The life of the Bohemian in London is no brilliantly coloured affair.
The most that can be said for it is that it has its moments. The first
flush of a full purse and the last despair of an empty pocket are
always sensations that are worth while. With the one you can gauge
the shallow depth of pleasure and find the world full of friends;
with the other you can learn how superfluous are the things you called
necessities and you may count upon the fingers of your hand the number
of friends whom really you possess. In their way, these moments are
true values--both of them.
But the life of the Bohemian, wherever it may be, has one advantage
that no other life possesses. It is a series of contrasts. With his
last sovereign, he may have supper at the Savoy, rubbing shoulders
with the best and with the worst; the next night, he may be dining
off a _maquereau grille_ in a Greek Street restaurant, jogging elbows
with the worst and with the best. It is only the steady possession
of wealth that makes a groove; but steady possession is an unknown
condition in the life of the Bohemian. And so, drifting in this
sporadic way through the wild journeys of existence, he comes truly
to learn the definite, certain uncertainty of human things. This he
learns; but it is no sure guarantee that he will follow the teaching
of the lesson.
For in the heart of human nature is a common need of bondage. To this,
no matter what movement may be afoot, a woman still yields herself
willingly. To this, in deep reluctance, with dragging steps, but none
the less inevitably, man yields as well. The desire for companionship,
the desire to give, albeit there may be no giving in return, the
shuddering sense of the empty room and the silent night come to all
of us, however much we may wish for the former conditions of solitude
when once they are ours.
It was this common need of bondage, this hatred of the silent
emptiness of life that caught the mind of Jack Traill, arrested and
held it in the interest of Sally Bishop.
You are never really to know why a man, passing through life, meeting
this woman, meeting that, some intimately, some in the vapid chance
of acquaintanceship, will in one moment be held by the sight of a
certain face. The table of affinities is the only attempt at
regulating the matter, and in these changing times one cannot look
even upon that with confidence.
There is a law, however, whatever it may be, and in unconscious
obedience to it, Traill kept the face of Sally Bishop persistently
before him. After she had left him at Knightsbridge, he too descended
from the 'bus and walked slowly back to Piccadilly Circus.
Casting his eyes round the circle of houses with their brilliant
illuminations, he decided, with no anticipation of entertainment,
where to dine. A meal is a ceremony of boredom when it has no
pleasurable prospect. Indeed, the gratification of any appetite
becomes a sordid affair when the mind is stagnant and the body merely
asking for its food. But in the last three years, Traill had gone
through this same performance a thousand times; a thousand times he
had looked out of the little circular window on the top floor of the
house in Lower Regent Street where he lived; a thousand times he had
taken a coin out of his pocket and let the head or the tail decide
between the two restaurants which he most usually frequented.
On this night there was no tossing of a coin. He had not even so much
interest in the meal as that. Making his way across the Circus, he
entered a restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue, and passed down the
stairs to the grill-room.
The music, the lights, the haze of smoke and the scent of food were
depressing. The whole atmosphere rolled forward to meet him as he
came through the doors. He had no subtle temperament. It did not
offend his imagination, but it sickened his senses, even though he
knew that in five minutes he would be eating with the rest and the
atmosphere would have taken upon itself a false semblance of
normality.
All the tables had one occupant or another. He was forced to seat
himself at the same table with some man and a girl, who were already
half through their meal. He did so with apologies, quite aware of
the annoyance he was causing. But he was not sensitive. He had the
right to a seat at the table. The rules of the restaurant offered
no restrictions. With it all, he was British.
"Hope you'll excuse my intrusion," he said shortly.
The man, a clerk, with slavery written legibly across his face,
offered some mumbled acceptance of the inevitable. Traill himself
would not have borne with any such intrusion. He would have called
the manager--insisted upon having the table to himself; but he
intruded his presence with only a momentary consciousness of being
in the way.
His manner with waiters was peremptory. He gave them the recognition
of the position which they occupied, but beyond that, scarcely looked
upon them as human.
"Look here," he began, "I want so and so--" he named a dish that was
unknown to the companion of the young clerk. She felt a certain
respect of him for that. Her friend had ordered the most ordinary
of food and had tried to do it in a lordly manner. There was no
lordliness about Traill. He wasted no time with a waiter; he had never
met a German waiter who was worth it. All this gave the impression
of brusqueness. The girl liked it. She looked at her friend and wished
she was dining with Traill. But Traill took no notice of her. Except
an occasional glance, he ignored them both. As soon as he could, he
ordered an evening paper and sat concealed behind it--truly British
in every outline. The music in the place was good, but no music
appealed to him. It came as a confused wreckage of sounds to his ears
as he read through the news of the evening; and when the girl rattled
her spoon on the coffee cup and the young man clapped his hands
vigorously at the conclusion of a selection, he looked over the top
of his paper with annoyance. What music had ever penetrated his
understanding of the art, had come in the form of chants of psalms
and old hymn tunes, which a constant attendance at church in his youth
had dinned into him--the driving of soft iron nails into the stern
oak. He sang these laboriously with numberless crescendos as he
dressed in the mornings.
He finished dinner as quickly as he could. The young people opposite
him were insufferably dull. Apparently they had never met each other
before and were at a loss to make conversation to suit the occasion.
Accordingly, they listened intently to the string band while the
young man smoked a long cigar, and in the natural course of things,
they applauded after each piece to show that they had heard it. Traill
bolted his meal, glad to leave them.
He came out of the restaurant and thanked God--filling his lungs with
it--for the clean air. Then he stood on the pavement contemplating
the next move. Should he go back to his rooms, read--smoke--fall
asleep? Should he turn into a music-hall? When you live alone, the
greatest issues of life sometimes resolve themselves into such
questions as these.
Finally, scarcely conscious of arriving at any definite decision,
he walked slowly back across the Circus in the direction of Lower
Regent Street.
Over by the Criterion he heard the sound of footsteps behind him,
hurrying; then his Christian name in a woman's voice. He turned.
"I was up nearly at the Prince of Wales's," she said out of breath,
"when I saw you crossing the Circus. My--I ran!"
"What for?" he asked laconically.
"Why to talk to you, of course--what else? Where are you going?"
He looked at her coloured lips, at the tired eyes with their blackened
lashes, at the flush of rouge that adorned her cheeks. Involuntarily,
he remembered when she was charming, pretty--a time when she required
none of these things.
"Where are you going anyway?" she repeated. "You haven't been to see
me these months. Where are you going now?"
"I'm going back to my rooms."
A look of resigned disappointment passed like a shadow across her
face. The first realization in a woman of her failure to attract is
the beginning of every woman's tragedy.
"Never seen my rooms, have you?" he added.
"No; never expected to."
"Come in and see them now and have a talk."
"You don't mean that?" Eagerness dragged it out of her.
"Come along," he said; "they're just down here--in Regent Street."
She followed him silently--silently, but in that moment her spirits
had lifted. There was a wider swing in her walk. But he took no notice
of that; he was not observant.
She hummed a tune with a rather pretty voice as she walked up the
flights of stairs behind him.
"Gosh! it's dark," she exclaimed.
"Oh, it's none of your bachelor flats with lifts and attendants and
electric lights," he replied.
On the third landing she stopped--out of breath again.
"Tired?" he said.
"There--" she laid a hand on her chest and breathed heavily. Then
she moved a step nearer to him.
"Give us a kiss, dearie," she whispered.
He retreated a step. "My dear child--I didn't want you for that. Come
up to the next floor when you've got your breath. I'll go on and light
the candles."
He left her there in the semi-darkness, the thin light from the
landing window just breaking up the heavy shadows. When she heard
him open the door upstairs, she moved close to the window, took a
small mirror from her little reticule bag and gazed for a moment at
her face in its reflection. Then from some pocket of the bag, she
produced a powder-puff and a box of powdered rouge, applying them
with mechanical precision.
"S'pose he thought I looked tired," she muttered to herself as she
mounted the remaining flight of stairs.
The room was a bachelor's, but it showed discrimination. Everything
was in good taste--taste that was beyond her comprehension. She stood
there in the doorway and stared about her before she entered. She
thought the rush matting that covered the floor was cold; she thought
the oak furniture sombre. Without realizing the need for tact, she
said so.
"You want a woman in here," she said, thinking that she was paving
the way for herself--"to warm things up a bit--you know what I
mean--make things more cosy."
He put a chair out for her by the fire. It had a rush-bottomed seat
to it, and for the first few moments she worried about in it, trying
vainly to make herself comfortable.
"What would you do?" he asked quietly, filling a well-burnt pipe from
a tobacco-jar.
She took this as encouragement--jumped to it, as an animal to the
food above it.
"Do? Well, first of all I'd have a nice thick carpet." There was no
need to force the note of interest into her voice. She was already
absorbed with it. She confidently thought that she could impress him
with the comfort that she could bring into his life. Her eyes, quick
to grasp certain facts, had shown her that he lived alone. Long study
of men from certain standpoints had made that easy for her to
appreciate. This moment to her was as the gap in the wall of riders
before him is to the jockey; in that moment she saw clear down the
straight to the winning-post. She took it. Ten minutes before she
had not known where to turn. The race had seemed impossible. Two or
three times she had opened her reticule bag and counted the four
coppers that jingled within the pocket. She had had no dinner. No
music hall was possible to her with such capital. You know something
of life when you have only fourpence in the world and vice is the
only trade for which your hand has acquired any deftness.
"I pray God no man 'll offer me ten bob to-night," she had said to
another woman.
"Why?"
"Why? Gosh! I'd take it."
Here then, out of nowhere, in the dull impenetrable wall was torn
the gap through which she saw the chance, such a chance as she had
never been offered by the generosity of circumstance before. She
seized it--no hesitation--no lack of inspiring confidence. It did
not even cross her mind that she looked tired. She was in no way
thwarted by the knowledge that she was not so young, not so pretty
as when first she had known him. The opportunity was too great for
that. It had fallen so obviously at her feet, that she felt it was
meant for her.
She shuffled her feet on the cold clean matting and said again, "I'd
have a nice thick carpet--"
"What colour?"
She looked up to the ceiling to think--not at the room around her.
"I don't know--Turkey red, I think--that's warmest. You know my
carpet--well, it used to be nice. It's worn a bit now and there's
not so much colour in it as when it was new. That was Turkey red."
"And what else?" He sat on the corner of an old table and smoked his
pipe--swinging his legs and looking at her.
"Well, I'd have electric lights instead of these candles--you can't
expect a woman to see with candles;--'lectric light's twice as cheap
and it's much brighter. And they make lovely new fittings now--quite
inexpensive--oxidized copper, I think they call it; I like brass best
myself."
"You think brass is better?"
"Yes; don't you? Those brass candlesticks that you've got are all
right, only they're so plain."
"You like things more ornate?"
"More what?"
"More ornate--more highly finished--more elaborate?"
"Yes; don't you?"
He took no notice of that question. "What else would you do?" he asked.
The smoke curled up in clouds from the bowl of his pipe as he sat
listening to her.
She looked round the room contemplatively.
"Oh--lots of things," she said. "I'd have a sofa--one of those settee
sort of things--"
"Upholstered in red?"
"Yes--to go with the carpet. And a comfortable armchair--really
comfortable, I mean--something that you could chuck your legs about
it--less like a straight jacket than this thing I'm sitting in."
"Upholstered in red?" he repeated.
"Um--of course."
"Then how about this wall-paper?" he questioned. "It's green--do you
think that would go with all the red?"
She looked round the walls, then tried to blur her eyes in an effort
to give scope to her imagination. She put her whole heart into it.
This was the chance of her life. Thrilling through her, like some
warm current that forces its way through cold water, was the
consciousness that she was making him seriously consider the
benefits of having a woman to live with him, to look after his needs,
attend to his comforts, as she pictured herself so well able to do.
After due deliberation, she delivered her opinion.
"I don't think the green would go so badly as you'd think," she said
slowly--"I suppose it would be expensive to change. But red would
look better of course."
He took his pipe out of his mouth and blew a long scroll of smoke
from between his lips as he looked at her.
"In fact," he said at last--"you'd like to make this little room of
mine look like hell."
It was a brutal thing to have said. Yet he knew her mind no more than
she knew his. He knew but little of women. Her knowledge of men was
limited to one point of view. When her flat had been newly decorated,
newly furnished for her, she had boasted of its comforts to every
man she met. Nearly all of them had said that they liked it. It was
clean then, and all they had appreciated was the cleanliness. But
she had not known that. She thought they had approved of her taste.
So, with this narrow knowledge of the sex, she had made her bid for
security and failed.
And he, when he saw the drop in her face, when he saw features and
expression fall from the lofty height of anticipation as a pile of
cards topple in a mass upon the table, he was sorry. Her mouth
opened--gaped. She looked as if a flat hand had struck her.
"I don't mean that unkindly," he said--"but it would be hell--red
hell--to me."
She sat and stared at him. "Can't understand you," she said at last.
"Why not?"
"What did you let me go on talking for?"
"It was rather amusing to compare your taste with mine."
"Amusing? God!"
She lifted herself to her feet and went across to the mantelpiece,
leaning her elbows on it, her head in her hands. All her exhaustion
had returned. She felt a thousand times more tired in that moment
than when she had rested on the landing. All that afternoon she had
been walking the streets--all that evening too. From Regent Street
to Oxford Street, from Oxford Street to Bond Street, from Bond Street
through the Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, then over the whole
course again, smiling cheerfully at this man, looking knowingly at
that--all a forced effort, all a spurious energy; and pain throbbed
in her limbs--a dominant note of pain. She could feel a pulse in her
brain that kept time to it. These are the ecstatic pleasures of
vice--the charms, the allurements of the gay life.
At last she turned round and faced him. "I don't want any of those
damned red carpets and things," she said,--"if you'll let me come
and live with you--look after you."
She crossed the room and laid her hands heavily on his shoulders;
bent towards him to kiss his lips.
"We should be sick to death of each other in a week," he said, meeting
her eyes.
"No, we shouldn't."
He gazed steadily at her for a moment. "What makes you think I want
any one to live here with me?" he asked curiously.
"I don't know--you do. I saw it the first second I entered the room.
I felt it the first moment you asked me to come up here. You know
you do yourself. You're sick of this--aren't you?"
"You're right there."
She nodded her head sententiously--proud of her perceptive ability.
She wanted to go on saying other things that were just as true,
showing how well she understood him; but she could think of nothing.
Then she made the fatal mistake. She threw a guess at a hazard.
"And you thought when you saw me that I was just the girl you wanted.
I saw that in your face when you turned round."
He smiled. "You've lost the scent," he said, drawing away from her
hands. "Lost it utterly. And why do you want to come and live here?
You're not fond of me. You don't care a rap for me. Are you hard up?"
Pride--self-respect--they are lost qualities in a lost woman. You
must not even look for them. For the moment, she was silent, saying
nothing; but there was no moaning of wounded vanity in the heart of
her. Two questions were weighing out the issue. If she said she were
hard-up, then all opportunity of gaining the chance would be lost.
He would give her money--tell her to go. That would be all. If she
refused to admit it, the opportunity--slight as it had become--would
still be there. Which to do--which course to take? For a perceptible
passing of time she rocked--a weary pendulum of doubt--between the
two. Then she gave it.
"I'm dead broke," she said thickly.
She saw the last hope vanish with that--looked after it with a curl
of bravado on her lip. Lifting her eyes to his, she knew it was gone.
There, in the place of it, was the calculation of what he could
spare--what he should give.
"How much do you want?" he asked.
The question was ludicrous to her. She wanted all she could get. Now
that she had thrown away her chances of the future, her whole mind
concentrated with uncontrolled desire upon the present.
"What's the good of asking me that?" she exclaimed bitterly. "I'll
take what I can get. Reminds me of a girl--a friend of mine. She's
an illegitimate child. Her father's pretty well off. She was down
to the bottom of the bag the other day, so she went to her father
and asked him for some money. 'My dear child,' he said--'I can't spare
you a cent--I've just spent seven hundred and fifty pounds on a motor
car--is a sovereign any good to you?'"
There was a bitter sense of humour in the story. She laughed at
it--loud, uncontrolled laughter that rang as empty and as hollow as
an echo.
"Give me what you can," she added. "Anything above a shilling's
better than fourpence."
"Is that what you're down to?"
"Um--"
He took three sovereigns out of his pocket, and gave them to her.
She let them lie out flat in the palm of her hand--the three of them,
all in a row. They glittered--even in the candle-light. They were
her own.
"When are you coming to see me?"
She still looked at them.
"I'm not coming."
Her head shot up; her eyes filled with questions.
"Why not?"
He opened his hands expressively. If there were any answer to that
question, she learnt that she was not going to get it.
"Are you going to be married?" she asked slowly.
He shook his head--laughing. Then understanding shot into her eyes,
and a flash of jealousy came with it.
"I know," she exclaimed between thin lips.
"What do you know?"
"You're going to keep some woman here--some girl you're fond of."
It was the moment of intuition. She had struck deeper into his mind
than even he was aware of himself.
"What makes you think that?"
"What you said."
"What did I say?"
"You admitted that you were sick of being here alone."
"Well--?"
She burst out laughing. "Well--?" She turned to the door. "Good Lord!
Isn't every blooming man the same!"
She opened her bag and dropped the three gold pieces into a
pocket--one after another. You heard the dull sound of the first as
it fell, then the clinking of the other two, when the metal touched
metal. She shut the bag--the catch snapped sharp! Then she went.