A Little Treachery

14

It sent a premonitory quiver through her nerves, that knock at the street-door for which she had been listening. Running up the staircase, she felt a weakness at her knees. A variety of sage reflections occurred to her in that instant of time, and a full recognition of the folly of what she had done; and she turned the latch with a faltering hand.

A small person stood before her, a small young woman. Indeed, so young a woman that at first sight Catherine took this to be a chance call coinciding with the one she was expecting. Then the girl said, with vivacious friendliness, ‘Well, here I am, my dear. Emmy Rivers.’

Catherine opened the door wide with a few welcoming words, uttered she hardly knew how, for she was attempting to adjust herself to the unimagined, the unimaginable. ‘Oh, I’d have come to meet you,’ she managed to say in a normal tone, ‘but you didn’t tell me your train, you know.’

With a clasping of the hands, with a delighted smile, not with tongue alone, the young woman expressed intense gratification that Catherine had intended so kindly by her. What was it? Something which had seen the business side of the footlights? Catherine thought so.

But really by what standard could she judge this creature who stepped lightly down into her room with something of the demeanour of a young cat in a new home, as it immediately struck her, the big, gleaming eyes intent and the movements of the gracile body suggesting, in some obscure, half-comical manner, ingratiating and sinuous rubbings along the walls and furniture? Of course, an entirely pleasant, indeed, a delightful little cat.

In another minute, however, overcoming the shock of the impact, and looking with feelings less heightened and eyes which no longer exaggerated from apprehension, she saw a normal enough young woman, a little older than she had at first supposed, with a thin, bright, if somewhat anxious face. This small face, at her own rather tardy smile, instantly responded with so broad a flash of humour and liveliness that it was almost a laugh. And a laugh it became the next moment, and a catchy chuckle, too, rather deep. Emmy briefly gave herself up to merriment. But this was quickly subdued and replaced by a tone of earnest enthusiasm.

‘What a lovely little outfit you have here! All real antique. I judge. Look at those immense beams! Oh, I do hope I shall suit you, dear. My one awful fear is in case you find me allergic. Well, this is a wonderful little abode, is it not! Oh, I can’t help laughing, though – when I think how I was picturing it. To think I did fear it might be otherwise than I could wish! And look at you! Oh, d’you know, you’re just what I pictured you – just what I hoped you’d be!’

‘I thought perhaps you might stay, if you cared to, for a week as my guest, to see how you like it,’ Catherine found voice to say.

An additional sparkle crowded itself into the small countenance. Again a little stagily, a gesture with clasped and lifted hands indicated rapture.

Nevertheless, the young woman now took an earnest tone, the tone of one who well knew what it was which made the wheels of friendship go round. ‘Oh, it’s all right by me! Make no mistake, the whole outfit’s just my dream come true! So if it’s all right by you, I’ll put it straight down, say for a fortnight, shall I?’ And with some eagerness she produced her handbag (Catherine thought, as if to win over a suspicious landlady). ‘Emmeline’s my proper name – but I do prefer, and no wonder, to be called Emmy. And here we have my props.’ The young woman had dumped down by the wall a battered tin box of the kind to contain artist’s materials, a small, bulging, shabby portfolio and a plastic shopping-bag, also bulging. ‘The rest of my stuff’s to follow. Thought I’d wait and see if all’s in order. Well, now, I do hope I’m not a nasty surprise in any way? Sure, dear? I know you did say “middle-aged”, more or less, and I’m not that, when you face it, though I’m not so far off as you’d perhaps think, either – twenty-three! “The very thing for me,” I said when I saw your little ad – which I did quite by chance, Mumsie having gone arty at the bookstall. My eye just fell on your little piece, just when I was saying to myself, “If I don’t take off before long, she’ll murder me.” (Explain later.) You can only call it a miracle! I’ll explain it all as soon as you’ve got a moment to spare. I’m not a gabby type, I hope you do believe, in the ordinary way. I hate a gabby type –’ and the sharp eyes were on Catherine ‘– and I can see you do.’

Her vivid little face was all in motion as the girl talked. The darting eyes which seemed anxious to miss nothing, the eyebrows suggestive of antennae, so slender they were and so active, the flexible nostrils of the little hawk-nose, and that most fascinating mouth, the big, mobile, thin-lipped mouth always twisting and disporting itself zestfully over the slight twang of commonness, never inexpressive even when shut, with its restless corners – this lively assortment of features gathered into one small countenance seemed to overcrowd it with vivacities. Nor could one look at her without those eyes coming slyly to meet one’s own, all sharp consciousness. Then one noticed that they were faintly oblique and full-lidded, as if of eastern ancestry, although they were not dark to match the coarse, raven hair but a yellow hazel. And indeed the hawk-nose looked suspiciously like a little sprightly version of the Jewish nose.

Not a foolish face, by any means.

Yet the chatter flowed. And how delighted she was with everything about her, how utterly amazed at the quaintness, the weirdness of it all! Such thrills, such raptures – decidedly they were a little larger than life, and betrayed conscious art.

Catherine ran downstairs. She went down to get the tea, leaving her guest to tidy herself.

Putting the final touches to the tea-tray, she was obliged to trust that all was right, for she was quite unable to give her mind to it properly, while her hands shaking in agitation made her clumsy. She even glanced at herself in the square of looking-glass and met the image without her usual resignation. She was not far off panic. For looking back over the piled, complex, isolating agony of the past year, she could not think how she was to explain herself; her situation seemed terribly intricate and confused, beyond even her own grasp, and the problem seemed suddenly too much for her. So she stood there, fiddling senselessly with the tray, lost, like an idiot, with wandering eyes and a hard frown. ‘And to speak of Clem – impossible!’

Then relief came with the thought, ‘Why explain at all?’ and her tension dropped.

For the rest, what a type! Yet she had made up her mind to take whatever came to her. She now recognized that the base of this practical-looking and philosophical-seeming measure of taking a lodger had never been the necessity for money or anything but the recklessness of despair and an instinctive attempt to save her sanity. Standing with the teapot in her hand, she felt the folly of her proceedings as something which deserved castigation; she listened to the voice of a hard-headed judgment which should have come easily to one of her blood and upbringing. A disreputable young woman! Wasn’t she?

Then she laughed. ‘Well, it will do,’ she thought, snapping her fingers derisively under the nose of sobriety. ‘Yes, it will do very nicely.’

Indeed, there was now a question as to whether the outcome was not much as she had secretly desired. For certainly she had not wanted a friend, anyone of her own kind, even, or of the kind to which she had once belonged, between whom and herself the air would have been weighted with immeasurable tragedy, inescapably; she had not wanted anyone who knew. She had wanted someone to whom she need not talk of things too bad to talk about. A place where her sickened mind could rest, cast off its load and think lightly. Relaxation, she wanted.

So now that the cruel shock of the first moment was past, her first sense of outrage at this crashing in upon her private suffering of a frivolous, laughing theme had yielded to a kind of furtive, bad-conscienced excitement. She did not imagine that she was here offered an escape from hell or a means of salvation. This sudden ironical intrusion of a clowning note upon a lightless stage, like a giggle breaking in at a moment of human agony – was it not to be expected of the place where they were? Hell has its diversions. And surely they could not be otherwise than thus – frivolous, trumpery, blackguardly, of no great depth of turpitude, simply the froth of evil; and for laughter, a vulgar snickering; yet diversions, for all that. Oh, yes, and tempting ones.

Her mood swung over into a reckless pleasure at the thought of the girl. She recalled her person with those beguiled sensations which youth and beauty arouse in their own right. A charming thing, a pleasure to see, a joy! A brilliant, chattering bird. She used scented phrases here which she had never been accustomed to use.

‘Well, in any case, a bird of passage obviously. I shall not be exposed to the effects for long.’

At the very worst – But one look at her guest, one feel of that young woman’s texture, as it were, disposed once and for all of the natural suspicion awakened by a young woman seeking a few months’ modest retirement. Wideawake, if ever a girl was, Miss Rivers would play her no such trick as that.