Back Aa

Lady of the Basement Flat

<h3>Chapter Three.</h3> <h4>Charmion Fane Intervenes.</h4> During the next days the idea of making my home in London, and playing fairy godmother to the tenants in a block of flats, took an ever-deepening root in my heart. I pondered on it incessantly and worked out plans as to ways and means. Bridget should go with me as general factotum, for my method of living must be as simple as possible, since the neighbours would be more likely to confide their troubles to the ear of one who was, apparently, in the same position of life as themselves. Smart clothing would be unnecessary also, and a hundred and one luxuries of a leisured life. I mentally drew up a list of things taboo, and regarded it with—let me be honest—lingering regret. I was quite, quite willing to deny myself, but it is folly to pretend that it didn’t cost a pang. I like good clothes and dainty meals, and motor-cars, and space, and luxury, and people to wait upon me when I’m tired, and unlimited supplies of flowers, and fruit, and hot water, to say nothing of my own little share of variety and fun. Down at the bottom of my heart, a lurking doubt of myself stirred into life, and spoke with insistent voice:— “All very well, Evelyn, but can you keep it up? Are you brave enough, strong enough, unselfish enough to give up all that has hitherto made your life, and to be satisfied with living through others? Won’t the time come when nature will rebel, and demand a turn for yourself? And then, Evelyn, then what are you going to do? Could you ever respect yourself again if, having put your shoulder to the wheel, you drew back and lapsed into selfish indifference?” As for Aunt Emmeline, she turned on the cold tap, and kept it on at a continuous trickle. “Exaggerated nonsense! You always were exaggerated, Evelyn, from a child. Be kind, of course; that’s only your duty, but I call it officious and presumptuous to interfere in other people’s lives. You of all people! At your age! With your looks—” “What have my looks to do with it?” “My dear, it is not your fault, but I’ve said it before, and I say it again—you are showy! There is something about you which makes people stare. Dear Kathie could pass along quietly, or sit in a corner of a room and be conveniently overlooked, but you—I am not paying you a compliment, my dear, I consider it is a misfortune!—you take the eye! Wherever you go, people will notice you and gossip about your movements. At twenty-six, and with your appearance, I ask you candidly, as aunt to niece—do you consider yourself a suitable person to live alone, and minister to widowers?” “Well, if you put it like that, I don’t! But what of the children who shriek, and have holes in their stockings? Mightn’t they like me better just because I am young and look nice?” I laughed as I spoke, but Aunt Emmeline was so pleased that I showed some glimmerings of reason, that she said suavely:— “Wait ten years, dear! Till your hair is grey! You will age early with those sharp features. In ten or twelve years you can do as you please.” I thought, but did not say:— “My dear aunt, but I shall do it now!” A week passed by, while I pondered and worried, and then at last came a “lead” from without. A morning dawned when Bridget brought my letters with my early tea, and set them down on the table by my bed. “Four letters this morning, and only one of the lot you’ll be caring to see.” Bridget takes a deep interest in my correspondence, and always introduces a letter with a note of warning or congratulation: “That bothering creature is worrying at you again!” “There’s a laugh you’ll be having over Master George’s fun!” “You paid that bill before. Don’t be letting them come over you with their tricks!” It is, of course, reprehensible behaviour on the part of a maid, presumptuous, familiar, interfering; but Bridget is Bridget, and I might as soon command her not to use her tongue, as to stop taking an interest in anything that concerns “Herself”. As a matter of fact, I don’t try. Servility, and decorum, and a machine-like respect are to be hired for cash at any registry office; but Bridget’s red-hot devotion, her child-like, unshakable conviction that everything that Miss Evelyn does and says, or doesn’t say and doesn’t do, is absolutely right—ah, that is beyond price! No poor forms and ceremony shall stand between Bridget and me! I lifted the letters, and had no difficulty in selecting the one which would “give me joy”. Strangely enough, it was written by one of the newest of my friends, one whose very existence had been unknown to me two years before. We had met at a summer hotel where Kathie and I chanced to be staying, and never shall I forget my first sight of Charmion Fane as she trailed into the dining-room and seated herself at a small table opposite our own. She was so tall and pale and shadowy in the floating grey chiffon cloak that covered her white dress, she lay back in her chair with such languor, and drooped her heavy eyelids with an air of such superfine indifference to her fellow-men, that Kathie and I decided then and there that she was succumbing to the effects of a dangerous operation, and—with care—might be expected to last six or eight weeks. We held fast to this conclusion till the next morning, when we met our invalid striding over the moors, clad in abbreviated tweeds, and the manniest of hard felt hats. Kathie said that she was plain. I said, “Well, not plain exactly, but queer!” At dinner the same night, we amended the verdict, and voted her “rather nice”. Twenty-four hours later she represented our ideal of female charm, and we figuratively wept and rent our garments because she exhibited no interest in our charming selves. An inspection of the visitors’ book proved that her name was “Mrs Fane,” but that was not particularly enlightening, especially as no home address was given. But on the third day, just as we were beginning to concoct dark schemes by means of which we could force acquaintanceship, the “grey lady” entered the lounge, marched unhesitatingly across to our corner, stood staring down at us as we sat on the sofa, and said shortly:— “This is ridiculous! We are wasting time! We three are the only really interesting people in the hotel; we are dying to know each other—and we know it! Come for a walk!” And lo! in another minute we were on the high road, Kathie on one side, I on the other, gazing at her with adoring eyes, while she said briskly:— “My name is Charmion Fane. I am quite alone. No children. Thirty-two. I don’t live anywhere in particular. Just prowl round from one place to another. If there are any other dull, necessary details that you want to know, ask!—and get them over. Then we can talk!” We laughed, and replied with similar biographical sketches on our own account, and then we did talk—about books, and travels, and hobbies, and mankind in general, and gradually, growing more and more intimate (or rather conscious of our intimacy, for we were friends after the first hour!) of our personal hopes, fears, difficulties, and mental outlooks. When we came in, Kathie and I faced each other in our bedroom, almost incoherent with pleasure and excitement. “Well! What an afternoon! My dear, isn’t she—” Kathie waved her hands to express a superlative beyond the power of words. “She is!” “The most fascinating, the most interesting, the most original—” “And she likes us, too! As much as we like her. Isn’t it glorious?” “She hasn’t spoken to another soul. How could we have called her plain! Evelyn, did you notice that she never spoke of her husband? She wears grey and violet, so he has probably been dead for some years, but she never referred to him in the slightest possible way.” “Would it be likely, Kathie, in our very first talk?” “Yes!” declared Kathie sturdily. “Not intentionally, perhaps, but with ordinary people it would have slipped out. ‘We went to Italy. My husband liked this or that.’ She never advanced even as far as the ‘we’. She must have been dreadfully, dreadfully fond of him!” I wondered! The death of a beloved husband or wife is a devastating blow; but when the memory is beautiful, time softens it into a hallowed sweetness. It is the bitter sorrow which refuses to be healed, which fills the heart with a ceaseless unrest. Not even to Kathie would I express my doubts, but the conviction weighed upon me that the cloud which hung over Charmion Fane was the remembrance of unhappiness rather than joy! For the next fortnight the greater part of our time was spent in Charmion’s company; generally we were a party of three, but in every day there came a precious hour or so when I had her alone, and hugged the secret confidence that the tête-à-tête was as welcome to her as to myself. Everything that was to be told about my own uneventful life she knew before many days were passed, but of her own past she never spoke. From incidental remarks we found that she had been the godchild of a well-known politician long since dead, and that at eighteen she had been presented at Court, which two discoveries proved useful, as they were enough to convince the aunts that Charmion was a safe and desirable acquaintance. Before she was twenty the scene had apparently shifted to America, where she had lived for several years, and presumably—though she never said so—had met her husband and spent her brief married life. Widowed—childless—thirty-two. Those few words supplied all that I knew of Charmion Fane, except the obvious facts which were patent to the eye. She was oddly undemonstrative, and for all her charm had a manner which made it impossible to approach one step nearer than she herself decreed. Even when it came to the moment of saying good-bye, I could not tell whether she wished to continue our friendship, or would be content to let it drop as a passing incident of travel; but to my joy she held on to my hand with a grip which was almost an appeal, and her thin, finely-cut lips twitched once and again. She looked full into my face with her strange eyes, the pupil large, the iris a light grey, ringed with an edge of black, and said simply, “I’ll miss you! But—it will go on. We will always be friends.” That was all, and during the two years which had passed since that day we had met only once, for another short summer holiday, and repeated invitations to The Clough had received the same refusal—“I am not ready for visit-making.” Letters I had received in plenty, and she had sent Kathie a handsome—really an extraordinarily handsome gift on her marriage, and to me the dearest of letters, understanding everything without being told, entering into my varying moods with exquisite comprehension. In return, I had poured out my heart, telling her of my loneliness, my difficulty about the next step, and now, at last, here came the reply. I sent Bridget away, drank my tea at a gulp, and settled down to read in luxurious enjoyment. It was a longer letter than I had yet received, and I had a premonition that it would clear the way. But I did not realise how epoch-making it was to prove. “Dear Evelyn Wastneys,—I’ve been through it, my dear, and I know! It doesn’t bear talking of, so we won’t talk, but just pass on. What next? you ask. I have been trying to solve that problem for the last four years, and am no nearer a solution, so I can’t tell you, my dear, but I have an idea which might possibly provide a half-way house for us both till the clouds lift. “This summer I happened—literally happened!—upon a small country place about two hours’ rail from town. An agent would describe it as a ‘desirable gentleman’s residence, comprising four entertaining rooms and eight bedrooms, glass, stabling, and grounds of four acres, artistically laid out’. But never mind the agent; take it from me that that house is ideal. Long, low, irregular rooms just waiting to be made beautiful; no set garden, but a wilderness of flowers, and a belt of real woodland; dry soil, all the sun that is to be had, and an open country-side agreeably free from villadom. I was tempted—badly tempted, but could not face settling down alone. Only last week the agent wrote to me again. “Evelyn, we fit each other; we are friends by instinct. How would you like to take that house with me for the next two or three years, and furnish it between us with our best ‘bits’? “Understand, before we go any further—not for a moment do I suggest that we settle down to a definite home, and a jog-trot country life. I couldn’t stand it for one, and I doubt whether you could either, but—we suit each other, Evelyn; there’s that mysterious psychological link between us which makes it good to be together. I have a feeling that we could put in some good times in that house! “Financially, it would be an economy—we should save storage of furniture, and have a convenient refuge in case of illness. The place is cheap, and could be run with quite a small staff, and would be a pleasant means of returning hospitalities. We could settle down for as long as it suited us—three months, two months, a few weeks, as the case might be—and then, when the impulse to roam came upon us, we should simply rise up and depart. I should never ask where you were going. If you asked me, I should not reply. Probably I should not know. On certain months of the year the house might become the exclusive property of one owner, when she might invite her own friends, and disport herself as she pleased. Again, we might devote a certain period to charity, and entertain lame dogs. There’s no end to the good and the pleasure that might be got out of that house. ‘Pastimes’ is its name; isn’t it quaint and suggestive? And on the enclosed sheet you will behold elaborate calculations of the sum which it would cost to run. The figures are over the mark, for I never delude myself by under-calculating in money matters. For my own part, I can pay up, and have enough over to wander at will. Can you do the same? If not, say no at once, and the project is buried for evermore. You must not be tied. I refuse to be a party to shutting you up in the depths of the country for the whole year round. You have had enough of that. What you need now is movement, and the jostle of other lives; but if, in addition, you can afford a rest-house, a summer lodgment, a sanatorium for mind and body, and a meeting-place with a friend, then pack your box, Evelyn, come and look at Pastimes with me! “Your friend, Charmion Fane.” I threw down the letter and seized the sheet of calculations in an agony of eagerness. A glance at the final addition brought relief. Yes! I could do it—pay my full share, and still have a handsome margin left over. Once satisfied on that point, there could not be a moment’s hesitation, for it would be glorious to share a house with Charmion, and to have her companionship for some months of each year. My whole life was transfixed by the prospect, and yet she was right! I could not have accepted the offer if it had meant a permanent settling down to a luxurious country life. I was too restless, too eager for experience, too anxious to discover my very own work, and to do it in my very own way. The picture of that old English house, with its panelled rooms, set in a surrounding wealth of flowers and green, gripped hold of my imagination; but here was an odd thing. It was powerless to banish another picture, in which there was no rose and no blue, but only dull neutral tints—the picture of a basement flat in a grey London road, with electric burners instead of sun, and for view, a vista of passing feet belonging to bodies cut off from sight. I could not, even for Charmion, give up the prospect of that flat, and all that it had come to mean; but—let me acknowledge it honestly—it was balm and relief to know that I could have a means of escape, and that at culminating moments of weariness, when everything seemed wry and disappointing, and the whole weight of seven storeys seemed to be pressing down on my brains, I could bang my door, turn the key, and fly off to peace and beauty, and a healing pandering to personal tastes! Woman is a complex character, and I am no better than my kind. I feel it in me to be an angel of self-denial and patience for, say, the third of the year! I know for a certain fact that I should have a bad lapse if I tried to keep it up for the remaining thirds. Now, thanks to Charmion, the way was made easy, and I could put my hand to the plough without fear of drawing back. I leapt out of bed in a tingle of excitement. Impossible to lie still when things were happening at such a rapid rate. The sun was shining, and, looking at a belt of trees in the distance, I could catch a faint shimmer of green. It is perhaps the most intoxicating moment of the year, when that first gleam of spring greets the eye, and this special year it held an added exhilaration, for it seemed to speak of the budding of fresh personal life. I laughed; I sang; the depression of the last weeks fell from me like a cloak, and I faced the future glad and undismayed. With the reading of that letter had come an end to indecision. I now knew exactly what I was about to do. Write to Charmion, and fix the earliest possible date for a meeting in town. From town we would inspect Pastimes, the while I instituted inquiries for a suitable flat. The two homes secured, I would then return to The Clough, and divide my furniture into two batches, send them off to their several destinations, and follow myself, hot foot. It would take some time to put both dwellings in order, but it would be interesting work. I love the making of interiors, and if Pastimes must be fitted beautifully to do justice to itself, still more would it be needful to turn the uninspiring “flat” into a haven of comfort and cheer. At this precise moment my prancing brought me in front of the long mirror, and what I beheld therein brought me up with a gasp. Twenty-six is quite a venerable age, but at moments of happiness and exhilaration it has a disconcerting trick of switching back to seventeen. That smiling, bright-eyed, pink-and-white-cheeked girl in the glass, with two long pigtails of hair hanging to her waist, looked really absurdly juvenile! Given a small stretch of imagination, you might have believed that she was a flapper preparing for her last term at school; by no possible mental effort could you have placed her as a douce maiden lady, living alone in London, devoting herself to good works in a manner as adventurous as it was unusual. Mothers of children would insinuate that I was a child myself; troubled matrons would purse their lips, and say, “I can’t tell you, my dear. You are too young.” Certainly, oh, most certainly, men of all ages would put me down as a designing minx! In vain industry, self-sacrifice and generosity—that young face, that bright youthful colouring would nullify all my efforts. It was true—it was true! I looked, as Aunt Eliza had pointed out, a dozen years too young for the part. People would stare, people would talk, people would advise me to go back and live with my aunts, and wait ten years. In a frenzy of impatience I seized the two long plaits, and twisted them now this way, now that. Astonishing the difference which hair-dressing can make! I have read of a heroine who passed successfully as her own twin sister by the simple device of plainly brushed hair and puritanical garments, the sister, of course, sporting marcelle waves and Parisian costumes. I dipped my brush in the water-jug and dragged back my own hair in a plastered mass, clamping the plaits to my head. I looked like a Dutch doll! Clean and chubby, and, alas! considerably younger than before. I parted it in the middle, and glued it over my ears. I looked like a naughty schoolgirl, who had had her hair dressed by a maiden aunt. I piled the plaits in a coronet over my forehead; I looked like a portrait of a Norwegian damsel dressed for her bridal. I threw down the brush in disgust, and stamped with impatience. No use! Not a bit of use! All the hair-dressing in the world could not make me look old, or even approximately middle-aged. The ugliest flannel blouse that was ever made, while it would certainly be hideously unbecoming, could not add one year, let alone ten, to my age. It was a bitter blow. All that morning I went about pondering the desperate question of how to look old. Aunt Emmeline had prophesied that I should know soon enough, “with those beaked features,” but I wanted to know now, not in any permanent, disagreeable fashion, but as a kind of sleight-of-hand trick, by which I could be mature one day and the next in blooming youth. Elderly in London, young at Pastimes. A douce, unremarkable “body” in the basement flat, and in Surrey a lady of leisure, rings on her fingers and bells on her toes! Aunt Eliza would have cried once more, “Oh, don’t be silly!” if I had confronted her with such a problem. I said, “Don’t be silly!” to myself many times over in the course of that day, but I persisted in being silly all the same. At the back of my mind lingered the conviction that if I went on thinking long enough a solution would come. How could I manage to look old? I asked the question of myself every hour of the next few days. I asked it of everyone I met, and was fatuously assured that I demanded the impossible; at long last I asked it of old Bridget, whose sound common sense had come to my rescue times and again. “Sure, my dear, your husband will manage that for you!” was Bridget’s instant solution. “Not the husband I shall choose!” I replied with easy assurance. A moment’s pause was devoted to the problematical Prince Charming whose mission it would be to keep me young, then I asked tentatively:— “What shall I look like, Bridget, when I am old?” Bridget folded her arms and regarded me with a critical stare. “Your hair will turn grey, and them fine straight brows of yours will grow thin, or maybe fall out altogether, and leave you with none. An’ you’ll wear spectacles, and have lines round your eyes. But it’s neither the grey hairs nor the specs that spoils the looks. It’s not them that’s the worst!” I stared at her open-mouthed, trembling between shrinking and curiosity. “It’s the shape of the cheeks!” said Bridget darkly. “Yourself now, and the ladies of your age, it’s pretty, slim bits of faces you have, going to a peak at the chin. When you’re old, it runs to squares and doubles. Look to your cheeks, miss, if you wants to keep young!” She unfolded her arms, stretched them at full length, and comfortably folded them again. Her broad chest heaved in a cackle of amused reminiscence. “Sure, d’ye reminder Miss Kathleen when she play-acted the ould lady, the last Christmas party?” Poor old Bridget! She got the surprise of her life in my reception of that simple question. Jumping out of my chair, dancing round, whooping and hurraying “like a daft thing,” as she afterwards described my movements. Then to find herself at one moment enthusiastically patted on the back, and at the next to be pushed towards the door, and exhorted to hurry!—hurry!—to mount to the attic, and bring down the old tin box—well, it was disconcerting, to say the least of it, and Bridget’s dignity was visibly upset. She had forgotten that all the “make ups” which we had used for various Christmas festivals were stored away in that old tin box, and consequently could not guess that I was fired with an ambition to try on Kathie’s disguise forthwith. Ten minutes later I was standing before the glass and enthusiastically acclaiming the truth of Bridget’s statement, as I stared at the reflection of a spectacled dame with grizzled eyebrows, grey hair banded smoothly over the ears, and a bulging fullness at the base of each cheek! It was the cheeks that made the disguise! Spectacles and hair still left the personality of the face untouched; even the bushy eyebrows were but a partial disguise, but with the insertion of those small india-rubber pads came an utter and radical change. That chubby, square-faced woman was not Evelyn Wastneys. Never by any possibility could she see forty again. So far as propriety went, she might roam alone from one end of the world to the other. If she lived in the largest block of flats that was ever erected, her neighbours would regard her comings and goings with serene indifference. Admirable woman! She did not “take the eye”. I met her spectacled glance with a beam of approval. “I have it!—I have it! I must dress for the part! In London I’ll be a middle-aged aunt; in Surrey, a niece—my own niece and namesake, who, of her charity, consents to receive some of her auntie’s protégées and give them a good time!” The wildness, the audacity of the project made to me its chief appeal. My life interest had been so sheltered, so hedged round by convention, that at times it had seemed as though there was a wall of division between me and every other human creature. It was so difficult to show oneself in one’s real colours, to see and know other people as they really were. But now!—oh, what a unique and exhilarating experience it would be to taste at the same time the romance of youth and the freedom of age, to witness the different sides of other characters as exhibited in their treatment of aunt and niece. That one illuminating suggestion of Bridget’s has cleared the way. From the moment of hearing there had been no real hesitation; before night fell my plans were made, and a telegram to Charmion was speeding on its way. A new life lay before me—a dual life, teeming with interest and possibility. On one hand, my fate must be to some extent bound up with that of Charmion Fane, the most interesting and, in a sense, mysterious woman I had ever met; on the other, I was plunging into the unknown, and transforming myself into a new personality, to meet the new circumstances. I stared at myself in the glass and solemnly shook my grey head. “Evelyn, my dear, be prepared! You are going to have an adventurous time!” <hr /></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.