“Damned stupid of me!”
Verrinder frowned. This complicated matters. He had cornered her, only to have her abscond into neutral territory. He had known that Marie Louise was an adopted child, but had not suspected her Americanism. This required a bit of thinking. While he studied it in the back room of his brain his forehead self was saying:
“So Sir Joseph befriended you, and that was what won your amazing, unquestioning gratitude?”
“That and a thousand thousand little kindnesses. I loved them like mother and father.”
“But your own––er––mother and father––you must have had parents of your own––what was their nationality?”
“Oh, they were, as we say, ‘Americans from ’way back.’ But my father left my mother soon after I was born. We weren’t much good, I guess. It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I got my runaway nature from him. But I’ve outgrown that. Anyway, he left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother was a seamstress in a little town out West––an awful hole it was. I was a tiny little girl when they took me to 58 my mother’s funeral. I remember that, but I can’t remember her. That was my first death. And now this! I’ve lost a mother and father twice. That hasn’t happened to many people. So you must forgive me for being so crazy. So many of my loved are dead. It’s frightful. We lose so many as we grow up. Life is like walking through a graveyard, with the sextons always busy opening new places. There was so much crying and loneliness before, and now this war goes on and on––as if we needed a war!”
“God knows, we don’t.”
Marie Louise went to the window and raised the curtain. A haggard gray light had been piping the edges of the shade. Now the full casement let in a flood of warm morning radiance.
The dull street was alive again. Sparrows were hopping. Wagons were on the move. Small and early tradesfolk were about their business. Servants were opening houses as shops were being opened in town.
The big wheel had rolled London round into the eternal day. Doors and windows were being flung ajar. Newspapers and milk were taken in, ashes put out, cats and dogs released, front stoops washed, walks swept, gardens watered. Brooms were pendulating. In the masters’ rooms it was still night and slumber-time, but humble people were alert.