“Ah! if I’d known, I would have waited. But there was Pierre plaguing me to marry him. Told me he’d loved me since we’d worked together in that hotel in Brighton; me as bar-maid, him as head-waiter. Mighty nice he used to look too in his dress suit. He said he’d been left some money and wanted to go back to the little town where he was born and buy a pub. So we was married, once in England and once in France. God! I was particular in them days.”
She laughed bitterly, and took another gulp of the mixture in her glass. Her eyes went glassy. Her fingers clutched unseen things. She maundered on.
“Yes, I was happy there. It was all so new to me. Then we began to get ambitious. The landlord of the big hotel died suddenly. It was a great chance for Pierre, but he had not money enough to take it. There was where I came in. I gave him my five hundred pounds. Told him an aunt had left it to me. He believed me. We bought the hotel and everything seemed to go well. Yes, them were the happy days.”
A fit of coughing interrupted her. When it was over she took another drink.
“I don’t know how Pierre got to know about the American. He was away a month and when he came back he was changed. He explained nothing, but he treated me like dirt. It was that made me take to the drink.”
She was silent awhile. Then....
“He didn’t seem to care about the business any more and I was drinking too much to care; so we went from bad to worse. We lost the hotel and went back to the buvette. Then we lost that too, and he had to take a waiter’s place. By this time the drink was master of me. I tried to give it up but it was no use. When Cécile was born I thought I’d be able to stop, but I was worse than ever. If he’d only tried to help me! But no, he hated me; and I began to hate him too. We fought day and night, like cat and dog. Well, it’s a long, long story, and here’s the end.”
She threw a withered branch of gorse on the fire. It blazed up gold as its own May-day bloom. The girl had climbed on a bench by the high bed and was bending fondly over.
“Margot!” screamed the woman.
The girl started. In the sudden flare, her face was an ashen mask of fear.