And she held the book before her until he was asleep. Then she sat a long time, her elbows on her knees, her chin supported by her hands, her gaze fixed upon his face—the face of the man who was her master now. She must please him, must accept what treatment he saw fit to give, must rein in her ambitions to suit the uncertain gait and staying power of his ability to achieve. She could not leave him; he could leave her when he might feel so inclined. Her master—capricious, tyrannical, a drunkard. Her sole reliance—and the first condition of his protection was that she should not try to do for herself. A dependent, condemned to become even more dependent.
CHAPTER XVII
SHE now spent a large part of every day in wandering, like a derelict, drifting aimlessly this way or that, up into the Park or along Fifth Avenue. She gazed intently into shop windows, apparently inspecting carefully all the articles on display; but she passed on, unconscious of having seen anything. If she sat at home with a book she rarely turned a page, though her gaze was fastened upon the print as if she were absorbingly interested.
What was she feeling? The coarse contacts of street life and tenement life—the choice between monstrous defilements from human beings and monstrous defilements from filth and vermin. What was she seeing? The old women of the slums—the forlorn, aloof figures of shattered health and looks—creeping along the gutters, dancing in the barrel houses, sleeping on the floor in some vile hole in the wall—sleeping the sleep from which one awakes bitten by mice and bugs, and swarming with lice.
She had entire confidence in Brent's judgment. Brent must have discovered that she was without talent for the stage—for if he had thought she had the least talent, would he not in his kindness have arranged or offered some sort of place in some theater or other? Since she had no stage talent—then—what should she do? What could she do? And so her mind wandered as aimlessly as her wandering steps. And never before had the sweet melancholy of her eyes been so moving.
But, though she did not realize it, there was a highly significant difference between this mood of profound discouragement and all the other similar moods that had accompanied and accelerated her downward plunges. Every time theretofore, she had been cowed by the crushing mandate of destiny—had made no struggle against it beyond the futile threshings about of aimless youth. This time she lost neither strength nor courage. She was no longer a child; she was no longer mere human flotsam and jetsam. She did not know which way to turn; but she did know, with all the certainty of a dauntless will, that she would turn some way—and that it would not be a way leading back to the marshes and caves of the underworld. She wandered—she wandered aimlessly; but not for an instant did she cease to keep watch for the right direction—the direction that would be the best available in the circumstances. She did not know or greatly care which way it led, so long as it did not lead back whence she had come.
In all her excursions she had—not consciously but by instinct—kept away from her old beat. Indeed, except in the company of Spenser or Sperry she had never ventured into the neighborhood of Long Acre. But one day she was deflected by chance at the Forty-second Street corner of Fifth Avenue and drifted westward, pausing at each book stall to stare at the titles of the bargain offerings in literature. As she stood at one of these stalls near Sixth Avenue, she became conscious that two men were pressing against her, one on either side. She moved back and started on her way. One of the men was standing before her. She lifted her eyes, was looking into the cruel smiling eyes of a man with a big black mustache and the jaws of a prizefighter. His smile broadened.
"I thought it was you, Queenie," said he. "Delighted to see you."
She recognized him as a fly cop who had been one of Freddie Palmer's handy men. She fell back a step and the other man—she knew him instantly as also a policeman—lined up beside him of the black mustache. Both men were laughing.
"We've been on the lookout for you a long time, Queenie," said the other. "There's a friend of yours that wants to see you mighty bad."