"It seems her heart was not washed clean
Of tinted dreams of 'Might have been.'"
RUTH YOUNG.
There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her
first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and
fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment
which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness
when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search,
from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful
applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning
papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall
succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of
disappointment.
"There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally.
"It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there
is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon."
But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was
entering into her soul.
There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at
Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of
Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home
ever asked at the Bank as to how her money matters stood, or had they
shut her so completely out of their lives that even that was of no
interest to them? Miss Abercrombie wrote fairly regularly, but though
she could give Joan news of the home people she had to admit that Aunt
Janet never mentioned or alluded to her niece in any way.
"She is harder than I thought she could be," wrote Miss Abercrombie; "or
is it perhaps that you have killed her heart?"
Once Joan's pride fell so low that she found herself writing Aunt Janet
a pathetic, vague appeal to be allowed to creep back into the shelter of
the old life. But she tore the letter up in the morning and scattered
its little pieces along the gutter of Digby Street. Digby Street was
sucking into its undercurrents her youth, her cheerfulness, her hope;
only pride was left, she must make a little struggle to hold on to
pride, and then news came from Miss Abercrombie that Aunt Janet had been
ill and that the Rutherfords had gone abroad. Apart from her fruitless
journeys in search of work, her days held nothing. She so dreaded the
atmosphere of Shamrock House that very often she would have to walk
herself tired out of all feeling before she could go back there;
sometimes she cried night after night, weak, stupid tears, shut up in
the dreariness of her little room, and very often her thoughts turned
back to Gilbert--the comfort of their little flat, the theatres, the
suppers, the dances and the passion-held nights when he had loved her.
More and more she thought of Gilbert as the dreariness of Digby Street
closed round her days.
If her baby had lived, would life have been easier for her, or would it
only have meant--as she had first believed in her days of panic that
it would mean--an added hardship, a haunting shame? It was the lack of
love in her life that left so aching a void, the fact that apparently no
one cared or heeded what became of her. The baby would at least have
brought love to her, in its little hands, in its weak strength that
looked to her for shelter.
"I should be happier," she said once stormily to Rose, "if I could have
a cat to keep. I think I shall buy a kitten."
The other girl had looked at her, smiling dryly. "Pets are strictly
against the rules in Shamrock House," she reminded her.
It was in one of her very despondent moods that Joan first met the young
man with blue eyes. She never knew him by any name, and their
acquaintance, or whatever it could be called, came to an abrupt end on
the first occasion when he ventured to speak to her. Womanlike, she had
been longing for him to do so for some time, but resented it bitterly
when he did. Perhaps something faintly contemptuous, a shadowed hint
that he had noticed her interest in him, flamed up the desire to snub
him in her heart, or perhaps it was a feeling of self-shame to find
herself so poor a beggar at friendship's gate.
For a week he had met her at the same place and followed her on her way
down Victoria Street. Then one night, just as they came under the lights
of Vauxhall Clock tower, he spoke to her.
"Doing anything to-night?" he said. "Shall we dine together?"
She turned from him in a white heat of anger, more with herself than
with him, though that, of course, it was not given him to know. But he
caught a glimpse of her face and read his answer, and since he was in
reality a nice boy, and insult had been the last thought in his mind, he
took off his hat quickly and apologized.
"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "I can see that I have made a
mistake."
Joan did not answer him, she had moved quickly away in the direction of
Digby Street, but as she passed by the dingy houses she knew that he was
not following any more, and she felt the hot, hard lump in her throat
which is so difficult to swallow. She had wanted to go to dinner with
him, she had wanted to, that was the thought that mocked at her all
night.
It was one evening about a fortnight after that episode that Rose called
Joan into her room on their way upstairs.
"I want to talk to you," she said, closing the door behind them. "Has
Miss Nigel spoken yet?"
"To me?" asked Joan; "what about?"
"I see, then, she hasn't," Rose answered, "but she will soon. Did you
notice that the night before last Miss Wembly, who sits at the next
table to ours, had a guest to dinner?"
"No," Joan admitted; "but why? What has it got to do with me?"
"I am coming to that," the other answered; she stood with her head
averted, looking for a cigarette. "I am always a damned silent person
myself," she went on, "and I do not think anyone can accuse me of being
curious about their pasts. I do not want to know a blessed thing about
yours, for instance, but that guest of Miss Wembly's was a nurse from
St. George's Hospital."
"Oh," said Joan blankly; she was standing just within the door, her back
against the clothes that hung on it.
"Well," Rose hurried on, "it has gone all round the place like
lightning. They aren't fond of you because they hate me and we are
friends. Yesterday one of them took the story to Miss Nigel and she is
going to ask you to leave."
"What story?" asked Joan; she had not followed the other's swift
deduction.
Rose lit a cigarette and held out the case to Joan. "Have one," she
said, "and come and sit down. As I said before, I am not asking for
personal history, I am telling you the facts as they affect this place.
They say you were to have had a baby, and you are not married."
She shrugged her shoulders and sank into a chair.
"You mean," whispered Joan, "that the nurse told them that?"
"I suppose so," Rose admitted; "anyway, Miss Nigel spoke of it to me
to-day. She is not a bad sort, Miss Nigel, she was very kind to me once,
but she is going to tell you to go."
"What have you thought of it?" asked Joan.
"I don't think about other people's affairs," Rose answered. "Come and
sit down, I have got some jam for you after the powder, for I believe I
have found a job for you. But first you must move into diggings, these
clubs are all in a league, every one of them will be shut to you."
"You are not bothering to ask if it is true," said Joan. She moved
forward and sat down, her hands clenched on her lap. "I suppose----"
Rose interrupted, putting a swift hand on hers. "Don't," she said,
"don't deny it or tell me the truth, whichever you were thinking of
doing. It does not matter to me. Because I like you I have interfered as
much as I have so that you may be prepared for Miss Nigel's attack." She
smiled. "It will be an attack too--having a baby and no husband to
people like Miss Nigel is worse than any criminal offence."
"Yes," Joan admitted. A vision of Aunt Janet's horror-stricken face came
across her mind. "When I heard that it had been killed in the accident,
I was glad, glad. I had not got the courage to go on and brave it out. I
was glad to think that I could start life again, that no one would know
or look at me like the people at home had looked at me when they knew.
And now----"
"And now?" Rose repeated; she was studying Joan's face with her eyes
half closed, a peculiar trick she had when her thoughts were unpleasant.
"And now it doesn't seem worth while going on any longer," Joan burst
forth. "There must be other lives that are better worth living than
this. Do you know that for the last ten days I have made fifteen
shillings addressing envelopes from nine till six. It would be better,
surely it would be better, to be what people call bad!"
Rose watched the flushed face. "If a life of that sort would give you
any pleasure," she spoke slowly, "I should say live it by all means. The
trouble is, it would not please you. If you care to listen, I will tell
you a bit of my own story. It is not altogether pleasant, but in your
present frame of mind it will not do you any harm to hear it."
She paused a moment, head thrown back, blowing smoke-rings to the
ceiling.
"I came to London ten years ago," she began presently, "and I was
twenty-one at the time. I had been keeping house for a brother in India,
and I had had a good time, but a spirit of restlessness had come upon me
and I would not leave him alone till he let me come home and start on my
own. I had, of course, no people. Poor brother, he gave way after many
arguments, knowing as little as I did about the life here, and I came.
He died the year afterwards of enteric. I had been on an allowance from
him before, but when he died that stopped and I was left absolutely
penniless. You have had a bad time in that way, but I had a worse one.
Still I was young and strong, and, above all, I was a fighter, so I won
through. I got a post as typist in a city office and I drifted to
Shamrock House. My working hours were lengthy, sometimes it was after
half-past seven before I came out of office. Then I would hurry through
the crowded streets, as you do now, and always that walk, through gaily
lighted pleasure-seeking crowds, would end for me in the dark dreariness
where Great Smith Street turns away from Victoria Street, a ten-minute
walk through one of London's poorest neighbourhoods, and--Shamrock
House! Those were the days in which I did my hardest kicking against
fate; it was so unjust, so unfair, and all the while youth and power to
enjoy, which is the heritage of youth, were slipping past me. That is
how you feel, isn't it?" she asked suddenly.
"Yes," Joan said.
"I know," Rose answered softly; "well, wait and hear. I was in this
mood, and feeling more than usually desperate, when I met the woman. I
need not give her a name, not even to you; I doubt if I ever knew her
real one. I had seen her several times, perhaps she had noticed me,
though she had quaint, unseeing eyes that appeared to gaze through you
blankly. She was a beautiful woman with an arresting beauty hard to
define, and she used, as far as I could see, neither paint nor powder.
One evening, just as I was turning into Great Smith Street, I found her
at my elbow.
"'You live down there,' she asked in a curious, expressionless way as if
she hardly expected an answer.
"I was startled at her talking to me and at the same time interested.
"'Yes,' I said.
"'It is dark and very dreary,' she went on, talking almost to herself,
'why do you choose such a life?'
"I think the bitterness of my mood must have sounded in my answer, for
suddenly she turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.
"'Leave it then,' she whispered, her face close up against mine, 'leave
it, come home with me.'
"'Home with you,' I repeated, thoroughly astonished, and at that moment
a policeman, tall and stolid, strolled across the road towards us.
"'Don't let him hear what we are saying,' whispered the extraordinary
woman; 'just turn back with me a little way and I will explain to you.'
"Well, I went. Perhaps you can realize why, and I saw for a little into
the outside edge of life as lived by these women. I wonder how I can
best convey to you the horror and pity of it, for we--despite the
greyness of our lives--have something within ourselves to which we can
turn, but they have weighed even hopes and dreams with the weights of
shame, and found their poor value in pounds, shillings and pence. That
is why their eyes as they pass you in the streets are so blank and
expressionless. Each new day brings them nothing, they have learnt all
things, and the groundwork of their knowledge is--sin."
She rose abruptly and moved across to the window, pulling aside the
blue-tinted curtains, staring out over miles and miles of roof-covered
London. From far in the distance Big Ben shone down on her, a round, dim
face in the darkness.
"You are wondering why I stayed with the woman," she went on presently.
"The answer is easy and may make you smile. I met a man, one of the many
she brought to the house, and fell in love with him. I was stupid enough
to forget my surroundings and the circumstances under which he had met
me, or I dreamt that to him also they were only the outside wrappers of
fate, easy to fling aside. Does it sound like a thrilling romance, and
am I making myself out to be the heroine of one crowded hour of glorious
life? Because my hour was never glorious."
She repeated the last word with a wry laugh and turned to face Joan. "I
don't know why I have raked up all this," she said. "I thought it had
lost its power to hurt; but I was mistaken. I have liked you, perhaps
that is the reason, and I have wanted to save you from making the same
mistake as myself. For before you plunge out of monotony you must see
that there is nothing in your heart that can be hurt, as these women
have to be hurt every hour of their lives."
Joan could find nothing to say; the other girl's confidence had been so
overpowering, it left her tongue-tied and stupid. Rose came back after a
little silence and sat down opposite her again.
"I am sorry," she said, "I have talked you into a mood of black
depression; never mind, perhaps you will have learnt something from it
none the less. And meanwhile, things are going to be better for you; it
is no loss having to leave Shamrock House, otherwise you might grow into
the house as I have. You will have to see about getting a room
to-morrow, and then if you can meet me in the afternoon, I will take you
and introduce you to your job. It is quite a nice one, I hope you will
like it."
Joan stood up. "I don't know what to say," she began; "you--oh, if only
we could wipe out the past," she flamed into sudden rebellion, "and
start afresh."
Rose laughed. "I don't know about that," she said--the inevitable
cigarette was in her mouth again--"_I_ for one would be very unwilling
to lose a wisdom which has been so dearly bought."