“ ‘It’s no good sitting in the dark,’ I said.
“He lit the gas. He began smoking his pipe. I knew that would do him good. But I just sat and looked at the street. I don’t know what came over me. I felt that if I went on sitting in that room I’d go mad. I wanted to go somewhere where there were lights and people. I wanted to get away from Ted; no, not so much that, I wanted to get away from all that Ted was thinking and feeling. We only had two rooms. I went into the bedroom; the child’s cot was still there, but I wouldn’t look at it. I put on my hat and a veil and I changed my dress and then I went back to Ted.
“ ‘I’m going out,’ I said.
“Ted looked at me. I dare say he noticed I’d got my new dress on and perhaps something in the way I spoke made him see I didn’t want him.
“ ‘All right,’ he said.
“In the book he made me walk through the park, but I didn’t do that really. I went down to Victoria and I took a hansom to Charing Cross. It was only a shilling fare. Then I walked up the Strand. I’d made up my mind what I wanted to do before I came out. Do you remember Harry Retford? Well, he was acting at the Adelphi then, he had the second comedy part. Well, I went to the stage door, and sent up my name. I always liked Harry Retford. I expect he was a bit unscrupulous and he was rather funny over money matters, but he could make you laugh and with all his faults he was a rare good sort. You know he was killed in the Boer War, don’t you?”
“I didn’t. I only knew he’d disappeared and one never saw his name on playbills; I thought perhaps he’d gone into business or something.”
“No, he went out at once. He was killed at Ladysmith. After I’d been waiting a bit he came down and I said: ‘Harry, let’s go on the razzle tonight. What about a bit of supper at Romano’s?’ ‘Not ’alf,’ he said. ‘You wait here and the minute the show’s over and I’ve got my makeup off I’ll come down.’ It made me feel better just to see him; he was playing a racing tout and it made me laugh just to look at him in his check suit and his billycock hat and his red nose. Well, I waited till the end of the show and then he came down and we walked along to Romano’s.
“ ‘Are you hungry?’ he said to me.
“ ‘Starving,’ I said; and I was.
“ ‘Let’s have the best,’ he said, ‘and blow the expense. I told Bill Terris I was taking my best girl out to supper and I touched him for a couple of quid.’
“ ‘Let’s have champagne,’ I said.
“ ‘Three cheers for the widow!’ he said.
“I don’t know if you ever went to Romano’s in the old days. It was fine. You used to see all the theatrical people and the racing men, and the girls from the Gaiety used to go there. It was the place. And the Roman. Harry knew him and he came up to our table; he used to talk in funny broken English; I believe he put it on because he knew it made people laugh. And if someone he knew was down and out he’d always lend him a fiver.
“ ‘How’s the kid?’ said Harry.
“ ‘Better,’ I said.
“I didn’t want to tell him the truth. You know how funny men are; they don’t understand some things. I knew Harry would think it dreadful of me to come out to supper when the poor child was lying dead in the hospital. He’d be awfully sorry and all that, but that’s not what I wanted; I wanted to laugh.”
Rosie lit the cigarette that she had been playing with.
“You know how when a woman is having a baby, sometimes the husband can’t stand it any more and he goes out and has another woman. And then when she finds out, and it’s funny how often she does, she kicks up no end of a fuss; she says, that the man should go and do it just then, when she’s going through hell, well, it’s the limit. I always tell her not to be silly. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her, and isn’t terribly upset, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just nerves; if he weren’t so upset he wouldn’t think of it. I know, because that’s how I felt then.
“When we’d finished our supper Harry said: ‘Well, what about it?’
“ ‘What about what?’ I said.
“There wasn’t any dancing in those days and there was nowhere we could go.
“ ‘What about coming round to my flat and having a look at my photograph album?’ said Harry.
“ ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ I said.
“He had a little bit of a flat in the Charing Cross Road, just two rooms and a bath and a kitchenette, and we drove round there, and I stayed the night.
“When I got back next morning the breakfast was already on the table and Ted had just started. I’d made up my mind that if he said anything I was going to fly out at him. I didn’t care what happened. I’d earned my living before, and I was ready to earn it again. For two pins I’d have packed my box and left him there and then. But he just looked up as I came in.
“ ‘You’ve just come in time,’ he said. ‘I was going to eat your sausage.’
“I sat down and poured him out his tea. And he went on reading the paper. After we’d finished breakfast we went to the hospital. He never asked me where I’d been. I didn’t know what he thought. He was terribly kind to me all that time. I was miserable, you know. Somehow I felt that I just couldn’t get over it, and there
