Cabmen, she had heard, were brutes; but the man who
had brought her to the house must be appealed to....
Where could she get the cheapest lodging of some kind?
How did he know? What was she wanting to pay?
...
The great city roared at her. Her head swum a
little. An idler or two took up a grinning stand:
the thing looked like a cab-fare dispute....
What was she wanting to pay? ... Well, as little
as possible. “I have never been in London
before, and I don’t know anybody. My friend
here has gone. I have just arrived from Ireland.”
She began to cry.
He from his box in a moment. “From Ireland!”
Why, he was from Ireland! ... Not likely she
was from Connemara? ... She was? ... From
Kinsloe? ... Why, he knew it well; he was from
Ballydag!
He rolled his tongue around other names of the district;
she knew them all; could almost have laughed at the
silly fellow’s delight.
Why, the honour it would be if she would come and
let his missus make her up a bed! “Don’t
ye cry, missie. Don’t ye take on like that.
It’s all right ye are now.” He put
a huge, roughly great-coated arm about her—squeezed
her, she believed; helped her into the cab.
Missus in the clean little rooms over the rattling
mews was no less delighted. From Kinsloe?
Why, missie saw that canary?—that was a
present from Betty Murphy in Kinsloe, not three months
before!
The canary, aroused by the attention paid it, trilled
upward in a mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went
up and up and up through her head ... louder and louder
... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and cage
became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim
must have carried her to the bed in which she awoke.
Friends in Ireland had given her the addresses of
friends in London on whom she must call. She
visited some houses; then in a sudden wild despair
tore the list. Either these people were dense
of comprehension or she clumsy of explanation.
To make them realise her position she found impossible.
They were warmly kind, sympathetic—cheery
in that lugubrious fashion in which we are taught
to be “bright” with the afflicted.
But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment
they would warmly cry, “Oh, but you must not
think of that yet, Miss Humfray ... after all you
have been through.... You must keep quiet for
a little.”
One and all gave her the same words. An impulse
took her to kick over the tea-table—anything
to arouse these people from their stereotyped mood
of sympathy with a girl suddenly bereaved,—and
to cry, “But don’t you understand?
I am living over a mews—over a mews
with twelve pounds and a few shillings, and then nothing—nothing
at all.”
Wise, perhaps, had she indulged the outburst without
the action; wiser had she written to some of the friends
in Ireland, asked to go back to one of them for a
while. But the dull grief beneath which she still
lay benumbed prevented her from other course than tonelessly
accepting the proffered sympathy; and the thought
of returning to Ireland was impossible. She tore
the list of London friends; appealed to Tim and Missus.
