Clarissa was an extraordinarily pretty girl. She had blue eyes set very far apart, and a striking profile. With her loose knot of hair, her delicate nose, and her short upper lip, she looked like a cameo—one of those pure, classic faces which middle-aged ladies used to wear in a brooch. Of course she was powdered, and she laced tightly and puffed her lovely hair out into one of those exaggerated erections which is the professional headgear of the barmaid. You never see such an arrangement anywhere else; perhaps the management provides it. But she was very lovely and demure. Also, she had the sense to be silent: an unusually pretty woman should never talk.
Arnold, who dropped into the “Worcester Arms” nightly, began to regard her as a woman—not merely a barmaid. Men sometimes talk dubiously to the barmaid, and she—figuratively speaking—ducks her head and lets the stream of insinuation flow over her. She is never affronted; takes it as a matter of course; customers pay for this privilege with their drinks.
Clarissa was lonely. She lived in a barracks somewhere off Greek Street, clubbing together with a lot of other young women. She never spoke of her relations. Arnold assumed that she was like so many other girls, alone in London—to sink or swim, according to her luck. He took her out and gave her harmless little treats whenever she could get away from the bar. But he never asked her to his rooms. He had a sort of reverence for her. He didn’t wish to compromise her, and he took to glaring fiercely at any harmless simpleton who strolled into the “Worcester Arms” and chaffed Clarissa in the usual way.
He introduced her to Sol, telling her how the dog had saved his life on Dartmoor and adding that nothing on this earth would induce him to part with the animal.
“He’s a pure-bred blue deerhound,” he wound up enthusiastically. “I’ve got his pedigree for seven generations.”
Clarissa said “really” in her demure way, and she stroked the thing’s wiry coat and said what beautiful eyes he had, and that she supposed he must be worth a lot of money.
“Twenty pounds—I’ve been offered that,” Arnold told her concisely. “It was a fellow who shows these dogs. He’s got a whole kennel of them at his place in the country. I went down there; you never saw a more beautiful sight.”
“Twenty pounds!” said Clarissa, drawing in her breath softly.
Things went on for a month or two. Then Arnold became more infatuated than ever. He asked Clarissa to marry him. Of course she jumped at it. The great ambition of these girls is to marry a gentleman. And Arnold would pass—with a barmaid. He was fairly well off, too, making, so he said, about six hundred a year on the Stock Exchange; it is always these stupid men who make money. It was a catch for Clarissa.
He took her away from the “Worcester Arms” and boarded her out with a decayed widowed lady at Clapham. He made an arrangement for Sol to board there too, and Clarissa promised to take the dog for long rambles on the Common while his master was in the City.