“But I told you to ask.”
“I did not dare. Madame will not pay in advance. The last time I asked her she almost sent me away.”
“Nom de Dieu! Couldn’t you give her some story? Your little sister’s sick. There’s no food in the house. Your poor mother’s.... Ugh! What a fool I have for a daughter. So all you’ve brought back’s an empty stomach. Oh, I could strike you, I could.”
She suited the gesture to the threat, and the girl arched her slender arms to stave off the blow. But the woman dropped her hands disgustedly.
“Bah! what’s the use. If I could only make you cry there’d be some relish in it. But no! I beat you till my arms ache and never a whimper. That’s your stubborn nature. You’ll do nothing to please me. Oh, you’re a stubborn little devil, still as a mouse, obstinate as a mule. There’s something in you, daughter, I can’t get at. But I will. I’ll thrash it out of you. You wait. Not to-night. I’m too tired to-night....”
From the tumbler at her elbow she took a gulp of cider and brandy, then turned broodingly to the fire. The sickly flames betrayed the wretchedness of the room, the gaunt rafters, the floor of beaten earth. On a deal table lay a clasp knife, and beside it a loaf of bread. The girl eyed the bread avidly. Then her hand, red and claw-cold, stole to the knife, while her gaze rested fearfully on her mother. But the woman no longer heeded.
“What a life!” she was muttering. “What a home! And to think I’d have been rolling in my auto, and crackling in silk and satin, if I hadn’t been a fool. That’s my weak point.... I always wanted to be respectable, to be married—all that sentimental rot. Well, I’ve made my bed and I’ve got to lie on it. But it’s hell....”
She stared dismally at her draggled skirts, her coarsely stockinged feet, her wooden shoes so warped and worn. Seeing her absorbed, the girl hacked off a piece of bread and fell to wolfing it. The woman went on, her face harsh and haggard in the light of the fire:
“There was the American. Mad about me, he was. If I’d played my cards right he’d have married me. What a time he gave me, Paris, Venice, Monte Carlo.... Oh, Monte Carlo! But he had to go back home at last. His wife! Told me to wait and he’d get a divorce. Gave me all the money he had. Nearly five hundred pounds. Believe me, I was pretty in them days.”
As if for confirmation, she stroked her hollow cheeks. Tears of self-pity welled in her weary eyes.