“Oh . . . quite soon. Any day this week. Promise me you won’t forget . . .” As if he could ever forget! Her exquisite humility quite bowled him over. When she had closed the door behind her he walked away dazed with an unfamiliar emotion that made the mean street, with its uniform row of mid-Victorian houses on one side, and on the other the blank wall of the theatre and huge, sooty warehouses, seem a holy place. The Halesby Road, with its streaming traffic, shared the same transfiguration. The speed and strength of the horses enthralled him; the faces of men and women walking homeward from their work in the city seemed triumphantly happy; the smooth wood-pavement, polished by the rolling of innumerable wheels, shone like a street in heaven. It seemed to Edwin as if the whole world had somehow been uplifted by a secret knowledge of his own experience. A night of wonder. . . .
“Well, what is the young woman’s name?” asked Boyce, when he returned to Easy Row.
“Beaucaire. She’s principal girl in the pantomime at the Queen’s.”
“H’m. . . . Attractive little piece. But she can’t be up to much if she’s a pal of the Latham woman’s. I’ve seen her there several times.”
“Oh, that means nothing,” Edwin explained. “I don’t think she’s at all keen on her. They acted together somewhere years ago. You can’t drop people when they’ve been kind to you. I don’t think she’s at all keen on her. She’s quite all right. Lives with her mother in Prince Albert’s Place.”
“Pretty rotten sort of street. Got a bad name, you know. I believe, as a matter of fact, it’s considered rather the thing to lug an official mother about with you.”
“You don’t mean—” Edwin began, going very white.
“Of course I don’t. I don’t know anything about her. Only, for God’s sake, take care of yourself. A young woman of that kind generally has a fair share of experience, and you . . . well, you haven’t exactly. Besides, it’s just as well to remember that the final’s coming off in ten days.”
The less said about the final the better.
“She isn’t a chorus girl, you know. If you’d met her I think you’d admit that she’s a lady. She told me that her mother—”