I know a place in Brook Green.”

  “Well, why don’t you come and stay where I am? She lets rooms, you see; because somebody’s being sort of turned out because of me. And I know it’d be all right.”

  He did not stop in his stride, for he was now reaching a kind of crescendo of hurrying, but he seemed to be very pleased by the idea, and in a hundred yards’ time he had her address and the whole thing was arranged. Unless she wrote to him, he would arrive on Monday at three o’clock, and she might be in, or she might not be in, to welcome him.

  “And when I see you again,” said Jackie, smiling, “I’ll talk to you about That.”

  He smiled back but made no rejoinder. They now plunged into a crowded arcade, which she recognized as Piccadilly Underground Station, and he was making for the booking office.

  “After all,” said Jackie, “if you say that acting’s such a beastly business, why do you do it yourself?”

  “West Kensington, please…. Oh, well; I don’t know…. Now, listen.” He led her towards the lifts. “You go in one of these lifts, you see.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you go Down, naturally.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, when Down, you see a thing saying To the Trains. And you walk; along a thing like the inside of a toothpaste tube, and then you see a thing pointing to Westbound or Eastbound. You take Westbound.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you get in a train which takes you to Earl’s Court. And when you’re at Earl’s Court, you get out and follow the others into a lift, which takes
you Up. When Up, you look about for other things, but probably ask a Porter, or Man, for West Kensington, please.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he’ll tell you to go down some stairs for an Ealing or Richmond train. And it’s the very next station.”

  “Thanks ever so much,” said Jackie.

  “Well, good-bye,” he said, and smiling faintly, he offered his hand. “You’ve got it clear?”

  “Yes. Good-bye,” said Jackie. “And thanks so much.”

  She turned, and commenced to walk away.

  Now whether at this moment this more than hard-hearted individual caught something of the unthinking obedience and pathetic trembling optimism of the figure departing into an unknown city, is not known. But something must have stolen over his conscience momentarily, for he called her back.

  “I say.”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t be lost or anything, will you?”

  “No. I’m all right,” said Jackie, smiling. “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  And when she reached the lift, he was standing there to be waved to.

  CHAPTER II

  GLIMPSES

  I

  IT was twilight at four o’clock on Monday afternoon — a grey, lowering, windy afternoon, big with the threatening and grandiose mischief of the running elements above — and Jackie was standing at the window of her quite pleasant front room in Talgarth Road, West Kensington, and waiting, with an expectancy momentarily more perturbed, and a trust swiftly vanishing, for the arrival of Mr. Gissing.

  The grey, drab, naked, flat, scythe-like sweep of the road before her eyes was all but entirely deserted — as though people had read the signs of the god-like frolics about to commence overhead, and had dashed to shelter to wait in suspense. And apart from the milkman on his round, who, like some demented walker in a city awaiting destruction, emitted bedlamite yodelling sounds: and apart from his truck, which crashed crazily and spasmodically on its way, there was no person or thing to break the sighing uniformity of the wind-swept street. Mr. Gissing was now three-quarters of an hour late.