"There's one of them," Elizabeth went on. "Now, I know that boy: he used to come to these outings three years ago. He's left school now, and he has tramped down from London for the sake of a meat-pie or a mug of tea. Lots of them do that, you know," she said to Humphrey. "He's never learnt a trade. Of course, he learnt history and geography, and all that, and he got a place, I think, as an errand-boy. There's no interest in running errands—so he just loafs now; and he'll loaf on through life, until he's an old man, sleeping on the Embankment, or on the benches on the Bayswater side of the Park. Perhaps he'll have a few spells in prison—anyhow, he's doomed. Lost. And so are nearly all these children here to-day."
The strength of her convictions amazed Humphrey. He had never heard Elizabeth talk like this before. He wondered why she, so beautiful and frail, should mingle with the ugliness of life. When they came to the forest, and Kenneth wandered off alone, she told him.
"It's because behind all this sordidness there is something that is more than beauty—there are magnificent tragedies here, that make my throat dry. There are struggles to live of which nobody ever knows. And, sometimes, you know, when I come from one of my slums and stand by the theatres as they are emptying, and see the lighted motor-cars, and all these other women with jewels round their necks and in their ears, I want to laugh at the folly of it all.
"They don't know ... they never can know, unless they go down to the depths, and look."
Humphrey was silent.
"And nobody can do anything, you know, except this sort of thing. It's a poor enough thing to do, but it's something to know you're helping."
"I think this work is noble," Humphrey said.
"Oh no—not noble. It would be noble if we could do something lasting—something permanent."
They were sitting now on the soft grass, and he looked sidewise at Elizabeth Carr, and saw the fine outline of her profile. There was great beauty in her face, in the delicate oval of her chin, in the shadows that played about her throat, showing soft and white above the low collar of lace. That low lace collar and unornamented dress gave to her a touch of demure simplicity. She had the fragrance of lavender: he could imagine her—(seeing her now, with her eyes and lips tender, and her hands meekly clasped in her lap)—standing in a room of chintz and Chippendale, tending her bowl of pink roses by the latticed window opened to the sunshine.
He sat by her absorbing her serenity; there was repose and rest in the unconscious pose of her body. He had suddenly found the Elizabeth Carr of the photograph on Kenneth's mantelpiece: her presence seemed to bring him peace.