Chapter 28 - Page 2

Merton, the contemptuous
judgment Mary had passed on him had become her judgment; the words she
had heard of him in the train were absolutely true; he had deceived his
wife with lies; he was weak and vain and fickle, one it was a disaster to
love and lean upon. Love, gratitude, and pity stirred her heart when she
thought of Constance, and while the pity was kept secret the love was
freely and frequently expressed, and from week to week she told the story
of her life to her sympathetic friend--all its little incidents, trials,
and successes.

There was little to break the monotony of her life out of business hours
at this period; and it was perhaps fortunate for her that she usually
came home tired in the evening, wishing for rest rather than for
distraction. There was nothing in that part of London to make walking
attractive. The Regent's Park was close by, it is true, and thither she
was accustomed to go for a walk on Sundays, except when one or other of
her new acquaintances in the shop, living with her own people, invited
her to dinner or tea. But on weekdays, especially in winter, when the
streets were sloppy, and the atmosphere grey and damp, there was no
inducement to take her out. In such conditions Marylebone is as
depressing a district as any in London. The streets have a dull
monotonous appearance, and the ancient unvenerable houses are grimy to
blackness with the accumulation of soot on them. The inhabitants,
especially in that portion of Marylebone where Fan lived, form a strange
mixture. Artists, men of letters, sober tradesmen, artisans, day
labourers, students, shop-assistants, and foreigners--dynamiters,
adventurers, and waiters waiting for places--may all be found living in
one short street. Bohemianism, vice, respectability, wealth and poverty,
are jumbled together as in no other district in London. The modest wife,
coming out of her door at ten in the morning to do her marketing, meets,
face to face, her next neighbour standing at _her_ door, a jug in
her hand, waiting for some late milkman to pass--a slovenly dame in a
dressing-gown with half the buttons off, primrose-coloured hair loose on
her back, and a porcelain complexion hastily dabbed on a yellow
dissipated face. The Maryleboners (or -bonites) being a Happy Family, in
the menagerie sense, do not vex their souls about this condition of
things; the well-fed and the hungry, the pure and the impure, are near
together, but in soul they are just as far apart as elsewhere.

Nevertheless, to a young girl like Fan, living alone, and beautiful to
the eye, the large amount of immorality around her was a serious trouble,
and she never ventured out in the evening, even to go a short distance,
without trepidation and a fast-beating heart, so