"Gilbert!" The girl was looking at him quizzically. "I want to hear all about this. What was she like? Big and rather brazen—quite a child of nature, with what they call a heart of gold—eh? I know the sort."
"I beg again, Enid, that the subject may be dropped," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane icily. But no one took the least notice of her.
"I'm afraid you don't know the sort," said Gilbert. He was annoyed at the turn the conversation had taken—annoyed, too, at Jordan Tant for his breach of faith. He hated the thought of discussing the girl with these people; he knew that the more he tried to explain his feeling about the matter, the less they would be able to understand. But the rather haughty eyes of Enid were upon him, and he had to go on, against his will. "The girl Tant is talking about is a little hard-working thing, who lived in the next house to that in which I stayed; and she keeps a drunken father and a reprobate brother by the simple process of letting lodgings. Now you know all about it."
"How touching—and how romantic!" exclaimed the girl. "And the great man from the great world took a deep interest in her, and stayed perhaps a little longer in his slum on her account—eh?"
"For my part," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane stiffly, "since the subject must be discussed, I have never been able to understand what people let lodgings for. If they've got a house, why not live in it, and not give over bits of it to other people?"
Gilbert Byfield glanced at his watch. "We shall be late for the first act," he said.
"Which of course puts an end to the discussion," Enid said, as she rose from the table. "Of course, if you'd like me to send her anything that would be useful, I should be only too pleased. Mother likes me to be charitable."
The play proved to be dull (at least to Gilbert Byfield), and the evening seemed to stretch on interminably. For the man was haunted by the miserable feeling that this child, in her common back-yard—this girl he had understood, as he thought, so perfectly—could never by any chance be understood by those who had not intimately touched her life. He was puzzled to think what he could do to carry out that brave determination of his to help her—to lift her out of her surroundings. If he remained where he was, among his own people, and in his own sphere, he deserted the child; if he went back to her, he deserted them, and took up his life in surroundings uncongenial, except so far as she was concerned. And he saw that it was utterly impossible to go half-way about one matter or the other; Arcadia Street was not to be brought into the West End and dumped down there.
It happened that between the acts he went out to smoke a cigarette, and found himself, with a dozen other men, near the open doors of the theatre. A few people were strolling listlessly outside in the street—pausing now and then to stare in at the well-dressed men, and to whisper. And once a girl went past—a thin shabby girl in black; and he was reminded so forcibly of Bessie Meggison that, without knowing what he did, he hurried out of the place, and went after her. Fifty yards down the street she stopped to look in at a shop window; and it was not Bessie at all, but someone quite different. Yet the thought assailed him, as he went back to the theatre, that just in that fashion the girl might be wandering alone in this horrible London—poorly clad, and not too well fed. He hated the thought of his own prosperity; quite unnecessarily called himself a brute, because he had had a good dinner, and was supposed to be out in search of enjoyment.
Never for a moment, of course, did it occur to him that his point of view was wrong; never for a moment did he understand that properly his life could not touch the girl's, and could have nothing in common with it. He accused himself unnecessarily, when the only mistake that had been made in the whole matter was in going to Arcadia Street at all, and above all going there under false colours. That point of view he did not regard in the least.