me one struck a match, and a lamp
was lit and set on the mantelshelf. It flung a soft, caressing radiance
on its shabby home, and on its mistress, and on the other girls and
boys. The boys were tough youngsters of the district, evidently very
much at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and settling themselves on the
bed in a manner that seemed curiously continental in Cockney toughs. I
doubt if you would have admired the girls at that moment.

The girl who had collared me disappeared for a moment, and then brought
a tray of Russian tea. "Help 'selves, boys!" We did so, and, watching
the others, I discovered that it was the correct thing to lemon the
ladies' tea for them and stir it well and light their cigarettes.

The room, on which the wallpaper hung in dank strips, contained a
full-sized bed and a chair bedstead, a washstand, a samovar, a
pot-pourri of a carpet, and certain mysteries of feminine toilet. A
rickety three-legged table stood by the window, and Katarina's robes
hung in a dainty riot of frill and colour behind the door, which only
shut when you thrust a peg of wood through a wired catch.

One of the girls went to the piano and began to play. You would not
understand, I suppose, the intellectual emotion of the situation. It is
more than curious to sit in these rooms, in the filthiest spot in
London, and listen to Mozskowsky, Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by a
factory girl. It is ... something indefinable. I had visited similar
places in Stepney before, but then I had not had a couple of vodkas, and
I had not been taken in tow by an unknown gang. They play and play,
while tea and cigarettes, and sometimes vodka or whisky go round; and as
the room gets warmer, so does one's sense of smell get sharper; so do
the pale faces get moister; and so does one long more and more for a
breath of cold air from the Ural Mountains. The best you can do is to
ascend to the flat roof, and take a deep breath of Spitalfields ozone.
Then back to the room for more tea and more music.

Sanya played.... Despite the unventilated room, the greasy
appointments, and other details that would have turned the stomach of
Kensington, that girl at the piano, playing, as no one would have
dreamed she could play, the finer intensities of Wieniawski and
Moussorgsky, shook all sense of responsibility from me. The burdens of
life vanished. News editors and their assignments be damned. Enjoy
yourself, was what the cold, insidious music said.