AS that cab swung round the corner bearing away the nameless haunter of George's dreams, she to the red wrath beside her turned, and, “Oh, Mrs. Chater,” she said, “I hope you are not hurt!”
By a mercy Mrs. Chater was not hurt. By a special intervention of Providence she had escaped a fearful death. Whether she would ever recover from the shock was another matter. Whether the shock would prove to be that sudden strain on her heart which she had been warned would end fatally, might at any moment be proved. Much anybody, except her darling children, would care if she were brought home dead in this very cab. Never had she known a heart to act as hers was acting now—thumping as if it would burst, first quickly then slowly. Perhaps Miss Humfray would feel it, and give her opinion.
Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant Chaters had been nourished; the massive bosom was advertisement that they had done well. Beneath the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently contracted and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though Mrs. Chater said it throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned.
The agitated woman panted, “Can it go on like that?”
“I'm afraid I hardly—” Miss Humfray shifted her hand.
“Stupid! Take off your glove!”
The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous and clumsy the girl struggled with it.
“Miss Humfray! How slow you are! Pull it!”
Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A crack answered the jerk, and the glove split away in her hand. “There! Not my fault. Next time, perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently large. Oh, my poor heart! Now, feel. Press!”
The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her throat. She pressed, as bid, into that heaving blouse; said she could feel it. It was not very violent, she thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater lay back and closed her eyes—
“I was not able to jump out, you see,” said Mrs. Chater, sinking.
“Oh, you don't think I jumped out—and left you? I wouldn't. Besides, it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would have prevented me in any case. I was thrown. I thought I was going to be killed.”
“You were with a young man.”
“He caught me.”
The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying. That lump in her throat seemed to be squeezing tears from her eyes—silly tears. She did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy, yet could not but reflect what disregard for her the utter absence of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts yet more dangerously squeezed the tears. She was a paid thing, that was all—not even a servant. Mrs. Chater was on kindly terms with her servants—had experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded it by the familiarity that was too useful to produce contempt—knew her maids' young men, entered into their quarrels with their young men, read their young men's letters.
Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner, the girl felt herself friendless, outcast, alone. Again she told herself that she did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy; yet it was the studied withholding of it—studied or callous because so natural, the merest conventionalism, to have asked, “Were you hurt?”—that made her acutely feel her position.
A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet to be wounded because it was not hers. A ridiculous paradox—and brightly she tried to smile at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were swelling now, her face turned against the window towards the pavement.
A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of a nice-looking little old man with a grey moustache and military air. The tall, slim girl was laughing down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily, just as—Her mind swung off, and the tears must be blinked again.
They reminded her, those two, of herself and her father. Such familiar friends as they looked so she had been with Dad who idolised her and whom she had idolised. Just like that—arm in arm, joking, “ragging”—she used to walk with him round about the home in Ireland—the world to one another and none else in the world, except the mother who was so intimately and inseparably of them that years past her death they still spoke of her as if she were alive.
Thus, long after her death, it would be: “Dad, we can't go home by the hill; mother never lets Grizzle do that climb after a long day.” And: “Mary, your mother won't like you being so late; we must turn back.” And: “Mary, there's the pig by mother's almond tree; run and shoo him.”
Partly this refusal to recognise that, though dead, Mother was actually gone from them, no longer was sharing their little jokes and duties, was because death came with such steady, appreciable, unfrightening steps. First the riding stopped, and then the walks made shorter and shorter; then the strolls in the garden stopped, and then carrying the couch out under the trees—and none of them very fearful, because prepared: it was to be—almost the very day could have been named. Thus, when it came, though the blow swooped heavy, terrific, she never seemed actually to have left them.
“Well, now, dear dears,” she had said with a little smile and a little sigh, “we have been happy ... only a little way away....”
But with Dad it was different. Somehow, looking back on it, one had supposed that nothing would ever touch the cheery little man; that she and he would go on and on and on—well, till they grew very old together.
Nothing could ever touch him....
“What a wicked beauty, eh, Mary?” he had said when the man brought round the half-broken filly that its owner “funked.”
And she had laughed and said: “Yes, an angel in a temper—what a run you will have, Dad!” and had waved from the gate as the angel in a temper curveted away around the corner.
Nothing could ever touch him....
And then the man on a bicycle—with a dent in his hat, she noticed.
“If you can come quickly, missy. Top of the Three Finger field he lays.”
Bare-backed she had galloped Grizzle there, and as she sped could not for the life of her think of aught else than the dent in the man's hat; rode up Three Finger Lane wondering how it came there; approached the little group wondering why he did not push it out.
Just as she galloped up they took off their hats. Someone who had been on his knees stood upright—she saw the stain of wet earth where he had been kneeling; forgot the dented hat; wondered if he knew of the Marvel Cleaning Pad that had done so wonderfully with Dad's breeches when he took a toss last Friday.
Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him home ... could do no good—now.
“Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders.”
Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her because of the pain.... Better come away.
She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ... all crumpled up....
Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over the twisted face.
Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but to which memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin touched the earth seven feet down....
Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of documents; interminable writing of signature; interminable making of lists. And then the word LOT. “Lot I,” “Lot 2,” “Lot 50,” “Lot 200”—a hammerlike word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep, producing grotesque nightmares, as “Lot 12, a polished oak coffin, finished plain, brass Handles.”
No! No! That was not to be sold!—leaden hands holding her down; stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting “Stop!”
Then sudden consciousness—only a dream! Bolt upright in bed staring into the darkness. A dream? How much of it a dream? Was it all a dream? The fevered brain would fetch her from her bed, groping to Dad's room, striking a match—no familiar form upon the bed; a big white ticket—“Lot 56.”
Back to the hot, crumpled couch, there, tossing, to lie attempting a grasp, a realisation of what it all meant....
A dark little office in Dublin.... So much the “Lots” had fetched, so much the balance at the bank; no investments, it was to be feared; no insurance, my dear Miss Humfray; so much the bills and other claims on the estate.... “Don't wish to be bothered with figures? Of course not, my dear.... And then we come to the balance—I'm afraid a few pounds, practically nothing....”
On the steamer bound for Holyhead.... During the crossing the stifling weight that had benumbed her intellect ever since the man with the dent in his hat came riding up the drive seemed suddenly to lift. Whipped away perhaps by the edged wind that rushed past her from England to Ireland sinking in the sea—a wind to cut you to the bone; discovering sensation in every marrow; stinging her to clear thought.... That idyllic life with Mother and Dad—the world to one another and none else in the world beside—had been rather the creation of circumstance than of design. Dad's people were furious when he married Mother; in defiance of hers, Mother married Dad. Relations on either side had shrieked their disapproval of the match, then left the couple to their own adventures. A thing to laugh at in those days, but bringing now to the child that was left the realisation of not a support in the world.
Her mother's sisters had written after the funeral inviting her to come to them in England “while she looked about her.” She could recall every sentence of that letter. It had burned. Each word, each comma was fresh before her eyes as the cab jolted on to Palace Gardens.
“It would have been our pleasure constantly to have entertained you during your mother's life-time,” they had written, “but she wilfully flouted our desires at her marriage and thereafter utterly ignored us. The fault for the rift between us was of her making, not ours; we sent her an Easter card one year, and had no reply; though we have no doubt that your father, not that we would say a word against him now, influenced her against her better judgment. However....”
She had written back a hysterical letter.
“Your letter came just after I had returned from burying my dear, dear father, who worshipped my darling mother. If I were begging in the street, starving, dying, I would not touch a crumb or a penny of yours. You are wicked—yes, you are wicked to write to me as you have written....”
She could not stay in Ireland. Her only friends there lived about the dear home that was now no longer a home but a “desirable residence with some acres of garden and paddock.” Her only friends there were friends who had been shared with Mother and Dad—whose presence now would be constant reminder of that happy participation now lost. One and all offered her hospitality, but she must refuse. “No, no silly idea of being a burden to you, dear, dear Mrs. Sullivan—only I can't, can't live anywhere near where we used to live.”
Years before a great friend of hers had married an English clergyman; had written often to her from London of the numerous activities in which she was engaged—principal among them a kind of agency and home for gentlewomen. “Governesses, dear, and all that kind of thing ... poor girls, many of them, who have suddenly had to earn a living.”
The correspondence had died, as do so many, from the effects of undue urgency at the outset; but she had the address, and was certain there of welcome and of aid. “Poor girls who have suddenly had to earn a living.” The words took on a new meaning: she was of these.
From Euston she drove to the address. Her friend had gone. Yes, the present occupant remembered the name. The present occupant had been there two years; had taken over the lease from the former tenant because the lady was ill and had been ordered abroad. That was all the present occupant knew; saw her to the door; closed it behind her.
Alone in London. “Alone in London”—it had been one of Dad's jokes; he had written a burlesque on it, and they had played it one Christmas to roars of fun. O God! what a thing at which to laugh now that the realisation struck and one stood on the pavement in the dark with this great city roaring at one!
Cabmen, she had heard, were brutes; but the man who had brought her to the house must be appealed to.... Where could she get the cheapest lodging of some kind?
How did he know? What was she wanting to pay? ...
The great city roared at her. Her head swum a little. An idler or two took up a grinning stand: the thing looked like a cab-fare dispute.... What was she wanting to pay? ... Well, as little as possible. “I have never been in London before, and I don't know anybody. My friend here has gone. I have just arrived from Ireland.” She began to cry.
He from his box in a moment. “From Ireland!”
Why, he was from Ireland! ... Not likely she was from Connemara? ... She was? ... From Kinsloe? ... Why, he knew it well; he was from Ballydag!
He rolled his tongue around other names of the district; she knew them all; could almost have laughed at the silly fellow's delight.
Why, the honour it would be if she would come and let his missus make her up a bed! “Don't ye cry, missie. Don't ye take on like that. It's all right ye are now.” He put a huge, roughly great-coated arm about her—squeezed her, she believed; helped her into the cab.
Missus in the clean little rooms over the rattling mews was no less delighted. From Kinsloe? Why, missie saw that canary?—that was a present from Betty Murphy in Kinsloe, not three months before!
The canary, aroused by the attention paid it, trilled upward in a mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her head ... louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and cage became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have carried her to the bed in which she awoke.
Friends in Ireland had given her the addresses of friends in London on whom she must call. She visited some houses; then in a sudden wild despair tore the list. Either these people were dense of comprehension or she clumsy of explanation. To make them realise her position she found impossible. They were warmly kind, sympathetic—cheery in that lugubrious fashion in which we are taught to be “bright” with the afflicted. But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment they would warmly cry, “Oh, but you must not think of that yet, Miss Humfray ... after all you have been through.... You must keep quiet for a little.”
One and all gave her the same words. An impulse took her to kick over the tea-table—anything to arouse these people from their stereotyped mood of sympathy with a girl suddenly bereaved,—and to cry, “But don't you understand? I am living over a mews—over a mews with twelve pounds and a few shillings, and then nothing—nothing at all.”
Wise, perhaps, had she indulged the outburst without the action; wiser had she written to some of the friends in Ireland, asked to go back to one of them for a while. But the dull grief beneath which she still lay benumbed prevented her from other course than tonelessly accepting the proffered sympathy; and the thought of returning to Ireland was impossible. She tore the list of London friends; appealed to Tim and Missus.
Tim was helpful. He had taken fares to an Agency in Norfolk Street—an Agency for “Disturbed Gentlewomen,” he called it; there took her one morning.
“Distressed Gentlewomen,” she found the brass plate to read—“The Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed Gentlewomen.”
A lymphatic-looking young woman, assisting the growth of a singularly stout face by sucking a sweet, and wearing brown holland sleeve protectors hooked up with enormous safety-pins, received her in the room marked “Enquiries”; put her into that labelled “Waiting.” Here were two copies of the Christian Herald, some emigration pamphlets, a carafe of water covered by an inverted tumbler dusty with disuse, and three elderly females—presumably gentlewomen, possibly distressed, but not advertising either condition.
In due time her turn for the room marked “Private”; interrogation by Miss Ram, a short, thin lady in black, who bowed more frequently than she spoke, possessing a range of inclinations of the head each of which had unmistakable meaning.
Position sought?—Oh, anything; governess, companion. Last situation?—None; she was inexperienced. Capabilities?—Equally lacking, as discovered by a probing cross-examination. Salary required?—Oh, anything; whatever was usual; a home—that was the chief object in view.
Miss Ram entered the details in a severe-looking book with a long thin pen—could hold out but faint hopes. The applicants whom she was accustomed to suit were “in nine and ninety cases out of one hundred cases” accomplished in the domestic or scholastic arts. However. Yes, Miss Humfray should call every morning. Better still, stay in the waiting-room. Be On the Spot—that was the first requisite for success, as Miss Humfray would find whether in a situation or awaiting a situation; be On the Spot.
On the Spot. A nightmare week in the dingy waiting-room ... thoughts probing the mind, stabbing the heart.... Nine till one, a cup of tea and a roll at an A.B.C. shop, an aimless walk in the park; two till six, good-night to the stout young woman named Miss Porter in “Enquiries,” home to the rattling mews and to Missus.
On the Spot. Occasional interviews. “Miss Humfray, a lady will see you.” ... “Oh, too young—far too young.” ... “Thank you, that will do, Miss Humfray.” ... “Oh, not my style at all.” ... “Thank you, that will do, Miss Humfray.”
On the Spot. Fortunately On the Spot one day—a Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, as nursery governess, Streatham.
For a week very much On the Spot with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton. Nursery governess was a comprehensive word in the Eyton-Eyton vocabulary; covered every duty that in a nursery must be performed. One must do the nursery fire, sweep the nursery floor, bring up and carry down the nursery meals—servants, you see, object to waiting upon one whom, as Mrs. Eyton-Eyton with a careless laugh pointed out, they regard as one of themselves. Quickly the lesson was appreciated that while a servant must never be “put upon,” the same consideration need not be extended to a lady. Servants are rare in the market, young ladies cheap.
The lesson of dependence, subserviency, Mary found harder in the learning; did not study it; therein reaped disaster.
She arrived on a Tuesday. Upon that day of the following week Mrs. Eyton-Eyton paid to the nursery one of her rare visits, beautifully gowned, the hired victoria waiting to take her a round of calls.
Lunch, delayed not to disturb the midday sleep of Masters Thomas and Richard Eyton-Eyton, was not cleared—Master Thomas still struggling with a plate of sago pudding.
Betwixt her children Mrs. Eyton-Eyton—beautifully gowned, hired victoria in waiting—took her seat; Mary hovered behind—and catastrophe swooped. Master Thomas grabbed for a glass of milk; Mary strove to restrain him. There was an awkward struggle, her elbow—or his—caught the plate of pudding, tipped the sticky mass into the silken lap of Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, beautifully gowned, hired victoria in waiting.
Infuriated, Mrs. Eyton-Eyton turned upon Mary. “Oh, you little fool!”
The rebuke that should have been taken with downcast eyes, murmured apologies, was otherwise received.
“Mrs. Eyton! How dare you call me a fool!”
Pause of blank amazement; sago-messed table-napkin in the scented hand; sago creeping down the silken skirt. That a nursery governess—not even a servant—should so presume!
“Miss Humfray! You forget yourself!”
“No!-No! It is you who forget yourself. How dare you speak to me like that!”
Another moment of utter bewilderment; small Eyton-Eytons gazing round-eyed; the girl white, heaving; the woman dully red. Then “Pack your boxes, Miss!”
She was upon the platform at Victoria Station, a porter asking commands for her box, before she realised what she had done. A few pounds in her purse, and infinitely worse off now than a week before. Then she had no “character”; now employment was to be sought with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton as her “last place.” She would not go back to Missus and Tim. Though they had tried to conceal it, secretly, she had seen, they were relieved when she left. They had not accommodation for her; latterly she had dispossessed of his bed a sailor son on leave from his ship.
She left her box in the cloak-room; turned down Wilton Road from the station; penetrated the narrow thoroughfares between Lupus Street and the river; secured a bedroom with Mrs. Japes at six shillings a week.
Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received a furious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel line of red ink ruled through the page that began “Name: Mary Humfray,” and ended “Salary:—”
“But I don't know a soul in London.”
“You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have a reputation for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk.”
A bow closed the interview.
It was her landlady's husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, who dealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shops that had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and her presumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she found Mrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs. Up to her room—the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents scattered across the floor, the little case in which with her pictures of Mother and Dad she kept her money gone.
A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which Mrs. Japes's property had also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ... had done time ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she'd best go ... of course she could tell the police.
Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered and frightened her.
To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new landlady into the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe.... Answering of advertisements found in the public library in Great Smith Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Always the same outcome. ... Experience?—None. References?—None.... “Thank you; I'm afraid—I'm sure it's all right, but one has to be so careful nowadays. Good morning.” ... Always the same outcome.... The idea of writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ... That life, those friends, seemed of a period that was dead, done, gone—ages and ages ago....
Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow—a gentlemanly-looking person of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to an address copied from the Daily Telegraph. Why, by an extraordinary coincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!—flat, rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help. Might he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though putting now and then curious little questions which she could not understand.... Hadn't he seen her at the Oxford one night? ... Assuredly he had not; what was the Oxford?
He laughed, evidently pleased. “Gad, you do keep it up!” he cried.
So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
“You understand why I can't use the lift?” he said. “They're beastly particular here.”
She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thus to a door where he took out a latch-key.
It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, took her, trembling her limbs.
She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
“Why, it is the wrong number!” she cried.
He had turned the key. “Lord! you do keep it up!” he laughed, his hand suddenly about her arm.
Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the thing.
“Ah, let me go—let me go!”
“Oh, chuck it, you little ass!” His arm was about her waist now, dragging her; his face close.
With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched from his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered his wits; across the hall and running—shaking, hysterical—down the street.
Thereafter men were a constant horror to her—adding a new and most savage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair that bayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, she went again to Miss Ram at the Agency—almost upon her knees, crying, trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat to the man in Wilton Road.
Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grim exterior; had never realised the actual circumstances; would do what she could; no need to be frightened.
Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. No sharpness, no slight now could prick her spirit; she had learned too well; she would not face those streets again.
That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds were healing now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at present discomforts. It was only now and again—as now—that she, driven by some sudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander—bruising itself in those dark passages.
The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob; was herself.
Mrs. Chater said: “Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda.”
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg