Trial and Error (11 page)

“That woman must have wrecked dozens of lives in her time. She's wrecked my career, I expect you've heard.”

“Well, yes, I. . .”

“I really can act, you know,” said the girl with complete simplicity. “But of course she had to get rid of me, once she'd got Father in tow. Anyhow that doesn't matter. The point is, she's not going to be allowed to wreck Viola's life. Vincent's a bit of an ass anyway, and I really believe that woman could get round the devil himself.”

“Yes,” said Mr Todhunter. “But how do you propose to stop it?”

“I don't know. But I will. You see if I don't. Mr. Todhunter, things are much worse than I let out to you just now. You see, I didn't know how much you knew. Mother's even having to sell the house and furniture because she can't get a penny out of Father. And she won't take him to court. I advised her to. I thought just the threat might bring him to his senses. But you know what Mother is.”

“No—er—as a matter of fact I haven't that pleasure.”

“Oh well, she's all stiff and proud and that sort of thing. She'd far sooner starve to death, in a thoroughly ladylike way, then do anything so vulgar as haul Father into any sort of court, even the divorce one. And of course he's trading on it. In a way, I mean, because, poor darling of an idiot that he is, he doesn't know what he
is
doing. I tried to get Mother to appeal to him on the grounds of Faith, but she won't even do that.”

“Faith?” repeated Mr Todhunter, puzzled.

Miss Farroway seemed surprised. “Yes, you know. Faith. Oh, I see. You don't know. Well, Faith's my small sister. Thirteen. And Mother told me about a couple of months ago that our charming cook got drunk one day and blurted out to Faith the whole story. It's been a bit of a shock to all of us, but just fancy what it must have been to a sensitive child of thirteen. Mother could hardly get her to go to school the next day, she was so ashamed. And of course she's brooding over it and getting quite ill, Mother says. It's damnable, Mr Todhunter—damnable! And all because of that damned woman's vanity and greed.”

Mr Todhunter was old fashioned enough still to feel mildly shocked at hearing oaths on the lips of pretty girls, but if ever there was an occasion on which such a thing was justified, it was this one.

“Dear me! Tut, tut!” he muttered inadequately. “Yes indeed. Dear me, no. I had no idea things were so bad. And your career too . . .”

“Oh, the career,” said the girl impatiently. “Yes, that's annoying enough, but no real importance. What
is
maddening about that is the fact that as an actress I could have been earning just three times what I'm getting as a shop assistant, and so could have sent Mother about ten times what I'm able to send her now.”

“Yes, that is so. Of course. Dear me, a shop assistant . . . I—er—understand it's very tiring work?” said Mr Todhunter vaguely. “Standing behind a counter. . .”

“Oh well,” smiled the girl, “I don't exactly have to do that. I'm one of those superior young ladies in black frocks who lurk languidly in our smaller dress shops; only we don't call them ‘dress shops' of course, we call them ‘modistes.' Like this.” She jumped up and gave an imitation of one of the young ladies in question dealing with a plump matron from the provinces, so humorously lifelike that Mr Todhunter, who had never been in a modiste's in his life, instantly felt that he knew all about them.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “upon my word, you're as good as Ruth Draper.” For Mr Todhunter, who went to see Miss Draper every time she was in London, this was almost extravagant praise.

Laughing a little, the girl sat down. “Oh no; Ruth Draper's unique. Though it's sweet of you to say so.”

“Anyhow, you can certainly act,” affirmed Mr Todhunter.

“Oh yes,” agreed Felicity Farroway somewhat ruefully. “I can act, all right. And a fat lot of use that is to me—and to Mother.”

“Yes,” said Mr Todhunter, a little embarrassed. “And—er—that reminds me. You must allow . . . old friend of your father's . . . haven't pleasure of her acquaintance, but would esteem it a privilege . . . er . . . yes . . .” Subsiding into incoherence, Mr Todhunter drew out his chequebook and fountain pen and, blushing till his ears glowed, wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds.

“Oh!”
gasped the girl, when Mr Todhunter handed it to her with a mumbled request that she send it on to her mother. “Oh, you
angel!
You sweet lamb! You perfect
pet!
” And, jumping out of her chair, she threw her lovely arms round Mr Todhunter's stringy neck and kissed him with the utmost fervour.

“Hey! Really! Well, dear me!” cackled Mr Todhunter in high glee.

Soon afterwards he refused with regret a most pressing invitation to stay to lunch (being his own housekeeper, he knew the difficulties of an unexpected guest when the shops are closed) and took his leave, not a little pleased with himself and not a little perturbed too.

CHAPTER VI

It must be admitted that during these days Mr Todhunter was thoroughly enjoying himself.

He was genuinely and quite altruistically worried about the Farroway situation, and the thought of that unhappy child in Yorkshire distressed him; but nevertheless the part he was playing gave him a good deal of pleasure. For one thing, it made him feel important. Mr Todhunter could not remember ever having been made to feel important before, and the sensation was by no means unpleasant. All these people—Viola Palmer, charming Felicity Farroway, even to some extent the gloomy Mr Budd—had all looked towards Mr Todhunter as though he could really
do
something. Mr Todhunter knew that in a mild and perhaps unconscious way he had encouraged this view. The knowledge made him feel slightly guilty but in no way spoilt his pleasure.

For if (he thought) I really were going to do something, it would no doubt turn out all wrong and leave everyone much worse off than before. How admirable therefore to savour the situation, even to reap the kudos, and yet to do no one any harm.

Such reflections made Mr Todhunter feel extremely detached and superior and still were able to leave him with the sneaking conviction that he could have done something very helpful had he liked. But of course he did not like. That had all been decided long ago. Much better to stand outside all these foolish imbroglios. A philosophic detachment combined with a sympathetic interest; that was the only correct attitude for a man in his position.

It was therefore still with the outlook of a professor of entomology studying an ant heap, and with no intention at all of becoming an ant himself and burdening himself with huge eggs to be carried about wildly for no apparent purpose, that Mr Todhunter presented himself at the Norwood-cum-Farroway flat on Tuesday He was not exactly looking forward to the meeting, for Miss Jean Norwood was the kind of person who made him feel as if his skin were crinkling all down his back, but he anticipated a certain amount of sardonic amusement in observing her efforts to enslave him. That an attempt would be made to enslave him Mr Todhunter was convinced. The technique was apparently the same as had already been employed in Farroway's case. Whether he was going to pretend to be enslaved or not Mr Todhunter was not certain, though he fancied that the role would be rather too difficult for him to sustain; it all depended how much his skin crinkled. But that he was going basely to deceive the lady and sustain the fiction of his great wealth Mr Todhunter was determined. He thought she deserved that at least.

He therefore arrived for lunch, malignantly looking his very worst (and that was saying a good deal), in the same misshapen old suit that Miss Norwood had wrinkled her pretty nose at before, wearing a hat so dilapidated and ancient that even a real professor might have realised that something was a trifle wrong with it, and with the same identical egg stain (unaccountably not yet removed) still decorating his waistcoat. Wealthy eccentricity was Mr Todhunter's theme, and he cackled maliciously to himself as he pressed the bell button and prepared to act the part as he conceived it.

2

Mr Todhunter had to admit afterwards that, whatever her shortcomings in other respects, Miss Norwood knew how to order a lunch. (It did not occur to him that Miss Norwood might never have ordered it at all but left everything to her thoroughly competent and extremely expensive cook.) The trouble was that, like the cocktails which preceded it, practically everything had to be refused by such a conscientious invalid as Mr Todhunter. When at last his hostess asked him in despair what he would really like, Mr Todhunter asked modestly whether he might be accommodated with a glass of milk and a rusk. That this was not a promising basis for attempted enslavement both hostess and guest could not but feel.

If, however, Mr Todhunter had conceived any highly coloured visions of an exiguously clad Miss Norwood languishing at him from a leopard-skin rug, he was disappointed. Nothing could have exceeded the decorum with which the proceedings after lunch were conducted. Miss Norwood, sipping her coffee, entertained her guest with a really intelligent commentary on contemporary theatrical matters; and Mr Todhunter, regretting that he had had to refuse coffee which smelt as good as this did, listened happily. To his surprise, he found himself quite at his ease. To his greater surprise, he found Miss Norwood quite a different person from the idea he had formed of her on his first visit. Not a single allusion was made to his supposed riches; gone were all the small coquetries and affectations which had jarred on him so when Farroway was present; here, one would have said, was a perfectly simple, charming and intelligent woman who was enjoying his company and perhaps might be hoping that he was enjoying hers. Mr Todhunter's caution, which had lasted all through lunch, slithered, slipped and melted
.
He relaxed; he unbent; he grew genial.

She
is
charming, he thought. Those people were wrong. This is no devil, but as natural and pleasant a lady as ever I've met. With a little time I might even fall in love with her myself.

He cackled.

“What are you laughing at, Mr Todhunter?” politely enquired his hostess.

“I was thinking that with a little time I might fall in love with you myself,” replied Mr Todhunter.

The lady smiled. “Don't do that. It would be such a bore for me. I should never fall in love with you, and you can't imagine how deadly boring it is for a woman to have a man in love with her when she can't feel that way about him.”

“It must be indeed,” agreed Mr Todhunter earnestly.

Miss Norwood lifted her arm in the air and allowed the sleeve to fall back from it. She contemplated the slender white column with an absent air.

“Men are so odd when they're in love,” she reflected. “They seem to think that the very act of being in love gives them certain proprietary rights; certainly the right to be jealous. At least they don't actually think it, because they can't think at all when they're in that state, poor dears.”

“Ha, ha,” cackled Mr Todhunter. “No, I suppose they can't. Well, I've never been in that state myself, I'm glad to say.”

“You've never been in love, Mr Todhunter?”

“No, never.”

Miss Norwood clapped her elegant hands. “But this is marvelous! I do believe you're the person I've been looking for—oh, I don't know how long. And I'd quite given up hope of ever finding him. Oh, do say it's true, Mr Todhunter.”

“What's true?” asked Mr Todhunter affably.

“Why, that you and I can be just simple, ordinary
friends,
without any boring complications. Will you be friends with me, Mr Todhunter?”

“I sincerely hope I may be,” Mr Todhunter replied with something like fervour.

“Good! Then that's settled. Now, what shall we do to celebrate? I can give you a box for
Fallen Petals
of course, and I shall. But that's so ordinary. Oh, I know! Let's make a blind promise, shall we? We'll each ask the other for a boon and promise to grant it, whatever it is. There, I call that a real thrill. Will you agree, if I do?”

“Do you mean, no reservations of any kind?” asked Mr Todhunter, his caution popping up its head again.

“Absolutely none. Have you the courage? I have.” Miss Norwood really seemed quite excited. She leaned forward in her chair, her enormous eyes (which Mr Todhunter remembered with shame that he had once thought naked and indecent) alight with a childlike pleasure. “Have you, Mr Todhunter?” she repeated.

Mr Todhunter's caution made a final grab for the side, lost its hold and disappeared under the water.

“Yes,” he said with a smile which on anyone else he would have considered just fatuous. Mr. Todhunter really was behaving very foolishly.

“Oh, how sporting of you! Very well, that's a bargain. We've promised, remember. Now, you ask me first.”

“No, no,” cackled Mr Todhunter inanely. “Ladies first. You ask me.”

“Very well.” The lady closed her lustrous eyes, placed the tips of her encarmined fingers together and considered. “Now, what shall it be? My first real friend. . . what shall I ask him?”

Suddenly caution, which Mr Todhunter had thought safely submerged, popped up an unexpected head and addressed him in blunt terms. “You adjectival fool, don't you see she's been playing a game with you? She's going to ask for a diamond necklace or something—and you, poor noodle, have undertaken to give it her. Didn't everyone tell you what she was?”

Horribly alarmed, Mr Todhunter clutched at the arms of his chair and wondered desperately how he could save the situation.

The lady opened her eyes and smiled at him. “I've decided.”

Mr Todhunter gulped. “Yes?” he asked shakily.

“I ask you to dedicate your next book to me in these words, ‘To my friend, Jean Norwood.' ”

“Oh!” Mr Todhunter clutched at his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Relief, not the agony which went before, had bespangled it with moisture. “Yes, certainly. Very glad indeed . . . great honour . . .” Mr Todhunter had once published, at his own expense, a critical study of the work of an unknown eighteenth-century diarist, whom he had acclaimed as the equal of Evelyn and Pepys. The book had sold forty-seven copies and the diarist was still unknown. There was no intention in Mr Todhunter's mind of ever publishing another, but he saw no need to tell Miss Norwood that.

“Now you!” Miss Norwood laughed delightedly. “Whatever it is, I'll grant it, you know. That's rather brave, I think—for a woman. But I always flatter myself I can judge character. Now, what is it to be?”

A sudden idea jumped into Mr Todhunter's mind. Without stopping to think, he said:

“Send Farroway back to his wife in Yorkshire.”

Miss Norwood stared at him, her eyes widening till Mr Todhunter could hardly believe that any eyes could be so enormous. Then she laughed, simply and naturally.

“But my dear man, that's just what I've been trying to do for the last six months. I can't tell you how much I wish he'd do it. But he simply won't go.”

“He'll do anything you tell him,” said Mr Todhunter mulishly. “And you promised. Send him.”

“I'll send him,” laughed Miss Norwood lightly. “I promise you that. But I can't promise that he'll go.”

“You can make him if you try. I ask you to make sure he goes.”

Miss Norwood's fine eyebrows lifted for a second, then dropped. She smiled—a smile different from all the others that Mr Todhunter had seen. It was, as a matter of fact, a provocative, pleased, quietly triumphant, faintly deriding smile, but Mr Todhunter recognised none of that.

“Mr Todhunter,” said Miss Norwood softly, “just why are you so anxious that Nicholas should retire back to the north? Tell me, between friends.”

“Oh, come,” protested Mr Todhunter. “Don't tell me you can't see that for yourself.”

“Perhaps I can,” murmured Miss Norwood, and her smile became a little intensified.

“Then you'll make him go?” asked Mr Todhunter earnestly.

“He shall go. I promise you,” replied Miss Norwood with an earnestness matching Mr Todhunter's own.

“Thank you,” said Mr Todhunter simply.

He beamed in happy relief upon his hostess. Mr Todhunter had quite decided now that Miss Norwood was a thoroughly maligned woman. It was the penalty, he supposed, of greatness. Jealousy, no doubt, and all that sort of thing. Anyone who really knew her could see at once what a sweet nature she had.

“But I think,” remarked the maligned woman with an attractively wicked little laugh, “that you rather threw your opportunity away, Mr. Todhunter, didn't you? And it's not the sort of opportunity that occurs twice. I was quite in your hands, you know—well, I mean, I might have been.”

“But that would hardly have been fair,” replied Mr Todhunter roguishly.

Miss Norwood tilted her charming head. “Isn't all fair in war and—other things?”

Mr Todhunter cackled happily and felt the very devil of a fellow. For the first time in six weeks he had completely forgotten his aneurism.

Mr Todhunter always had thought the best of people.

3

It was past three o'clock when Mr Todhunter got up to leave, and he did so then with reluctance.

“It has been delightful, Miss Norwood,” he said, shaking his hostess's hand. “I can't recall when I enjoyed a luncheon more.”

“Oh, come,” smiled the lady. “To my friends I'm Jean. ‘Miss Norwood' sounds just too grim for words.”

“And my name is Lawrence,” crowed Mr Todhunter, apparently unaware that his hand was being held.

They parted with assurances of a further meeting in the very near future.

It was only as he was going down the stairs that Mr Todhunter recalled the delusion of which his hostess had been the victim. Something had been said about Miss Norwood visiting him next, in Richmond. She would expect a palace, and she would find—well, not a hovel but a semidetached Victorian house of quite revolting aspect. It was not fair to let her remain under the impression that he was a rich man. Not that it would make any difference to so generous a nature, of course, but . . . well, one simply did not deceive one's friends.

Mr Todhunter turned and sought the electric lift again.

It is a matter for question whether Miss Norwood's life might have been saved had Mr Todhunter been not quite so punctilious. Had he written his information, for instance, or even telephoned it, Miss Norwood would just have dropped him quietly, Nicholas Farroway would probably have returned in any case to the north, for, having come to the end of his cash, he was of little practical use and therefore interest to anyone in London, and Mr Todhunter would duly have died at the appointed time of his aneurism. But all this simple arrangement was shattered by Mr Todhunter's regard for the requirements of friendship.

For the door of Miss Norwood's flat stood just a little ajar when Mr Todhunter reached it. In point of fact the lock was defective and should have been put right that morning, and the locksmith, in failing to keep his promise to do so, had driven a screw into Miss Norwood's coffin as surely as if he had wielded the screwdriver with his own hands. Mr Todhunter was therefore able to hear only too clearly certain observations which Miss Norwood, in a voice very different from that in which she had addressed him, was calling through the open door of her bedroom to the maid, Marie, in the sitting room.