"Oh--of _course_ he was drunk! My father keeps a public-house, so I ought to know. And they often get black eyes when they're drunk. Let's talk about something else."

"Well," said Kitty, with her head on one side, "a public-house is as paying a business as there is, especially in a poor neighbourhood. But I'd rather have my little bit in tramways. People ought to be careful how they invest their money; dividends aren't everything; what shall it profit a man? So you think I needn't worry about Jeff's black eye?"

All at once Louie felt an almost hysterical need to turn Kitty's weak wanderings into another direction--any other direction. Glibly she began to improvise.

"It's horrid," she said, her voice a little raised. "I've seen them at my father's. They get drunk, and fall, and then they get black eyes quite easily. And," she ran on regardlessly, "they knock themselves about fearfully! I saw a man in the Harrow Road one night----"

Feverishly she extemporised. To something she had once seen from the top of a bus she gave colour and circ.u.mstance. Kitty was impressed.

"Dear me!" she said.

Then, when the danger, whatever it was, seemed to be averted, Louie turned, though not much more calmly, to Margate. Kitty was perfectly docile; Margate or that dangerous other were all the same to her.

Louie had never been to Margate, but she compared Margate with other places--Bournemouth, Ilfracombe, Scarboro.

"I should like to go to Scarboro," Kitty mused--"Harrogate too--Harrogate's tremendously toney, isn't it?"

"Very; all hotels and kursaals and pump rooms and things," averred Louie, who had never been to Harrogate either.

Then, ten minutes later, she rose. She said good-bye. But even as she did so she received another start. Kitty had suddenly called in a sharp, loud voice.

"Was that Annie at the door?"

"No," said Louie, her nerves all on edge. "There's n.o.body."

"Open the door and look!"

Louie did so. There was n.o.body. She returned to the bed again. Kitty was once more squatting up. She still spoke sharply.

"It's all very well to be so c.o.c.ksure," she said, "but if Annie was to guess, or Miriam Levey or any of them, it would be all U P, I can tell you! Or Evie Soames either! I only told you because you're different and can hold your tongue! The tongue is a little member, so the best thing people can do is to shut up, you take my tip! And _I_ broke it off, mind you! There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, without girls making themselves cheap, and if he ever wants to know I'll tell him straight--no drunks and black eyes for me! Not that I don't forgive my enemies; I'm as good at that as the next one; but when I'm engaged again it'll be to somebody who's TT absolutely, though he does clean the knives!" Then, dropping her voice again, she said equably: "Good-bye, dear--you will come again, won't you? I sha'n't be going for a fortnight--the rooms aren't at liberty yet--there isn't a sea view, but it isn't a minute from the Ramsgate tram--you must come and stay with me----"

Louie left her. Downstairs in the hall she had a few words with Kitty's cousin. She asked when the engagement with Mr. Jeffries had been broken off, and was told a year ago. Part of the time since then Kitty had spent with another cousin, Alf Windus, who lived in Kilburn and played the first fiddle at the Metropolitan in Edgware Road; part she had spent at Alf's sister-in-law's at Wealdstone; and for the rest of the time she had been at the Hickleys'. She was only a little flighty at times, and Mrs. Hickley was too busy, what with breakfasts at different hours and some liking one thing and some another, to pay much attention to her. She would have taken her for nothing if she could, but life was a struggle and business was business, and Mrs.

Hickley had been lucky enough to let her room for the time she would be away at Margate. If Kitty really had anything to keep from her cousin, apparently (Louie concluded) she had kept it. Probably Kitty's condition (Mrs. Hickley added) was a result of the shock of Archie Merridew's suicide, coinciding with her rupture with Mr. Jeffries.

Beyond that Mrs. Hickley minded her own business--plenty, too,----

"Thank you for coming," she said, opening the door for Louie.

"I shall come again if I may," Louie replied.

Already she knew that she would go again--must go again--though it was only when she had left the house behind her that she began to ask herself why. Then followed another dialogue. The critical Louie began it.

"Well, what did I tell you? His engagement's off, and he's getting on in his business. I'm right so far, eh?"

"Too right," the other Louie muttered. "Let it rest."

"Will it let you rest--that's the question! Well, what do you want next--his engagement to Evie Soames?"

"I don't want anything. I've got my boy and my living to earn. That fills my life."

"Then why are you going to see Kitty again? Come, don't shirk it. You know why you're going. You're going to----"

"I'm not!"

"You're going to protect him! If that poor creature thinks she guesses, you're going to tell her the notion's perfectly absurd!

You're going to lie to her! If she has weak fancies, you're going to see that they're just as wide of the truth as they can be. Do you still deny what the truth is? After whatever the tale is he's been telling about drunkenness and a black eye? _Is_ he that kind of man?

_Isn't_ that just as likely as not to be one of his blinds? A man has to be cunning, you know, to hoodwink a coroner's jury, but somehow he seems to have done it."

"I don't know anything about it."

"You mean you believe he hasn't done it? Then why are you going to see Kitty again? Oh, don't pretend to me! I tell you you're going to protect him. And why are you going to protect him? (Ah, I didn't think of that before, but I see it now!) You'll love him a little more still just for that! You'll love him because you have his safety in your hands. You'll keep it in your hands. Even if you have to take Kitty to live with you, so that you can watch her every spare moment, you'll take care she never, never knows. You're planning it now. You're going to have a right in that man no other woman on earth has, Evie Soames or anybody else. And you're going to take him from Evie Soames too, if you can!"

The other attempted irony. "What, me? With my story?"

"You only regret your story because it stands now in your way of getting him! Would you marry Roy now even if you could gain a kingdom by it? Why, you wouldn't before, let alone now! What are you going to see Kitty again for--to-morrow? We shall see! Your nerves are all a-jump at this moment; you don't feel it safe to leave here even for a few hours! And another thing. Miriam Levey seems to be at his place, wherever it is, and you're positively trembling about _that_! While you're trying to worm things out of Kitty on the one side, she'll be at the other--_you_ know what she is! So the first thing you'll do will be to find out exactly what Kitty's got into her head."

But here the normal Louie temporarily triumphed. "What a tale you're making up!" she laughed. "These things simply do not happen. Actually, you're trying to force it on me that I love a man simply because he's committed a----"

"Not simply because----"

"Well, that I'm in love with a man who has committed one. Tell that to the world, and see how you're laughed at!... Oh no, it's too much.

People don't do it, especially when it's guesswork, pure and simple----"

So she triumphed. The other Louie held her peace.

But for all that she went to see Kitty again on the morrow.

II

It was an error of judgment that caused Louie to leave the photographer's in Bond Street. The money she owed to Buck and Chaff was on her mind; she saw that Richenda Earle had been right; she was not yet out in the open. She sought to diminish her indebtedness by finding a better-paid post.

The opportunity presented itself. She obtained, at a salary of three pounds a week, the coveted secretaryship. Never mind to whom she became secretary; he is now a renowned author; and Louie was with him for just a fortnight. At the end of that time he offered to double her salary. Louie's answer was to walk immediately out of his house. She had now no job at all.

The story of the pinch shall be pa.s.sed over lightly. The boy did not feel it; it was she who tightened her belt. Promising herself that it was for the last time, she borrowed of Buck, and then removed to Edith Grove, taking two small rooms in the same house as Myrtle Morris, the model. But Myrtle had gone for the Christmas season into pantomime, and as Louie was out all day, and asleep when Myrtle returned at night, she saw little of her. She would have gone into pantomime too, but she was too late, and still hoped for something better. Of necessity Celeste remained with her; Celeste kept the place going with her needle. This was at the beginning of 1898. February found her again in a cash-desk, this time at Slater's. The desk had a mirrored panel in the front of it that extended from the narrow counter to the floor, and at first Louie wondered why clerks and shop-a.s.sistants put down their money, stood back from the desk, and grinned. Then one day, when somebody else was inside the box, she noticed the illusion.

The head and shoulders of the girl in the cage appeared to be continued downwards by the trousers of a man. As she could not afford to throw up her job, she continued to bear the grins disdainfully.

After her day's work she acquired from Celeste the art of crochet. Her mats and table-centres and borders for teacloths went in with Celeste's own work.

Her improved French enabled her to pa.s.s, in April, from the cash-desk at Slater's to one at a foreign restaurant in Soho. She still lived in Edith Grove. For several weeks that summer she was again at Earls Court, but with the reopening of the theatres she obtained a place in the ladies' cloakroom at His Majesty's. One night she helped Miss Elwell, the daughter of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, off with her cloak. She was unrecognised. She wondered how B. Minor was getting on.

She was still at His Majesty's at Christmas 1898; but the New Year saw her at still another place--a Ladies' Turkish Baths, in St. James's.

Buck, angry and disapproving of the whole course of her life, liked this least of all; ma.s.sage somehow brought it home to him. But there was a worse shock still in store for Buck. In the spring of '99 Louie became an artist's model.

Myrtle Morris introduced her to the profession and to Roy's friend, Billy Izzard, at the same time. This also was in Edith Grove. Billy Izzard, whose large, boyish face and loose, shambling figure somehow gave Louie the impression that he had either grown too quickly or else not yet filled out, was telling Miss Morris, with a candour entirely disarming, that for some purpose or other her own form was no good at all; and Miss Morris asked him why he didn't try the Models' Club. He snorted.

"Try it? I have tried it; tried everything. Fact of the matter is, it's like going to a Registry Office for servants; you find the rich people have snapped up all the best before they get there. Old Henson gets 'em. He's got the very girl I want; Miss Gale; but I can't pay what Henson pays. And the rest of you are like that egg--good in parts."

Louie wondered whether Billy had ever heard her name before; she found a way of making sure. The talk turned to holiday-places for the coming summer, and Louie contrived to mention the Somerset coast and the Bristol Channel. The unsuspecting Billy told her that he had once been yachting there with a fellow and had had a smash-up. It was amusing.

According to Billy, the other fellow had rather fancied himself as a patcher-up of broken centre-boards and suchlike, had put in at some place or other, and had said he'd made the centre-board all right; and he'd come pretty near drowning the pair of them off a place called Combe Martin. Luckily they'd been spied by the coastguard, and a boat had been put out to them. "Rottenest piece of navigation in England,"

Billy grumbled on; "there's a place called the Boiling Pot----" He described it....

Louie felt a little gush of grat.i.tude towards Roy. He had not chattered. But of course he would not----