The wealth of Messrs. Pattenden and Sons, which was considerable, was
not indicated by the arrangement of their London branch. A flight of
narrow stairs, none too clean, led to a pair of doors respectively
painted "Warehouse" and "Private"; and having performed the superfluous
ceremony of knocking at the former, Mary found herself in front of a
rough counter, behind which two or three young men were busily engaged
in stacking books. There were books in profusion, books in virginity,
books tempting and delightful to behold. Volume upon volume, crisp in
cover and shiny of edge, they were piled on the table and heaped on the
floor; and the young men handled them with as little concern as if they
had been grocery. Such is the force of custom.
In response to her inquiry, her name and the card were despatched to
Mr. Collins by a miniature boy endowed with a gape that threatened to
lift his head off, and, pending the interview, she attempted to subdue
her nervousness.
A man with a satchel bustled in, and made hurried reference to "Vol.
two of the _Dic_." and "The fourth of the _Ency_." Against the window
an accountant with a fresh complexion and melancholy mien totted up
columns.
Seeing that everybody--the melancholy accountant not excepted--favoured
her with a gratified stare, she concluded that women were infrequently
employed here, and she trembled with the fear that her application
might be refused. She assured herself that the Scotsman would never
have spoken so confidently of a favourable issue if it had not been
reasonable to expect it, but the doubt having entered her head, it was
difficult to dispel. It occurred to her that she could astonish the
accountant by telling him that she was on the brink of destitution. The
perspiring young packers, sure of their dinners by-and-by, looked to
her individuals to be felicitated on their prosperity, and, luckless
as they were, it is a fact that a person's lot is seldom so poor but
that another person worse off can be found to envy it. The book-keeper
who has grown haggard in the firm's employ at a couple of pounds a
week is the envy of the clerk who lives on eighteen shillings, and the
wight who sweeps the office daily thinks how happy he would be in the
place of the clerk. The urchin who hawks matches in the rain envies the
sheltered office-boy, and the waif without coppers to invest envies the
match-seller. The grades of misery are so infinite, and the instinct of
envy is so ingrained, that when two vagrants crouched under a bridge
have tightened their belts to still the gnawings of their hunger, one
of the pair will find something to be envious of in the rags of the
outcast suffering at his side.
Messrs. Pattenden's youngster reappeared, and, with a yawn so
tremendous that it eclipsed his previous effort, said:
"Miss Brettan!"
Mr. Collins was seated in a compartment just large enough to contain a
desk and two chairs. He signed Mary to the vacant one, and gave her a
steady glance of appreciation. A man who had risen to the position of
conducting the travelling department of a firm that published on the
subscription plan, he was something of a reader of temperament; a man
who had risen to the position by easy stages while yet young, he was
kindly and had not lost his generosity on the way.
"Good-morning," he said; "what can I do for you?"
"I want to represent you with one of your publications," she answered.
"Mr. Macpherson was good enough to offer me the introduction, and he
thought you would be able to arrange with me." The nervousness was
scarcely visible. She had entered well, and spoke without hesitancy,
in a musical voice. All these things Mr. Collins noted. Before she
had explained her desire he had wished that she might have it. The
book-agent is of many types, and skilful advertisements hinting at
noble earnings, without being explicit about the nature of the pursuit,
had brought penurious professional men and reduced gentlewomen on to
that chair time and again. But these applicants had generally cooled
visibly when the requirements of the vocation were insinuated; and here
was one, as refined as any of them, who came comprehending that she
would have to canvass, and prepared to do it! Mr. Collins nearly rubbed
his hands.
"What experience have you had?"
"In--as an agent? None. But I suppose with a fair amount of
intelligence that doesn't matter very much?"
"Not at all." For once he was almost at a loss. As a rule it was he who
advocated the attempt, and the novice on the chair who grew reluctant.
"I take it," said Miss Brettan, concealing rapture, "that the art of
the business is to sell books to people who don't want to buy them?"
"Just so; tact, and the ability to talk about your specimen is what is
wanted. Always watch the face of the person you are showing it to and
don't look at the specimen itself. You must know that by heart."
"Oh!"
"Suppose you're showing an encyclopedia! As you turn over the plates,
you should be able to tell by his eyes when you have come to one that
illustrates a subject that he is interested in. Then talk about that
subject--how fully it is dealt with. See?"
"I see."
"If you think he looks like a married man and is old enough to have a
family, say how useful an encyclopedia is for general reference in a
household--how valuable it is for children when they are writing essays
and things."
"Are you going to engage me for an encyclopedia?"
He smiled.
"You're in a hurry, Miss----"
"Brettan. Am I in too much of a hurry?"
"Well, you have to be patient, you know, with possible subscribers. If
_you_ rush, _they_ will, too, and the easiest reply to give in a hurry
is 'No.' I'm not sure about sending you out with the _Ency_.; after a
while, perhaps! How would you like trying a new work that has never
been canvassed, for a beginning?"
"Would it be better?"
"Yes; there's less in it to learn, and you needn't be afraid of
hearing, 'Oh, I have one already!'"
"I didn't think of that. What is it, Mr. Collins?"
He touched a bell, and told the boy to bring in a specimen of the
_Album_.
"Four half-volumes at twelve and sixpence each," he said, turning
to her, "_The Album of Inventions_. It gives the history of all the
principal inventions, with a brief biography of the inventors. You want
to know who invented the watch--look it up under W; the telephone--turn
to T. It's a history of the progress of science and civilisation. 'The
origin of the inventions, and the voids they fill,' that's the idea.
Ah, here it is! Now look at that, and tell me if you think you could do
any good with it."
She took a slim crimson-bound book from its case, and glanced through
it.
"Oh, I certainly think I could," she said; "I should like to try,
anyhow."
"Very well, you shall be the first agent to canvass the _Album_ for us."
"And how about terms?" she questioned.
"The terms, Miss Brettan, ought to be to you in a very little while
about five or six pounds a week. You may do more; we have travellers
with us who are making their twenty. But for a start say five or six."
"You mean that that would be my commencing salary?" she asked calmly.
"No, not as salary," he said, carelessly too. "I mean your commissions
would amount to that." By his tone one might have supposed that
formality obliged him to distinguish between these sources of income,
but that it was practically a distinction without a difference. "On
every order you bring us for the Album we allow you half a guinea.
Saturdays you needn't go out--it's a bad day, especially to catch
professional men. But saying you make twelve calls five days a week,
and out of every dozen calls you book two orders, there is your five
guineas a week for you as regular as clockwork! I'll tell you what I'll
do: just give me a receipt for the specimen, and go home this morning
and study it. To-morrow come in to me again at ten o'clock. And every
day I'll make out a short list for you of people who've already been
subscribers of ours for some work or another--I can pick out addresses
that lie close together; and then you'll have the advantage of knowing
you're waiting on buyers, and not wasting your time."
"Thank you very much," she said.
"Here's the order-book. You see they have to fill up a form. Every one
you bring filled-in means half a guinea to you. You have no further
trouble--a deliverer takes the volumes round and collects the money.
Just get the order signed, and your responsibility is over. Is that all
right?"
"That's all right."
He rose and shook hands with her.
"At ten o'clock," he repeated. "So long!"
She descended the dirty stairs excitedly. The aspect of the world
had changed for her in a quarter of an hour. And to think, she
would never have dreamt of trying Pattenden's--never have heard of
the occupation--if she had not met Mr. Macpherson, had not gone to
Finchley, had not been so tired that, having parted with her last penny
at the news-room----
The remembrance of her present penury rushed back to her. With five
guineas a week coming in directly, she had no money to go on with
in the meanwhile. To walk about the streets all day, without even a
biscuit between the scanty meals at home, would be impossible. She
questioned desperately what there remained to her to pawn--what she was
to do. Gaining her room, she eyed her little bag of linen forlornly;
she did not think she could borrow anything on articles like these,
neither could she spare any of them, nor summon the courage to put them
on a counter. Suddenly the inspiration came to her that there was the
bag itself. And at dusk she went out with it. This time the pawnbroker
omitted to inquire if she had a halfpenny; he deducted the cost of the
ticket from the amount of the loan. Taking the bull by the horns, she
next sought the landlady, and said that she would be unable to pay the
impending bill when it came up, but that she would pay that and the
next one together.
"I've found work," she said, feeling like a housemaid. "If you wouldn't
mind letting it stand over----"
Mrs. Shuttleworth dried her fingers on her apron, and agreed with less
hesitation than her lodger had feared.
Convinced that her specimen was mastered--she had rehearsed two
or three little gusts of eulogy which she thought would sound
spontaneous--Mary now considered calling on the Macphersons to inform
them of the result of their suggestion. Reluctant to intrude, she had
half decided to write, but with her limited means, the stamp was an
object, and besides, she was uncertain of the number. She determined on
the visit.
The door was opened by Charlotte, and hastily explaining the motive for
the call, Mary followed her inside. She found the parlour in a state of
confusion, and gathered from the trio in a breath that destiny, in the
form of Pilcher's, had ordered that Mr. Macpherson should be torn from
his family a week earlier than the severance had been anticipated.
"He's going to Leeds to-morrow," exclaimed the little woman
distractedly, oppressed by an armful of shirts that fell from her one
by one as she moved; "and it wasn't till this afternoon we heard a word
about it. Oh dear! oh dear! how many's that, James?"
"'Tis thirty-three," said the traveller, "an', as ye weel ken, it
should be thirty-sax! I canna see the use o' a body havin' thirty-sax
shirts if they can never be found."
"I'm afraid I'm in the way," murmured Mary; "I just looked in to say
it's all satisfactory, and to tell you how much obliged I am. I won't
stop."
"You're not in the way at all. You've got one on, James: that's
thirty-four! My dear, would you mind counting these shirts for me? I
declare my head's going round!"
She held the bundle out to Mary feebly, and, dropping on to the
traveller's box, watched her with harassed eyes.
"Pa has three dozen of 'em," said Charlotte with pride, "'cos of the
trouble of getting 'em washed when he goes about so much. I think,
though, you lose 'em on the road, pa."
"It's a silly thought that's like ye," returned her parent shortly.
"Young leddy, what dae ye mak' it?".
"There are only thirty-three here," replied Mary, struggling with a
laugh, "and---and one is thirty-four!"
"Thirty-three," exclaimed Mr. Macpherson, "and are is thirty-four! Twa
shirts missin', twa shirts at five and saxpence apiece wasted--lost
through repreheensible carelessness!" He sat down on the box by his
wife's side, and contemplated her severely. "Aweel," he said at last,
sociable under difficulties, "an' Collins was agreeable, ye tell me?"
"He was very nice indeed."
"Hoh!" he sighed, "ye will na mak' a penny by it. But the pursuit may
serve tae occupy ye!"
"Not make a penny by it?" she ejaculated.
"Don't you mind him," said his partner; "he's got the 'ump, that's
what's the matter with him!"
"It may serve tae occupy your mind," repeated Mr. Macpherson
funereally; "'tis pleasant walkin' in the fine weather. Now mind ye,
'oman, I dinna leave withoot ma twa shirts. I canna banish them frae ma
memory."
"Bless and save us, James, haven't I rummaged every drawer in the
place?"
"I am for ever replenishing that thirty-sax, an' it is for ever short,"
he complained; "will ye no' look in the keetchen?"
She was absent some time on the quest, and Charlotte questioned Mary
about the details of her interview at Messrs. Pattenden's. She said she
knew that "Pa had been with them for several years," so the business
could not be so unprofitable as he had just pretended. Appealed to
for support, however, her pa sighed again, and it was obvious that he
was impelled towards an unusually pessimistic view of everything that
night. A brief reference to a "sink o' ineequity" was accepted as a
comment upon the "wine-and-speerit" trade, but he had nothing cheerful
to say of books, either; and, recognising the futility of attempting a
graceful retreat, the visitor got up abruptly and wished them good-bye.
Mrs. Macpherson joined her in the passage, without the shirts.
"Good-night, miss," she murmured; "don't be down in the mouth. Have
plenty of cheek, and you'll get along like a house afire! As for me,
I'm going back to the kitchen and mean to stop there."
At Mary's third step she called to her to come back.
"Never," she added, "go and settle down with a traveller. You're
likely to fetch 'em, but don't do it!" She jerked her head towards the
parlour. "A good man, my dear, but his shirts were my cross from our
wedding-day!"
Mary assured her that the warning should be borne in mind, and left
the little person wiping her brow. The remark about marrying, idle as
it was, distressed her. Last night too there had been a mention of
the possibility, and, knowing that she could never be any man's wife,
the suggestion shook her painfully. How she had wrecked her life, she
reflected, and for a man who had cared nothing for her!
The assertion that he cared nothing for her was bitterer to her soul
than the knowledge that she had wrecked her life. To have a love
despised is always a keener torture to a woman than to a man; for
a woman surrenders herself less easily, thinks the more of what
she is bestowing, and counts the treasures at her disposal over and
over--ultimately for the sake of delighting in the knowledge of how
much she is going to give. If one of the pearls that she has laid so
reverently at her master's feet is left to lie there, she exonerates
him and accuses herself. But his caresses never quite fill the
unsuspected wound. If it happens that he neglects them all, then the
woman, beggared and unthanked, wonders why the sun shines, and how
people can laugh. Some women can take back a misdirected love, erase
the superscription, and address it over again. Others cannot. Mary
could not. She had lain in Seaton's arms and kissed him; pride bade her
be ashamed of the memory; her heart found food in it. It was all over,
all terrible, all a thing that she ought to shiver and revolt at. But
the depth of her devotion had been demonstrated by the magnitude of her
sin, and she was not able, because the sacrifice had been misprized, to
say, "Therefore, in everything except my misery, it shall be as if I
had never made it."
She could not, continually as she put its fever from her, wrench the
tenderness out of her being, recall her guilt and forget its motive.
The sin of her life had been caused by her love, and, come weal, come
woe, come gratitude or callousness, a love that had been responsible
for such a thing as that was not a sentiment to be plucked out and
destroyed at the dictates of common-sense. It was not a thing that
Carew could kill with baseness. She could have looked him in the face
and sworn she hated him; she felt that, though that might not be quite
true, she could never touch his hand nor sit in a room with him again.
But neither her contempt for him nor for her own weakness could blot
out the recollection of the hours of passion, the years of communion,
when if one of them had said, "I should like," the other had replied,
"Say _we_ should!"
It was well for her that the exigencies of her situation were supplying
anxieties which to a great extent penned her thoughts within more
wholesome bounds. On the morrow her chief idea was to distinguish
herself on her preliminary expedition. Mr. Collins, true to his
promise, had prepared a list for her. The houses were all in the
neighbourhood of the Abbey, and mostly, he informed her, the offices
of civil engineers. He said civil engineers were a "likely class," the
principal objection to them being that they were "so beastly irregular
in their movements." When she had "worked Westminster," he added, he
would start her among barristers and clergy-men.
"Come in, when you've done, and tell me how you've got on," he said
pleasantly. "I suppose you haven't a pocket large enough to hold your
specimen? Never mind! Keep it out of sight as much as you can when you
ask for people; and ask for them as if you were going to give them a
commission to build a bridge."
She smiled confidently; and, allaying the qualms of peddlery with the
balm of prospective riches, on which she could advertise for other
employment should this prove very uncongenial, she proceeded to the
office marked "1."
It was in Victoria Street, and the name of the gentleman upon whom
she was to intrude was painted, among a string of others, on a black
board at the entrance. She paused and inspected this board longer than
was necessary, so long that a porter in livery asked her whom she
wanted? She told him, "Mr. Gregory Hatch"; to which he replied, "Third
floor," evidently with the supposition that she would make use of the
lift. She profited by this supposition of his, and felt an impostor
to begin with. The name of "Gregory Hatch," with initials after it
which conveyed no meaning to her, confronted her on a door as the lift
stopped; and with a further decrease of ardour, she walked quickly in.
There were several consequential young men acting as clerks behind a
stretch of mahogany, and, perceiving her, one of these lordly beings
lounged forward, and descended from his high estate sufficiently to
inquire, "What can I do for yer?" His bored and haughty glance took in
the specimen.
"Is Mr. Hatch in?"
"I'll see," drawled the youth; he looked suspiciously at the specimen
now, and it began to be cumbersome.
"Er, what name?"
"Miss Brettan."
He strolled into the apartment marked "Private," and a sickening
certainty that, if she were admitted to it, the youth would be summoned
directly afterwards to eject her, made her yearn to take flight before
he reappeared. She was debating what excuse for a hurried departure she
could offer, when the door was re-opened and he requested her to "step
in, please."
An old gentleman of preoccupied aspect was busy at a desk; he and she
were alone in the room.
"Miss--Brettan?" he said interrogatively. "Take a chair, madam."
He put his papers down, and waited, she was convinced, for his
commission for a bridge. She took the seat that he had indicated,
because she was too much embarrassed to decline it, and she immediately
felt that this was going to be regarded as an additional piece of
impertinence.
"I have called," she stammered--in her rehearsals she had never
practised an introductory speech, and she abominated herself for the
omission--"I have called, Mr.----" his name had suddenly sailed away
from her--"with regard to a book I've been asked to show you by
Messrs. Pattenden. If you'll allow me----"
She drew the specimen from the case and put it on the desk before him.
She was relieved to find him much less astonished than she had
anticipated. He even fingered the thing tentatively, and she began to
collect her wits. To take it into her hands, however, and expatiate on
its merits leaf by leaf, was beyond her. She soothed her conscience by
remarking it was a very nice book, really.
"It seems so," said the old gentleman. "_The Album of Inventions_, dear
me! A new work?"
"Oh yes," she said, "new. It's quite new, it's quite a new work." She
felt idiotic to keep repeating how new it was, but she could not think
of anything else to say.
"Dear me!" said the old gentleman again. He appeared to be growing
interested by the examination, and it looked within the regions of
possibility that he might give an order. Up to that moment all her
ambition had been to find herself in the street again without having
been abused.
"The beauty of the work is," she said, "er--that it is so pithy. One so
often wants to know something that one has forgotten about something:
who thought of it, and how the other people managed before he did. I'm
sure, Mr. Pattenden, that if you----"
"Hatch, madam--my name is Hatch!"
"I beg your pardon," she said--"I meant to say 'Mr. Hatch.' I was going
to say that, if you care to take a copy of it, it is very cheap."
"And what may the price be?" he asked.
"It is in four volumes at twelve and sixpence," said Mary melodiously.
"The four?"
"Oh no--each! Thick volumes they are; do you think it's dear?"
"No," he said; "oh no!--a very valuable book, I've no doubt."
"Then perhaps you will give me an order for it?" she inquired, scarcely
able to contain her elation.
"No," he said, still perusing an article, "I will not give an order for
it; I have so many books."
She stared at him in blank disappointment while he read placidly to the
end of a page.
"There," he said benevolently; "a capital work! It deserves to sell
largely; the publishers should be hopeful of it. The plates are bold,
and the matter seems to me of a high degree of excellence. The fault
I usually condemn in such illustrations is the mistake of making
'pictures' of them, to the detriment of their usefulness; clearness
is always the grand desideratum in an illustration of a mechanical
contrivance. With this, the customary blunder has been avoided; in
looking through the specimen I've scarcely detected one instance where
I would suggest an alteration. And, though I wouldn't promise"--he
laughed good-humouredly--"but what on a more careful inspection I might
be forced to temper praise with blame, I'm inclined, on the whole, to
give the book my hearty commendation."
"But will you buy it?" demanded Miss Brettan.
"No," said the old gentleman, "thank you; I never buy books--I have so
many. No trouble at all; I am very pleased to have seen it. Allow me!"
He bowed her out with genial ceremony, and seemed to be under the
impression that he had conferred a favour.
The next gentleman that she wanted to see was dead. Number 3 had gone
on a trial-trip; and two other gentlemen were out of town. Number 6,
on reference to her paper, proved to be a "Mr. Crespigny." His outer
office much resembled that of Mr. Hatch, and more supercilious young
men were busy behind a counter.
She waited while her name was taken in to him. On Mr. Collins's theory,
this, the sixth venture, ought to result in half a guinea to her. She
had by now arranged a little overture, and was ready to introduce
herself in coherent phrases. Instead of her being admitted to the inner
room, however, Mr. Crespigny came out, in the wake of his clerk, and
it devolved upon her to explain her business publicly. He was a tall
man with a pointed beard, and he advanced towards her in interrogative
silence, flicking a cigarette. Her heart was thudding.
"Good-morning," she said; "Messrs. Pattenden, the publishers, have
asked me to wait upon you with a specimen of a new work that----"
Mr. Crespigny deliberately turned his back, and walked to the threshold
of the private office without a word. Regaining it, he spoke to the
hapless clerk.
"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "don't you know a book-agent yet when you see
one?"
He slammed the door behind him, and, with a sensation akin to having
been slapped in the face, she hurried away. Her cheeks were hot; no
retort occurred to her even when she stood on the pavement. She _was_
a book-agent, a pest whose intrusion was always liable to be ridiculed
or resented according to the bent of the person importuned. Oh, how
hateful it was to be poor--"poor" in the fullest meaning of the term;
to be compelled to cringe to cads, and swallow insults, and call it
"wisdom" that one showed no spirit! An hour passed before she could
nerve herself to make another attempt; Mr. Crespigny had taken all the
pluck out of her. And when she repaired to Pattenden's her report was a
chronicle of failures.
The exact answers obtained she had in many cases forgotten, and Mr.
Collins advised her to jot down brief memoranda of the interviews in
future, that he might be able to point out to her where her line of
conduct had been at fault.
"Now, that set speech of yours was a mistake," he said. "What you want
to do at the start is to get the man's attention--to surprise him
into listening. Perhaps he has had half a dozen travellers bothering
him already, all trying for an order for something or another, and
all beginning the same way. Go in brightly. Don't let him know your
business till you've got the specimen open under his nose. Cry, 'Well,
Mr. So-and-So, here it is, out at last!' Say anything that comes into
your head, but startle him at the beginning. He may think you're mad,
but he'll listen from astonishment, and when you've woke him up you can
show him that you're not."
"It's so awful," she said dejectedly.
"Awful?" exclaimed Mr. Collins. "Do you know the great Napoleon was a
book-agent? Do you know that when he was a lieutenant without a red
cent he travelled with a work called _L'Histoire de la Révolution_? My
dear young lady, if you go to Paris you can see his canvasser's outfit
under a glass case in the Louvre, and the list of orders he succeeded
in collaring!"
"I don't suppose he liked it."
"He liked the money it brought in; and you'll like yours directly. You
don't imagine I expected you to do any good right off? I should have
been much surprised if you'd come in with any different account this
afternoon, I can tell you! No, no, you mustn't be disheartened because
you aren't lucky at the start; and as to that Victoria Street fellow
who was in a bad temper, what of him? He has to make his living, and
you have to make yours; remember you're just as much in your rights as
the man you're talking to when you make a call anywhere."
"Very good," said Mary; "if you are satisfied, _I_ am. I don't pretend
my services are being clamoured for. You may be sure I want to do well
with the thing. If, by putting my pride in my pocket, I can put an
income there too, I'm ready to do it."
It became a regular feature of her afternoon visit at the publishers'
for Mr. Collins to encourage her with prophecies of good fortune;
and her anxiety was frequently assuaged by his consideration. On the
first few occasions when she returned with her notes of "Out; Out;
Doesn't need it; Never reads; Too busy to look," etc., she dreaded
the additional chagrin of being rebuked for incompetence; but Mr.
Collins was always complaisant, and perpetually assured her that she
was enduring only the disappointments inevitable to a beginner. In
his own mind he began to doubt her fitness for the occupation, but he
liked her, and knowing that, in the trade phrase, some orders "booked
themselves," he was willing to afford her the chance of making a trifle
as long as she desired to avail herself of it. They were terrible
days to Mary Brettan, wearing away without result, while her pitiful
store of cash grew less and less; and since each day was so drearily
long, it was amazing that a week passed so quickly. This is an anomaly
especially conspicuous to lodgers, and when her bill was due again she
beheld her landlady with despair.
"Mrs. Shuttle worth," she said, "I have done nothing; I hoped to pay
you, and I can't. I'm not a cheat, though it looks like it; I am agent
for a firm of publishers, and I haven't earned a single commission."
Mrs. Shuttleworth scrutinised her grimly, and she held her breath. She
might be commanded to leave, and as omnibus fares were an item of her
expenditure now, no more than a shilling remained of the sum raised on
the handbag. "What do you say?" she faltered.
"Well," said the other, "it's like this: I'm not 'ard and I don't
say as I'd care to go and turn a respectable girl into the streets,
for I know what I'd be doing. But I can't afford to lay out for your
breakfas' and your tea with never a farthing coming back for it. Keep
the room a bit, and the rent can wait; but I must ask you to get all
your meals outside till we're straight again."
A lodger on sufferance; left with nothing to pawn, and possessed of a
shilling to sustain life till she gained an order for _The Album of
Inventions_, Mary toiled up staircases with the specimen. To economise
on remaining pounds may be managed with refinement; to be frugal
of the last silver is possible with decency; but to be reduced to
the depths of pence means a devilish hunger whose cravings cannot be
stilled for more than an hour at a time, and a weakness that mounts
from limbs to brain till the throat contracts, and the eyeballs ache
from exhaustion. However fatigued her fruitless expeditions might have
made her now, she went back to the publishing-house enduringly afoot,
grudging every halfpenny, husbanding the meagre sum with the tenacity
of deadly fear. The windows of the foreign restaurants with viands
temptingly displayed and tastefully garnished, the windows of the
English cook-shops, into which the meats were thrown, enchanted her
eye as she would never have believed that food could have the power to
do. She understood what starvation was; began to understand how people
could be brought to thieve by it, and exculpated them for doing so.
Without her clothes becoming abruptly shabby, the aspect of the woman
deteriorated from her internal consciousness. She carried herself
less confidently; she lost the indefinable air that distinguishes the
freight from the flotsam on the sea of life. Little things sent the
fact home to her. Drivers ceased to lift an inquiring fore-finger when
she passed a cab-rank, and once, when an address on her list proved to
be a private house, the servant asked her "Who from?" instead of "What
name?"
Inch by inch she fought for the ground that was slipping under her,
affecting cheerfulness when the specimen was exhibited, and hiding
desperation when she restored it, a failure, to its case. The sight
of Victoria Street and its neighbourhood came to be loathsome to her.
Often her instructions took her on to different floors of the same
building day after day; and, fancying that the hall-porters divined why
she reappeared so often, she entered with the misgiving that they might
forbid her to ascend.
It was no shock to her at last to issue from the lodging beggared. She
had felt so long that the situation was inevitable that she accepted
its coming almost apathetically. She faced the usual day, mounting the
flights of stairs, and drooping down them, a shade the weaker for the
absence of the pitiful breakfast. It was not until one o'clock that the
hopelessness of routine was admitted. Then, the prospect of the journey
to reach her room again was intimidating enough; she did not even
return to Pattenden's; she went slowly back and lay down on the bed,
managing to forget her hunger intermittently in snatches of sleep.
Towards evening the pangs faded altogether. But incidents of years ago
recurred to her without any effort of the will, impelling her to cry
feebly at the recollection of some unkind answer that she had once
given, at a hurt expression that she saw again on her father's face.
During the night her troubles were reflected in her dreams, and at
morning she woke hollow-eyed.
It was labour to her to dress. But she did not feel hungry, she felt
only dazed. She drank a glassful of water from the bottle on the
wash-hand-stand, and, driven to exertion by necessity, took her way to
the publishers', moving among the crowd torpidly, not acutely conscious
of her surroundings.
Mr. Collins exclaimed at her appearance and strongly advised her to go
home and rest.
"You don't look the thing at all," he said with genuine concern. "Stay
indoors to-day; you won't do any good if you're not well."
She smiled wistfully at his idea that staying indoors would improve
matters.
"I shan't be any better for not going out," she said. "Yes, give me the
list. Only don't expect me to come in and report; I shan't feel much
like doing that."
He wrote a few names for her.
"I shan't give you many to-day," he said. "Here are half a dozen; try
these!"
"Thank you," said Mary; "I'll try these." She went down, and out into
the street once more. The rattle of the traffic roared in her ears; the
jam and jostle of the pavements confused her. She felt like a child
buffeted by giants, and could have lifted her arms, wailing to God to
let the end be now--to let her die quickly and quietly, and without
much pain.