Up to that point it would be quite simple. But beyond it a lot of thought would be required. So good a motive must not be flung away, and all the way down the Charing Cross Road I turned the incident over in my mind.
Fifteen years ago I could have made him an agent in the White Slave Traffic. It was a popular theme then; every young girl who came up to London looked round at Paddington apprehensively for the kindly old lady who would ask her if she was new to these parts. Yes, fifteen years ago it would have been a moving story. But, during the last fifteen years, Villiers Street has become placarded with shilling descriptions of “Why Girls Go Wrong”; and the Bishop of London has written a great many prefaces and preached a great many sermons. The White Slave Traffic is vieux jeu. Still, there was something in the seduction motif. “Yes, certainly,” I said to myself, as I presented my season-ticket at the barrier at Victoria and walked down the platform in search of a corner-seat; something might be made out of it: and by the time we had reached Selhurst a story had begun to form itself in my mind.
She had come up from the provinces for the day, and had met an old friend of hers who had asked her out to dinner; she had intended to catch the last train home. The man is smitten by her beauty and wonders how he can best possess it. Should he steal her money she will be unable to buy a ticket back.
The picture grew before me. I could see them at the booking-office. I could see her fumbling in her bag, searching every pocket, and then turning to him with a despairing look.
“I’ve lost the money.”
“Oh, no; surely not,” he would say. “It must be in one of your pockets. Have another look.”
And she would make another long, careful search which would, of course, be equally vain. And she would turn to him with tear-filled eyes.
“But what am I to do? I can’t get home. I haven’t any money to buy a ticket.”
And in her voice would be the suggestion that he should lend her some, and, of course, he would say that he had none with him, but that if she would come back to his flat.... And she would thank him effusively and they would leap into a taxi, but when they arrived at the flat, which would be at the top of four flights of stairs, with the flat below unoccupied, he would discover that he had no money after all, and that the porter had gone, and that there was no one from whom he could borrow any; she would sink down on the sofa, her hands clasped before her knees, while he stood behind her wondering at what exact point——
But at that moment the train stopped at East Croydon, where I had to change and wait twenty minutes for a connection; and, while I stamped up and down the platform trying to keep warm, a swift dissatisfaction with my story overcame me. What did it matter what he said next, or at what exact point he ... for whatever he did, or whatever she did, the story as I had elected to tell it could only end in one way—a row of dots, and a short concluding paragraph: “Next morning, her dark hair scattered across the pillow, she woke in a strange room....” And how often that has been done. In how many novels has not that dark hair been scattered across that pillow? It was theatrical, vulgar, the sort of plot that occurs to one as one sits in the smoking-room of one’s club after a heavy lunch and half a bottle of Pommard, and I walked up and down the platform of East Croydon station in a state of cold and miserable self-contempt.