Chapter 20

July thickened down upon London. The society papers announced that with the exception of the few unfortunate gentlemen who were compelled to stay and look after their constituents' interests, at Westminster, "everybody" had gone out of town, and filled up yawning columns with detailed information as to everybody's destination. To an inexperienced eye, with the point of view of the top of an Uxbridge Road omnibus for instance, it might not appear that London had diminished more than the extent of a few powdered footmen on carriage boxes; but the census of the London world is after all not to be taken from the top of an Uxbridge Road omnibus. London teemed emptily, the tall houses in the narrow lanes of Mayfair slept standing, the sunlight filtered through a depressing haze and stood still in the streets for hours together. In the Park the policemen wooed the nursery-maids free from the embarrassing smiling scrutiny of people to whom this serious preoccupation is a diversion. The main thoroughfares were full of "summer sales," St. Paul's echoed to admiring Transatlantic criticism, and the Bloomsbury boarding-houses to voluble Transatlantic complaint.

The Halifaxes were at Brighton, Lady Halifax giving musical teas, Miss Halifax painting marine views in a little book. Miss Halifax called them "impressions," and always distributed them at the musical teas. The Cardiffs had gone to Scotland for golf, and later on for grouse. Janet was almost as expert on the links as her father, and was on very familiar terms with a certain Highland moor and one Donald Macleod. They had laid every compulsion upon Elfrida to go with them, in vain; the girl's sensitiveness on the point of money obligations was intense, and Janet failed to measure it accurately when she allowed herself to feel hurt that their relations did not preclude the necessity for taking any thought as to who paid. Elfrida staid, however, in her by-way of Fleet Street, and did a little bit of excellent work for the Illustrated Age every day. If it had not been for the editor-in-chief, Rattray would have extended her scope on the paper; but the editor-in-chief said no, Miss Bell was dangerous, there was no telling what she might be up to if they gave her the reins. She went very well, but she was all the better for the severest kind of a bit. So Miss Bell wrote about colonial exhibitions and popular spectacles, and country outings for babies of the slums, and longed for a fairer field. As midsummer came on there arrived a dearth in these objects of orthodox interest, and Rattray told her she might submit "anything on the nail" that occurred to her, in addition to such work as the office could give her to do. Then, in spite of the vigilance of the editor-in-chief, an odd unconventional bit of writing crept now and then into the Age—an interview with some eccentric notability with the piquancy of a page from Gyp, a bit of pathos picked out of the common, streets, a fragment of character-drawing which smiled visibly and talked audibly. Elfrida in her garret drew a joy from these things. She cut them out and read them over and over again, and put them sacredly away, with Nadie's letters and a manuscript poem of a certain Bruynotin's, and a scrawl from one Hakkoff, with a vigorous sketch of herself, from memory, in pen and ink in the corner of the page, in the little eastern-smelling wooden box which seemed to her to represent the core of her existence. They quickened her pulse, they gave her a curious uplifted happiness that took absolutely no account of any other circumstance.

There were days when Mrs. Jordan had real twinges of conscience about the quality of Miss Bell's steak. "But there," Mrs. Jordan would soothe herself, "I might bring her the best sulline, and she wouldn't know no difference." In other practical respects the girl was equally indifferent. Her clothes were shabby, and she did not seem to think of replacing them; Mrs. Jordan made preposterous charges for candles, and she paid them without question. She tipped people who did little services for her with a kind of royal delicacy; the girl who scrubbed the landings worshipped her, and the boy who came every day for her copy once brought her a resplendent "button-hole" consisting of two pink rosebuds and a scarlet geranium, tendering it with a shy lie to the effect that he had found it in the street. She went alone now and again to the opera, taking an obscure place, and she lived a good deal among the foreign art exhibitions of Bond Street. Once she bought an etching and brought it home under her arm. That kept her poor for a month, though she would have been less aware of it if she had not, before the month was out, wanted to buy another. A great Parisian actress had made her yearly visit to London in June, and Elfrida conjuring with the name of the Illustrated Age, won an appointment from her. The artiste staid only a fortnight—she declared that one half of an English audience came to see her because it was proper and the other because it was sinful, and she found it insupportable—and in that time she asked Elfrida three times to pay her morning visits, when she appeared in her dressing-gown, little unconventional visits "pour bavarder." When Miss Bell lacked entertainment during the weeks that followed she thought of these visits, and little smiles chased each other round the corners of her mouth.