XIII

After that day Mary Makebelieve met her new friend frequently. Somehow, wherever she went, he was not far away; he seemed to spring out of space⁠—one moment she was alone watching the people passing and the hurrying cars and the thronged and splendid shop windows, and then a big voice was booming down to her and a big form was pacing deliberately by her side. Twice he took her into a restaurant and gave her lunch. She had never been in a restaurant before, and it seemed to her like a place in fairyland. The semidarkness of the retired rooms faintly coloured by tiny electric lights, the beautifully clean tables and the strange foods, the neatly dressed waitresses with quick, deft movements and gravely attentive faces⁠—these things thrilled her. She noticed that the girls in the restaurant, in spite of their gravity and industry, observed both herself and the big man with the minutest inspection, and she felt that they all envied her the attentions of so superb a companion. In the street also she found that many people looked at them, but, listening to his constant and easy speech, she could not give these people the attention they deserved.

When they did not go to the Park they sought the most reserved streets or walked out to the confines of the town and up by the river Dodder. There are exquisitely beautiful places along the side of the Dodder: shy little harbours and backwaters, and now and then a miniature waterfall or a broad, placid reach upon which the sun beats down like silver. Along the riverbank the grass grows rank and wildly luxurious, and at this season, warmed by the sun, it was a splendid place to sit. She thought she could sit there forever watching the shining river and listening to the great voice by her side.

He told her many things about himself and about his comrades⁠—those equally huge men. She could see them walking with slow vigour through their barrack-yard, falling in for exercise or gymnastics or for school. She wondered what they were taught, and who had sufficient impertinence to teach giants, and were they ever slapped for not knowing their lessons? He told her of his daily work, the hours when he was on and off duty, the hours when he rose in the morning and when he went to bed. He told her of night duty, and drew a picture of the blank deserted streets which thrilled and frightened her⁠ ⁠… the tense darkness, and how through the silence the sound of a footstep was magnified a thousandfold, ringing down the desolate pathways away and away to the smallest shrill distinctness; and she saw also the alleys and laneways hooded in blackness, and the one or two human fragments who drifted aimless and frantic along the lonely streets, striving to walk easily for fear of their own thundering footsteps, cowering in the vastness of the city, dwarfed and shivering beside the gaunt houses; the thousands upon thousands of black houses, each deadly silent, each seeming to wait and listen for the morning, and each teeming with men and women who slept in peace because he was walking up and down outside, flashing his lantern on shop windows, and feeling doors to see if they were by any chance open. Now and again a step from a great distance would tap-tap-tap, a far-off delicacy of sound, and either die away down echoing side streets or come clanking on to where he stood, growing louder and clearer and more resonant, ringing again and again in doubled and trebled echoes; while he, standing far back in a doorway, watched to see who was abroad at the dead of night⁠—and then that person went away on his strange errand, his footsteps trampling down immense distances, till the last echo and the last faint tremble of his feet eddied into the stillness. Now and again a cat dodged gingerly along a railing, or a strayed dog slunk fearfully down the pathway, nosing everywhere in and out of the lamplight, silent and hungry and desperately eager. He told her stories also, wonderful tales of great fights and cunning tricks, of men and women whose whole lives were tricks, of people who did not know how to live except by theft and violence; people who were born by stealth, who ate by subterfuge, drank by dodges, got married in attics, and slid into death by strange, subterranean passages. He told her the story of the Two Hungry Men, and of The Sailor who had been Robbed, and a funny tale about the Barber who had Two Mothers. He also told her the stories of The Eight Tinkers and of the Old Women who Steal Fish at Nighttime, and the story of The Man he Let Off, and he told her a terrible story of how he fought five men in a little room, and he showed her a great livid scar hidden by his cap, and the marks in his neck where he had been stabbed with a jagged bottle, and his wrist which an Italian madman had thrust through and through with a dagger.

But though he was always talking, he was not always talking of himself. Through his conversation there ran a succession of queries⁠—tiny, slender questions which ran out of his stories and into her life⁠—questions so skilful and natural and spontaneous that only a girl could discover the curiosity which prompted them. He wanted her name, her address, her mother’s name, her father’s name; had she other relatives, did she go to work yet, what was her religion, was it a long time since she left school, and what was her mother’s business? To all of these Mary Makebelieve answered with glad candour. She saw each question coming, and the personal curiosity lying behind it she divined and was glad of. She would have loved to ask him personal and intimate questions about his parents, his brothers and sisters, and what he said when he said his prayers, and had he walked with other girls, and, if so, what had he said to them, and what did he really and truly think of her? Her curiosity on all these points was abundant and eager, but she did not dare to even hint a question.

One of the queries often touched upon by him she eluded⁠—she shrank from it with something like terror⁠—it was, “What was her mother’s business?” She could not bear to say that her mother was a charwoman. It did not seem fitting. She suddenly hated and was ashamed of this occupation. It took on an aspect of incredible baseness. It seemed to be the meanest employment wherein anyone could be engaged; and so when the question, conveyed in a variety of ways, had to be answered it was answered with reservations⁠—Mary Makebelieve told him a lie. She said her mother was a dressmaker.