Читать книгу Moss Rose - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 19

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Belle, Lily Mason, Moll and the little boy all slept in the kitchen that night with the fire kept going—the gas turned low, all resting as best they could on chairs and mattresses on the floor. The other women were huddled somehow into Mrs. Bulke's bedroom; a constable kept guard in the parlour.

Belle had procured herself another good meal, and a glass of old sherry from Mrs. Bulke's store. She had washed again in warm water, with a cake of good soap that Lily Mason had shyly proffered. She felt refreshed—raised in her own esteem, as if she were a more estimable member of society than she had been the day before.

Yes, even lying on a mattress in the kitchen that was so much cleaner and neater than it had been yesterday, even part of this sordid excitement and wretched upset, she felt she had regained something of her own self-respect.

That conversation with Superintendent Matchwell, when he had treated her as a sensible human being—treated her as a lady, that had soothed her bruised and broken pride which she had believed only a short while before to be utterly crushed.

As she lay there—shawls and blankets over her—on the mattress, her head propped on a pillow, staring at the fire which Lily Mason had made up just before they had tried to sleep, she felt as if she were once more part of an ordered existence, not a mere waif or outcast who had no useful or necessary place in the world. She knew, she reasoned with herself acutely, that she had no firm foundation for this belief and hope, but they were there. She looked at her fine hands, smoothly-turned wrists, and delicate forearms, in the fire-light. A little good food, such as she had had to-day, a little warmth and ease of mind—she might be a lively pretty woman again.

Had that acute detective, used as he must be to dealing with human nature and with the underworld, believed he simple story?—a gentlewoman struggling to earn her live'; hood—an actress of the better sort, not knowing to what manner of house she had gone? Had he believed about the little music shop in Baker Street?—would there be enquiries into her past life? She did not think so.

She would have to give evidence at the inquest, but it would not be of much importance. She could soon, with her intelligence and her respectful air, impress the coroner that she had spoken the truth. She would appear for a moment in the coroner's court, and disappear again. That would do her no harm. Her name was easily changed. She need not be for long contaminated by any association with Daisy Arrow.

Meanwhile, how to get out of this? She almost formed the question aloud, anxious as she was not to disturb the other uneasy sleepers in the kitchen.

She longed, as she had hardly ever longed before, to find a few pounds and decent lodgings—some foothold in the world of respectability.

"I thought that I had forgotten how to care, and now I care a great deal—more than I ever thought possible. Am I a fool to think that I can regain anything, lust when everything seems so lost—just when I seem to be indifferent that it was lost? Was it only yesterday that I had in my hand that knife, which is now, as I suppose, at Scotland Yard? I had better not think about it. I must try to sleep a little or I shall be quite upset and give way."

She readjusted her pillow—under it was the carpetbag in which lay the plumes and the German Bible.

Lily Mason was crying and gurgling in her sleep. Moll was restless with ugly twitches of body and face.

Strange, thought Belle contemptuously, that last night when it really happened we were all at peace, and tonight, when there is nothing to be afraid of, we are all in a panic.

After all, she could not sleep. She pulled herself to her knees on the warm mattress—the shawls and blankets fell off her slender figure. She clasped her hands before her lips and muttered:

"O God! O God, give me a chance."