Lonely Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

short, ordered a cup of coffee, and went out.
    In the hall one of the waiters found me a cigar. I hung about there for a bit and managed to get into conversation with the hall porter, and was pleased to do so. He told me about the theatres that were on and I didn’t like the idea of any of them, and then he started on the cinemas. And finally he said:
    “There’s a good Palais de Dance if you’re fond of dancing, sir. Quite a good class place to-night. This is the two-shilling night, you know.”
    I don’t dance more than once or twice a year, but I am very fond of it. This was something rather new to me, and so I said:
    “They have professional partners there?”
    He smiled fatly. “Oh, yes, sir. Sixpennies, you know. Sixpence a dance, or sixpence a sit out, which ever you happens to prefer. Nice respectable young ladies they are—mostly.”
    I nodded. The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. I could not face the thought of going through the evening alone, but for a pound or so I could hire a girl to spend the evening with me. For once in a way my money was some good to me, and so I went upstairs and changed my shoes, and went out to the Palais.
    I sat at a table by the floor for some time before dancing. It must have been a pretty slack night at the Palais, because there cannot have been more than a dozen couples in the place. The sixpennies sat in a pen in the corner, smoking cigarettes and reading magazines; four or five girls in black silk dresses and the same number of slightly effeminate young men in dinner-jackets. There was one girl there that I liked the look of most, a little older than the rest, perhaps, and one who looked as if she wouldn’t be much effort for me to entertain. And so at last I walked up to the barrier and caught her eye, and I said: “Would you care to dance this one with me?”
    She glanced quickly up and down the little row of girls; a sort of commercial rectitude that insisted that she must be quite sure that the invitation was to her, and not to her neighbour. And then she looked up at me and smiled, and said:
    “Me? I’d like to very much.”
    So we danced, and she asked me if I had been long in Leeds, and I made the usual talk about the band and the floor and my own dancing, and she gave little stilted answers. And suddenly it struck me that she was busy, almost too busy to talk. Then I fell over her feet and she said quickly: “Would you do that again?” I did it again, but her feet weren’t there that time. It took her about a minute and a half to learn my tricks. By the end of that quickstep I could do exactly what I liked; she danced magnificently. The dance came to a truncated end and the short encore; I walked her off the floor and put her back into the pen.
    Three minutes later I got her out again for a waltz. Again she was busy at first, so that I left her alone and we danced that one in silence. I was taking her back to the pen again when she turned to me and said:
    “You know, you don’t need to put me back in the pen again after every dance unless you want to. They let us go and sit with gentlemen at the tables, if you like.”
    I said something suitable, and so we picked a table and sat down. And hardly was my chair drawn in when she remarked:
    “Would you like anything from the soda fountain? A cup of coffee or anything? I’ll fetch the waitress for you, if you like.”
    So I ordered a cup of coffee for her; she would not eat anything because eating between meals was bad for the figure. Then I bought her cigarettes. Then we danced again, and coming back to the table I had leisure to examine what I’d got.
    She was not very tall, perhaps a little higher than my shoulder. She had long black hair tied up in coils about her ears and drawn straight back from her forehead; she was extravagantly made-up with a dead white complexion and deep red lips. She had very large, black eyes and rather a determinedchin; when she smiled she was very friendly to