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- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Step into the eerie and enchanting world of Ethel Lina White, one of the forgotten queens of suspense whose pen turned ordinary lives into extraordinary tales of mystery and dread. This collected volume brings together her most compelling short stories (67 short stories)—each one a masterclass in building tension, weaving secrets, and delivering chilling twists that linger long after the last page. From sinister strangers and haunted houses to quiet moments that spiral into terror, White captures the hidden fears of everyday life with elegance and precision. Every story is a door into a shadowy world where nothing is quite what it seems, and danger lurks just beyond the light. Whether you crave psychological suspense, classic detective intrigue, or atmospheric horror, this anthology will hold you spellbound and make you rediscover why White remains a timeless voice of the Golden Age of crime fiction.
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Table of Contents
Whispers in the Dark
A Bad-Good Woman
A Case for Compensation
A Flutter in Souls
An Advertisement Baby
An Unlocked Window
A Stranded Soul
At Twilight
BLACKOUT
Caged
Catastrophe
Cheese
Diana The Huntress
Don't Dream on Midsummer's Eve
Down The Red Lane
Evil
Falling Downstairs
Fate
Fog Folk
Green Ginger
If You Can-Lose
It Hung on a Thread
Jack Of Hearts
Le Roi Est Mort
Lightning Strikes Twice
Mabel's House
Maids Of Honor
Mr. Cophetua And The Governess
Ninepins
Noblesse Oblige
Pink Tulips
Silver Nails
Snapdragon and Ghosts
The Aboriginal
The Adventure
The Baby Heir
The Call of the Tiger
The Cellar
The Counter-Irritant
The Day
The Fairy Pot
The First Day
The Flying Leave
The Formula
The Ghost Gavotte
The Gilded Pupil
The Holiday
The Hoof Slide
The Island
The Master Microbe
The Open Door
The Philanthropist and the Pudding
The Pillow
The Purple Bus
The Royal Visit
The Scarecrow
The Seven Years Secret
The Sham Shop
The Suicide and the Saint
The Uninvited Guest
The Unknown
The Young Pretender
Thumbs Down
Underground
Waxworks
White Cap
You'll Be Surprised
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Whispers in the Dark
A Bad-Good Woman
First published in The Novel Magazine, March 1926
"WHEN I look at this—" Charlotte pointed to the islets, floating like mauve and turquoise petals upon the jade sea—"I always think hard of Piccadilly Circus and mud."
"Why?" asked Lord Chard's eyebrows.
"It's too beautiful," went on Charlotte. "It's like a fairy tale. And when you're a real person, you've got to remind yourself that you live in a real world."
"What is reality but the income tax?" murmured Chard.
"It means that you're alive. Here—in this fairy tale—we live on sugar plums and dreams. Real life means work and bread."
Lord Chard said nothing. He was naturally of indolent disposition, and he had been on the island for six years.
Charlotte sat bolt upright, as she scooped up handfuls of the snow-white beach. She was very young and the last word in modernity. Her swimsuit was little sister to that of Chard. Her hair—gold as a guinea—was not much longer than his.
She sniffed the warm breezes, which seem to bear spicy fragrance from distant Ternate and Tidore, as she studied Lord Chard's handsome impassive face.
"What are you doing here?" she asked. He said nothing, which was the right answer.
"The men who plant things belong here," continued Charlotte. "So do their wives and little etceteras, so does the native population and rare floaters, like me. But where do you come in?"
"Just drifted here. In a ship—or something. Thought I'd stop here a day."
"And then," dared Charlotte, "you met Mrs. Gloria Sims?"
"No. She met me."
"And since then, you've been lying round, like something that's been washed up by the tide."
Lord Chard raised his indolent eyebrows. "Why do you hate her so?" he asked.
"Hate—whom?"
"Gloria. Or if you prefer it, Mrs. William John Sims."
Charlotte crushed a fragile pink shell viciously in an effort to be honest. She knew that she was jealous of the elder woman's beauty and power. But there were other things.
"I can't stick her," she said. "She pulls such old stuff—all the things we've cut out. She'll never let you forget she's a woman, Doesn't her hair come down regularly, by accident, at every picnic?"
"Wonderful hair,"
"That's the only sort that comes down. And doesn't she display an inch of ankle as much as to say, 'Boys, there's a treat for you'?"
"Eve."
"With a jolly sight too many fig leaves." Charlotte kicked a tanned leg impatiently. "And I'll bet her name is Gertie. Can't you see? If she were an out-and-out bad lot, she'd have the good points that go with her type. And if she were really good, you'd respect her. But she's neither black nor white. She's dirty grey—a bad-good woman. She'd never care enough for a man to come a cropper. But she makes men mad about her and then they may go hang. And her husband is just there to pay the bills."
"Decent little chap—Sims."
Charlotte flushed slightly, checked by Chard's air of glacial experience.
"Still, Tops," she persisted, "one day, you'll be a marquis, won't you?"
"My people would consider this conversation tactless."
"But when they die you will be. It means a lot... you do the job thoroughly. And because of that you shouldn't be here. It's gorgeous for a holiday. But it's moral mush. Everyone turns soft, and then they rot."
"Rot!"
"Truth. Tops, you're too—too worthwhile to rot. Go back. Do, do go back!"
Chard let his cigarette die out as he stared at the sea which gleamed like a sheet of pale green metal.
"You're right, Charlie," he said. "I am living in a fairy tale. Do you remember Hans Anderson's fairy tale of 'The Snow Queen?'"
"Yes." Charlotte looked surprised. "I think go."
Chard sank hack on the sand. "Tell it," he said.
"I can't remember the lot. But a little girl, Gerda, went to rescue her foster brother from the Snow Queen, and on her way she met a friendly witch, who wanted to keep her. So she magicked away her memory. And because she knew that roses would make Gerda remember her quest, she made every rose in her garden sink into the earth."
"Go on!" said Chard in a low voice.
"But she forgot about the roses painted on her own tall hat. One day, Gerda saw those, and then, of course, she remembered—"
"That's all?"
Charlotte glanced at Lord Chard and then looked quickly away at the floating sun had spread a golden pathway over the islets. They seemed on the point of dissolving into the deep azure sky. The sea. It seemed a land where it was always afternoon.
Presently, Charlotte broke the silence. "I think I understand. You came here to forget something?"
"Yes."
"Have you forgotten?"
"Utterly."
Suddenly to Charlotte's surprise, Lord Chard's hand was laid over her own.
"There's always something," he said. "Here, there seems nothing to remind me of the past. But there's always the thing one overlooks. I dread every fresh arrival to the island. I dreaded—you. For, one day. I'll see the roses painted on the witch's hat. That day I shall remember. That day I'll have to go back!"
"Go back to—hard things?"
"Damnable."
Charlotte sprang to her feet. Her common sense told her that Lord Chard was no good. At least, not to her. When the patch on her lung was healed, she was going back to England. She wanted to be a doctor. She hoped she would marry someone of her own profession, for the sake of mutual interest. A match with a future marquis was all right inside a fairy tale, but nowhere else.
"I wish I knew what are the special roses which would make you remember," she said. "I'd paint the blessed island with them."
"Pleasant child."
"I would. I'd make you go back and face the music, whatever you'd suffer. That's the only way you'll save your soul alive."
Lord Chard's flicker of self-revelation had died out. He smiled in his old enigmatic manner as he watched Charlotte striding up the beach, the sun gliding her golden tanned limbs and golden hair, until she looked like some godlet arisen from the sea.
TWO WOMEN
AS Charlotte approached a dark carven bungalow, bound with scarlet creeper, a white-clad woman languidly arose from her seat on the verandah.
It was the island queen—Mrs. William John Sims.
The woman and girl regarded each other, much as a horse might wonder at a unicorn. The other was the unicorn. Centuries yawned between their points of view.
Gloria, whose real name was Grace, had come to the island when she was little more than a child. She still belonged to the nineties, when there was a handful of notable beauties standing out from the regiment of ordinary women.
Her features and figure were perfect—her eyes blue as violets. Every gesture and glance was studied with a view to fascination.
Charlotte involuntarily thought of the tales connected with Gloria—unreal, fantastic tales which belonged to the three-decker yellow back.
Less than three months ago a bank clerk had paid tribute to Gloria by spattering her verandah with his brains.
Gloria, in her turn, viewed Charlotte with amusement, blended with contempt. Illustrated papers came to this remote fairy islet, which portrayed the modern Eve as a flat-chested, cropped being, dressed in the short skirts of childhood.
Gloria had ridiculed them in the company of her enslaved admirers.
"Mercy! what are they? Not women!" Gloria looked past Charlotte.
"I am expecting Lord Chard."
"He's on the beach, gradually coming to life after swimming."
"Amazing energy on his part."
"On mine. I dug him out." Charlotte glanced at the tea table. "And I'm going on with the good work, so don't wait tea for him. Directly we've changed, we're going for a ride."
Gloria's famous violet eyes grew darker. This was interference of a new order. She, herself, never beckoned her admirers where a single glance sufficed. This boy-girl, who had no dignity to lose, and no manners, descended to cave-tactics.
"Interested in him?" she asked sweetly.
"A bit."
"Don't be. It's dangerous."
"Dangerous? For whom?"
"You."
"But not for you? Hasn't he been coming to see you for six years?"
Gloria merely smiled. The island saw Lord Chard as her shadow; it was her own secret that she could not be certain whether he were enslaved.
"Well, don't worry," said Charlotte. "My interest in Tops is localized. I'm doing my best to get him to leave this blighted island."
Gloria stared after her retreating figure, partially draped in a bathing cloak of faded orange toweling. Into her eyes had stolen the first suggestion of panic.
RIVALRY
ALTHOUGH there seemed no time upon the island—one scented day slipping into the next—it was a forcing bed of fruition. A bud became overblown in a day. An introduction blossomed into romance inside a week.
Before the new moon rose into the sky as a tiny nail-paring of silver, the Island Club had a new topic of gossip.
Lord Chard had transferred his allegiance from Gloria to Charlotte.
Gloria remained unmoved by the rumors. Incredulity had much to do with her lack of jealousy. She had only to look in the mirror.
This feeling was dominant, one afternoon, when she—and her latest attachment—a man called Palfrey—met Chard and Charlotte on their ride. She posed consciously on her horse, as she glanced superciliously at Charlotte, who rode astride in shorts.
"She looks like a circus rider," commented Charlotte, turning to look after her.
"Rides like one," said Chard.
"Anyway, she's a bad piece of work.
"Who's the man?"
"Nutmegs."
"Well, I can't understand how any man can be such a fool as to dangle round her, when he knows about the rest."
"My child never studied a fly-paper?"
"But, Tops, it's awful. There was that boy who committed suicide the other day."
"Nasty mess, that,"
"And the planter who drank himself right through his plantation."
"But what a death!"
"And that married man who ran into debt to give her jewelry."
"And Chard, wasting his innocent youth and beauty—"
"Don't, Tops! I hate your island queen. If I thought you really had a crush on her, I'd try to cut her out myself!"
Charlotte's words were a challenge more to herself than to Chard. The weather had grown very hot and even her energy had grown torpid. Despite her warning commonsense, she felt herself drifting under the spell of the island.
"No," said Chard, "not you. You know I'm no good to you—or any other girl. Worse luck!"
In spite of the smart to her vanity, Charlotte felt almost glad of the rebuff. Life lay ahead of her; she would miss half of its wonder were she to be cheated of its struggle.
"I deserved that," she said, "for being soppy. Well, cheer up. I'm going home next week by the Empress of the East."
Chard's face clouded. He laid his hand on the bridle-rein of her horse and looked into her eyes.
"Don't go, Charlie! I can't spare you. You're like a pick-me-up after the night before. Stay here where nothing matters and no one's real and we're only part of the Bad King's Dream!"
"Not me. My life's cut out, Allah be praised! There's some biology, anatomy, and physical science, to begin with. And a fountain pen that leaks. And my self-respect."
"Yet even that could not sting him from his degraded sloth," murmured Chard.
Presently, his face cleared.
"I think I'm glad, after all, you're going, Charlie. This place is no good to you."
"Nor to you, Tops. If I could only find those roses on the witch's hat!"
Charlotte's grey-blue eyes were narrowed with perplexity. Lord Chard reminded her of a sound apple on a shelf filled with rotten fruit. Already there was a soft patch, which was the preliminary to decay.
Yet what was the reminder he dreaded? It was nowhere in this island, for here he had found oblivion. But, apart from its fairyland setting, the place was a miniature replica of the civilized world. Not a factor of social life was absent. The main difference was sugar plums for bread.
Chard's hand was still on Charlotte's arm, when Gloria and her cavalier turned at the end of the palm avenue.
The planter pointed to the tableau, with his whip.
"That's a case."
"Think so?" murmured Gloria languidly.
"You bet. It's the cat's camisole, or whatever the expression is. Club opinion, anyway."
Gloria's smile grew stiff. She never despised the barometer of the masculine island gossip.
"Lord Chard in love with—that?" she asked.
"Don't blast me utterly. It's not my taste. Far, very far from it." The planter cast her a glance of passionate, if slightly bloodshot devotion. "Granted, Chard is not exactly ardent. But has anyone seen him even half-awake before?"
Gloria stared fixedly at a clump of finest asparagus fern. It reminded her of green smoke. She pulled herself up to listen to the planter.
He was saying an incredible thing.
"It's club betting that when she goes home, next week, Chard goes as well."
Gloria could not reply. For the first time she was suffering.
She had not believed it possible that anyone could feel such pain. Quite suddenly, amid the green and golden glory, she had a vision of the red-haired bank clerk. She had looked with repulsion at his quivering rabbit-mouth—at the bloated face of the half-drunken planter—at the others, too.
She did not know that her eyes were even as theirs.
She could not sleep that night. Her mind was oppressed with a great dread.
Chard was going away. She saw miles and miles of green tropical ocean rising in mounds between herself and Chard. She listened to the beating of the far-away surf against the reef, until the whole island throbbed like a gigantic heart.
With morning came courage and resolution. She faced her problem with a clear mind. She told herself that personal appeal to Chard would be a blunder. Charlotte's triumph was the result of novelty. Chard had had six years in which to grow accustomed to her own beauty.
She had to make his see her again—for the first time
Her opportunity lay in the club fancy dress ball, which was to be given on the occasion of the visit of The Empress of the East.
For hours she pondered over theatrical papers, seeking inspiration for her costume. One portrait—that of a celebrated Parisian dancer—drew her eyes again and again. Each time she laid it down more reluctantly.
To conquer—she had to dare.
DEFEAT
THE island never seemed more beautiful to Charlotte than on her last night. As she motored to the clubhouse, she seemed to be brushing her way through the scented heart of a dark pansy, starred with fireflies.
Yet, already, it had lost some of its fairyland quality, for, from the Marine Drive, she could see the lights of The Empress of the East riding in the harbor.
They linked her with the prosaic world of bread.
The ladies' cloakroom was filled with an excited mob, all struggling for the mirror and the powder-puff. Charlotte stood aloof in the complete transformation of a Puritan maid.
Her dress fell in dove-grey folds to her ankles. Only little golden feathers of hair showed under her stiff lawn cap. But her smile was that of sinner rather than saint.
Since she had practically lived in shorts during her stay, masculine dress was no novelty to her. But, as she had foreseen, most of the island belles had taken the opportunity to appear as pierrots or jockeys.
"My score," she reflected. "Wonder what Gloria will wear!"
She was certain that Gloria, too, would appear in skirts—hooped, or trailing cloth-of-gold, or silver tissue. She would be both beautiful and magnificent—with the wonderful hair well on view.
As Charlotte entered the ballroom she admitted to herself a second motive for her choice of costume—a desire that Lord Chard's last memory of her should be, not that of a boy-chum, but of a woman.
"I'm on Gloria's ground," she told herself with an excited thrill of coming combat.
As she looked around eagerly for her rival, she met the appraising gaze of Lord Chard. His face could never be deemed expressive; but she read admiration in his weary eyes.
"Why, you've grown up," he said.
"Wonderful, isn't it? And all done on sugar-plums."
He took her programme.
"Suppose, just to save ourselves trouble we take each other on for the evening?"
Charlotte looked thoughtful. This arrangement would exclude Gloria from the entire programme. It would be complete triumph.
"Done," she said, "on one condition. Will you promise to come home?"
Chard sighed as he began to pencil his name on her card.
"That is impossible. Sorry. So sorry."
Charlotte bit her lip. What was the good of trying to do the decent thing in a fairy tale? She had only been a prig and spoiled her last evening.
She turned at the sound of a smothered gasp. As though a wind had swept through the ballroom, all heads turned in one direction.
Gloria had entered.
The gasp was succeeded by a silence which was electric.
Gloria appeared as a Bacchante—utterly beautiful—utterly alluring. She was dressed in autumn leaves, and not too many of them. Grapes wreathed her wonderful hair which fell over her bare back in a rippling copper cloud. As a classical picture, she was sheer joy and perfection.
The island allowed widest latitude in the matter of fancy dress. Gloria had strayed just beyond the limit.
For her costume was the replica of that rendered famous by the Parisian dancer—Bijou-Celeste.
Charlotte glanced involuntarily at Lord Chard. She started back at the sight of his face.
It was that of a stranger—alive in every nerve, hungry, suffering. In his eyes was a light that carried her right back to the Garden, when the Serpent walked upright like a man.
Then she became conscious of a buzz of comments.
"Bit too thick," murmured one man.
"Bit too thin, you mean."
At the second man's snigger Charlotte turned on him in a sudden fury. He was dressed as a hideous travesty of a woman.
"If you were men—not pigs—you would see she's just beautiful!"
It was her own salutation of the vanquished.
The next moment she was ashamed of her outburst.
"Ever so sorry," she said. "I'm sore because I'm going home tomorrow. Don't judge English girls by me."
Next minute she was gaily fox-trotting with the hideous travesty of a woman. Her eyes kept straying towards Chard, who was dancing with Gloria. She had her arms around his neck in approved island fashion, but there was no need of her possessive attitude to proclaim her conquest.
It was plain, from Chard's expression that he moved in a world of shadows where she was the reality.
He never claimed his dance with Charlotte. She made a grimace and tore up her programme.
"I'm going now," she told her partner. "I've still some packing to do, and I must keep that schoolgirl complexion."
THE WITCH'S HAT
THE island danced till daybreak. It rode, instead of going to bed, until it was time to witness the sailing of The Empress of the East.
Only Gloria lay dozing in the cool gloom of her room. The walls still revolved around her in a golden blur of lights. The music still heats in her head.
She awoke to the memory of Chard's parting words.
"Gloria! You little know what you've done to me!"
"I do!" she had answered. "You are awake—at last!"
The distant sounds from the harbor reminded her of the departure of the liner.
Her lips hardened as she thought of Charlotte. Last night the island had witnessed the downfall of her rival. Today's sailing would partake of the nature of a rout. She resolved to be present in order to add the final humiliation.
She arrived on the quay too late for the farewells. The gangway had been withdrawn and three yards or more of clear jade water separated her from the ship. The scores of colored paper streamers which moored the Empress of the East to the island were still taut.
As she swept on the scene in queenly white Gloria was conscious of slight bewilderment. She had expected some new note of deference—some hint of homage—in her reception. Instead there were glances—curious, amused, and even compassionate.
She started as her eyes fell on Charlotte who was leaning over the rail. There was no sign of the wilted maiden in her cheerful grin. It even held friendship for herself.
"I want to take my hat off to you," called Charlotte, who was already bareheaded. "You've succeeded where I've failed." As Gloria looked in the direction of her nod her heart gave a great leap and then seemed to stop beating.
Lord Chard stood on deck, gazing moodily towards the island.
"He's—going away!" she gasped.
"Yes." Charlotte regarded her with friendly eyes. "And he told me himself he had to thank you for it."
Gloria pressed her lips to stifle an elemental scream.
Next second, instinct reasserted itself. She knew that she had to remain on the island. If she left it, where would she go? Not to Lord Chard. She had to admit to herself that, during the six years of their friendship, he had spoken no word of love.
Instinctively, she slipped her hand into the arm of Mr. William John Sims—the man who paid the bills.
The siren blew a last blast. The band struck up a lively air. Amid cheers and farewells, the last fragile streamer was snapped.
Soon the Empress of the East would be lost behind the blue line of the horizon. Soon, too, the fairy island would sink, like a waterlogged mauve petal, into the ocean.
Gloria stared at the churning foam. She could not feel the gaping wound in her heart. Not yet. That was still to come.
Her mind was a blur of bewilderment. She, herself, had sent Lord Chard away. How? Last night was no illusion. The whole island had witnessed her triumph.
"What? What?"
There was no answer.
How was she to know that when she had entered the ballroom in the guise of a beautiful Bacchante, Lord Chard had never seen her at all. What he had seen was the colorless likeness of another Bacchante—ravishing, magnetic, shameless—who had swept him, on the gale of his infatuation, into a secret marriage.
He had met with storm, disaster, heartbreak. To escape slavery, he had fled, seeking oblivion—to find it in a fairy island where he had even forgotten the humiliation of his own shameful flight.
But last night he had seen the roses painted on the witch's hat. In every gleam of white skin and every flying lock of grape-bound hair he remembered.
And he had to return—return to the old enchantment—the old trouble—to take up his responsibilities and build afresh what he had broken down.
He had to return to his wife—the celebrated Parisian dancer—Bijou-Celeste.
END
A Case for Compensation
First published in The Lady's Realm, June 1908
"IS Mr. Cotton at home?" The butler opened the door and gazed in some perplexity at the figure on the doorstep. Her voice was commanding, while her face and form bore marks of breeding, and even of elegance, but her clothing was cheap and shabby. After a moment's pause he looked down at her boots, and noting that they were thickly coated with the free while dust of the king's highway, he resolved to bar her entrance.
"What name?" he asked mincingly.
"It would convey no meaning," was the answer.
What is your business?"
"My business is private."
The man continued to stare. He gained boldness from the slight quiver perceptible in the woman's voice.
"Well, be off then," he said sharply. "You can't see the master if you haven't an appointment."
The woman's eyes flashed at the insult. "How dare you speak to me in that manner? Go this instant to your master and say I wish to see him."
There was a penetrating quality in her voice that impelled obedience, and the servant sullenly admitted the intruder within the massive doors,and hurried off with his message.
The woman gazed around the great pillared hall apprehensively. The reaction from her fit of indignation had left her listless and inert, and the luxury and wealth that were visible everywhere overwhelmed her with a sense of oppression. Apparently of some thirty years of age, her personal charms were expressed in a wealth of hair and slightly Semitic features.
"Inside!" she murmured. "So much for bluff:"
Her almond eyes roving restlessly round were attracted by the portrait of an old man with white hair and blue eyes which was embellished by a tarnished gilt frame. It was the likeness of Christopher Cotton, the Quaker founder of the great house of Christopher Cotton & Co. Ostensibly trading in cottons and printed calicoes, the ships that formerly sailed from the port of Bristol brought in a more lucrative business to the benevolent-looking ancestor, for they dealt in profitable black wares—slaves. The firm was proud of its long pedigree, and every advertisement boldly recorded the date of its establishment. And nobly to preserve all the old traditions, the slaves still played an important part in the destinies of the trading-house, although, as a tribute to more advanced civilisation, their color had been changed to white.
Rebecca Pheasant, who now stood in the hall, was one of the many who were being ground to powder between the millstones of the huge sweating system in force at the workrooms of Cotton & Co. For months she had labored there, sitting shoulder to shoulder with anaemic work-girls, weaving in common with them the rounded shoulders and the roughened forefinger. But there was a barrier that separated her from her companions, whose existence was betrayed by the mute evidence of such trifles as the crescent moon at the base of her finger-nails, and a voice whose only accent was the accent of hopelessness.
Ill-fortune of a peculiarly malignant type had placed her there. When her father, Owen Pheasant, M A., of Cambridge, who was careful to miserliness, took the cheapest ride of his life—for, irrespective of fare, it began at Euston Station and ended in the Great Beyond—the same cab that shot him into the road with a broken neck cast his daughter into a world that was not in the least anxious to receive her. A total lack of preparation, ill health, nerves, and pure bad luck, had ended by leading her, through a strange chain of circumstances, into the sweating-dens of Christopher Cotton & Co.
As Peters walked reluctantly in the direction of his master's private room, he gave a slight sniff, and a faint, familiar odour stole on his nostrils, which caused the man to give instantly a louder sniff of disgust. It was the penetrating smell of unbleached calico. Not daring to return to the black-browed intruder, he sought his master, his fat cheeks wobbling like jellies.
At his entrance, the head of the firm, the great Christopher Cotton himself, faced abruptly from the window, where he stood reading a paper.
A few years over thirty, his shaven cheeks were as smooth and his eyes as blue as those of a boy. His wholesome and pleasant face bore a marked resemblance to the benevolent-looking ancestor in the gill frame. A close observer might trace in the face of the living man an expression that had been omitted from the portrait by the tactful painter. In a greedy glitter of the young man's eye and a vice-like grip of the teeth peeped out a faint resemblance to a shark.
"Well?" he asked abruptly.
Peters paused before speaking, then deciding to endow the visitor with the grace of youth, in order to make his announcement the more crushing, he spluttered out:
"A young person wishes to see you. It's my belief she is one of the hands from the factory."
Cotton tilted back his chin, and threw down the report of his own speech. Although keenly interested in his attempt to enter the House of Commons by the medium of a by-election, his first energies were centred on anything that remotely concerned his business.
"Show her in," he said.
When the fat butler returned, the woman following in his train, he received a shock, for at first sight of his visitor. Cotton's face changed.
"Miss Pheasant!" he exclaimed. "Please sit down."
The woman also staggered slightly at Cottons recognition, and a wave of crimson beautified her face.
"I never expected to find you here," she said. "Are you any connection of Christopher Cotton?"
Cotton bowed proudly. "I am the firm," he said. "Ichanged my name when my uncle took me into the concern."
There was a moment's silence. Rebecca's fine dark eyes were roving over the details of the magnificent room, while Cotton scanned her shabby garments with a cold, apprising eye, noting as he did so with a thrill of wonder that she had patronised his own cheap wares.
"To what am I honored?" he began; but the girl cut him short.
"You are anything but honored," she said bitterly. "I have no doubt you will feel you are insulted by this visit. You will remember the last time we met. I believe then I wounded your self-respect. Now let me administer balm to that wound by assuring you that the position has been righted. Briefly, then, I am one of your factory hands."
Cotton whistled softly. In his college days he, an uncouth undergraduate, had fallen in love with the black-browed daughter of his coach. He had only succeeded in inspiring her with a strong sense of aversion.
Every scornful look, and every slighting word, culminating with the crowning-point of her refusal of his offer of marriage, came back to him, and he looked at her sunken cheeks and worn boots with a sudden gleam of malice in his eve.
"The firm is honored," he said suavely, "in possessing a lady of your abilities. Well, I was often impertinent in the past, so I will not be guilty now of the impertinence of curious questions, or of offering sympathy, although I am tempted on both points. To be brief, then, what is your business? The woman's eyes flashed, and she unrolled something she held tightly screwed up in her hand. Shaking it out, she displayed a lightly run-up blouse, of a flimsy red material.
"Do you recognize this?" she asked grimly.
"Certainly," was the prompt answer. "One of the firm's leading lines of blouses. One and eleven-pence halfpenny. Excellent value,"
"Then listen to me," went on the girl. "For months I have sat in a crowded room stitching at these garments, and watching others stitch at them, until my eyes have failed me. I have seen them finished by the dozen, by the gross, by the hundred. But to-day, something stronger than I am, something stirred inside me to Stan in protest for myself and the others. I thought that perhaps the grinding-process and the starvation scale of the wage might be due to the dishonesty of some manager or overseer, and I determined to take my appeal right to the head of the firm. And I find you here, ChristopherChadwick, whose character I probed only too well in the old days at Cambridge."
Cotton's mouth twitched.
"I imagine you are lodging some i plaint against your scale of wage," he said. "Well, Miss Pheasant, I have had much experience in the past of your personal charm and of your powers of repartee, but I have no knowledge of your capabilities as a worker. However, on purely sentimental grounds, and for old associations' sake, I shall be pleased to increase your wages as a mark of my deep respect."
Rebecca's face distorted with fury at the sneering words. In this one speech alone, bristling with mean malice, Cotton had taken his full measure of revenge.
"Your generosity comes too late," she said. "I have done my Last stitch for your firm. What I did before was in ignorance of your connection with it. But I have one word to add. You say this blouse is a cheap line. I say you are wrong. I say it is one of the dearest articles ever placed before the public—put together in tears, and sapping the youth and energy of the helpless women on whom you are trading. And I say more," she added, her voice suddenly rising—"I say there is a curse on it."
She threw the blouse on the table and swept from the room.
Cotton stood for a few minutes biting his nails. Even in her humiliation Rebecca Pheasant possessed the power of making him feel small.
With a shrug of his shoulders he resumed his reading.
But he was destined to be interrupted. No knock heralded the advent of his second visitor. She rustled in, sweet and dark as a ripe mulberry, and fresh as the morning, in a dainty, embroidered gown.
Cotton's brow cleared as his wife snatched the paper from him.
"Put down that stupid stuff!" she demanded, "and let the future Prime Minister attend to his wife. I want to know who was that majestic young person who nearly knocked me over in the corridor just now."
"Merely one of the hands."
Stella arched her brows.
"Dear me! what a grand scale the firm works on. I thought she was a duchess, Good gracious! What a curious thing! Did she bring it?"
Her eye, attracted by the vivid red, had swooped down on the blouse, and she examined it with amused curiosity.
"Whatever is it meant to be?" she inquired. "Surely not a blouse?"
"It is a blouse," said Cotton gravely, ""equal in finish and material to any Bond Street product, and its price is one and elevenpence halfpenny. You should encourage home industries, Stella, and buy from the firm. As it is, you cost me a small fortune in clothes."
Then they both burst out laughing, for Cotton's pride in his wife's appearance was even stronger than her own love of finery: and in that laugh the memory of the morning's episode passed away.
Success was vital to him, for Stella, when she deserted her titled relatives by marrying into trade, had insisted that he should atone for the lack of a prefix to his name by tacking on a couple of letters after it.
As Conservative candidate his chance was regarded as a dead one, but his marvelous powers of organisation and his strong personality soon changed the position of affairs, and a close fight was generally anticipated.
It was a week before the election, and a Saturday afternoon, and Cotton stood in his library, in company with his agent, waiting for the motor that was to convey them to Wakeley, a part of his constituency.
"Well, Bean, what is the prospect for this afternoon?" he asked absently, as he glanced over his notes. "A soft job, I take it."
Bean shook his head despondently. He was an irritable slip of a man, with upward-bristling eyebrows and wispy moustache that imparted to his face an odd resemblance to a prawn.
"I'm afraid it won't be such a picnic as we imagined," he said despondently. "I foresee trouble."
Cotton stopped in his task of checking his typewritten notes.
"How's that? " he queried sharply.
"I've just had a 'phone from Wakeley that a discharged hand of yours means to start a row and queer your pitch."
"Rebecca Pheasant?"
Cotton spoke involuntarily, and was annoyed to see the inquisitive twist of Bean's eyebrows at his indiscreet remark.
"That was the name. It seems that she's been hanging round there for a week or so past."
"Well, and what is my formidable opponent going to do? Hurry up, man, the car will be round in a minute."
The impatient scorn in Cotton's voice roused the agent to defend his position.
"It doesn't do to look down one's nose at trifles," he asserted. "This election will be a close fight, and we are reckoning on the weight of the Wakeley vote to secure your seat. You calculate you have your hand on these votes: large employer of British labor, improved condition of your factories, recreation clubs for your employees, and the rest of the bag of tricks. But these factory hands are as restive as a young colt at the first smell of powder. They hang together, and their true sympathies are all with the Labor candidate. If this girl gets up to-night and heckles you with leading questions about the scale of wage you pay, unless you have an answer ready there will be no end of a rag."
Cotton buttoned up his leather coat impatiently.
"My good man," he said, "I must admit I can't feel absolutely scared by this enterprising young woman. There is a professional humourist at every election nowadays. At the worst she will give my audience a good laugh."
But Bean stuck to his point doggedly.
"This is a different affair to a suffragette scrimmage," he said. "You will find that the sympathies of the men will all be with this girl. She is a handsome piece, too, and, I'm told, not badly educated. Depend on it, someone else is behind her, and it is a put-up affair."
"Doubtless," answered Cotton stiffly.
But as he stepped into the Panhard his thoughts reverted to his last meeting with Rebecca Pheasant. He saw her face distorted with fury, and her brooding eyes.
Instinctively he knew that this was no piece of electioneering finesse. It was the outcome of personal antipathy on the part of the girl—the first phase in the elemental mutiny of the oppressed against the tyrant.
"Con—found the girl," he said softly, as the car sped forward.
Bean turned his goggles inquiringly towards Cotton.
"The girl will know what to say," he remarked. "I suppose when she begins to bait you, you have your figures ready."
"That's all right," answered Cotton suavely. "Considering it is a month since that girl was sacked, and she hasn't troubled to do a stroke of work since, it looks as if she had done pretty well out of the firm."
But the tight set of the candidate's mouth betokened keener tension than the legitimate amount exacted by the steering of the Panhard.
The car hummed along, past the redbrick suburbs, till the brand-new villas met the green wave of cabbage-fields crested with the white foam of flowering beans. As the beautiful Surrey country stretched before them Cotton increased his speed until they seemed to stand still while the leafy roads rushed up to meet them.
With the fleetness of forty horses they passed an old Elizabethan house, creeper-bound, and buried up to its chimneys in trees, and to Bean's astonishment Cotton's grim mouth relaxed in a smile. From an invitation card stuck up in her looking-glass, to refresh Stella's memory, he knew that a garden-party was in full swing behind those ivied walls, and that his wife in her daintiest finery was perhaps trying to urge a croquet ball through its appointed hoop.
Patch by patch the green began to wear from the ground as the chalky shoulder-bone of the hill forced itself through its grassy covering. On the other side of the rise, in the hollow, lay Wakeley. the theater of Cotton's conflict for Parliamentary honors.
Cotton's face grew grave as they drew near the town. His confidence in a successful meeting died away as Bean's warning words revolved in his head. He was not a man to underrate the importance of petticoat influence when exercised in the right quarter, for he was fully aware of the plastic nature of his own iron character under his wife's light touch. Regarded as a woman, Rebecca Pheasant was no more to him than a fly. but a fly wedged over his goggles would be enough to account for an accident fraught with gravest consequences if it chose the critical moment. It resolved itself into a question of the point of view.
Cotton thought of the close hall packed with factory employees, swayed by every passing gust, and he saw already the precious votes trickling between his fingers.
"Confound the girl," he muttered again.
The car shot round a corner, scraping a sharp curve with a warning hoot of the horn.
A group of people gathered on the road stampeded like a flock of geese and scuttled to either side of the track.
There was one exception to the sudden flight, for a shabbily-gowned woman plodded on stolidly alone. Without slackening his pace Cotton again sounded the warning note. The summons was shrill and imperative, but the girl heeded it no more than the pipe of a grasshopper With a muttered oath Cotton slowed up slightly, still hooting furiously The bystanders now added their shrill voices to the clamor, and one of them rushed forward and attempted to drag the obstinate woman from the path.
The next minute the motor was close on the girl. It seemed to Cotton that there was something familiar about the resolute bearing and the proudly held head. His business instinct swooped down on the red blouse that the girl was wearing, and he unconsciously pronounced it a product of his own firm.
"What's the girl's name?" he asked angrily. "Who is she? I have seen her before. Does she mean to make me pull up?"
Bean nodded.
"That's the ticket," he said. Then he added in sudden excitement: "Isn't it the girl Pheasant? Or I'm a Dutchman!"
Cotton instantly remembered the defiant figure in the ready-made clothes.
The next minutes passed in a whirl. Cotton steered to one side, in a desperate effort to scrape past the girl. The pace was too great to admit of brakes, and it needed expert judgment to pass in the narrow space between the high curb and the reckless pedestrian. The Panhard swept by, and at the same moment something fell and collapsed on the dusty road.
Then with a final jarring of brakes the car stopped dead. The candidate ran back to the group of people who had collected round the prostrate form. Bean followed more leisurely, and the chauffeur spoke to him as he jumped from the car.
"Never knew the guv'nor an inch off his driving before," he said. "This election business has made him jumpy."
Bean nodded. He arrived at the scene of the accident in time to see Cotton thrust his card into the hand of the nearest workman.
"I cannot possibly stop," he said, "I am due to address my constituents at Wakeley. I cannot express my sorrow for what has happened. You must all of you have seen that it was the purest accident."
"That it was, sir," was the answer. "You did everything in mortal power to stop."
"Mind, everything is to be done that money can do," continued Cotton. "Though I disclaim all responsibility, at the same time I mean to make the amplest compensation.
He hurried back to his motor, followed by a hum of approval.
"That's one of the right sort," was the freely voiced verdict. "'E ain't the kind to run over a body and then scorch off afore you can tike his number."
Cotton grasped the steering-wheel again and the car leaped on.
"We must make up for lost time," he said briskly. "One of the men there has a knowledge of first-aid, and he believes the wretched girl has broken her leg."
Bean looked at him keenly.
"I begin to have hopes of a quiet meeting now," he said. "What a wonderful stroke of luck to wing that particular girl."
Only the merest flicker of satisfaction, totally remote from a smile, swept for the friction of a second around Cotton's cleanly cut mouth: but in that glance the agent reverted to his original good opinion of the candidate's power of driving.
Bean proved himself to be a true prophet, for the meeting was a complete success. Backed with intelligent artisans, who followed every word of Cotton's clever address with keen attention, there was hardly a dissentient voice raised against the capitalist, who left the building amidst the cheers he had evoked ringing in his head. Crossing over to the "Stag," he stopped there to refresh himself before his homeward drive. An hour slipped quickly away, and when Bean returned from a tour of the town he saw Cotton, flushed and eager, standing on the hotel steps surrounded by a knot of his supporters.
It was plain that the agent was alive with some unwonted excitement. His eyebrows and moustache worked convulsively, as if in obedience to hidden springs, and he elbowed the crowd unceremoniously in his haste.
His appearance did not escape Cotton's eye. He sprang down the steps towards him.
"You've something to tell me, Bean?" he asked rapidly. "What is it? Quick ! "
"You're right! That girl—Pheasant—I have heard—"
"Well?"
"She's dead! Struck her head, I believe. They've taken the body to the Police Station."
Cotton's face blanched.
"How will it affect me?" he asked quickly.
The agent's eyebrows worked.
"Not adversely," he answered briskly. "Everywhere the deepest sympathy is being expressed for you. They all agree that your behavior was beyond reproach, and it is my belief"—he dropped his voice impressively— "that if you shell out handsomely it may turn out a gilt-edged security."
"Hush!" said Cotton sharply. "A promising young life ended. But she brought it on herself," he added.
He closed his mouth with a snap, and as Bean caught the relentless glitter of his eye he had a visionary glimpse of the swollen form of the mammoth capitalist englutting into its bulk all the small tradesmen who had also stood in the way.
"We will just go round to the station," resumed Cotton. "I wish to identify the body as the girl's. There was a crowd on the road, and—I was not keen on details—so I didn't look."
Arrived at the station, they were received by the Superintendent with every mark of respectful sympathy, and two minutes later were piloted down a stone-flagged passage into the mortuary.
Cotton did not flinch before the ordeal. Two shrouded forms lay side by side, keeping each other chilly company as they lay in their last sleep.
"Two bodies!" commented Cotton softly to the Superintendent. "Very sad! Is the other another accident?"
"I fear not, sir. This is the poor young thing they pulled out of the river to-day."
As he spoke he whisked back the sheet. Cotton's eyes bulged out of his head as he gazed at the miserable figure exposed, from whose garments the water still oozed in dark drops. Dank of hair, pinched of feature, with the grim lips just beginning to set in the sphinx-like smile of death, the face that challenged his startled gaze was that of Rebecca Pheasant.
He started back in horror. The next minute his business instinct warned him that he had made an unnecessary investment
"But—there is some mistake!" he stammered. "Who is this?"
"Name unknown, sir. Was driven to it very likely, for she looks half-starved. Fine-looking young woman, too. Ah me, there will surely be a reckoning!" sighed the Superintendent, filled with the sympathy attendant on a hearty meal.
"About the other poor young thing that had the accident," he continued briskly. "I understand you wish to make it up to her relations. Ah well! there's no doubt the money will do a lot to soften the blow *
As the man spoke he whisked away the covering, and then he started back in alarm, terrified by the expression of the candidate's face. It worked convulsively, in horrible spasms of agony.
Cotton had caught a glimpse of the other corpse, laid out in its scarlet blouse. The reckoning had met with swift settlement
Thrice the candidate strove to speak, but no breath whistled up through his dry lips. But when at last his voice came it was dull and even.
"This is not a case for compensation," he said quietly. "That is—my wife! "
His unnatural calm remained with him on his homeward journey. In the midst of the dreadful excitement that reigned in the great house, he alone seemed unmoved. Even his wife's maid, when she poured out her story, found her sobs checked by the rigid face of her master.
"It was all along of the blouse," she declared. "The poor mistress took it for a joke. She said you had chaffed her about not patronising the firm, and she meant to get even with you. She borrowed my skirt to go with it, and she intended to go to hear you speak at the meeting. 'It will be fun if he doesn't recognize me,' she said, 'seeing as it will be because I'm wearing his goods!'"
"That will do!" said Cotton hoarsely.
The maid shrank out of the room at the sight of his face.
Later in the evening he telephoned for his manager. The man arrived, ferret-faced and curious. He began to stammer out his condolences, but Cotton cut him short
"Enough of that! I wish to speak to you on a matter of business."
The manager stared. What manner of man was this who could speak of business while that stiff figure lay in the darkened room upstairs? But he felt relieved at the words.
"Yes, sir? "he said briskly.
"About the work-hands. See that their wages are raised."
The man jotted down the figure, then waited for further instructions. None came, so he timidly dared to jog his employer's memory.
"Of course, you wish to reduce the number of hands?" he asked.
"No."
The manager stared in surprised. He feared that the shock of his bereavement had turned Cotton's brain.
"But, sir, the profits," he stammered.
Profit! Cotton's overtaxed brain responded to the goad of the familiar word as to the prick of a spur. He snatched at it eagerly in his answer, but somehow the words got twisted and tangled into the current of an unfamiliar formula.
"What shall it profit a man," he asked wearily, "if he gain the whole world, and lose his—"
The last word was lost.
A Flutter in Souls
First published in Pearson's Magazine, August 1908
OUTSIDE the great gales of Ripley Court, the Curer of Souls and the Curer of Bodies shook hands with the grip of a short friendship, yet long sympathy, founded on the tie of Oxford associations and a common object. They—the two energetic microbes, who were doing their best to effervesce the ditch-water of Ripley village to the bubbling zest of soda-water—differed in every respect.
The representative of the Church Militant bore the look of a man who had been beaten in a hard fight by unfair methods. His black coat seemed weighed down with depression, and his hat was even more crushed than is demanded by clerical etiquette.
"You'll have no luck with her, Brady," he said. "I've tackled her repeatedly. She's hard as nails."
"Then she needs hammering, and by my grandmother's parrot, she shall have it. You've been on the wrong lack entirely."
The speaker's face kindled in the glow of the hanging lamp. Tall, and of striking personality, Terence Brady looked more like a Bond Street exquisite than a country doctor. Of mixed parentage, the English mother within him had decreed he should thus array himself in the frock coat of etiquette as he paid his formal call on the lady of Ripley Court; but inside this frigid casing his Irish father was whirling his shillelagh with mad glee in expectation of a fight.
Terence Brady's long legs propelled him up the drive to the time of a double two-step, while his eager thoughts winged on before him; then there was a minute of tiresome delay, while the man with the mission provided the man at the door with his name for the purpose of a formal entry.
Yet his real entry was anything but formal. As the drawing-room door opened, the mistress of the great house looked at Brady with a glance of welcome, for she thought he was afternoon tea. Her face dropped when she saw only a visitor, and her attention was momentarily distracted from the game of diabolo with which she was busily engaged. The spool descended, and, finding no cord to meet it, dashed, like a great white moth, towards a pink-shaded lamp. Contrary to the nature of the flame, it seemed for once to reciprocate this passion, for it shot up to meet it.
The next minute there was a feminine shriek, and the overturned lamp was spreading a pool of liquid flame over the flimsy tablecloth.
As the girl rushed away from the scene, the two men dashed towards it. But the waiting-man was naturally slower than the man who acted, and to Brady's lot fell the burning honors of extinguishing the flaming mass. Thus, dashing, flushed, and eager—in a circle of limelight—Terence Brady made a dramatic entry to the acquaintance of Miss Vivien Primrose.
"Real Irish luck," said Terry inwardly, as in one brief moment he found he had wiped out quite thirty minutes of frigid overtures, and was nearer the object of his quest. It was pleasant to sit in an easy-chair while a remarkably pretty girl alternately thanked him and fussed over him, and Terry, who liked all young things, from children to new potatoes, was especially tolerant to the charm of youth in women.
"I'm sure you have burnt your arm, and I shall never forgive myself if you have. Do turn back your sleeve and see," cried Vivien, as she laid impetuous fingers on his frock coat.
"Not a bit. I haven't so much as scorched myself," answered Terry, stoutly resisting her overtures. "And, in any case, I'd like to keep the scar as a memento of a charming lady. Now, do look. That kettle is boiling over with impatience to make your acquaintance."
As Miss Primrose busied herself with the tea-equipage, the doctors keen blue eyes looked with surprise at this young lady who had been represented to him as an armour-plated virago. The sole heiress to her father's wealth, seen through the golden mist of a fortune her claims to beauty had been exaggerated, but even Terry, who was not prepared to admire her, found her pretty.
"A dimple, too," thought he with delight, as he noted the treacherous pit that has swallowed up the common-sense of so many men. "She can't be such a Tartar with a dimple."
Vivien started the conversation with hunting, but before long, as they exchanged ideas, they found that, so far from following the fox in spirit over the red earth, they were soaring up into the clouds. So many thoughts in common, so many mutual tastes, so many experiences to relate, that they were soon borne along on the full spate of friendship.
But, little by little, Terry turned the talk to the subject of his visit. It was his pet theme—the Cottage Hospital. He deplored the fact that the wives of the righteous county folk allowed this full-grown adult scandal to stand unchallenged in their midst. He observed that when he tried to drive home the facts of the case to these smug gentry, men who had approved of him because he rode straight had resented the fact that he could talk straight as well. They could afford to hunt, but when it came to a question of putting their hands to their pockets, they pleaded poverty. Was it not a shame?
Miss Primrose assented, and then gently tried to switch the conversation on to the number of unpaid hunt subscriptions. But Terence was firm. He insisted ongoing into details of the exact state of dilapidation and discomfort that reigned at the miserable travesty of a hospital, and at his downright words Vivien shuddered. He imagined it was from sympathy, and instantly he saw himself, twenty years later, when he had raked in fame and a fortune, coming to claim her and her stately home, while apparently she remained still the pretty golden-haired girl of twenty-three.
"And what we want," concluded Terence vehemently, "is to pull down this rotten old shell—this plague-spot—and erect a splendid new building. It must, and it shall be done!"
Vivien's eyes sparkled. "Why don't you do it yourself?" she asked.
"I?" Brady roared with laughter. "I do it? Whom do you think I am?"
"The nephew of the Duke of Wesson, to begin with—"
"To end with, a poor devil of a doctor, without a shirt to his back."
Vivien smiled at the extravagant statement of the tall young exquisite, who was intently-regarding her with eyes that were bluer than her own.
"No, Miss Primrose," announced Terry firmly, "I'm not the man to do it. But it's hanging like a load on my back, and I stumble over it at every step I take."
He paused, evidently more impressed by the pathos than the impossibility of this particular feat. "Now, is it fair? It's your responsibility that I am bearing. You are the largest landowner in the district, all your interests are here, you have no ties, you have the means. And clearly you are the obvious person to wipe out this disgrace for ever, and preserve it as a living monument of your generosity, enshrined in all the grateful hearts of the county."
He stopped, panting, and then looked at Vivien in dismay. The soft curves of her mouth had been sucked into a hard red line, and her eyes were glassy. The flow of friendship had been turned off at the main.
"I am very sorry, Dr. Brady," she said coldly, "but I must decline to take up your magnificent project. It is against my principles."
"Principles!"
