To Love Part 11

Fifteen and six a week. Joan attempted to make a rapid calculation in her head, but gave up the idea. It sounded at least quite absurdly cheap, she would not have to spend very much of Uncle John's allowance before she got some work to do for herself. The future seemed suddenly to shut her in to a life enclosed by the brick walls of Shamrock House with its attendant neighbourhood of Digby Street.

"That will do," she answered, "it sounds very nice."

"Yes," agreed Miss Nigel; she closed the desk and stood up, "for the price, we offer exceptional advantages. If you will carry up what you need for to-night, I will show you to your rooms."

It occurred to Joan as she followed her guide up flights of carpetless stone stairs that her new abode resembled a prison more than anything else. The long bare pa.s.sages were broken up by countless doors all numbered and painted white in contrast to the brick-coloured walls. The sound of their footsteps echoed mournfully through the bareness and seeming desolation of the place. From one of the landing windows she caught a blurred picture of the streets outside, the lit-up barrows, the crowd just emerging from the public-house. She was to get very used and very hardened to the life in Digby Street, but on this, her first evening, it caught at her senses with a cold touch of fear.

On the top floor of all Miss Nigel opened the first door along the pa.s.sage and ushered Joan into the room that was to be hers. It was so small that its one window occupied practically the whole s.p.a.ce of the front wall. A narrow bed stood along one side, and between this and the opposite wall there was scarce room for a chair. At the foot of the bed stood the wash-stand and the chest of drawers facing each other, with a very narrow s.p.a.ce in between them. But it was all scrupulously clean, with white-washed walls and well-scrubbed furniture, and the windows opened over the roofs of the neighbouring houses. Very far up in the darkness of the sky outside a star twinkled and danced.

Miss Nigel looked round at the room with evident satisfaction. "You will be comfortable here, I think," she said; "we do our best to make the girls happy. We expect them, however, to conform to our rules; you will find them explained in this book." She placed a little blue pamphlet on the dressing-table. "Lights are put out at ten, and if you are later than that, you have to pay a small fine for being let in, a threepenny door fee, we call it. Everyone is requested to make as little noise as possible in their rooms or along the pa.s.sages, and to be punctual for dinner."

With one more look round she turned to go. Half-way out, however, a kindly thought struck her, and she looked back at Joan.

"Dinner is at seven-thirty," she said. "I expect you will be glad to have it and get to bed. You look very tired."

Joan would have liked to ask if she could have dinner upstairs, but one glance at the book of rules and regulations decided her against the idea. Shamrock House evidently admitted of no such luxury, and on second thoughts, how ridiculous it was to suppose that dinner could be carried up five flights of stairs for the benefit of someone paying fifteen and six a week all told. She was too tired and too depressed to face the prospect of a meal downstairs, she would just have to go to bed without dinner, she concluded.

The House woke to life as she lay there, evidently the inhabitants returned about this time. Joan remembered the cabman's somewhat blunt description and smiled at the memory. A Home for Working Girls. That was why it had seemed so silent and deserted before, shops and offices do not shut till after six. But now the workers were coming home, she could hear their feet along the pa.s.sages, the slamming of doors, voices and laughter from the room next hers. Home! This narrow, cold room, those endless stairs and pa.s.sages outside, they were to be home for the future. The hot tears p.r.i.c.ked in her eyes, but she fought against tears.

After all, she had been very lucky to find it, it was cheap, it was clean; other girls lived here and were happy, someone had laughed next door.

"I have got to take you firmly in hand," Joan argued with her depression. "It is no use making a fuss about things that are all my own fault. I tried to play with life and I did not succeed. It is too big and hard. If I had wanted to work it out differently I ought to have been very strong. But I am not strong, I am only just ordinary. This is my chance again, and in the plain, straight way I must win through." She spoke the words almost aloud, as if challenging fate: "I will win through."

CHAPTER XI

"Will my strength last me? Did not someone say The way was ever easier all the way?"

H. C. BEECHING.

Youth can nearly always rely upon sleep to build up new strength, new hope, new courage. If you have got to a stage in your life when sleep fails you, if night means merely a long tortured pause from the noises of the world, in which the beating of your heart seems unbearably loud, then indeed you have reached to the uttermost edge of despair. Joan slept, heavily and dreamlessly, save that there was some vague hint of happiness in her mind, till she was wakened in the morning by a most violent bell ringing. The dressing-bell at Shamrock House, which went at seven o'clock, was carried by a maid up and down every pa.s.sage, so that there was not the slightest chance of anyone oversleeping themselves.

Joan dressed quickly; the faint aroma of happiness which her sleep had brought her, and which amounted to cheerfulness, stayed with her. She remembered how Miss Abercrombie had once said to her: "Oh, you are a Browningite," and smiled at the phrase, repeating to herself another verse of the same poem:

"And I shall thereupon Take rest ere I be gone, Once more on my adventure brave and new."

She felt almost confident of success this morning; her mind was busy with plans of the work she would find. She was glad to feel herself one in a giant hive of workers, all girls like herself, cutting out their lives for themselves, earning their own living.

Breakfast brought with it a slight disillusionment. The dining-room in Shamrock House is in the bas.e.m.e.nt; chill and dreary of aspect, its windows always dirty and unopenable, because at the slightest excuse of an open window the small boys of the neighbourhood will make it their target for all kinds of filth. Rotting vegetables, apple-cores, sc.r.a.pings of mud; there is quite sufficient of all that outside the windows without encouraging it to come in. Six long deal tables occupy the s.p.a.ce of the room, and it is one of the few amus.e.m.e.nts which the children of Digby Street possess to gather at the railings and watch the inhabitants of Shamrock House being fed.

It was the last flight of stairs into the bas.e.m.e.nt which damped Joan's enthusiasm for her new home. As she stood hesitating in the doorway, for there were a great many people in the room, and the tables seemed crowded, she caught Miss Nigel's eye.

"You will find a seat over there," the lady called out to her, waving a hand in the direction of the furthest table. "Help yourself to bacon, which is on the hot case near the fire, and come here for your tea or coffee. By the way, which do you like?"

Joan asked for tea, and having secured her cup and a small piece of unappetizing bacon, she found her way over to the indicated table. A girl sat at the head of it, and since she was ensconced behind a newspaper and apparently paying no attention to anybody, Joan chose the chair next her. She felt on the sudden shy and unwilling to make friends with anyone, the chill of the room was striking into her heart.

She had presently to rouse her neighbour, however, to ask her to pa.s.s the salt, and at that the girl lifted a pair of penetrating eyes and fixed Joan with an intent stare.

"New arrival?" she asked.

"Yes," Joan admitted. "I came last night."

"Humph!" the girl commented. "Well, don't touch the jam this morning. It is peculiar to Shamrock House--plum-stones, raspberry-pips and glue."

She swept the information at Joan and returned to her paper.

She was a big girl with rather a heavy face and strong, capable-looking hands. Despite her manners, which were undeniably bad, Joan would almost have described her as distinguished but for the fact that the word sounded ridiculous amid such surroundings.

"Looking for work?" the girl asked presently.

"Yes," Joan answered again, "only I am not sure what sort of work to look for, or what I should like to do."

The girl lifted her eyes to stare at her once again. "It isn't generally a case of 'like,'" she said, "more often it is necessity. In that case"--she reached out a long arm for the bread--"Fate does not as a rule give you much time in which to make up your mind; she pushes you into something which you hate like h.e.l.l for the rest of your life."

"You aren't very cheerful," remonstrated Joan.

"Oh, well, I never am that," agreed the other, "nor polite. You ask Miss Nigel if you want a true estimate of my manners. But I have lived here ten years now and I have seen girls like you drift in and out by the score. The feeding or the general atmosphere doesn't agree with them, and our ranks are maintained by beings of a coa.r.s.er make, as you may see for yourself."

She rose, crumpling her paper into a ball and throwing it under the table.

"My name is Rose Brent," she said. "What is yours?"

"Rutherford," Joan answered, "Joan Rutherford. I hope I shan't drift quite as quickly as you foretell," she added.

Secretarial work was what she had really made up her mind to try for, though she had not had the courage to confess as much to her breakfast companion. She had, after all, had a certain amount of training in that and hoped not to find it so very impossible to get a post as a beginner somewhere. Her first visit to the nearest registry office, however, served to show her that her very slight experience was going to be of little use to her. The registry lady was kind, sufficiently interested to appear amiable, but not at all rea.s.suring in her views as to Joan's prospects.

"I am afraid I cannot hold out very much hope," she said, after five minutes' crisp questioning of Joan. "You have, you see, so very few qualifications, and the market is rather over-stocked with girls who can do just a little. My strong advice to you is to continue your shorthand; when you are a little more experienced in that we ought to have no difficulty in placing you. Good morning; please see that the hall door shuts properly, the latch is very weak."

Her business-like manner, the absolute efficiency which shone around her, and the crowded aspect of the waiting-room--all girls who could do just a little, Joan presumed--caused her heart to sink. Finding work was not going to be as easy as she had first supposed.

She roamed from office to office after that for several days, to be met everywhere with the same slight encouragement and frail promises to help. Finally, thoroughly discouraged, she bought papers instead, and turned to a strict perusal of their various advertis.e.m.e.nts.

One in particular caught her eye.

"Wanted a pupil shorthand typist. Tuition in return for services.--Apply Miss Bacon, 2, Baker Street, W."

It was late in the afternoon of the day before Joan found her way to Baker Street, for she had had several other places to call at and she was in addition very tired. Going from place to place in search of work had reduced her to a painful knowledge of her own absolute incompetency and the general uselessness of life. A bra.s.s plate on the door of No. 2 conveyed the information: "Miss Bacon. Fourth floor. Shorthand and Typing. Please ring and walk up."

Joan rang and followed the instructions. On the very top landing a girl stood, holding a candle in her hand, for up here there was no light of any sort. The grease dripped down her skirt and on to the floor.

"Do you want Miss Bacon?" she asked.

Joan nodded, too breathless to say anything.

The girl turned into the dim interior and threw open a door, snuffing the candle at the same time.

"If you will wait here," she said, "Miss Bacon will be with you in a minute."