In the Cage | Page 5

in which she spent most of her time; and she would have been ready,
had it been at all worth while, to contend that, since her outward
occupation didn't kill it, it must be strong indeed. Combinations of
flowers and green-stuff, forsooth! What SHE could handle freely, she
said to herself, was combinations of men and women. The only
weakness in her faculty came from the positive abundance of her
contact with the human herd; this was so constant, it had so the effect
of cheapening her privilege, that there were long stretches in which
inspiration, divination and interest quite dropped. The great thing was
the flashes, the quick revivals, absolute accidents all, and neither to be
counted on nor to be resisted. Some one had only sometimes to put in a
penny for a stamp and the whole thing was upon her. She was so
absurdly constructed that these were literally the moments that made
up--made up for the long stiffness of sitting there in the stocks, made
up for the cunning hostility of Mr. Buckton and the importunate
sympathy of the counter-clerk, made up for the daily deadly flourishy
letter from Mr. Mudge, made up even for the most haunting of her
worries, the rage at moments of not knowing how her mother did "get
it."
She had surrendered herself moreover of late to a certain expansion of
her consciousness; something that seemed perhaps vulgarly accounted
for by the fact that, as the blast of the season roared louder and the
waves of fashion tossed their spray further over the counter, there were
more impressions to be gathered and really--for it came to that--more
life to be led. Definite at any rate it was that by the time May was well
started the kind of company she kept at Cocker's had begun to strike
her as a reason--a reason she might almost put forward for a policy of
procrastination. It sounded silly, of course, as yet, to plead such a
motive, especially as the fascination of the place was after all a sort of
torment. But she liked her torment; it was a torment she should miss at
Chalk Farm. She was ingenious and uncandid, therefore, about leaving
the breadth of London a little longer between herself and that austerity.
If she hadn't quite the courage in short to say to Mr. Mudge that her
actual chance for a play of mind was worth any week the three shillings

he desired to help her to save, she yet saw something happen in the
course of the month that in her heart of hearts at least answered the
subtle question. This was connected precisely with the appearance of
the memorable lady.

CHAPTER III

She pushed in three bescribbled forms which the girl's hand was quick
to appropriate, Mr. Buckton having so frequent a perverse instinct for
catching first any eye that promised the sort of entertainment with
which she had her peculiar affinity. The amusements of captives are
full of a desperate contrivance, and one of our young friend's
ha'pennyworths had been the charming tale of "Picciola." It was of
course the law of the place that they were never to take no notice, as Mr.
Buckton said, whom they served; but this also never prevented,
certainly on the same gentleman's own part, what he was fond of
describing as the underhand game. Both her companions, for that
matter, made no secret of the number of favourites they had among the
ladies; sweet familiarities in spite of which she had repeatedly caught
each of them in stupidities and mistakes, confusions of identity and
lapses of observation that never failed to remind her how the cleverness
of men ends where the cleverness of women begins. "Marguerite,
Regent Street. Try on at six. All Spanish lace. Pearls. The full length."
That was the first; it had no signature. "Lady Agnes Orme, Hyde Park
Place. Impossible to-night, dining Haddon. Opera to-morrow, promised
Fritz, but could do play Wednesday. Will try Haddon for Savoy, and
anything in the world you like, if you can get Gussy. Sunday
Montenero. Sit Mason Monday, Tuesday. Marguerite awful. Cissy."
That was the second. The third, the girl noted when she took it, was on
a foreign form: "Everard, Hotel Brighton, Paris. Only understand and
believe. 22nd to 26th, and certainly 8th and 9th. Perhaps others. Come.
Mary."
Mary was very handsome, the handsomest woman, she felt in a
moment, she had ever seen--or perhaps it was only Cissy. Perhaps it
was both, for she had seen stranger things than that--ladies wiring to

different persons under different names. She had seen all sorts of things
and pieced together all sorts of mysteries. There had once been
one--not long before--who, without winking, sent off five over five
different signatures.