“Where you going? What you going to do?”
“Go, Dress. Wash. So far as I can wash. Get away out of sight of you. So as not to be sick.”
She dressed swiftly, going to and fro and flinging insults at him. He sat on the soiled and devastated bed considering the situation.
“But wait a bit!” he said. “You can’t go like this?”
“If this comes to anything—oh! if it comes to anything—oh! I’ll do my best to kill you.”
“But you can’t leave me here—”
“I’ll kill you and I’ll kill myself. I swear it. I swear it.”
“You can’t leave me here in this place like this.”
He followed her into the drawing-room and made to intercept her. And here is a queer thing to tell. Twenty minutes before she had been entirely powerless in his grip and yet now as he intervened between her and the door, she could face him with an expression of blazing hate, anger and contempt that was itself a blow. “Fool!” she spat out at his face. She clenched her fists, held them up to her ears, and suddenly shot them forward at his face with such force that she sent him spinning.
He span round and sprawled anyhow....
The door slammed on her and he found himself naked and entangled in an overturned chair on the floor of his new home and almost directly beneath that tender and beautiful picture, Enfin seul.
Poor little beasts! That was the dismal joke our Tewler civilisation played upon two of its children—for no reason at all. For sheer want of reason. It wrapped them about and misled them—to this,...
Evangeline wandered out into the square, ruffled, and distraught, and unspeakably uncomfortable. She hesitated, called a taxi and fled to her cousin, Millie Chaser, to tell her all about it, for she felt she had to tell someone about it all or burst. Then she returned to Scartmore House and went supperless to bed. Edward Albert dressed slowly and still more slowly reassembled his scattered mentality.
He tried to simplify and concentrate it in hatred of her. He shouted a string of foul names at her. “She-devil”, was the mildest thing he could think of to call her. “You come back, you foul bitch! If I get you here again I’ll show you.”
He was affecting this fury and at the same time he was already desiring her again. It was exasperating, but he felt he had hardly begun upon her.
She had left red marks on both his cheeks. He examined them in the bathroom mirror with some consternation. Both would be bad bruises unless he sponged them with cold water, and one had the skin broken and was oozing blood.
“She took me by surprise.... Them rings of hers.
“Changed into a devil.... Hog, am I?—selfish young hog? Fool, eh? Did she mean it all or only some?.... So that’s where we stand....
“I was a fool to let her go!...
“She’d have torn the ’ouse down....
“Wonder where she’s gone to.
“Pretty fool I shall look if she goes back to her old job. If everything’s all right.... She might do it.”
XII. Mr Pip Chaser
In spite of this mental turmoil Edward Albert slept profoundly that night, and the next morning he woke still extremely perplexed but refreshed and feeling much more able to cope with this difficult world. As he had nothing better to do he went for a walk in Regent’s Park and sat down almost on the very seat on which he had discussed his future with Evangeline eight or nine days before. And regardless of the tragedy of the previous day he found himself regretting her acutely.
For nearly two weeks she had subjected him to a regime of unprecedented mental massage, she had anointed him with flattery and endearment, and abruptly he was exposed to this cold and disillusioning world again. And the affair of yesterday was taking on a new appearance. Whatever happened he’d had it and done it. He was a, man. He no longer peeped and peered at the girls and women going by. Their last secret was his. He looked at them appraisingly. But none of them, he realised, was quite like Evangeline. And the very violence aid extravagance of his reaction against her made him feel he had by no means finished with her.
What was to be done about it? Walk about a bit. Have a look at the shops down Regent Street. Get a snack somewhere. Wait for something to happen.
In the afternoon he had an unanticipated visitor.
He answered the door expecting only some tradesman’s call, and discovered a short but upstanding young man in a jauntily cocked bowler hat, an extremely neat black jacket, cheerful herring-bone trousers, and a bright bow tie that harmonised beautifully with a blue shirt and collar and matched exactly with the corner of a handkerchief that projected from the breast-pocket. The face was also up-’ standing, so to speak, clean-shaven, with alert brown eyes, a pug nose and a large oblique mouth ready to smile. A pink carnation in his button hole enhanced his cheerfulness. By Edward Albert’s standards this was an excessively well-dressed person. He opened the door wider.
The visitor neighed. He produced a loud clear lingering key. Then he spoke. “Mr Tewler?” he said.
“You want to see me?” said Edward Albert.
“Guessed it in one,” said the visitor. “May I come in?”
Edward Albert stood aside to admit him.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he said. “If it’s business—”
He remembered some recent instructions of Evangeline.
“If you ’appen to have a card....”
“And why not a card?” said the visitor, “Why not? I think, why—yes” He produced a neat black leather pocket-book adorned with a silver monogram, and extracted a card.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said.
Within a deep black edge it announced its purport:
To introduce
Mr Philip Chaser
representing Pontifex, Urn and Burke.
Funerary Undertakers.
The visitor watched his host’s face for a moment and then gave way to a brief cackle of laughter. “Not on business this time, Edward Albert, not on business. Purely social. It’s the only card I have on me. You see I’m Pip Chaser at your service. Pip, Pip Chaser. I’m, hey, Evangeline’s first cousin by marriage and my wife is her bosom friend. Old schoolfellows. You may have heard her speak of Millie—her dear Millie. Always dear. And her godfather, my revered parent. Nice chap he is—provided you don’t call him Old Gooseberry. We marry from his place. Wedding breakfast and all that. I have to be Best Man. See? Came about the arrangements.”
He removed his hat and revealed an upstanding tussock of hair. He seemed to find some difficulty about placing his hat. He held it in his hand until a suitable place could be found. “You ought to have a hatstand, Edward Albert,” he said. “Hats and umbrellas. There.” He pointed his hat to indicate the exact place. “You must get one and put it there. And now for a talk. Nice little place this looks. Well lit.”
Edward Albert opened the door to the drawing-room.
“Would you like me to make you some tea?” he asked.
“I can.”
“Whisky is, hey, better,” said Mr Chaser.
“I don’t ’appen to have any whisky.”
“Oh, but you must get a bottle of whisky in the pantry and all that. And cocktail stuff, gin, vermouth, lime juice, the, hey, requisites. What is home without a shaker? Don’t worry about tea. We’ll settle our business and go out for what is called, I believe, a quick one. I should have rung you up this morning, but you’ve got no telephone yet. You must get a telephone. And take my advice, don’t put it out there in the hall for everyone to hear. In a corner near your desk. Bed-room extension perhaps. We’ll fix places for that later. I—hey. I couldn’t come this morning because I had two Blessed Ones to plant out at Woking. I had to get out of my—hey—sables.”
He placed his hat with care and precision exactly in the middle of the table and seated himself gracefully with an arm over the back of his chair. Edward Albert found him admirable. He tried to imitate his ease and left him to open the conversation.