(I)
Mrs. Partington and Gertie had many of those mysterious conversations
that such women have, full of "he's" and "she's" and nods and becks and
allusions and broken sentences, wholly unintelligible to the outsider,
yet packed with interest to the talkers. The Major, Mr. Partington
(still absent), and Frank were discussed continually and exhaustively;
and, so far as the subjects themselves ranged, there was hardly an
unimportant detail that did not come under notice, and hardly an
important fact that did. Gertie officially passed, of course, as Mrs.
Trustcott always.
A couple of mornings after Frank had begun his work at the jam factory,
Mrs. Partington, who had stepped round the corner to talk with a friend
for an hour or so, returned to find Gertie raging. She raged in her own
way; she was as white as a sheet; she uttered ironical and
unintelligible sentences, in which Frank's name appeared repeatedly, and
it emerged presently that one of the Mission-ladies had been round
minding other folks' business, and that Gertie would thank that lady to
keep her airs and her advice to herself.
Now Mrs. Partington knew that Gertie was not the Major's wife, and
Gertie knew that she knew it; and Mrs. Partington knew that Gertie knew
that she knew it. Yet, officially, all was perfectly correct; Gertie
wore a wedding-ring, and there never was the hint that she had not a
right to it. It was impossible, therefore, for Mrs. Partington to
observe out loud that she understood perfectly what the Mission-lady had
been talking about. She said very little; she pressed her thin lips
together and let Gertie alone. The conversations that morning were of
the nature of disconnected monologues from Gertie with long silences
between.
It was an afternoon of silent storm. The Major was away in the West End
somewhere on mysterious affairs; the children were at school, and the
two women went about, each knowing what was in the mind of the other,
yet each resolved to keep up appearances.
At half-past five o'clock Frank abruptly came in for a cup of tea, and
Mrs. Partington gave it him in silence. (Gertie could be heard moving
about restlessly overhead.) She made one or two ordinary remarks,
watching Frank when he was not looking. But Frank said very little. He
sat up to the table; he drank two cups of tea out of the chipped enamel
mug, and then he set to work on his kippered herring. At this point Mrs.
Partington left the room, as if casually, and a minute later Gertie came
downstairs.
* * * * *
She came in with an indescribable air of virtue, rather white in the
face, with her small chin carefully thrust out and her eyelids drooping.
It was a pose she was accustomed to admire in high-minded and
aristocratic barmaids. Frank nodded at her and uttered a syllable or two
of greeting.
She said nothing; she went round to the window, carrying a white cotton
blouse she had been washing upstairs, and hung it on the clothes-line
that ran inside the window. Then, still affecting to be busy with it,
she fired her first shot, with her back to him.
"I'll thank you to let my business alone...."
(Frank put another piece of herring into his mouth.)
"... And not to send round any more of your nasty cats," added Gertie
after a pause.
There was silence from Frank.
"Well?" snapped Gertie.
"How dare you talk like that!" said Frank, perfectly quietly.
He spoke so low that Gertie mistook his attitude, and, leaning her
hands on the table, she poured out the torrent that had been gathering
within her ever since the Mission-lady had left her at eleven o'clock
that morning. The lady had not been tactful; she was quite new to the
work, and quite fresh from a women's college, and she had said a great
deal more than she ought, with an earnest smile upon her face that she
had thought conciliatory and persuasive. Gertie dealt with her
faithfully now; she sketched her character as she believed it to be; she
traced her motives and her attitude to life with an extraordinary wealth
of detail; she threw in descriptive passages of her personal appearance,
and she stated, with extreme frankness, her opinion of such persons as
she had thought friendly, but now discovered to be hypocritical parsons
in disguise. Unhappily I have not the skill to transcribe her speech in
full, and there are other reasons, too, why her actual words are best
unreported: they were extremely picturesque.
Frank ate on quietly till he had finished his herring; then he drank his
last cup of tea, and turned a little in his chair towards the fire. He
glanced at the clock, perceiving that he had still ten minutes, just as
Gertie ended and stood back shaking and pale-eyed.
"Is that all?" he asked.
It seemed it was not all, and Gertie began again, this time on a
slightly higher note, and with a little color in her face. Frank waited,
quite simply and without ostentation. She finished.
After a moment's pause Frank answered.
"I don't know what you want," he said. "I talked to you myself, and you
wouldn't listen. So I thought perhaps another woman would do it
better--"
"I did listen--"
"I beg your pardon," said Frank instantly. "I was wrong. You did listen,
and very patiently. I meant that you wouldn't do what I said. And so I
thought--"
Gertie burst out again, against cats and sneaking hypocrites, but there
was not quite the same venom in her manner.
"Very good," said Frank. "Then I won't make the mistake again. I am very
sorry--not in the least for having interfered, you understand, but for
not having tried again myself." (He took up his cap.) "You'll soon give
in, Gertie, you know. Don't you think so yourself?"
Gertie looked at him in silence.
"You understand, naturally, why I can't talk to you while the Major's
here. But the next time I have a chance--"
The unlatched door was pushed open and the Major came in.
(II)
There was an uncomfortable little pause for a moment. It is extremely
doubtful, even now, exactly how much the Major heard; but he must have
heard something, and to a man of his mind the situation that he found
must have looked extremely suspicious. Gertie, flushed now, with emotion
very plainly visible in her bright eyes, was standing looking at Frank,
who, it appeared, was a little disconcerted. It would have been almost
miraculous if the Major had not been convinced that he had interrupted a
little private love-making.
It is rather hard to analyze the Major's attitude towards Gertie; but
what is certain is that the idea of anyone else making love to her was
simply intolerable. Certainly he did not treat her with any great
chivalry; he made her carry the heavier bundles on the tramp; he behaved
to her with considerable disrespect; he discussed her freely with his
friends on convivial occasions. But she was his property--his and no one
else's. He had had his suspicions before; he had come in quietly just
now on purpose, and he had found himself confronted by this very
peculiar little scene.
He looked at them both in silence. Then his lips sneered like a dog's.
"Pardon me," he said, with extreme politeness. "I appear to be
interrupting a private conversation."
No one said anything. Frank leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece.
"It was private, then?" continued the Major with all the poisonous
courtesy at his command.
"Yes; it was private," said Frank shortly.
The Major put his bowler hat carefully upon the table.
"Gertie, my dear," he said. "Will you be good enough to leave us for an
instant? I regret having to trouble you."
Gertie breathed rather rapidly for a moment or two. She was not
altogether displeased. She understood perfectly, and it seemed to her
rather pleasant that two men should get into this kind of situation over
her. She was aware that trouble would come to herself later, probably in
the form of personal chastisement, but to the particular kind of
feminine temperament that she possessed even a beating was not wholly
painful, and the cheap kind of drama in which she found herself was
wholly attractive. After an instant's pause, she cast towards Frank what
she believed to be a "proud" glance and marched out.
"If you've got much to say," said Frank rapidly, as the door closed,
"you'd better keep it for this evening. I've got to go in ... in two
minutes."
"Two minutes will be ample," said the Major softly.
Frank waited.
"When I find a friend," went on the other, "engaged in an apparently
exciting kind of conversation, which he informs me is private, with one
who is in the position of my wife--particularly when I catch a sentence
or two obviously not intended for my ears--I do not ask what was the
subject of the conversation, but I--"
"My dear man," said Frank, "do put it more simply."
The Major was caught, so to speak, full in the wind. His face twitched
with anger.
Then he flung an oath at Frank.
"If I catch you at it again," he said, "there'll be trouble. God damn
you!"
"That is as it may be," said Frank.
The Major had had just one drink too much, and he was in the kind of
expansive mood that changes very rapidly.
"Can you tell me you were not trying to take her from me?" he cried,
almost with pathos in his voice.
This was, of course, exactly what Frank had been trying to do.
"You can't deny it!... Then I tell you this, Mr. Frankie"--the Major
sprang up--"one word more from you to her on that subject ... and ...
and you'll know it. D'you understand me?"
He thrust his face forward almost into Frank's.
It was an unpleasant face at most times, but it was really dangerous
now. His lips lay back, and the peculiar hot smell of spirit breathed
into Frank's nostrils. Frank turned and looked into his eyes.
"I understand you perfectly," he said. "There's no need to say any more.
And now, if you'll forgive me, I must get back to my work."
He took up his cap and went out.
* * * * *
The Major, as has been said, had had one glass too much, and he had,
accordingly, put into words what, even in his most suspicious moments,
he had intended to keep to himself. It might be said, too, that he had
put into words what he did not really think. But the Major was, like
everyone else, for good or evil, a complex character, and found it
perfectly possible both to believe and disbelieve the same idea
simultaneously. It depended in what stratum the center of gravity
happened to be temporarily suspended. One large part of the Major knew
perfectly well, therefore, that any jealousy of Frank was simply
ridiculous--the thing was simply alien; and another part, not so large,
but ten times more concentrated, judged Frank by the standards by which
the Major (_qua_ blackguard) conducted his life. For people who lived
usually in that stratum, making love to Gertie, under such
circumstances, would have been an eminently natural thing to do, and,
just now, the Major chose to place Frank amongst them.
The Major himself was completely unaware of these psychological
distinctions, and, as he sat, sunk in his chair, brooding, before
stepping out to attend to Gertie, he was entirely convinced that his
suspicions were justified. It seemed to him now that numberless little
details out of the past fitted, with the smoothness of an adjusted
puzzle, into the framework of his thought.
There was, first, the very remarkable fact that Frank, in spite of
opportunities to better himself, had remained in their company. At
Barham, at Doctor Whitty's, at the monastery, obvious chances had
offered themselves and he had not taken them. Then there were the small
acts of courtesy, the bearing of Gertie's bundles two or three times.
Finally, there was a certain change in Gertie's manner--a certain silent
peevishness towards himself, a curious air that fell on her now and then
as she spoke to Frank or looked at him.
And so forth. It was an extraordinarily convincing case, clinched now
by the little scene that he had just interrupted. And the very
irregularity of his own relations with Gertie helped to poison the
situation with an astonishingly strong venom.
Of course, there were other considerations, or, rather, there was
one--that Frank, obviously, was not the kind of man to be attracted by
the kind of woman that Gertie was--a consideration made up, however, of
infinitely slighter indications. But this counted for nothing. It seemed
unsubstantial and shadowy. There were solid, definable arguments on the
one side; there was a vague general impression on the other....
So the Major sat and stared at the fire, with the candle-light falling
on his sunken cheeks and the bristle on his chin--a poor fallen kind of
figure, yet still holding the shadow of a shadow of an ideal that might
yet make him dangerous.
Presently he got up with a sudden movement and went in search of Gertie.
(III)
There are no free libraries in Hackney Wick; the munificences of Mr.
Carnegie have not yet penetrated to that district (and, indeed, the
thought of a library of any kind in Hackney Wick is a little
incongruous). But there is one in Homerton, and during the dinner-hour
on the following day Frank went up the steps of it, pushed open the
swing-doors, and found his way to some kind of a writing-room, where he
obtained a sheet of paper, an envelope and a penny stamp, and sat down
to write a letter.
The picture that I have in my mind of Frank at this present time may
possibly be a little incorrect in one or two details, but I am quite
clear about its main outlines, and it is extremely vivid on the whole. I
see him going in, quietly and unostentatiously--quite at his ease, yet a
very unusual figure in such surroundings. I hear an old gentleman sniff
and move his chair a little as this person in an exceedingly shabby blue
suit with the collar turned up, with a muffler round his neck and large,
bulging boots on his feet, comes and sits beside him. I perceive an
earnest young lady, probably a typist in search of extra culture, look
at him long and vacantly from over her copy of Emerson, and can almost
see her mind gradually collecting conclusions about him. The attendant,
too, as he asks for his paper, eyes him shrewdly and suspiciously, and
waits till the three halfpence are actually handed across under the
brass wire partition before giving him the penny stamp. These
circumstances may be incorrect, but I am absolutely clear as to Frank's
own attitude of mind. Honestly, he no longer minds in the very least
how people behave to him; he has got through all that kind of thing long
ago; he is not at all to be commiserated; it appears to him only of
importance to get the paper and to be able to write and post his letter
without interruption. For Frank has got on to that plane--(I know no
other word to use, though I dislike this one)--when these other things
simply do not matter. We all touch that plane sometimes, generally under
circumstances of a strong mental excitement, whether of pleasure or
pain, or even annoyance. A man with violent toothache, or who has just
become engaged to be married, really does not care what people think of
him. But Frank, for the present at least, has got here altogether,
though for quite different reasons. The letter he wrote on this occasion
is, at present, in my possession. It runs as follows. It is very short
and business-like:
"DEAR JACK,
"I want to tell you where I am--or, rather, where I can be got
at in case of need. I am down in East London for the present,
and one of the curates here knows where I'm living. (He was at
Eton with me.) His address is: The Rev. E. Parham-Carter, The
Eton Mission, Hackney Wick, London, N.E.
"The reason I'm writing is this: You remember Major Trustcott
and Gertie, don't you? Well, I haven't succeeded in getting
Gertie back to her people yet, and the worst of it is that the
Major knows that there's something up, and, of course, puts the
worst possible construction upon it. Parham-Carter knows all
about it, too--I've just left a note on him, with instructions.
Now I don't quite know what'll happen, but in case anything
does happen which prevents my going on at Gertie, I want you to
come and do what you can. Parham-Carter will write to you if
necessary.
"That's one thing; and the next is this: I'd rather like to
have some news about my people, and for them to know (if they
want to know--I leave that to you) that I'm getting on all
right. I haven't heard a word about them since August. I know
nothing particular can have happened, because I always look at
the papers--but I should like to know what's going on
generally.
"I think that's about all. I am getting on excellently myself,
and hope you are. I am afraid there's no chance of my coming to
you for Christmas. I suppose you'll be home again by now.
"Ever yours,
"F.G."
"P.S.--Of course you'll keep all this private--as well as where
I'm living."
Now this letter seems to me rather interesting from a psychological
point of view. It is extremely business-like, but perfectly unpractical.
Frank states what he wants, but he wants an absurd impossibility. I like
Jack Kirkby very much, but I cannot picture him as likely to be
successful in helping to restore a strayed girl to her people. I suppose
Frank's only excuse is that he did not know whom else to write to.
It is rather interesting, too, to notice his desire to know what is
going on at his home; it seems as if he must have had, some faint
inkling that something important was about to happen, and this is
interesting in view of what now followed immediately.
He directed his letter, stamped it, and posted it in the library
post-box in the vestibule. Then, cap in hand, he pushed open the
swing-doors and ran straight into Mr. Parham-Carter.
"Hullo!" said that clergyman--and went a little white.
"Hullo!" said Frank; and then: "What's the matter?"
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going back to the jam factory."
"May I walk with you?"
"Certainly, if you don't mind my eating as I go along."
The clergyman turned with him and went beside him in silence, as Frank,
drawing out of his side-pocket a large hunch of bread and cheese,
wrapped up in the advertisement sheet of the _Daily Mail_, began to fill
his mouth.
"I want to know if you've had any news from home."
Frank turned to him slightly.
"No," he said sharply, after a pause.
Mr. Parham-Carter licked his lips.
"Well--no, it isn't bad news; but I wondered whether--"
"What is it?"
"Your governor's married again. It happened yesterday. I thought perhaps
you didn't know."
There was dead silence for an instant.
"No, I didn't know," said Frank. "Who's he married?"
"Somebody I never heard of. I wondered whether you knew her."
"What's her name?"
"Wait a second," said the other, plunging under his greatcoat to get at
his waistcoat pocket. "I've got the paragraph here. I cut it out of the
_Morning Post_. I only saw it half an hour ago. I was coming round to
you this evening."
He produced a slip of printed paper. Frank stood still a moment, leaning
against some area-railings--they were in the distinguished quarter of
Victoria Park Road--and read the paragraph through. The clergyman
watched him curiously. It seemed to him a very remarkable situation that
he should be standing here in Victoria Park Road, giving information to
a son as to his father's marriage. He wondered, but only secondarily,
what effect it would have upon Frank.
Frank gave him the paper back without a tremor.
"Thanks very much," he said. "No; I didn't know."
They continued to walk.
"D'you know her at all?"
"Yes, I know her. She's the Rector's daughter, you know."
"What! At Merefield? Then you must know her quite well."
"Oh! yes," said Frank, "I know her quite well."
Again there was silence. Then the other burst out:
"Look here--I wish you'd let me do something. It seems to me perfectly
ghastly--"
"My dear man," said Frank. "Indeed you can't do anything.... You got my
note, didn't you?"
The clergyman nodded.
"It's just in case I'm ill, or anything, you know. Jack's a great friend
of mine. And it's just as well that some friend of mine should be able
to find out where I am. I've just written to him myself, as I said in my
note. But you mustn't give him my address unless in case of real need."
"All right. But are you sure--"
"I'm perfectly sure.... Oh! by the way, that lady you sent round did no
good. I expect she told you?"
"Yes; she said she'd never come across such a difficult case."
"Well, I shall have to try again myself.... I must turn off here. Good
luck!"
(IV)
Gertie was sitting alone in the kitchen about nine o'clock that
night--alone, that is to say, except for the sleeping 'Erb, who, in a
cot at the foot of his mother's bed, was almost invisible under a pile
of clothes, and completely negligible as a witness. Mrs. Partington,
with the other two children, was paying a prolonged visit in Mortimer
Road, and the Major, ignorant of this fact, was talking big in the bar
of the "Queen's Arms" opposite the Men's Club of the Eton Mission.
Gertie was enjoying herself just now, on the whole. It is true that she
had received some chastisement yesterday from the Major; but she had the
kind of nature that preferred almost any sensation to none. And, indeed,
the situation was full of emotion. It was extraordinarily pleasant to
her to occupy such a position between two men--and, above all, two
"gentlemen." Her attitude towards the Major was of the most simple and
primitive kind; he was her man, who bullied her, despised her, dragged
her about the country, and she never for one instant forgot that he had
once been an officer in the army. Even his blows (which, to tell the
truth, were not very frequent, and were always administered in a
judicial kind of way) bore with them a certain stamp of brilliance; she
possessed a very pathetic capacity for snobbishness. Frank, on the other
side, was no less exciting. She regarded him as a good young man, almost
romantic, indeed, in his goodness--a kind of Sir Galahad; and he,
whatever his motive (and she was sometimes terribly puzzled about his
motives), at any rate, stood in a sort of rivalry to the Major; and it
was she who was the cause of contention. She loved to feel herself
pulled this way and that by two such figures, to be quarreled over by
such very strong and opposite types. It was a vague sensation to her,
but very vivid and attractive; and although just now she believed
herself to be thoroughly miserable, I have no doubt whatever that she
was enjoying it all immensely. She was very feminine indeed, and the
little scene of last night had brought matters to an almost exquisite
point. She was crying a little now, gently, to herself.
* * * * *
The door opened. Frank came in, put down his cap, and took his seat on
the bench by the fire.
"All out?" he asked.
Gertie nodded, and made a little broken sound.
"Very good," said Frank. "Then I'm going to talk to you."
Gertie wiped away a few more tears, and settled herself down for a
little morbid pleasure. It was delightful to her to be found crying over
the fire. Frank, at any rate, would appreciate that.
"Now," said Frank, "you've got the choice once more, and I'm going to
put it plainly. If you don't do what I want this time, I shall have to
see whether somebody else can't persuade you."
She glanced up, a little startled.
"Look here," said Frank. "I'm not going to take any more trouble myself
over this affair. You were a good deal upset yesterday when the lady
came round, and you'll be more upset yet before the thing's over. I
shan't talk to you myself any more: you don't seem to care a hang what I
say; in fact, I'm thinking of moving my lodgings after Christmas. So now
you've got your choice."
He paused.
"On the one side you've got the Major; well, you know him; you know the
way he treats you. But that's not the reason why I want you to leave
him. I want you to leave him because I think that down at the bottom
you've got the makings of a good woman--"
"I haven't," cried Gertie passionately.
"Well, I think you have. You're very patient, and you're very
industrious, and because you care for this man you'll do simply anything
in the world for him. Well, that's splendid. That shows you've got grit.
But have you ever thought what it'll all be like in five years from
now?"
"I shall be dead," wailed Gertie. "I wish I was dead now."
Frank paused.
"And when you're dead--?" he said slowly.
There was an instant's silence. Then Frank took up his discourse again.
(So far he had done exactly what he had wanted. He had dropped two tiny
ideas on her heart once more--hope and fear.)
"Now I've something to tell you. Do you remember the last time I talked
to you? Well, I've been thinking what was the best thing to do, and a
few days ago I saw my chance and took it. You've got a little
prayer-book down at the bottom of your bundle, haven't you? Well, I got
at that (you never let anyone see it, you know), and I looked through
it. I looked through all your things. Did you know your address was
written in it? I wasn't sure it was your address, you know, until--"
Gertie sat up, white with passion.
"You looked at my things?"
Frank looked her straight in the face.
"Don't talk to me like that," he said. "Wait till I've done.... Well, I
wrote to the address, and I got an answer; then I wrote again, and I got
another answer and a letter for you. It came this morning, to the
post-office where I got it."
Gertie looked at him, still white, with her lips parted.
"Give me the letter," she whispered.
"As soon as I've done talking," said Frank serenely. "You've got to
listen to me first. I knew what you'd say: you'd say that your people
wouldn't have you back. And I knew perfectly well from the little things
you'd said about them that they would. But I wrote to make sure....
"Gertie, d'you know that they're breaking their hearts for you?... that
there's nothing, in the whole world they want so much as that you
should come back?..."
"Give me the letter!"
"You've got a good heart yourself, Gertie; I know that well enough.
Think hard, before I give you the letter. Which is best--the Major and
this sort of life--and ... and--well, you know about the soul and God,
don't you?... or to go home, and--"
Her face shook all over for one instant.
"Give me the letter," she wailed suddenly.
Then Frank gave it her.
(V)
"But I can't possibly go home like this," whispered Gertie agitatedly in
the passage, after the Major's return half an hour later.
"Good Lord!" whispered Frank, "what an extraordinary girl you are, to
think--"
"I don't care. I can't, and I won't."
Frank cast an eye at the door, beyond which dozed the Major in the chair
before the fire.
"Well, what d'you want?"
"I want another dress, and ... and lots of things."
Frank stared at her resignedly.
"How much will it all come to?"
"I don't know. Two pounds--two pounds ten."
"Let's see: to-day's the twentieth. We must get you back before
Christmas. If I let you have it to-morrow, will it do?--to-morrow
night?"
She nodded. A sound came from beyond the door, and she fled.
* * * * *
I am not sure about the details of the manner in which Frank got the two
pounds ten, but I know he got it, and without taking charity from a
soul. I know that he managed somehow to draw his week's money two days
before pay-day, and for the rest, I suspect the pawnshop. What is quite
certain is that when his friends were able to take stock of his
belongings a little later, the list of them was as follows:
One jacket, one shirt, one muffler, a pair of trousers, a pair of socks,
a pair of boots, one cap, one tooth-brush, and a rosary. There was
absolutely nothing else. Even his razor was gone.
Things, therefore, were pretty bad with him on the morning of the
twenty-second of December. I imagine that he still possessed a few
pence, but out of this few pence he had to pay for his own and Gertie's
journey to Chiswick, as well as keep himself alive for another week. At
least, so he must have thought.
It must have been somewhere in Kensington High Street that he first had
a hint of a possibility of food to be obtained free, for, although I
find it impossible to follow all his movements during these days, it is
quite certain that he partook of the hospitality of the Carmelite
Fathers on this morning. He mentions it, with pleasure, in his diary.
It is a very curious and medieval sight--this feeding of the poor in the
little deep passage that runs along the outside of the cloister of the
monastery in Church Street. The passage is approached by a door at the
back of the house, opening upon the lane behind, and at a certain hour
on each morning of the year is thronged from end to end with the most
astonishing and deplorable collection of human beings to be seen in
London. They are of all ages and sizes, from seventeen to seventy, and
the one thing common to them all is extreme shabbiness and poverty.
A door opens at a given moment; the crowd surges a little towards a
black-bearded man in a brown frock, with an apron over it, and five
minutes later a deep silence, broken only by the sound of supping and
swallowing, falls upon the crowd. There they stand, with the roar of
London sounding overhead, the hooting of cars, the noise of innumerable
feet, and the rain--at least, on this morning--falling dismally down the
long well-like space. And here stand between two and three hundred men,
pinched, feeble, and yet wolfish, gulping down hot soup and bread,
looking something like a herd of ragged prisoners pent in between the
high walls.
Here, then, Frank stood in the midst of them, gulping his soup. His van
and horses, strictly against orders, remained in Church Street, under
the care of a passer-by, whom Frank seems to have asked, quite openly,
to do it for him for God's sake.
It is a dreary little scene in which to picture him, and yet, to myself,
it is rather pleasant, too. I like to think of him, now for the second
time within a few weeks, and all within the first six months of his
Catholic life, depending upon his Church for the needs of the body as
well as for the needs of the soul. There was nothing whatever to
distinguish him from the rest; he, too, had now something of that lean
look that is such a characteristic of that crowd, and his dress, too,
was entirely suitable to his company. He spoke with none of his hosts;
he took the basin in silence and gave it back in silence; then he wiped
his mouth on his sleeve, and went out comforted.