第20章

'Overmastering passion' used to be the explanation, before that. Iguess it's all much of a muchness: just natural instinct."The restaurant had been steadily emptying. Monsieur Gustav and his ample-bosomed wife were seated at a distant table, eating their own dinner.

"Why couldn't you have married?" asked Joan.

The girl shrugged her shoulders. "Who was there for me to marry?"she answered. "The men who wanted me: clerks, young tradesmen, down at home--I wasn't taking any of that lot. And the men I might have fancied were all of them too poor. There was one student.

He's got on since. Easy enough for him to talk about waiting.

Meanwhile. Well, it's like somebody suggesting dinner to you the day after to-morrow. All right enough, if you're not troubled with an appetite."The waiter came to clear the table. They were almost the last customers left. The man's tone and manner jarred upon Joan. She had not noticed it before. Joan ordered coffee and the girl, exchanging a joke with the waiter, added a liqueur.

"But why should you give up your art?" persisted Joan. It was that was sticking in her mind. "I should have thought that, if only for the sake of the child, you would have gone on with it.""Oh, I told myself all that," answered the girl. "Was going to devote my life to it. Did for nearly two years. Till I got sick of living like a nun: never getting a bit of excitement. You see, I've got the poison in me. Or, maybe, it had always been there.""What's become of it?" asked Joan. "The child?""Mother's got it," answered the girl. "Seemed best for the poor little beggar. I'm supposed to be dead, and my husband gone abroad." She gave a short, dry laugh. "Mother brings him up to see me once a year. They've got quite fond of him.""What are you doing now?" asked Joan, in a low tone.

"Oh, you needn't look so scared," laughed the girl, "I haven't come down to that." Her voice had changed. It had a note of shrillness. In some indescribable way she had grown coarse. "I'm a kept woman," she explained. "What else is any woman?"She reached for her jacket; and the waiter sprang forward and helped her on with it, prolonging the business needlessly. She wished him "Good evening" in a tone of distant hauteur, and led the way to the door. Outside the street was dim and silent. Joan held out her hand.

"No hope of happy endings," she said with a forced laugh.

"Couldn't marry him I suppose?"

"He has asked me," answered the girl with a swagger. "Not sure that it would suit me now. They're not so nice to you when they've got you fixed up. So long."She turned abruptly and walked rapidly away. Joan moved instinctively in the opposite direction, and after a few minutes found herself in a broad well-lighted thoroughfare. A newsboy was shouting his wares.

"'Orrible murder of a woman. Shockin' details. Speshul,"repeating it over and over again in a hoarse, expressionless monotone.

He was selling the papers like hot cakes; the purchasers too eager to even wait for their change. She wondered, with a little lump in her throat, how many would have stopped to buy had he been calling instead: "Discovery of new sonnet by Shakespeare. Extra special."Through swinging doors, she caught glimpses of foul interiors, crowded with men and women released from their toil, taking their evening pleasure. From coloured posters outside the great theatres and music halls, vulgarity and lewdness leered at her, side by side with announcements that the house was full. From every roaring corner, scintillating lights flared forth the merits of this public benefactor's whisky, of this other celebrity's beer: it seemed the only message the people cared to hear. Even among the sirens of the pavement, she noticed that the quiet and merely pretty were hardly heeded. It was everywhere the painted and the overdressed that drew the roving eyes.

She remembered a pet dog that someone had given her when she was a girl, and how one afternoon she had walked with the tears streaming down her face because, in spite of her scoldings and her pleadings, it would keep stopping to lick up filth from the roadway. A kindly passer-by had laughed and told her not to mind.

"Why, that's a sign of breeding, that is, Missie," the man had explained. "It's the classy ones that are always the worst."It had come to her afterwards craving with its soft brown, troubled eyes for forgiveness. But she had never been able to break it of the habit.

Must man for ever be chained by his appetites to the unclean: ever be driven back, dragged down again into the dirt by his own instincts: ever be rendered useless for all finer purposes by the baseness of his own desires?

The City of her Dreams! The mingled voices of the crowd shaped itself into a mocking laugh.

It seemed to her that it was she that they were laughing at, pointing her out to one another, jeering at her, reviling her, threatening her.

She hurried onward with bent head, trying to escape them. She felt so small, so helpless. Almost she cried out in her despair.

She must have walked mechanically. Looking up she found herself in her own street. And as she reached her doorway the tears came suddenly.

She heard a quick step behind her, and turning, she saw a man with a latch key in his hand. He passed her and opened the door; and then, facing round, stood aside for her to enter. He was a sturdy, thick-set man with a strong, massive face. It would have been ugly but for the deep, flashing eyes. There was tenderness and humour in them.

"We are next floor neighbours," he said. "My name's Phillips."Joan thanked him. As he held the door open for her their hands accidentally touched. Joan wished him good-night and went up the stairs. There was no light in her room: only the faint reflection of the street lamp outside.

She could still see him: the boyish smile. And his voice that had sent her tears back again as if at the word of command.

She hoped he had not seen them. What a little fool she was.

A little laugh escaped her.