The pa.s.sage was the field of battle, and the narrow s.p.a.ce seemed to give not only an added virulence to the fight, but also an added grotesquery.
When Michael arrived at the head of the staircase, Alf had pinned his wife to the wall and was shouting to Poppy over his shoulder to get back into her own room. Poppy would go halfway, but always a new insult would occur to her, and she would return to fling it at Mrs. Murdoch, stabbing the while into its place again a hatpin which during her retreats she always half withdrew.
As for Mrs. Murdoch, she was by now weeping hysterically and occasionally making sudden forward plunges that collapsed like jelly.
Michael paused at the head of the stairs, wondering what to say. It seemed to him really rather a good thing that Alf was restraining his wife. It would be extremely unpleasant to have to separate the two women if they closed with each other. He had almost decided to retire upstairs again, when Poppy caught sight of him and at once turned her abuse in his direction.
"What"s it got to do with you?" she screamed. "What"s the good in you standing gaping there? We all know what _you_ are. We all know what she"s always going up to _your_ room for."
Mrs. Murdoch was heaving and puffing and groaning, and while Alf held her, his rolling eye with fierce and meaningless stare nearly made Michael laugh. However, he managed to be serious, and gravely advised Poppy to go to bed.
"Don"t you dare try to order me about!" she shrieked. "Keep your poncified ways for that fat old maggot which her husband can"t hardly hold, and I don"t blame him. She"s about as big as a omnibus."
"Oh, you wicked woman," sobbed Mrs. Murdoch. "Oh, you mean, hateful snake-in-the-gra.s.s! Oh, you filth!"
"Hold your jaw," commanded Alf. "If you don"t want me to punch into you."
"All day she"s in his room. Let him stand up and deny it if he can, the dirty tyke. Why don"t you punch into _him,_ Alf?" Poppy screamed.
Still that wobbling eye, blank and ferocious, was fixed upon vacancy.
"Let _me_ look after Mrs. Murdoch I _don"t_ think!" shouted Poppy. "And be a man, even if you can"t keep your old woman out of the lodger"s room. ---- ----! I wouldn"t half slosh his jaw in, if I was a man, the ---- ----!"
It was a question for Michael either of laughing outright or of being nauseated at the oaths streaming from that little woman"s thin magenta lips. He laughed. Even with her paint, she still looked so respectable.
When he began to laugh, he laughed so uncontrollably that he had to hold on to the rail of the bal.u.s.ters until they rattled like ribs.
Michael"s laughter stung the group to frenzied action. Mrs. Murdoch spat in her husband"s face, whereupon he immediately loosed his grip upon her shoulders. In a moment she and Poppy were clawing each other. Michael, though he was still laughing unquenchably, rushed downstairs to part them. He had an idea that both of the women instantly turned and attacked him. The hat-stand fell over: the scurfy front-door mat slid up and down the oil cloth: there was a reek of stale scent and dust and spirituous breath.
At last Michael managed to secure Poppy"s thin twitching arms and to hold her fast, though she was kicking him with sharp-heeled boots and he was weak with inward laughter. Mrs. Murdoch in the lull began f.e.c.klessly to gather together the strands of her disordered hair. Alf, who had gone to peep from the window of the ground-floor front in case a policeman"s bull"s-eye were glancing on Neptune Crescent, reappeared in the doorway.
"What a smell of gas!" he exclaimed nervously.
There was indeed a smell of gas, and Michael remembered that Poppy in her struggle had grasped the bracket. She must have dislocated the lead pipe rather badly, for the light was already dimming and the gas was rushing out fast. The tumultuous scene was allayed. Mr. Murdoch hurried to cut off the main. Poppy retired into her room, slammed and locked the door. Michael went upstairs to bed, and just as darkness descended upon the house he saw his landlady painfully trying to raise the hat-stand, while with the other arm she felt aimlessly for strands of tumbled hair.
Next morning Michael was surprised to see Mrs. Murdoch enter very cheerfully with his tea; her hair that so short a time since had seemed eternally intractable had now shriveled into subjugatory curl-papers: of last night"s tear-smudged face remained no memory in this beaming countenance.
"Quite a set-out we had last night, didn"t we?" she said expansively.
"But that Poppy, really, you know, she is the limit. Driving home with my old man in a hansom cab. There"s a nice game to get up to. I was bound to let her have it. I couldn"t have held myself in."
"I suppose you"ll get rid of her now," said Michael.
"Oh, well, she"s not so bad in some ways, and very quiet as a rule. She was a bit canned last night, and I suppose I"d had one or two myself.
Oh, well, it wouldn"t do, would it, if we never had a little enjoyment in this life?"
She left him wondering how he would ever be able to readjust his standards to the topsyturvy standards of the underworld, the topsyturvy feuds and reconciliations, the hatreds; the loves and jealousies and fears. But to-day he must leave this looking-gla.s.s world for a time.
Mrs. Murdoch was very much upset by his departure from Neptune Crescent.
"It seems such a pity," she said. "And just as I was beginning to get used to your ways. Oh, well, we"ll meet again some day, I hope, this side of the cemetery."
Michael felt some misgivings about ordering a hansom after last night, but Mrs. Murdoch went cheerfully enough to fetch one. He drove away from Neptune Crescent, waving to her where she stood in the small doorway looking very large under that rusty frail veranda. He also waved rather maliciously to Poppy, as he caught sight of her sharp nose pressed against the panes of the ground-floor front.
CHAPTER III
THE CAFe D"ORANGE
Michael came back to Cheyne Walk with a sense of surprise at finding that it still existed; and when he saw the parlormaid he half expected she would display some emotion at his reappearance. After Neptune Crescent, it was almost impossible to imagine a female who was not subject to the violence of her mutable emotions. Yet her private life, the life of the alternate Sunday evening out, might be as pa.s.sionate and gusty as any scene in Neptune Crescent. He looked at the tortoise-mouthed parlormaid with a new interest, until she became waxily pink under his stare.
"Mrs. Fane is in the drawing-room, sir." It was as if she were rebuking his observation.
His mother rose from her desk when he came to greet her.
"Dearest boy, how delightful to see you again, and so thoughtful of you to send me those postcards."
If she had asked him directly where he had been, he would have told her about Neptune Crescent, and possibly even about Lily. But as she did not, he could reveal nothing of the past fortnight. It would have seemed to him like the boring recitation of a dream, which from other people was a confidence he always resented.
"Stella and Alan are in the studio," she told him.
They chatted for a while of unimportant things, and then Michael said he would go and find them. As he crossed the little quadrangle of pallid gra.s.s and heard in the distance the sound of the piano he could not keep back the thought of how utterly Alan"s company had replaced his own. Not that he was jealous, not that he was not really delighted; but a period of life was being rounded off. The laws of change were being rather ruthless just now. Both Alan and Stella were so obviously glad to see him that the fleck of bitterness vanished immediately, and he was at their service.
"Where have you been?" Stella demanded. "We go to Richmond. We send frantic wires to you to join us on the river, and when we come back you"re gone. Where have you been?"
"I"ve been away," Michael answered, with a certain amount of embarra.s.sment.
"My dear old Michael, we never supposed you"d been hiding in the cistern-cupboard for a fortnight," said Stella, striking three chords of cheerful contempt.
"I believe he went back to Oxford," suggested Alan.
"I am going up to-morrow," Michael said. "When is your Viva?"
"Next week. Where are you going to stay?"
"In college, if I can get hold of a room."
"Bother Oxford," interrupted Stella. "We want to know where you"ve been this fortnight."
"You do," Alan corrected.
"I"ll tell you both later on," Michael volunteered. "Just at present I suppose you won"t grudge me a secret. People who are engaged to be married should show a very special altruism toward people who are not."
"Michael, I will not have you being important and carrying about a secret with you," Stella declared.
"You can manage either me or Alan," Michael offered. "But you simply shall not manage both of us. Personally, I recommend you to break-in Alan."
With evasive banter he succeeded in postponing the revelation of what he was, as Stella said, up to.