Baldwin, who had become a hospital nurse, and wore the neatest possible
costume with quite inimitable grace. It might be worth while asking her
a few questions. It was true she had never much cared for Eroica; she
was so tall and strong, so absurdly healthy, and so intolerant of one's
aspirations. Still, her experience might be of use.
There was Babette Irving--a foolish name, but it was her parents' fault;
they had apparently thought she would always remain an infant in arms.
Her father had married again, and Babette was keeping house with another
woman of talent.
[Illustration: HER VERY YOUTH PLEADED FOR HER.]
Babette had taken to the pen. Her very youth at first pleaded for her
with editors, and she got some work. Then more came; but never quite
enough. Now she wrote stories for children and for the "young person,"
conducted a "Children's Column" in a weekly paper, supplied "Answers to
Correspondents" upon a startling variety of absurd questions, and just
contrived to live thereby.
Babette's friend had been reared in the lap of luxury until a woeful
year in the City made her father a bankrupt, and sent her to earn her
living as a teacher of singing. They ought to have some advice to give.
Then there was Sarah Griffin--"plain Sarah," as some of the unkind had
chosen to call her at school. She was one of nine girls, and when her
father died suddenly, and was found to have made but poor provision for
his family, she had been thankful to find a place in a shop where an
association of ladies endeavoured to get a sale for the work of
"distressed gentlewomen."
She also ought to know something of the world. Perhaps, she, too, could
offer some suggestion as to how the life of a poor aimless thing like
Claudia Haberton might be animated by a purpose.
But they all lived in London, the very place, as Claudia felt, where
women of spirit and of "views" should be. If she could but have a few
hours of chat with each! And, after all, no doubt, this could be
arranged. It was but a little time since Aunt Jane and Aunt Ruth had
asked when she was going to cheer them with another visit. Might not
their invitation give her just the opportunity she sought?
Claudia reflected. She had not in the past cared much for her aunts'
household. The elderly maiden ladies were "the dearest creatures," she
told herself; but they were not interesting. Aunt Jane was always
engaged in knitting with red wool, any fragments of attention which
could be given from that task being devoted to Molossus, the toy
terrier, who almost dwelt in her lap. Aunt Ruth was equally devoted in
the matter of embroidery, and in the watchful eye she kept upon the
movements of Scipio, a Persian cat of lofty lineage and austere mien.
Their other interests were few, and were mainly centred upon their
pensioners amongst the poor. Their friends were of their own generation.
Thus in the past Claudia had not felt any eager yearning for the house
in St. John's Wood, where the sisters dwelt at peace. But it was
otherwise now, because Claudia had new designs upon London.
She confided to her mother her readiness to accept the recent
invitation.
"Go, my dear, by all means," said the invalid; "I am sure you must want
a change, especially after so many weeks of looking after me."
"Pinsett," said Claudia, salving her own conscience, "is so very careful
and efficient."
"And so good," added Mrs. Haberton; "you may be sure I shall be safe in
her hands."
For the moment Claudia was sensible of a little pang. Ought she to be so
readily dispensed with? Were her services a quantity which could be
neglected?
But, after all, this was nothing. She did not neglect her mother; that
was out of the question.
[Sidenote: Up to Town]
So it was agreed that Claudia should go. Aunt Jane wrote a letter
expressing her joy at the prospect, and Aunt Ruth added a postscript
which was as long as the letter, confirming all that her sister had
said.
So Claudia went up to town, and was received with open arms by her
aunts.
* * * * *
The placid household at St. John's Wood was all the brighter for
Claudia's presence; but she could not suffer herself to remain for more
than a day or two in the light of an ordinary visitor.
"I came this time, you know," she early explained to Aunt Jane, "on a
voyage of exploration."
"Of what, my dear?" said Aunt Jane, to whom great London was still a
fearsome place, full of grievous peril.
"Of exploration, you know. I am going to look up a few old friends, and
see how they live. They are working women, who----"
"But," said Aunt Jane, "do you think you ought to go amongst the poor
alone?"
"Oh, they aren't poor in that sense, auntie; they are just single women,
old acquaintances of mine--schoolfellows indeed--who have to work for
their living. I want to see them again, and find out how they get on,
whether they have found their place in life, and are happy."
Aunt Jane was not wholly satisfied; but Claudia was not in her teens,
nor was she a stranger to London. So the scheme was passed, and all the
more readily because Claudia explained that she did not mean to make her
calls at random.
Her first voyage was to the flat in which Babette Irving and her friend
lived. It was in Bloomsbury, and not in a pile of new buildings. In
old-fashioned phraseology, Miss Irving and her friend would have been
said to have taken "unfurnished apartments," into which they had moved
their own possessions. It was a dull house in a dull side street.
Babette said that Lord Macaulay in his younger days was a familiar
figure in their region, since Zachary Macaulay had lived in a house hard
by. That was interesting, but did not compensate for the dinginess of
the surroundings.
Babette herself looked older.
"Worry, my dear, worry," was the only explanation she offered of the
fact. It seemed ample.
Her room was not decked out with all the prettiness Claudia, with a
remembrance of other days, had looked for. Babette seemed to make the
floor her waste-paper basket; and there was a shocking contempt for
appearance in the way books and papers littered chairs and tables. Nor
did Babette talk with enthusiasm of her work.
"Enjoy it?" she said, in answer to a question. "I sometimes wish I might
never see pen, ink, and paper again. That is why I am overdone. But I am
ashamed to say it; for I magnify my office as a working woman, and am
thankful to be independent."
"But I thought literary people had such a pleasure in their gift," said
Claudia.
"Very likely--those eminent persons who tell the interviewers they never
write more than five hundred words a day. But I am only a hewer of wood
and a drawer of water, so to speak."
"But the thought of being useful!"
"Yes, and the thought----but here is Susie."
Susie was the friend who taught singing. Claudia thought she had never
seen a woman look more exhausted; but Claudia knew so little of life.
"You have had a long day, my dear," said Babette, as Susie threw herself
into a chair; "it is your journey to the poles, isn't it?"
"To the poles?" said Claudia.
"Yes; this is the day she has to be at a Hampstead school from 9.30 till
12.30, and at a Balham school from 2.30 till 4. It's rather a drive to
do it, since they are as far as the poles asunder."
"Still," said Claudia, "railway travelling must rest you."
"Not very much," said Susie, "when you travel third class and the trains
are crowded."
"But it must be so nice to feel that you are really filling a useful
position in the world."
"I don't know that I am," said Susie, rather wearily. "A good many of my
pupils have no ear, and had far better be employed at something else."
"But your art!"
"I am afraid few of them think much about that, and what I have to do is
to see that the parents are well enough pleased to keep their girls on
at singing. I do my best for them; but one gets tired."
[Sidenote: Another Surprise]
Claudia did not reply. This seemed a sadly mercenary view of work, and a
little shocked her. But then Claudia had not to earn her own living.
Claudia's inquiries of Sarah Griffin were scarcely more cheerful. Sarah
was at the shop from 8.30 until 7, and was unable, therefore, to see her
friend during the day. Aunt Jane and Aunt Ruth insisted that Sarah
should spend the evening at St. John's Wood, and promised that she
should leave early in the morning.
She came. Again Claudia marvelled at the change in her friend. Already
she seemed ten years older than her age; her clothes, if neat, cried
aloud of a narrow purse. She had lost a good deal of the brightness
which once marked her, and had gathered instead a patient, worn look
which had a pathos of its own.
Sarah did not announce her poverty, but under the sympathetic hands of
Aunt Ruth and Aunt Jane she in time poured out the history of her daily
life.
She was thankful to be in work, even though it was poorly paid. When
first in search of occupation, she had spent three weary weeks in going
from one house of business to another. In some she was treated
courteously, in a few kindly, in many coarsely, in some insultingly. But
that was nothing; Sarah knew of girls, far more tenderly reared than she
had been, whose experiences had been even sadder.
But Claudia hoped that now Sarah really was at work she was comfortable.
Sarah smiled a little wintry smile. Yes, she was comfortable, and very
thankful to be at work.
Aunt Jane with many apologies wanted more detail.
Then it appeared that Sarah was living on 15s. a week. She lived at a
home for young women in business; she fed chiefly on bread and butter.
Her clothes depended upon occasional gifts from friends.
Claudia began to condemn the world for its hardness.
"But I am not clever," said Sarah; "I can do nothing in particular, and
there are so many of us wanting work."
"And do all these people really need it?"
"Yes; and we all think it hard when girls come and, for the mere
pleasure of doing something, take such work at a lower wage than those
can take who must live."
"But look at me," said Claudia; "I don't want the money, but I want the
occupation; I want to feel I have some definite duties, and some place
of my own in the world."
Sarah looked a little puzzled. Then she said, "Perhaps Mrs. Warwick
could help you."
"Who is Mrs. Warwick?"
"Mrs. Warwick is the presiding genius of a ladies' club to which some of
my friends go. I daresay one of them will be very glad to take us
there."
So they agreed to go. Claudia felt, it must be owned, a little
disappointed at what she had heard from her friends, but was inclined to
believe that between the old life at home and the drudgery for the bare
means of existence there still lay many things which she could do. She
revolved the subject in the course of a morning walk on the day they
were to visit the club, and returned to the shelter of her aunts' home
with something of her old confidence restored.
Despite their goodness--Claudia could not question that--how poor, she
thought, looked their simple ways! Aunt Jane sat, as aforetime, at one
side of the fireplace, Aunt Ruth at the other. Aunt Jane was knitting
with red wool, as she had always knitted since Claudia had known her.
Aunt Ruth, with an equal devotion to habit, was working her way through
a piece of embroidery. Molossus, the toy terrier, was asleep in Aunt
Jane's lap; Scipio reposed luxuriously at Aunt Ruth's feet.
[Sidenote: Mild Excitement]
It was a peaceful scene; yet it had its mild excitements. The two aunts
began at once to explain.
"We are so glad you are come in," said Aunt Jane.
"Because old Rooker has been," said Aunt Ruth.
"And with such good news! He has heard from his boy----"
"His boy, you know, who ran away," continued Aunt Ruth.
"He is coming home in a month or two, just to see his father, and is
then going back again----"
"Back again to America, you know----"
"Where he is doing well----"
"And he sends his father five pounds----"
"And now the old man says he will not need our half-a-crown a week any
longer----"
"So we can give it to old Mrs. Wimple, his neighbour----"
"A great sufferer, you know, and oh, so patient."
"Really!" said Claudia, a little confused by this antiphonal kind of
narrative.
"Yes," continued Aunt Jane, "and I see a letter has come in for
you--from home, I think. So this has been quite an eventful morning."
Claudia took the letter and went up to her own room, reflecting a little
ungratefully upon the contentment which reigned below.
She opened her letter. It was, she saw, from her mother, written,
apparently, at two or three sittings, for the last sheet contained a
most voluminous postscript. She read the opening page of salutation, and
then laid it down to prepare for luncheon. Musing as she went about her
room, time slipped away, and the gong was rumbling out its call before
she was quite ready to go down.
She hurried away, and the letter was left unfinished. It caught her eye
in the afternoon; but again Claudia was hurried, and resolved that it
could very well wait until she returned at night.
The club was amusing. Mrs. Warwick, its leading spirit, pleasantly
mingled a certain motherly sympathy with an unconventional habit of
manner and speech. There was an address or lecture during the evening by
a middle-aged woman of great fluency, who rather astounded Claudia by
the freest possible assumption, and by the most sweeping criticism of
the established order of things as it affected women. The general
conversation of the members seemed, however, no less frivolous, though
much less restrained, than she had heard in drawing-rooms at home.
She parted from Sarah Griffin at the door of the club, and drove to St.
John's Wood in a hansom. The repose of the house had not been stirred in
her absence. Aunt Jane, Aunt Ruth, Molossus, and Scipio, all were in
their accustomed places.
"And here is another letter for you, my dear," said Aunt Jane. "I hope
the other brought good news?"
Claudia blushed a healthy, honest, old-fashioned blush. She had
forgotten that letter. Its opening page or so had alone been glanced
at.
Aunt Jane looked astonished at the confession, but with her placid
good-nature added: "Of course, my dear, it was the little excitement of
this evening."
"So natural to young heads," said Aunt Ruth, with a shake of her curls.
But Claudia was ashamed of herself, and ran upstairs for the first
letter.
[Sidenote: Startling News]
A hasty glance showed her that, whilst it began in ordinary gossip, the
long postscript dealt with a more serious subject. Mr. Haberton was ill;
he had driven home late at night from a distance, and had taken a chill.
Mrs. Haberton hoped it would pass off; Claudia was not to feel alarmed;
Pinsett had again proved herself invaluable, and between them they could
nurse the patient comfortably.
Claudia hastened to the second letter. Her fears were justified. Her
father was worse; pneumonia had set in; the doctor was anxious; they
were trying to secure a trained nurse; perhaps Claudia would like to
return as soon as she got the letter.
"When did this come?" asked Claudia eagerly.
"A very few moments after you left," said Aunt Jane. "Of course, if you
had been here, you might just have caught the eight o'clock train--very
late, my dear, for you to go by, but with your father so ill----" And
Aunt Jane wiped a tear away.
Claudia also wept.
"Can nothing be done to-night?" she presently cried. "_Must_ I wait till
to-morrow? He may be----" But she did not like to finish the sentence.
Aunt Ruth had risen to the occasion; she was already adjusting her
spectacles with trembling hands in order to explore the _A B C
Timetable_. A very brief examination of the book showed that Claudia
could not get home that night. They could only wait until morning.
Claudia spent a sleepless night. She had come up to London to find a
mission in life. The first great sorrow had fallen upon her home in her
absence, and by an inexcusable preoccupation she had perhaps made it
impossible to reach home before her father's death.
She knew that pneumonia often claimed its victims swiftly; she might
reach home too late.
Her father had been good to her in his own rather stern way. He was not
a small, weak, or peevish character. To have helped him in sickness
would have seemed a pleasant duty even to Claudia, who had contrived to
overlook her mother's frail health. And others were serving him--that
weak mother; Pinsett, too; and perhaps a hired nurse. It was unbearable.
"My dear," said Aunt Jane, as Claudia wept aloud, "we are in our
heavenly Father's hands; let us ask Him to keep your dear father at
least until you see him."
So those two old maids with difficulty adjusted their stiff knees to
kneeling, and, as Aunt Jane lifted her quavering voice in a few
sentences of simple prayer, she laid a trembling hand protectingly on
Claudia.
Would that night never go? Its hours to Claudia seemed weeks. The shock
of an impending loss would of itself have been hard enough to bear; but
to remember that by her own indifference to home she had perhaps missed
seeing her father again alive--that was worse than all.
And then, as she thought of the sick-room, she remembered her mother.
How had she contrived for years not to see that in the daily care of
that patient woman there lay the first call for a dutiful daughter?
It was noble to work; and there _was_ a work for every one to do.
But why had she foolishly gone afield to look for occupation and a place
in life, when an obvious duty and a post she alone could best fill lay
at home? If God would only give her time to amend!
It was a limp, tear-stained, and humbled Claudia who reached home by the
first train the next morning.
Her father was alive--that was granted to her. Her mother had borne up
bravely, but the struggle was obvious.
A nurse was in possession of the sick-chamber, and Claudia could only
look on where often she fain would have been the chief worker.
But the room for amendment was provided. Mr. Haberton recovered very
slowly, and was warned always to use the utmost care. Mrs. Haberton,
when the worst of her husband's illness was over, showed signs of
collapse herself.
[Sidenote: A New Ministry]
Claudia gave herself up to a new ministry. Her mother no longer called
for Pinsett; Mr. Haberton found an admirable successor to his trained
nurse.
Claudia had found her place, and in gratitude to God resolved to give
the fullest obedience to the ancient precept: "If any have children . . .
let them learn first to show piety at home, and to requite their
parents."
[Sidenote: Women explorers have been the helpers of men, and spurred
them on towards their goals. Some such workers are here recalled.]
Famous Women Pioneers
BY
FRANK ELIAS
A great deal has been said and written about the men who, in times past,
opened up vast tracts of the unknown, and, by so doing, prepared new
homes for their countrymen from England. Park and Livingstone, Raleigh
and Flinders--the names of these and many more are remembered with
gratitude wherever the English tongue is spoken.
Less often perhaps do we remember that there have been not only
strong-willed and adventurous men but brave and enduring women who have
gone where scarcely any white folks went before them, and who, while
doing so, bore without complaint hardships no less severe than those
endured by male pioneers.
To the shores of Cape Cod there came, on November 11, 1620, a little
leaky ship, torn by North Atlantic gales and with sides shattered by
North Atlantic rollers. Standing shivering upon her decks stood groups
of men and women, plainly not sailor-folk, worn by a long voyage, and
waiting to step upon a shore of which they knew no more than that it was
inhabited by unmerciful savages and overlaid by dense forests. The
first must be conciliated, and the second, to some extent at least,
cleared away before there could be any hope of settlement.
What pictures of happy homes in the Old Country, with their green little
gardens and honeysuckle creepers, rose up in the memory of those
delicate women as they eyed the bleak, unfriendly shore! Yet, though the
cold bit them and the unknown yawned before, they did not flinch, but
waited for the solemn moment of landing.
[Sidenote: The "Mayflower"]
Perhaps a little of what they did that day they knew. Yet could they, we
wonder, have realised that in quitting England with their husbands and
fathers in order, with them, to worship God according to the manner
bidden by their conscience, they were giving themselves a name glorious
among women? Or that, because of them and theirs, the name of the little
tattered, battered ship they were soon to leave, after weary months of
danger from winds and seas, was to live as long as history. Thousands of
great ships have gone out from England since the day on which the
"Mayflower" sailed from Plymouth, yet which of them had a name like
hers?
Tried as the "Mayflower" women were, their trials were only beginning.
Even while they waited for their husbands to find a place of settlement,
one of their number, wife of William Bradford--a man later to be their
governor--fell overboard and was drowned. When they did at last land
they had to face, not only the terrors of a North American winter, but
sickness brought on by the hard work and poor food following the effects
of overcrowding on the voyage.
Soon the death-rate in this small village amounted to as much as two to
three persons a day. Wolves howled at night, Indians crept out to spy
from behind trees, cruel winds shook their frail wooden houses and froze
the dwellers in them, but the courage of the women pioneers of New
England never faltered, and when, one by one, they died, worn out by
hardship, they had done their noble part in building an altar to Him
whom, in their own land, they had not been permitted to serve as they
would.
For many years the task of helping to found settlements was the only
work done by women in the way of opening up new territory. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most of our discoveries were still
those of the mariner, who could scarcely take his wife to sea. But in
the nineteenth came the rise of foreign missions, as well as the
acknowledgment of the need of inland exploration, and in this work the
explorer's wife often shared in the risks and adventures of her husband.
When Robert Moffat began his missionary labours in South Africa in 1816,
he had not only to preach the gospel to what were often bloodthirsty
savages, but he had to plunge into the unknown. Three years later he
married Mary Smith, who was henceforth to be his companion in all his
journeys, and to face, with a courage not less than his own, the
tropical heat, the poisonous insects, the savage beasts, the fierce
natives of a territory untrod by the white man, and who had to do all
this in a day before medicine had discovered cures for jungle-sickness
and poisons, before invention had improved methods of travel, and before
knowledge had been able to prepare maps or to write guides.
It was the daughter of Mary Moffat who became the wife of the greatest
of all explorers, David Livingstone, and who like her mother, was to set
her foot where no white men or women had stood before.
Their first home was at Mabotsa, about two hundred miles from what is
now the city of Pretoria. But soon Livingstone began the series of
journeys which was to make his name famous. With his wife he travelled
in a roomy wagon, drawn by bullocks at a rate of about two miles an
hour. But they often suffered intensely from the heat and the scarcity
of water. Then the mosquitoes were always troublesome, and frequently
even the slow progress they were making would be interrupted by the
death of one of the bullocks, killed by the deadly tsetse. At other
times they would halt before a dense bunch of trees, and would have to
stop until a clearing had been cut through.
Such was the life of Mrs. Livingstone during her first years in Africa.
For a time, following this, she lived in England with her children, and
had there to endure sufferings greater than any she had shared with her
husband, for during most of her time at home Livingstone was cut off
from the world in the middle of Africa. When he reached the coast once
more she went back to him, unable to endure the separation longer.