A LITTLE later in the day Uncle Si came into the back kitchen
where June was at work. It seemed that he had an announcement to make.
“Niece, there’s a piece of news for you. I’ve decided to take Mrs.
Runciman back.”
June saw no reason why Mrs. Runciman should not be taken back. Indeed,
she would welcome the return of the charwoman. It would certainly
reduce the burden of her own labours which was by no means light.
“You and I are not going to hit it off, I can see that. Already there’s
been too much of your interference. Next thing you’ll upset that boy.
And I wouldn’t have that happen--not for a thousand pounds. So I think
the best thing I can do is to take Mrs. Runciman back, and get her to
find you a job.”
“For me!” said June slowly. “Mrs. Runciman find a job for me!”
“If she comes you’ll have to go. I can’t afford to keep a couple o’
women eating their heads off. The times don’t run to it.”
“What sort of a job do you expect a charwoman to find for me?” June
asked, biting her lip.
“She may know of somebody who wants a domestic help. As far as I can
see, you are not fitted for anything else.”
That was true enough, as June felt with a sharp pang. She was a girl
without any sort of training except in the tedium of housework. No
other career was open to her and she was going to be turned adrift.
There came a hot flame to her cheeks, a sting of quick tears to her
eyes. She was a proud and ambitious girl; never had she felt so keenly
humiliated.
“If you stay here,” said Uncle Si, “you’re sure to upset that boy. And,
as I say, rather than that should happen I’d pay a thousand pounds to a
hospital.”
June didn’t reply. But in a surge of feeling she went up to her attic,
and with rage in her heart flung herself full length on the bed.
The blow was fully expected, yet that hardly made the weight of it
less. Soon or late this miser was bound to turn her out of doors; yet
coming at such a time “the sack” was in the nature of a calamity.
Well, she must face it! Domestic service was the only thing to which
she could turn her hand, and that, she foresaw, was likely to prove a
form of slavery. A future, hard, confined and miserable, lay in front
of her.
Bitterly she regretted now that she had not been able to fit herself
for some other way of life. She had had a reasonably good education, as
far as it went, in her native town of Blackhampton, where her father at
one time had been in a moderately good position. But he had died when
she was fourteen. And her mother, with health completely broken several
years before her death had been left so badly off that June, perforce,
had to give up all thoughts of a wider field. Stifling vague ambitions,
she had bravely submitted to the yoke but, in spite of a sense of duty
honestly, even nobly done, the sequel was a grim distaste of household
drudgery. And this had not been made less by a month under the roof of
S. Gedge Antiques.
With a gnawing sense of misery that was like a toothache, June slid off
the bed and looked at herself in the cracked mirror which adorned the
crazy dressing-table. Her only assets were comprised in her personal
appearance. Instinctively she took stock of them. Alas, as she beheld
them now, they were pretty much a “washout.”
First to strike her was the tell-tale redness of her eyelids, and that
disgusted her to begin with. But, apart from that, she felt in her own
mind that her personality was not really attractive. Her education was
small, her life had been restricted and narrow; and now there seemed no
way out.
Honestly she was not pretty, she was not clever, and she knew next to
nothing of the world. Even at Blackhampton, where the supply of smart
girls was strictly limited, she had never passed for anything out of
the common. She had felt sometimes that her nature was too serious. In
a girl a serious nature was a handicap, she had once heard Mr. Boultby,
the druggist at the corner of Curzon Street, remark. One “asset,”
however, she certainly had. The mop of golden-brown hair had always
been her stand-by, and Mr. Boultby, that man of the world, had paid
her compliments upon it. An artist would revel in it, he had said.
Certainly there was a lot of it, and the colour having aroused comment
even in her early days at the High School among her form-mates, it was
no doubt rather striking. She was also inclined to be tall and long in
the leg, she knew that her shoulders and chest were good, she prided
herself upon the neatness of her ankles, yet at the back of her shrewd
mind lurked the fear that the general effect must be plainness, not
beauty. She had heard Mr. Boultby, always a friend, describe her as
“unusual,” but she had felt that it was his polite way of saying she
was not so good-looking as she might be.
No, wherever her fortune might lie, it was not in her face. Once
or twice, in her romantic Blackhampton phases, which at best were
very brief and few, she had thought of the stage. But one month of
London had convinced her that it was not her line. Considering her
inexperience of life her fund of horse sense was rather remarkable. She
was a great believer in the doctrine of “looking facts in the face.”
And the fact she had to meet now was that she was not in any way pretty
or talented. Unless you were one or the other, and London teemed with
girls who were both, the doors of the theatre were locked and barred.
Back on the edge of the bed, she began to consider the question of
learning shorthand and typing, so that she might become a clerk in an
office. But her means were so scant that the plan was hardly feasible.
Really it seemed that no career was open to her, other than the one she
loathed. And then the thought of William came. At once, by a strange
magic, it eased the pressure. Heart, brain and will were merged in an
immediate task; she must stand between this child of nature and the
avarice of his master.
The sudden thought of William brought courage, tenacity, fighting
power. She knew that at this moment he was the other side the wall. An
impelling need urged her to go to him. Forgetful of red and swollen
lids she got up at once and went and knocked on the studio door.
A familiar voice said, “Come in!”
William, as usual in that room, was pottering about amid oils,
canvasses and varnish. He was in shirt sleeves, he wore a large apron,
his shock of fair hair, which gave him the look of a poet, was rumpled,
there was a smudge on his cheek, but the absorption of his eyes, their
look of intensity, half filled her with awe.
She had really come to tell him that she was going to be sent away. But
as soon as she found herself in his presence she was overcome by sheer
pride. From the first this young man had treated her with a deference
which implied that she was of a clay superior to his own. His bearing
towards her always stressed the fact that she was the niece of his
good master, and that he was a servant humbly grateful for his fifteen
shillings a week.
At first this attitude had fed her vanity in a subtle way. But now, in
present circumstances, it seemed almost to enrage her. It was quite
absurd that a man of such distinguished talent should place her upon a
pedestal. The truth of the matter was she was unfit to lace his shoes,
and it was amazing that he did not know it.
Upon her entrance William had immediately risen from his stool, and
had bowed slightly over the pot of varnish he held in his hand, with
a half-humorous air of homage, as some famous chemist might have
done when disturbed by a great lady in the midst of his wonderful
researches. “I know it’s not me you have come to see,” his gentle
manner seemed to say; “it is this marvellous thing on the easel at my
elbow.”
All the same it was William she had come to see. She had come to him
for countenance and sympathy. And it did not help her at all that
she should be treated with a shy reserve. She craved to be told that
she had come to mean something to him; she craved to be told that his
fastidious concern for her hands, and the regard he had for a beauty in
which she herself did not believe was more than mere chivalry towards
women in general. Alas, in spite of the eager friendliness of her
reception this was not apparent. In the eyes of William she was just
the master’s niece, and the incident of the pumice stone was without
significance, beyond the fact that he was no more than the least of her
servants.
It was very exasperating.
“But if you are wise,” said a voice within, “you will not let this Gaby
know that you think so.”