THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
Just for a moment Mary felt inclined to disclose her identity. It
warmed her heart and brought tears to her eyes to hear this kind of
voice from the past. The wound of separation was too recent for Mary
not to feel it keenly. The woman's face was so familiar, too; it
reminded the girl oddly of somebody else, somebody that she did not
like, but to whom for the moment she could not give a name.
Then Mary's pride came back to her and the natural impulse to confide
in the woman was crushed down.
"I suppose I made a mistake," she said. "After all, it is not an
uncommon thing to find chance likenesses to your friends in other
people. You must find London a great change after being brought up in
the country."
The woman sighed deeply and a look of pain came into her eyes. It was
evident that she had felt the change far more cruelly than Mary had
imagined. The girl longed to ask further questions, but she restrained
her curiosity. Nor could Connie Colam throw any light on the subject
after she returned. She knew very little about Mrs. Speed, except that
she was a widow with a grown-up son, who had been a great trouble to
her. The son appeared occasionally, and Mrs. Speed always seemed to be
in deep distress afterwards. Mary was still debating the matter in her
mind at bedtime. After breakfast the following morning there were more
important matters to occupy her attention.
"Now you are going to show me what you can do," Connie said
cheerfully. "I take it that you have come up here with a view to
getting your own living. If you have any money----"
"You may get that idea out of your mind altogether," Mary smiled. "I
have a very few pounds to keep me going for the present, and a little
jewellery to fall back upon. I have not been used to this kind of
life, and I shall probably find it trying at first. But I am going to
succeed. We have lost our position socially and financially, and I
would not be beholden to those who have taken our place. I need not
say more than that."
"That is just as you please," Connie said somewhat coldly. "I see you
are terribly proud and reserved, but you will grow out of that. And I
like your face. But please don't make up your mind that it is a very
easy thing for a girl to get her living in London. When you come to
know the inside of a pawnshop, and share the last sixpence with a
friend, you will be all the sweeter and better for it. Now show me
your work."
Not without some pardonable pride, Mary displayed her drawings. There
were pretty landscapes in water colours, studies of groups of flowers
in oils, and the like, all the conventional kind of stuff that girls
produce at finishing schools under the eye of some discreet and clever
master. But they did not seem to impress Connie, who handled them with
some contempt. Mary's sensitive face flushed.
"You do not seem to care for them," she said with a challenge in her
voice.
"Oh, it isn't that," Connie replied. "It's the uselessness of the
things. I daresay that a good many of your friends have seriously
advised you take up art as a career."
"Two or three people," Mary protested, "who are in a position to
judge."
"Oh, I know all about that," Connie said without ceremony. "It was
just the same with me in the happy days. My dear Mary, that pretty,
pretty stuff of yours is all very well to bring you in flattery from
bazaar managers, but the milk-stool school of art is no good when you
get into the market. Painters, real painters, mind, not daubers like
us, find colour work dreadfully hard to sell. There isn't a dealer who
would give you five shillings for what you have there. Could you do
work like mine, for instance?"
"I'm afraid that I should not care to attempt it," Mary said coldly.
"There you go! Too vulgar for you, of course! You would never get the
price of your lodgings out of your class of work, believe me. I know,
because I tried it myself. But you will need to have your lesson like
the rest of us, and I will give you the names of a few of the most
likely dealers in London. You start off directly after breakfast and
go the round of them. I shan't be back to luncheon because I've got an
hour or two on one of the evening papers getting out sketches of a
fashion plate for a lady's page."
Mary grasped eagerly at the suggestion. She wanted to prove that
Connie was wrong. With her head high and heart full of hope, she set
off presently.
On the whole, it was a morning to be remembered. It was hot and
stuffy, and Mary was not accustomed to the blistering, trying heat of
London pavements. She was tired and worn out and her head ached
terribly by the time she got back. Nor was there any difference in the
weight and contents of her portfolio.
Alas, for the blood of the Dashwoods! It was all the same to those
flinty-hearted dealers. Mary might have been the meanest beggar in
London for all the reception she met with. Struck by her distinguished
appearance and haughty beauty, a cringing shop assistant or proprietor
would probably ask her business, but what a change when the portfolio
was produced! It was the same in one shop after another, contemptuous
inspection, rude denial, a suggestion that the shopkeeper had more
rubbish already than he knew what to do with. The tears were at the
back of Mary's eyes now; unconsciously her voice grew soft and
pleading. One dealer, a little kinder than the rest, did suffer the
drawings to be laid out before him.
"No use, my dear," he said with a sympathetic familiarity that,
strange to say, Mary could not bring herself to resent. "Bless your
soul, cheap lithographs and German reproductions have driven them out
of the market. If you offered me the lot at half-a-crown each I
couldn't take them. It'll save you a lot of trouble and disappointment
if you put the whole batch on the fire. Why should I buy that group of
flowers for five shillings when I can sell you a photogravure of
Watts's for half the money? Your work has been out of date since the
mid-Victorian period."
It was the same everywhere, not so kindly expressed. At one o'clock
Mary returned to her lodgings utterly tired out and ready to cry in
the bitterness of her disappointment. How hard people were to one
another, she thought. It never occurred to her that this hardness had
been her own great besetting sin in the past. She was even inclined to
quarrel with Connie because the latter's prophecy had come so cruelly
true.
But Connie was not in yet, and therefore Mary had to fight out her
trouble alone. Still, she had learned already a deeper and more
important lesson than she was aware of. She began to see that there
was a world beyond the narrow limit of the Dashwood horizon. There
were other men and women living in the world quite as worthy of
respect. Mary took her sketches and dropped them one by one slowly
into the empty grate. Then she put a match to them and watched them
burn away to ashes. It was a full and complete confession of failure,
and Mary felt all the better for it. She rang the bell for a glass of
milk to drink with her frugal meal that was already set out on the
table.
Nobody came in reply to her ring. Mary was not aware that it was an
understood thing in a general way that nobody rang the bell except at
stated times such as just after breakfast and the like. In houses of
that class the lodgers were expected to be away all day more or less.
Otherwise, they were really obliged to look after themselves. After
the third ring Mary went downstairs to investigate.
So far as she could judge the house was deserted. The dingy first
floor smelt horribly of cheap, stale, cigar smoke. The sordidness of
the whole thing struck Mary with peculiar and unpleasant force. It was
all so totally different to what she had been accustomed to. She
wondered where Mrs. Speed was to be found.
Then voices came from the dining-room, voices raised in anger. A man
and a woman there were quarrelling violently. It seemed to Mary that
the man's voice was familiar to her, but she could not be quite
certain as yet.
She made up her mind to go down into the basement--the dark, warm
basement that seemed to reek with the ghastly smells of bygone meals.
Mary wondered how people could live in an atmosphere like that. She
was standing in doubt at the head of the kitchen stairs when from the
dining-room she heard her own name.
There was no mistaking the allusion to Dashwood. Quite naturally Mary
stood to listen. It was the man in the dining-room who was speaking.
"I tell you I must have it," he said. "What reason have you got to be
fond of the name of Dashwood? It never brought us any good. If Ralph
Dashwood had not been a fool, and you had played your cards right, you
might be living at the dower house now, with a handsome income and a
staff of servants to wait upon you."
The woman made some kind of reply that Mary could not quite catch,
though she knew by the choke in the voice that she was sobbing. The
man resumed.
"I tell you I must have it," he said. "No use to tell me that you
haven't got the letters; for I have seen them in your possession. It's
a letter sent from Lady Dashwood to her son and the date is 9th
September, 1884. Now you make a note of that, please. If I don't have
it, I shall find myself in serious trouble. What game am I playing?
I'm playing for more money than you ever dreamed of."
"Money!" the woman said bitterly, "that is always your cry. But it has
not prevented you from taking all mine. And I owe three quarters'
rent, which has to be paid tomorrow. If it isn't paid tomorrow, I
shall be sold up and turned into the street."