Such a poor room it was, with a well-worn carpet, shabby furniture, a dingy mirror over the fireplace, and a mean sordid look everywhere. The bright sunshine, pouring in through the dirty windows, showed up the weak points of the apartment in the most relentless manner. Great folding-doors at one side half open, showing an untidy bedroom beyond, and on the other side the many-paned windows, veiled by ragged curtains, looked out into Jepple Street, Bloomsbury.
There was a shaky round table in the centre of the apartment, on which was spread a doubtfully clean cloth, and on it the remains of a very poor breakfast. An egg half eaten, a teacup half filled, and a portion of bread on the plate showed that the person for whom this meal was provided had not finished, and, indeed, she was leaning on the table with her elbows, looking at a copy of the Daily Telegraph.
A noticeable woman this, frowning down on the newspaper with tightly closed lips, and one whom it would be unwise to offend.. After a pause she pushed the paper away, arose to her feet, and marching across to the dingy mirror, surveyed herself long and anxiously. The face that looked out at her from the glass was a remarkable one.
Dark, very dark, with fierce black eyes under strongly marked eyebrows, masses of rough dark hair carelessly twisted up into a heavy coil, a thin-lipped, flexible mouth and a general contour of face not at all English. She had slender brown hands, which looked powerful in spite of their delicacy, and a good figure, though just now it was concealed by a loose dressing-gown of pale yellow silk much discoloured and stained. With her strange barbaric face, her gaudy dress, Mrs. Belswin was certainly a study for a painter.
Mrs. Belswin, so she called herself; but she looked more like a savage queen than a civilised woman. She should have been decked with coloured beads, with fantastic feathers, with barbaric bracelets, with strangely striped skins, as it was she was an anomaly, an incongruity, in the poor room of poor lodging-house, staring at her fierce face in the dingy mirror.
Mrs. Munser, who kept the establishment, acknowledged to her intimate friend, Mrs. Pegs, that the sight of this lady had given her a turn; and certainly no one could blame cockney Mrs. Munser, for of all the strange people that might be seen in London, this lithe, savage-looking woman was surely the strangest. Indian jungles, African forests, South American pampas, she would have been at home there, having all the appearance and fire of a woman of the tropics; but to see her in dull, smoky London--it was extraordinary.
After scrutinising herself for a time, she began to talk aloud in a rich full voice, which was broken every now and then by a guttural note which betrayed the savage; yet she chose her words well, she spoke easily, and rolled her words in a soft labial manner suggestive of the Italian language. Yet she was not an Italian.
"Twenty years ago," she muttered savagely, "nearly twenty years ago, and I have hardly ever seen her. I must do so now, when Providence has put this chance into my hands. They can't keep a mother from her child. God's laws are stronger than those of man. Rupert would put the ocean between us if he could, but now he's in New Zealand, so for a time I will be able to see her, to speak to her, to hold her in my arms; not as her mother,--no, not as her mother,--but as her paid servant."
She turned away from the mirror with a savage gesture, and walked slowly up and down the room with the soft sinuous movement of a panther. Her soft silk dress rustled as she walked, and her splendid hair, released by her sudden movement, fell like a black veil over her shoulders. She thrust the tresses back from her temples with impatient hands, and her face looked forth from the cloud of hair, dark, sombre, and savage, with a flash of the fierce eyes and vicious click of the strong white teeth.
"Curses on the man who took me away from her. I did not care for him, with his yellow hair and pink face. Why did I go? Why was I such a fool? I left her, my own child, for him, and went out into the world an outcast, for his sake. God! God! Why are women such fools?"