The house to which Glory had fled out of the fog was a little dingy
tobacconist's shop opening on a narrow alley that runs from Holborn into
Lincoln's-Inn Fields. It was kept by the baby farmer whom she had met at
the house of Polly Love, and the memory of the address thrust upon her
there had been her only resource on that day of crushing disappointment
and that night of peril. Mrs. Jupe's husband, a waiter at a West End
club, was a simple and helpless creature, very fond of his wife,
much deceived by her, and kept in ignorance of the darker side of her
business operations. Their daughter, familiarly called “Booboo,” a
silent child with cunning eyes and pasty cheeks, was being brought up to
help in the shop and to dodge the inspector of the school board.
On coming downstairs next morning to the close and dingy parlour at the
back, Glory had looked about her as one who had expected something she
did not see, whereupon Mrs. Jupe, who was at breakfast with her husband,
threw up her little twinkling eyes and said:
“Now I know what she's a-lookin' for; it's the byeby.”
“Where is it?” said Glory.
“Gorn, my dear.”
“Surely you don't mean----”
“No, not dead, but I 'ad to put it out, pore thing!”
“Ye see, miss,” said Mr. Jupe with his mouth full, “my missus couldn't
nurse the byeby and 'tend to the biziniss as well, so as reason was----”
“It brikes my 'eart to think it; but it made such a n'ise, pore
darling!”
“Does the mother know?” said Glory.
“That wasn't necessary, my dear. It's gorn to a pusson I can trust to
tyke keer of it, and I'm trooly thenkful----”
“It jest amarnts to this, miss: the biziness is too much for the missus
as things is----”
“I wouldn't keer if my 'ealth was what it used to be, in the dyes when I
'ad Booboo.”
“But it ain't, and she's often said as how she'd like a young laidy to
live with her and 'elp her with the shop.”
“A nice-lookin' girl might 'ave a-many chawnces in a place syme as this,
my dear.”
“Lawd, yus; and when I seen the young laidy come in at the door, 'Strike
me lucky!' thinks I, 'the very one!'”
“Syme 'ere, my dear. I reckkernized ye the minute I seen ye; and if ye
want to leave the hospital and myke a stawt, as you were saying--last
night----”
Glory stopped them. They were on the wrong trace entirely. She had
merely come to lodge with them, and if that was not agreeable----
“Well, and so ye shell, my dear; and if ye don't like the shop all at
onct, there's Booboo, she wants lessons----”
“But I can pay,” said Glory, and then she was compelled to say something
of her plans. She wanted to become a singer, perhaps an actress, and
to tell them the truth she might not be staying long, for when she got
engagements----
“Jest as you like, my dear; myke yerself at 'ome. On'y don't be in a
'urry about engygements. Good ones ain't tots picked up by the childring
in the streets these dyes.”
Nevertheless it was agreed that Glory was to lodge at the tobacconist's,
and Mr. Jupe was to bring her box from the hospital on coming home that
night from his work. She was to pay ten shillings a week, all told, so
that her money would last four or five weeks, and leave something to
spare. “But I shall be earning long before that,” she thought, and her
resources seemed boundless. She started on her enterprise instantly,
knowing no more of how to begin than that it would first be necessary to
find the office of an agent. Mr. Jupe remembered one such place.
“It's in a street off of Waterloo Road,” he said, “and the name on the
windows is Josephs.”
Glory found this person in a fur-lined coat and an opera hat, sitting in
a room which was papered with photographs, chiefly of the nude and the
semi-nude, intermingled with sheafs of playbills that hung from the
walls like ballads, from the board of the balladmonger.
“Vell, vot's yer line?” he asked.
Glory answered nervously and indefinitely.
“Vot can you do then?”
She could sing and recite and imitate people.
The man shrugged his shoulders. “My terms are two guineas down and ten
per cent on salary.”
Glory rose to go. “That is impossible. I can not----”
“Vait a minute. How much have you got?”
“Isn't that my business, sir?”
“Touchy, ain't ye, miss? But if you mean bizness, I'll tyke a guinea and
give you the first chawnce what comes in.”
Reluctantly, fearfully, distrustfully, Glory paid her guinea and left
her address.
“Daddle doo,” said the agent.
Then she found herself in the street.
“Two weeks less for lodgings,” she thought, as she returned to the
tobacconist's. But Mrs. Jupe seemed entirely satisfied.
“What did I tell ye, my dear? Good engygements ain't chasing nobody
abart the streets these dyes, and there's that many girls now as can do
a song and a dance and a recitashing----”
Three days passed, four days, five days, six days, a week, and still
no word from Mr. Josephs. Glory called on him again. He counselled
patience. It was the dead season at the theatres and music halls, but if
she only waited----
She waited a week longer and then called again, and again, and yet
again. But she brought nothing back except her mimicry of the man's
manner. She could hit him off to a hair--his raucous voice, his guttural
utterance, and the shrug of his shoulders that told of the Ghetto.
Mrs. Jupe shrieked with laughter. That lady's spirits were going up as
Glory's came down. At the end of the third week she said, “I can't abear
to tyke yer money no longer, my dear, you not doing nothink.”
Then she hinted at a new arrangement. She had to be much from home.
It was necessary; her health was poor--an obvious fiction. During her
absence she had to leave Booboo in charge.
“It ain't good for the child, my dear, and it ain't good for the shop;
but if anybody syme as yerself would tyke a turn behind the counter----”
Having less than ten shillings in her pocket, Glory was forced to
submit.
There was a considerable traffic through the little turnstile. Lying
between Bedford Row and Lincoln's Inn, it was the usual course of
lawyers and lawyers' clerks passing to and fro from the courts. They
were not long in seeing that a fresh and beautiful face was behind the
counter of the dingy little tobacco-shop. Business increased, and Mrs.
Jupe became radiant.
“What did I tell ye, my dear? There's more real gentlemen a-mooching
rahnd here in a day than a girl would have a chawnce of meeting in a
awspital in a twelvemonth.”
Glory's very soul was sickening. The attentions of the men, their
easy manners, their little liberties, their bows, their smiles, their
compliments--it was gall and wormwood to the girl's unbroken spirit.
Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain pleasure in the bitterness.
The bitterness was her own, the pleasure some one else's, so to speak,
who was looking on and laughing. She felt an unconquerable impulse to
sharpen her wit on Mrs. Jupe's customers, and even to imitate them to
their faces. They liked it, so she was good for business both ways.
But she remembered John Storm and felt suffocated with shame. Her
thoughts turned to him constantly, and she called at the hospital to ask
if there were any letters. There were two, but neither of them was from
Bishopsgate Street. One was from Aunt Anna. Glory was not to dream of
leaving the hospital. With tithes going down every year, and everything
else going up, how could she think of throwing away a salary and adding
to their anxieties? The other was from her grandfather:
“Glad to hear you have had a holiday, dear Glory, and trust you are
feeling the better for the change. Must confess to being a little
startled by the account of your adventure on Lord Mayor's Day, with the
wild scheme for cutting adrift from the hospital and taking London by
storm. But it was just like my little witch, my wandering gipsy, and
I knew it was all nonsense; so when Aunt Anna began to scold I took my
pipe and went upstairs. Sorry to hear that John Storm has gone over to
Popery, for that is what it comes to, though he is not under the Romish
obedience. I am the more concerned because I failed to make his peace
with his father. The old man seems to blame me for everything, and has
even taken to passing me on the road. Give my best respects to Mrs.
Jupe, when you see her again, with my thanks for taking care of you. And
now that you are alone in that great and wicked Babylon, take good care
of yourself, my dear one. To know that my runaway is well and happy and
prosperous is all I have left to reconcile me to her absence. Yes,
the harvest is over and threshed and housed, and we have fires in the
parlour nearly every day, which makes Anna severe sometimes, coals being
so dear just now, and the turf no longer allowed to us.”
It was ten days overdue. That night, in her little bedroom, with its low
ceiling and sloping floor, Glory wrote her answer:
“But it isn't nonsense, my dear grandfather, and I really have left the
hospital. I don't know if it was the holiday and the liberty or what,
but I felt like that young hawk at Glenfaba--do you remember it?--the
one that was partly snared and came dragging the trap on to the lawn by
a string caught round its leg. I had to cut it away, I had to, I had
to! But you mustn't feel one single moment's uneasiness about me. An
able-bodied woman like Glory Quayle doesn't starve in a place like
London. Besides, I am provided for already, so you see my bow abides in
strength. The first morning after my arrival Mrs. Jupe told me that if I
cared to take to myself the style and title of teacheress to her little
Slyboots I had only to say the word and I should be as welcome as
the flowers in May. It isn't exactly first fiddling, you know, and it
doesn't bring an ambassador's salary, but it may serve for the present,
and give me time to look about. You mustn't pay too much attention to my
lamentations about being compelled by Nature to wear a petticoat. Things
being so arranged in this world I'll make them do. But it does make
one's head swim and one's wings droop to see how hard Nature is on a
woman compared to a man. Unless she is a genius or a jelly-fish there
seems to be only one career open to her, and that is a lottery, with
marriage for the prizes, and for the blanks--oh dear, oh dear! Not that
I have anything to complain of, and I hate to be so sensitive. Life is
wonderfully interesting, and the world is such an amusing place that
I've no patience with people who run away from it, and if I were a
man--but wait, only wait, good people!”