Dear Acquaintance

Front matter

DEAR ACQUAINTANCE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

APRIL’S SOWING HEATHER OF THE SOUTH LAKE OF ENCHANTMENT LIFE’S WHAT YOU MAKE IT WILD, WILD HEART

I

CHAPTER I

IN No. 5 Dressing Room the air was heavy with the odour of hot cosmetique, powder, grease-paint and perfume; and the glare of the unshaded electric lights—reflected and magnified by many mirrors—was so brilliant as to be almost painful in its intensity. This fierce flood of radiance revealed with uncompromising clarity, not only the extravagantly attired figures of the two girls themselves, but every detail of the small room in which they sat: the heavily curtained window; the rows of gaily coloured stage frocks suspended by hangers from a dozen black pegs; the bright satin shoes lying awry on the carpet; the dressing-places littered with sticks of grease-paint, powder boxes, and jars of face-cream; the sofa and chairs; the wash basin with its two taps; and the innumerable telegrams pinned up on the walls, together with photographs, mascot dolls, and lucky charms.

The telegrams: “Best of luck old thing for to-night”; “Wishing you a big success”; and others of a like nature, were now already two months old. And during those two months, for six evening performances and two matinees each week, Hilary Ware and Gina Gould had sat side by side, smoothing the thick grease-paint over their unlined young faces, before the call-boy’s cry of “Overture and beginners, please!” summoned them to the stage.

They were described on the programme as: ‘Divorced wives of Hiram P. Blaxted the Sausage King’; and they were appearing in the cast of ‘London’s Latest Laugh,’ the revue which was so happily and wittily entitled, ‘Sausages and Mash.’

The ‘Intelligent Playgoer’ might be inclined to dismiss such a revue, and all connected with it, as banal and futile. But Hilary and Gina were neither. Young and vital, eager for experience, each held within her the vast potentialities for good or evil which lie in the souls of all men and women.

Gina had already definitely chosen her road. To her it represented the way of pleasure. She meant to have ‘a good time,’ to enjoy everything life offered her. Now her hands—though outstretched quite openly to take—seemed too young and soft to be described as predatory. Later, they might be claws and talons, with which to snatch and grab.

But Hilary looked out on life from the background of a healthy, honest girlhood, with clear brown eyes that sometimes held within them a hint of fear. There was a touch of wildness in her face—something which indicated temperament and feeling in the sensitive mouth and in the wisttul arch of the fine brows. Almost it seemed as though she herself were doubtful of her own courage—her ability to face any of the storms or stresses of life. She didn’t want to face them. She, too, wanted the easy, pleasant road—meant to have it if possible. But she knew that a certain coarseness of fibre which Gina had was lacking in her own character. One mustn’t be too dainty and fastidious if one wanted to live softly. Fine feelings weren’t always compatible with fine living.

To-night the girls had reached that period of the evening’s entertainment known to them both as their ‘long wait’; and Blanche, the dresser, had been sent out for Gina’s third whisky and soda. Hilary, earlier, had declined a second one, and this had provoked something of an argument—an argument dropped for a time but now revived.

“I don’t want any more. We’ll be expected to drink to-night, won’t we?”

“Expected to? Pretty sort of party if we weren’t! That’s what we’re going for, isn’t it?”

At this moment the door leading out into the long stone-floored corridor was pushed open, and Nan Stirling entered. “It’s only me,” she said.

Gina, bending close to her mirror, adding another layer of carmine to her already heavily made-up lips, nodded in a casual, friendly fashion.

“Hullo! Thought you were Blanche with my whisky.”

Nan gave a cheerful grin.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

She wore an evening-dress and wrap, and as her makeup was not nearly so heavy as that of the other two girls, it was evident that it was not stage makeup. She was merely ready for the party.

“Early, aren’t you?” said Gina, “They haven’t called us for our last number yet.”

“I know, but I got the pip all alone in the flat—felt perfectly mouldy—so I thought I might as well dress and come on here.”

“Have a drink? Blanche’ll go out and get you one. That litle rotter Hilary won’t have anything.”

“All right, I’ll take her share. Don’t worry.” Nan flopped down on the sofa and produced three letters. “Australian mail, Hilary! Came by the last post so I brought it on.” She threw the letters across to Hilary, and then turned again to Gina, “And one for you. I saw it in the rack at the stage door so I brought it up.”

“Thanks.” Gina took the letter and turned it over. “From France. Who’s writing to me from France?” She tore open the envelope, but Hilary sat quite still with her three letters lying on the dressing-table before her. The very thick one was from mother, and Joan’s was the thin one. Joan never wrote long letters. She said mother gave you all the family news. So she scribbled a few lines just about the dances she was going to—the men in the office—the rise she’d had—the tennis club. If you’d received one letter from Joan, you knew exactly what all the rest would be. And Gladys—the young monkey—still at school, scarcely ever bothered to write. A letter or two acknowledging the small presents sent out by her sister, and three Christmas letters for the three Christmases Hilary had been in England. Three years was a long time. Gladys was only twelve when Hilary left home, Joan fifteen, and she herself just twenty. The other letter in the grey enyelope was from John Harper. Faithful old John! Not really old—only a year or two her senior. Did he still potter about next door in the garage under the Moreton Bay fig tree? You could see the Harper’s side verandah, all covered with purpley-blue morning glories, from Joan’s bedroom window. One got a peep, too, at the brilliant sapphire harbour—lovely Sydney Harbour, and the ships and ferry boats, and the red-tiled roofs of the city across the water—through the swaying green branches of the tall, pink-blossomed oleanders.

Poor John! He hadn’t approved of her idea of going on the stage. That last night, coming back along the Lane Cove Road in his old Citroën—a hot north-easter tossing the branches of the gum trees to and fro across the starry sky—she’d nearly consented to give up the idea of coming to England. What a blessing she hadn’t! Why, if she’d stayed in Sydney she might have been married to John by now; living in a little suburban villa, alone all day doing her own housework, while John was at the bank in Pitt Street, adding up, adding up, from morning till night. Perbaps John would transfer his affection to Joan one day. That might be a good thing.

Hilary took up her mother’s letter; but Gina was speaking:

“Here’s a scream! Just listen to this. You remember that French wine merchant from Bordeaux who was potty about me?”

Hilary put her mother’s letter down again. Somehow she didn’t want to read it here. She had a feeling that it didn’t belong. Mother would be shocked at this free and easy atmosphere. Was she, Hilary herself, sometimes just a little shocked? Indignantly she denied this. She’d been on the stage for three years. She wasn’t an ignorant schoolgirl. Surely, nowadays, even if one didn’t behave quite in the same way oneself, one wasn’t prudish, and self-righteous, and stupidly narrow-minded about others. Did she consider herself any better than Gina? What an odious litle prig both Nan and Gina would think her if they knew the sudden shrinking of her mind from some of Gina’s stories.

“Just listen!” Gina’s voice was shrill with laughter. “He thinks I’ll go out to Bordeaux to join him. He’s booked my passage. Sent me the ticket.”

“No!” said Nan. Her good-natured face was alight with interest. Everything intrigued Nan. She was never bored except with her own company. She couldn’t bear to be alone. That was why Hilary had asked her to come and share the little flat in Westminster. They had been on tour together a year ago, and now Nan’s husband was with a company in Africa.

“Look! Here’s the ticket. Made out in my name and everything!”

“Well, I never did!” Nan scrutinised the ticket carefully. “But it says you get on at Tower Bridge. I never knew that was the way to Bordeaux.”

“It’s one way. He explains it here. I’ve only got to step on board this boat at the London and Bordeaux Trading Company’s wharf any Saturday morning at twelve o’clock, and, hey presto! in three days’ time—if I don’t die of seasickness in the Bay of Biscay—I step off the boat again at Bordeaux and into my boy friend’s arms. I’m to let him know when I’m coming. What a scream! Look at his letter. His English is comic!” She pushed the letter into Nan’s hand. Nan loved reading other people’s letters. Her curiosity about her fellow-creatures’ affairs was apparently insatiable. But that was what made her lovable—the keen interest she took in the lives of others.

“It’s available for three months, I see, but you’ve got to have a passport.”

Gina went off into another peal of laughter, “You silly old Juggins, Nan! You don’t suppose I’m going, do you?”

“No,” said Nan, “But what will you do with the ticket?”

“Light a cigarette with it,” replied Gina, crumpling it up.

“Don’t do that. …” Nan snatched it out of her hands. “It cost six pounds. Look—it says so.” Even Hilary bad to laugh at Nan’s tone. They always teased Nan about her thriftiness.

“If you’d ever been as hard up in your lives as I’ve been, you’d be careful too,” she invariably replied. But she wasn’t really thrifty. She was everlastingly buying things because they seemed to be bargains, and they might ‘come in,’ But they never did ‘come in.’ They usually went out—unused—in the dustbin. Now she bought the ticket to Bordeaux for half a crown!

Both Gina and Hilary were in fits of laughter at her. Nan laughed too, but she stuck to her guns all the same—and to the ticket. “I may be able to sell it.”

“Silly ass! No one wants a ticket in a cargo steamer to Bordeaux.”

“I might go for a trip myself.”

“Then you’ll have to travel in my name. It says it isn’t transferable.”

“I’ll find some use for it,” said Nan obstinately, as she folded it up and put it in her bag.

“And I’ll find some use for your half-crown. Here’s Blanche! Blanche, just step out and buy Miss Stirling a double whisky. She’s having it with me, but she’s paid for it herself.” With a wink at Hilary, Gina handed Blanche the coin paid to her by Nan as the price of the ticket to Bordeaux.

II

CHAPTER II

The party was given by a rather wealthy bachelor friend of Gina’s at his flat; and it was very much the same as other parties which Hilary had attended during the past few months. A great many hot and noisy people were crowded into two not over-large rooms, a hall, and a bathroom; and the air was thick with cigar and cigarette smoke. Everyone shouted at everybody else, and no one seemed to listen. Cards were being played in the bedroom; a gramophone was going in the living-room where a few couples danced; but the buffet in the hall, and the ‘bar’ arranged in the bathroom, attracted most attention from the guests.

Hilary’s first ewo years on the stage had been spent with good repertory companies in the provinces; and in those hard-working, but happy days, parties such as these were unknown to her. This, of course, was much gayer! This was seeing life! Hilary took wwo cocktails in quick succession from the hands of a facetious young man who was acting as barman, and then everything seemed easier and more amusing. She was even inclined to believe that the barman’s constantly repeated remark about being quite ready to give anyone who desired it a hot or a cold bath, was funny. Not very witty perhaps, but funny enough to make one laugh.

Nan had never budged from the buffet. Nan’s idea of a nice party was having a good hearty meal; and she always saw to it that the business of securing sufficient nourishment was attended to without any loss of time.

Hilary, tired of waiting for her, moved towards the card-room. A man standing in the doorway impeded her progress. She tiptoed to glance over his shoulder, and he turned and regarded her coolly.

“And what are you doing at an entertainment like this?”

Hilary looked up at him in surprise. One didn’t wait for introductions at these parties, but the man’s tone was so intimate—the ‘you’ emphasised in such a way as to suggest a complete knowledge of her identity—that she wondered quickly where and when she had made his acquaintance. He was tall, and handsome, in a somewhat sinister fashion; his dark hair was turning grey, and his heavy chin was blue with constant shaving. But he was undoubtedly a stranger to Hilary. She would never have forgotten that queer, inscrutable smile, if she had seen it before.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” she asked.

“They must have snared you in the woods.”

“How rude! Like a specimen for the Zoo!”

“I’ve never seen a wood-nymph or a dryad at the Zoo.”

“I’ve never seen one anywhere.”

He took her head quite calmly between his two long-fingered hands, and turned it so that she faced a mirror on the wall beside her.

“You see one now,” he told her; “eyes like the clear brown water of brooks, lips like red autumn berries, and a dress made from the first green of spring.”

“Sounds uncomfortably like Eve,” remarked Hilary, with an elaborate air of unconcern.

She was already well enough versed in the manners and customs of this Bohemian world to conceal any resentment she might feel at his familiarity, and she now continued in the same flippant strain: “At any rate I’m glad you like the colour of my lipstick.”

“I’d like to know what your lips are like”—he paused for a moment—“below it.”

In spite of her cocktail-given courage—in spite of a fairly comprehensive experience of the opening gambits of flirtation—flirtation of not too delicate an order—something in the man’s tone left Hilary a little breathless. There was an air of certainty—of power—about him that had a disquieting effect. She felt herself tongue-tied—unable to make any adequate rejoinder. But when he spoke again her self-control returned. Perhaps he had intended that it should.

“I have a picture in my flat that might be a portrait of you. Perhaps you sat for it.”

Hilary shook her head. “No, I don’t know any artists—except revue artistes.”

He made no comment on this. “Come along over to the card-table,” he said abruptly. “They’re playing chemey. If the police knew we might be raided.”

“What a joke!”

“Not quite so great a joke as you seem to imagine,” he returned drily. “They visited this flat once before. I’m glad to say I wasn’t present on that historic occasion.”

Hilary felt like a small snubbed child.

“I said that because I thought it was the right thing to say,” she owned up with rather pink cheeks.

“Never mind about the right thing with me. Most people would tell you I prefer the wrong thing.”

He was guiding her through the crowd towards the table. It seemed to Hilary that there was a sort of passage-way made for them; and certainly when they reached the card-players, two men jumped up to offer her companion their places. He nodded to the younger man of the two.

“Thanks, Jimmy. Just for ten minutes.”

His hand was on Hilary’s shoulder, and before she quite realised what was happening, she was sitting in the vacated chair, with the green baize cloth of the table before her, and the circle of the gamblers’ faces on a level with her own.

The long-fingered brown hand deposited a roll of notes in front of her. Hilary glanced up at him as he stood behind her.

“I don’t know how to play …”

He was leaning very close against her shoulder. “I’ll show you,” he answered. “It’s quite simple. You play for me. A beginner’s often lucky.”

For a time Hilary took no part in the betting, but watched the other players, while the man behind her explained the rudiments of the game.

“The banker deals the cards—two to himself and two to his betting opponent. The hand whose total is nearest to mine wins. If your hand totals ten, or any multiple of ten, it’s a washout. You’re baccarat and you lose.”

When the ‘shoe’ containing the cards was passed to Hilary, and it was her bank, she was told to put five pounds in the centre of the table, and to deal. She dealt: a three and a four to her opponent, and a ten and a queen to herself.

“Baccarat!” remarked the croupier, glancing at her cards casually; and with that her five pounds was swept away, and the bank passed.

It seemed a very swift and absurd method of disposing of one’s money, Hilary thought; and was thankful that it wasn’t her own. A silly game!

But a few minutes later when she was told by the man behind her chair to say: “Banco!”—that is, to bet against the banker—and found the two cards dealt to her were a king and a nine, she was inclined to reconsider her opinion. The five-pound note was returned to her, and now the game appeared to be less foolish.

When the ‘shoe’ had gone round the table, and it was her turn to take the bank again, she dealt a three and a five to herself, and the cards held against her totalled six. She had won, and kept the bank. On the next hand she won again, and again the third time.

“Now pass the bank,” whispered her monitor.

She passed it, and her winnings were pushed towards her. Hilary could scarcely believe her eyes! Forty pounds! Deducting the original five pounds, it meant a clear gain of thirty-five pounds.

A splendid game!

What a pity it wasn’t her own money she was playing with! She turned an excited, laughing face up over her shoulder to her instructor. He smiled down at her. She had forgotten her fear of him now; although she had no idea of what his name might be, he seemed like an old friend.

The ten minutes for which Hilary was to occupy Jimmy’s chair, lengthened into half an hour. She had lost, and she had won, she had lost again, and won again. It was thrillingly exciting! Now the bank had mounted to eighty pounds.

“Say ‘banco,’” whispered the man behind her chair.

“Banco!” The cards were turned face upwards. She won!

Eighty pounds! Rapidly she deducted the sum with which she had originally started, from the total. A nice little profit of sixty pounds remained.

She heard the voice of the man behind her chair remarking: “You can take your place again, Jimmy!” and knew that she must leave the table. She didn’t want to. The gambling fever was in her blood. She rose, hoping that her reluctance to give up her place wasn’t too apparent. The dark face of the man whose winnings she held in her hands, smiled down at her.

“So you don’t want to stop?” he asked.

“It seemed a pity when I was winning.”

“If you always stop when you’re winning, you’re a pretty safe gambler, aren’t you?”

She laughed. “I suppose you are. Here’s your money.” She held out the bundle of notes. He took them, counted them out, and gave her back one stiff white one.

“Ten pounds! What’s this for?” she asked.

“Your commission for playing.”

“Oh! but I can’t take your money.”

“Why not? You won it. I didn’t.”

That was true, thought Hilary. She’d never taken money from anyone before, although both Gina and Nan had no hesitation in taking all they could get. In Nan’s case this amounted to very little. “When they know you’ve got a perfectly good husband somewhere in the background, the men grow a bit stingy,” she had been known to remark. She didn’t add: “a perfectly good husband to whom you are a perfectly good wife,” but she might have done. Nan’s only grief was that she and her husband were so often separated.

As Hilary looked down at the money in her hand, she was thinking of Nan. Poor old Nan was out of a job. She was just scraping along on the money her husband was able to send her from South Africa, and that wasn’t much. She could buy Nan a new frock. Well, perhaps not a frock—a little hat—not too expensive. Hilary herself wanted a new evening-dress! Her salary wasn’t very big, and there were so many odd expenses. Tips and taxis, drinks and cigarettes, photographers and hair-dressers; to say nothing of housekeeping expenses and clothes. But of course she couldn’t take the money—she hadn’t been brought up to accept money from men. She handed the note back again. “No thank you,” she said.

He took it from her, folded it into a very small tight square, and then before she knew what he was doing, he had slipped it down the front of her dress. For just a second his brown hand had brushed the smooth whiteness of her breast.

“It wouldn’t be dignified to fish for it,” he remarked coolly, “and dignity seems to be your strong suit. Queer that, in such a nymph-like creature! But perhaps your little air of dignity is a cloak to hide your shyness.”

Shyness! That to Hilary was a word that signified everything gauche and unsophisticated. She was bitterly ashamed of being thought ‘shy.’ So now, though her cheeks were a trifle flushed, she managed to shrug in a detached and unconcerned fashion.

“I see it would be a waste of time and energy to argue with you,” she remarked, “and so …”

Her sentence ramained unfinished, for here Gina intervened. A somewhat stormy-looking Gina, whose eyes held a very steely light, and whose lips were set in a thin and rather ugly line.

“I didn’t know you were a friend of Hilary’s,” she said, addressing herself to the man.

“Didn’t you? Oh, yes, Hilary—little Saint Hilary—and I are quite good friends. We haven’t known each other long, but we’ve already found that we’ve something in common.”

“Really! and what’s that?’ Gina’s voice was still sharp.

“We’re both admirers of your own.”

“Oh, are you?” Gina glanced a trifle suspiciously from one to the other, but she was distinctly mollified.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” the man went on. “I thought we were going to dance.”

They neither of them seemed to be paying the smallest attention now to Hilary, and yet as they maved away together, the man turned and smiled at her. An intimate, low-lidded smile that seemed to be full of meaning. What meaning? That Gina was really of no importance, but that he must humour and placate her?

Hilary resented that smile, which seemed to indicate a secret shared between them in which Gina had no part. The man was an abominable creature altogether—but he was clever. He’d realised at once from Gina’s use of her name—Hilary—that she and Gina were acquaintances; and he evidently knew that it was quite safe to tell a woman she was secretly admired. She’d always be inclined to believe it true.

A young man struggled through the crowded doorway towards Hilary. Would she dance? Of course she would. Would she like a whisky and soda first? Of course she would. So they adjourned to the ‘bar’ and she did not see Gina or the man again that night.

III

CHAPTER III

Later going home in the taxi, Nan, who had been particularly trying for the past half-hour, remarked, apropos of nothing, that she’d better take care or Gina would be scratching her eyes out.

“What do you mean?” demanded Hilary crossly. How Nan did get on one’s nerves at times!

“Well, if you’d seen her face just before she cut in on you and Feltman!”

Feltman! So it was Feltman who had called her “little Saint Hilary"! No wonder people made way for him, and those two young men jumped up to offer him their chairs. Director of one of the richest producing syndicates in London—with his finger in a dozen theatrical pies. Gina had been bragging lately in the dressing-room of her visits to his wonderful flat. She hadn’t known him for more than a week or two, but friendships ripened quickly with Gina, and Feltman himself wasn’t altogether slow in his methods, Hilary reflected drily.

Conscious of some feeling that was compounded of scorn and distaste for them both, Hilary moved impatiently; and as she did so a corner of the bank-note concealed beneath her frock chafed her soft skin. Should her scorn be directed solely against the man and Gina? Was Hilary Ware in a very safe position for stone-throwing?

She wouldn’t answer that question, but unreasonably she felt her anger and annoyance against Nan increasing. Nan wanted to know about this meeting of Hilary’s with Feltman. Had she just been introduced to him when Gina butted in? Apparently they hadn’t been observed together at the card-table. Hilary, becoming mulish, determined not to gratify Nan’s curiosity. Such rubbish she was talking! Asking silly questions, and then, when she found they weren’t eliciting the information she desired, complaining of having indigestion, and feeling ill, and being generally sorry for herself.

“You can’t expect to feel very well after eating all that supper,” Hilary remarked rather brutally, at last.

“Well, I’d only had a scrambled egg for tea. It didn’t seem worth while getting any dinner as you didn’t come home after the matinee.”

‘My fault she had no dinner, I suppose,’ thought Hilary irritably.

“And if I did eat a good deal of supper,” continued Nan, giving way to a sudden flare of annoyance at Hilary’s lack of communicativeness on the subject of Feltman, “at any rate I wasn’t in the bar quite so often as … as some people. And I don’t set up to be so very high-minded either!”

“Meaning that I do?” asked Hilary icily.

They were both tired out, and they had both had a little more to drink than was strictly necessary. The result was that when they reached their flat, paid off the taxi, and fumbled their way into the dark hall, they were scarcely on speaking terms.

Three floors of offices—deserted and ghostly now—lay below their attic flat. Hilary switched on the light and went upstairs without waiting for Nan, who seemed to be mumbling and muttering over the letter-box at the hall door. Let her mutter! Hilary, now thoroughly enraged, resolved that she would go to bed without saying another word to her companion. Yet after all she didn’t keep this resolution, for it appeared that there was a letter in a brown envelope which had fallen against the brown door, and which Nan had evidently failed to see when collecting the Australian mail for Hilary earlier in the evening. And the letter in the brown envelope was for Nan.

So upstairs in the little sitting-room the two girls both sat down to open their respecuve letters. They were still maintaining a somewhat sulky silence with one another; but as Hilary turned over the closely covered pages—read the simple expressions of love, from her mother—the hardness of her heart was softened, and she looked across at Nan with eyes that had grown a little jess obdurate.

But, oh, heavens! What was the matter? Nan was crying! Sniffing and blowing her nose—all her poor, tired, pretty face puckered up and swollen—and the tears making the black run off her eyelashes in streaks. More-over it was quite evident that Nan didn’t care a pin if she looked the most awful sight in the world. Hilary, with her heart in her mouth, sprang up to comfort her.

“Nan! Nan! What’s the matter?”

It appeared that this was a letter from Bill—her husband. He wanted to see her so much. He missed her so dreadfully. There was a vacancy in the company, and if only she could raise enough money to pay her own fare out, and bring some really nice clothes, and could come by the next boat, the management would engage her. Of course Bill didn’t think there was the least hope of it, but he’d written on the chance; and if she could rake up the money somewhere, she was to send a cable, and he would be in the seventh heaven of delight.

“But where could I get the money?” wailed poor Nan. “Why, it would mean about fifty pounds at least. There isn’t anyone anywhere that would lend it to me, and I haven’t got anything to pawn. And, oh, how wonderful it would have been. We’d have been together and able to save quite a lot. Oh, I wish he’d never said anything about it … it’s worse now than … ever. …” She choked over the last few words. She was desperately tired, and the quarrel with Hilary had left her desperately lonely and seli-pitying. This letter from Bill was like some cruel practical joke played upon her—like a goblet of ice-cold water displayed before a thirst-parched wanderer in the desert, and then withdrawn.