“It isn’t that. It’s something much more serious,” said Miss Sooley. “It’s that new maid, Susie Cozens.”
“Her with the London manners!” snorted Miss Lincallow. “Too free with the gentlemen! She’ll have to go.”
“It’s really Mr. Helm’s fault. He encourages her. I found her in his room this morning going through his things.”
“Then she can just go through her own and take herself off,” said the head of the establishment decidedly. “Theft, as likely as not! She came here with no character never having been in a regular situation before. I wouldn’t have taken her, even though it is the height of the season, only I was sorry for her mother—they are almost Bognor people, you know—so I took the girl. But out she goes if she’s a rummager! I can’t have a girl who can’t control her curiosity. People would never put up with it. Give her her wages instead of notice, and send her off.”
“What about a character?”
“I’ll write her a character. ‘Honest and industrious’ ought to be enough. She can make up her own reason for leaving us. I’ll write it now, at the same time as I write to my niece. Have you found out whether Number Four intends to stop the extra week? Because I’ve had an application for a sitting-room and three bedrooms which I’d like to take up with. But don’t discourage Number Four. He comes here every year, and no complaints.”
On the following morning Miss Ferris received a cordially-worded letter from her aunt, offering her a bed-sitting-room with full board and attendance for six weeks at an inclusive charge for the whole period. The money was even more reasonable than Miss Ferris had anticipated, so she sent off a telegram advising her aunt to expect her on the following Monday afternoon, and went to the Public Library to look up a train.
Sunday passed uneventfully. She went to church three times, including early service, took a short walk between lunch and tea, and retired to bed at half-past nine. She felt contented, and although she had been prepared to feel no particular enthusiasm for her six weeks’ holiday, she found herself now looking forward to a visit to the seaside, and she found also that the warm tone of her aunt’s letter had given her a feeling of cheerfulness and well-being to which, on holidays, she had often been a stranger.
Her trunk was already packed. She went by taxi to the station, caught her train with a quarter of an hour to spare, and arrived at her aunt’s boarding-house in time for afternoon tea. Her aunt received her very cordially, and showed her her room. It was at the back of the house, but as none of the windows overlooked the sea, for her aunt lived in a road which ran parallel with the esplanade, but was separated from it by a row of larger and more imposing private hotels and boarding-houses, a room at the back was as good, or better than one at the front.
This her aunt explained to her at some length and with many repetitions, for, like most seaside landladies, she was loquacious. Miss Ferris pronounced herself delighted with the room, and her aunt, having drawn her attention to the printed notice fixed above the mantelpiece, left her to unpack. Miss Ferris committed the contents of the notice to memory—they dealt exclusively with times of meals and rules concerning the occupation of the bathroom—unpacked, wrote a post card to her landlady at Hillmaston, announcing her safe arrival, and went down to tea.
After tea she went for a stroll along the esplanade, and encountered Hurstwood, of the Sixth Form. He saluted her, and Miss Ferris bowed and smiled nervously. She went in deadly terror of all the upper forms, because she never taught them. Hurstwood was wearing a boater and his school blazer. She was surprised at the boater. Most young men went bareheaded in the summer. She could not know that Hurstwood’s father, a man of peculiar theories, believed that a straw hat protected the brain.
Dinner was at seven. She would have enjoyed it but for the fact that a handsome man of early middle age sat opposite her at table, and every time she looked up she caught his eye. The first time this happened she blushed and looked down at her plate. The second time, the man said:
“Isn’t the fish always so nice here?”
The third time he said:
“Don’t you think the air here makes you hungry?”
After dinner Miss Ferris asked her aunt whether her seat at table could not be changed. Her aunt, humouring her, changed it and put her at a larger table, with a named couple and their three children. Miss Ferris, who had a genuine liking for children, was pleased with this new arrangement, although her aunt began by apologising for it. The middle-aged man, whose name was Helm, did not come into contact with Miss Ferris again for more than three weeks, but towards the middle of the fourth week of her stay they became acquainted under romantic circumstances in the form of an attempted burglary.
She had gone to bed later than usual one night, because she had been to the theatre, where a good repertory company were doing a play which had had a successful run in London, and which she thought she would enjoy. She did enjoy it, and after she had retired to bed she continued to think over the story and to visualise herself in the character of the heroine.
Thus, at a quarter to twelve, she was completely wide awake, and was suddenly conscious of the sound of a cough which seemed to come from the balcony outside her bedroom window. She was not particularly alarmed, for her physical courage was of a reasonably high order, and she raised herself in bed and listened. There was no further sound of coughing, but she thought that she could distinguish a slight scraping noise.
Curiously enough, the thought of burglars did not immediately occur to her, but her sense of duty caused her to get out of bed and proceed cautiously to the window. She peered out, but could see nothing, and the scraping noise continued. She could hear it distinctly. This time she did think of burglars. Like most teachers who take any of the games—and she sometimes coached netball with the junior forms to relieve the Physical Training Mistress—she always carried a whistle in her handbag.
She moved quietly towards the dressing-table, where her handbag lay, and was about to open it when there came three quiet but distinct taps upon her bedroom door. Miss Ferris started with surprise, but she put down the handbag, pulled her dressing-gown about her and opened the door. A man pushed past her without ceremony, opened her window wide, climbed on to the balcony, and apparently, from the sounds, dropped into the garden below. Miss Ferris took the whistle from her handbag, leaned out of the wide-open window and blew three shrill blasts. There was a rush of feet, a warning shout, and the sound of a motor-horn from the front of the house. Below Miss Ferris’s eye-level a dark object appeared. Miss Ferris shouted:
“Stop, or I’ll fire!”
“It’s me,” said the voice of the handsome middle-aged man. “They’ve got away.”
By this time the sounds of an awakened household reached their ears. Lights were being switched on. They could hear voices.
“Go back,” said Miss Ferris. “You can’t use my room again.”
The dark man, however, climbed back again and closed the window. Miss Ferris opened the bedroom door, to find Miss Sooley and her aunt upon the threshold.
“They’ve got away,” she said to her aunt.
Nothing, upon investigation, proved to have been stolen. The cough which had first attracted Miss Ferris’s attention had been the undoing of the burglars, who were in the act of forcing an entrance. But Miss Ferris and Mr. Helm were the heroine and hero respectively of the boarding-house, Miss Ferris’s aunt, who was deeply shocked, excluded. Mr. Helm was leaving at the end of the week, but they were sufficiently well acquainted for him to propose marriage to Miss Ferris, and to be refused. Calma Ferris was under no illusion as to her attraction for a man of Mr. Helm’s appearance and character.
“I fancy he thought I might have expectations,” she confided to her landlady when she got back. “And so I have,” she added. She so seldom confided in anybody that it was a relief to have this woman to talk to. “My aunt who keeps the boarding-house is making me the principal beneficiary under her will. It’s rather exciting, isn’t it? I’ve to give up teaching and carry on the boarding-house; but I should like to do that, I think. It would be a change; and, anyhow, I hope my dear aunt has many years of life before her yet.” iv