They arrived at the bottom of the stairs, and looking up from the stone steps on which she was afraid her feet might slip, she got rather a shock. Standing talking excitedly were three acrobats with the minimum of clothing, the perspiration pouring down over their make-up. It was certainly Nature in the raw, and hardly a pleasant sight at close quarters. The muscles were standing out on their arms and chests, and for the first time Claudia realized the work involved in such performances, which she usually sat through indifferently. One of them hailed Jack enthusiastically.
“Hallo! old man! Fay was asking if we’d seen you.” They cast a curious but not very interested glance at Claudia. “Come into our room and have a drink later on.”
Jack nodded, and Claudia followed him along another few yards of the passage. It struck her that most of the dirt had been made by human fingers and bodies, for above the height of five feet or so the walls were comparatively clean. They passed an open door where a stout woman in chemise and petticoat was making-up in a public manner before a looking-glass, and then she found herself in Fay’s dressing-room.
It was a small slip of a room, with flaring gas-jets protected by wire shades and two washing-basins inset in the table-shelf which went across one side of it. The heat in the room took Claudia’s breath away; it was even worse than the passages. The light was almost cruelly bright. There were three huge dress-baskets, which almost filled the apartment, and a lumpy, perspiring and heavily-breathing dresser was sitting on one of them, sewing on something spangled.
A man was just finishing speaking in a heavy, oily voice as Fay’s husband pushed open the door, and Claudia was in time to hear Fay say, in accents of excitement and pleasure: “Jim, you’re a perfect duck. I love diamonds and rubies. Come here and let me give you another kiss for it.”
So it happened that Claudia’s second view of Fay was one with her arms flung round something masculine, standing on the tips of her toes to do so. Two brawny arms were returning her hug. She felt Jack stiffen a little as Fay broke loose with a laugh.
“It’s almost like old times. Oh! but I mustn’t remember them now. I promised.... Here he is. Jack, come in. I want to introduce you to Jim Clerry—my husband.”
There was not the faintest touch of confusion in Fay’s manner or face, any more than with a child who has been caught bestowing embraces. She was evidently very pleased over something. She was radiant with good humour.
The man, who thrust out his hand and said, “Glad to know you sir,” was, in spite of his name, an obvious Jew, with heavy, coarse features and almost negroid lips. The face was only redeemed by the brightness of the dark eyes. To Claudia’s artistic sense it was almost revolting that any pretty woman should kiss him, especially anything so dainty as Fay. She wondered, indeed, that any woman could wish to do so.