On a foggy morning in the beginning of the following January, Ted
Morton strolled out of his bedroom shortly before eight o'clock, and
rang the bell for breakfast. He yawned as though he were only half
awake, and swore gently at the weather as he stirred up the fire to
make a blaze.
"What an infernal day!" he muttered, and pulled down the blind and
lighted the gas. The housekeeper brought in his breakfast and his
letters, and wisely withdrew without saying anything. Ted took the lid
off the teapot, and examined the three envelopes in turn. His face
brightened a little as he came to the third, and he buttered some
toast and ate it standing.
"Well, I'm hanged! Not a single bill, and one from Kit, good old Kit!
That'll wait, and that. Well, I can stand hers; it's sure to be funny,
at all events."
He put on one boot, and then stood up again and read her letter, with
a large cup of tea in his right hand. The smile on his face faded
gradually as he read, and he looked almost thoughtful when he folded
it up again and placed it in his breast-pocket. He was staunch in his
belief that Katharine could do no wrong, but her latest idea went far
to shake his conviction.
"You see, it is like this," her letter ran.
"There is plenty of money, really, but we have to behave as
though there were none; so the effect is the same, it seems to
me. I never thought about it before; I only found it out by
accident, when I overheard Aunt Esther abusing daddy for
buying some old architectural books. It seems as though he
really does spend a good lot, without knowing it; but then,
why shouldn't he? I won't have daddy bullied, so that I should
have enough bread and butter to eat; it is sordid and
horrible. They don't say a word about my earning my own
living, but that is what they are driving me to do; it seems
ridiculous that I should make other people uncomfortable by
being here, when there is plenty of money in the world waiting
to be earned by some one. Don't you think so? But when I said
I would come up to London and give lessons, Aunt Esther had
heroics, and said I should kill her. She didn't say how, and
I'm sure I did not feel particularly murderous; I only wanted
to laugh, while she lay on the sofa and said I was undutiful
for trying to save her anxiety! I don't understand parents.
They hide everything from you, and behave as if they were
wealthy; then they abuse you for costing so much to keep; and
then, when you say you will keep yourself, they call you
undutiful. There is no doubt that if we were to send away one
of the servants, I should be able to stay at home; but Aunt
Esther would have a fit at the idea. It seems to me that we
spend half our income in trying to persuade people of the
existence of the other half. Anyhow, I am coming up at once to
look for work. I haven't told daddy yet, and don't know how I
am going to; he will be so dreadfully cut up at losing me. But
I am sure he will understand; he is the one person who always
has understood. And won't it be glorious when I have earned
enough money to give him everything he wants? About rooms: I
saw an advertisement of some, a few doors from you. Do you
know them? I thought it would be rather nice to be near you,"
etc., etc.
Ted answered her letter the same evening. Writing letters was always a
labour to him, but he toiled over this one more than usual.
"Of course you know what you are playing at," he wrote, "but I
believe it is awfully hard to get anything to do. London is
packed with people trying to find work; and most of them don't
find it. As to the rooms, it would be beastly jolly to have
you so close, but I don't advise your coming here; this street
pals on to Regent Street, you know, and it isn't supposed to
be pleasant for a girl. I will explain more fully when I see
you. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm a rotten
ass at expressing myself, as you know; but it will be awfully
decent to have you to take about. Only I don't like the idea
of your grinding away alone; it's rotten enough for a man, but
it's miles worse for a woman. Write again soon. It _is_ a
life, isn't it?"
It was nearly a fortnight before he heard from her again, and he felt
guiltily conscious of not having encouraged her as much as she
expected. Then came another letter, in her small, firm handwriting;
and he tore it open anxiously.
"I am coming up by the 4.55 on Wednesday," she wrote. "Will
you meet me? I thought perhaps you might, as it is a late
train. Oh, Ted, I feel so old and different somehow; I don't
believe I _could_ climb into that pantry window now! Daddy
took it so strangely; he hardly said anything at all. Do you
think it is possible that he really does not love me as much
as I love him? And I mind leaving him so much that it quite
hurts every time he asks me to do anything for him. Why was I
made to like people more than they like me? Why, I believe
daddy was rather relieved than otherwise. And I thought he
would never be able to do without me! Am I very conceited, I
wonder? But indeed, I do believe he will miss me dreadfully
when I am gone. Aunt Esther won't speak to me at all; I feel
in disgrace, without having done anything wrong. Parents are
inexplicable; they seem to grow tired of us as we grow up,
just like birds! And they persist in treating us like
children, while they are forcing us to behave as if we were
grown up; I can't understand them, or anything. Things seem to
be going all wrong, everywhere. I have heard of a sort of home
for working gentlewomen, near Edgware Road; it seems
respectable, and it is certainly cheap. They have left me to
arrange everything, just as though I were going to do
something wicked. And I thought all the while I was doing
something so splendid and heroic! You will meet me, won't you?
I feel so forlorn and miserable."
Ted wrote back immediately:--
"It is a beastly rotten world. Neither of us ought to have
been born. I will cut the office and meet you. Buck up."
And the following Wednesday saw him on the platform at Euston, trying
to find Katharine in the crowd of passengers who were pouring out of
the 4.55 train. It was not long before he discovered her, looking very
unlike her surroundings, and pointing out her luggage, half
apologetically, to a porter who seemed inclined to patronise her.
There was an exaggerated air of self-possession in her bearing, which
did not conceal her provincial look and rather showed that she felt
less composed than she wished to appear. Ted examined her for a moment
doubtfully, and then made his way towards her. He had not seen her
once since she left him in the summer-house, eight months ago; and he
was amazed at himself for not feeling more disturbed at meeting her
again now. Perhaps her prosaic winter clothing helped to rob the
occasion of romance; for, in his mind, he had vaguely expected to find
her wearing the garden hat and print frock in which he had last seen
her. But when she turned round and saw him, the frank pleasure in her
face was the same as it had always been, and the episode that had been
enacted in the summer-house seemed all at once to be blotted out of
their past.
"You dear old boy, I knew you'd come! I feel so awfully out of it, in
this noise! Do make that porter understand I want to get across to
Gower Street, will you? He seems confused. I don't speak a different
language, do I? Just look at that glorious pair of bays; but, oh, what
a shame to give them bearing-reins! Why, Ted, what a swell you are in
that frock coat; you look just like the vet. at Stoke on Sundays! Oh,
I'm so sorry; I forgot! I want to get to Edgware Road, you see, and I
thought--"
"Oh, we'll cab it, then! Nonsense! it isn't a bit cheaper, only
nastier. Girls never understand these things. Hadn't you better get
in, instead of examining the points of the horse? It won't stand any
quieter than that, if that's your idea."
The porter went off with a handsome gratuity, and Katharine settled
herself in her corner of the cab, and began to examine her companion.
"You've altered a little bit, Ted," she observed. "You're not so
afraid of unimportant people as you used to be. I believe you would go
into the post office at Stoke for your own stamps, now, instead of
sending me because the girl laughed at you. Do you remember? You are
such a swell, too; how you must be getting on at that place!"
"Oh, I don't think so. I don't want to get on there; no decent chap
would," said Ted, and Katharine changed the conversation.
"The streets seem very full," she said, as they came to a block in the
traffic.
"Up to the brim," said Ted laconically. "I always wonder the horses
don't tread on one another's toes, don't you?"
She laughed in her old joyous manner, and he leaned back contentedly
and looked at her.
"At all events, you haven't altered much," he observed.
"I've grown an inch, and my dresses are quite long now. Besides, I
have put up my hair. Didn't you notice?"
"I thought there was something. Turn your head round. About time you
did, wasn't it? But why don't you make it stick out more? Other girls
do, don't they?"
Katharine had not seen any other girls, and said so; whereupon Ted
supposed it was all right, if she thought it was, and added
conciliatingly, that at all events her new coat was "all there." They
chattered in the same trivial manner all the rest of the way; it was
like the old days, when they had never thought of making up a quarrel
formally, but had just resumed matters where they had been broken off.
"Do you feel bad?" he asked, in his sympathetic way, when they stood
at last on the well-worn doorstep of number ten, Queen's Crescent,
Marylebone.
"Oh, I don't know! I've got to go through with it now, haven't I? It's
just like you and me not to have touched on anything really important
all the way; isn't it? And I've got such a heap of things to tell
you," said Katharine, in a nervous tone; and she gave a little shiver
as an east wind came rushing up the street and blew dirty pieces of
paper against the dingy iron railings, whence they fluttered down into
the area.
"Never mind; I'll look you up some evening soon. Let me know if you
want bucking up or anything. Good-bye, old chum."
And she found herself inside a dimly lighted, distempered hall, face
to face with a kindly looking maid, who was greeting her with the air
of conventional welcome she had been told to assume towards strangers.
It was supposed to support the advertisement that this was a home.
"Miss Jennings? No, miss; she won't be in, not before supper. And the
lady what's in your cubicle ain't cleared out yet, miss, so I can't
take your box up, neither. Will you come and have your tea, miss? This
way, if you please."
Katharine followed her mechanically. The heroic notions that had
sustained her for weeks were vanishing before this pleasant-faced maid
and the dreary, distempered hall. For the first time in her life a
feeling of shyness suddenly overwhelmed her, as the servant held open
a door, and a hum of voices and clatter of plates came out into the
passage. For the moment, she hardly knew where to look or what to do.
The room into which she had been ushered was a bare-looking one,
though clean enough, and better lighted than the hall outside. Long
tables were placed across it, and around these, on wooden chairs, sat
some twenty or thirty girls of various ages, some of whom were talking
and others reading, as they occupied themselves with their tea. They
all looked up when Katharine came into the room, but the spectacle did
not present enough novelty to interest them long, and they soon looked
away again and went on with their several occupations. "_She_ won't be
here long,--not the sort," Katharine overheard one of them saying to
another, and the casual remark brought the colour to her cheeks, and
made her assume desperately some show of courage.
"May I take this chair?" she asked, moving towards a vacant place as
she spoke.
"It isn't anybody's; none of them are unless the plate is turned
upside down," volunteered the girl in the next chair. She was reading
"Pitman's Phonetic Journal," and eating bread and treacle.
"You have to get your own tea from the urn over there, and collect
your food from all the other tables," she added in the same brusque
manner, as Katharine sat down and looked helplessly about her.
However, by following out the instructions thus thrown at her, she
managed, with a little difficulty, to procure what she wanted from the
food that was scattered incidentally about the room, and then returned
to her seat by the girl who was eating bread and treacle.
"Isn't it rather late for tea?" she asked of her neighbour, who at
least seemed friendly in a raw sort of way.
"It always goes on till seven; most of them don't get back from the
office before this, you see."
"What office?" asked Katharine, who did not see.
"Any office," returned the girl, staring round at her. "Post office
generally, or a place in the city, or something like that. Some of
them are shorthand clerks, like me,--it's shorter hours and better
paid as a rule; but it's getting overcrowded, like everything else."
"Do you like it?" asked Katharine. The girl stared again. The
possibility of liking one's work had never occurred to her before.
"Of course not; but we have to grin and bear it, like the food here
and everything else. I'm sorry for you if you mean to stop here long;
you don't look as though you could stand it. I've seen your sort
before, and they never stop long."
"Oh, I mean to stop," said Katharine decidedly. But her heroic mood
had been completely dissipated by the leaden atmosphere of the place,
and she could not repress a sigh.
"Butter bad?" asked her neighbour cheerfully. "Try the treacle; it's
safer. You can't go far wrong with treacle. The jam's always
suspicious; you find plum stones in the strawberries, and so on."
Katharine was obliged to laugh, and the shorthand clerk, who had not
meant to make a joke, seemed hurt.
"I beg your pardon," said Katharine, "but your cynical view of the
food is so awfully funny."
"Wait till you've been here three years, like I have," said the
shorthand clerk, and she returned to her newspaper.
Katharine tried to stay the sinking at her heart, and made a critical
review of the room. What impressed her most was the twang of the
girls' voices. Not that they were noisy,--for they seemed a quiet set
on the whole; either daily routine or respectability had succeeded in
subduing their spirits; but for all that they did not look unhappy,
and Katharine supposed, as her neighbour had remarked, that it was
possible to get used to it after a time.
"And the room is certainly clean," she reflected, as she made an
effort to see the brighter side of things; "and the girls don't stare,
or ask questions, or do anything unpleasant. I _couldn't_ tell them
anything about myself if they did. And I do wish, though I know it's
awfully snobbish, that some of them were ladies."
Her neighbour broke in upon her thoughts, and Katharine came to
herself with a start.
"Whose cuby are you going to have?" she was asking.
"I--I don't know. The servant said it was not empty yet. I should
rather like to unpack."
"I don't suppose you will get a permanent one yet awhile," said the
shorthand clerk, in the cheerful way with which she imparted all her
unpleasant revelations; "they always move you about for a week or two
first. I expect you are coming into our room for the present; Miss
King is going up to Scotland by the night mail. Jenny will tell you
when she comes in. Supper is at nine," she added, pushing back her
chair and folding up her paper, "and there are two reception rooms
upstairs, if you want to sit somewhere till your cubicle is empty."
Katharine thanked her, and felt more forlorn than ever when the
shorthand clerk had gone. But the servant came to her rescue a few
minutes later, and offered to take her to her room which was now
empty.
"Is it Miss King's?" asked Katharine, and felt a little happier when
she learned that it was. She would have one acquaintance in the same
room at all events. But her heart sank again, when she found herself
alone with her two boxes in a curtained corner of a dingy room, the
corner that was the farthest from the window and the smallest of the
four compartments. There was hardly room to move; and when she tried
to unpack her boxes, she found that most of the drawers in the tiny
chest were already occupied, and that there were no pegs for her
dresses.
"Could anything be more dreary?" she said aloud. "And the curtains are
just horribly dirty, and I don't feel as though I _could_ get into
that bed. And what a tiny jug and basin!"
"Hullo, is that you?" said the voice of the shorthand clerk, who had
come into her part of the room unobserved. "I guessed you'd feel
pretty bad when you saw what it was like. They all do. But you might
as well turn up the gas, and make it as cheerful as possible. That's
better. Well, it's not much like the prospectus, is it?"
Katharine remembered the plausible statements of the prospectus, and
broke into a laugh. There was a grim humour in her situation that
appealed to her, though it seemed to be lost on her companion.
"Well, I'm glad you can laugh, though I never found it funny myself,"
she called out. "But don't stay moping here; come into the
drawing-room until the bell rings for supper, won't you?"
Katharine followed her advice, and allowed herself to be taken into
another bare looking room, over the dining-room. This was furnished
with a horsehair sofa and three basket chairs, which were all
occupied, several cane chairs, and two square tables, at which some
girls sat writing. One of them looked up as the door opened, and asked
the shorthand clerk to come and help her with her arithmetic.
"You know I'm no good, Polly. Where's Miss Browne?" asked the
shorthand clerk, pushing a chair towards Katharine, and taking one
herself.
"She's out; I think you might try," said the girl who had spoken to
her, in a peevish tone. "I have got to finish this paper to-night; and
I'm fagged now."
"Can I help?" asked Katharine. The other two looked at her, and seemed
surprised.
"This is some one new," explained her first friend. "Let me introduce
you: Miss Polly Newland, Miss-- Why, I don't even know your name, do
I?"
"Austen," said Katharine. "Won't you tell me yours?"
The girl said her name was Hyam,--Phyllis Hyam; and they returned to
the subject of the arithmetic.
"Let's look at it, Polly," said Phyllis Hyam, and Miss Newland passed
the paper across the table. The two girls bent over it, and Phyllis
shook her head.
"I never understood stocks,--too badly taught!" she said, and tilted
her chair and began to whistle.
"Shall I try?" said Katharine, taking out a pencil. She worked out the
sum to the satisfaction of Polly Newland, who then unbent a little,
and explained that she was going up for the Civil Service examination
in March.
"I say, you're clever, aren't you? Do you teach?" asked Phyllis Hyam,
bringing the front legs of her chair down again with a bang.
"That is what I want to do; but I never have," replied Katharine. The
other two looked at her pityingly.
"Any friends in London?" they asked.
"Only relations; and they won't help me."
"Of course not. Relations never do. Hope you'll get some work," said
the shorthand clerk dubiously. Katharine changed the conversation, to
hide her own growing apprehension.
"Where are the newspapers?" she asked, looking round.
"In the prospectus; never saw them anywhere else!" said Phyllis, with
a short laugh.
"Did you expect to find any?" asked Polly Newland. "They all do," she
added gravely. "It's like the baths, and the boots, and everything
else."
"Surely, the bath-room is not a fallacy?" exclaimed Katharine in
dismay.
"Oh, there is one down in the basement; but all the water has to be
boiled for it, so only three people can have a bath every evening. You
have to put your name down in a book; and your turn comes in about a
fortnight."
"And the boots?" said Katharine, suppressing a sigh.
"You have to clean your own, that's all. They are supposed to provide
the blacking and the brushes; but, my eye, what brushes! Of course you
get used to it after a bit. When you get to your worst, you will
probably wear them dirty."
"When does one get to one's worst?" asked Katharine.
"That depends," said Polly Newland, sucking the end of her pencil, and
staring across in a curious manner at Katharine. "I should say you
would get to it pretty soon, if you stop long enough."
"Of course I shall stop!" cried Katharine, a little impatiently. "Why
do you both say that?"
The two girls glanced at one another.
"You're not the sort," said Phyllis shortly; and Polly returned to her
arithmetic.
Katharine relapsed into a dream. All her aspirations, all her hopes of
making her father a rich man, had only landed her in number ten,
Queen's Crescent, Marylebone! She looked round at the silent occupants
of the room,--some of them too tired to do anything but lounge about,
some of them reading novelettes, some of them mending stockings. She
wondered if her existence would simply become like theirs,--a daily
routine, with just enough money to support life, and not enough to buy
its pleasures; enough energy to get through its toil, and not enough
to enjoy its leisure. Ivingdon, with its recent troubles, its more
distant happiness, seemed separated from this rude moment of
disillusionment by a long stretch of years. A passionate instinct of
rebellion against the circumstances that were answerable for her
present situation made her unhappiness seem still more pitiable to
her; and a tragic picture of herself, martyred and forgotten, ten
years hence, brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes.
A piano began a cheerful accompaniment in the next room, and some one
sang a ballad in a fresh, untrained soprano. The piano was out of
tune, and the song was of the cheapest and most popular nature; but it
made an interruption in the sound of the traffic outside on the
cobble-stones, and Katharine glanced round the room characteristically,
in search of an answering smile. But the other girls were as
unaffected by the music as they had been by the dreariness that
preceded it; and nobody looked up from what she was doing. Only one of
them made a comment; it was Phyllis Hyam. "How that girl does thump!"
she said.
But on Katharine the effect had been instantaneous. She was not
cultured in music: with her it was an emotion, not an art; and the
little jingling tune had already turned her thoughts into a happier
channel. Her spirits rose insensibly, and the spell that the dingy
surroundings had cast over her was broken. Why should she believe what
these two girls told her? Surely, her conviction that she would make
something of her life was not going to wear itself out in a miserable
struggle to keep alive! She was worth something more than that: she
was intellectual beyond her years; every one had told her so, until
she had come to believe it was true; and her future was in her own
hands. She would be a teacher of a new school; she would make a name
for herself by her lectures; and then, some day, when she had acquired
a fortune, and all the world was talking of her talent, and her
goodness, and her beauty,--she was going to be very beautiful, too, in
her dream,--these girls would remember that they had doubted her
powers of endurance. She was even rehearsing what she would say to
them in the hour of her triumph, when a touch on her shoulder brought
her back abruptly to her present surroundings, and she looked up to
see a little white-haired lady at her side, in a lace cap and a black
silk apron.
"Miss Austen? Come down with me, and let us have a little chat
together. I was sorry not to be back in time to receive you, my dear."
It was a sudden awakening; but she was able to smile as she followed
her guide downstairs.
"She has the captivating manner of an impostor," she reflected. "She
is just like Widow Priest! But it accounts for the prospectus."