Even while Winnie was studying spring fashions she found herself smiling wryly with relief that her parents had this queer fad for living in a poky house in a poky suburb. If they had launched out a bit when they had made their money, as once she had wanted them to, there would not be all this loose cash to throw about. Twelve hundred a year was not much; if they had a big house and a motorcar her father would certainly not be able to pay three hundred a year for her school expenses, nor these big sums for her clothes, and as for the cheque she had just wheedled out of him—well, he would have thought more than twice about giving her that!
Winnie was acutely aware of the atmosphere of insecurity that hung like a fog about 53 Malcolm Road; of its true cause she was, of course, ignorant, but she appreciated it sufficiently to do her best to make hay while the sun still shone. She had plenty of clothes, and she had a monstrous sum in her handbag—an amount undreamed of by her schoolfellows and most certainly unknown to her schoolmistresses. For all the fact that it was a school for profiteers’ daughters there would have been a huge commotion if it had got about that Winnie Marble habitually carried over a hundred pounds, a bulky roll of five and ten-pound notes with her. But Winnie was cautious so far; she took pains that it did not get about. Money was always useful; and at the back of Winnie’s mind there was a half-formed plan, in carrying out which she would find it more than useful, she expected.
Last holiday had been most successful. The girl she had stayed with had, of course, been only a girl, and the other guests who came at odd intervals had hardly noticed her. But they noticed Winnie all right. It would have been hard not to. Winnie, to the annoyance of her hostess and the chagrin of the daughter of the house, had climbed into the position of full guest; she attained brevet woman’s rank and clung to it like a leech. The other women had turned up their noses; the men had grinned and played up to her. And two of the men were likely to be useful to Winnie if ever she decided to act on that half-formed plan. They were powers in the world of musical comedy—maybe because they, too, were war profiteers. But for all that it was a little inconvenient that she was not to be asked to that house again. She would be glad to have somewhere to go this holiday.
If she had, the storm might perhaps have been averted; perhaps everything might have been different. As it was, the eventual catastrophe was impossible to avoid.
It began in quite a small way, the way these things do.
“Oh, mother,” said Winnie, “you’re never going out in that hat?”
“Why not?” asked Mrs. Marble. She had never liked the way Winnie had dismissed, with a bare word, all the fine clothes she had been buying.
“It’s too awful for words. That red and that blue—”
It was unfortunate that she should have said that. The hat was one whose trimming Mrs. Marble had altered herself, and she was proud of the result.
“I think it’s very nice,” said Mrs. Marble.
“Oh, it’s not, mother. Those colours swear at each other most frightfully. Oh, dear, and your coat’s all wrinkled at the back. Why don’t you learn to put your clothes on properly?”
“I do put them on properly. I put them on better than you do. I don’t look fast.”
The last words slipped out almost without Mrs. Marble being aware of them. She felt sore and irritable, and it had been a tradition in her family when she was a little girl that everyone who had the self-assured manner and polished appearance that Winnie affected was “fast.”
Winnie did not mind being called fast by her mother. She only deigned to reply with a rather unladylike snort. But the word attracted her father’s attention, and he looked up sharply. He was irritable, too.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that, Winnie,” he said.
“Don’t interfere,” snapped Winnie.
She gave a last wrench at the wrinkled coat; but she was cross, and the coat was a hopeless misfit, anyway. Mrs. Marble staggered at the wrench. Winnie had meant nothing by it, but it brought Mr. Marble to his feet.
“Be careful, my girl,” he said.
It was that “my girl” which settled the matter. It was a horridly vulgar expression, and it took Winnie straight back to those dark days before she had ever gone to school in Berkshire. She turned and looked at her father, looked him up and down, and as she could find nothing to say she did something far more effective than any speech would have been. She turned away without a word spoken, her upper lip a little curled—not much, that was the annoying part; it implied that her father was not worth being too contemptuous about—and her best young ladyish expression on her face. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, especially flesh and blood that had been moistened by just not enough whisky for the last few days.
Marble caught her by the shoulder and swung her round again.
“One word from you, my girl,” he said, “and you’ll be sorry. You’re not grown up yet, you know.”
“Aren’t I?” said Winnie, “Aren’t I? I’ll show you that I am in a minute, if you’re not careful. Bah!” she added, manners clean forgotten, “you and your silly old house, and your silly old furniture, and your silly old clothes. Just look at you both.”
She looked them up and down again, both of them, this time. It was here that Mrs. Marble should have played the peacemaker. It was her last opportunity, and she might have flung herself between her husband and her daughter. But she was too cross; partly because she
