Chapter 28: Mrs Darcy Sutherland

As Miss Arnott went to her visitor she had premonitions that more disagreeables were at hand. No one whom she was desirous of seeing would have uttered such a speech as that which Mrs Plummer had repeated. Her premonitions were realised to the full. As she entered the sitting-room, into which the caller had been shown, a big, blowsy, over-dressed woman rose from a chair, whom the girl instantly acknowledged that Mrs Plummer had been perfectly justified in calling an extraordinary person. She was painted, and powdered, and pencilled, and generally got up in a style which made it only too plain what kind of character she was. With a sinking heart Miss Arnott recognised Sarah Stevens, her quondam associate as a model in that costume department of that Regent Street draper’s where, once upon a time--it seemed centuries ago--she had earned her daily bread, the woman who had introduced her to Robert Champion, who had urged her to marry him, to whom she owed all the trouble which had come upon her, and whose real character she had learned too late.

She had not expected, as she had asked herself what awaited her now, that it was anything so bad as this.

“You!” she stammered.

“Yes, my dear, me! A nice little surprise for you, isn’t it?” The woman advanced towards her with the apparent intention of greeting her with a kiss. Miss Arnott showed by her manner, as much as by the way in which she drew back, that she did not intend to submit to anything of that sort. The visitor was not at all abashed. She continued to smile the hard, mechanical smile of the woman of her class. “You didn’t expect to see me, I’ll be bound. Perhaps you’d forgotten me, and you thought, perhaps, that I’d forgotten you, but you see I haven’t. I’ve got a very good memory, I have. Well, my love, and how are you? You’re not looking so well as I expected; quite peaked, you seem, nothing like so well filled out as you used to be.”

“What do you mean by coming here? And by calling yourself Mrs Darcy Sutherland?”

“My dear Vi!”

“Have the goodness not to address me by my Christian name.”

“It used to be Vi and Sally in the days gone by. But I suppose circumstances are changed, that sometimes makes a difference. I don’t mind, it’s all the same to me. I’ll call you whatever you choose--Miss Arnott if you like. I’m surprised to find that they all do seem to call you that round here.”

“You haven’t answered my questions. Why have you come here? And why do you call yourself Mrs Sutherland?”

“As to why I’ve come here, I’ll tell you in half a minute, though there’s some who wouldn’t ask such a thing of an old friend. Let me get my breath, my love; that rotten old fly shook me all to pieces. As to why I call myself Mrs Sutherland--that does seem an unpleasant remark to make to a lady, let alone an old friend. But I’m not one that’s quick to take offence. I call myself Mrs Sutherland because I am Mrs Sutherland. I’ve married since I saw you last.”

“You’ve married?”

“Yes, why shouldn’t I? And, unlike you, I’m not ashamed of my married name, or of my husband’s. By the way, my love, you must remember my husband.”