She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
“Why, it is the wrong number!” she cried.
He had turned the key. “Lord! you do keep
it up!” he laughed, his hand suddenly about
her arm.
Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the
horror of the thing.
“Ah, let me go—let me go!”
“Oh, chuck it, you little ass!” His arm
was about her waist now, dragging her; his face close.
With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise
she wrenched from his grasp; was a flight of stairs
away before he had recovered his wits; across the
hall and running—shaking, hysterical—down
the street.
Thereafter men were a constant horror to her—adding
a new and most savage beast to the wolves of noise,
of desolation and of despair that bayed about her
in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them,
she went again to Miss Ram at the Agency—almost
upon her knees, crying, trembling, pitching her tale
from the man with the dent in his hat to the man in
Wilton Road.
Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay
beneath her grim exterior; had never realised the
actual circumstances; would do what she could; no
need to be frightened.
Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace
Gardens. No sharpness, no slight now could prick
her spirit; she had learned too well; she would not
face those streets again.
That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago.
Wounds were healing now; old-time brightness was coming
back to laugh at present discomforts. It was
only now and again—as now—that
she, driven by some sudden stress, allowed her mind
backwards to wander—bruising itself in
those dark passages.
The cab stopped. She with a start came to the
present; gulped a sob; was herself.
Mrs. Chater said: “Run in quickly and mix
me a brandy-and-soda.”
Excursions In Vulgarity.
A violent dispute with the cabman set that disturbed
heart yet more wildly thumping in Mrs. Chater’s
bosom; the sight of her husband uneasily mooning in
the dining-room heated her wrath to wilder bubblings.
Mr. Chater—a ‘oly dam’ terror
in Mincing Lane, if his office-boy may be quoted—was
an astonishingly mild man in his own house.
He said brightly, noting with a shiver the gusty stress
of his wife’s deportment: “You drove
up, my dear?—And quite right, too,”
he hastily added, upon a sudden fear that his remark
might be interpreted as reproach.
“How do you know?” Mrs. Chater’s
nose went into the brandy-and-soda.
“I saw you from the window,” her husband
beamed. He repeated, “The window,”
and nervously pointed at it. There was a strained
atmosphere in the room, and he was a little frightened.
“Oh!” Out from the brandy-and-soda
came the nose; down went the glass with an emphasising
bang: “Oh!”
