Chapter IX

Jim stood in the National Gallery looking vaguely about him. It had occurred to him that he might test one of the great conveniences of London. It was pouring with rain—and there was nothing to pay. The walls were a blur of scarlet and gold, and there was a deadness in the air which took the edge off his not very sharp appetite for pictures. He wandered through the rooms uneasily, feeling that his blue jersey caught the eye of the custodian without attracting it.

Finally, he found an inner room where he couldn’t see the custodian and there was a red velvet seat.

There was only one other person in the room, a tall, neat girl in a well-cut blue coat and skirt, who seemed no more interested in the pictures than Jim was. She sat on the red velvet seat and from time to time she moved a little so that she could see several of the rooms at once.

She was a lady, and Jim seldom looked very carefully at ladies. But something in the bend of her head struck him as strangely familiar. He moved forward so that he could see first her profile, and then her full face. She raised her eyes and shot a quick, furtive glance at him, like the lick of a flame.

He would have known her anywhere whatever she wore; and whoever she successfully pretended to be—she was Eliza.

Eliza was equally sure of Jim, but it took her a moment or two to decide to show it. Her eyes, without seeming to move, took in with caution the surrounding emptiness. Then she leaned forward.

‘Perhaps,’ she said in a gentle, well-bred voice, ‘you would like me to explain the picture to you, my good lad?’

‘Garn,’ said Jim impatiently. ‘Wot are yer doin’ of ’ere, Eliza?’

Eliza did not answer directly. She rose and moved gracefully toward the door. As she passed Jim she said aloud, ‘This is the Early Tuscan room,’ and in a quick undertone she added, ‘We’ll go outside and have a talk—follow me, but not too quickly.’ She raised her hand as if she were directing him into another room more suited to his uneducated taste, and moved briskly away.

Jim was in two minds whether to follow her or not. His pride was up in arms at her subterfuge and at his own appearance.

Probably when he went outside she wouldn’t be there. It would be like Eliza to have invented a ruse to get rid of him quietly. On the other hand, if she was there, she wouldn’t mind if he didn’t turn up.

Jim suffered under the disadvantage of caring a great deal more for Eliza than Eliza cared for him.

He wanted too much to find out what she was up to not to take the risk of being taken in by her. There was just the chance that Eliza was not up to anything, but had been decently and successfully married, but this comfortable solution was unlikely unless it had suited her book.

Jim passed on tiptoe quickly through an avenue of pictured rooms, dodging behind the custodian’s back, until he found himself on the steps shared by several undecided pigeons and a sedate and inconspicuous woman’s figure. After all Eliza had waited for him.

Curiosity or some vague sentiment of childhood had operated upon her rainproof spirit.

‘Come along, my poor boy,’ she said in her new mincing voice, for the apparent benefit of the pigeons, ‘and I will give you something to eat at an A. B. C.’

Jim growled, but he followed her. Eliza never turned her head to see if he was obeying her or not.

She knew London as a housemaid knows her pantry, and she slid in and out of the traffic of Trafalgar Square as easily as melted butter slips over asparagus.

She did not speak to Jim again until she had found the exact place she wanted in a shop crowded with little tables.

Then, with a grand air, Eliza ordered tea and a poached egg for Jim, and when the driven waitress hurried off with her order, she leaned forward and said,—

‘What a rum go to be sure, and when did you get out?’

She had remembered where Jim had been; though her interest was insufficient to cause her to wait for an answer.

‘I don’t think much of your get-up,’ she added with a disapproving eye, ‘but you always were a guy about your clothes.’

‘Yours seem a bit of all right,’ said Jim with an edge of suspicion in his voice. ‘Where did you get ’em from?’

‘Ah,’ said Eliza, receiving the handle of a teapot with a gracious gesture, and curling her little finger delicately as she poured out the tea. ‘I have plenty more better than these, but I always had a quiet taste in dress.’

This was an unnecessary lie, and it roused Jim’s worst suspicions. Eliza loved bright colours, high voices with giggles at the end of them, and fashions which caused men’s heads to turn after her in the street. Had she really learned better, or was she merely up to some new game?

‘You ain’t never been near the children,’ he said accusingly. ‘I seed ’em directly I got out. Margaret’s with what they call Sisters—ladies in black with religion—but they give ’em enough to eat. Bert, ’e’s at the Waifs and Strays—they say they’re going to make a sailor out of ’im; ’e ’ankers fer the sea; but it’s a rough life. I asked ’em abaht you—but they ’adn’t ’eard nuffin’.’

‘Oh, I knew they’d be all right,’ said Eliza serenely. ‘Children always fall on their feet somehow, as long as you leave them alone. If I had tried to find out about them next thing would have been I should have been expected to support them.’

‘’Ow did yer leave ’ome an’ all?’ asked Jim sullenly.

‘Oh, I had to make my way in the world,’ said Eliza, thoughtfully fingering a pink sugar-cake. ‘There was nothing doing at home for a girl like me. I read of a place in a newspaper at New Cross and I just applied. They took me on at once, and after six months I heard mother had gone, and the home was broken up. It was just as well I _did_ leave, wasn’t it, with you put away and all?’

‘What kind of a place,’ Jim asked implacably, ‘did you find out of a newspaper?’

Eliza smiled charmingly into a looking-glass and moved her hat the eighth of an inch forward.

‘It suited me,’ she said reflectively. ‘They called it a “lady’s help.” There was a widow and her daughter, the widow did the cooking; the daughter was engaged to a nice young man with a big house and garden. But soft—they all were, believing all I told them; particularly the young man. I helped them all right.’

‘How long did you stay there?’ asked Jim.

‘Well,’ said Eliza, ‘the young man broke off his engagement with Miss Simmons after a while. There was quite an upset about it, so I left.’

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t ’ave an ’and in it,’ said Jim fiercely, ‘’cos I shouldn’t believe yer!’

Eliza was not pretty, but even Jim was not sure that she wasn’t. He was less sure than ever when her eyelashes came together suddenly over her glinting eyes.

‘I daresay,’ she said consideringly, ‘I helped it on a bit. They weren’t what I called properly suited for each other, on account of their both being so soft.

‘I was by way of being engaged to that young man myself for a time. In some ways I might have done worse. I could have married him as easily as picking up a crumb; but who wants to live with a man who won’t ever do anything different?

‘He had a mother and three sisters on his hands, too, and whenever I went there to tea they all started crying. It quite took the edge off my appetite! Of course I could have got them turned out after a bit, but Joe, he was the same kind of kiss-and-cry character himself. As far as I could see he was meant to be the fourth sister, and had been turned out a man by accident.

‘I didn’t say anything definite to him one way or another, for he was something to fall back on in case I didn’t do well elsewhere. I told him I had a dying aunt in London that I’d got to go and nurse, and that I would write. I daresay he’s still waiting for that letter.’

Eliza swallowed the last pink cake thoughtfully.

‘I had good luck,’ she observed, with another glance at her satisfactory image in the looking-glass, ‘as you see.’

‘What do you call good luck?’ asked Jim stubbornly. I want to ’ere all you bin up to.’

‘Would you like another poached egg, dear?’ Eliza replied sympathetically. ‘You don’t look any too well fed.’

Jim shook his head, his eyes fixed themselves on his sister’s face with the intentness of a faithful watchdog guarding a perfectly irresponsible and evasive kitten.

Eliza smiled mysteriously merely to irritate him, for she was not averse to giving him her confidence. It did not occur to Eliza that there was anything to be ashamed of in a career that had obviously paid.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you,’ she said after a reflective pause, ‘seeing it’s all in the family. I haven’t seen you for four years now I come to think of it, and who knows when we shall meet again.’

‘I came up to London as I told Joe I should, but not to the address I gave him, for I’d made that up; and I walked down Oxford Street and looked in at the shops. I had a five-pound note in my purse, and without meaning to spend it, I slipped into a shop to have a little look around. Evans’, I think it was, but I don’t quite remember.

‘I was always fond of fur, and I saw a nice white boa lying out on a counter. I hadn’t made up my mind then whether I should go back and marry Joe or not, but I knew he couldn’t have afforded to buy me that fur.

‘All the young ladies’ backs were turned—it was the lunch hour, and hardly any one was about at the moment. I just slipped it off the counter like, and round my neck; but as luck would have it, as I turned to walk out, I saw a shop man standing behind a pile of ribbons with his eyes on me like a couple of gimlets. He stepped forward and I daresay he would have made quite a little scene over it when a young gentleman, well dressed and smiling, came up, and said,—

‘“Please bring a looking-glass so that my wife can see if she likes this fur—I rather think it suits her.”

‘Well, the young man, he had opened his mouth to give me a bit of sauce, but he shut it again and looks from one to the other of us quite stupid-like, and I said,—

‘“Well, dear, I should like it, if you don’t think it’s too expensive.”

‘And the gentleman says,—

‘“Oh, not at all. Nothing is too expensive if it really suits you.” And I said,—

‘“Well, then, I’d like it, and the muff to match, too, please.”

‘I hadn’t thought of the muff before, but I thought I might as well have both if he was prepared to pay for them.

‘The shop young man, he hovered about until an older one came up, but nothing happened. The gentleman paid for the furs on the spot, and I walked out of the shop with the boa around my neck and the muff in my hand.

‘When we stood outside on the pavement I looked at the young man and he looked at me, smiling.

‘“It’s not the first time, surely?” he said, and I gave him my word it was—I had never lifted furs before.

‘We started up a little connection there and then. Poor George, he was a perfect gentleman always—it was a pity he went in for notes; I never have believed in forging notes. They’re too easy to track. People being as careless as they are, too, it isn’t necessary. A note makes a splash and gets noticed, but a little lifting here and there, if you do it carefully and have a good place handy to dump your swag, is hardly ever dropped on. George got five years soon after we’d met.’

‘Then you make your living crooked?’ asked Jim after a pause.

He was unable to pretend any surprise. A strange feeling of insecurity and helplessness swept over him. He was conscious that what happened to Eliza mattered horribly to him, and that nothing he could do would ever influence her destiny.

‘It’s like everything else,’ said Eliza calmly; ‘easy when you know how. Of course there are drawbacks to it. I wouldn’t really choose to wear clothes like these that no one ever notices—but that’s part of the game.

‘I seldom take anything myself. I didn’t start young enough to be sure of my fingers. You want to be as light-handed as a feather. I just go where one of my friends is working and he passes the swag on to me—I know how to take it, and I know how to get rid of it. It’s not every one I’d trust to work with, but I’ve been fortunate so far.’

Jim’s eyes searched Eliza’s small, inscrutable face, but he did not ask her any further questions. He had no doubt at all about the absence of any innocence in Eliza, but he had no wish to have his certainty reinforced by a direct statement.

There are some women who keep their innocence in spite of all adverse circumstances, and there are others who part with all they have before circumstances attempt to influence them. Eliza belonged to this latter type. She thought that innocence was dangerous as a fact, and ineffectual, as a precaution. But she had parted with it cleverly, as if it were a stolen jewel; neither its destination nor its moment of disappearance could have been traced to Eliza.

‘I always liked the idea of living in a hotel,’ she continued after a pause. ‘I’ve been abroad once to the Riviera—after pearls, that was. You’d be surprised at the luxury people live in, and the little sense they have to look after what they’ve got. I’ve picked up quite a bit of education and a little French. There is a lot in education. It’s a pity you don’t put your mind to it, Jim.’

‘There must be,’ said Jim with a grim twist of his mouth. ‘How long do you think you’ll stick it without getting run in?’

Eliza’s expressionless bright eyes rested on him without change.

‘I’ve been talking careless to you,’ she said quietly, ‘but I’m not careless. I’ve been on this game for nearly four years. Six of my men are doing time, but I’ve never been let down. As I was saying to you just now, I don’t take up with any one.’

‘And you ’aven’t never got married?’ Jim asked cautiously. ‘I see you got a ring on all right?’

‘Rings are neither here nor there,’ said Eliza calmly. Sometimes I’m a widow, and sometimes just plain Miss. You can pick up a thing or two without being married. I haven’t ever had a real husband, of course. I don’t believe in getting mixed up with the law, and I shouldn’t fancy a man thinking he can do as he likes with me. Men and women are better on their own, in my opinion, especially women, if they keep their wits about them.’

‘Eliza,’ Jim asked, with a sudden flare of a feeling that, though he knew it was no use showing, he could not for the moment hide, ‘don’t you ever want to live _different_?’

Eliza stared at him a little, but she remained safe from all inconveniences—even spiritual ones. Nothing in her mind responded to Jim’s urgency.

‘I daresay there’s something in being a duchess,’ she said lightly, ‘but I haven’t tried it.’

‘You don’t seem to have done very well for _yourself_,’ she added, drawing on her dark suède gloves, ‘by staying respectable, if you _have_ stayed respectable.’

‘Gawd!’ said Jim bitterly. ‘I nearly swung for that poker of yours, Eliza!’

Eliza had forgotten her manipulation of the poker. She looked at a small gold watch on her wrist and said,—

‘Dear me, I must be running off—but you shouldn’t have struck so hard at a bread-winner, you know, Jim. I always have thought that about it. Shall I pay for the tea or will you?’

Eliza was a thrifty soul and she knew that Jim was a proud one.

He took out his lean purse, and Eliza, who had asked for the bill in a flute-like voice, leaned over and helped herself out of it.

‘It will look more natural coming from me,’ she observed; and Jim, after a moment of expostulation, agreed that it would look more natural.