Poor Caroline (14 page)

She did not deny her poverty, her loneliness, her frequent
failures. But she spoke of them all in the past tense.

'I've sometimes thought,' she said, 'that when the
dreamer's dream comes true, he takes a little while to
realize that he isn't still asleep. To be
really
affluent at last
- to be able to repay all the kindness that people have shown
one in the past, because I always say that it's just the art of
being
kind
that's all this sad world needs. You know, my
dear, as we grow older we do like to do a little of the
giving
as well as the
taking
in the material things of life. I have
always tried to be a spiritual giver. But circumstances have
often compelled me to be a material borrower. I've tried to take generously, because I always say that it takes two to make a gracious gift, the generous giver and the generous
taker. But there comes a time when one would like to be
the
giver
for a change. And so you see how doubly glad
I was when I realized that it might be in my power

not only to repay, but to enrich those who have helped
me.'

'Yes, of course,' murmured Eleanor inadequately.

'That's why I made my
Will
as I did.' She turned and
rummaged among the papers in her desk, opening drawer
after drawer, each of which spilled new contributions to the general confusion on the floor. But at last she found a long blue envelope. 'Ah. Here it is. I want you to read this, my
dear. Just in case.'

In just what case, Eleanor did not know; but she took the envelope and drew from it a long blue document, written in
Caroline's delicate sloping hand.

'The last Will and Testament of Caroline Audrey Denton-Smyth, Journalist and Secretary, of 40 Lucretia Road, West
Kensington, in the County of London.

'I, Caroline Audrey Denton-Smyth, being in my right
mind and in active bodily health do hereby cancel and
revoke all other wills, testaments, and legacies whatsoever
that I may at any former time have
made. And I will and bequeath hereby to my dear friend and cousin Enid Smith
of Marshington in the County of Yorkshire, and to her hus
band, Robert Harold Smith, 10,000 Ordinary £1 Shares in
the Christian
Cinema Company, to be held jointly if both
are alive when this Will comes into force, or severally by the
survivor. And I will and bequeath to my dear cousin John
Robert Smith, son of the above, the sum of £500, and to my
dear cousins Dorothy and Elizabeth Smith, sisters of the
above John Robert, and to his brother Harold, the sum of
£250 each. To my cousin the Reverend Ernest Albert
Smith, Rector of Flynders in the County of Lincolnshire I will and bequeath 1,000 £i shares in the Christian Cinema Company, in the hope that he will continue to use his in
fluence as a clergyman to bring the Church of England to
a full sense of its Responsibility in the matter of the Purifica
tion of the Amusements of the People. To my nephews,
Claude and William, sons of my late dear sister Daisy Shot-well
(n
é
e
Smyth) of Newcastle-on-Tyne, I leave the sum of
£50 each in token of my true forgiveness of all their past
neglect. To my friend and landlady, Eliza Hales of 40
Lucretia Road, I leave the sum of £200 in gratitude for
all her kindness and consideration to me, and in testimony
to our sisterhood in Christ through the Fellowship of St.
Augustine's Church. The rest of my fortune I leave to the Church Fund of Saint Augustine's, Fulham, in the County
of London, in memory of all the inspiration and help that
it has been to me in my lonely work of pioneering, and in the
hope that my friends there may see fit to commemorate any
small service that I may have been able to render to my
fellows by a memorial tablet to be placed near the pew in
the Southern transept where I used to worship.'

Eleanor read to the end and sat silent, the document in
her hands, her face bent over it.

'Well? Well?'asked Caroline. 'What do you think of it?
It's fair, isn't it? It gives an impression of Christian justice
and magnanimity, doesn't it? Or do you think I ought not
to say that about forgiving my nephews? But you know, my dear, I always say that bitterness is the first infirmity of
ig
noble
minds, but really they might have written or come to
see me when they were in London.'

'I think it's a wonderful will,' said Eleanor truthfully.
'And how splendid to be able to leave all that money, after
. . .' She meant to say 'after you have been so poor.' But
the evidence of present poverty was all around her. The
details that Caroline had told her of the Christian Cinema Company's fortune perplexed her. 'I didn't realize that you
had invested all
that
amount of capital in the company.'

'Oh, of course, dear, you must understand. I haven't
yet.
That is what
will
happen when we come into our own. Of
course, we've got to find
three
thousand to begin with before
the end of January, or else Mr. Macafee will withdraw his
patent and then I don't quite know what will happen. But what's the good of Faith if you can't gamble on it a little?'

'You mean you've left this money without having it yet?'
asked Eleanor slowly.

'Why - but I've as good as got it, my dear. Quite as good.
Because if I don't, if I don't get it - why, what's the good of
waiting and starving? Yes, starving through all these years
of pioneer work, if I never see the promised land? Oh, I shall
get it. Life won't let me down. God won't let me down. I
always say that wills are like epitaphs - you know the poem.

"Write your own epitaph in high-flown phrases,

Paint every virtue in its brightest hue,

Fill all your lines with glowing, golden praises -

Then live a life that shall prove it true."

Well? Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that beautiful. "That's
Faith, my dear. I live on Faith. My will is a great act
of Faith, and will be justified. You'll see, my dear. You'll
see.'

§4

Eleanor left Lucretia Road disturbed, amazed and curi
ous. She had never met anyone like Cousin Caroline before.
Her bizarre, animated, decorative little figure, in the crim
son velvet dress which, Eleanor reflected, had probably once
belonged to Dorothy or Betty, her crowded room, her fan
tastic will, her large, glowing, beautiful brown eyes, all these
epitomized the unexpected quality that Eleanor found in London. The Christian Cinema Company was to her the
personification of all that she found strange in England.

She had little leisure during the following few days in which to think of Caroline, for the novelty of London life
absorbed her. She had come to the club in Earl's Court
bristling with prejudices, prepared to dislike everybody and
to wear the discomfort of English society as a hair-shirt un
der her sensitive shyness. She found to her astonishment that she was popular, and that her fellow residents in the
club, though frequently second-rate and silly, were almost
invariably kind.

Being a modest person, and, until her father's death, not
given to introspection, she found it odd that something of a
fashion should arise for her society. She was surprised to
find herself regarded as a person of unusual courage and
initiative. Her car, her mechanical efficiency, her Afrikaans
expressions, her enterprise and independence all won respect
and interest. The girls were refreshed by her appearance of
unself-conscious interest in feminine society. They had their own standards of social value, and according to these, within
a week of the acquisition of the Clyno, an evening drive with
Eleanor de la Roux ranked almost equal to a date with a
young man. Eleanor could not understand their eagerness
for male society. She herself was so well accustomed to the
companionship of her father, her brother and their friends,
that she found a certain attractive novelty in association
with girls, and, anxious to return any kindness shown her by
the English, she invited one member of the club after an
other to accompany her upon her voyages of discovery
through London.

But Eleanor's expeditions were by no means all idle
pleasure-trips. During her first week at the club she
had
been taken to an I.L.P. meeting by a fierce, untidy, ink-
stained amusing young fanatic called Rita Hardcastle. There
she listened to a thin man with black heavy hair, a disarm
ing smile, and a mind of virginal unsophistication piling one
indictment after another upon the British Empire. He re
minded her of the
speakers at the Nationalist Convention at
Bloemfontein. Translating in her own mind his most telling phrases into Afrikaans, she felt that at last she had found her
spiritual home in London. She joined the Independent
Labour Party, and later on placed her car and her services
in the evening at the disposal of its London speakers.

Then began a period of superb adventure. Throughout
the rest of the winter she spent bright orderly days at the
secretarial college, where she worked with punctual neatness and efficiency; but her days were threaded together by
nights of daring splendour. Backwards and forwards through
the lighted streets of London Eleanor drove, conveying chair
men to conferences, lecturers to week-end schools, and hum
bler speakers to little meetings at Croydon and Ilford. She learned the elements of English politics through heated dis
cussions in small schoolrooms and Labour clubs. She learned
the geography of the Home Counties by poring over maps in
the light of an electric torch, and she saw the
landscape of
England as a flurry of moving darkness, through which she
rode behind the silver spear of light thrown by her lamps on
the sleek ribbons of asphalt or the winding caprice of coun
try lanes. She drove in a cool fury of concentration, tilting
at the huge December darkness with her spear of light, and
as she drove she felt that she was indeed tilting against slums
and poverty and economic oppression and the hidden
menace of vested interests. She surrendered herself to the strong sweeping urgency of speed and propaganda. Though
temperamentally cool-headed and suspicious of enthusiasm,
she found that the physical excitement of driving an uncer
tain engine down strange roads in darkness, and the mental
excitement of political indictment of half-realized evils, re
laxed the painful tension of her nerves. She was so tired
when she went to bed that she no longer lay tormenting
herself about her father's death, but fell into the dreamless
sleep of exhausted youth.

In this new life, Eleanor's first visit to Caroline lost its
dream-like fantasy. Caroline soon appeared no stranger an
enthusiast than the many other Eleanor encountered. Caroline starved, prayed, toiled and exalted over the Christian Cinema Company with a faith no more foolish than that of
Rita Hardcastle, who hunted a crock of gold at the Rain
bow's End of family allowances, of Ben Sanders, who cheer
fully courted imprisonment while demonstrating on behalf
of the Class War Prisoners' Aid Association, or of Brenda
Clay who shuddered at Marble Arch on frosty evenings,
preaching passionately the gospel of Total Abstinence from Alcoholic Liquors.