The Charmers Read Free

tenaciously to her own lady-like imitations of what she deeply admired. Mrs. Benson, more simply, thought that Christine was stuck-up.
    But she was a little embarrassed by the naked stare of clear brown eyes. Such a look, who does she think she is? said Mrs. Benson’s own eyes. “When you thinking of going?” she demanded. “I can let that room of yours tomorrow.”
    Her lodger nodded, recognizing her resentment at losing a tenant who expressed no word of regret at going.
    “On the twentieth.”
    “You’ll be going to Drake’s, then. Better get round there quick, if you are. He was telling me yesterday he’s that busy he don’t know whether he’s coming or going. I’d pop round this evening, if I was you.”
    Is this good-nature on Mrs. Benson’s part? Or is it a lifetime’s habit of arranging other people’s affairs for them? We must be careful here, remembering that Mrs. Benson is not just a cow; she is a sacred one.
    “Oh, tomorrow will do, I think, thanks all the same.”
    Christine was turning away to the door of her room when, suddenly, and with the force and colour of a vision, a picture entered her mind: with such strength and authority that afterwards she wondered if it could possibly have been a Message from Mother and Father, who perhaps Knew Better now, and wanted her to be free at last of Mortimer Road?
    She saw her furniture, the pieces she had chosen before the sale, and sent away in a van to be stored at Messrs. Jeffrey’s emporium somewhere out at Enfield: the Sideboard, the Dining-Room Table, her Bed, the familiar pictures no one had ever looked at, Father’s Chair, and the Best Bedroom Carpet—she saw them all, in their hallowed associations and venerable comfort sitting in those three rooms with their walls of birds-egg tint in Pemberton Hall. For an instant, she experienced a pure, overwhelming feeling of repudiation.
No
, said her spirit.
    She did not stop to think. Turning to Mrs. Benson, who had also moved away in the direction of her own quarters, she cried, rather than said, so excited and high was her voice:
    “Oh—Mrs. Benson—would you like to have my furniture?”
    Mrs. Benson turned, face alight with greed and suspicion.
    “’Ow do you mean, have? Store it ’ere—or buy it off of you? I can tell you here and now I’ve got no room for storing, in my place. And I’ve not money to buy second-hand stuff, neither.”
    “No—not store it or buy it. Have it. As … a present.”
    “I don’t need anyone’s old bits and pieces thank you … What is there, then?”
    Christine rapidly ran through the list, with every second feeling more strongly impelled to get rid of it all, and with every other second crushing down the sensations of guilt.
    “Quite a flatful,” was Mrs. Benson’s comment. “They giving you your own place, up at this place, then? I said to Stan, ‘I’m sure she’s got her own stuff, in store,’ I said. They don’t half charge you in those places neither.” She paused.
    Christine was now trying to work out how much of her share in the money from the sale of the house could be safely spared for new furniture … pale wood, against those walls … or … very dark perhaps? Second-hand ‘finds’, from junk-shops … she could glue, and polish, and re-cover … Yes, dark would look best.
    “I don’t mind obliging you, if you want a home for it,” Mrs . Benson was saying. “My sister always says I’m a fool to myself. Soft. But I’m like that. I don’t mind. I’ll have it.”
    Christine was still inexperienced in the ways of the Benson world, and she felt that she had misjudged her landlady. She did not realise that her possessions were as good as reposing in Mrs. Benson’s place from the first instant that the words ‘have’ and ‘furniture’ had penetrated Mrs. Benson’s consciousness.
    It was arranged that the vanload from Enfield should be delivered on the afternoon of the twentieth.
    Christine insisted on this, with adamant