The Little Shadows - By Marina Endicott Page 0,119

Pander.’

Sybil milled back in. ‘So we did, as a favour, and look what good it’s done her! And you!’

‘If you call it good, for her to be tied to an old goat more than twice her age. Whom you now—when it suits your story—call unscrupulous.’

In the doorway Clover clung to Bella. Thank God, she thought, Mayhew is not here to add to this. Mama waved a hand at the girls, ordering them from the room. But Clover stayed rooted to the spot, as Sybil, towering to her full five feet, jabbed her jaw forward furiously. ‘I don’t say he’s unscrupulous—I say he’s a damned cheat, and I’ll be damned if we’ll ever work with him again!’

Julius hummed, his demon tickled by this excitement. ‘Well, now, my dear Syb, where would we be in vaudeville if we refused to work with cheats and whores!’

Mama turned on him in a fury. ‘And who are you calling a whore?’

There was a moment of silence in the room. But Julius never backed away from a fence. ‘I suppose, dear lady, that I was referring to your eldest daughter.’

Mama stared at him, her eyes dark caves, her mouth fallen off its usual line.

Sybil cracked a sudden laugh. ‘You’d rather he was talking of you?’

‘That’s enough!’ Mama dashed her hand across her eyes to clear them and advanced on Sybil, step by step. Her wrapper had come untied, Clover saw, and the slip underneath drooped, revealing her slackened chest. ‘After what you did to me! Such a good friend in those olden days—you made trouble between me and Arthur that nearly dished me, talking to Chum as if I was no better than a trollop.’

Sybil sobbed. ‘I never meant to,’ she said, ‘I never meant it.’

‘Well, you ought to have meant not to! You were jealous as a cat, and you are still, and you near as nothing ruined my life.’

Sybil gave a bleat of anguish and fell to her knees.

‘Do you know how hard that was to fight against?’ Mama demanded. ‘He never truly believed me again—his whole life—’ She looked at Clover and Bella, seeming to see them there for the first time. Her voice cracked and her fists flew through her hair, disarranging it.

‘Girls, out!’ She pointed to the apartment door. ‘Go to Aurora.’

They ran.

Outside in the stair-hall, Bella and Clover stood shivering, almost laughing, unable to climb the flights to Aurora and Mayhew’s suite. Bella rang the button, but the elevator banged and clanged down in the basement region.

‘Whore!’ Bella said, behind her hand, her eyes bright and scared.

Clover put her arm around Bella. ‘Oh, fish! Any girl in vaudeville might be called that. Even in the legitimate, to some people’s mind.’

‘I thought he liked us!’

‘Think of Mr. Tweedie in Paddockwood,’ Clover said. ‘Everybody had him over to supper and felt so sorry for him because he was a bachelor and a sidesman. But nobody talked to Lily Bain or even let her come to church.’

‘Well, but Lily Bain went with all the men.’

‘Why should that make a difference? All the men went with her!’

‘She looked like a scrag-end of mutton.’

‘And Mr. Tweedie an old goat, they were well-suited that way.’

Bella laughed. ‘All those scrawny goat-kid children!’

‘I don’t see why when a woman does that, she’s a whore. When a man does it, there’s no bad name to call him.’

The elevator came trundling up at last.

The apartment door behind them opened and Julius slid out, then shut the door again on a confused babble of women’s voices. ‘I’ve a mind to see Mayhew,’ he said, with a bob of his massy head. ‘And Miss Aurora—the virtue of whom has never been impugned, to my knowledge. Regrets! My devilish tongue cannot resist a quarrel.’

So Clover held the gate open, and let Julius ride up with them.

Charlatan

On the fifth floor Aurora was in perfect order, her rooms fresh as iced water after the overheated atmosphere downstairs. Bella and Clover vanished into the kitchenette, in fits of horrified laughter after attempting to convey the situation.

Aurora made a polite effort to entertain Julius—with whom she’d never had a cordial friendship, his heart having been given to Clover. She had noticed it often: people picked one or another sister to like, not understanding how closely they were twined. There was no point in his partisanship for Clover, because Clover herself was hopelessly partisan for Aurora and Bella, and they for her.

She sought for some subject that might interest him. ‘We had a delightful dinner with Sir Arthur