CHAPTER IV THE MAN WITH THE MUSTARD-COLOURED BEARD
It was the morning of the day on which part of the façade of Paddington House, Piccadilly, was destroyed by the explosion of a bomb.
London was a city of darkness and gloom, a veritable "city of dreadful night."
The fog was everywhere, it was bitter cold, and all the lights in the shops and the lamps in the streets were lit. As yet the fog was some few yards above the house-tops. It had not descended, as it did later on in the day, into the actual streets themselves. It lay, a terrible leaden pall, a little above them.
In no part of London did the fog seem more dreary than in Bloomsbury. The gaunt squares, the wide, old-fashioned streets, were like gashes cut into a face of despair.
At half-past nine o'clock Mary Marriott came out of her tiny bedroom into her tiny sitting-room and lit the gas. She lived on the topmost floor of a great Georgian house in a narrow street just off Bedford Square. In the old days, before there were fogs, and when trees were still green in the heart of London, a great man had lived in this house. The neighbourhood was fashionable then, and all the world had not moved westwards. The staircase at No. 102 was guarded by carved balusters, the ceilings of the lower rooms were worked in the ornate plaster of Adams, the doors were high, and the lintels delicately fluted. Now 102 was let out in lodgings, some furnished, some unfurnished. Mary Marriott had two tiny rooms under the roof. On the little landing outside was a small gas-stove and some shelves, upon which were a few pots and pans. A curtain screened this off from the stairhead. This was the kitchen. The furniture, what there was of it, was Mary's own, and, in short, she might, had she been so disposed, have called her dwelling almost a flat. Moreover, she paid her rent quarterly—five pounds every three months—and was quite an independent householder.
Mary was an actress, a hard-working member of the rank and file. She had never yet secured even the smallest engagement in London, and most of her life was spent on tour in the provinces. When she was away she locked up her rooms.
She was without any relations, except a sister, who was married to a curate in Birmingham. Her private income was exactly thirty pounds a year, the interest upon a thousand pounds safely invested. This paid the rent of the rooms which were all she had to call "home," and left her ten pounds over. Every penny in addition to this she must earn by the exercise of her art.
She had been lucky during her four years of stage life in rarely being out of an engagement. She had never played a leading part, even in the provinces, but her second parts had generally been good. If she had come nowhere near success she had been able to keep herself and save a little, a very little, money for a rainy day. It is astonishing on how little two careful girls, chumming together, can live on tour. Managing in this way it was an extravagant week when Mary spent thirty shillings upon her share of the week's bill, and as she never earned less than three pounds she felt herself fortunate. She knew piteous things of girls who were less fortunate than she.