Kingdom Lost (16 page)

They called for Eustace, and they went down into the places where Eustace worked. They were all places that belonged to the Ryvens. They belonged to
her
. Dirty houses and dirty narrow streets. Dirty men and women. Dirty children and dirty babies. And everywhere the horrible smell of dirt. The afternoon had its unforgettable things as well as the morning. They were quite different things.

Helena Ryven had wished to provide an object-lesson and to point a contrast, but she had only a vague and insensitive notion of what the effect of this object-lesson would be. Valentine had the child's mind, sensitive as the unexposed photographic plate is sensitive, and as ready to hold impressions; but she had also the more alert brain, the stronger reasoning power, and the quickened emotions that belong to the woman.

She received impressions which she could never forget.

They went from Lentham Court to Basing Buildings, and from Basing Buildings to Parkin Row. Echoes and snatches of what she said to Eustace, and of what Eustace said to her, kept repeating themselves in Valentine's mind:

“Why does that baby look like that?”

“Because it has never had enough to eat.”

“Why?”

“The man's out of work—he drinks.”

“Oh, why does he? Edward said—”

“If I lived where he has to live, I should probably drink too. Two families in one small room—ten people. The public house is decency and comfort compared with it.”

Up a stair, slippery with grime, foul to the smell. Rooms worse than the stair. A new-born baby wailing. Down again and on.

Mrs. Ryven in her quiet usual voice: “You were going to do this street next, weren't you, Eustace? Were you able to cancel the contracts?”

“Yes—everyone's been very decent about it.”

“What was he going to do?” said Valentine in a whisper.

“He'll show you.” Mrs. Ryven looked at her hard. “What's the matter? Are you not well?”

All the carnation colour was gone.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” said Valentine in a trembling voice.

Mrs. Ryven dealt with this firmly.

“Nonsense! Pull yourself together! I didn't think you'd be so foolish.” She spoke to Eustace in an undertone. “Eustace is going to show us the last block of re-built tenements. You'll find those pleasanter.”

The sick feeling passed a little, became less of a physical sensation. The re-built tenements were clean and airy.

“Eustace—can't you possibly go on pulling those dirty houses down?”

“They're not mine,” said Eustace Ryven with a groan in his voice.

“You were going to.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you can't—because of me?”

He said, “It's not your fault.” He did say that.

Valentine felt a passionate gratitude.

“If I begged and
begged
Colonel Gray?”

Eustace shook his head.

“It's no use—he can't do anything. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't—and he doesn't want to. What exists is good enough for him. He's the type that thinks change of any sort is the worst of all evils. You can't do anything with that frame of mind—it's completely impervious to any new idea. But in five years' time you'll be independent of him—you can pull down Parkin Row then. The trouble is you won't.”

“I will.” The earnest voice made the words sound like a vow.

Eustace Ryven shook his head.

“Five years is a long time. You'll have learnt how to spend money by then, and you'll have got accustomed to spending it. Besides, you'll probably marry.”

Her face flamed just for a moment.

“But if I get married, I can give it back.”

Eustace actually laughed.

“I can see your husband letting you!” he said.

“
Wouldn't
he?”

He shook his head again.

Helena Ryven interposed with a question about the hot water supply.

They drove back to the station. Valentine no longer saw the streets or the people; she saw only Parkin Row and the baby who had never had enough to eat. What she saw caused her the most dreadful suffering; and the suffering was weighted and fastened down upon her heart by a crushing sense of responsibility. To the island-bred child, the dirt, the crowding, and the noisome air of Parkin Row were a great deal more dreadful than they would have been to the ordinary girl—and to the ordinary girl they would have been bad enough. She had never seen dirt, foulness, poverty, or disease before. She saw them now as things for which, in some dreadful unescapable way, she was responsible. If she hadn't come back from the island, the houses would have been pulled down and the people would have had clean places to live in. It was her fault.

She sat up a little straighter in the taxi beside Helena Ryven. If a thing is your fault, you are bound to do something about it—Edward always said that. She had got to do something, and there was only one thing that would make it possible for Eustace to go on pulling down those dreadful houses and building new, clean ones in their place. He couldn't go on unless he had the money; and she couldn't give him the money unless she married someone. She saw the whole thing quite plainly. The only thing she didn't see was whom she was going to marry. She had planned to marry Austin, and Austin wouldn't. Barclay had said he would always be there if she wanted him. But Barclay had gone to America; and she had got to marry someone at once so that Eustace needn't stop pulling down houses and building them up again. Besides, Eustace said that perhaps her husband wouldn't let her give the money back. It would be dreadful to marry someone just for nothing at all; because she didn't,
didn't
want to get married for a long, long time.

The taxi stopped, and they got out. All the time that they were crossing the crowded station, Valentine's thoughts went on.

They passed the barrier and got into the train. Mrs. Ryven bought a couple of papers and arranged herself comfortably in a corner seat. Valentine sat opposite to her. And as Helena unfolded a rustling sheet between them, the great idea came into her head.

A preliminary quiver ran through the train; the engine shrieked. A late passenger ran panting down the platform, wrenched the door open, and plumped into a seat. Mrs. Ryven glanced at her, wondering why people did not allow themselves time to catch a train. Then her eyes were back to her paper and she became plunged in a
cause célèbre
.

Half an hour later the train slowed down preparatory to stopping at Durnham. Helena put down her paper and looked up. Valentine's place was empty, and the door into the corridor half open. She leant forward and looked down the narrow passage. Valentine's green dress was in sight. Mrs. Ryven was rather short-sighted, but she saw the green dress, and the girl's figure turned away from her at the end of the corridor. And then the train stopped and people began to pour into it. An elderly man came into the carriage and sat down opposite Mrs. Ryven.

“I beg your pardon—this is my niece's place,” she said, and he apologized and moved up, leaving the corner free.

Helena began to feel more than a little vexed. Valentine ought to come back and keep her seat whilst the train was in the station.

Presently they moved again. Mrs. Ryven read for a little longer, and then got up and looked out into the corridor. There was no one there.

Ten minutes later she was in a state of very considerable alarm. Valentine was not on the train at all, and at least three people had noticed a girl in a green dress leaving it at Durnham.

Helena looked at her watch. It was seven o'clock. They would stop again in twenty minutes. She took out her time-table and consulted it. She could not get back to Durnham before nine. If she were to telephone for the car, it would hardly save any time at all. She decided to wait for the train.

It was actually a quarter past nine when she got to Durnham, and it took her nearly half an hour to find anyone who remembered a young lady in a bright green dress who had got out of the London train two hours before. It was a porter who remembered, and he was quite positive that the young lady had crossed the platform and got into the Lexington train, which was waiting there.

Helena took a ticket to Lexington, with bewilderment and anxiety struggling for the upper hand. The anxiety came uppermost. The girl had had a shock. She, Helena, had deliberately subjected her to this shock. Suppose it had unbalanced her. Such things happened. She began to recall with horror that Valentine had not spoken a single word after they got into the taxi together.

Lexington is a large junction. Trying to trace a green dress seemed to be a pretty hopeless business. This time it was the waiting-room attendant who remembered it.

“Oh, yes, ma'am—set here for half an hour she did, and told me she was expecting a gentleman to meet her. And he met her, and they went off together.… No, I couldn't describe him, because I can't rightly say I saw him.”

“You didn't see him?”

“Not to say
see
. She was setting here and asking me if I knew Liverpool—because that's where she was going—when all of a sudden the door opened and she says, ‘There he is!' and off she runs.”

“But you didn't see him?”

“No more than a bowler' at and an 'and.”

The journey to Liverpool was a nightmare. Helena, tired, remorseful, and thoroughly alarmed, arrived there at midnight. At the third hotel she visited, her urgency produced a waiter who remembered serving a lady in a green dress; she had arrived with a gentleman at ten o'clock and they had had coffee in the lounge; he thought they were staying in the hotel.

Reference to the register showed the last entry as Mr. and Mrs. Trotter. For a moment Helena Ryven saw it through a thick mist. Then she had herself in hand again. She asked questions.

“Had the lady a wedding ring?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Was she in the hotel?”

The waiter didn't think so. They were talking over their coffee and he could not help hearing what they said. Also they had asked him whether they could come in late. He thought they were going out to visit friends. They might have returned or they might not.

Helena found herself addressing the night porter.

The night porter could only say that he had not seen them come in; and on the top of his saying so the swing-door opened, and into the rather dimly lighted hall came a dark young man in glasses and a girl in a green dress. She was of about Valentine's height and of about Valentine's figure. But she wasn't Valentine.

CHAPTER XVII

It was not Valentine who had left the train at Durnham. Valentine had never reached Durnham. When the great idea entered her mind, it took command of it to such an extent that she acted exactly as if everything that she had to do had been carefully planned. She got up out of her seat, passed through the half open door into the corridor, opened the outer door, and jumped out just as the train began to move. She was not seen, because everyone who might have seen her was looking in the opposite direction. On the other platform a woman was running to catch the train; she was panting and wrenching at the door of Mrs. Ryven's compartment at the moment when Valentine shut the door behind her and began to walk quickly towards the barrier.

The train throbbed, clanked, and gathered speed. Valentine did not even turn her head to look in it. She had her ticket, because Helena, in an educational mood, had made her take it herself. The little snipped square was in her hand. She presented it at the barrier, and the man said,

“You've missed your train.”

He said it rather severely, and she felt obliged to explain:

“I didn't want to go by it really.”

“Next one doesn't go till seven-twenty, and you'll have to change at Durnham.”

Valentine thanked him politely and put the ticket away in her purse. Then she walked to the line of waiting taxis, gave Eustace's address just as she had heard Helena Ryven give it, and in a moment was being driven out of the station.

It was all quite, quite easy. The horrible sick feeling had gone, and the weight on her heart had lifted. If she married, she could give the money back; and if she married Eustace, there would be no difficulty about giving it back. This was the great idea that had come into her head as she sat in the train. She would marry Eustace; then the money would all belong to Eustace again.

She felt very happy indeed, and she hardly gave a thought to Helena Ryven. Great ideas are like that; they catch you up and whirl you away so fast that you have no time to think about other people. Also somewhere deep down in her mind was the unformulated impression that Aunt Helena might say “No,” or that Aunt Helena might say “Wait.” She might say “No,” because she did not really like Valentine, and she might say “Wait,” because that was what she nearly always did say. Valentine was tolerably sure that Aunt Helena would not feel very enthusiastic about a great idea unless it were her own great idea. She wasn't troubling at all about Aunt Helena. She was going to see Eustace, and she was going to find out whether he would like to marry her at once, so that he could have the money and go on with his work. She felt no embarrassment, because people under the influence of a great idea are never embarrassed. She was going to his flat. She wanted to see him alone, and she wanted to see him at once. The great idea made her feel that she could not possibly wait till to-morrow, or the day after, or next week. She was going to see Eustace at once, and when they had got everything fixed up, he could telephone to his mother and tell her all about it.

The taxi drew up, and she got out and paid the man as composedly as if she had been going about London by herself for years. Eustace's flat was on the fourth floor. She walked up the stairs because the automatic lift was out of order, and when she had almost reached the fourth floor she heard someone behind her, running. Next moment a man rushed past her and on, taking three steps at a time. She heard the click of a key, and, running too, came up on to the landing to see the door of Eustace's flat standing ajar.