A YOUNG LADY IN SEARCH OF A LIVING
The more Nora sought for means to earn her own livelihood, the more
they seemed to evade her. In her time she had heard a good deal about
how difficult it sometimes is to earn one's own living, but she never
realized what that meant until she started to earn hers. To begin
with, she had only the very vaguest notions of how to set about it.
She could not serve in a shop; at least she did not feel as if she
could; she was conscious that she was not qualified to be a governess;
she had no leaning towards domestic service, though she would have
preferred that to serving in a shop; she had no woman's trade at her
fingers' ends, so that she was unfit for a workroom. What remained? It
seemed to her very little, except some sort of clerkship; she had
heard that thousands of women were employed as clerks; or if she could
get a post as secretary. That was the objective she had in her mind
when she left Cloverlea, a secretaryship; for that she believed
herself to have two necessary qualifications--she wrote a very clear
hand, and she had some knowledge of typewriting. She had once started
a typewriting class in the village; she had taken lessons herself. She
had bought a machine and practised on that, until she gave it away to
one of the pupils, who wished to take advantage of the information she
had acquired to earn something for herself. That was nearly a year
ago; she had not practised since; but she did not doubt that if she
came within reach of a machine it would all come back to her; and she
had attained to a state of considerable proficiency.
So she bought the daily papers and answered all the advertisements for
secretaryships which they contained. There were not as many as she
would have wished; some days there were none; and the only answers she
received were from agents, who offered to place her name upon their
books, in consideration of a fee, which she did not see her way to
give them. The way those eight pounds were slipping through her
fingers was marvellous; when three weeks had gone she had scarcely
thirty shillings left, between her and destitution. Of course, she had
been extravagant--monstrously extravagant, as Miss Gibb occasionally
told her; but when you have been accustomed all your life to an
establishment kept up at the rate of some twelve thousand pounds a
year, to say nothing of having five hundred a year for pocket money,
it is not easy, all at once, to learn the secret of how to make a
shilling do the work of eighteenpence; that is a secret which takes a
great deal of learning; by many temperaments it can never be learnt at
all.
She had been a month in Swan Street; had paid three weeks' bills; the
fourth lay in front of her. It was such a modest bill--Miss Gibb's
bills were curiosities; yet when it was paid she would not have six
shillings left in the world. It frightened her to think of it; the
effort to think seemed to set her head in a whirl; her heart was
thumping against her ribs; it made her dizzy. What was she to do?
where was she to go? She could not stay in Swan Street; she had not
enough to pay next week's rent, to say nothing of food. Yet, what was
the alternative? With less than six shillings in the world what could
she do?
In a sense, since her coming to Newington Butts she had kept herself
to herself. She had this much in common with her father, she could not
wear her heart upon her sleeve. She had kept her own counsel; told no
one of the straits she was in, of the efforts she was making to find a
way to earn her daily bread. But it was plain even to her, as she
regarded her few shillings, that the time had come when she must take
counsel of some one. If she had to go out into the highways and
byways, with her scanty capital, she must learn of some one what
highways and byways there were for her to go out into; of herself she
knew nothing. As she cast about in her mind for some way out of her
trouble, it seemed to her that the only person to whom she could
unbosom herself was Miss Gibb.
She rang the bell, paid her bill, and as she watched Angelina, with
her tongue out and her head on one side, making magnificent efforts to
affix her signature to the receipt, she prepared herself for the
ordeal. When the receipt was signed, and Angelina was about to go,
Nora stopped her.
"If you have nothing particular to do just now, and you don't mind,
there is something which I should like to say to you."
"I don't know that there's anything you might call particular that
I've got to do, but there's always something."
Which was true enough; from the first thing in the morning to the last
thing at night, Miss Gibb was always doing something; and sometimes
also, Nora suspected, in the silent watches of the night. Nora
hesitated; she found the subject a difficult one to broach.
"I'm in rather an uncomfortable position; I--I'm afraid I shall have
to leave you."
"Why? Aren't we giving satisfaction?"
"If I give you as much satisfaction as you give me there'd be no
trouble on that score."
"Oh, you give us satisfaction all right enough; although, of course,
any one can see you're several cuts above our place."
"You are likely to be several cuts above me; I am having to leave you
because I have not money enough left to pay you next week's rent."
"Not enough money left? How much have you?"
"Five and eightpence halfpenny, to be precise." Miss Gibb changed
countenance. "Five and eightpence halfpenny! That's not much."
"No one can appreciate the fact better than I do."
"But however come you to have so little?"
"I hadn't much when I came, and I suppose I've been extravagant."
"You have been that."
"You see,"--despite herself Nora sighed--"I haven't been used to
economy."
"Any one could see that with half-an-eye; I shouldn't be surprised to
learn that you're one of those who've been used to spend as much as
five pounds a week."
"I'm afraid I am.
"Then of course there's excuses. We can't get out of ways like that
with a hop, skip and a jump; it's not to be expected. But haven't you
got any friends who'd help you?"
"I haven't a friend to whom I can apply for help."
"I should have thought you were the kind who'd have had lots of
friends. Have you fell out with them?"
"I thought my father was a rich man; but when he died--it was only a
very little while ago--it appeared that he wasn't; so I have to make
my own way in the world, and that is how I came to Swan Street."
"I know them fathers; I had one of my own, and he wasn't of any
account; though I will say this, I always liked him."
"I have been trying to find something by means of which I could earn
enough money to keep me. I hoped to have found it before now, but I
haven't, and that's the trouble."
"What sort of work have you been looking for?"
"I've been endeavouring to get a post as secretary, among other
things, and I've answered no end of advertisements, but nothing has
come of one of them."
"Secretary? what's that? The notices that the water'll be cut off if
it's not paid for, they're signed by a secretary; I always took him to
be some kind of a bailiff."
Nora endeavoured to explain, but her explanation was not very lucid,
and Miss Gibb was not extremely impressed.
"Is that the only kind of work you want?" she asked; "a secretary?"
"Indeed it isn't; I should be glad to do anything."
"Some people, when they say they'd be glad to do anything, mean
nothing, which is about all they're good for; I know. How would you
like to go out charing?"
"Charing? Well, I may be glad to have an opportunity of doing that."
"Yes, no doubt; I fancy I see you at it! you charing! My word! Strikes
me you're the kind who'll find it difficult to get work of any sort."
"You're not very reassuring."
"Facts is facts."
"That's true enough; and it's no use blinking them. I fear you're
right; I shall find it hard; anyhow while I'm looking for work it's
clear that I can't continue to be your lodger. That's what I wanted to
explain."
"And pray why not?"
"Isn't it pretty obvious? With five and eightpence halfpenny, and no
prospect of more, how am I to pay you next week's rent?"
"I did think you'd have talked better sense than that."
"Angel!"
"If there's one thing I cannot stand it is to hear people talk
right-down silly; I never could stand it, and I never shall. I
wouldn't take this week's bill if it wasn't that we were so short; but
if that there poor-rate isn't paid next week we shall have the brokers
in, so paid it must be; them there poor-rates is demons; they'll turn
me grey yet before I've done. But as for your next week's rent--we'll
talk about that when it's due."
"Are you proposing that I should run up debts with you, which I may
never be able to pay? Do you call that sense?"
"As it happens that's not what I'm proposing; though if I were as sure
of most things as I am of that you'll pay me first chance you get, it
might be better for me; but you can hardly say you've got no money
when you've got plenty of things you can get money on."
"I don't understand."
"Look at your clothes--lovely some of them are; you can get money on
them."
"Get money on my clothes? How?"
"Why, bless me, aren't there pawnbrokers? What do you think they're
for? Taken to the proper place, by the proper person, you'd get a lot
of money on those things of yours; I know. I always say that so long
as you've something to pawn it's like having money at the bank."
It was to Nora as though Miss Gibb's words had opened out to her a new
world, of which she had not dreamed. In none of the country towns
within miles of Cloverlea was there a pawnshop; to her knowledge she
had never seen one; there were plenty within an easy stroll of Swan
Street; she had passed and re-passed them, but her attention had not
been called to what they were; they had escaped her notice. In her
mind the word pawnshop stood for almost the lowest word in the scale
of degradation; it was the drunkard's last hope; the friend of the
felon; the resource of those to whom there was no resource left; that
gate into the unthinkable which was associated only with despair. And
that it should be suggested to her that she should enter a
pawnbroker's den--she had heard it spoken of as a "den"--to "raise"
money on the clothes she had worn yesterday, and had hoped to wear
again to-morrow--in her blackest hours she had not anticipated such a
fate for herself as that. The proposal actually appalled her; filled
her with a fear of she knew not what; shamed her; hurled her from a
pedestal into a morass. She stammered as she replied, conscious of the
crass banality of what she was saying--
"I--I don't think I--I should like to pawn any--any of my things
if--if I could help it."
Miss Gibb's scorn was monumental, as if she resented something which
the other implied, though it had been left unuttered.
"And who do you think does like to pawn their things if they can help
it? Do you suppose people pawn their boots because they've got their
pockets full of money? I am surprised to hear you talk, I really am;
should have thought at your time of life you'd have known better.
Wouldn't you rather pawn your clothes than starve?"
"If you--if you put it in that crude way, I suppose I would."
Nora smiled; a horrible libel on what a smile ought to be. There was
no pretence of a smile about Miss Gibb; there never was; she was
always like a combatant, who, armed at all points, is ever ready for
the fray.
"Very well, then; you say you've got no money, and I say how do you
make that out when you have got things that you can pawn? If you like
to go hungry rather than put away a lace petticoat--which you can get
out again, mind you, whenever you've a chance--all I can say is I
don't; I've known what it is to be hungry, I have."
"But I fear that I--I shouldn't know how to set about pawning a lace
petticoat even if I wanted to save myself from going hungry."
"Who said you would? Who said anything about your setting about it?
Not me; I do hope I have more sense than that. Why, you'd be worse
than a baby at the game; it needs some knowing. I'll do all in that
way that's wanted; if I don't know pretty well all about pawning that
there is to know I ought to, I've been pawning pretty nearly ever
since I could walk. What's more, I've pawned pretty nearly every
blessed thing that there is to pawn, down to a towel-horse and a
kitchen fender. Mother and Eustace and me would have been a case for a
coroner's inquest long ago if I hadn't; and I will say this for them
there pawnbrokers, that, considering the class they've got to do with,
and that they have got to make a living, they've got as much of the
milk of human kindness in them as most. You're going to stop here,
that's what you're going to do, and mother and Eustace and me will put
our heads together to see about finding you some work to do, though I
don't know about that there secretary. Only for goodness' sake don't
you lose heart; no one ever gained anything by doing that. I've seen
as much of the world as most, and I know from my own experience that
when things are tightest is just the moment when help comes. Mother
says it comes from heaven; but I don't know, it may or it may not; but
it comes from somewhere, and that often from where you least expected
it. When next week's bill comes due, if nothing's turned up, you give
me something, and I'll take it round to Mr. Thompson--he's about as
good as any--and I'll get as much on it as ever I can, and you'll be
able to pay all right; you see, I'm not concealing from you that we've
got to live as well as you, and them poor-rates there's no shirking.
But don't you fear; mother and Eustace and me will have found you
something to do between us long before you've spent all the money
you've got in the bank; but whatever you do do, don't you go losing
heart."
So the child taught the woman, who was learning rapidly that age is
not measured by the years one has lived; Miss Gibb was a century older
than she was, though she was only just in her teens. Two visits were
paid to Mr. Thompson, each time with a petticoat. Nora lived on the
proceeds of those two petticoats for nearly another month, during
which all the members of the establishment were putting their heads
together in endeavours to find her something to do. The heart-sickness
it meant for her; the consciousness of wasted effort; the sense of
shame; the realization of her own futility; she had aged more during
the time she had been in Swan Street than in all the preceding years.
She had long ceased to confine herself to attempts to find a post as
secretary, or as clerk. She tramped half over London in her desire to
answer, in person, advertisements of all sorts and kinds, always in
vain. Any one but a sheer ignoramus--Miss Gibb's ignorance outside her
own sphere of action was colossal--would have told her at a glance
that her efforts were foredoomed to failure. And why? The idea of such
a one as she was occupying some of the situations for which she
applied was in itself an absurdity; her appearance, her bearing, her
manners, her dress, all were against her; perhaps her dress
handicapped her worst of all. She did not know it; she thought her
frocks were as simple as they could be; and so they were, in the sense
of the great costumier, with the simplicity which is the hall-mark of
the dressmaker's art. There was not one of them which had not cost her
ten or fifteen guineas. The would-be employer saw this at once, and
decided that the applicant was unsuited, which she was; so Nora was
sent sorrowing away.
So with Nora the world went from bad to worse; until, as if to
justify Miss Gibb's prophetic instinct, when things seemed really at
their "tightest," help came to her from a quarter--as Angelina had
foretold--from which she had least expected it.