It is a somewhat dreary feeling to arrive even at a friend’s house before seven o’clock in the morning, and be received by sleepy-looking people who have obviously been torn unwillingly from their beds in deference to the precepts of hospitality, but it is infinitely worse to arrive at a lodging-house at the same hour, ring several times at the bell before a dingy servant can be induced to appear, and to realise a moment later that in a tireless parlour you perceive your journey’s goal!

Claire Gifford felt a creep of the blood at the sight of that parlour, though if her first introduction had been at night, when the curtains were drawn and the lamps lit, she would have found it cosy enough.  There was no sign of her room-mate; perhaps it was too much to expect her to get up at so early an hour to welcome a stranger, but Claire had expected it, felt perfectly sure that-had positions been reversed-she herself would have taken pains to deck both herself and her room in honour of the occasion, and so felt correspondingly downcast.

Presently she found herself following the dingy maid up three separate nights of stairs, and arriving at a tiny box of a bedroom on the top floor.  There was a bed, a washstand, a chest of drawers doing service as a dressing-table, two chairs and a sloping roof.  Claire would have been quite disappointed if that last item had been missing, for whoever heard of a girl who set out to make her own living who had not slept in a room with a sloping roof?  On the whole, despite its tiny proportions, the little room made a pleasant impression.  It was clean, it was bright, walls and furniture were alike of a plain unrelieved white, and through the open casement window could be seen a distant slope of green overtopping the intervening chimney tops.  Claire’s eyes roved here and there with the instinct of a born home-maker, saw what was lacking here, what was superfluous there, grasped neglected possibilities, and mentally re-arranged and decorated the premises before a slower person would have crossed the floor.

Then she took up her stand before the small mirror, and devoted a whole minute to studying her own reflection from the point of view of Captain Erskine Fanshawe of unknown address.  By her own deliberate choice she had cut herself off from future chance of meeting this acquaintance of an hour; nevertheless it was distinctly reviving to discern that her hat was set at precisely the right angle, and that for an all-night voyager her whole appearance was remarkably fresh and dainty.

Claire first smiled, and then sighed, and pulled out the hat-pins with impatient tugs.  To be prudent and self-denying is not always an exhilarating process for sweet and twenty.

Presently the maid came staggering upstairs with the smaller boxes, and Claire busied herself in her room until the clock had struck eight, when she again descended to the joint sitting-room.  This time the fire was lighted, and the table laid for breakfast, and behind the tea-tray sat Miss Rhodes, the English mistress, already halfway through her meal.  She rose, half smiling, half frowning, and held out a thin hand in welcome.

“Morning.  Hope you’ve had a good crossing.  Didn’t know when you’d be down.  Do you take coffee?”

“Please!” Claire felt that a cup of coffee would be just what she needed, but missed the familiar fragrant scent.  She seated herself at the table, and while Miss Rhodes went on with her preparation, studied her with curious eyes.

She saw a woman of thirty-two or three, with well-cut features, dark eyes, and abundant dark hair-a woman who ought to have been distinctly good-looking but who succeeded in being plain and commonplace.  She was badly-dressed, in a utility blouse of grey flannel, her expression was tired and listless, and her hair, though neat, showed obvious lack of care, having none of the silky sheen which rewards regular systematic brushing.  So far bad, but, in spite of all drawbacks, it was an interesting face, and Claire felt attracted, despite the preliminary disappointment.

“There’s some bacon in that dish.  It will be cold, I’m afraid.  You can ring, if you like, and ask them to warm it up, but they’ll keep you waiting a quarter of an hour out of spite.  I’ve given it up myself.”

“Oh, I’m accustomed to French breakfasts.  I really want nothing but some bread and coffee.”  Claire sipped at her cup as she finished speaking, and the sudden grimace of astonishment which followed roused her companion to laughter.

“You don’t like it?  It isn’t equal to your French coffee.”

“It isn’t coffee at all.  It’s undrinkable!” Claire pushed away her cup in disgust.  “Is it always as bad as that?”

“Worse!” said Miss Rhodes composedly.  “They put in more this morning because of you.  Sometimes it’s barely coloured, and it’s always chicory.”  She shrugged resignedly.  “No English landlady can make coffee.  It’s no use worrying.  Have to make the best of what comes.”

“Indeed I shan’t.  Why should I?  I shan’t try.  There’s no virtue in drinking such stuff.  We provide the coffee-what’s to hinder us making it for ourselves?”

“No fire, as a rule.  Can’t afford one when you are going out immediately after breakfast.”

Claire stared in dismay.  It had never occurred to her that she might have to be economical to this extent.

“But when it’s very cold?  What do you do then?”

“Put on a jersey, and nurse the hot-water jug!”

Claire grimaced, then nodded with an air of determination.

“I’ll buy a machine!  There can be no objection to that.  You would prefer good coffee, wouldn’t you, if you could get it without any more trouble?”

“Oh, certainly.  I’ll enjoy it-while it lasts!”

“Why shouldn’t it last?”

Miss Rhodes stared across at the eager young face.  She looked tired, and a trifle impatient.

“Oh, my dear girl, you’re New.  We are all the same at first-bubbling over with energy, and determined to arrange everything exactly as we like.  It’s a phase which we all live through.  Afterwards you don’t care.  You are too tired to worry.  All your energy goes on your day’s work, and you are too thankful for peace and quietness to bother about details.  You take what comes, and are thankful it’s not worse.”

Claire’s smile showed an elaborate forbearance.

“Rather a poor-spirited attitude, don’t you think?”

“Wait and see!” said the English mistress.

She rose and threw herself in a chair by the window, and Claire left the despised coffee and followed her example.  Through the half-opened panes she looked out on a row of brick houses depressingly dingy, depressingly alike.  About every second house showed a small black card on which the word “Apartments” was printed in gilt letters.  Down the middle of the street came a fruiterer’s cart, piled high with wicker baskets.  The cry of “Bananas, cheap bananas,” floated raucously on the air.  Claire swiftly averted her eyes and turned back to her companion.

“It is very good of you to let me share your appartement.  Miss Farnborough said she had arranged it with you, but it must be horrid taking in a stranger.  I will try not to be too great a bore!”

But Miss Rhodes refused to be thanked.

“I’m bound to have somebody,” said she ungraciously.  “Couldn’t afford them alone.  You know the terms?  Thirty-five shillings a week for the three rooms.  That’s cheap in this neighbourhood.  We only get them at that price because we are out all day, and need so little catering.”  She looked round the room with her tired, mocking smile.  “Hope you admire the scheme of decoration!  I’ve been in dozens of lodgings, but I don’t think I’ve ever struck an uglier room; but the people are clean and honest, and one has to put that before beauty, in our circumstances.”

“There’s a great deal of pattern about.  It hasn’t what one could call a restful effect!” said Claire, looking across at an ochre wall bespattered with golden scrawls, a red satin mantel-border painted with lustre roses, a suite of furniture covered in green stamped plush, a collection of inartistic pictures, and unornamental ornaments.  Even her spirit quailed before the hopelessness of beautifying a room in which all the essentials were so hopelessly wrong.  She gave it up in despair, and returned to the question of finance.

“Then my share will be seventeen and six!  That seems very cheap.  I am to begin at a hundred and ten pounds.  How much extra must I allow for food?”

“That depends upon your requirements.  We have dinner at school; quite a good meal for ninepence, including a penny for coffee afterwards.”

“The same sort of coffee we have had this morning?”

“Practically.  A trifle better perhaps.  Not much.”

“Hurrah!” cried Claire gaily.  “That’s a penny to the good!  Eightpence for me-a clear saving of fivepence a week!”

Miss Rhodes resolutely refused to smile.  She had the air of thinking it ribald to be cheerful on the serious question of pounds, shillings and pence.

“Even so, it’s three-and-four, and you can’t do breakfast and supper and full board on Saturday and Sunday under seven shillings.  It’s tight enough to manage on that.  Altogether it often mounts up to twelve.”

“Seventeen and twelve.”  Claire pondered deeply before she arrived at a solution.  “Twenty-nine.  Call it thirty, to make it even, and I am to begin at a hundred and ten.  Over two pounds a week.  I ought to do it comfortably, and have quite a lot over.”

Miss Rhodes laughed darkly.

“What about extras?” she demanded.  “What about laundry, and fires, and stationery and stamps?  What about boot-mending, and Tubes on wet days, and soap and candles, and dentist and medicines, and subs, at school, and collections in church, and travelling expenses on Saturdays and Sundays, when you invariably want to go to the very other side of the city?  London is not like a provincial town.  You can’t stir out of the house under fourpence or sixpence at the very least.  What about illness, and amusement, and holidays?  What about-”

Claire thrust her fingers in her ears with an air of desperation.

“Stop!  Stop!  For pity’s sake don’t swamp me any more.  I feel in the bankruptcy court already, and I had imagined that I was rich!  A hundred and ten pounds seemed quite a big salary.  Everybody was surprised at my getting so much, and I suppose you have even more?”

“A hundred and fifty.  Yes!  You must remember that we don’t belong to the ordinary rut of worker-we are experts.  Our education has been a long costly business.  No untrained worker could take our place; we are entitled to expert’s pay.  Oh, yes, they are quite good salaries if you happen to have a home behind you, and people who are ready to help over rough times, instead of needing to be helped themselves.  The pity of it is that most High School-mistresses come from families who are not rich.  The parents have made a big effort to pay for the girls’ education, and when they are fairly launched, they expect to be helped in return.  Some girls have been educated by relations, or have practically paid for themselves by scholarships.  Three out of four of us have people who are more in need of help than able to give it.  I give my own mother thirty pounds a year, so we are practically on the same salary.  Have you a home where you can spend your holiday?  Holidays run away terribly with your money.  They come to nearly four months in the year.”

For the first time those prolonged holidays appeared to Claire as a privilege which had its reverse side.  Friends in Brussels might possibly house her for two or three weeks; she could not expect, she would not wish them to do more; and at the end there would still remain over three months!  It was a new and disagreeable experience to look forward to holidays with dread!  For a whole two minutes she looked thoroughly depressed, then her invincible optimism came to the top, and she cried triumphantly-

“I’ll take a holiday engagement!”

The English mistress shook her head.

“That’s fatal!  I tried it myself one summer.  Went with a family to the seaside, and was expected to play games with the children all day long, and coach them in the evening.  I began the term tired out, and nearly collapsed before the end.  Teaching is nerve-racking work, and if you don’t get a good spell off, it’s as bad for the pupils as yourself.  You snap their heads off for the smallest trifle.  Besides, it’s folly to wear oneself out any sooner than one need.  It’s bad enough to think of the time when one has to retire.  That’s the nightmare which haunts us more and more every year.”

“Don’t you think when the time comes you will be glad to rest?” asked innocent Claire, whereupon Miss Rhodes glared at her with indignant eyes.

“We should be glad to rest, no doubt, but we don’t exactly appreciate the prospect of resting in the workhouse, and it’s difficult to see where else some of us are to go!  There is no pension for High School-mistresses, and we are bound to retire at fifty-five-if we can manage to stick it out so long.  Fifty-five seems a long way off to you-not quite so long to me; when you reach forty it becomes to feel quite near.  Women are horribly long-lived, so the probability is that we’ll live on to eighty or more.  Twenty-five years after leaving off work, and-where is the money to come from to keep us?  That’s the question which haunts us all when we look into our bank-books and find that, with all our pains, we have only been able to save at the utmost two or three hundred pounds.”

Claire looked scared, but she recovered her composure with a swiftness which her companion had no difficulty in understanding.  She pounced upon her with lightning swiftness.

“Ah, you think you’ll get married, and escape that way!  We all do when we’re new, and pretty, and ignorant of the life.  But it’s fifty to one, my dear, that you won’t?  You won’t meet many men, for one thing; and if you do, they don’t like school-mistresses.”

“Doesn’t that depend a good deal on the kind of school-mistress?”

“Absolutely; but after a few years we are all more or less alike.  We don’t begin by being dowdy and angular, and dogmatic and prudish; we begin by being pretty and cheerful like you.  I used to change my blouse every evening, and put on silk stockings.”

“Don’t you now?”

“I do not!  Why should I, to sit over a lodging-house table correcting exercises till ten o’clock?  It’s not worth the trouble.  Besides, I’m too tired, and it wears out another blouse.”

Claire’s attention was diverted from clothes by the shock of the reference to evening work.  She had looked forward to coming home to read an interesting book, or be lazy in whatever fashion appealed to her most, and the corrections of exercises seemed of all things the most dull.

“Shall I have evening work, too?” she inquired blankly, and Miss Rhodes laughed with brutal enjoyment.

“Rather!  French compositions on the attributes of a true woman, or, `How did you spend your summer holiday?’ with all the tenses wrong, and the idioms translated word for word.  And every essay a practical repetition of the one before.  It’s not once in a blue moon that one comes across a girl with any originality of thought.  Oh, yes! that’s the way we shall spend five evenings a week.  You will sit at that side of the table, I will sit at this, and we’ll correct and yawn, and yawn and correct, and drink a cup of cocoa and go to bed at ten.  Lively, isn’t it?”

“Awful!  I never thought of homework.  But if Saturday is a whole holiday there will still be one night off.  I shall make a point of doing something exciting every Saturday evening.”

“Exciting things cost money, and, as a rule, when you have paid up the various extras, there’s no money to spare.  I stay in bed till ten o’clock on Saturday, and then get up and wash blouses, and do my mending, and have a nap after lunch, and if it’s summer, go and sit on a penny chair in the park, or take a walk over Hampstead Heath.  In the evening I read a novel and have a hot bath.  Once in a blue moon I have an extravagant bout, and lunch in a restaurant, and go to an entertainment-but I’m sorry afterwards when I count the cost.  On Sunday I go to church, and wish some one would ask me to tea.  They don’t, you know.  They may do once or twice, when you first come up, but you can never ask them back, and your clothes get shabby, and you know nothing about their interests, so they think you a bore, and quietly let you drop.”

A smothered exclamation burst from Claire’s lips; with a sudden, swirling movement she leapt up, and fell on her knees before Miss Rhodes’s chair, her hands clasping its arms, her flushed face upturned with a desperate eagerness.

“Miss Rhodes! we are going to live together here, we are going to share the same room, and the same meals.  Would you-if any one offered you a million pounds, would you agree to poison me slowly, day by day, dropping little drops of poison into everything I ate and everything I drank, while you sat by and watched me grow weaker and weaker till I died?”

“Good heavens, girl-are you mad!  What in the world are you raving about?”

Miss Rhodes had grown quite red.  She was indignant; she was also more than a little scared.  The girl’s sudden change of mood was startling in itself, and she looked so tense, so overwhelmingly in earnest.  What could she mean?  Was it possible that she was a little-touched?

“I suppose you don’t realise it, but it’s insulting even to put such a question.”

“But you are doing it!  It’s just exactly what you are beginning already.  Ever since I arrived you’ve been poisoning me drop by drop.  Poisoning my mind!  I am at the beginning of my work, and you’ve been discouraging me, frightening me, painting it all black.  Every word that you’ve said has been a drop of poison to kill hope and courage and confidence-and oh, don’t do it! don’t go on!  I may be young and foolish, and full of ridiculous ideas, but let me keep them as long as I can!  If all that you say is true, they will be knocked out of me soon enough, and I-I’ve never had to work before, or been alone, and-and it’s only two days since my mother left me to go to India-all that long way-and left me behind!  It’s hard enough to go on being alone, and believing it’s all going to be couleur de rose, but it will be fifty times harder if I don’t.  Please-please don’t make it any worse!”

With the last words tears came with a rush, the tears that had been resolutely restrained throughout the strain of the last week.  Claire dropped her head on the nearest resting-place she could find, which happened to be Miss Rhodes’s blue serge lap, and felt the quick pressure of a hand over the glossy coils.

“Poor little girl!” said the English mistress softly.  “Poor little girl!  I’m sorry!  I’m a beast!  Take no notice of me.  I’m a sour, disagreeable old thing.  It was more than half jealousy, dear, because you looked so pretty and spry, so like what I used to look myself.  The life’s all right, if you keep well, and don’t worry too much ahead.  There, don’t cry!  I loathe tears!  You will yourself, when you have to deal with silly, hysterical girls.  Come, I’ll promise I won’t poison you any more-at least, I’ll do my best; but I’ve a grumbling nature, and you’d better realise it, once for all, and take no notice.  We’ll get on all right.  I like you.  I’m glad you came.  My good girl, if you don’t stop, I’ll shake you till you do!”

Claire sat back on her heels, mopped her eyes, and gave a strangled laugh.

“I hate crying myself, but I’ll begin again on the faintest provocation.  It’s always like that with me.  I hardly ever cry, but when I once begin-”

Miss Rhodes rose with an air of determination.

“We’d better go out.  I am free till lunch-time.  I’ll take you round and show you the neighbourhood, and the usual places of call.  It will save time another day.  Anything you want to buy?”

Claire mopped away another tear.

“C-certainly,” she said feebly.  “A c-offee machine.”