“Well, honestly, you’re awfully jolly and all that—but you see we’re a bit bothered about Deb just at present. Is she here?”
“Deb—oh, then you’re her brother. Mr Richard Marcus, isn’t it?” Zoe immediately adapted herself to the change of notion, and all the possibilities it in its turn entailed. “D’you know who I thought you were? My unknown correspondent at the Front—I answered his Ad. in the “Vie Parisienne”; there was no harm in it, was there? He wrote back such a darling letter—and promised to come here on his next leave. So of course I thought.... But it doesn’t matter one bit, so do come in. I’m really rather glad you’ve come, between ourselves, because my landlord’s called on me and he’s perfectly awful when he starts.”
“What a beast!” rather hazy, nevertheless, as to what it was the landlord started. Possibly the poor kid was behind-hand with the rent, and he was trying to cart away her furniture. “I say, is Deb here?”
“No, but I daresay if she told you to meet her here, she’ll turn up presently, so you might as well wait. I’ve often wondered what you were like ...” with a serious intimate scrutiny from under drawn brows, which she always found “went” well with under seventeen and over sixty. “Come into the sitting-room. You’ll excuse these clothes, but I was just dressing for to-night when he came”—with a nod towards the room—“and you won’t believe me, but I’ve had to be perfectly horrid to him ...to counteract the effect of my hair down, you know. I suppose he has the kind of wife who keeps hers always in iron curlers—shouldn’t you think he has? So, poor man, one would expect a little agitation. But there are limits, aren’t there? I mean from one’s landlord. So you really are a godsend ...a sort of guardian angel. Isn’t it curious, but I’ve always, even when I was a kiddie, wanted to see my Guardian Angel in the flesh—at least in his clothes—you know what I mean? Because I was always quite sure he was a man—it didn’t seem right that he shouldn’t be, somehow.”
“Bet you could have made a man of him, anyway,” said Richard in blind admiration. And he was right; Zoe could be relied on to rouse the sex element from any substance in her vicinity, even a guardian angel.
Delighted with his tribute, and still gabbling, she preceded him into the sitting-room, and prettily introduced him to the landlord, a very low man, but genial, and obviously with no evil intentions on the furniture. The difficult point at issue seemed to be that he desired to pay for the new carpet; and Zoe, wriggling coyly on the edge of temptation, would yet not quite yield to it. “Though if spitting on a carpet makes it yours, I’m sure I’ve no more claims at all, Mr Wright!” with a look of coquetry that mellowed her unexpectedly frank rebuke.
Richard was enjoying it—enjoying her immensely. There was no real cause for alarm about Deb; only the family were fussing. And he was flattered by Zoe’s skill in making him feel essential to her being, while dimly recognizing that the flattery was somewhat impaired by its too even distribution between himself and the landlord. Zoe was not in the least Richard’s ideal. But Zoe was—well, rather a rag! And she bespoke applause by the zest and candour with which she demanded it, retailed it, invented it ...her existence might present a surface appearance of muddle, but perhaps more than other girls she could hail herself as a success. Zoe knew how to unwind unlimited quantities of what makes you happy, and how to be made happy by a material of which unlimited quantities exist for the unwinding.
“I’m going to be taken out this evening by a Cavalry giant who clanks and jangles the whole way up the stairs, and calls me ‘You dear little thing! fancy livin’ all alone with no one to look after you—it’s a shame!’—and brings me presents. He’s about forty and thinks I’m not quite seventeen; and when I perch winsomely on his knee and turn his pockets inside-out to find what he’s got for me, he’s just as pleased as a little child. Really he is! And then I spread out all my presents on the table to make them look more, and dance round them and skip and clap my hands with glee. Oh, he loves it when I clap my hands with glee. You shall both see me do it if you wait long enough. Isn’t it funny what things please some men? Sometimes I say ‘What have you brought me?’ and he says ‘nothing at all’ to tease me, and I pout—like this—look—look, Mr Marcus!—and he can’t bear to see me so disappointed and pulls an enormous painted chocolate-box from behind his back! That sort of treatment is wonderfully rejuvenating, you wouldn’t believe it; tons better than massage. There he is, and I’m not dressed yet!” She scuttled into her room as a door banged down on the street level; then popped her head in again to say: “You’ll keep him entertained, won’t you, till I’m ready? He’s quite easy!”
“Would he rather have me or Mr Wright to perch on his knee?” laughed Richard.
“Ef it’s fur turnin’ aht ’is pawkits, it’ull be me!” the landlord remarked with a facetious wink.