Two men and a woman were sitting together in a corner of a hotel lounge. It was one of the finest hotels on the south coast. A constant stream of traffic flowed past the windows, and, across the road, waves were breaking on the beach.
The woman was stout, elderly, expensively clothed and heavily made up. The men were both young. One, who was addressed as Ken, was slim and fair. He lay back in his chair and appeared to be half asleep while keeping a wary eye on his companions. The other was the possessor of the kind of good looks that are often described as Byronic. In other words he was dark and he looked unhappy.
“So nice of you to look me up,” babbled the lady. “What a pity you’re still so lame. Mark was my dancing partner, Ken, before he broke his leg. He danced divinely.”
“Thank you, Violet,” said Mark.
The fair youth yawned. “Badly set, I suppose. What putrid luck.” Mark raged inwardly. Why hadn’t Violet Lobb got rid of that puppy for the afternoon and seen him alone? Probably because she was not an utter fool and had guessed that he hoped to borrow something to go on with. She would not have missed it, and Heaven knew she had got her money’s worth out of him in the past.
Some women who were unwieldy in appearance were light on their feet, he reflected, but Violet was not. Twelve stone to push round the floor night after night, and tea dances two or three afternoons a week. And it had not been easy to keep her in a good temper either.
A waiter approached and Mrs. Lobb ordered tea and went on talking. “I’m off to Cannes next week. Ken booked the places in the Blue train this morning. He’s coming, too, to look after my correspondence and so forth. I can’t do without a secretary.” The diamonds on her fat fingers flashed as she poured out the tea. “Sugar, Mark? I’ve forgotten. Shall you get over this lameness in time? Look me up again when I get back in April.”
She had not meant to say that. It was better to make a clean cut. But he certainly was extraordinarily good looking, and he was not as grasping as some. He had never played up as Ken did. But he was no use to her if he couldn’t dance. She must have constant exercise to keep her weight down.
Mark drank his tea and smoked a cigarette. He wondered what she would say if he told her that he got the money for his railway fare to Brighton from his sister Claire, and that he had exactly three halfpence left. She was not the kind of woman whose heart is softened by hard luck stories, and in any case he would rather have died than make any such admission in the hearing of the bored and languid Ken. The latter, meanwhile, was looking at his wrist watch.
“I say, Violet, it’s past four. I hear the band tuning up. What about it?”
His patroness nodded. “I’m coming,” she said gaily. Mark looked rather miserable, but it was no good being silly and sentimental about him. She turned to him, holding out her podgy hand. “So sweet of you to come over. Good-bye and good luck,” she said.
The fair youth smiled. “Cheerio, Armour.”
Mrs. Lobb hoisted herself up and waddled away, her escort following carrying her fur wrap, her gold chain bag, and her novel.
Mark Armour stared after them for a moment before he picked up his hat and passed out through the revolving doors to meet the cold wind blowing in from the sea.
Three halfpence and the return half of his ticket from Dennyford. He would have to catch the next train home. He would have to go back to hear Winnie’s foolish giggle, poor old George munching his food, and Bertha’s incessant nagging. Claire had borne it all these years, and he had only been home a few weeks and had reached the limits of endurance. But women, he supposed, were more patient. His position at home was degrading, humiliating, impossible. But there was no way out of it without money, and he could not think of any means of earning a livelihood.
When he changed into the branch line train at the junction he saw Lucy Rivers’ aunt with another woman getting into the compartment next to his. Miss Rivers was tall, upright, and grey-haired. She knew him, of course, by sight, but they were not on bowing terms. He wondered what she would say if he told her that her niece had promised to meet him that night at eleven in the last shelter along the parade. He could hear the murmur of her voice and her friend’s. Probably they were talking about him. For years past the Armours had supplied Dennyford with an unfailing topic of conversation. The scandals about them had begun, Mark supposed, when his father married his mother, who was his children’s French governess, only three weeks after his first wife’s death. There had been plenty of others since to enliven the local tea parties and keep the family outside the social pale. The result had been that while everybody knew of the Armours nobody went near them, except, very occasionally, to ask for subscriptions.
The White House was a mile outside the town. A bus passed the gate every hour, but the fare was threepence so that Mark was obliged to walk.
He had left the town behind him and was approaching the bridge over the railway cutting. There were fields on either hand. On the right were two thatched cottages that had been there since 1690, the date carved over the lintel, and on the left a row of tall stuccoed houses of which only one was occupied. They had been derelict for some time and were to let at very low rents. The end house had been taken as a rather forlorn hope by a young doctor who had put up a brass plate and was trying to work up a practice. Claire Armour had been to him for a whitlow and her report had been favourable. He was painstaking, she said, and moderate in his fees, especially if his patients came to him in his surgery hours. He was a Scot and his name was Cardew, Ian Cardew.
Mark, whose leg was aching rather badly by the time he reached Victoria Terrace, yielded to an impulse to call on the doctor and get his opinion. He rang the bell but there was no reply. There was a faint light in the hall. He rang again and then turned the door handle and walked in.
The door of the surgery was open. He entered and sat down to wait. He had been there about ten minutes when the doctor hurried in.
He was a big-boned, gaunt-looking young man with freckles and red hair.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. A little fool of a skivvy nearly sliced her hand off with a bread knife I had to put in five stitches, and it took longer than I expected. My housekeeper’s down in the basement and as deaf as a post. What can I do for you?” Mark explained. “I broke my leg last June. It was a bad break and they had to cut out a splinter of bone. I want to know if I shall always be lame.”
“Let’s have a look at it.”
Ian Cardew’s manner was against him but he was a competent surgeon and his big red hands worked swiftly and without fumbling.
“Yes,” he said at last. “They made the best job they could of it. Do you want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think that in time there’ll be no pain, but you’ll always walk with a limp.”
“I see. Thank you. Do you mind if I pay you what I owe to-morrow?”
“That’s all right,” said Cardew brusquely. “I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Armour. I live at the White House just over the railway bridge.”
“Oh—I hadn’t realised—”
They were in the narrow hall-way by this time. Someone had pushed a note through the letter box while they were in the surgery. It was lying on the mat and Mark stooped instinctively to pick it up. As he handed it to Car dew he saw and recognised the weak sprawling handwriting with a shock of distaste. So Winnie was corresponding with the doctor. He glanced at the young man’s flushed face and pitied him. He was probably only at the beginning of his troubles, for Winnie had the terrifying persistence of her type. Venus toute entière a sa proi attachée. In other words, she stuck like a limpet. “Well, anyhow I won’t bilk him,” he thought. There was a wardrobe dealer in the town and he might get a few shillings for one of his suits, or there was the platinum cigarette case that South American woman had given him the winter before last. She was freer with her money than Mrs. Lobb.
He said good night and limped away down the road in the gathering dusk, the fallen leaves rustling under his feet.