"Why don't you come round to Shelley Mansions this evening?" Lily suggested. "We've invited some friends in."
One of the stipulations made about Norah's friendship with Lily had been that she should never visit the home of her friend, about whose mother all sorts of queer stories were current in West Kensington. To challenge family opinion on this point seemed to her an excellent preliminary to challenging it more severely by insisting on being openly engaged to Wilfred Curlew. She hesitated for a moment, and then announced that she would come.
"To supper?" Lily asked.
After another moment's hesitation Norah promised firmly that she would, and her friend hurried away just as Cecil, a loutish boy with sleeves and trousers much too short for him, slouched back from St. James's. The house which a little while ago had been gently murmurous with that absorbing conversation about pompadour pads now reverberated with the discordant cries of a large family; an overpowering smell of boiled mutton and caper sauce ousted the perfumes from Norah's room; her eyes flashed with resentment, and she went down-stairs to take her place at table.
II
If Norah had been a journalist like her suitor, Wilfred Curlew, she would have described the resolution she made on that September morning as an epoch-making resolution, for since the effect of it was rapidly and firmly to set her on the path of independence it certainly deserved one of the great antediluvian epithets.
Some months ago the Hadens had moved from their house in Trelawney Road because the landlord was so disobliging—as a matter of fact, he was unwilling to wait any longer for the arrears of rent—and they were now inhabiting Shelley Mansions, a gaunt block of flats built on the frontier of West Kensington to withstand the vulgar hordes of Fulham, and as such considered the ultimate outpost of gentility. Most of the tenants, indeed, like the Foreign Legion, were recruited from people who found that their native land was barred to them for various reasons; but if Shelley Mansions lacked the conveniences of civilized flat-life, such as lifts and hall-porters, they possessed one great convenience that was peculiar in West Kensington—nobody bothered about his neighbor's business. Mrs. Haden's elder daughter, Doris, was no longer at home, having recently gone on the stage and almost immediately afterward married; and the small flat, with two empty spare rooms so useful for boxes, was comparatively much larger than the Caffyns' house in Lonsdale Road, the respectability and solid charms of which were spoiled by overcrowding.
Mr. Haden was supposed to be in Burma; but people in the secure heart of West Kensington used to say that Mr. Haden had never existed, a topic that Norah remembered being debated at school, to the great perplexity of the younger girls, who could not imagine how, if there was no Mr. Haden, there could possibly be a Doris and Lily Haden. Nowadays, with years of added knowledge, Norah would have liked to ask her friend more particularly about her absent father; but she was of a cautious temperament, and decided it was easier to accept the Oriental interior of the Shelley Mansions drawing-room as evidence of the truth of the Burmese legend. Her instinct was always against too much intimacy with anybody, and she rather dreaded the responsibility of a secret that might interfere with the freedom of her relations with Lily. Whatever the origins of the household, she decided it was a much more amusing household than the one in Lonsdale Road, and if No. 17 could have achieved the same atmosphere by banishing Mr. Caffyn to Burma, Norah would willingly have packed him off by the next boat.
Mrs. Haden had a loud voice, an effusive manner, and a complexion like a field of clover seen from the window of a passing train. Her coiffure resembled in shape and texture a tinned pineapple; it was, too, almost the same color, probably on account of experimenting with henna on top of peroxide. Norah's inclination to be shocked at her hostess's appearance was mitigated by the pleasure it gave her in demonstrating that Lily's really golden hair was not more likely to prove permanent. Mrs. Haden earned her living by teaching elocution and by reciting. These recitations were mostly interruptions to the conversation of afternoon parties in private houses; but once a year at the Bijou Theater, Notting Hill, she gave a grand performance advertised in the press, when her own recitations were supplemented by a couple of one-act plays never acted before or since, for the production of which some moderately well-known professional friends used to give their services free in order to help Mrs. Haden and the authors. Notwithstanding her energy, she found it very hard to make both ends meet. Norah distinctly remembered that Doris and Lily Haden had left school on account of unpaid fees, and some of the objections raised now to her friendship with Lily were due to Mrs. Caffyn's knowledge that the tradesmen of West Kensington would not allow even a week's credit to the residents of Shelley Mansions. If Mrs. Haden could have overcome their prejudice, her hospitality would doubtless have been illimitable; with all the difficulties they made, it was extensive enough, and she need not have bothered to consecrate a special day to it. But perhaps it pleased her to think that she owned one of the days of the week, for she used to refer to the fame of her Thursdays with as much pride as if they were family jewels.
It was to one of these enslaved Thursdays that Lily had invited Norah, who at first sat shyly back in a wicker chair within the shade of a palm, afraid, so fiercely did Mrs. Haden fix her during a recitation of "Jack Barrett Went to Quetta," that the creakings of her chair were irritating the reciter. Gradually the general atmosphere of freedom and jollity communicated itself to the strange guest, and when the room was so full of tobacco smoke that it was impossible for anybody to recite or to sing or to dance without being almost asphyxiated, she had no qualms about obeying Mrs. Haden's deafening proclamation that everybody must stay to supper. A young man with a long nose, a long neck, an extravagantly V-shaped waistcoat like a medieval doublet, and a skin like a Blue Dorset cheese attached himself to Norah and advised her to sit close to him because he knew his way about the flat. Presumably the advantage of knowing your way about the flat was that you sat still while other people waited on you, and that you obtained second helpings from dishes that did not go round once. Norah seldom resisted an invitation that enabled her to keep quiet while others worked, not because she was lazy, but because rushing about was inclined to heighten her complexion unbecomingly; moreover, since the young man in the V-shaped waistcoat was enough like her notion of a distinguished actor to rouse a mild interest in him, and not sufficiently unlike a gentleman to destroy that interest, she was ready to listen to the advice he was anxious to give her about all sorts of things, but chiefly about the stage.