“Well, what do you care about?”
The suggestion that in order to be entertained one must either drink or play billiards made Wynne laugh, and since no man cares to have his more serious pleasures ridiculed, the young actor snorted, and left him to spend the rest of the evening alone.
Possibly it was loneliness which directed Wynne once more to seek employment upon the stage. In the play in which he appeared he was given the part of a hot-potato man who was on the stage for only a few moments.
To perfect the detail for this rôle he made the acquaintance of a real example of this calling, and spent many midnight hours talking with the old fellow and warming himself before the pleasant coke fire.
Wynne discovered that there was a deal of philosophy to be gleaned in this manner. Thereafter he became well known to many of the strange, quiet men who feed the hungry in queer, out-of-the-way corners of the sleeping city.
On Sundays he would go to Petticoat Lane, or pry into the private lives of the outcasts of Norfolk House. The East End fascinated him, with its mixture of old customs and new—its spice of adventure and savour of Orientalism. Many of the folk with whom he conversed were strangely illuminating. After an initial period of distrust and suspicion they would open out and disgorge some startling views on life and matters in general. They spoke of anarchy and crime and confinements as their more civilized brothers of the West spoke of the brand of cigarettes they preferred. The elemental side of these men’s natures, being so totally dissimilar from his own, made a profound impression upon Wynne. Their attitude toward women amazed and perplexed him. The phrase, “my woman,” with its solid, possessive, animal note, was original to the ears. It suggested an entirely different attitude from the one he had observed in France, the one so alive with thrill and volatile desire.
“My woman!” he repeated it over to himself as he plodded homeward through the dark streets. He said it experimentally with the same inflection that had been used—and yet to him it was only an inflection. He could not conceive a circumstance in which he would naturally stress the “my,” or would actually feel the possessive impulse to make it inevitable.
“She’s my woman,” the man had said, when telling his story—“my woman, d’y’hear?” Followed an oathy description of a chair and table fight, a beer bottle broken across a bedrail and used as a dagger—something, that was once a man, carried in the arms of a trustworthy few and hidden in a murky doorway a couple of streets distant.
It was hard to imagine such a coming about at the dictates of a convention of sex. If a woman inclined to sin with another man, let her—what did it matter? Fidelity was of very little consequence. Common reason proved it to be a myth. Yet men committed murder that fidelity—physical fidelity—might be preserved. That’s what it amounted to. But did it? That possessive “my” argued a greater and more masterful motive—something beyond mere moral adherences.
“My woman!” Very perplexing!