Part 40 (1/2)

If she ”caught on,” there was no knowing what he might not get for her--ten pounds a week--fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, even fifty perhaps.

Glory's palpitation was becoming painful, and at the bottom of her heart there was a certain fear of this sudden tide of fortune, as if Providence had somehow made a mistake and would as suddenly find it out.

To appease her conscience she began to think of home and how happy she might make everybody there if G.o.d was really going to be so good to her.

They should want for nothing; they should never know a poor day again.

Meantime the stage manager was painting another picture. A girl didn't go a-begging if he once took her up. There was S----. She was only an ”auricomous” damsel, serving in a tobacconist's shop in the Haymarket when he first found her, and now where was she?

”Of course, I've no interest of my own to serve, my dear--none whatever.

And there'll be lots of people to tempt you away from me when your name is made.”

Glory uttered some vehement protest, and then was lost in her dreams again.

”Well, well, we'll see,” said the stage manager. He was looking at her with glittering eyes.

”Do you know, my dear, you are a very fine-looking young woman?”

Glory's head was down, her face was flushed, and she was turning her mother's pearl ring around her finger. He thought she was overwhelmed by his praises, and coming closer, he said:

”Dare say you've got a good stage figure too, eh? Pooh! Only business, you know! But you mustn't be shy with me, my dear. And besides, if I am to do all this for you, you must do something for me sometimes.”

She hardly heard him. Her eyes were still glistening with the far-off look of one who gazes on a beautiful vision.

”You are so good,” she said. ”I don't know what to say, or how to thank you.”

”This way,” he whispered, and leaning over to her he lifted her face and kissed her.

Then her poor dream of glory and grandeur and happiness was dispelled in a moment, and she awoke with a sense of outrage and shame. The man's praises were flattery; his predictions were a pretence; he had not really meant it at all, and she had been so simple as to believe everything.

”Oh!” she said, with the feeble, childish cry of one who has received a pistol wound in battle. And then she rose and turned to go. But the stage manager, who was laughing noisily out of his hot red face, stepped between her and the door.

”My dear child, you can't mean--a trifle like that--!”

”Open the door, please,” she said in her husky voice.

”But surely you don't intend--In this profession we think nothing, you know----”

”Open the door, sir!”

”Really--upon my word----”

When she came to herself again she was out in the dark back street, and the snow was hard and dirty under foot, and the wind was high and cold, and she was running along and crying like a disappointed child.

The bitterest part of it all was the crus.h.i.+ng certainty that she had no talents and no chances of success, and that the man had only painted up his fancy picture as a means of deceiving her. Oh, the misery of being a woman! Oh, the cruelty of this great, glorious, devilish London, where a girl, if she was poor and alone, could live only by her looks!

With G.o.d knows what lingering remnant of expectation, but feeling broken and beaten after her brave fight for life, and with the weak woman uppermost at last, she had turned toward the hospital. It was nearly half-past eleven when she got there, and Big Ben was chiming the half hour as she ascended the steps. Bracing herself up, she looked in at the porter's door with a face that was doing its best to smile.

”Any letters to-night, porter?”

”Not to-night, miss.”