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.But though there were no fastenings on windows or doors and the bedclothes were patched and gray with bad washing, she had fixed her lodgers' rooms up completely, with each a little oven and stove, and good lights, each item on a separate meter.The meters ate up the pennies, sixpences and shillings.There was a regular rake-off for the landlady on each meter.It was in the best room, the large front room on the first floor upstairs, that Caroline lived; a shabby and dirty room, but cheaper than most to be found and "clean"; that is, free of insect pests.Caroline was deeply ashamed of living in such dirt.She invited no friend there but Nellie.She was afraid of Mrs.Hatchard.Ma Hatchard let Nellie in without a word.Nellie flung past and ran up the stairs three at a time, with a gay halloo."Are you there, love?"She flung herself down on the armchair with her leg over it and began raging about her brother.How could Tom still go round making experiments with human beings? There was a stormy, seeking time in Bridgehead many years before when they were roaming looking for the road out."Some people called it Bohemia." That was all right for young people.It was all despair, stupidity and selfishness if they looked homewards.So they looked outwards and saw depression, the dole, the fourth winter of unemployment, many homes broken up, children wandering for work all over England.They had found the answer, she and Tom; but it had formed them differently."I struggled out of it; but he never did.He's remained an adolescent and he's killed souls with his purposeful evasiveness.He's dangerous.I'm warning you.You want to be very sure of yourself to cope with him.It was a bad time, a time of many solutions.There was corruption.Tom and I were in all that corruption together.He's no good.""But Tom is so gentle and good and so gay," said the young woman.Nellie said bitterly, "Aye, he's an angel—a gilded angel with rotting wings." She flung herself down and hid her face on the chairback, "I've come for ye.He'll pull the wool over your eyes; he's the spirit of mischief.He'll take you away from me.""Oh, how can you say that? I know what you've done for me.You've befriended me; and I was so lonely.""There's no standing water with friendship; it's turn your back on me or come forward and be my real friend.There's no other way.It's me or him.Life or death.He's coming here! I know his tricks.He'll catch a poor bloody innocent like you.And why haven't you trusted me? It should be all right between us, I shouldn't have to worry, after all I've done for you.But you shilly-shally.You married a weak man and you hadn't the backbone to stand by your mistake.You got led astray like a Woolworth miss in Roseland.You fell for that bugger in the office.I know you.I have no faith in you.You have no character.You won't look into yourself and see what you are.You won't confess to what's wrong.""I know Alan has been strange.I don't understand all he does.I have been very unhappy, very.He was so good to me.I went over everything a hundred times.Why should he be unkind to me? I loved him; he asked me and I told him.I do love him.I always will.Would it be love if I became angry with him the first time he hurt me?""I pity you.I pity you from the bottom of my heart.I pity you living in fairy stories like a child.If you even think you love him, I pity you.And you'll be easy game for a prinking thing, a smirking toy like Tom.He'll sing you a song and tell you a tale and you'll go straight to the mountebank and forget everything I've told you and been to you.""I don't understand you.Why are you so upset?"Caroline was uneasy at Nellie's pain.Couldn't they all be friends? Nellie loved Tom, Caroline liked them both.No, no, said Nellie; she had to choose.The ways lay at right angles.Caroline was puzzled and very uneasy at the misery and passion she saw in Nellie.Nellie was downright, "He has no need of you.He can do nothing for you and I can do everything.He can't offer you friendship, love or any such thing.He's coming over to play cat's cradle with your feelings.If you knew my wild loneliness, Caroline, you'd come to your senses.""But I thought you had so many friends."Nellie muttered, "Not one that understands me.In you I thought I had found the perfect understanding.Oh, Caroline, for someone to talk to, to talk into the heart and leave it there and feel peace."Nellie talked in this distracted way for some time, when they both had to go to work.Nellie went along with Caroline to the station, begging her to be true to her, not to be taken in by the "pink and white illusionist.""I'm warning you.It will end badly.He can only harm women."Nellie bought the morning papers, sat on a bench till it was time for the pubs to open and presently went downtown to work.Caroline came out of the housing office at six o'clock and walked along briskly, thinking about catching her bus, though her head was spinning.She wondered if she would have the courage to go into a pub and have a drink, wishing she were home now, at Ma Hatchard's, so that she could begin the routine of cooking, eating, fixing her clothes.She had thought about Alan so much that she had envisaged even the most unlikely possibilities; even that he would tell her the affair was finished.I couldn't face it, she said to herself; then at once, everything can be faced.And he is too good, too kind and I am no nuisance; and he loves me.She had thought of everything, wondering very much these last few months at his strangeness.I don't know much about men.I have to learn.This afternoon, after talking to her in a gruff embarrassed way, chopping out his answers and questions, he had mentioned a couple that had been ejected from their one-room home and were now housed in different temporary shelters, wives and husbands separately.The wife was having a love affair with the man's closest friend.The husband couldn't grasp it and was disturbed."He cries without stopping; he cried for three days.""Oh, poor man.It's overwork.""Yes, he was doing two jobs to try to get a home.I told him it will be all right.Temporary affairs have no meaning and don't last."When he said it, she knew at once what he was getting at.They talked for a while in this way and everything had two meanings.He walked to the door with her and she kissed him as she had been doing, though she noticed he drew back.A car honked at her and there was Tom waiting to take her home.She got in and sat down, quite easeful.He noticed her looks and asked if she were ill."I may be, but I'm happy and free.""Who is happy and free?"They laughed."Would you like a drive in the country?"No, she had promised Nellie to go straight home."Nellie will get along all right.""No: I promised."He began to drive.She didn't know where they went; but she realized presently that Tom was talking, talking, the light voice mixing with the street sounds, birds.It stopped when the traffic stopped.He was recounting all kinds of things."I'm a lonely walker.I was just thinking about something that happened last time I was in Bridgehead.There was a boy at a corner in the main road.He was in painter's overalls, new, just an apprentice, with a bucket and brush, laughing at the antics of four older painters two houses away, one on the ladder going up, splashing stuff at the others.The boy stood with things in his hand and a rag; his hair blowing like a storm of cornflakes and the rag blowing.Just then a hat came round the corner.It made three hops and it was so funny we all started to laugh; and it hopped into the boy's bucket.A man came round the corner to get his hat which was in green paint.We fished it out and we started to talk.He said, Do you know anything that is going on? He was a local Reuter's correspondent and he said he had no luck.Just the night before, there was a fire in his lodgings, which spread to a few other houses, when he was in the movies.He saw it flashed on the screen.I promised to let him know if anything happened and he gave me his address
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