Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant
Chaters had been nourished; the massive bosom was
advertisement that they had done well. Beneath
the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently
contracted and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though
Mrs. Chater said it throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned.
The agitated woman panted, “Can it go on like
that?”
“I’m afraid I hardly—”
Miss Humfray shifted her hand.
“Stupid! Take off your glove!”
The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous
and clumsy the girl struggled with it.
“Miss Humfray! How slow you are! Pull
it!”
Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A
crack answered the jerk, and the glove split away
in her hand. “There! Not my fault.
Next time, perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently
large. Oh, my poor heart! Now, feel. Press!”
The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her
throat. She pressed, as bid, into that heaving
blouse; said she could feel it. It was not very
violent, she. thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater
lay back and closed her eyes—
“I was not able to jump out, you see,”
said Mrs. Chater, sinking.
“Oh, you don’t think I jumped out—and
left you? I wouldn’t. Besides,
it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would
have prevented me in any case. I was thrown.
I thought I was going to be killed.”
“You were with a young man.”
“He caught me.”
The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying.
That lump in her throat seemed to be squeezing tears
from her eyes—silly tears. She did
not want Mrs. Chater’s sympathy, yet could not
but reflect what disregard for her the utter absence
of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts yet more dangerously
squeezed the tears. She was a paid thing,
that was all—not even a servant. Mrs.
Chater was on kindly terms with her servants—had
experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded
it by the familiarity that was too useful to produce
contempt—knew her maids’ young men,
entered into their quarrels with their young men,
read their young men’s letters.
Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner,
the girl felt herself friendless, outcast, alone.
Again she told herself that she did not want Mrs.
Chater’s sympathy; yet it was the studied withholding
of it—studied or callous because so natural,
the merest conventionalism, to have asked, “Were
you hurt?”—that made her acutely
feel her position.
A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet
to be wounded because it was not hers. A ridiculous
paradox—and brightly she tried to smile
at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were
swelling now, her face turned against the window towards
the pavement.
A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of
a nice-looking little old man with a grey moustache
and military air. The tall, slim girl was laughing
down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily,
just as—Her mind swung off, and the tears
must be blinked again.
