 CHAPTER III There may be heaven, there may be hell. Meantime there is our earth here—well, Robert Browning. The naming of Flair Caldecott was on this wise. A certain editor in referring to her said, oh, Miss Caldecott has what the French call Le Flair. She knows the direction of public taste almost before it comes. It is a good gift for a journalist. She had up till then signed her copy F. Caldecott, nor did anyone know or care what F should stand for. In the trade she was mistakenly recognized as a man many editors never setting eyes on her to the end and continuing their error through a certain quality in her work which was never feminine. But that section of the press which knew her as a personality adopted the word in default of a better transcription, and she became Flair Caldecott to them, until the inverted commas were lost and she was Flair Caldecott, to the inside as well as the outside world. She came from nowhere and her existence was bounded exactly by what Nuzotra knew of her. She lived in two little rooms at the top of a gaunt building off Duncannon Street, Strand, with an occasional reversion to the big one used for the meetings of the society. She had no ties beyond Nuzotra, and her possessions, when she died, amounted to twenty pounds in the post office, which buried her, and certain trifling profits from two volumes of short stories, the only books she ever published. This went to Alma, who also inherited her personal belongings, and if among them she found any private information concerning Flair, she never spoke of it. Mrs. Bonnet was caretaker in the gaunt house, which really belonged to a company which some day intended taking possession of the whole premises for an elaborate scheme in trade, but at present were so entangled in law that it seemed a remote possibility. Mrs. Bonnet cooked for Flair and occasionally dusted her rooms, but as Flair was liable to fits of ferocity of a paper of her innumerable belongings were moved, there was small inducement to the woman to attempt much order. As she, as caretaker, forced her employers to pay inhabited house duty, she saw no reason against subletting the attics, though she warned Flair that when the company's affairs were straightened out, they might both of them have to go at a minute's notice. Flair took the risk and lived there for some years, a few forlorn firms of the photographic plate or architectural association type, using the intermediate floors by day. She rarely encountered the clerks on the dirty staircase, and as the downstairs room remained sacred to the packing cases and Nuzotra, she was content. One strong reason for her remaining was an urgent one, almost incomprehensible to anyone, but Nuzotra. The luxury of cleanliness, the house off Duncannon Street had originally been built for residents and not offices, and the dressing room used by Nuzotra at their meetings was also a bathroom. Why it had been placed on the ground rather than the upper floors was a mystery probably connected with hot water pipes and the kitchen range, but there it was, and the first side of it made Flair a tenant. Mrs. Bonnett did not hold with bathing. Her sympathies were more towards the method of R.L. in his toilet, and the clerks on the intermediate floors made no raid upon the place either. Flair asked and obtained leave to use the bath, provided she gave Mrs. Bonnett no further trouble over her ablutions at all. As a matter of sacred solemnity she confided her extraordinary luck to Nuzotra and admitted them to the privilege of the bath, every one of them sharing in the labour involved. No one who has not lived in cheap lodgings in side streets of London, or even a low rented house, realises the joy of a real bathroom. Nuzotra usually possessed their own small tubs, and bribed an unwilling servant to carry up meager cans of water, as often as may be. They would do it themselves if a pump were accessible. But when Mrs. Bonnett cooked, somewhere in the bowels of the earth, it seemed to Flair, by a process of enchantment there was plenty of hot water, and one had only to turn the tap and soak. Mrs. Bonnett had a weakness for a good coal fire, and her range was a large one. Flair nearly got water on the brain, physically as well as mentally, with cleaning out the bath, and Magda and Frank took turns at scrubbing the bare boards. They subscribed for the usual accessories of the place, booked their occupancy beforehand, and revelled Alma had been down before the next meeting of the society, had gone into the bathroom feeling gritty, she had been in and out of agents all day, and emerged with her self-respect restored when she appeared the other chairs were occupied, and an extra one to boot, for Beatrice had brought a friend with her, a teacher with qualifications above her own, and the brown eyes of a hungry deer. Nuzotra called her B.A. to enforce her title to the degree, and she would have been permanently up the circle, had she not been stationed at Croyton, with the fare to consider, Alma sat down next to her and purred. That was like heaven, she said. I haven't felt clean since last time. Any matches, Flair? I've got them. B.A. tossed them into her lap. I hope they will build bathrooms to the many mansions up above, I'm sure. A good many of us will need cleaning by that time, said Beatrice Dryley. I wonder whether physical comfort is an element of heaven. Anyhow, physical discomfort isn't, said Frank. That's good enough for me. They have crowded up the lunch-room so lately, that it is just like struggling at the pit door of a theatre to get to the order desk. What is your system, asked Winnie, interestingly? Do you pay so much and choose from the list? Yes. You go and read what the waitress calls the menu, and then buy your ticket for the item you fancy. Do they feed you well? Oh, the food is all right of itself. Only there is no time to eat it. One of the nicest things one gets is stuffed breast of veal. And really, I had quite a shock the other day. I had ordered that particular dish and forgot to say what vegetables. So the girl came back to me and said suddenly, and what will you take with your stuffed breast, Miss? My figure, being all my own, I felt it rather hard. Let's get back to heaven, said Hilda, as the laughter subsided. Frank always demoralizes us. Beatrice, what is your opinion? It will be always mourning there, said Beatrice, slowly, after one of her characteristic pauses. At least one will feel as one does in the morning after a good night, as if everything were possible, and one wanted to be happy. I don't even want that at night. It will be something beyond comprehension, said Winnie, who declined scriptural problems as the only escape from disbelief. It is noticeable that the two most irreligious members of the society were Winnie, whose father was a clergyman, and B.A., who had been brought up in a strictly church-going family. It will be simply going to sleep, said Flair. I wonder if we have our heaven on earth, mused Hilda, turning her head with one of her sudden lovely movements and striking her company dumb with appreciation of her profile. I am certain that we have our hell. Oh, we have our hell, said Winnie Dryley. I never heard of anyone having their heaven, though. All pleasure has a sting in it. All our pleasure, anyhow. A great orchestra giving a perfect performance of certain music gives me a foretaste, anyhow, Frank admitted. But I can't talk about it. No, and you show your enjoyment by crying. Most people do when they declare themselves perfectly happy. Do you call that heaven? Winnie's quick laugh was a little scornful. I like crying in that way, said Alma. I enjoy the thing all the more. Well you won't get it in heaven, said Winnie. So don't you think it, dear? They won't even let you carry a pocket-hanger-chip in the pocket under your wing. You are not supposed to need it. Nonsense, said Alma, opening her big eyes wider. If I can't cry, I shan't play. And besides, you might have a cold, remarked Beatrice gravely. I know just how an angel sneezes. It is a little soft sound, like a humming-bee. Sex and Hilda's susceptibilities are being hurt, said Flair, uncrossing her knees, because R.L. had intimated that he wished to jump up. Winnie, who was sitting next to her, leaned over and rubbed his head, remarking, Poor Pussums, sardonically, and Flair instinctively interposed her hand to protect the big blunt muzzle. Do let him alone, Winnie, she said fretfully. He's not well, I think. He never wants to be nursed if he is. Flair's temper was only touchy with regard to R.L. If the other girls wanted to tease her, they treated him with mild disrespect, and watched Flair turn to bay with open amusement. He likes it, said Winnie mischievously. I never knew the male animal that did not. What were we talking about? Oh, Heaven, I don't like your view, Flair. It's cold and impersonal, nor I chimed in Alma. I want people. I want all sorts of people whose society I ought not to enjoy on earth. Surely in another world one will have one's innings. The pupils of her eyes enlarged themselves, and she saw some one whom her friends not see, filling a private heaven of her own. It would be an illegitimate heaven, under the rose, or it would hardly be Alma's. The worst of it will be, she confessed with a sigh, that everything will be allowed and acknowledged, and human nature is so constituted that it loves forbidden fruit. Winnie's hazel eyes looked at her sympathetically across the room. What nonsense, said Flair scornfully. You wouldn't bother over it anyway, if you were asleep. Who wants society when they are unconscious? These and Alma's eyes met again, and flashed a sudden amusement. One might, began Alma. Winnie laughed. One certainly might. She began in her turn. Are you so tired, Flair, filled to put in with a gentleness that was almost hurried? I lived through the day in order to go to bed at night, said Flair philosophically. The days are duties, and the nights indulgences, or rewards. Life is just the same, on a larger scale. We are all living through it, in order that we may have leave to die. Isn't that so? True for you, Flair. Magda spoke bitterly. Beatrice, who had been watching her from the corner, and thought that it was a cloudy day for April's lady. But the sunshine had not broken up the clouds as usual, and she wondered. Magda had not spoken of the dissolution at the office as yet. I shall be glad when it's all over, she said. Won't you, Hilda? I'm very strong, said Hilda simply, and it was true. Her physique was considerably better than most of the others. But had it not been so, she would have broken down long since. Of course she added an impossible home life to her working day. Hilda was waiting. She did not know for what. But the vitality in her was its own promise of fulfillment, and she would not surrender life until she had at least sucked some sweetness from it. It has occurred to me, said Beatrice, and her voice sounded awe, that there will be a day of judgment before heaven. In my opinion, there will be no day of judgment to speak of, said B.A. Bluntly. We shall all be so busy asking questions that the Almighty will have all He can do to answer them. I am looking forward to it myself, as the one thing that makes life bearable. There will be an explanation of so much that seems purposeless and intolerable now. I want that explanation badly. Amongst other things, I should like an explanation of Nuzotra, said Winnie, dryly. Evolution will give you that. Where the hardship seems to me to come in, is that we were looked after as sharply as the last generation, up to a certain age. When we were turned out to sink or swim, handicapped by the very theory of men and women's relation to each other which had been taught to us, Frank and Flair and Winnie will all bear me out. And so will Magda. It says much for the modern woman that she is as nice as she is, considering the bewildering experiences of her life. Don't you agree with me, Flair? I don't believe in negative virtue, said Flair Bluntly. The woman who keeps herself pure, by steering scrupulously clear of temptation, is a prudent person at best, a coward at worst. She is colorless and unsympathetic, and inevitably uncharitable. It is those who have faced temptation, who have even fallen, and struggled to rise again, who are good. There is no such thing as a good man or woman, who has never had a chance to be bad. Flair simply unproven, and hold their diploma by fraud. Give me the fighting angel. That's me, said Magda, promptly and unexpectedly. I am going off now to carry out Flair's ideal in the most literal sense, and fight with a large, hot crowd at the Westminster Baths. Report, said Flair Idley, as the art editor looked to see that the fountain pen was in its place, and ruffled the notebook leaves wherein she would take both an outline of the proceedings in shorthand, and one of the actual scene in a few rough strokes, to refresh a tenacious memory. Yes, there's a lady's swimming competition on tonight, three or four clubs, and it's rather an important event in women's sports. I told them I would take the report, but I did not see going down until late, as all I want is the finals. Her face altered unconsciously, for they, to Magda, simply meant that she had, as usual, thrown herself into the breach to take a minor worry off the mind of one man. It was not, rightly speaking, her work, but the editor was short of reporters, and she had volunteered. It meant exactly three hours extra work, after her day was done, intense heat and tire, and an expression of relief in one pair of masculine eyes before which she unconsciously martyred herself. To everyone's surprise, Magda's most of all, Flair dragged her lazy body out of the hammock chair. If you can wait five minutes while I put on a hat, she said, I'll come with you. I can go in on your pass, I suppose, and I'll do it for my LC, London Correspondents. Will some of you lend a hand and get the chairs up to my rooms again? I am sorry to turn you all out so early. If it were possible to suspect Flair of virtue, one might attribute her sudden energy to some intuitive feminine sense that told her Magda would be better off for a companion just now. But it is just as possible that she merely pleased herself. As it was half past nine, they were not sorry to go. Five minutes later the room where the packing-cases was dark and silent, only a flake or two of cigarette ash on the floor, telling of the vitality lately gathered there, and out into the dark spring night went to women across the roaring strand, where the noise of pleasure had succeeded that of work, down the steep incline of Villiers Street into the hot gulf of the underground railway, to report on the stronger physique and modern athletics of their more fortunate sisters. It was a great night for the ladies' swimming-clubs, and a long struggle in the water polo match. Flair and Magda did not get home until midnight, and R.L., very cross, got out of the central position he had taken on Flair's bed, and lay down on her feet in lieu of a hot water bottle. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4, Part 1 of The Pathway of the Pioneer. This lever-box recording is in the public domain. The Pathway of the Pioneer by Dolph Willard. Chapter 4, Part 1. None worship her, but some I fancy love her, cynics to boot. I know the children run, seeing her come, for not that I discover save that she brings the summer and the sun, Austen Dobson. Frank Payton's number was 312 in his Majesty's Telegraph Extension Department, lately established in Sheepside for the connection of small hamlets hitherto unenlightened by telegraph communication with larger centres. She was represented to government, if they could have been made aware of her existence, by a unit drawing twenty-eight shillings a week after having been in their employ for some ten years, and she was pigeon-holed for exchange of six months of country service on account of health, pending a transfer to the Central Telegraph Office in St. Martin's Le Grand. Frank herself found her life settled in a groove with certain stationary affections and shifting interests, like a little river running between narrow banks and seeing at a farther distance towns and landscapes. The banks were always the same, and depended upon the river for their flowers and green grass, and all the beauties of life, but the cities and landscapes vanished and varied as the river flowed on, going outwards to the sea. Round about the quadruplex set, at a table where she spent on an average eight hours of her day, were rows of pallid faces, some of which, from near association, were quite familiar, and had personalities attached, while others, fading away in distance, were mere types of the London Worker. Young men and girls with livid skins like plants reared away from sun and fresh air, and minds which learned to jog with the morse dot dash dash dot dot dot dash dot dash dot all day long. The men mostly developed a cockney accent, and the girls a questionable taste in blouses. It became an unconscious impression in Frank's mind, for being healthy and sane, her vitality rose superior to inherited instinct, and she accepted the accents and the blouses as mere details in the scenic background of life, as little to be objected to as Alma found the whitewashed walls behind the glitter of the house. Some few of the girls immediately surrounding Frank knew and consequently loved her. They told her what he had said, and so I said, etc., and they asked her out to tea at other suburbs than the one where she lived, and stated a reprimand from the supervisor as a common grievance. For the supervisor walks to and fro, to and fro, all the weary day, between the lines of clerks in his majesty's telegraph extension department, and checks the girls when they flag or fling a scrap of human conversation to a neighbor, when engaged on his majesty's business, for which supervision they draw better pay and gain much jealousy, and so all girl clerks look forward to being supervisors and hated in their turn, and hope for the early death of those who block the way to the position. Frank was on a small hamlet near a racing-center about nine months before the first meeting of Nuzotra recorded here, and thoroughly sick of sending through messages in cipher and otherwise all relating to the noble sport. Now and then a bubble of wit from the general public enlightened the monotony, as for instance when a medical student telegraphed through to a friend in this unknown spot that he had mastered his exam. Sorrows ended, labor vanquished, I have passed, but as a rule it was monotonous enough to breathe the devil's own mischief. Frank sat with her hands in her lap at times, and waited for the summons to take a message, or else she chaffed the girl next to her, who was engaged to a man in St. Martin's Legrand, and giggled so easily that it was no fun to upset her gravity. Sometimes when work was slacker she would have two circuits to look after, and this she preferred, for she was a skilled telegraphist, and it irked her to waste her time, but on an average the work of the extension had not the intensity of that in the larger telegraph department, in particular the met where the girls sit close shoulder to shoulder, and are so hard pressed that at times they can hardly read the offices of origin in the confusion of sounds between their neighbors' sounder and their own. Frank had no desire to be one of that overburdened, understaffed department, but there is a happy medium, and the extension was certainly slow. Once it was so dull that Frank always declared that it drove her to a frock out with the head of the department, who suddenly and with dignity became aware of her existence, and designated her as Pert in a marginal note after having to apologize for impugning her veracity on a question of a non-delivery, and Frank was nicknamed Miss Pert by the whole laughing division for a week. Then things settled down again to the old monotony, and the grind of dot dash dash dot dot dot dash dot went on as before. It is very cold in March at six o'clock in the morning, if a woman bread delicately has to rise at that hour, light the kitchen fire, feed herself and an invalid mother, set all in order for the day in the suburban home she is leaving, and catch the seven twenty to the city and her work. She will find that her working hours run into some sixteen all told, for she has her woman's day to finish when she comes back after her man's day at the office. The strain told upon Frank Payton and is one explanation of what followed, though it did not matter to anybody but Frank in its final result, and she went on with her life just exactly as if she were the automatic machine expected by government, and no human interest had ever threatened to disturb her perfect organization. Frequent attacks of neuralgia and indigestion began to warn her that woman is merely mortal, though to official minds an operator on the quad is as near as may be to an automaton, and should only be moved by putting pennies in the slot, i.e. the weekly wage. A breakdown is the chief dread in the minds of Nuzotra and Frank, driven by her doctor's warnings, set her wits to work and arranged for a six-month exchange with a girl who wanted to see what London work was like. Frank did not even know her personally, and the mutual obligation was contrived by a clerk at the check table where the telegrams are distributed for transmission through the tubes. It was an instance of Frank's popularity that no sooner did it become known that her health demanded a change to provincial work. Then the news acted like a beacon, and offers of assistance and suggestions of how it might be managed poured in on her from a dozen different groups. Frank was as grateful for the kind heartedness which she had drawn out without knowing, as the sun draws out the scent from the flowers, as she was for the assistance she really received, and pending her transference in a month's time, she endured the irritating succession of ailments to which her weakened body made her a prey, feeling at least refreshed in mind. She had been fidgeting through a bleak morning after the usual routine of housework, and the rush for the train, and was thinking of her mother's health and her own, and sitting in a despondent bunch in consequence. When the bell rang, the future did not bear a contemplation if Frank were to continue sane and sufficiently healthy for eight hours a day work, and she welcomed the distraction. She was on the A side of the quad, which is always the best, but it was a tiresome message, and the clerk at the other end had to repeat, which he did with exasperated side-notes. Can't you hear? Have you got that? Until Frank jumped to the conclusion that she was being irritated on purpose, and her blood boiled in consequence. There is hardly any limit to the fret and annoyance that a willfully bad operator can give to the victim receiving a message. Frank was as skilled a telegraphist as any in St. Martin's Legrand, and was not inclined to turn her cheek to the smiter. To the unknown clerks, have you got that? She retorted, Yes, and no thanks to you, whereupon having passed on an enigmatic message carrying its thousands of pounds of racing debts, she became aware that her late adversary was still speaking on the sounder. I say, are you the girl who has been on this wire all the week? Frank was just so tired of slack business that she was glad to break the rule and use the telegraph for private conversation, glad of any diversion that the supervisor would stop if she heard. It is very nearly irresistible for the human machines at either end of the wires to use the connecting link for personal intercourse, for which reason no rule is more strict than that the wires shall not be used for anything but the work of the government, and the girls are fined according to ordinary telegram rates if they are caught. Half penny a word, considering that the supervisor can read off every letter ticked out by the sounders as she strolls up and down between the tables. The risk run is very heavy, considering also that human nature is human nature. It is one that the girls still run and will continue to run to the end of all time. How do you know that I am a girl? Frank demanded, in reply to the question asked her. Because you are so precious slow. No, I don't mean that. I say stop and talk to me a little. You will kindly keep a civil tongue in your head, then, tapped Frank sharply. I know it was awfully rude, but you made me repeat three times. I say what is your name? Sally said Frank promptly. What is yours? Dick. Thank you. Good morning. It was a temptation to add A-A-R, which means go to the devil, and though an accepted code throughout the post office is strictly unofficial. I say wait a minute. Frank was beginning to endow Dick with a personality through the medium of I say. I wonder if I shall ever see you? Nothing more likely. I am arranging an exchange for provincial work. What luck. Do you think you will come here? I don't know. Yes, Miss Smith. I was just asking the operator to go a little more slowly. The messages are mostly in cipher, and I cannot take them. Fortunately the supervisor had only heard the last three words of the conversation and passed on, but Frank rang off abruptly. Dick began again in the afternoon, however. Frank hurried off to her lunch about eleven, for the girls were fed in batches from that hour to two-thirty, and the operators who were at work at eight were ready for their meal before noon. No clerk was allowed to leave the building for food, for fear of their circulating information gained over the wires. So the girls came down from the office through the endless passages to the swing-glass doors that shut off the refreshment room from the rest of the building. In the busy kitchens, at least, law and order reigned, but the dining-room itself was less attractive, and the air of the place resembled a bean-feast under unospicious circumstances. At one end were the tables of the mighty, where the supervisors fed off properly-laid cloths garnished with vases of flowers, and waited on by real servants in real caps and aprons. But between the supervisor and the clerk there was a great gulf, exemplified in this case by the mere getting of dinner. A female clerk entered by the same door as the supervisors, but passed on to the ticket office, where she bought a ticket for the dish she chose from a written menu. This she presented at the counter, from behind which came Frank's query of what with your stuffed breast missed, and carried her own plate of meat across to the tables at the further end of the room, which were simply spread with cloths. She found her own table cutlery and glass from a certain drawer and shelf, and carried them to her place, returning to the counter at the pudding course for the next plateful. Thus the clerks waited on themselves and were examples of official economy. Whether or no it increased their self-respect to be treated somewhat like a board school did not matter. It was a more serious consideration to them, anyhow, that their time limit off work was half an hour, and that the taking tickets and getting attended to reduced the time for actual eating to some twenty minutes, after which they must be back and on duty until finally relieved. The male clerks had their own separate room, but were no differently served, and indeed the bare, low-sealed room in which they dined, was even less appetizing, being underground. Their chief advantage came in the better pay, for they drew nearly double what the women did, though their work was neither more skilled nor a greater quantity than the best operators among the opposite sex. Frank had eaten her lunch without appetite on this particular day, and was back in her place at the southwestern district hamlet table, wondering why Providence had not endowed her with the digestion of the proverbial ostrich. When the bell rang and she prepared to take a message, I say began the little-clicking machine, which was introducing two people to each other at a distance of some few hundred miles, and that is a feat not granted to most chaperones. Oh, is it you, said Frank casually? I'm nearly asleep. I wish you wouldn't disturb my after-dinner nap. You can't be very busy, Sally. We are nodding over the quads up here. I suppose they are nearly as slack in country offices, since they have to use up their time talking to perfect strangers to keep in practice. Oh, I say you do hit hard. Look here. I want to know if you are dark or fair. Non-descript, said Frank. My hair is red, and my eyes are pink-rimmed, and I have a turned-up nose. I'm sure that isn't true. Why? Because no girl would own up if it were. Stress of interest was quickening Dick's wits. Very well, then. It's not true. And you may think of me as you like. Oh, I say. But how am I to know you when we do meet, by the wart on my nose, said Frank, with a chuckle, and then seeing the supervisor bearing down on her she added R.D., which means received, and put an end to all communication, legitimate or otherwise. Frank's interests, both inside and outside the office, were so manifold that she forgot Dick exactly five minutes after he ceased to talk to her along the wires. She belonged to two choirs, one secular and one in the church in the immediate neighborhood of her home, where she sang alto and expanded her soul, for her natural taste ran to music. The units which went to make up His Majesty's telegraph extension department had strangely enough preserved sufficient life and individuality to combine into societies and clubs and other associations for the development of body and brain, despite system and routine, which was an outlet unprovided for in the regulations, and occasionally confused the authorities who came in contact with some rumor of such organizations, and hardly knew how to deal with them. There was a Philharmonic Society belonging exclusively to the whole extension, a book club to several of the divisions, and various funds or mutual aid, to say nothing of subscriptions whenever anyone left, or was married, or fell ill, and Frank was clamored for as a member to most of them, but regarded her own popularity no more than she did the simple doing of hard duty that made up her daily life. Dick, on this occasion, was speedily put out of her mind by a call from another sounder for which she was responsible. She knew nothing of the clerk at the end of this particular wire, and went on taking messages monotonously until tea time. The forefinger of one hand held over the key, ready to give the R.D. or to demand an R.Q. The other hand writing letter by letter as she listened to the She had made a poor lunch, and was thankful when four o'clock brought tea, and she could rest from work for a few minutes and talk to the girl next to her. Tea was the only meal with which the clerks were served, and was given free, with such additions as they chose to supply out of their own pockets. It consisted in one thick delf cup. There was no saucer allowed, filled with a weekly beverage and two slices of bread and butter, which had been chopped off by machinery as fast as the kitchen could prepare them, for the four or five hundred men and women for whom it was catering. The cups came around on trays, such as are used at railway stations, and then followed the outside orders of cake or buns or jam. Most of the girls bought penny pots, and spread the thick slices with sticky redness, and the men had stolid bunstuffs and sometimes even fruit. Frank ate her bread and butter plain, her only extravagance being a second cup of tea, and the girl next to her, to whom she turned for a minute's conversation, promptly asked her to share some unwholesome looking cake, and added a request that she would help her in a private concert, given in a part of London, almost inaccessible to Frank, whose good nature had off times, to bear the strain of deferred meals and late hours in order to oblige her friends. Oh, my dear, I don't think I can, she protested in some distress. I like to get home to my mother early, you see. Oh, do, Miss Peyton, you sang for Miss Seton last month, and I hear you simply made the success of the evening. She offered the compliment with a jammy mouth, but it was quite genuine. I wish I had not, then, said poor Frank comically. Look here, if I come down, will you put me early in the programme and let me leave before 9.30? I may be home by midnight that way. I will, on my word of honour. And, Miss Peyton, will you play some of the accompaniments? Oh, use me for anything you like when you've got me, said Frank desperately. Then, with a sigh, some people are born to play accompaniments. The unusual protest against fate was rung from her by the weariness of ill health, for as a rule she did not repine. She had learned the lesson preached by Flair Caldecott's worshipped author. Gentleness and cheerfulness. These come before all morality. They are the perfect duties. It was in her tired, drawn face as she swung out of the office day after day, and trudged along the city, working southwards through monotonous stages of omnibus and train and tram. The beginning and ending of Frank's day for eight months of her year was the fire. The morning she mechanically connected with lighting it, sometimes with laying it. At night she came in from the city to find both her mother and the fire, rather low in their vitality, as a general rule, and proceeded to build them both up. The attack with the poker and the judicious expenditure of coals was hardly more efficacious than her cheery. Well, mother dear, I'm so glad to get home, was to the invalid with the gracious face whom the rest of Nuzotra always connected with a sofa, a white fluffy shawl, and a presence in which one always spoke gently. Frank's transference to the country, though she knew it imperative, was a time of anxiety to her, both on account of her mother and the fact that she had practically to keep up two establishments. Mrs. Payton had a pittance which was called a pension by the wealthy institution in which her husband had worked, and Frank had helped to eke it out ever since she left off schoolwork, and began her career as a government clerk. It is difficult to divide twenty-eight shillings so that it will support two people. But much can be done if you live in one room over a station or shop in a small country town, and deny yourself most things except soap and water. Nuzotra may not be godly, but they are invariably cleanly, even though, as Flair said, they hardly have time to wash properly. There was nothing in Frank's existence to mark her as different to the young ladies who served behind other counters than that, sacred to the post office, except perhaps the worn books that lay on her window sill and covered the one little table where she spread her own meals. R. L. Stephenson's Christmas sermon, for which she has already stood as an example, Dickens' Christmas books, Ruskin's Time and Tide, the Rubiot, and one or two of the best novels of the day that had reached the sixth penny edition. That was all, if one did not count a Bible. I have never met any community so devoted to their Bibles as Nuzotra, or so utterly indifferent to their prayer books. Frank did not personally draw any distinction between herself and her neighbours, though she did not find that she could make even acquaintances of them as she had of the girls in the London extension. It was a lonely life in consequence, for she was the only one of Nuzotra in that immediate neighbourhood, and the girls in the stationers' shop, where the post office had set up their own counter with Frank behind it, had alien interests. At the end of a long, tiring day, she would hear them say with cross politeness, excuse me, Miss Jones, dear, as they pushed past each other, and it always made her laugh. The young lady to whom the excuse was addressed did not laugh, and therein lay the barrier between them, for a different sense of humour betrays racial separation, and fixes a great gulf between one class and another. It had slipped Frank's mind when she left London that she was going to the big town of the district in which Dick's small connection was, though she had actually told him of her appointment one day, in a fit of desperation, when he had been more than, usually pressing in his overtures of friendship, and had said, I say, to the end of Frank's endurance, I am going to X next week, and there will be another girl here to listen to your nonsense, and good riddance to bad rubbish for me, Frank had said, allowing discurtycy the rain in her character of Sally. Dick had taken the information, with unusual taciturnity, he had merely said, oh, which office there are two, to which Frank had deigned no reply but R.D., and had dismissed Dick from her existence. She had been a week in her new birth with no one to speak to, and only her mother's letters, or her friends, to make her homesick, when one evening a bashful young man walked into the stationer's shop, and over to Frank's counter. It was tea time, and this chance customer was unwelcome, for Frank had hoped to dive into the little parlour behind the shop, and, in the language of Nuzotra, borrow a cup of tea from her good-natured landlady. She came forward rather wearily, and faced the young man, who was smiling sheepishly, and seemed uncertain what he wanted. He was rather a toe-haired young man, to Frank's inspection, and his provincial clothes made him appear more of a hobbledy hoi than he really was. In any guise he did not attract Frank. Stamps she suggested politely from behind the counter. No, I've just come from counting them, he said, and the uneasy smile widened. We have about seven sheets at Little X. I'm in the post-office, too. He seemed to think that this conveyed sufficient reason for his presence at an office in the larger town. Frank began to wonder if a certificate of lunacy were all the examination needed to pass him to the offices in this part of the world, when he spoke again. Oh, I say, are you sally? For a minute Frank could not recover the connection of a fortnight ago across the telegraph wires, and wondered what he meant. When she remembered she had presence of mind enough left to take advantage of her alias. No, my name is Frank Payton, she said, with distant politeness. Perhaps it is one of those young ladies in the shop whom you wanted. She glanced in the direction of the busy shop girls behind the legitimate stationery counters. But Dick had the quality of persistence, and though slow his brain was tenacious. No, that won't do, he said, and his expression had the sense of a wink. I've inquired at all the offices for a young lady who came down from the extension, from London, and you are the only one. I've run you to earth at last. I suppose it was only your kid to tell me your name was sally, he said simply. Frank convicted, smiled in apology, and did not wince at the slang. There was no intention of offense in Dick, nor was he of a very different grade to the man whom Frank associated with, and avoided, in London. What he wanted was to follow up in acquaintance which had piqued his curiosity, and he found nothing in Frank to damp his courage. In a vague fashion he felt her a shade more to his liking than the other girls in a like position whom he had met, though he could not have put it into words. Frank was very shabby just then. You cannot squeeze clothes as well as two livings out of twenty-eight shillings a week, and beyond the fact that she did not overdress her hair, or wear strings of beads round a bare neck. There was nothing to divide her from the other girls in the shop save her hands. Next to Magda she had the prettiest hands of all news-otra, and a woman's hands are the sign of breeding that lingers longest, and carries most conviction. Perhaps Dick did not observe such details, but he knew in his honest soul that she differed in some sort to most of his acquaintance, and he managed to explain his desire to improve their friendship. Look here! Will you come out with me on Sunday, he said? I'll come over and we'll go for a walk. Or you could meet me a little way out of the town, and we'd have tea somewhere, and come back to church. I always go to church in the evening, instead of the morning, because it's less crowded. Now Sunday was Frank's worst day, because she had not even worked to fill the long, silent hours, and there was no one at all to speak to. Had she faced herself with the problem of walking out with a young man known only to her across the telegraph wires, she must have gently declined and stopped the whole thing at once. But the boy, he was little more, was merely well-meaning and wanting in all finer knowledge of life, and the trap of church-going snared Frank's feet as innocently as Dick's own. The church has chaperoned more flirtations than any other respectable excuse for drawing men and maidens together, and where the religion is genuine the results seem to be even more serious. Frank did not quite know in what rash moment she agreed to Dick's plan, but the next Sunday saw her desperate young feet walking out from the solitude of the closed streets, away into the spring country, where fitful April and rustic love awaited her together. Dick was of the silent order of wooers, a bucolic shyness that is content to walk stolidly arm in arm with the object of its affection, neither exchanging a word, and so his drawbacks were less manifest than if he had had the town assurance to talk. When he had got over a little of his diffidence, however, he confided most of his bald history to Frank, and with her sad knowledge of youths in general, she found the record refreshingly harmless. He was the son of a small provincial tradesman, who had put his son into the post office as equivalent to a clerkship, and consequently an advance in gentility. Dick had done ponderously well at school, and had plotted credibly through his exams. He really meant to rise in his station in life, and to help his parents. And like all his class, he looked forward to an early marriage as a matter of course, long before he could afford to keep a wife. For the rest he was an affectionate fellow, with rough toe-colored hair, and ill-cut clothes, and he sang in the church choir sometimes, another fatal bypass to Frank's favor. CHAPTER 4 She did not write and tell either her mother or Nuzotra of this new acquaintance. Perhaps even at a distance she felt that strange influence that thrust her out into the desert as one of them, a creature for ever set apart from its own kind, and she craved for the warm human bliss of companionship and a dream fireside, however homely. It was but her womanhood with all its great capacities for bliss. Frank Payton had the impulse of all warm-hearted women to take the love offered her wherever and however she found it, with the added and more dangerous excuse of making the best of her life, and accepting that sphere in which she found herself. He is not a gentleman, she said to herself in self-defense, as the months went on and made it impossible to shut her eyes to the point whether they were drifting. But he is a good fellow, and we think alike and feel alike. And what use is it for me to hanker after the kind of position that mother had when I have to live amongst people like Dick and never mix with anyone else? I have no social status, and if I marry I had better take a good man than wait for the chance of someone with more questionable principles and greater polish. But she knew in her piteous heart that she was denying her birthright and trying to disprove herself. It was in church that Dick jarred least, and came nearest to her in every way. His religion was of a very simple quality, but it was the one subject on which he had thought and read a little. And in spite of a provincial accent in commonplace words, he managed to express the best part of himself to Frank, who like all generous natures glowed into enthusiasm, in catching eagerly at the least reason for appreciation, and raised poor Dick to a pedestal where he posed oddly even in imagination. When they stood side by side in the choir stalls and held the same hymn-book and felt their voices mingle and support each other, Frank found no implacable barrier to prevent her looking steadily to a long life with this same man beside her, despite his limitations. Dick did not wear his dreadful ill-cut black coat on Sunday, either, or the round hat that seemed to press out his ears to more than their usual evidence. When they went for a Sunday tramp, it was an excuse for him to appear in harmless tweed, a short jacket and knickerbockers which the vicar excused beneath the surplus. And with a cap on his rough, fair head, he cut rather an admirable figure of urban strength. And then at last there came a moonlight night, as there does in all women's lives, when the organist had played a voluntary from Tomaze, what does the French master of yearning and passion want with stealing his melodies among the abstract emotions of a congregation, yet they will play him in sacred buildings? And the anthem had been, O for the wings of a dove, one unusually rich boys' voice rising and falling, until Frank struggled with the tears gathering in her eyes, and felt Dick's large, rough hand close over her own, with what seemed to her an inspiration of sympathy. As a matter of fact, they were merely two young people, with a musical taste which made their emotions dangerously near the surface. But by and by, when they were walking home through the echoing streets of the broad old market-town, Dick stopped suddenly and stammered with his own impulse. Frank, dear, I want you to promise to be my wife, he said, as suddenly as the words had overtaken him. Then there was the pause before the answering impulse in the woman's heart. But Nuzotra were very far away, and the infallid mother with the gracious, refined face, and there was only the human nearness and dearness of Dick's broad shoulders, and the hand that was nervously clasping her arm under the old cloak she wore. She could not see the coarse mould of the features in the shade of his tilted cap, and perhaps some of the church music lingered still in his voice to idealize it, for she heard no commonness there. They were just man and woman for the nonce, and if they could have remained at the height of a supreme moment of their lives, lesser things would not have mattered at all. But there is a tomorrow even after a moonlight night, when we come back to earth, and Frank forgot it. And so she said yes, and felt very strangely tired and quiet that night, when she went up to her little bed-sitting room and sat down to realize that her future was out of her own hands at last, in the strange, unknown keeping of a man whom she had only met six months since, and who might be either gentle or rough, but she could not tell, and had trusted to fortune. Frank had gone to provincial duty in April. She left in the following September, and went back to the extension, to wait for the move, into St. Martin's Legrand, which she expected later on. She had all the summer months in which to wander about the lanes with Dick, and idealize the moonlight and the wild rose hedges in her own womanhood, while the man represented a peg on which to hang ownerless affections. In after years that particular country town, and its neighborhood, was always colored for Frank by the period of her life spent there, for it is a pitiful fact that we can only see the beautiful earth through our own little mental mood. The sun will shine in the million different ways for a million different people, but the mere fact that the sun is shining, however gloriously, will not lighten the heart with a new grief in it. To Frank those hedges were always a memory to wince under, and the wild roses had more thorns than petals, yet she thought at the time that she was happy, and when the day of her departure actually came, and Dick saw her off at the station, in the abominable black coat and round hat which she always wore on serious occasions. She cried a little, and attributed it to him. Perhaps she cried over herself, and a vague pain already menacing her from the future. But even as he stood there, leaning his elbows on the carriage door, and thrusting his head into the compartment, some shock of contrast to the well-known faces to which she was going back, seemed to touch her like a cold wind. Gip my love to mother, said Dick facetiously, and tell her I'm coming to make her acquaintance the very first time I get a day out. It was rather a favorite joke of his to speak of Mrs. Peyton as mother, which Frank had carefully ignored even to herself, for fear of feeling it a liberty. It jarred now, and her smile was a little more constrained than usual. Right to me, won't you, dear old boy, she said gently, and Dick promised, adding that she would soon get tired of seeing his fist. He should write so often. And then the train went off, and Frank heaved a sigh, which she called regret, but which sounded like relief. She had not done more than hint of her engagement to her mother, preferring to explain the drawbacks about which she was perfectly honest. I have to live amongst such people. It is better to accept fate and thank myself one of them, she said steadily, and without the least snobbishness. For a glance at Dick relegated him to an undeniable class, even in the eyes of the charitable. And for all her unpretentious clothes and tired face, Frank bore another stamp quite as plainly. It had seemed easy in the country to state her reasons for marrying this type of young man, and she was proportionately surprised when she found herself explaining them rather hotly to her gentle mother, who accepted the position with such perfect courtesy and kindness that Frank suffered an unexpected pang. Oh, mother, dear, it won't be any different, she said in protest of she knew not what. We can all live together, Dick understands that, and you will only feel that you have got a big son. At least, she looked round the familiar homely room and faltered. There was absolutely nothing of value in it. Even the watercolor drawings on the walls had been given by Magda, and for her own work. But on the invalid couch by the little fire which Frank had kept alight for so many weary years, lay a woman with a face alien to Dick's world, a fleecy white shawl wrapped around her shoulders, and one hand softly stroking the tabby cat who was lying on her knees. Yes, dear, said Mrs. Peyton brightly, and when am I to see Dick? Then it blazed over Frank that she did not desire her mother to see Dick, that the meeting she had steadily planned was a horrible incongruity, not because they were any less poor than Dick, or that he would find an atmosphere unknown to him in the little room, but because she would not have asked any of the tradesman's boys, or the shopkeepers round about, to come and see her mother, and because she had asked Dick, and Dick was to be her husband in the future. She turned mechanically to the fire, as to a healthful duty, with the shadow of defeat fallen upon her face. The first of Nuzotra whom she met after her return to London was Hilda Romain. They met unexpectedly in the strand, and Frank had just time to admire the swing of Hilda's advance before she saw who it was. The tall young body and the grave Greek face were upon her even as each recognized the other, and Hilda shook hands warmly. Why, old girl, I didn't know you were back. You never told us, she said reproachfully. Have you seen any of the others? No, I've been devoting myself to mother since I returned, Frank explained with growing difficulty. Every line of Hilda's beauty seemed somehow to make the vision of a toe-headed young man at a carriage window more of a fading vision, with something of the nightmare about it. She felt indeed as if the whole incident of Dick and her engagement had been engendered by a bad attack of indigestion, and she began to be desperate. I have some news for you, she said, with a forced brightness that struck drearily on her own ears. I want to tell the others at our next meeting. I'm engaged. She hardly paused before she flung the whole matter down before Hilda to a clerk in the post office. He is in the same position as myself. He is in my own station of life. You know, we have always agreed that Nuzotra should not go out of their sphere. Hilda hardly seemed to hear the piteous little justification. My dear, I am glad, she said generously, and the blue eyes warm to the color of violence. What is he like? Who is he? Come in and have tea and tell me. Frank followed her into an ABC with a miserable reluctance, and they sat down at a stained marble table and smelt the fumes of many teas, already disposed of, while awaiting their own. The atmosphere of the place somehow reincarnated Dick. He was no longer a phantom. Frank remembered the ill-drawn outline of his face with sudden distinctness. She saw again his badly chosen clothes, and the hat that pressed out his ears. Even while her eyes rested on Hilda's profile, the same grave profile as the Apollo Belvedere's, only fined down to a woman's. The wide noble beauty of it cowed her. He is not a gentleman, Hilda. She said in the stress of the moment's truth. Not what we call a gentleman. But he is a good fellow, suggested Hilda bravely. Oh yes, after his manner. He is the son of a small tradesman. I can't see what one's parents matter, said Hilda, with broad comfort. It occurred to Frank that it was Hilda now who was giving the excuses. Must her relation with Dick always be excused? He has not risen so much above their class, she said with an effort. He is quite content with his position. I think, poor Dick, you must not expect too much, Hilda. You must bring him to see us. Perhaps we may stretch a point and have him to one of our meetings, said Hilda kindly. She did not say, What was your reason for doing this? But as if she felt the unasked question, Frank answered it. Hilda, what do I matter? I am of no importance to any one save myself. Number 312 in the Telegraph Extension A girl clerk marrying a boy clerk, who cares, when mother isn't with me any longer, and you know it must come, I shall be quite alone, and I, somehow I can't bear the loneliness any longer, Hilda. We can't afford to know nice people every day, Nuzotra. Sometimes one of the women whom we call the real girls will keep up an acquaintance with us and we visit them, when we happen to possess a frock in which to go. And every day and all day there is a class round us, that we must meet on the level of an equal fight for bread and butter, and those are the people with whom we live. If we cut ourselves off from these, we are alone. Hilda's lower lip took the proudest of its tender curves, and that wonderful grave glance of hers went away from Frank, across the cheap hot tea shop, out to the busy strand where many grades of life jostled each other, and all it seemed to her unlovely. She saw the exaggerated face of an actor drift by, the sharpened features of a newspaper man, the nondescript London type of a London clerk. No, not this, or this, or this, for her. And yet, as Frank said, if they turned from this, their womanhood must go hungry. Then I will be alone, dear, she said in a low voice, answering the stream of male faces beyond the cakes in the shop window, as much as she answered Frank. I couldn't bear it, said Frank blankly. You don't know what it was. Work all day, and no one to speak to, and the evenings with nothing to do. And I'm not flair. I can't live on myself and not lack for company. One couldn't even go out and see things as one can in London. And then Dick came, and so I took him. And therein lies one tragedy of our sex which occurs daily, said Hilda, in her heart. For she saw all Frank's disaster, but allowed she spoke no word of dissuasion, and that made Frank more miserable still. She was afraid to face the rest of Nuzotra, with her news, knowing that she should meet the same hearty encouragement, and feel the traitor in herself. For as old ways and associations swung back upon her, she lost touch even with the humanity of Dick's personality, the little refinements of living with an educated person, which she had grown used to and taken as part of existence, now started out oddly in contrast to something she had always known she should have to endure. She had thought to influence Dick and alter him to her own turn of thought in a measure, and had comforted herself with the mutual taste for music, even though she might not mitigate his physical drawbacks. But a grim doubt began to make her heart sink more after each letter which she received from him. He wrote the excellent hand of a clerk, and his expressions were irreproachable, even if they smacked of the elementary school. But it was when Dick became facetious that their natures sprang to alien spheres, and once more Frank experienced the appalling difference in senses of humor. Dick's jokes were of the kind that seize a wit in exchanging hats on a bank holiday. They were not coarse because he was simply a young man emerging from the peasant class into the bourgeoisie, and by no means vicious. Nevertheless, Frank found herself totally unable to do more than ignore them, with courteous silence, and began to look forward to his appearance in her home circle with actual dread. It came at last that touchstone of a meeting, for Dick got his holiday in December, and devoted a week of it to seeing London and Frank. His lady love was working into the late afternoons that week, and could not even meet him and pilot him to the suburb where she lived. She was obliged to drive through her day with blind misgiving, and the hope that Dick might not get to her home before her, for everything seemed to hinder her leaving the office. There were purple shadows under her eyes and a hunted look on her fagged face, when at last she turned in at her own gate, and opening the door with her latch-key, learned that what she had feared had happened by a loud laugh from the sitting-room, and a familiar voice grinding her nerves afresh. I'll do it, Mrs. Peyton. I'm quite a ladies' man, you know. Recognize a teapot from a warming pan, and boil the beans to the minute. Hasn't Frank told you? Frank hasn't told any tales. Frank tried to say gaily from the hall as she pushed open the sitting-room door, and entered the room. Her mother was lying in her usual place, the table drawn up beside her with the tea-things, and no change in the placid kindness of her manor. Dick had evidently been having a comic fight with the kettle, at which he was pretending to spar, and telling the spluttering spout that he wouldn't stand any of its nonsense, don't you know. He meant to have the tea made, or he'd make it warmer than the fire for the delinquent. Mrs. Peyton was even smiling faintly at these efforts to amuse her, as Frank came forward. But in a flash the girl's eyes saw the gentle, worn face and figure as something set apart from the young man in a horrible suit of dittos, which had been specially purchased as a compliment to his London holiday. Dick's ears did not seem to need the round hat to set them out today, and his hair was preferable in its toe-like condition to being flattened with pomade as now. He kissed Frank noisily, and she sat down rather limply, as if the operation resembled the last straw which overtaxed the endurance of the camel. That was a hideous tea-party, punctuated with Dick's rallying remarks, a new form of his wit, and her own heroic efforts to be cheerful and bright against the increasing silence which threatened to overwhelm her. As a matter of fact Mrs. Peyton did a surprising amount of the talking, and Dick had much to relate of the acquaintance and courtship, until the eyesays tumbled out of his mouth in every sentence. Hasn't Frank told you this? Didn't Frank explain that, he demanded? Oh, I say, Frank, do you remember trying to kid me about your not being sally? That was cruel of you. It was really. Had Dick always said cruel for cruel, had it really always been as bad as this, in the lanes where the dog roses grew, and in church, she clung to the memory of his honest convictions, and their talk of them as to a saving hope of grace, when he left at last, thank God. She followed him into the little hall, in her sweet heart at remorse, and kissed him as one asking pardon for the lack she found in him. Come again soon, dear, she said, and we will go about together. Mother is tired to-night, or I would ask you to stay to supper. Good night, Dick. I'm sorry I have been so dull. She watched him go out into the quiet suburban night, and felt as if a greater loneliness took hold upon her after his departure. Yet it seemed an old pain now, a part of her life which must have been accepted by her anyway. There were not many things in Frank Payton's life which it made her feel mean to remember, but the time which Dick spent in town had a furtive humor about it in her memory, for all her life. She made no settled plan of campaign, but she asked Dick to call for her at the office, and contrived to introduce him to the girl who sat next but won to her in her division. This girl was pretty in spite of the universal taste in blouses. She had a well-coloured face that Dick could understand, and a style of batonage that matched his own. Frank felt herself Machiavellian, as she threw them more and more together, herself acting third, but the instinct of self-preservation rises above morality. This twenty-three years made him susceptible, but he fully appreciated his obligations with regard to Frank and struggled against his dissatisfaction, only urging her to dress her hair like pretty Nelly, and to buck up after the manner of that sprightly young lady. Until all Frank's tired soul longed for the finale, the weak Dick had meant to spend in town had, however, lengthened into a fortnight's discomfort before she ventured to suggest, as softly as only a woman in the wrong can do, that they had made a mistake. At first Dick would not hear of it. He blustered of his own certainty with regard to his feelings, and accused Frank of being fickle, then of being jealous, then of being stuck up, the only shaft that made her wince. But it was so obviously his self-love that was wounded, that she applied the balm of representing him to himself as only too attractive, and is poor Nelly to be unhappy because we can't be sensible, and own that we are better friends than lovers, she suggested, in such a droid fashion, that she felt ashamed of her own facility. It took another half-hour to soak the flattery well into Dick's mind, but it was evident that it comforted him, only at the end when he shook hands with Frank, and held hers in an honest grip. He had almost invited her to his and Nelly's wedding in a momentary expansiveness. Did she get a glimpse of the old glamour, and felt her justification? I was awfully fond of you, Frank, he said, and his eyes were honest if his lips were coarse. You know, we seemed such chums down at X, that I fancied we should do well in a snug little house of our own. Just you and me together, and let the world go hang. Yes, dear, she answered with a caught breath. It did seem possible, didn't it? But it wasn't for me. Things have seemed different in London, haven't they? Yes, things have seemed different in London, echoed Frank. Well, give me a kiss, just to show there's no ill-feeling old girl, said Dick. Nelly won't mind that, you know. Frank put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him gently. Kissed goodbye to home and homely love, and the little bearings and forbearings of every day that make up married life, also. But she had really parted from them on the day that Dick first came to see her mother. She could not have altered Dick. He had certain good qualities of the peasant nature in him, but he had also the slow tenacity of the peasant brain. Frank would have gone downhill with him, before she could have dragged Dick up to a higher standpoint. But downhill looks desirable to tired feet, and though she knew that what she had done was inevitable, she went straight into the sitting-room after Dick had gone, and sitting down on the floor by her mother's couch, she buried her face against the invalid's gown. Mrs. Paton's thin hand rested on the girl's tumbled hair in silence for a while, but when at last she spoke, her voice trembled a little, with the first betrayal of infinite relief that she had shown. Is Dick gone, dear? Yes, mother, for good. There was another pause, and then the refined voice that was familiar music to Frank's sensitive ears spoke again. I am very glad that I need not lose my little girl after all. One three one two in the telegraph extension department was a necessary personality here. Frank went back to the old life with its hopeless outlook, and did not even sigh when Nelly's face daily simpered into a nearer confession of bliss. Dick was one of many admirers to Nelly, but strangely enough the fact of his having in some sort belonged to Frank, seemed to give him an exceptional value in her eyes, and his suit prospered. It was not strange to Nelly, perhaps, or to the rest of the department, for it was only Frank herself who felt so plainly her own unimportance that at times she seemed merely a unit drowning in the enormous size of a world which was so full and yet so empty for her. It would have surprised her very much. Could she have realized the extent of her own influence in the circle immediately around her? Even when she had a momentary glimpse of such truth she found it hard to believe, but she accepted it gratefully and humbly as a beautiful gift rather than the result of her own individuality. One such glimpse came to dazzle her on the day that Nelly appeared at the office with a new ring on her finger, a small and yet rather pretentious ring with two corals and a pearl. Frank had worn no ring when engaged to Dick out of respect for his pocket, but Nelly liked gods, and she was of a shrewd mind with commercial instincts inherited from her immediate forebears. She preferred to parade her appropriation. Even if it doesn't come off she added in her own mind, and I dare say he will let me keep the ring anyhow. Frank did not see the new adornment on Nelly's plump, soiled hand, however, owing to a larger excitement. She was working in the later day that week, that is to say she went on duty at twelve and left at eight. When she reached the office she was aware of newspaper boys running up and down Cheepside, yelling specials almost thrusting them into the hands of those snatching at them as eagerly in their turn. Of the whole live heart of the city stirred in some uncommon way there had been a victory on the other side of the world, a victory that affected Great Britain, and it was of a nature to be splendidly popular. The civil departments of the Empire at home and abroad are not supposed to be of a humanity that takes a keen interest in the success of the nation, but as a matter of fact, party feeling runs nowhere more high than in such little communities, with an existence almost a world of their own, such as the Telegraph Extension Department. The stock exchange is the best instance of this, for its patriotism is not all due to the rise and fall of the markets, and it is the first to break out and roar for imperial reasons, and the last to be controlled, for weeks the extension had been burning over the uncertainty on the other side of the world, which had ended in victory. Now when Frank entered, she found the place in a ferment. Someone had brought in a paper, and the news was known, in vain the supervisors endeavored to keep order in the groups, and to regulate the work as usual. The clerk's male and female took advantage of the dinner hour to rush down to the refreshment rooms, each division having its own demonstration that nothing could repress. They took the chairs and mounted a special leader to start them and to keep time. They sang the national anthem in crashing chorus, and gave three cheers that could be heard in St. Martin's Legrand, where no doubt similar demonstrations were taking place. Take men and women and bind them down to labor in artificial light and stale air for eight to ten hours of their day. You will drain the light and color from their faces, until, to look at them, you will think them poor mechanical things with all the vitality drained away, but touch the old spark of racial pride in the meanest worker whom the relentless nation is grinding daily to help the empire's existence forward. And the old life and light and heat will burst out in such ringing cheers, as startled Frank Payton on her entrance to the refreshment rooms that day. They were waiting for her. Her own division had spared to begin, until she should be there to give the note, and greeted her with an eager buzz. Miss Payton, we want you to start us. And before she knew where she was, Frank was lifted onto a chair, the group closing in on her with impatience. A rush of feelings swept over her at the press of the shoulders round her, the obedient lifted faces waiting for her voice, and she recognized, even in her modesty, that she had some sort of a world here, that she was not only one with these, but had influenced them, and was necessary to them. She steadied herself with an effort, and lifted the first pure strong note across the hot crowded room with a call like prayer. God, the voices caught the key and took up the national anthem. Save our gracious king! But after the usual two verses and the pause, during which they looked at Frank to see if she were going on, she drew breath and changed the strain to the old doxology. These God, from whom all blessings flow, the department had already sung the national anthem in various keys, and rule Britannia, and soldiers of the queen, but the unexpectedness of the doxology struck an instant response. Those who were not singing joined in, so that most of the extension were swelling the chorus behind Frank Payton's clear, leading voice, and a message from those in authority which came up to know the cause of the disturbance, was answered breathlessly by the supervisors. We can't hold the department, sir. No one just then could have held the department. They pressed up round the chair, where Frank still stood looking over the clustered faces, and singing with all her heart and soul, as if she were one with the toiling men and women whose unlovely lives were like her own. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above, angelic host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Some consolation out of the stress of daily life touched her, a sudden acknowledgment from fate, for all the cheerfully born days and hours and years, during which the rites of her womanhood had been merged into mere mechanical existence. She no longer grudged her lot. She was one of a mighty nation whose individuality, even in the unit, can never be stamped out, though she was merely Frank Payton three-one-two of his majesty's telegraph extension, leading the whole department in thankful praise for national victory. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 They passed one resolution. Your subcommittee believed. You can lighten the curse of Adam, when you've lightened the curse of Eve. But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and each other, for ever and ever, amen. Rudyard Kipling Flair's publisher had given her a book, for which good deed he will most assuredly go to heaven. Flair always thought of this gentleman as a favored being who lived in an atmosphere of books. Indeed he had only to speak through a telephone, and books were brought to him, that he might raise humbler mortals to a pinnacle of happiness, by bestowing stray volumes upon them. Her impression of him was rather confirmed by the fact that when she saw him, he was generally controlling an amused smile, which she vaguely regarded as the outcome of his happy lot, that she had probably caused the amusement, did not occur to Flair. The book in question was poems and a struggle ensued in Flair's mind between a fierce desire to devour it, and a duty which took her to the cat's home, with a basket and what remained of a miserable stray whom R.L. had met upon the housetops. As he had amply breakfasted with her, Flair, for once, was indignant with him because he seemed to consider that a portion of the stray cat's right ear would make a bone bush, and she rescued the poor thing, and fed and nursed it in her bedroom, until such time as she could tenderly convey it to the nearest home. Lost animals were Flair's chief charity. She not only subscribed to the homes where she took them, but she spent many pennies on fares to get the strays there, and had acquired a special basket for the cat's, and a collar and chain for the dog's after some self-denial and economy. We all have our good angels guiding us to practice the harder virtues. Flair's were none the less a spiritual agency because they came in furry guise, and perhaps if she never got to heaven, she is now an honored guest in some celestial zoo for her unfailing charities on earth. The cat and duty having carried the day, Flair went out and left the book on the table in the committee room, as the one with the packing cases was called, by a stretch of courtesy, and Beatrice and Alma happening to arrive before her return, they fell upon it and sucked in its sweetness, whereby the donor gained yet another double blessing for his gift. The book was Stars of the Desert, and Beatrice and Alma were sitting close together when Magda entered, drinking this in, and when the hands were fallen apart and the loving lips groan loathe. A little wind from under the stars came down and caressed us both. There was no respect of persons about Magda, nor any understanding of poetry or reverence for it. Beatrice and Alma, being in Africa, naturally did not hear her enter, and she made a sarcastic remark about their indifference, and went to take off her hat. Upon her return, however, they were still engrossed, and that was too much for her self-respect, so she threw the nearest cushion at them, tried to snatch the book, and awaited results. "'Sit on her head while I finish this, will you, Alma?' Beatrice said dreamily, for she was in the midst of the date garden. So Alma went to the fray, and being nearly overpowered by the taller Magda, was reinforced by Frank, and by the time that flair returned, it looked like a rugby match, with Beatrice clasping the book for the leather, in their midst. Flair rescued her property and sat upon it until she should have time to see what lay between the covers, and gradually the howls ceased and the society sat down. "'What shall we talk about tonight?' said Hilda, a little breathlessly, for she had lent her weight and strength to the losing side, and it had been a tug of war. "'Oh, for heaven's sake, talk about the leaders in tonight's papers. Anything that is prose,' said Magda, whose propensities were war-like, and forced her to throw down the glove again. "'Magda doesn't understand poetry,' mocked Flair. "'That's what makes her so annoyed with it. "'Know what French forms are, April? By Jove, if I won't write you a rondelle, that you will understand. It's not true French, but it's Swinburne's invention and twill-serve. Pass me a piece of paper, someone. Now I suppose we mustn't breathe while the depless work is shaping in Flair's brain,' retorted Magda. As the fountain pen flew over an old envelope that Beatrice contributed. "'What nonsense are you writing, Flair? Don't look over my shoulder-worned flair, edging away. Go on talking all of you. I can write through traffic. There was a murmured buzz, a note lower than usual out of respect for the effort, and then Flair flung the envelope across to Alma, who choked and read it out. "'This is Magda's rondelle,' suited to her capacity. The making up is very hard and bitter. Bitter is my cup. I must reduce by half a yard the making up. For fear that there should be a rupture, I can't leave my sub on guard. Our office boy is but a pup. No single ad dare I discard. Oh, would I could go out to sup. But that I fear me would retard the making up. I hope you understand it,' said Flair, with sweet politeness to Magda, who was laughing in spite of herself. "'I like it a great deal better than those awful things you sometimes get into the gazettes,' Magda declared brazenly. Now there is something comprehensible in this one. Do let me have that scribbled envelope, Alma, and I will keep it as a proof of Flair's best work. And besides, there is a pathetic point that appeals to me in the not being able to get out and meal. I dined at ten the other night, because of the printers being late with the polls. All the same I'm tired of poetry. I've had to contend with so much tonight. Let's talk prose, please. The evening papers will do, as I suggested. Has anybody seen them? The article in tonight's gazette happens to deal with female labor, said Winnie. It suits, dear. B.A. says the Education Bill is rather a boon than otherwise to her line of business, remarked Frank. I met her yesterday in an A.B.C., dining sumptuously off an old meat pie and two cups of coffee. She told me she has seen more posts offered to female teachers at 120 pounds than she has for a long time. What's the reason? Are men too dear? Oh, the LCC have got a little money in hand, and are making a show of it, I suppose. One mustn't hope that it's a permanent improvement, or a sudden awakening to female worth. You see, you can't get over the fact that women can keep soul and body together on less than men, and so the price of labor will always differ. The scale might improve, though, said Beatrice in her soft, trenchant tones. At present it is, roughly speaking, one-third below for women. They might make it a quarter. In order that we may buy ribbons, said Alma, that's another point against us, and we can't alter our characteristics. I know perfectly well that if I get a good salary, I shall buy things with pink and blue ribbons in them, but I should not feed myself any better than I do. We are rather unsensible, even when we have learned by experience, and the men know that and argue from it. Alma's English was so frequently her own invention that it was open to criticism, but her facts were uncontrovertible. Women ought to be fed by the state, said Hilda positively, and the wage fixed with so much allowed and insisted on for food, then there would not be a chance to sacrifice health to sentiment, and it would be political economy in the main to feed us well in order to improve the race, to say nothing of individual effort. Women, as Alma says, don't keep a steady head enough to spend wisely. Duty seems to call one way, charity calls another, inclination calls a third. In the end, the woman herself starves. Hilda speaks as if we were merely in existence to improve the race began winnie, quietly for once, and without laughter. So we are according to nature, Hilda retorted. We don't come under any heading of nature, Nuzotra. Then they all began to speak quickly, fighting to express their special experience, and hardly waiting for their turn, which was against the rules. If you fix a wage, you let in a lot of incompetence, anyhow. What we want is a sliding scale, and tests. Why shouldn't the woman who can get through as much work as a man be paid the same? Let the incompetence go to the bottom. That doesn't touch the feeding theory. And they argue that the man when he marries is the one to support his family, not the woman. Which isn't true nowadays, but anyhow it might be limited by marriage or adapted to need. If government wishes to encourage increase of population, what we want is mere justice, and the opening of a few more trades to us. They push women out of it in the unions. The compositor's trade is a fair instance. We shall never have unions of our own, until we learn to combine. And the experience of all ages is against that. Of all ages. Hilda's voice rang out again. But not of this age. Look what we've done in thirty years. Look how we fought our way, without traditions. Without the necessary physique. With men who have everything in their favor, to oppose us. And we are getting on. We are getting on. Take Nuzotra as a fair instance. We are only the failures by which a creator learns to improve his model. Look at the next generation, and how we are training our girls to be as healthy as boys, and to live with the same liberty and not abuse it. In another twenty years, even if we go on as fast as we have, we shall raise women who can compete with men as nearly on a level, as nature will go, and with brains to overweight the physical difference. Then they will have a right to demand equality of terms, and they will get them. And Nuzotra, said Beatrice, the locusts and the bridge, said Flair under her breath. The pole doesn't come in doing the work once you've got it, said Magda. We will do or die then, and probably die. But the real hardship is the getting it. If a boy is to earn his own living, parents have seen a qua known that his parents and guardians train him for it. Look for the birth, put him into it, and do their best to help him when there. I mean parents in the position of our own. In a lower grade I believe it is more rough and tumble. But when it comes to us, we are simply turned out at a minute's notice. I find you'll have to work now. Things are less flourishing with me than I hoped. Go out and find employment, my dear, as if it lay ready to our hand just round the corner, and as if we were capable of anything, untrained and totally without experience. Funny thing, isn't it, that a woman has so much initiative. We generally bring common sense to bear on the problem, train ourselves as much as we can, and find work. Somehow, then we starve, but we generally scrape along until the works wear out. This was Frank's contribution. Boys are given all the chances. Oh, if I had been a boy, I would have done something, if only with a ready-made future which would be my right. At this point Alma interrupted, because she wanted more claret and soda. Hilda, being the nearest to the packing-case, Alma had been trying to break in on her conversation with Magda for some minutes, and to gently attract her attention by waving an empty glass. But Hilda had been too absorbed, and so Alma began to sing to herself softly. It was the oldest of cod-on-cores, and is introduced when some wearied comedian has been recalled so many times that the extraverses of a topical song have all been used up. I want half a pint of mild and bitter chanted Alma on C natural, and Frank, who unfortunately knew the trick, took it up soda voce as the man in the wings on E. I want half a pint of mild and bitter. Then Alma raised her voice and sang forte on G. I want half a pint of mild and bitter. Oh, go out and pay for it, then, said Frank with a chuckle. Here, Hilda, give Alma something more to drink for goodness' sake. Hilda did as requested, but absently. Her mind was more with the question of wages than with what it would buy, though a shilling to Nuzotra means just so much bread and butter and tea, as the market value will allow from it. In Alma's case at the present moment it meant a bottle of claret, of which she had drunk about a penny worth, and wondered in her generous heart if she had mulked at anyone else of their rightful share. Having supplied her wants, however, Hilda rose to break up the meeting, with a final corollary born of her thought. After all, what do we matter? We are a passing phase, the blood of the forerunners in Mrs. Humphrey Ward's book. There will be no chance for Nuzotra, but there will be for those who come after us in the path that we have worn. Legislature for women will be the natural outcome of work for women. It always has been, and it is inevitable. But not yet, and not for us. For us there is only to stand shoulder to shoulder, to be kind to each other individually, and to let trade unions and theories go until the age is ripe for them. Men cannot help us. The real girls cannot help us. But we can help each other. There was a little silence as her voice ceased, and they stood looking into each other's faces. Then Frank said unexpectedly, Amen.