3
As they came nearer to representative London the signs of deserted traffic were more numerous. By the Albert Memorial they saw an overturned motor-bus which had smashed into the park railings, and a little further on were two more buses, one standing decently at the curb, the other sprawling across the middle of the road. The wheels of both were axle deep in the dust which had blown against them, and out of the dust a few weak threads of grass were sprouting. There were other vehicles, too, cabs, lorries and carts: not a great number altogether, but even the fifty or so which the girls saw between Kensington and Knightsbridge offered sufficient testimony to the awful rapidity with which the plague had spread. For it seems probable that in the majority of cases the drivers of these deserted vehicles must have been attacked by the first agonizing pains at the base of the skull while they were actually employed in driving their machines. There were few skeletons to be seen. The lull which intervened between the first unmistakable symptoms of the plague and the oncoming of the paralysis had given men time to obey their instinct to die in seclusion, the old instinct so little altered by civilization. Those vestiges of humanity which remained had, for the most part, been cleansed by the processes of Nature, but twice the girls disturbed a horrible cloud of blue flies which rose with an angry buzzing so loud that the girls screamed and ran, leaving the scavengers to swoop eagerly back upon their carrion. Doubtless the thing in the Hammersmith tram had been the body of a woman, recently-dead from starvation. Even from the houses there was now little exhalation.
In Knightsbridge, a little past the top of Sloane Street, Blanche and Millie came to a shop which diverted them from their exploration for a time. Most of the huge rolling shutters had been pulled down and secured, but one had stopped half way, and, beyond, the great plate-glass windows were uncovered. One of ten million tragedies had descended swiftly to interrupt the closing of that immense place, and some combination of circumstances had followed to prevent the completion of the work. The imaginative might stop to speculate on the mystery of that half-closed shutter; the two Goslings stopped to admire the wonders behind the glass.
For a time the desolation and silence of London were forgotten. In imagination Blanche and Millie were once again units in the vast crowd of antagonists striving valiantly to win some prize in the great competition between the boast of wealth and the pathetic endeavour of make-believe.
They stayed to gaze at the “creations” behind the windows, at dummies draped in costly fabrics such as they had only dreamed of wearing. The silks, satins and velvets were whitened now with the thin snow of dust that had fallen upon them, but to Blanche and Millie they appeared still as wonders of beauty.
For a minute or two they criticized the models. They spoke at first in low voices, for the deep stillness of London held them in unconscious awe, but as they became lost in the fascination of their subject they forgot their fear. And then they looked at one another a little guiltily.
“No harm in seeing if the door’s locked, anyway,” said Blanche.
Millie looked over her shoulder and saw no movement in the frozen streets, save the sweep of one exploring swallow. Even the sparrows had deserted the streets. She did not reply in words, but signified her agreement of thought by a movement towards the entrance.
The swing doors were not fastened, and they entered stealthily.
They began with the touch of appraising fingers, wandering from room to room. But most of the rooms on the ground floor were darkened by the drawn shutters, and no glow of light came in response to the clicking of the electric switches that they experimented with with persistent futility. So they adventured into the clearly lit rooms upstairs and experienced a fallacious sense of security in the knowledge that they were on the floor above the street.
Fingering gave place to still closer inspection. They lifted the models from the stands and shook them out. They held up gorgeous robes in front of their own suburban dresses and admired each other and themselves in the numerous cheval glasses.
“Oh! bother!” exclaimed Blanche at last, “I’m going to try on.”
“Oh! B.” expostulated the more timid Millie.
“Well! why to goodness not?” asked her elder sister. “Who’s to be any the wiser?”
“Seems wrong, somehow,” replied Millie, unable to shake off the conventions which had so long served her as conscience.
“Well, I am,” said Blanche, and retired into a little side room to divest herself of her own dress. She had always shared a bedroom with her sister, and they observed few modesties before each other, but Blanche was mentally incapable of changing her dress in the broad avenues of that extensive show-room. It is true that the tall casement windows were wide open and the place was completely overlooked by the massive buildings opposite, but even if the windows had been screened she would not have changed her skirt in the publicity of that open place, though every human being in the world were dead.
When she emerged from her dressing-room she was transformed indeed. She went over to her still hesitating sister.
“Do me up, Mill,” she said.
Blanche had chosen well; the fine cloth walking dress admirably fitted her well-developed young figure. When she had discarded her hat and touched up her hair before the glass, only her boots and her hands remained to spoil the disguise. Well gloved and well shod, she might have passed down the Bond Street of the old London, and few women and no man would have known that she had not sprung from the ruling classes.
She posed. She stepped back from the mirror and half-unconsciously fell to imitating the manners of the revered aristocracy she had respectfully studied from a distance.
In a few minutes she was joined by Millie, also arrayed in peacock’s feathers and anxious to be “fastened.”
Their excitement increased. Walking dresses gave place to evening gowns. They lost their sense of fear and ran into other departments searching for long white gloves to hide the disfigurements of household work. They paraded and bowed to each other. The climax came when they discovered a Court dress, immensely trained, and embroidered with gold thread, laid by with evidences of tenderest care in endless wrappings of tissue paper. Surely the dress of some elegant young duchess!
For a moment they wrangled, but Blanche triumphed. “You shall have it afterwards,” she said, as she ran to her dressing-room.
Millie followed in an elaborate gown of Indian silk; a somewhat sulky Millie, inclined to resent her duty of lady’s maid. She dragged disrespectfully at the innumerable fastenings.
“My!” ejaculated Blanche when she could indulge herself in the glory of full examination before a cheval glass in the open show-room. She struggled with her train and when she had arranged it to her satisfaction, threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin haughtily.
“I ought to have some diamonds,” she reflected.
“It drags round the hips,” was Millie’s criticism.
“You should say ‘Your Majesty,’” corrected Blanche.
“Oh! a Queen, are you?” asked Millie.
“Rather——”
“Queen of all the Earth,” sneered Millie.
Blanche’s face suddenly fell. “I wonder if she began like this,” she said, and a note of fear had come into her voice.
Millie’s eyes reflected her sister’s alarm.
“Oh! let’s get out of this, B.,” she said, and began to tear at the neck of her Indian silk gown.
“I wanted diamonds, too,” persisted Blanche.
“Oh! B., it isn’t right,” said Millie. “I said it wasn’t right and you would come.”
Silence descended upon them for a moment, and then both sisters suddenly screamed and ducked, putting up their hands to their heads.
“Goodness! What was that?” cried Blanche.
A swallow had swept in through the open window, had curved round in one swift movement, and shot out again into the sunlight.
“Only a bird of some sort,” said Millie, but she was trembling and on the verge of hysterics. “Do let’s get out, B.”
After they had put on their own clothes once more they became aware that they were hungry.
“We have wasted a lot of time here,” said Blanche as they made their way out.
She did not pause to wonder how many women had spent the best part of their lives in a precisely similar manner.
“And we ought to have been looking for food,” she added.
“Come on,” replied Millie. “That place has given me the creeps.”