 DEDICATION TO THOSE HIGH HEARTS THAT COULD NOT FEAR, TO THOSE WEEK HANDS THAT COULD NOT FAIL, TO FEBEL FEET THAT DARED A SALE THE PATHWAY OF THE PIONEER, TO THOSE WHO MEN CAST OFF, PAST BY, YET USED FOR VANTAGE AS THEY COULD, THEIR HANDICAP OF WOMENHOOD, WHO DIING ONLY COULD NOT DIE. THROUGH THE ORDEAL OF BLOOD THEY PAST, AND CAME BACK WITHOUT FAITH IN GOD, THE OUTCASTS PATH THEY TROD, AND FOUGHT THEIR WAY TO HIM AT LAST, BENEATH OF VICTORS DIADEM, THEIR GHOSTS MAY SEE A RACE BEGIN, WHO SHALL NOT FAIL, AND SAY, THEY WIN, WE OTHERS SHOW THE WAY TO THEM. The multitude of victims has not robbed us of courage in the past, nor will it rob us in the future, till victory dawns. You who survive will conquer, and in your victory we the dead shall live. Take no thought for us. The blood of the forerunners is like the seed which the wise husbandman scatters on the fertile ground. Work there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome, no opposition that cannot be destroyed, the how and the when only remain to be solved. You, more fortunate than we, will find the clue to the riddle when all things are accomplished and the times are ripe. Hope, hope always, and waste no time in weeping. From Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Lady Rose's Daughter, Chapter 21, Page 358. End of Dedication and Quotation Chapter 1 We have done with hope and honor. We are lost to love and truth. We are slipping down the ladder, rung by rung. And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young. Rudyard Kipling Flair Caldecott turned on the gas and pushed the chairs into position. Then she let down the blind and shut out the roaring March evening and the brown twilight. The night seemed full of wind and fluttering leaves, even in this little side street where trees were not. The women's skirts flapped as they passed, and the men had to hold on their hats. Passers-by were few, but those who came in sight battled with the wind and said in dumb show that it was well to be indoors. It was cold in the bearer room, as well as in the streets, even though a large stove had been burning for an hour. The gas-lamp would help, so Flair turned it up full, and it revealed every detail of the unusual furnishing, searching into distant corners and displaying three large packing cases, with straw protruding through the spaces between the boards, as if someone were perpetually moving house. Besides the packing cases there were seven chairs of no resemblance at all to each other, which appeared to have been forcibly gathered together rather than naturally associated. There was also a bare deal-table on which lay a large dictionary and some typewritten sheets, the fifth chapter of Flair's last story, which she was correcting while waiting for the assembling of Nuzotra, for she could not afford to waste time. A rug had been laid on the oil-clothed floor before the half-circle of the seven chairs, and on one of the forlorn packing cases was an old drawing board converting it into a sideboard to carry a siphon of soda water, a bottle of cheap claret, and half a bottle of whiskey. There were cigarettes and matches on the mantle shelf. This completed the furnishing. The room had two doors to it, one leading into a long passage and vents to the entrance of the house, the other to a small dressing-room where, every time that the society met, Flair carried her own lamp and hung up a square of looking-glass. She also provided a towel, soap, and a brush and comb from her own bedroom, which was up six flights of stairs at the top of the gaunt-echoing building. And when the meeting was over and she was tired and wanted to get into bed, she had most of these things to convey up the six flights again, which necessitated two, if not three, journeys before she could do so, it being a stipulation to her use of the empty room with the packing cases, that she should leave it as she found it. The door which led into the passage had a strip of cardboard, some two feet wide hanging from a nail, on the inner side, and black-lettered like a label, Nuzotra. This also Flair removed after each irregular meeting of the society to which she belonged by election of circumstances, which is the only ballot known to Nuzotra. There was an air of watchfulness and expectancy about the girl as she stood reading the typed sheets by the table, which seemed habitual to her, but nonetheless wearying. It was as if she set a dreadful guard upon herself that could not be laid aside even when she slept, for fear of being taken unawares in a dream. Once she raised her head from the sheet as she turned it, and looked down the long room as a sentry might look up and down his beat, and her eyes were haunted by a shadow of some threatened fear in their momentary expression. But it was only when she was alone that the expectancy took possession of the young face. At the sound of approaching voices and steps it had vanished, and Flair turned to meet her friends, who had never seen the former look, nor knew of its existence. The door with the label opened almost before someone tapped, to admit first an exclamation, and then two girls. There ye are, dear. We're just clammed. There's plenty wind to-night. Ugh! I'm so blown about I'm just a tatty-bogal. Through the high sweet voice ran an accompaniment of merriment, not a full laugh, only the soul of it, and the speaker stooped and offered Flair a cold cheek, as soft and pink as the heart of a wild rose. Something of the wild rose was in her slender swaying figure, too, a most un-British grace, a haunting memory of France and the carriage of her women. Yet the voice came from the North Country. An East wind is it, said Flair. That accounts for my skin playing me tricks. It feels like a nutmeg grater. Where did you meet Alma? On the doorstep. Using the most awful swear words, dear. Mrs. Bonnet let us in. She joined us on the doorstep, too, with plenty parcels. Oh, it was a kind of at-home on the doorstep, and Alma was so cross with the wind I could do nothing but laugh. The voice trailed off into its irresistible, provoking merriment. And the hearers laughed, too, because Winnie Dare carried the spirit of mirth with her wherever she came. She had laughed through hunger and despair and illness, and whenever fortune did not hit her heavily at the moment, she staked her buoyant vitality with the born instinct of the gambler. Tomorrow she would suffer again, for today she found something to laugh at, though half pitifully. I do hate wind, said the smaller girl, who had entered with her. Loosening a fine wool wrap that had been twisted round her neck and over her mouth, Flair took it from her gently and laid her face a shade more tenderly against the one revealed. How's the cough, Alma? she said. Better. I must be well by next week. We sing for the merry milkmaid to-morrow, and if I get in, we rehearse at once. May I go and take my hat off and clean up, Flair? I'm so dirty. Yes, of course. Where have you come from then? Haven't you been home for a meal? I borrowed a cup of tea with Hilda, said Alma, simply crossing the long space to the dressing room at Winnie's heels. As they went they passed the packing case and its refreshments. Have a drink? said Flair, hospitably. Alma laughed and declined. Winnie laughed and accepted. She lingered to mix herself a small portion of whiskey and soda, Flair looking on with comprehension. Have you had any meals today, Winnie? she said in a slightly desperate tone. The rose-hued face turned to her brightly. The hazel-grey eyes smiled with love. For the minute Winnie Dare was at her prettiest. I lunched out, dear, she said with a little nod and in a lower tone. Oh! said Flair, accepting the confidence and attempting no comment. Winnie did not lunch alone then. Well, but if it had not happened she might not have lunched at all. Did he turn up at the office? she asked, because it was not good to drop a confidence amongst Nuzotra, be it never so slight. There might come a day when there was no information offered and that, in Flair's experience, preceded disaster. She never operated and she never washed her hands of the responsibility and said, Don't tell me then. She listened. It was the only help she could offer to all her friends alike. He sent up a message. I don't know what Mr. Jennings thinks. And I joined him outside. Winnie laughed again. Life often amused her, even when she was staking it most recklessly. How is the Jennings man? Far too civil. He is a beast. Most employers are, said Flair, out of the ugliness of her experience. Did he kiss his hand to you this time? When you left to lunch with somebody? No, the second clerk was in the office. I wonder what these firms engage a typist for, to add a little excitement to the manager's business day, I sometimes think. The Jennings man told me I had a lovely figure yesterday and I told him I should be glad if he would go away and not interrupt my work. I am getting positively rude to him, though he is my employer and I don't see how to alter it. It would be a nuisance if you had to leave. I can't, dear. I simply derent. When should I get anything else? And somebody is getting so jealous. He threatens to come up to the office and speak to Jennings for me. There will be plenty rows, dear. What am I to do with them? Hmm, said Flair Dryly. I'll think. Hurry up, Winnie. There's the doorbell. It's Frank, most likely. But as the last frill of Winnie's skirt vanished into the further room, the door was pushed open to admit a guest of the society who, though always welcome, was not one of them, being a very large, very handsome cat. He was what is technically called a black tabby, the groundwork of his coat being black, with gray markings like watered silk, which hardly showed in some lights. He was not at any time a black cat, however, his singularly broad nose being distinctly brown, and the bracelets round his neck, standing out against lighter fur. He entered with the air of a man with his hands in his pockets, lounged across the room, paused at the table, and after measuring the space as cats do, sprang with perfect aim and balance on to Flair's manuscript. She did not attempt a protest, but she did make a hurried note of thanksgiving, that the streets were dry, because most of her manuscript bore the cat's sign-manual in four toes smudges, when he had been out walking on a muddy day, and came straight into her domains. He was originally the property of Mrs. Bonnet, Flair's landlady, who tolerated him, because he never mewed, except in dire necessity, and did not desire to be nursed. When Flair drifted into the two small rooms at the top of the house, the cat made her acquaintance, and when Mrs. Bonnet cooked her a chop, she secretly kept him the tail. Flair was strictly honest. Had she been examined over the subject, she would have said that he was her landlady's cat, but in the tenderness of her heart she knew that they would share their last scraps together, and it sometimes came to counting the pens. Newz Ultra knew it too, and acknowledged him. He attended all their meetings, and by now wore a collar on whose plate was engraved his name and address. My sakes, Miss, said Mrs. Bonnet, you don't suppose as anybody would want to steal him, why the neighbourhoods so full of cats, the trouble is not to have one. No one's likely to want another. Flair dodged the question, feeling herself weak. Nevertheless the cat wore his collar, and gained the respect of the street in consequence. His name would have astonished a finder had he really strayed, and they had seen it, for Flair had not had her own, or Mrs. Bonnet's, engraved above the address. The cat's own title was plainly to be read, though it must be owned, between inverted commas. His name was R. L. Stevenson. Flair had christened him for the pleasure of daily addressing a household deity, and as he had never had another he accepted it without question. Newz Ultra called him R. L. for short. He had flourished on the tails of Flair's chops, and having had some original beauty to develop, warranted in some sort the fear in Flair's mind that had resulted in his wearing a collar. As he sat upon the manuscript with his solemn face and wonderful eyes turned on Flair, he looked like a monument of tabby fur, but he was undeniably handsome. The relations between them were obvious, from the way in which he thrust his blunt nose into her hand, as she stood beside him and rubbed a wet muzzle softly on her palm. Pretty old kitten, said Flair softly, and with foolish flattery, for the enormous tome would have made six kittens. By the time that Winnie and Alma had done gossiping and cleaning up, the remainder of the society had arrived, and proceeded to assemble one girl after another, filing out to take off her hat, and returning to drop into the chair, which was her own by custom. They represented, pretty collectively, the professions open to women of no deliberate training, some education, and too much delicacy for the fight before them. Hilda Romaine, of the ladies' cat-gut band, may stand for music. She played in a very successful, feminine orchestra at halls and amateur entertainments, whereby the conductor began a successful career, and the members usually starved if they did not marry. Frank Payton was of His Majesty's Telegraph Extension Department in His Majesty's Post Office, a government official, please, on twenty-eight shillings a week, working eight hours a day, and half the nights at exams if she wanted more salary. Magda Burke was art editor and journalist, with the chance of dismissal at the proprietor's pleasure at a week's notice. We give no characters in journalism. Dismissal spells failure, but the causes will not bear recording, because they usually reflect on those in authority, not on those employed. Alma Craig, actress, with seven years' experience behind her, and glad to take thirty shillings a week and walk on. She had no influence and no figure. She played old women and boys as an artist, but the stage wants legs and private means. Beatrice Barley, music teacher and preparatory mistress, in a second-rate private school, because her qualifications were not quite sufficient for a high school, Beatrice held two medals for music, and had taken scholarships. But after a struggle through her matric, she had never had either money, health, or time for the inter, which she might have passed more easily, and that barred the letters to her name. Her gifts were unluckily social, which are no good in the labour market. Winifred Dare, typist and shorthand clerk, in a situation found for her by the firm which had taught her, and which if she refused or threw it up, would find her no more, the less said about the situation, the better, as witnessed the gentleman who kissed his hand to her, had admired her figure, and Flair Caldecott, fictionist, freelance journalist, reporter, literary hack of all kinds, who lived on whatever work she could get, and had neither illusions nor ideals, left from eight years of honest work. They were all, heaven help them, the daughters of professional men, who with the lack of responsibility, peculiar to their generation, had had families for whom they had not the least intention to provide. Then they had partially failed, sometimes utterly, and died, leaving their daughters an inheritance of refinement that was nothing but a handicap. For the professions entail a certain amount of education and money, and these, again, presuppose means that rank the holders among the upper middle classes, families whose women, at least, have been trained in a degree of idleness, of sheltered home life, of all the instincts and tastes that belong to the leisure classes. Then comes a new order of things that forces the new generation to stand on its own feet, and the girl who inherits her father's and mother's qualities finds herself suddenly thrust on to the lower plane of the workman's daughter to compete with a coarser physique, a less sensitive mind, and more capable qualities for the labour that both must gain or starve. The workman's daughter is coming up to meet the professional man's daughter coming down. They meet on a mid-level, and the one brings push to match the other's brains. The more refined animal is at a disadvantage, because she has lost her own sphere and does not take kindly to the lower. She is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good-red herring. Then she becomes one of Nuzotra, who are the outsiders of life, and like all pioneers, is lost without record for the good of a future of which she knows nothing, and which, being a woman, it is no comfort to her to contemplate. Have you ever seen in the handsome cabs of London some poor sorry hack which looks as if it were only held up by the shafts to get through its daily work, yet which, compared with the stronger, clumsier roadster trotting sluggishly by, still shows signs of breeding? The cab men usually prefer an old broken-down hunter or a half-breed with some blood in him, however worn out to the nearer relations of the cart-horse, for they still have the mouth that can feel a bit, and the instinctive pride that seems to make them willing to go until the patient hearts mercifully break. And there is another loss for the cab owner. Nuzotra are very like the broken-down hunter. They cannot quite forget the gentle breeding, and they pull at the collar until they drop and die in the open road, stumbling the last half-mile perhaps, but going game to the last. There was plenty of diversity in the seven faces gathered in a broken circle, in the long bare room, but there was not much beauty. The life they had led for some years had worn it away, and left the eager, fighting look of young men who have their own way to make in the world. Those who might have been the ordinary pretty girl of the upper-middle class had lost their attributes of round curves and color and bright expressions, something also of that intangible feminine quality, which expects attention from the world at large merely because it is feminine. The anxiety about bread and butter soon destroys that look. Nuzotra learn that they are not likely to be spoiled by the men who look upon them simply as rivals, most fortunately handicapped by sex, but certainly not rendered more attractive by it. And if such consideration is offered them, it is a danger signal rather than a gracious tribute. The day of chivalry is over, and its outward courtesies are only put to an ignoble use for a motive too ugly to be acknowledged. When Magda met with indulgence, or Alma was treated with humanity, both girls had learned to be on their guard for a compensating demand on their personal attractions. It gave all the young faces a shadow of suspicion, a certain alertness, that was apt to harden into defense before a man's eyes. It takes very emphatic beauty to survive the experience of such a training. Hilda Romain was the only girl amongst them who could be always called pretty in spite of fatigue and ill health and disheartening. But Hilda would have been exceptional in any sphere of life. She belonged to no race and no climate, though she had often passed for typically English, with mistaken critics. If you look in the British Museum amongst the antique sculpture, you will find many nameless women's heads with Hilda's profile, save that their lips are too coarse. But the lovely line of forehead, nose and cheek that is called Greek was exactly reproduced in her, and the generous width between the eyes and the grand brows. She had too a curious droop of the head from the neck, which threw her head into the loveliest pose, though she did not stoop at all, nor was she bent by desk work, like Magda, or Flair, or Frank, to the find-down Greek features. She had the added beauty of coloring. Her hair was the true golden brown that shines like the glossy coat of a thoroughbred horse. Her skin was still a complexion in spite of the London air, and her eyes were very blue. Even across a room they kept their color. Magda, whose hair was the fair brown of many northern races, whose face was usually pale, and her eyes only blue when she was happy, and gray when she was sad, was far more typically English. The hesitating colors of its skies and sunshine seemed to be reflected in her delicacy. But Hilda was as warmly painted as if she hailed from the tropics. The talk tonight was desultory, because most of the girls were tired. Frank and Hilda were not smoking, not because they could not, but because they did not particularly care for it. The rest of the society were doing their best to thicken the atmosphere and make R.L. cough. He turned his broad back on them presently in deep disapproval, and went to sleep on Flair's story, regardless of blandishments. It was penal to talk shop, but Flair nearly earned a forfeit by turning to Winnie instinctively. Are they knocking your market to bits in the Athenium? She said. I know, said Winnie disgustedly. Eight pence per thou, isn't it? No one could possibly live, dear. How can they expect decent work? Well, if I do have to put out, I never expect anything but the regular rates. I wouldn't trust the lower wage, said Flair thoughtfully. It was the subject that interested both of them, Winnie as labour, and Flair as capital, when, as she said, she had to put work out. Order, order! Frank called across the group. Flair, what are you thinking about? Sorry, said Flair penitently. I forgot. What's the last from the city, Frank? Listen, this is what I heard at lunch today. A little boy went to have his tooth out, and he asked the dentist to give it to him afterwards, because it had been so painful when in his head. Well, my little man, said the dentist, I should think you wouldn't want to keep it on that very account. What will you do with it? Oh, please, sir, I shall wash it very carefully, and take it down to tea, and put it on a plate, and cover it with cake and jam, and watch it ache. She ended with a chuckle of intense joy, and Hilda followed her lead with a swift, sarcastic ripple that chimed against Winnie's mirth. It did not take more to amuse them than it does other girls. Have you, any of you, ever seen Flair's dentist? said Magda with intentional malice. She told me he was good-looking, and took me a long journey out to Bayswater to see him the last time she had her teeth looked over. I felt inclined to demand my omnibus bear back from her. He was the most cadaverous-looking person you ever saw. Well, there, I said, where is the handsome man? I am beginning to know Magda's ideal, drawled Flair in retort, clasping her hands behind her curly head. He is the sort of man who wants to make love to you immediately after breakfast, and tells you to put your hair back from your forehead. How dare you, Magda said, laughing. I should like to see any man interfere with my personal appearance. An Earl's court-exhibition kind of man went on Flair dreamily. He will take her out there in the evenings for her sins, and then grumble at the crowd. Anyhow, that doesn't affect his looks, and he shan't be like a hungry bone, anyway. Magda was still indignantly reminiscent of the handsome dentist. Oh, his looks won't matter. You will be far too much in love with his brutality. I can't bear being made love to in the morning, said Alma, with great candor. I want gas lights and surroundings and things. I shouldn't care for a man who only made love because the atmosphere intoxicated him, protested Hilda. I should always doubt its reality. The next morning. That is just what Flair and I mean, though. We don't want him bothering round the next morning. We are tired and practical until the lamps are lit. But that is because we are Nuzotra, Beatrice suggested. Her voice floating out of her dusky corner, like a song. When Beatrice spoke, people were first conscious of her personality. But she had a way of keeping long silences. I don't fancy that the real girls have the same morning reaction that is forced on us. I'm too old to alter now, said Flair. Magda must risk her inartistic young man, if she will. Only don't bring him round to me to be congratulated before 4 p.m., Magda. The cushion which Magda aimed at her missed its mark and hit Beatrice, who had risen inoffensively to help herself to Claret and Soda, it is but fair to Nuzotra to say here that they did not drink wine in the ordinary sense of the word. Flair called Akat after endless ailments, drove her distracted doctor into ordering it, if she could possibly afford it. She was a delicate girl, with a poor circulation, which was at the root of other growing weaknesses, and he had to contend with the germs of half a dozen diseases inherited from an ancestry of which he knew nothing. So Flair went without any et cetera's to her meals, and bought a horrible kind of wine at a shilling a bottle which, eeked out, cost her no more than if she drank beer, and injured her digestion even more. She called it Claret, and Nuzotra contributed a certain amount of pence to supply the same stuff at their irregular meetings. Beatrice, when the cushion hit her, tucked it under her arm with an inscrutable smile, and continued her progress to the packing-case sideboard. Then she carried both tumbler and cushion back to her chair, and made herself comfortable. She was a very slight girl, with too much dark hair for her white face, and gloomy eyes out of which a very hungry soul stared at a world which had fed it as sparingly as her thin young body. Beatrice was the youngest of the party, but she had been keeping herself by the drudgery of uncongenial teaching ever since a charitable institution turned her out. With the stereotyped education it bestows on the daughters of men who have shirked all responsibility with regard to them by dying. Well, I do like that, said Magda, with mock indignation. Beatrice has taken the cushion, which ought to be extinguishing Flair at this very moment. Talum Imbele, Sina Ictu, said Flair, which freely translated, means that you're a beastly bad shot, Magda. Go on, Trix, tell us some more about the real girls. Don't they ever have reactions? Of course not, because they have the right to be happy. How softly ironical a young voice can be! The gasp was over Beatrice's head, and through strange shadows of her heavy hair about the childish roundness of her face, if she had not been so horribly young, it might have sounded tolerable. We have lost it, you know. If we are happy, Nuzotra, you may be certain we have stolen it, snatched at something we want. Yes, said Alma thoughtfully, taking a fresh cigarette. It's always stolen, that's true, and you go into a corner and play with it under the rose. We've both been happy in that way, haven't we, Winnie? Yes, dear, and enjoyed it like all stolen violets. I don't care for a thing I can't parade in broad daylight, said Hilda quickly. It isn't happiness. It's excitement and distraction. I want something of my own, that no one in the world dare question. But we must have some distraction, protested Magda. No human being can live as Flair tries to do, and make the work everything. Flair writes verse, and the kind of tale she loves, and that she can't sell. When she wants a rest from pot boiling, it can't go on. It's like feeding a dog with his own tail. Say a cat, and I won't quarrel with you, said Flair lazily. The vet told me R.L. could live on himself for a fortnight. He is so well nourished. Well, you can't do it for long. I know you will break down. You had much better go to Earl's Court with the young man you designed for me. He would probably be a decent fellow, and it wouldn't matter any more than if you went with another girl. If we take our distractions openly, said Frank honestly, it means that we must accept, as escort, the men who are round about us, the class with which our daily life brings us in contact. What is the use of flinching from a grade that we consider in our hearts is just below us. The men whom Winnie calls not quite are our social equals through stress of circumstances. It is no good fretting after a class which belongs to the real girls. Are you cold, Beatrice? Cold it, said kindly, for the youngest member of the party had shivered. Not physically, said Beatrice briefly. Winnie shivered, too. I felt it all across the room, and Flair set her teeth. You are quite right, Frank. We are all more or less on the level of shop girls, and should be content to walk out with shop boys. If we insist on knowing gentlemen, we must do so illegitimately, and then they will treat us like shop girls all the same. Look at Hilda, said Flair, laughing. Her fighting blood is up at the notion. Tell us your view of the real girls and their advantage as Hilda. The real girls, said Hilda, with a little resentful laugh, have time to be dainty. If there is one thing I resent on fate, it is the hurry it costs to earn one's bread and butter. I could turn myself out so well, if I might live a little slower. Anyhow you never look anything but lovely, Apollo. Hilda's profile had gained her the nickname of the Apollo Belvedere amongst Nuzotra. So perhaps it is as well for the peace of mankind that you have not time to enhance your charms. I wonder whether the real girls have ever had to spoil their hands for lack of attention. It takes five to ten minutes to get them really clean in London after a morning's work, and we are mostly allowed half an hour for feeding time, washing being included. I should like to have my clothes mended for me, like a man, said Frank. No affectionate landlady comes to us and offers to sew the buttons on our shirts. When we have ended our male day in the office, we have to go home and begin our female day, unless we have lost our sense of feminine decency and go in rags. I should be thankful to read in the evenings and forget myself and my own life for a while, though I don't hanker after extra work, like Flair. But there are always a pile of domestic duties that have grown during the day. You are a saint, Frank, but it is not all of us who have a home life at all. We have to cook our own dinner, though, even if we live in rooms, put in magda roofily. Oh, how sick I get of it! I should often go without food at the end of a day. If it were not for Deb, it is bad for her, and so I have to insist on supper. Why is it that these things are not done for us? Can you fancy a man living in rooms and cooking his own meals? Some of them do. Some of them go to eating houses, where we could not swallow the food. I suppose it costs too much to make an arrangement with your landlady to do for you generally. We went into that when Deb and I joined forces, and the other way is cheaper. No, we cannot afford to be comfortable, Nuzotra. The men are always better off than we, somehow. They don't mend their own table linen and clean their own plate for another thing. I don't fancy they have such things, said Hilda honestly. If a man lives in rooms and by himself, he does away with all such graces of life unless he is rich. It's a bald existence, and one we will not endure ourselves. So as we will have the home luxuries and refinements after which we hanker, we pay for it in extra labor. That is all. I shall pay for it if I don't begin to get home, said Frank, jumping up. It's early duty tomorrow. I have to leave our house by ten minutes past seven. I used to think it hard when I had to be down to breakfast at seven-fifteen in my last school, said Beatrice, opening her big eyes. What an awful life! When do you go off duty, Frank? Oh, at four. Of course, if you begin earlier, you end earlier. The Eight Hours Act sees to that. Goodbye, Flair. Look after yourself, old girl. You are growing thin. I am growing old, said Flair carelessly. It's my birthday next Wednesday. Will you congratulate me? I will heartily, said Magda, with no intention of being pathetic. For it means that you have got through another year and have won less to live. And that's the truest reason for congratulation. I'm sorry I shan't see you on Wednesday, Flair, but we make up that day. Yes, I feared it was hopeless to ask you. I am going to just come in and look at you, said Alma, in her purry, purry voice. She was a small person, with an infinite capacity for mothering other and more angular people. Even Flair smiled a wintry smile upon her blandishments. All right, she said. Will you come to luncheon? Alma declined, quite rightly, though she did not know it. Flair's idea of luncheon consisted in three mutton sandwiches and a banana, always washed down by the cheap claret. I have lunched with her and I ought to know. This, however, was not Alma's reason for declining, though it should have been. She had had a call to try voices for a musical comedy, which necessitated her going to the south side of London at an unearthly hour, and probably getting no meal at all. But we ought to be free by three, she said hopefully. I'll come in on the way home and borrow a cup of tea, Flair. I'll get some sausages, and we will toast them, said Flair thoughtfully. You will have no lunch, I know, so you may as well have something more substantial than bread and butter. That's right. Look after her, said Hilda, with her soft, quick laugh, a laugh that always had an echo of irony in it, even when she was least ironical. Because life had struck her as a sorry jest, and she had learned to treat it as bitter humor, lest she should weep over it. Goodbye, my child. She patted Flair's curly head from her loftier height, and linked her arm in Alma's, Beatrice kissed Flair in silence, but was held back till Winnie had followed Magda and Frank into the passage. How's the music master? said Flair breathlessly. The expression went out of Beatrice's face in a curious fashion. She made her brown eyes blank, and stared at Flair as if she locked a secret behind closed doors. Oh, very well, I think. She spoke in the congratulatory tone of one who assures another of the health of an acquaintance. Flair sighed. This was worse than Winnie's luncheon party, frankly, whispered. All right. He is sometimes in a bad temper. That was why I asked, she said good-humoredly. Beatrice hesitated, the silence which seemed to have fallen on her during the long, lonely years at the charitable institution, developing very slowly into a faint smile. It was like the twilight of a smile, and hardly lifted the corners of her lips. Flair waited as usual. If one did not ask Beatrice, she would sometimes speak. He was very nice. Yesterday, she said in the best music of her voice, when it remembered happy things. When we put away the music together, after the lesson was over, there was another pause. R. L. rose on the table, and yawned as a hint to Flair that he wished to go to bed. Beatrice turned suddenly, and kissed the baby rings of hair that lay most incongruously over Flair's broad masculine forehead. Good night, she said softly, and vanished after the others. Their voices and steps died down the passage. Someone whistled a bar of Berlio's Faust. Then good night alas, from ill-happ who shall stay thee. And Winnie laughed. The front door shut with a bang, and darkness seemed to settle once more on the gaunt house, with a certain weariness in her very movements. The one girl left alone collected the personal belongings she had brought down for the meeting, took down the placard with Nuzotra from the door, and carried the lamp up the six flights of stairs. After her fourth journey she looked round inclusively, and saw that all signs of their presence were removed. Then she lifted the sleepy cat, and settled him on her left arm like a baby, his limp paws hanging over her shoulder, the solid weight of his great body, making her pant a little, before she reached her own quarters. But before she actually left the big room downstairs, she paused a minute, looking backwards and forwards, the old expectancy returning to her face, and haunting her eyes, horrible eyes, in which the wisdom and sins and experiences of ten centuries seemed to have suffered resurrection, a clock struck ten from a neighboring church as she stood there. It was early for the London world, but late for Nuzotra, who lie down that they may rise, and live through tomorrow, and so on, through countless tomorrows, all shading towards a universal greyness of middle age, or a tragedy of poverty-stricken years that end in merciful death. It is the portion to which Nuzotra look if they dare to look at all. Flair Caldecott turned out the gas lamp, and the stove, and went slowly up those many stairs to the attic under the roof. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Part 1 Each life's unfulfilled, you see, it hangs still patchy and scrappy. We have not drunk deep, laughed deep, starved, feasted, disbared, been happy, and nobody thinks you adunts, and people suppose me clever. This could but have happened once, and we missed it. Lost it forever. Robert Browning The first thing that Magda Burke distinctly remembered in her life was being taught to stand alone. Refused even the support of a chair, she stood a forlorn little figure in a wilderness of floor. While admonishing voices cried, Baby must learn to use her own feet. Baby must walk without being led. Baby did learn, and went on learning the same moral lesson all through her youth. Her untried feet forced to find their way without encouragement of someone stronger to help her if she fell. The large, terrible room. And the friends that stood afar off. That was the allegory of life of Magda Burke. Her father was an artistic failure. One of those men who, as the Americans say, bust up and go on again. He was always busting up, but he generally went on again. And his hopefulness was equal to that of Macauber. He was not a good man of business, but he did happen to be a gentleman. And his traditions were those wherein the men work and the women remain at home. In the European version of a Turkish harem, Magda was an only child, and her mother had died at her birth. She was not encouraged to work for the first twenty years of her life, and when she brought common sense to bear upon the periodical smashes of her existence, and suggested that she might help to avert such disasters, she was told by her relations not to trouble herself, and to trust in providence. You will always be provided for, said the feminine portion of the family piously. You must just trust in God. There is a certain creed which makes the deity a kind of managing director of earthly incompetence. The holders of it are largely responsible for the desperate tendency to agnosticism, which is often and loudly condemned by them in a younger and more practical generation. When Magda was twenty-three, her father died suddenly, and the state of his affairs upheld his daughter's theory that the Lord helps those who help themselves, rather than the tenet vaguely relied upon by her relations that the Lord will provide. She was not entirely thrown on her own helplessness, however, because for two years previously she had been earning her dress allowance by sheer persistence and energy on her own part. She had insisted on that much independence in the face of disapproval and accusations of want of faith, but she did not care to saddle her God with the responsibilities which she considered that he had given to her, and so began to feel her way in a hard world to her ultimate salvation. It was the old experience of the nursery floor, and by the time she had learned to trust her own feet, she had lost faith in the guidance that had been denied her. The best thing in the world is independence, said Magda Burke. After all, I am quite capable of doing without their help, and she looked elsewhere for assistance and for sympathy also, concluding that a woman's foes are often as foes of her own household. It was not pleasant work which she found. Her hours were long, and her pay was little. She was not strong. No girl born in bread in the harris and worry of such a household, and devoid of special training both of body and mind, is very fitted for a female clerkship, which as Magda took, but the half-bread hunter, with the inherited instincts in his blood, will do the uncongenial work before him, and go as well in the cab as the real cab-stock, just as long as he can stand. There comes a knackers-day at last. There is a knackers-day for Nuzotra. Magda had had an irregular education, begun when things were flourishing, discontinued when the periodical bust-ups occurred. At every school she went to she learned drawing, as well as being taught by her father at home, and she developed a talent for art, because it was a pleasure to her. When the final blow came, and she saw her home broken up before her eyes, she went into rooms with a friend some years older than herself, and set her face steadily against the buffets of life to see what could be made of an unpromising existence. Magda could not live by herself. Loneliness of life, or lack of physical companionship, was as terrible to her as loneliness of mind to Flair Caldecott. What Flair felt chiefly was the lack of someone who loved the books she loved, who read and thought, as she did, or who at least could realize her standpoint in argument. Amongst her seven particular friends, even, she found only two who did not think her rather odd in her mental tastes, and Magda's half-amused criticism. You are a funny girl, Flair, filled Flair with a blank despair of being able to explain herself, while the actual living alone did not disturb her at all. Magda, on her side, wanted to chum with someone for the human necessity of saying good morning and good night, and went into partnership accordingly. Deborah, the elder girl, had worked in the city. Magda's lay nearer the West End. Between the two of them, they made something like one hundred and fifty pounds a year, working some nine or ten hours a day. They lived in three small rooms in the vicinity of the Tottenham Court Road, as the most central point for their different destinations. They cooked their own food on a gas stove in a tiny attic they called their kitchen. At first they did their own scrubbing, but unfortunately, though the half-bred hunter can go for some time and stay until he drops, he cannot pull very heavy loads. Deb and Magda founded a necessary item of expenditure to have a woman in to do the scrubbing. For the rest they bought their clothes as they could, and looked respectable when they went to business, and their diversions were taken as might be, visiting at a few old friends' houses, or getting press passes for a theatre or concert. But that came later. At first they were too new to their daily grind to have discovered that they required recreation, and too tired after working all day to go out in the evening. There was always hanging over them the horrible dread of one or the other falling ill, with no money to provide for such contingency, and no friends who could or would help them. Besides which, it is an inherent and ineradicable characteristic of Nuzotra that when they set their faces to the problem of work or starve, they work silently and desperately. They do not whine. They do not ask help. More especially, they do not indent themselves. To the few people they may know who possess means or obligations to help them. It may be pride or it may more probably be an inherited inability to ask for alms. If one of Nuzotra must borrow, she will borrow from another of the society who is as poor or poorer than herself, who will give a few pence or a few shillings according to her means, and who will never refer to it again until, with pain and breathless anxiety, it is saved up and handed back to her when she says, Oh, thanks awfully, but are you sure you can spare it? Look here, I've put it out of my calculations, and can go on all right, I think. Don't give it to me if you can't spare it just yet. Magda had always been able to draw. She sketched in off moments for her own pleasure and being of a resourceful nature. She dared to send some sketches to an illustrated paper. I can only be refused, she said to Deb. She was refused, but she tried again, this time personally. She took the sketches to an editor and asked why they were not available. Well, you see, for one thing, they are not drawn for reproduction, he said, good naturedly. The subject isn't very taking, either, but you might have a chance if you understood press drawing. Magda went home and thought it out. The result of several weeks' inquiries and despairing calculations was that she entered the Birkbeck schools and went through the course devoted to the knowledge she wanted. It was something to do in the evenings, and she loved the work. Then she went back to Fleet Street and battered in vain at editorial doors for the space of six months, during which time she still drudged through uncongenial work she dared not throw up. She might have had better luck if she had been able to hawk her wares in business hours, but she was often too late to see the men she wanted to see, or unable to pursue an advantage by constant applications. After six months she had a sketch accepted, and then she had another month of discouragement, another set of drawings taken by a dishonest firm this time who never paid her, more waiting, more sickening sense of failure, more dogged perseverance in her little leisure. Gradually, gradually, she got a firmer footing in the great murderous world of journalism, which grinds and spares not, and asks impossible work of its victims, and dismisses without reason and is bought and sold by interest behind the scenes. It is part of the everyday business of Fleet Street to break hearts. The stage is cruel, the musical world crushes and hammers the soul out of all endeavor into a gray monotony of form, but literature and journalism torture first, and kill slowly, very slowly, by inches of a disease which, once caught, shall never be healed again, for the born journalist who wants taste journalism will never, never give it up until the knackers' day. The press is the pulse of the moment, the incarnate vitality of today, and those who once experienced the thrill of being the tiniest particle in that great living force find all things else a dead and silent world. It is not only that they attain the voice of printed matter, for their hearers may make such an insignificant circle that it does not satisfy the least ambitious, but from the incalculable staff of the Times to the short paragraphist in some trivial penny-weekly there is the electric sense of being behind the scenes in the world's drama, of knowing how the machinery works, of that mysterious link that draws newspaper people together from one end of the empire to the other. It was through her profession that Magda met with Flair and through her with Alma and Frank. Hilda had been a friend of hers before she became literally one of Nuzotra, and Hilda had brought Beatrice into the circle. Thus they amalgamated and were augmented or decreased in numbers as things chanced. Sometimes Deb would accompany Magda to the Society's meetings, but oftener she took that opportunity of visiting friends of her own who were not intimate with Magda. There was a difference of some eight years in the girl's ages, and it gave them, naturally, individual interests. It was in the early days of her acquaintance with Flair, and before the ordered meetings of the Society, that a turn in her circumstances enabled Magda to give up the clerkship she held and devote all her time to journalism. Her excursions of grimy stairs in Fleet Street had resulted, at least, in the side issue of an acquaintance amongst men and women who had reached the position for which she was feverishly fighting, and because they liked her they asked her to dubious journalistic gatherings and so-called literary at-homes, where all the third-rate lionesses of the profession congregated in tumbled gowns. Men were rare at these functions and were mostly undersized, as if the imbibing of much inky experience had stunted their growth. Magda went to such affairs in the forlorn hope of some day meeting someone with influence, because she never missed a chance, however remote, affording her desire. It was at one of the least hopeful of them that she noticed a man so much taller and less worn than the newspaper-writers whom she knew, that she came to the conclusion that he could not be a journalist at all, and wondered if he felt like a fish out of water. They both, as it happened, charged the refreshment table at the same time in a desperate raid for tea, and holding out their hands for the same cup, drew back and apologized. I beg your pardon, said the man. Please take it. You had better, while you can. Oh, no, you were first, said Magda, honestly. I can wait, really. I shall get some in time, I have no doubt. She spoke with the simplest self-confidence in waiting on herself. As it happened, she knew but few people in the room, and took it for granted that, if she wanted tea, she must make an effort for it. Life was one great effort to Magda. She never sat down helplessly in a corner and wailed, that she had not been served. If, when she left the feast of existence, she went hungry, it would not be from incompetence on her part. The tall man looked down at her and smiled. Something seemed to have amused him and arrested his attention. It was one of Magda's good days, when her eyes were blue and her hair had golden lights in it, tire or discouragement or hardship drained the color out of her body as well as out of her mind. But it was the fiat of the gods that she should have her share of vitality just now. Supposing you take this cup and let me get you something to eat, he said quietly, and then I will find you a seat. Magda's independence was essentially a feminine quality. It just stopped short of resisting masculine authority of the right sort. Thank you, she said meekly, though she was in fact rather surprised at herself. As a matter of fact, he found two seats in a secluded corner, and having supplied himself also with tea, they sat down and had it together. The talk turned naturally upon the profession most in evidence around them. But why, at the end of ten minutes, Magda found herself confiding all her aspirations and the hopeless outlook before her to a total stranger. She was never able to explain and was so convinced that it was inexcusable that she always defended it earnestly to Flare and Hilda. He listened gravely with a searching gaze into her discouraged face, and at the end he said, I think I can help you. At least I can give you a chance to help yourself. But are you a journalist? said Magda blankly, her very real surprise making him laugh. I had been feeling more sure every minute that you had nothing to do with them. Why, I wonder, he said rather quizzically. I thought I was rather well known in Fleet Street. It seems I flattered myself. I dare say you are, said Magda dryly, but I do not happen to know your name. He told it to her, and for the minute she wished she had never confided in him. He was editor of an illustrated weekly, a well established paper, backed by a great firm, and had control also of a smaller paper which his people had but lately started. These things were a matter of common report, and it seemed to her that he must think she was not telling the truth, and had talked to him from self-interest. I did not really know who you were, she said impulsively, the sting of her sensitive pride bringing tears into the blue of her eyes. Magda's emotions were as quick as her wits. She felt vividly, and on the spur of the moment, laughter or tears coming to her as easily as her trick of verbal retort. Beatrice called her April's Lady. I know, said the editor, composedly. I have realized that. What I propose to do is to give you a trial on the smaller of our papers, if your work is good enough. Can you come up and see me tomorrow, and bring some as a specimen? Yes, said Magda breathlessly. Very well. Tomorrow afternoon at four. By the way, can you write paragraphs? Oh yes, I have done that often. That is a good thing, as I can give you more work. By Job, I must be going. It's past six. Goodbye. He shook hands with Magda, but she could not speak. The gates of her paradise seemed for the moment, slowly opening to her, and the angel who had wrought the miracle was the tall man pushing his way impatiently through the chattering crowd. To him it was a passing freak, and he forgot her long before he left the room, having merely offered his help to a rather interesting type that had saved his being unutterably bored at a dull function. At the same time that he had made a physical note of Magda's name, he made a mental one that he would never attend another afternoon reception of the same kind, that he had gone there and talked to a girl who had blue eyes. In a corner was the nearest incident. He kept his promise to himself, and never did attend such an entertainment again. The meeting was a chance, one that might never have taken place save for a disposition of providence that might almost be called faintly ironical. Magda went home to cook the dinner, which she was too excited to eat, but her nerves, which threatened to play her false, had been worn down to a more uniform endurance by the endless mirages of false hope which she had seen across her desert, and by the next morning she was as depressed as she had been elated. She looked at Deb over the forlorn breakfast table in the little attic under the roof, and her eyes were piteous. It is no use my going. The work won't be what he wants. They have all said that. She said wretchedly, blinking away the tears. Yes, but he must be personally interested in you, said Deb, with the cruel shrewdness born of those eight years ahead of Magda. It makes all the difference. The others looked at your work first. He has looked at you. I don't care for it if he helps me just because—just because I was nice to him, said Magda with hurt pride, and a mental inspection of yesterday's smiles. I should simply hate his charity. Again she saw the strong, self-reliant face of the tall editor, and rived a little, for lack of his acknowledgment of what she could do. It doesn't matter. He'll give you your chance, and you can prove that you are worth it. He wouldn't trouble about the chance if he had not looked at you. Deb was unintentionally cynical in her consolation. Do eat something, Magda. You will look like a ghost if you don't. But Magda was too finely strung that morning to swallow grilled bacon. Her appetite was fastidious suddenly. She saw that the charwoman had not rubbed the forks this week, and that the cloth was stained. What would the editor, in his immaculate shirt cuffs, think of murky plate and such damask as that? Life by the standard of his well-groomed success seemed suddenly sordid and unfit for women. She had had no chance to do household duties this last week. Beyond the necessary preparing of food, she thought of inviting him up here. It was no use trying to be dainty and feminine. The stress of bare existence battered such desires out of the way, and to be merely cleanly and honest appeared unsatisfactory at the moment. Magda felt suddenly humiliated by all the little shifts that destroy so much of the pleasure of a woman's life. The wearing of dark clothes, even in the summer, to save washing. The doing without of linen collars and cuffs in the winter, when office and writing desk soiled them in an hour. Most of Newzotra had ever even dreamed of white shirts and blouses in summertime. They wore striped things gray and dark blues for choice that do not soil, while white underskirts were grievous luxuries, and as to the delightful linen coats and skirts that women affect in hot weather, they ranked with the peaches in the fruiterer's windows that cost six pence at cheapest, and were like diamonds as far as attainment went. It is in the little ways of saving and making shift that the woman's tragedy comes in, in the carrying her own parcels to save postage within a possible radius. In the wearing of old skirts in doubtful weather, because she knows that she has only one decent gown that must face the searching sunlight next year, it is nothing to a woman comparatively speaking to starve herself, or to eke out a week in a cheap neighborhood for all her annual holiday, with no money for excursions. These things may kill her eventually, but they are to be born. The others, the pinpricks of every day and all day, go on for so long, dear God, how long it is to look back through years of such rigid economies that they wear the heart out of her. Later on that morning, when Deb had departed, Magda brushed her most respectable skirt and cleaned her shoes, for she had not to leave the house quite so early as her friend. Dressing to go out generally involves these preliminary details with Nuzotra, who are perpetually in a scramble and consequence, and lo the sight of blacking and brushes as no boot boy can do. For at least it is the boot boy's business, and to Magda and her kind it comes as an extra. In the ordinary routine of bread-blending, she had to go to business as usual, but by making a special appeal to those in authority over her, she really got off early and rode down to Fleet Street. The omnibus jolted, and Magda's head ached. She had not had time to go home and freshen herself up or have tea, and when she presented herself at the doors of her destination, it was with a depressed feeling that all the charm of yesterday had gone from her. She almost doubted its existence as she sat in the outer office, waiting for the deity within to send and summon her to the inner sanctuary. As she sat there she wondered how many men and women had waited wearily in her place, hoping against hope, infinitely weary with tramping from office to office, and finally proved so unimportant that, instead of ever reaching the editor, they were merely dealt with by a clerk who demanded and dismissed their business in the toneless voice of official routine. I shall never forget all this. Never, said Magda, catching her breath. Though I succeeded a hundred times, the chill of poverty would still be in my bones. I should never forget the days of the outer office. No one who succeeds after such experience ever does. She had grown so used to being refused a hearing that she felt a dull surprise on being at last bidden to follow to the editor's own room. Her friend had not forgotten her. Perhaps he had hardly had time to do so, and he rose and shook hands. She looked at the strong spare figure, and remembered her own whimsical depression over his shirt cuffs. Certainly they were immaculate, and he wore his clothes with an ease, which does not often go with such a position as his. Magda's own hands were her best point. They had not only the approved points of filbert nails, soft white skin and delicate modeling, they had character as well. I have seen many beautiful women's hands, which were as correct in form as Magda's, though utterly helpless. But I remember no others that were at once well-breaded, perfectly artistic. She had taken off her gloves to untie the precious drawings she brought as samples, and the slim fingers lay pleasantly in the editors as he looked down on her. Well, he said, let's get to business at once. Show me what you can do. She liked that, for the suggestion of challenge put her on her metal, and the business quality of his tone destroyed her fear of personal bias. One after another she laid a few of her best black and whites on the desk, and his face did not cloud. Yes, he said, you do this sort of thing quite well enough, a good deal better than the average draftsman, in fact. Then why is it that I find it so difficult to get anything accepted? Magda exclaimed. My dear child, he said dryly, I did not say you were a genius. If your work were strikingly original, you would make your way eventually, because every editor in London is keenly on the scent for genius. Always. But the market is packed with average work, and it is backed with interest. Yours may be above the average, but that does not outweigh the added interest. Someday you will understand all that. I am afraid. Better than I care to explain it to you. But it seems so unfair, said the Magda, of those days still strong in her youth and its demand for justice. He shrugged his shoulders. It is the way of all trades, journalism among the rest. Anyhow, I am very glad to give you the chance you wanted. Afterwards, she remembered his talk of this interest, unpossessed by her, and found its darker meaning that he had held back. At the time she merely thought he meant literally introductions or some obligation to help her, which she had always lacked. He was kind and courteous, as well as encouraging, at this second meeting, and showed her a small inner room where she could work on certain days in the week after her business hours, correcting proofs for him, and looking through the drawings and photographs submitted to the smaller paper. The last lady who had done this kind of sub-editing had had the room entirely to herself, he said. But that was before he joined the staff. Magda wondered for a moment who her predecessor had been, but he did not explain further, and she forgot the matter, in the more absorbing interest of arranging the details of her connection with the paper. Even when it was all settled, it seemed to her a chance too happy in all its aspects to really belong to her, and she was surprised to find that her hands were trembling, and her eyes half blind with tears, when she stepped out once more into the steep rise of Norfolk Street. I will work hard, said Magda, looking up instinctively at the gray sky between the gray houses, as if to someone up there in command of all the grayness of London. I am very thankful, very grateful. Indeed, I will do my best. End of Chapter 2, Part 1 Chapter 2, Part 2 of the Pathway of the Pioneer. This labor box recording is in the public domain. The Pathway of the Pioneer by Dolph Willard. Chapter 2, Part 2. She did not immediately throw up the clerkship, but it came inevitably with time. At first she worked at the office in Norfolk Street after her day's work as a female clerk was done, or on half holidays, or when she could get off earlier, and her editor helped her and made things easier with his powerful authority. She grew to look upon him as the incarnation of power, as someone on whom to rely as, certainly as if he could not fail her, even more certainly than she relied on herself. The second commandment is not the least brittle in a woman's hands by reason of her physical infirmities, for she is prone to make a graven image in whom to trust under sufficient masculine provocation. Magda did not know what this new intercourse was growing to be in her life, or the domination over her of one man's force of character. She told Deb that she was afraid of her editor, and that sometimes she wanted to rebel against his emphatic authority. Perhaps she did. Certainly she trembled occasionally at the sound of his voice or step, or the knock on the door which she knew, and hid it under a greater audacity of manner, which she marveled that he pardoned. There were few of those working under Magda's editor who presumed to jest with him. She had been combining her old employment and the new for a month, when one day he summoned her into his own office, and showed her the page-proofs of the paper to which she contributed. Have you ever learned to make up? He said quietly. No, said Magda, distressfully conscious that the blank sheet intersected by a single line, and the long printer's poles on the desk meant nothing to her mind. It is a useful thing to know. You ought not to be ignorant of it, he said. Sit down, and I will give you a lesson. If he was a good teacher, Magda was an excellent pupil. She fought her way rapidly through the mysteries of outers and inners, how to measure up, the space allowed to the ads, and, most trying of all, on and illustrated, the amount of letterpress for the printers to overrun round the blocks. The editor did not really help her there, for she made up all through her journalistic life by a process of her own which she never could explain to a subordinate, calculating headlines and illustrations by dint of a ruler, and a form of addition and subtraction, but which always came out correctly. In the space of a few lessons she was competent to pass the paper for press, though her editor looked it through afterwards, and his few words of satisfaction and praise brought the vitality to her face like a stimulant, and made her a pretty girl, with blue eyes, pink cheeks, and happy lips, though she might have been dull and tired throughout the day. It was just the changes in April's lady that gave her what she had of charm, and its very evanescence was its great danger. A man never knew that, just when he was feeling disappointed in her looks, she would not flash out upon him with a sudden color and life, and even as he turned away saying, Why, she is a plain girl. Behold, she gave him the why, by being a pretty one. You will be of great use to me, said the editor at last. I shall be able to leave some of the work to you, and look up the advertisement department. I want to do that. The paper has been shamefully neglected by the man before me. Do you think it would pay you to leave your present birth come here every day, if we gave you a settled salary? The gates of Paradise opened a little wider, and Magda set her foot inside. When she went home that day to deb, the flush of its radiance was still in her face, and her heart was warm within her. She thought that her angel would always stand at the gate. It did not occur to her that he had only opened it, for his part. Yet she never actually saw much of them, and these lives, running side by side in office hours, did not intersect beyond. Sometimes they had tea together, when he had something to say to her about the work. But it was always about the work, and they only drifted to other abstract subjects, when some details started a side issue. Magda's editor was a gentleman by birth and breeding, the sort of man whom Frank had said that Nuzotra had no chance to know, and he treated Magda as one of his own world. She had not found any such before up the grimy Fleet Street staircases. There had been men there, sometimes too automatic to do more than thrust her appeals aside in the absorption of business, sometimes enough of a male animal to see that she was a woman, and then she had turned and fled. But this man never once held the cool, pretty hand she offered him beyond the time of regulation greeting, never deepened the kindly encouragement of his tone into a personal thrill, never looked at her with eyes that asked more than comprehension. Yet he must have been human enough to appreciate the quick sympathy that never failed him in the smaller office, for when he was tired or worried or annoyed, he always went to her, and she, being a woman, gloried in giving and never asked for a return, only once in all their intercourse he laid his hand on her shoulder. He had come to her with a minor irritation, the stupidity of a member of the staff, which it was beneath his dignity to notice, and which nevertheless galled him in his work, like the infinitesimal sting of the titsy fly does the African horses. Magda had not said much, but he had felt the electric response and understanding in her. There is an affinity between us, I think, he said, for the sigh of partial relief. I know no one else whose mind responds to mine so quickly as yours. It takes up half the burden somehow. Magda did not answer. She sat still at her desk. Her eyes very suddenly blue, as they stared at the trivial things before her. The ink and the office stamp, the ruler, the scissors, the paste pot, all the details of her trade, for the editor had laid his strong hand on her shoulder. She sat dumb under the pressure, wondering what came next, or if he knew how he was leaning on her, physically as well as mentally, just now. Perhaps he laid a heavier burden on her then than he knew, or perhaps he overestimated the self-reliance which in her always amused him. It was a typical instance of this that he had come into the smaller office one day at the beginning of her tenancy, to find her energetically moving the ink-stained table to the further side of the room. Couldn't she ring the bell, Miss Burke? He remarked, dryly. The office boy could do that for you. But I wanted it in a better light, Magda protested. And I can't be waiting half the morning for the office boy. It takes time to ring bells and have them answered. And I am accustomed to do things for myself, so it seems. There are plenty of people to do them for you here, however. He put her very gently but irresistibly on one side, and rolled the table into the position she wished. Magda noticed vaguely how strongly his sinewy hands gripped the heavy piece of furniture, and how fast studiously kept they were. The blood rose to her face with her quick habit of blushing, and she laughed a little impatiently. It is much worse to make the editor do it than to do it myself, it seems to me, she said. If it is beneath my dignity, it is positively sacrilegious for you. Not to assist a lady, he returned compositely. If you want any of this sort of work done, you will ask me to help you please, if you don't care to wait for the office boy. But you will not do it yourself. Had it been anyone else who asserted that, you will not. Rather than asked, will you, Magda's independence would have been up in arms in a minute. She almost hated herself for the meekness of her own words, as she said, very well, and the irrepressible feeling of satisfaction in being taken charge of in this way. The remainder of the staff found her rather belligerent than otherwise, for she was quick to take offense just as she was generous to forgive. The little jars and disagreeable incidents of office life were serious trials to Magda. She took the ill nature caused by jealousy, as personal dislike, and under any less broadly masculine control than that of the man with whom fate had placed her. She might have made more enemies than friends. He played upon the finely strung overwrought temperament with as masterful a touch as a musician does upon a violin, controlling and guiding and exercising an authority against which she would have chafed elsewhere. And the secret was the old eternal secret of masculine and feminine nature, completing and complimenting each their opposite. However thin-skinned Magda proved to other men and women in the journalistic world. To her editor she was always the same, and always ready to hear reason, just as his mere presence drew up her vitality, so that though she might have been looking dispirited before, his appearance changed her eyes from gray to the bluer tint, and seemed to flood the color back into her whole nervous body. So his mind demanded and obtained the best in hers. In his memory she was always and remained a pretty woman. There was no doubt that Magda's work improved rapidly at this period, partly from the stimulus of desiring the editor's approbation. For a woman, however much she loves her art, will always accomplish most before an audience of one. It was a happy time, though not altogether a peaceful one. Long years after, when Magda was herself editing a flourishing sixpenny, of which she was part proprietor, she looked back to her novitiate with a little sigh, and thought that all the success could not quite equal the glow and glory of her first staff appointment. She forgot the strain and the anxiety and the physical disadvantages which handicapped her youth. Perhaps the heaviest drawback, with which she had to contend, was neuralgia, for she was constantly wracked with it. And there were times when she did her work with one hand pressed against her temples, while the other held the pen. It was a purely natural outcome of the overstrain of her life, the ill-feeding, the anxiety, the earnest desire to prove herself capable in her present position. And it is her best testimonial that it did not drive her to drugs, that panacea of a working woman, when life becomes too unbearable, and which is a shortcut to the end of it. Magda was bearing pain about four days in the week, like a little heroine, working side by side with men whose superior physique could not conceive of the effect of the strain upon hers, and by contrast with whom she was once more approved, the weaker vessel. We are learning sense and justice now, and training our girl children as carefully as schoolboys, to fit them at least to endure hardship. In a few generations we shall produce women with as sound a constitution as men's, and civilization will so far have mitigated the conditions of city life that they will not drop off like flies under forty. But Nuzotra represent the locusts whose dead bodies were swept down the river, until the mass of them formed a bridge whereby those following might pass over. It sounds a high-flown assertion to say that Magda's body was tortured in order that fifty years hence women may earn their right to exist under advantageous circumstances. But many locusts went to the forming of the bridge, and each unit helped the whole. Neralja was the medium through which she recalled the crises of her existence, for it generally formed a factor in all the important scenes of her life. She remembered it inevitably, like a red thread running through the tissue of gold and gray, and marking the pattern. So there came a point in her connection with the editor, which to look back upon seemed to her a delirium of pain, both physical and mental. Everything went wrong that day. They had been making up for the spring number, and the advertisement manager had demanded more space, and that meant cutting down matter already accepted. Magda pressed her fingers into her temples to hold the red-hot nerve, which threatened to swell the veins to bursting, and flung herself upon the proof. The usual features must stay. They meant the popularity of the paper. Had anyone ever cut out the serial in a spring number, she wondered, her dazed blue eyes following the hopelessly fat columns and the half-tone process blocks that would not bear reducing further. She was practically doing editorial work just now, and looking forward to a rise in salary if she successfully managed the smaller paper without much help from her harassed chief. At present she drew two pounds a week, and thought herself lucky, but the editor told her honestly that he was only letting his firm pay her starvation wages until he could arrange something better and get her an accepted position in the office. On anything over a hundred a year I can save, said Magda, doing outside work in her evenings and slaving all day. Her work certainly did not suffer in itself, but her health did, and her head was particularly bad that morning. Then the sub-editor of the larger paper came into the room with his hat on and said, Good morning, Miss Burke, without taking it off. Men soon lose the niceties of their manners to women in an office. Magda should, by this time, have grown used to being treated like any other clerk. She should perhaps have been grateful for the good morning, but she found it hard to forget her womanhood and remember that she ranked a little lower than the printers in importance. Good morning, Mr. Hope, she said, the more courteously for his covered head. Her own politeness always became punctilious on these occasions. Can I do anything for you? The sub-editor had come to grumble, not to ask assistance. He was worried, and his first instinct was to shift the burden on to the weaker pair of shoulders, belonging to the girl before him. He did not pause to think of the white face, or the strained eyes turned anxiously to the page-proof. He claimed, as a matter of course, the sympathy which Magda had been giving to the more selfish natures all round her since she came into the office. Seeing the chief this morning, he said abruptly, No, Magda's nerves braced themselves with a momentary interest. The editor's name never struck on her ears quite as dullly as other men's. It was like a colored thing in a drab world. There's been a holy rowl, said the sub, sitting on the edge of the ink-stained table, and thrusting his hands into his pockets. The proprietor was down yesterday, and made his ignorance of advertisement blissfully apparent. He wanted to know why this was done and why that was done, and to alter the lines of the whole paper. But, exclaimed Magda bewildered, the paper is going splendidly. Everyone says that the editor has doubled the circulation and worked up the advertisement department so that it pays three times what it used. I know, said the sub impatiently, but that's just journalism. You get a good man who knows the ropes and makes the paper pay, and then the fool of a proprietor wants to have a finger in the pie and assert his authority. That's the real secret, Miss Burke. The old ass couldn't stand the editor having so much power in his hands. I won't say the chief doesn't boss it a bit over everyone. Magda recognized the grievance here. But apart from his manner, he's a rattling good man for the place. They'll never get such another. Magda's heart seemed to throb steadily for an instant or so, like the pendulum of a clock, then it surely stopped dead. The meaning of the sub-editors coming into her room to tell her of the frocka dawned on her as if it danced before her in red letters. Has the editor resigned, she said sharply, in the clutch of her physical and mental pain? Hush, don't speak so loud. Nothing is officially settled yet. Yes, he's pretty safe to leave. And we go after him, said the sub gloomily. It doesn't matter for him. He's one of the best men in London, and he's had three better offers than this show since he's been here. He won't go begging. It's the rest of the whole damn staff who will suffer. You and I amongst them, he added brutally. Perhaps he did not realize what this meant to the girl before him, whose lips were so steady, and whose pretty hand holding the blue pencil was so untremulous. He thought afterwards that Miss Burke took it very well, for it was serious for her, core girl. But in his mind's eye Magda saw once more the blank weary streets, the doors closed against her efforts, the old sickening round of anxious tramping, while the pence pile grew lower and lower, and one calculated anxiously that bread and a penny packet of desiccated soup was all that must be afforded today. It seemed worse now than it had been before she felt the security of the office round her. Perhaps the relief of settled and congenial work had unnerved her. Perhaps she had learned to depend too much on the masculine strength and assistance which seemed to be leaving her life as suddenly as it had come into it. It was a sorry day for one of Nuzotra, when she begins to trust to any aid save the self-reliance with which her god has specially endowed her. But, said Magda, in a low bewildered tone, I do not quite see why there should be a clean sweep of us all. Of course the editor is free to resign if the proprietor does not leave him enough authority or questions his work. But surely we have done nothing to be turned off. Why, it is as bad as sending a servant away without a character. Oh, well, you see, the old fool, Magda began to recognize the esteemed head of her firm under this title, will have back the last editor for certain. They were always pals because he was a man who groveled to those in authority, and he was only turned out because he was making such a hash of the whole thing. They will have to have a real advertisement manager, I expect. You know, ours only works under the chief's direction, and leave him to mess up the letterpress. I don't see why you or I should go, even if he does come back. Isn't he a friend of yours? The sub gave her a quick, queer look. Magda's eyes were gray with tire, and her face was dispirited and colorless. But she looked a young, slight figure, little more than a girl in appearance. No, he said curtly. He was no friend of mine, and he will not be of yours, if you knew him. He will have the woman back who was here before you, too, to take her old place again, as surely as he comes into the office. The married woman, who was always late with her copy, and wrote slovenly English, surely I am better at the work than she was. So you are, ten thousand times. But that won't save your dismissal, he laughed shortly. But why? Magda stared with all her strained face. It was obvious that she saw no reason and acknowledged change for the worse between her and her predecessor. She was blankly incredulous. The sub-editor got off the table and turned away to light a cigarette. Miss Burke, he said, and there was, if anything, a shade more respect in his tone. That woman will turn you out and take your place because she is a friend of the last editor. She will give what you would not dream of giving. Are you woman of the world enough to understand me? The desperate hope of justice and of keeping her position, because she merited it, faded slowly out on Magda's mental horizon. She saw it vanish like the rainbow of hope, and the bitterness of her own struggle to live decently and work honestly, tasted like poison on her tongue. She could not misunderstand. For years of making her own living had taught her to see this poor, ugly world of humanity very plainly. But she belonged to Nuzotra, women who walk with clean feet through the streets of experience. Or if they touch pitch, feel their defilement as a brand upon them. And so such an outline of knowledge had not seemed to affect her personally. Now it appeared necessary to take it into calculation. And for the minute she could not speak because she had lost faith in the purpose of her existence, and saw only her own sex up for hire, and apparently her single marketable possession. Even God's providence seeming estranged. Yes, she said it last quietly, I am woman of the world enough to understand you. I see that I shall go. She took up the blue pencil again and began to make rough notes for the printers. The sub-editor went out of the room, back to his own paper, and a great silence seemed to fill the outer offices, the silence that is full of the familiar sounds of one's life, the open windows let in the far-off hum of the Strand, and the sound of passers-by in Norfolk Street, a door banged in another department of the newspaper office, and the lift bell rang. Magda went on mechanically with her work, as if no moral eruption had taken place in her life. She felt as if she were numb and working purely by habit, and was dully surprised to find that her capacities did not fail her at all. A process block was smudgy, and she noted the fact to the head printer, asking him to tell the machinists to see that it was properly washed. It was only when it came to lunchtime, and she went out as usual, that she found she could not eat, and gave up the effort, finding that food choked her. She did not see the editor all day, and thought that he was not in the office, until suddenly at four o'clock she heard his rap on the door, and raised her head languidly to say, Come in. He came in with a cup of tea in his hand, and set it down beside her, with one of his straight looks into her self-betraying face. Has hope been in here talking to you, Ms. Burke? He said quietly, Yes, earlier in the day she answered with sudden difficulty. Then before we say a word more, I should like to reassure your mind on one point. I do not intend you to stay here if I leave, for one thing your work is too good for the position you hold, and your present salary, and I only intended it as a temporary help to you. For another there are other reasons. He shut his lips and looked out of the open windows at the roof's opposite, while Magda's face flamed. It is all right, he said after a minute, in his kindest tones. I have, I think, found you a better berth on another paper, or if that won't do, I will look for something else. There is plenty of time before us, and we neither of us leave for another three months, according to contract. Anyhow, you may be sure that you shall have my help, and I am not boasting when I say that you need not worry about your immediate future. Of course, whether you go up or down the ladder depends on yourself mainly, but I mean to give you a start. You needn't thank me, he added, glancing away from the quick tears in the blue eyes. You have thoroughly deserved it. There was a minute's silence. Magda put her hand out vaguely to the tea and gulped it down. Fighting for her self-control, the partial removal of the strain shook her as the ill tidings earlier in the day had not succeeded in doing, and showed her how terrible the outlook had been from the relief which followed. But it showed her something else, too. The personality of the man before her grafted on her life and the ascendancy he had gained revealed by the blank dismay of realizing that, that at least, she must lose. I suppose she said, trying to smile, that I shall not be lucky enough to work under you again. No, I think not, he returned, still kindly, however. I wish I could arrange it, but what I mean to do will not allow of your being with me. I see. I am very grateful to you, anyhow, for your kindness and for thinking of me. The bravery of her tone passed him by, but he felt the pathos of her drawn face and softened still more than was usual with him. You look as if you were worn out with anxiety and the spring number. It was too bad of hope to come in and burst this on you, when we are already working you to death. I wish I had been able to come and reassure you earlier in the day. But I did not know you had had an account of yesterday's affair until half an hour ago. Did you have any lunch, child? Not much, said Magda briefly. She was beginning to wish that the strain would relax, for she felt that a very little more would show her the breaking point of her endurance. You had better smoke a cigarette, he said, in his authoritative manner. And when you have rested a little, go out and get something to eat. Don't wait for that late supper of yours. How do you know that I have a late supper? said Magda, with a strained smile as she mechanically added the inscript at the foot of a paragraph. Lady Z and her children in their charming home life with an ironical remembrance that she knew actually nothing about Lady Z except a private rumour that she had come perilously near the divorce court last year. I know more about you than you think, said the editor, in an inscrutable tone. For a minute he lingered almost as if seized with an unprecedented impulse. He looked at the young brown head leaning on the characteristic hand and the soft hair falling round Magda's disheartened blue eyes, but the girl was fighting too desperate a battle to heed him. She wished he would go, that was all. She was tired of the struggle and utterly weary of the relentless emotions to which she seemed to have no right. Life was too vindictive for her just then. It had no aspect that did not show the face of a foe, and she would have been glad to throw up the contest. Why doesn't he go? What is the use of overtaxing me like this, she thought fretfully? It is nothing to him. He comes out of it all with credit. It must be nothing to me either, to Maro. Unfortunately it is with today that we have to wrestle, and the Maro to which we entrust our promises is no healer of the present pain, by and by the door shut, and that was all the intimation that Magda had of something passing out of her life, and yet she felt it go, and felt too, that the time that must pass before the actual dissolution of their daily association held nothing like this. If there had been anything more to do or to say, it would have sprung to life in the stress of the moment which showed them the dividing line. It was plain that there was nothing more. She went on working for a time, disregarding his advice to go out and get something to eat. Then when the boy came for the sheets, and she handed them out with a long sigh of relief, she lit a cigarette, and began to smoke. The office was very quiet now. Almost all the staff had left, but she had the key of her own room, and has sometimes been there until eight or nine o'clock. When there was a pressure of work, she smoked quite quietly, enjoying it, and wondering at her own deliberation, as if she were somehow outside herself, a new consciousness that watched her physical and mental body. At last she laid the little burnt end down on the pen tray, and rising walked over to the window and looked out. It is always Sunday in Norfolk Street after six o'clock. The business of the day seems to have been folded up and locked in with the offices, and the feet of passers-by become startlingly distinct. The strand roared softly still, but it was the roar of recreation, pleasure-seekers going to dinner or the theater after business. Magda looked down idly, feeling the innervating spring air lift the hair lightly from her forehead, as if it rejoiced in her womanhood. It was like a caress, and it made her shiver. There were to be none such things in her life. The gentle side of existence was a snare laid for weary feet. If one longed for it, or turned one's eyes for a minute from the goal of hard work, the punishment was out of all proportion to the transgression. I have been a fool, she told herself, in her hard, young condemnation. There is nothing for me but the things I earn for myself, success by sheer hard labour and the money comforts that success brings. I have always stood by myself. I always shall. Back on her sensitive memory flashed the sly degrees by which she had come to confide too much in another's strength. She saw each successive step and the growing compliance of her feminine attitude to that of the man. Where was her independence now? It had come to this, that she did not want to depend on herself. She would gladly have yielded to the authority of one man whose decision had usurped her own. A panic seized her. A fear that she was going to have to suffer pain which she might call by no definite name. I am tired, it is just that I am tired of responsibility tonight, she said breathlessly. It is only for the moment. She kept on repeating it over and over in a whisper, as if to soothe herself. It is only for the moment. Tomorrow, up above the roof lines, an indifferent heaven hung beyond the appeal of outstretched hands, down below in Norfolk Street, the ghostly sound of unseen feet passed by, going homeward. Between the two, the girl without a home stood and looked at life. It was not encouraging.