The girl coloured a little. In common fairness Louie had to acquit her of full partic.i.p.ation in the joke of Mr. Jeffries and his unknown _fiancee_. Louie had learned that it had been in order to congratulate Mr. Jeffries on this supposed engagement that she had followed Mr.
Jeffries into the library on that Friday evening before her departure for the week-end to Guildford. She thought little more of her on that account. In being too ready with apologies and congratulations Evie Soames merely showed the vulgarity of the rest of the place.
"No, do let"s get on with business," Kitty Windus broke in. "I vote for ordinary dress."
"Yes, ordinary dress," came the chorus.
"Vith vite gloves, of course," said Miss Levey.
"Of course."
"Vot do you say, Miss Causton?"
"White gloves, of course," said Louie, with her demurest look. "And flowers in their b.u.t.tonholes."
"Some gentlemen don"t like to vear flowers," said Miriam Levey suspiciously.
"Aha, doesn"t he?" from Mr. Mackie. "_I_ saw you at the Holborn, Miss Levey--naughty, naughty----"
"Oh, I don"t mean very big ones," said Louie, sipping her tea.
And the discussion went on, and meeting followed meeting; but the examination was to take place before the social.
The only fear Louie had for her Elementary was whether it would be worth very much when she had got it. She supposed that as an earnest preparation for the struggle of life this place was not quite such a fraud as Chesson"s, but that struggle could hardly be as fierce as Richenda Earle had said if this Elementary took her very far. Indeed she had wondered more than once lately, especially since she had ceased to amuse herself quite so desperately, whether it was likely that typewriting and book-keeping were to be her destiny after all.
She supposed they were, but she couldn"t quite realise it. But she was fully prepared, and hoped Mr. Jeffries was as sure of his Honours paper as she was of her simple Pa.s.s.
For she had gathered that success in the coming examination was of importance to Mr. Jeffries. She did not know the nature of his studies; later she surmised that those had been only loosely linked to the ordinary school curriculum, and that while for his Certificate"s sake he must acquire all that text-books could tell him, his real broodings had been over matters that are antecedent to text-books.
That was probably the difference between him and Mr. Weston. Mr.
Weston was said to be clever, but his cleverness ended at the point where real inquiry began. More than this Louie did not know. You cannot, after all, ask the pioneer what he goes forth for to see. He goes forth to see whatever there may be to be seen.
The weeks that had intervened since that evening when Louie had seen that wonderful radiance of his face had done nothing to alter her conviction that if there was a dark horse in that Holborn stable at all the name of that horse was Mr. Jeffries.
As it happened, Mr. Jeffries was almost the first person she encountered when, on the Friday morning of the examination, she entered the School at half-past ten. He wore the new brown suit that had been remarked on at the meetings of the Executive of the social, and he was looking with curiosity about him. They had made quite extensive preparations for the examination. The whole place had been divided into compartments with hired yellow-painted screens, and screens also barricaded the =E= of reference-books near the bay window of the general-room. New pens and new blotting-paper lay on the desks, and the little porcelain inkwells had been newly filled.
Then it occurred to Louie that it was more than likely that Mr.
Jeffries had never been in the place in the daytime before. He must have got the day off from that "somewhere in the City" that Kitty Windus had said sounded so prosperous. His tawny hair was as flat and silky as ever, and his chin as cleanly shaved. He pa.s.sed her with a curt bow and continued his inspection of the place. The candidates stood talking in groups, waiting for eleven o"clock.
"Have you discovered your--er--appointed place, Miss Causton?" said Weston, coming up to Louie. "Good, good! I must now take my departure.
Members of the Staff are not permitted to remain on the premises during the hours devoted to the examination. I wish you--er--good luck."
He seemed to change his mind about saying "a happy issue from all your afflictions."
By eleven o"clock Louie was seated in her little screen-enclosed compartment. A sort of hired mourner read a formal caution to the candidates. She noticed that it lacked the _largior ether_ of the third person indicative, being, indeed, in the second person imperative; and then she drew her paper to her.
Quiet fell on the examination-rooms.
She found her papers no more difficult than she had antic.i.p.ated. On one point only, a matter of indenting in actual practice, was she a little in doubt, and a minute in the old ledger-room at lunch-time would tell her whether her answer had been right or wrong. She read over again what she had written; it seemed, with the possible exception of that single point, all right; and she tilted her chair, put her hands behind her head, and leaned back. The candidates had been warned that they must bring lunch with them. It was half-an-hour from lunch-time yet.
Her place was by the folding door of the general-room. From it she could see nothing save the stationery cupboard on her left, and, beyond it, the next screen-enclosed compartment. She was wondering who was in it when a foot moved beneath the yellow screen. It was the foot of Mr. Jeffries. Louie hoped that he was getting on well, and then dismissed him from her thoughts. She began to wonder about the practical usefulness of the examination again.
Doubtless it was well enough in its way, but less than ever could she persuade herself that this kind of thing was to be her destiny. There were too many other likelihoods--not to speak of the one certainly so huge that she had sometimes been actually in danger of leaving it out of the account altogether. Idly she counted them. First, there was the certainty.... Next, she would probably be leaving Sutherland Place soon, to go--where? She did not know. At the price of submission to Uncle Augustus she could go back home; or Chaff would have her looked after; but both these courses were rather out of the question. They were out of the question because lately something else had been more and more in her thoughts--her unknown father. That father might, for all she knew, be the bugbear her mother had always made him out to be; but on the other hand he might not. She knew her mother, and the more she thought of it the more she gave her father the benefit of an increasing number of doubts. Until she should have seen him it was now no more than fair that she should do so. Moreover, she could see him at any time without his being any the wiser of the--inspection. Chaff knew where he was; Chaff, who was always fetching or taking her somewhere, would take her there also. She was resolved to go sooner or later, and later might be--who knew?--too late.
For at last she had admitted a dread.
In any case, her destiny was quite as likely to be determined by a visit to that public-house up the Thames as by writing, in this stuffy Holborn third floor, answers to ridiculous questions about _pro forma_ invoices and bills of lading.
She was still turning these things over in her mind when the bell rang for the close of the first part of the examination.
She ate her lunch in the company of Kitty Windus and Miss Levey, and then the three women pa.s.sed out on to the staircase and sat down half-way down the stairs. But the men had flocked to the staircase for their noxious smoking, and Louie re-entered the general-room again.
Then she remembered the doubtful point in her paper and walked to the library. She pa.s.sed through it into the old ledger-room. Any old ledger would settle the point on which she was not quite sure.
The room was almost dark, but Louie knew where the musty old books were. She put out her hand to the nearest of them. But suddenly she withdrew her hand. The high window that gave on the head of the stairs afforded no more than a glimmer of light, but Louie thought she had seen something move. She peered into the twilight, "Is anybody there?"
she said, but she had no answer.
But the room was occupied. The next moment she had seen and fled.
Her irregular lips were pursed as she came out into the light again.
There was a confusion, too, in her eyes, probably as much as there had been in the eyes of the two she had come upon in there. They must have seen her come in, and have realised that their only chance of escaping detection lay in keeping perfectly still.
Polly Ross, cheek to cheek with that horrid little bounder!
There was no question now of whom the girl preferred.
Louie, wondering what right she had to do so, felt nevertheless a little sick.
But the next moment her fastidiousness had vanished. The door that led to the stairs had opened; Mr. Mackie"s voice sounded loud for a moment on the landing; and then Mr. Jeffries lurched in, stumbled, and almost ran to his compartment between the yellow screens.
How he too knew what was going on in the old ledger-room, Louie could not guess; but she knew that he did know.
She walked slowly to her own place and sat down.
A few minutes later the bell for the second half of the examination rang, and a new paper was put before Louie. But she neither glanced at it nor yet heard the voice of the hired mourner repeating his caution.
She sat with her chin in her hands, looking straight before her. She was wondering what was taking place behind the yellow screen beyond the stationery cupboard. Amus.e.m.e.nt was hardly the word for that.
For she had seen Mr. Jeffries" face as he had stumbled in. She sought words for the expression that had been upon it.
Lost--despairing--devilish----
There was not much doubt about who _he_ was in love with either.
Devilish, despairing, lost----
"Poor--soul!" she thought compa.s.sionately....
She wondered why she should be so unaccountably nervous. She was nervous. She even jumped a little when somebody on the other side of the folding door allowed a pen to fall to the floor. She could see the feet beneath the lower edge of the screen in front of her; they did not move; the examination quietness had fallen on the place again, and the very quietness grew on her. Strong drama, if not tragedy outright, was being enacted behind those half-inch yellow boards beyond the stationery cupboard, but the quietness continued. It was such a quietness as she had read of in tales when, somebody"s ears being sharpened for an expected scream, their eyes had not at first noticed the little dark rivulet of blood trickling slowly across the floor.
Involuntarily her eyes went to the yellow screen.
But rubbish; this was morbid.
Morbid or not, however, her lips almost shaped the words, slowly and deliberately: that boy with the red waistcoat would do well to be careful. He would do especially well to be careful if, after this, after the glare on the other"s face, he should still have help offered him with his studies or be asked for a bath. For something would happen then. Eggsh.e.l.ls such as he did not come into collision with bronze without something happening. And if anything not easily to be accounted for did happen to that odious little whippersnapper, nothing would ever persuade Louie that she did not know a likely quarter in which to look for the reason.
Blind, devilish despair!