"Mrs. Eyton! How dare you call me a fool!"
Pause of blank amazement; sago-messed table-napkin in the scented hand; sago creeping down the silken skirt. That a nursery governess-- not even a servant--should so presume!
"Miss Humfray! You forget yourself!"
"No!-No! It is you who forget yourself. How dare you speak to me like that!"
Another moment of utter bewilderment; small Eyton-Eytons gazing round- eyed; the girl white, heaving; the woman dully red. Then "Pack your boxes, Miss!"
XI.
She was upon the platform at Victoria Station, a porter asking commands for her box, before she realised what she had done. A few pounds in her purse, and infinitely worse off now than a week before.
Then she had no "character"; now employment was to be sought with Mrs.
Eyton-Eyton as her "last place." She would not go back to Missus and Tim. Though they had tried to conceal it, secretly, she had seen, they were relieved when she left. They had not accommodation for her; latterly she had dispossessed of his bed a sailor son on leave from his ship.
She left her box in the cloak-room; turned down Wilton Road from the station; penetrated the narrow thoroughfares between Lupus Street and the river; secured a bedroom with Mrs. j.a.pes at six shillings a week.
Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received a furious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel line of red ink ruled through the page that began "Name: Mary Humfray," and ended "Salary:--"
"But I don"t know a soul in London."
"You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have a reputation for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk."
A bow closed the interview.
XII.
It was her landlady"s husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, who dealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shops that had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and her presumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she found Mrs. j.a.pes in convulsive tears, speechless.
What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs.
Up to her room--the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents scattered across the floor, the little case in which with her pictures of Mother and Dad she kept her money gone.
A little raid by Mr. j.a.pes, it appeared, in which Mrs. j.a.pes"s property had also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ...
had done time ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she"d best go ... of course she could tell the police.
Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered and frightened her.
To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new landlady into the mysteries of p.a.w.nshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe.... Answering of advertis.e.m.e.nts found in the public library in Great Smith Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Always the same outcome. ... Experience?--None. References?
--None.... "Thank you; I"m afraid--I"m sure it"s all right, but one has to be so careful nowadays. Good morning." ... Always the same outcome.... The idea of writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ...
That life, those friends, seemed of a period that was dead, done, gone--ages and ages ago....
XIII.
Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow--a gentlemanly-looking person of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to an address copied from the _Daily Telegraph_. Why, by an extraordinary coincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!--flat, rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help.
Might he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though putting now and then curious little questions which she could not understand.... Hadn"t he seen her at the Oxford one night? ...
a.s.suredly he had not; what was the Oxford?
He laughed, evidently pleased. "Gad, you do keep it up!" he cried.
So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
"You understand why I can"t use the lift?" he said. "They"re beastly particular here."
She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thus to a door where he took out a latch-key.
It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, took her, trembling her limbs.
She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
"Why, it is the wrong number!" she cried.
He had turned the key. "Lord! you do keep it up!" he laughed, his hand suddenly about her arm.
Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the thing.
"Ah, let me go--let me go!"
"Oh, chuck it, you little a.s.s!" His arm was about her waist now, dragging her; his face close.
With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched from his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered his wits; across the hall and running--shaking, hysterical--down the street.
XIV.
Thereafter men were a constant horror to her--adding a new and most savage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair that bayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, she went again to Miss Ram at the Agency--almost upon her knees, crying, trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat to the man in Wilton Road.
Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grim exterior; had never realised the actual circ.u.mstances; would do what she could; no need to be frightened.
Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. No sharpness, no slight now could p.r.i.c.k her spirit; she had learned too well; she would not face those streets again.
That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds were healing now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at present discomforts. It was only now and again--as now--that she, driven by some sudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander--bruising itself in those dark pa.s.sages.
The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob; was herself.
Mrs. Chater said: "Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda."