“That’s a frightful case. He’s the manager of a picture palace. That little girl plays the piano for eight hours a day for two pounds a week, at Croydon, except one day a week—to-day—She keeps a drunken father on that, and pays the rent of eighteen shillings, and ten shillings a week for her little sister’s schooling. The manager is a wicked old devil, and hates his poor drudge of a wife. Of course it wouldn’t do to refuse his invitations to tea, and other things. It’s not easy to get a job in another picture palace, even if one does play the piano blindfold—right notes or wrong—and use the rouge-pot ruthlessly. Plucky kid, I think! Look how she pretends to be merry and bright, poor child!”
“Ever seen her before?” asked Bertram.
“Never. But it’s something like that.”
She said Bertram had no idea of the amount of human courage in a city like London. The heroism of fighting men in war was nothing to the grim, enduring heroism of husbands nagged by their wives, wives bullied by their husbands, men struggling to keep on this side of destitution, women fighting with all the strength of their souls to keep “respectable” in underpaid jobs, young girls starving themselves on milk and buns in order to dress well enough for a chance in the marriage market, and all looking on the best side of things, refusing to surrender, holding on gamely.
“Doesn’t it prove that the game’s not worth the candle?” asked Bertram.
“The game of life?”
He nodded.
She caught hold of his hand, and said, “That’s blasphemy! That’s cowardice! Play the game, whether you lose or win. Stick it out to the end. And forget yourself by helping the other fellow. It’s only selfishness that despairs. It’s damned egotism that makes a man sit down and whine. There’s so much to do, so many to help.”
Bertram drew a deep breath. He’d been sitting down and whining. He’d wanted to quit before he’d played out the game. He’d been within a yard and a half of the coward’s white flag—the worst surrender.
Janet went on talking, wise things, foolish things, fantastic things, and ate not two éclairs, but four (just to make him marvel) and made him laugh heartily at her description of the last meeting of the “Left Wing,” which had broken up in wrath and violence because of a vote against the General Strike. One of the girls had slapped the face of one of the young men, and called him “a crawling Pacifist.” He had responded by calling her a “Blood-stained Bolshevik.” It had all been great fun.