It is a somewhat dreary feeling to arrive even at a friend's house
before seven o'clock in the morning, and be received by sleepy-looking
people who have obviously been torn unwillingly from their beds in
deference to the precepts of hospitality, but it is infinitely worse to
arrive at a lodging-house at the same hour, ring several times at the
bell before a dingy servant can be induced to appear, and to realise a
moment later that in a tireless parlour you perceive your journey's
goal!
Claire Gifford felt a creep of the blood at the sight of that parlour,
though if her first introduction had been at night, when the curtains
were drawn and the lamps lit, she would have found it cosy enough.
There was no sign of her room-mate; perhaps it was too much to expect
her to get up at so early an hour to welcome a stranger, but Claire
_had_ expected it, felt perfectly sure that--had positions been
reversed--she herself would have taken pains to deck both herself and
her room in honour of the occasion, and so felt correspondingly
downcast.
Presently she found herself following the dingy maid up three separate
nights of stairs, and arriving at a tiny box of a bedroom on the top
floor. There was a bed, a washstand, a chest of drawers doing service
as a dressing-table, two chairs and a sloping roof. Claire would have
been quite disappointed if that last item had been missing, for whoever
heard of a girl who set out to make her own living who had not slept in
a room with a sloping roof? On the whole, despite its tiny proportions,
the little room made a pleasant impression. It was clean, it was
bright, walls and furniture were alike of a plain unrelieved white, and
through the open casement window could be seen a distant slope of green
overtopping the intervening chimney tops. Claire's eyes roved here and
there with the instinct of a born home-maker, saw what was lacking here,
what was superfluous there, grasped neglected possibilities, and
mentally re-arranged and decorated the premises before a slower person
would have crossed the floor.
Then she took up her stand before the small mirror, and devoted a whole
minute to studying her own reflection from the point of view of Captain
Erskine Fanshawe of unknown address. By her own deliberate choice she
had cut herself off from future chance of meeting this acquaintance of
an hour; nevertheless it was distinctly reviving to discern that her hat
was set at precisely the right angle, and that for an all-night voyager
her whole appearance was remarkably fresh and dainty.
Claire first smiled, and then sighed, and pulled out the hat-pins with
impatient tugs. To be prudent and self-denying is not always an
exhilarating process for sweet and twenty.
Presently the maid came staggering upstairs with the smaller boxes, and
Claire busied herself in her room until the clock had struck eight, when
she again descended to the joint sitting-room. This time the fire was
lighted, and the table laid for breakfast, and behind the tea-tray sat
Miss Rhodes, the English mistress, already halfway through her meal.
She rose, half smiling, half frowning, and held out a thin hand in
welcome.
"Morning. Hope you've had a good crossing. Didn't know when you'd be
down. Do you take coffee?"
"Please!" Claire felt that a cup of coffee would be just what she
needed, but missed the familiar fragrant scent. She seated herself at
the table, and while Miss Rhodes went on with her preparation, studied
her with curious eyes.
She saw a woman of thirty-two or three, with well-cut features, dark
eyes, and abundant dark hair--a woman who ought to have been distinctly
good-looking but who succeeded in being plain and commonplace. She was
badly-dressed, in a utility blouse of grey flannel, her expression was
tired and listless, and her hair, though neat, showed obvious lack of
care, having none of the silky sheen which rewards regular systematic
brushing. So far bad, but, in spite of all drawbacks, it was an
interesting face, and Claire felt attracted, despite the preliminary
disappointment.
"There's some bacon in that dish. It will be cold, I'm afraid. You can
ring, if you like, and ask them to warm it up, but they'll keep you
waiting a quarter of an hour out of spite. I've given it up myself."
"Oh, I'm accustomed to French breakfasts. I really want nothing but
some bread and coffee." Claire sipped at her cup as she finished
speaking, and the sudden grimace of astonishment which followed roused
her companion to laughter.
"You don't like it? It isn't equal to your French coffee."
"It isn't coffee at all. It's undrinkable!" Claire pushed away her cup
in disgust. "Is it always as bad as that?"
"Worse!" said Miss Rhodes composedly. "They put in more this morning
because of you. Sometimes it's barely coloured, and it's always
chicory." She shrugged resignedly. "No English landlady can make
coffee. It's no use worrying. Have to make the best of what comes."
"Indeed I shan't. Why should I? I shan't try. There's no virtue in
drinking such stuff. We provide the coffee--what's to hinder us making
it for ourselves?"
"No fire, as a rule. Can't afford one when you are going out
immediately after breakfast."
Claire stared in dismay. It had never occurred to her that she might
have to be economical to this extent.
"But when it's very cold? What do you do then?"
"Put on a jersey, and nurse the hot-water jug!"
Claire grimaced, then nodded with an air of determination.
"I'll buy a machine! There can be no objection to that. You would
prefer good coffee, wouldn't you, if you could get it without any more
trouble?"
"Oh, certainly. I'll enjoy it--while it lasts!"
"Why shouldn't it last?"
Miss Rhodes stared across at the eager young face. She looked tired,
and a trifle impatient.
"Oh, my dear girl, you're _New_. We are all the same at first--bubbling
over with energy, and determined to arrange everything exactly as we
like. It's a phase which we all live through. Afterwards you don't
care. You are too tired to worry. All your energy goes on your day's
work, and you are too thankful for peace and quietness to bother about
details. You take what comes, and are thankful it's not worse."
Claire's smile showed an elaborate forbearance.
"Rather a poor-spirited attitude, don't you think?"
"Wait and see!" said the English mistress.
She rose and threw herself in a chair by the window, and Claire left the
despised coffee and followed her example. Through the half-opened panes
she looked out on a row of brick houses depressingly dingy, depressingly
alike. About every second house showed a small black card on which the
word "Apartments" was printed in gilt letters. Down the middle of the
street came a fruiterer's cart, piled high with wicker baskets. The cry
of "Bananas, cheap bananas," floated raucously on the air. Claire
swiftly averted her eyes and turned back to her companion.
"It is very good of you to let me share your _appartement_. Miss
Farnborough said she had arranged it with you, but it must be horrid
taking in a stranger. I will try not to be too great a bore!"
But Miss Rhodes refused to be thanked.
"I'm bound to have somebody," said she ungraciously. "Couldn't afford
them alone. You know the terms? Thirty-five shillings a week for the
three rooms. That's cheap in this neighbourhood. We only get them at
that price because we are out all day, and need so little catering."
She looked round the room with her tired, mocking smile. "Hope you
admire the scheme of decoration! I've been in dozens of lodgings, but I
don't think I've ever struck an uglier room; but the people are clean
and honest, and one has to put that before beauty, in our
circumstances."
"There's a great _deal_ of pattern about. It hasn't what one could call
a restful effect!" said Claire, looking across at an ochre wall
bespattered with golden scrawls, a red satin mantel-border painted with
lustre roses, a suite of furniture covered in green stamped plush, a
collection of inartistic pictures, and unornamental ornaments. Even her
spirit quailed before the hopelessness of beautifying a room in which
all the essentials were so hopelessly wrong. She gave it up in despair,
and returned to the question of finance.
"Then my share will be seventeen and six! That seems very cheap. I am
to begin at a hundred and ten pounds. How much extra must I allow for
food?"
"That depends upon your requirements. We have dinner at school; quite a
good meal for ninepence, including a penny for coffee afterwards."
"The same sort of coffee we have had this morning?"
"Practically. A trifle better perhaps. Not much."
"Hurrah!" cried Claire gaily. "That's a penny to the good! Eightpence
for me--a clear saving of fivepence a week!"
Miss Rhodes resolutely refused to smile. She had the air of thinking it
ribald to be cheerful on the serious question of pounds, shillings and
pence.
"Even so, it's three-and-four, and you can't do breakfast and supper and
full board on Saturday and Sunday under seven shillings. It's tight
enough to manage on that. Altogether it often mounts up to twelve."
"Seventeen and twelve." Claire pondered deeply before she arrived at a
solution. "Twenty-nine. Call it thirty, to make it even, and I am to
begin at a hundred and ten. Over two pounds a week. I ought to do it
comfortably, and have quite a lot over."
Miss Rhodes laughed darkly.
"What about extras?" she demanded. "What about laundry, and fires, and
stationery and stamps? What about boot-mending, and Tubes on wet days,
and soap and candles, and dentist and medicines, and subs, at school,
and collections in church, and travelling expenses on Saturdays and
Sundays, when you invariably want to go to the very other side of the
city? London is not like a provincial town. You can't stir out of the
house under fourpence or sixpence at the very least. What about
illness, and amusement, and holidays? What about--"
Claire thrust her fingers in her ears with an air of desperation.
"Stop! Stop! For pity's sake don't swamp me any more. I feel in the
bankruptcy court already, and I had imagined that I was rich! A hundred
and ten pounds seemed quite a big salary. Everybody was surprised at my
getting so much, and I suppose you have even more?"
"A hundred and fifty. Yes! You must remember that we don't belong to
the ordinary rut of worker--we are experts. Our education has been a
long costly business. No untrained worker could take our place; we are
entitled to expert's pay. Oh, yes, they are quite good salaries if you
happen to have a home behind you, and people who are ready to help over
rough times, instead of needing to be helped themselves. The pity of it
is that most High School-mistresses come from families who are _not_
rich. The parents have made a big effort to pay for the girls'
education, and when they are fairly launched, they expect to be helped
in return. Some girls have been educated by relations, or have
practically paid for themselves by scholarships. Three out of four of
us have people who are more in need of help than able to give it. I
give my own mother thirty pounds a year, so we are practically on the
same salary. Have _you_ a home where you can spend your holiday?
Holidays run away terribly with your money. They come to nearly four
months in the year."
For the first time those prolonged holidays appeared to Claire as a
privilege which had its reverse side. Friends in Brussels might
possibly house her for two or three weeks; she could not expect, she
would not wish them to do more; and at the end there would still remain
over three months! It was a new and disagreeable experience to look
forward to holidays with _dread_! For a whole two minutes she looked
thoroughly depressed, then her invincible optimism came to the top, and
she cried triumphantly--
"I'll take a holiday engagement!"
The English mistress shook her head.
"That's fatal! I tried it myself one summer. Went with a family to the
seaside, and was expected to play games with the children all day long,
and coach them in the evening. I began the term tired out, and nearly
collapsed before the end. Teaching is nerve-racking work, and if you
don't get a good spell off, it's as bad for the pupils as yourself. You
snap their heads off for the smallest trifle. Besides, it's folly to
wear oneself out any sooner than one need. It's bad enough to think of
the time when one has to retire. That's the nightmare which haunts us
more and more every year."
"Don't you think when the time comes you will be _glad_ to rest?" asked
innocent Claire, whereupon Miss Rhodes glared at her with indignant
eyes.
"We should be glad to rest, no doubt, but we don't exactly appreciate
the prospect of resting in the workhouse, and it's difficult to see
where else some of us are to go! There is no pension for High School-
mistresses, and we are bound to retire at fifty-five--if we can manage
to stick it out so long. Fifty-five seems a long way off to you--not
quite so long to me; when you reach forty it becomes to feel quite near.
Women are horribly long-lived, so the probability is that we'll live on
to eighty or more. Twenty-five years after leaving off work,
and--_where is the money to come from to keep us_? That's the question
which haunts us all when we look into our bank-books and find that, with
all our pains, we have only been able to save at the utmost two or three
hundred pounds."
Claire looked scared, but she recovered her composure with a swiftness
which her companion had no difficulty in understanding. She pounced
upon her with lightning swiftness.
"Ah, you think you'll get married, and escape that way! We all do when
we're new, and pretty, and ignorant of the life. But it's fifty to one,
my dear, that you _won't_? You won't meet many men, for one thing; and
if you do, they don't like school-mistresses."
"Doesn't that depend a good deal on the kind of school-mistress?"
"Absolutely; but after a few years we are all more or less alike. We
don't _begin_ by being dowdy and angular, and dogmatic and prudish; we
begin by being pretty and cheerful like you. I used to change my blouse
every evening, and put on silk stockings."
"Don't you now?"
"I do _not_! Why should I, to sit over a lodging-house table correcting
exercises till ten o'clock? It's not worth the trouble. Besides, I'm
too tired, and it wears out another blouse."
Claire's attention was diverted from clothes by the shock of the
reference to evening work. She had looked forward to coming home to
read an interesting book, or be lazy in whatever fashion appealed to her
most, and the corrections of exercises seemed of all things the most
dull.
"Shall I have evening work, too?" she inquired blankly, and Miss Rhodes
laughed with brutal enjoyment.
"Rather! French compositions on the attributes of a true woman, or,
`How did you spend your summer holiday?' with all the tenses wrong, and
the idioms translated word for word. And every essay a practical
repetition of the one before. It's not once in a blue moon that one
comes across a girl with any originality of thought. Oh, yes! that's
the way we shall spend five evenings a week. You will sit at that side
of the table, I will sit at this, and we'll correct and yawn, and yawn
and correct, and drink a cup of cocoa and go to bed at ten. Lively,
isn't it?"
"Awful! I never thought of homework. But if Saturday is a whole
holiday there will still be one night off. I shall make a point of
doing something exciting every Saturday evening."
"Exciting things cost money, and, as a rule, when you have paid up the
various extras, there's no money to spare. I stay in bed till ten
o'clock on Saturday, and then get up and wash blouses, and do my
mending, and have a nap after lunch, and if it's summer, go and sit on a
penny chair in the park, or take a walk over Hampstead Heath. In the
evening I read a novel and have a hot bath. Once in a blue moon I have
an extravagant bout, and lunch in a restaurant, and go to an
entertainment--but I'm sorry afterwards when I count the cost. On
Sunday I go to church, and wish some one would ask me to tea. They
don't, you know. They may do once or twice, when you first come up, but
you can never ask them back, and your clothes get shabby, and you know
nothing about their interests, so they think you a bore, and quietly let
you drop."
A smothered exclamation burst from Claire's lips; with a sudden,
swirling movement she leapt up, and fell on her knees before Miss
Rhodes's chair, her hands clasping its arms, her flushed face upturned
with a desperate eagerness.
"Miss Rhodes! we are going to live together here, we are going to share
the same room, and the same meals. Would you--if any one offered you a
million pounds, would you agree to poison me slowly, day by day,
dropping little drops of poison into everything I ate and everything I
drank, while you sat by and watched me grow weaker and weaker till I
_died_?"
"Good heavens, girl--are you mad! What in the world are you raving
about?"
Miss Rhodes had grown quite red. She was indignant; she was also more
than a little scared. The girl's sudden change of mood was startling in
itself, and she looked so tense, so overwhelmingly in earnest. What
could she mean? Was it possible that she was a little--_touched_?
"I suppose you don't realise it, but it's insulting even to put such a
question."
"But you _are_ doing it! It's just exactly what you are beginning
already. Ever since I arrived you've been poisoning me drop by drop.
Poisoning my _mind_! I am at the beginning of my work, and you've been
discouraging me, frightening me, painting it all black. Every word that
you've said has been a drop of poison to kill hope and courage and
confidence--and oh, don't do it! don't go on! I may be young and
foolish, and full of ridiculous ideas, but let me keep them as long as I
can! If all that you say is true, they will be knocked out of me soon
enough, and I--I've never had to work before, or been alone, and--and
it's only two days since my mother left me to go to India--all that long
way--and left me behind! It's hard enough to go on being alone, and
believing it's all going to be _couleur de rose_, but it will be fifty
times harder if I don't. Please--please don't make it any worse!"
With the last words tears came with a rush, the tears that had been
resolutely restrained throughout the strain of the last week. Claire
dropped her head on the nearest resting-place she could find, which
happened to be Miss Rhodes's blue serge lap, and felt the quick pressure
of a hand over the glossy coils.
"Poor little girl!" said the English mistress softly. "Poor little
girl! I'm sorry! I'm a beast! Take no notice of me. I'm a sour,
disagreeable old thing. It was more than half jealousy, dear, because
you looked so pretty and spry, so like what I used to look myself. The
life's all right, if you keep well, and don't worry too much ahead.
There, don't cry! I loathe tears! You will yourself, when you have to
deal with silly, hysterical girls. Come, I'll promise I won't poison
you any more--at least, I'll do my best; but I've a grumbling nature,
and you'd better realise it, once for all, and take no notice. We'll
get on all right. I like you. I'm glad you came. My good girl, if you
don't stop, I'll shake you till you do!"
Claire sat back on her heels, mopped her eyes, and gave a strangled
laugh.
"I hate crying myself, but I'll begin again on the faintest provocation.
It's always like that with me. I hardly ever cry, but when I once
begin--"
Miss Rhodes rose with an air of determination.
"We'd better go out. I am free till lunch-time. I'll take you round
and show you the neighbourhood, and the usual places of call. It will
save time another day. Anything you want to buy?"
Claire mopped away another tear.
"C-certainly," she said feebly. "A c-offee machine."