Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/34

30 in a little dingy parlour with dirty dog's-eared cards, scoring their points with beer-marks on the sticky tables. Not a very attractive house of entertainment this; but it has an attraction for the woman with the baby, for she looks at it wistfully, as she paces up and down. Presently she fumbles in her pocket, and produces two or three halfpence—just enough, it seems, for her purpose, for she sneaks in at the half-open door, and in a few minutes emerges in the act of wiping her lips.

As she does so, she almost stumbles against a man wrapped in a great coat, and with the lower part of his face muffled in a thick handkerchief.

"I thought you would not come," she said.

"Did you? Then you see you thought wrong. But you might have been right, for my coming was quite a chance: I can't be at your beck and call night and day."

"I don't expect you to be at my beck and call. I've not been used to get so much attention, or so much regard from you as to expect that, Jabez."

The man started, and looked round as if he expected to find all Slopperton at his shoulder; but there wasn't a creature about.

"You needn't be quite so handy with my name," he said; "there's no knowing who might hear you. Is there any one in there?" he asked, pointing to the public-house.

"No one but the landlord."

"Come in, then; we can talk better there. This fog pierces one to the bones."

He seems never to consider that the woman and the child have been exposed to that piercing fog for an hour and more, as he is above an hour after his appointment.

He leads the way through the bar into the little parlour. There are no colliers playing at all-fours to-day, and the dog's-eared cards lie tumbled in a heap on one of the sticky tables among broken clay-pipes and beer-stains. This table is near the one window which looks out on the river, and by this window the woman sits, Jabez placing himself on the other side of the table.

The fretful baby has fallen asleep, and lies quietly in the woman's lap.

"What will you take?"

"A little gin," she answers, not without a certain shame in her tone.

"So you've found out that comfort, have you?" He says this with a glance of satisfaction he cannot repress.

"What other comfort is there for such as me, Jabez? It seemed at first to make me forget. Nothing can do that now—except"