A bow closed the interview.
It was her landlady’s husband, an unshaven,
shifty-looking horror, who dealt her, as it seemed
to her then, the last furious blow.
Returning one evening after an aimless search for
employment in shops that had earned her rude laughter
for her utter inexperience and her presumption in
supposing her services could be of any value, she found
Mrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the
head towards the stairs. Up to her room—the
cause clear in her rifled box, its contents scattered
across the floor, the little case in which with her
pictures of Mother and Dad she kept her money gone.
A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which
Mrs. Japes’s property had also suffered....
He had done it before ... a bad lot ... had done time
... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ...
she’d best go ... of course she could tell the
police.
Of course she did not tell the police. The whole
affair bewildered and frightened her.
To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation
by the new landlady into the mysteries of pawnshops;
gradual thinning of wardrobe.... Answering of
advertisements found in the public library in Great
Smith Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to
save omnibus fares.... Always the same outcome.
... Experience?—None. References?
—None.... “Thank you; I’m
afraid—I’m sure it’s all right,
but one has to be so careful nowadays. Good morning.”
... Always the same outcome.... The idea
of writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ...
That life, those friends, seemed of a period that was
dead, done, gone—ages and ages ago....
Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow—a
gentlemanly-looking person of whom in Wilton Road
one evening she asked the way to an address copied
from the Daily Telegraph. Why, by an extraordinary
coincidence he was going that way himself, to that
very house!—flat, rather. Yes, it
was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help.
Might he show her the way? ... It would be very
kind of him.
Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly
enough, though putting now and then curious little
questions which she could not understand....
Hadn’t he seen her at the Oxford one night? ...
Assuredly he had not; what was the Oxford?
He laughed, evidently pleased. “Gad, you
do keep it up!” he cried.
So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
“You understand why I can’t use the lift?”
he said. “They’re beastly particular
here.”
She did not understand; supposed it was some question
of expense. Thus to a door where he took out
a latch-key.
It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt,
a horror, took her, trembling her limbs.
