[IX
THE QUINTETTE]
HE had more of the deliciously grown-up sensation the next day, when Hetty came to see him. She was something new. The girls of the streets he knew, and unattainably above them were the girls at the school and his friends’ sisters, whom he called “top-knots,” because of the way they did their hair. The “top-knots” were hardly female at all to him, so remote were they, so entirely unapproachable; utterly different from the girls of the streets, who were so accessible that he had but to hold out his arms to find one of them, as if by magic, in his grasp. And now Hetty was different again.
“You are cosy up here,” she said, moving at once to the only comfortable chair and curling up in it. “Your sister told me about you.”
“Leah? What lies did she tell you?”
“Well, I knew it wasn’t all true, about the money you were making, because you wouldn’t live here if it was true, would you? But I suppose some of your friends make a lot of money.”
“They’re rich, some of them,” replied Mendel, aghast to find himself thinking coldly of his friends in terms of money, his mind rushing swiftly between the two poles of his father and Sir Julius. “Yes. There’s plenty of money in London.”
“That’s what Ma said when she gave me the fourteen shillings. She said a girl with eyes like mine had no need to go short in London.” Hetty raised her eyes and looked full at him, who met her stare boldly and yet with some alarm, finding himself acting a part.
Hetty was flattering him by regarding him as the possessor of a key to the wealth of London, and in spite of himself he could not help accepting the rôle. She had touched an element of his character of which till then he had been unconscious. The knave in him sprang into being and thrust all his other qualities aside. He began to boast of his success and to swagger about the luxury and immorality of London life, though it was not all braggadocio, but also a kindly desire to make Hetty happy by talking to her of the things that interested her.
He told her about Calthrop and the Paris Café, and Maurice Birnbaum and his motor-car and richly furnished flat in Westminster, and a Lord’s son who was at the Detmold, and Mitchell, whose father was a great man. And all the time, as he talked, he was astonished at the sound of his own voice, so different did it sound.