DURING the next fortnight Mrs. Heyham's sitting-room took on a business-like air. A desk appeared in it, a typewriter, and finally a lady called Miss Percival. She was Rosemary's idea, and the theory of her was that one cannot be certain of doing good, even to waitresses, unless one knows something about them before one begins. Miss Percival, who had been secretary to a philanthropic member of Parliament, was to help her employer acquire this necessary knowledge, and then act, so to speak, as a reservoir of information whose tap would be turned if Mrs. Heyham showed signs of forgetfulness or of letting her feelings run away with her.
There could be no doubt of the lady's fitness for this task, for away in her past behind the conscientious member lay services to every progressive society in London that wanted investigation done for nothing. And if testimonials can be trusted each of these bodies had relinquished Miss Percival with passionate regret.
Mary waited for such efficiency with certain misgivings. Her kind heart had prompted her to buy a fumed oak desk instead of the elegant sycamore she would have liked, in order that her secretary might feel at home. Anything so ugly must, Mary thought, be excessively practical. But when Miss Percival arrived she did not look like a person who would be affected by the material of her desk. She was short, dark, unexpectedly young, and quite kind to every one. She even informed Mrs. Heyham that this was the sort of work she had been hoping to get. The only other thing one noticed about her, at first, was that she would not speak, if she could help it, in front of James or Trent. Mary, when she saw that this was so, felt sorry for her, and almost suspected sad experiences. The M. P. was out of the question—Mary had once sat next to him at dinner—but she had no such guarantee about all the queer people there must have been in the societies. But kindness might be trusted to remove any doubts that lingered in Miss Percival's mind, and in the meantime the important thing was that she seemed to have a clear notion of what she meant to do. This was a relief to Mary, who could organise very well when she must, but took no delight in thinking out a plan for its own sake.
The first thing, according to the expert's scheme, was to ask Mr. Heyham to give them an account of the business. This he willingly did, at ease in his arm-chair, while Mary looked at him with quiet appreciation. Miss Percival was not present. James, when he told a story, liked to tell it in his own way, and in this case Mary's dead father and mother were involved, besides James's own father, who was intensely alive and sinful in South America. Mary could repeat the important facts to Miss Percival afterwards, and then Miss Percival could make a note of them.
The business came into the family in the middle-age of James's father, who in those days was a plausible, restless fellow, continually initiating enterprises and continually throwing them up. At this period in his career he was associated with a dubiously virtuous old man called Matthew Clarkson, and Clarkson persuaded his ally to invest some money they had recently acquired in a mineral water factory in East London. It was called the "'Rule Britannia' Aerated Water Co.," and that, as its vendor pointed out, was a very good name to start from. The factory, as they found it, was small and exceedingly dirty, and perhaps for these reasons congenial to Matthew, who developed a habit of visiting the place very morning in order that he might irritate the foreman, and conduct experiments in an unpleasant cupboard that he called his laboratory. Meanwhile Mr. Henry Heyham was making the most of this brief life, spending a good deal of mysterious money, moving into a larger house, giving his sons a passable education, and looking about him for a suitable match for his daughter Edith. Even her brothers thought Edith a handsome girl, and in particular she was attractively plump. Henry found it possible before his own financial needs became too glaring to marry her to a wealthy gentleman interested in meat. And thank heaven this is a Christian country where marriage is still held sacred.
He bore up until the honeymoon was over, for he always liked to do things decently, but two days after Edith's return he summoned his second son James, fresh from a London school, and told him, with an almost tearful impressiveness, that he, Henry, was for the moment done for. Honourably done for, mind you, not through his own fault but through the fault of those he had trusted. Not that he regretted having trusted them, he would rather have a mind full of faith and confidence in his fellows even if he had to pay for it than pass through the world crammed with ugly suspicions and for ever taking precautions against his neighbour.
Even without the old man's deprecating look, James would have understood that this was Henry's way for apologising for some gross and culminating piece of carelessness.
But that was not all he had to say. Many fathers, if not most fathers, when they had reached the age of having grown-up sons who had been treated with every kindness, supplied with every luxury, and equipped with an unsurpassed education, would consider—and in his opinion they wouldn't go beyond their rights if they did—that the time had come when the said sons were in duty bound to turn to and support the authors of their being. But he, Henry, was not that sort of man. He would never be a burden on any child of his. On the contrary it had been the object of his steadfast endeavour to provide a safe start in life for his boys, no matter what might happen to their old father. Edith couldn't have been better disposed of, Timothy was doing well with the smartest, most up-to-date solicitors in London, and he now proposed to complete the beneficent work by giving James an opportunity that most young fellows would cut off their ears to get, an opportunity so resplendent, if he only liked to use it, that ten years might see him a rich man, and twenty find him a captain of industry—and this in an age when to be a captain of industry, honest British industry, was the goal of every decent man's ambition. There was much that might be said upon this subject, upon the essential meanness and hollowness of politics, art, literature, the Church, the services, science, medicine, and teaching, regarded as careers. But time pressed. He would put what he wanted to say briefly, simply, without trimmings, as befitted a business man. He proposed to make over to his dear son James his share in the thriving mineral water business known as the Rule Britannia Aerated Water Co. And to whatever quarter of the globe fortune might drive him, to whatever depths of squalor she might plunge him, he would never forget to pray for the immediate, the triumphant, the cataclysmic success of his dear son, his old friend, and the Rule Britannia.
James had not known that there was such happiness. He could not speak. His eyes were dazzled by a vision of shining bottles, thousands of smooth glass bottles, crystal clear, through which gleamed splendidly the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, of their appetising contents. Above waved the flag of the greatest of nations, and the distant voices singing a glorious song broke off to acclaim him a captain of industry. His heart was full; for a moment he forgot his anxiety concerning the fate of a parent.
Old Henry, who had only paused for dramatic effect, felt no pain at this lack of piety. Let James rejoice, he went on, and not sadden his days by thinking about him. He had knocked about the world before now, and if a peaceful old age was denied him he would submit anew to the scourgings of fate. As a matter of fact—here his eye brightened—he had heard of a little affair in South America. There might be something in it or there might not. In any case no good would be served by talking about it now. If matters went well his boys would hear from him. If not—he hoped they would keep a warm corner in their hearts for the memory of their poor old father. And now James had better come along and see to the necessary papers, as he was sailing for Montevideo in a couple of days.
When next his boys did hear of him, two years later, he was lodged in a South American prison. James, who had long feared something of the sort, could only be thankful that it had happened in a romantic continent. None of Henry's family doubted that when Henry returned—if he ever did return—he would have some explanation compatible with the greatest physical courage and the loftiest qualities of heart and head. As a matter of fact when a letter arrived it contained the tale of a maiden in distress so beautiful, so tender, so virtuous, that only a scoundrel could have turned away from her piteous appeals.
Meanwhile James worked hard, for the captain of industry still dominated his dreams. But it was some time before he began to make more than a bare living. Even when he had to a certain extent surmounted his own inexperience he was faced by his partner's refusal to spend a penny on making the factory even decently clean, by the impossibility of keeping a good class of work-girl owing to the same old gentleman's roving eye, and by Clarkson's Ginger Cordial. This was the result of years of patient and muddled investigation on Matthew's part. He was not satisfied with it yet, he said, and meanwhile he was offended if he was not allowed to call the whole staff away from their work in order that they might conduct experiments with him. This was particularly troublesome because the coadjutor he most favoured was the forewoman, the only person in the place whose tongue was sharp enough to keep the girls in order. It was useless for James to explain that no business carried on in this way could have any chance of succeeding. Clarkson replied that it didn't matter a damn whether it succeeded or not until the Ginger Cordial was ready for the market. After that event it wouldn't be able to help succeeding. And further, he wasn't going to be preached at in his own factory by—young puppies.
That seemed an impregnable position, but Matthew's defences had one weak spot. The passing of the Employers' Liability Act revealed the fact that the senior partner was terrified of inspectors and of the fiendish things inspectors might do to him. He had no knowledge of the law, and only a vivid something in his past seemed adequate to account for his fear of it. Happily in this country we have, besides the clumsy and public efforts of our legislators, the subtle and intricate machinery of Home Office orders. One Julius Trent, a friend of James's, persuaded him to spend a few pounds at a costumier's and a few shillings at a printer's. After that one of Her Majesty's Factory Inspectors, in an imposing blue uniform, visited Mr. Clarkson several times a week. The old man withstood this onslaught for some time, but when the inspector arrived one day with a printed document which set forth that owing to information and complaints recently received regulations had been issued to the effect that those who were guilty of any breaches of the rules laid down for the safety and good government of the English people, and in particular of obstructing or using obscene or filthy language to Her Majesty's Factory Inspectors in the course of their duty, should in future be liable to imprisonment with hard labour without the option of a fine, the old man's courage failed. He undertook to allow the necessary cleaning, he promised to respect a salutary rule just made by the Home Secretary that no forewoman was on any account whatever to enter her employer's private room, he even gave up his laboratory because the same authority had found it inexpedient to permit experimental research into the composition of cordials to be carried on under one roof with the manufacture of mineral waters between the hours of 6 A.M. and 10 P.M. He retired routed to a shed at the bottom of his garden with no revenge but his votes, and the next thing to do was to buy him out before he discovered what had happened.
That took some time, partly because every penny James could spare was needed for repairs and improvements, partly because Mr. Clarkson, as soon as he found that James wished it, showed an obstinate reluctance to being bought out. The Home Secretary could not exclude him from his own premises altogether, and he still enjoyed an occasional ramble round. Finally James, who was growing more masterful, dismissed the forewoman. That was a blow, for her successor and her successor's underlings did not appreciate Mr. Clarkson's practised smiles. James found him one day examining himself rather sadly in a looking-glass.
The sight of James's reflected face suddenly mingled with an already unpleasing picture roused Mr. Clarkson. Hitherto, he said, he had borne with young Heyham's goings-on in a Christian spirit, but this was spying. Heyham seemed to think that he was cock of the walk, that he'd only got to say the word and every one would lick his boots; well, they wouldn't. And when he, Matt Clarkson, liked to be nasty he could be nasty. And no mistake about it.
Being nasty meant abusing James in front of the hands, jeering at him, or, what was worse, assuming in public that nothing delighted him more than to hear one of Mr. Clarkson's appalling anecdotes. Even the Home Secretary cannot forbid a Briton to make the jokes that please him. Nevertheless in his heart the old man was afraid. He did not attempt to control the business, and when he had made his partner really angry, he would say that he didn't mean anything by it, it was just his way.
Meanwhile James had arrived at a time of his life that he could discuss more fittingly with a wife on the sofa beside him than with a wife on a separate chair. Julius Trent, afterwards such a nuisance, then so charming, introduced his friend James to his parents, and old Mr. Trent took a fancy to the young man. Old Mr. Trent approved of young men who worked very hard and showed every intention of succeeding, and he had been amused by Julius's account of Mr. Clarkson and the factory inspector. He also enjoyed discussing books with James, for in those days James took an interest in political theory. He hadn't much time to think of these things himself, but there were plenty of men who had, and surely some day one of them would produce the simple, gentlemanly, inexpensive solution of social problems that would relieve an overworked business man of further anxiety.
Old Mr. Trent, like many people who have few chances of talking over the subjects that interest them, had invented two or three systems that would abolish bad times and make England prosperous for evermore. The trouble with most of them was that they involved a good deal of compulsion at the outset—before people had learned to appreciate their excellence—and Mr. Trent was against compulsion in any form. It was this that had made him give up his great Malthusian scheme of grading workmen according to their capacity and regulating their families in a corresponding manner. He still hoped that a more enlightened generation might adopt it of their own free will, and to this end he subscribed considerable sums to a Neo-Malthusian journal. But the plan to which he had finally devoted his declining years might perfectly well, if only the Government would leave off wasting their time, be put into effect at once. It consisted in taking a tenth of the capital of anybody who had got a sufficient quantity, buying gold with it, and depositing the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England. It would not be at all an oppressive measure, for the resulting prosperity and expansion of credit would far more than compensate everybody concerned. After only two or three years he was sure that no more compulsion would be necessary, for here you would be dealing, not with uneducated workmen, blind to their own interests, but with astute financiers and men of business. The only difficulty would be that other countries might get hold of the idea and refuse to sell gold. But let his hearers take heart, recent discoveries all went to show that there was a far greater quantity of gold in various parts of the planet—mostly, by the direct favour of God, British possessions—than one was apt to imagine. If James would glance at these geological maps....
James was not always allured by these problems, but he appreciated Mr. Trent's library and the comfortable, sufficiently cultured air of Mr. Trent's house. The manners that prevailed in it seemed to James very gracious and elegant—they were in any case a pleasant change from the manners of Mr. Clarkson. He also grew fond of Mrs. Trent, who was kind to him, and he fell in love with whatever her mother and her governess allowed him to see of Mary. She was sixteen when he saw her first, very pretty, very quiet, very easily made to blush. She would laugh delightfully, as if she could not help it, at the clever, witty things James said, and then stop suddenly, and droop her head over her embroidery, until James surpassed himself to make her look up again. They were engaged when she was eighteen, and at the end of another year he felt that he was in a position to marry her. Mr. and Mrs. Trent believed in girls marrying young, while they would still view facts in a romantic light and before they had become unable to adapt their dispositions to those of their husbands. James's only regret was that he could not present himself as the sole owner of his growing business, but old Clarkson persistently demanded not only three thousand pounds for what had only cost him fifteen hundred but an extra five hundred for the formula of his Ginger Cordial. Nobody wanted his cordial, but he would not sell one without the other. That he would sell at all was due to the fact that James was still bent on developing the business instead of considering all the returns as profit.
Neither James nor Mary was ever sure of the motives that led Mr. Trent to make his daughter part owner of the "Rule Britannia." But they believed that the idea must have occurred to him first on the day when he met Mr. Clarkson in James's office. The senior partner's clothes were particular greasy that day, he had been drinking a good deal of Ginger Cordial with a little rum in it to make it more satisfying, and he insisted on showing the visitor some picture postcards that he considered truly comic. Mr. Trent was a fastidious little man, and as an estate agent he had come into contact with some very good people. He asked James at the time whether he ever saw Mr. Clarkson outside the factory, and James's reply of "Not if I can help it!" may not have seemed sufficiently reassuring. At any rate when James came to sign his marriage settlements he found that Mr. Clarkson had sold his share in the firm and his rights over Clarkson's Ginger Cordial for £3,500, the said rights to revert to him if the said cordial were ever sold under any other name, and that Mrs. James Heyham would in future be entitled to half the profits of the business.
After his marriage James worked harder than ever. Old Mr. Trent made an excellent father-in-law; he never interfered but he was always ready to lend James a hundred or so when mineral-water provided some sudden opportunity for a rich man to become a little richer. James found considerable moral satisfaction in repaying these loans. Mrs. Trent was sympathetic, helpful when Trent and Laura were born, and an unfailing example to Mary of how a wife should cherish and revere a husband. The Heyhams lived frugally, for the firm was still absorbing every penny that could be spared. Bread companies and milk companies were beginning to make fortunes out of shops for the sale of tea and light refreshments. James did not see why a similar venture should not succeed with mineral water for its basis. The "Rule Britannia" was turned into a private company under the name of "Imperial Refreshments Limited." Mr. Trent lent James the necessary capital and three tea-shops were established.
The tea-shops flourished and their numbers grew. Before long they were the most important part of the business. They did not provide the market for mineral waters that James had expected, but, though it seemed a little perverse of them, they were steady customers for the Ginger Cordial. This proved to be a heartening mixture, unnecessarily complicated perhaps, but undoubtedly with an interest of its own. In summer it imparted life to our Imperial Fresh Fruit Drinks, in winter, hot, it made clients feel brisk but not aggressive. James hated the sight of it, and its smell gave him a headache.
Now he still worked, still looked for opportunities, still kept an open mind. But it was with the ease and amplitude of recognised success. Worries came and went, weather and government interfered with prices, this man or that turned out bad, neighbourhoods altered, and rivals had bright ideas. But at the bottom the Imperial was sound and everybody knew it. Its methods and its machinery alike were the most up-to-date in the trade. Its premises were spotless, the materials it put into its products were absolutely the best that could be done for the money. And James took trouble to please his customers' minds as well as their bodies. The tea-shops had begun in a somewhat gloomy fashion; the glass doors between their windows had been darkened with large bills of fare, the upper panes of the windows themselves had been pasted over with labels, and below a Japanese tea-set on one side and some fruit and a boiled ham on the other had been thrown into relief by red plush curtains. Inside there had been bamboo furniture, black screens with gold birds on them, and an occasional artificial palm. But as James rose in the world his taste improved. With the changes in Mary's furniture at home the decorative scheme of the tea-shops changed too, until now they were models of charm and sanitation. Their walls were white and their paint was black. Customers' hats and coats were massed in places where they did not destroy the effect. The tables had tops that were excellent imitations of green marble and as light as wood to shift—heavy wood. There were casement windows, and in winter the curtains and the crockery were cherry-coloured, in summer they were white with a border of green leaves. Trent thought this extravagant, but James preferred to consider the beneficial effect on the æsthetic natures of his customers. Besides it pays in the long run to be distinctive. Even the company's monogram had been carefully designed to add to the beauty of these favoured places. In short, they looked like shops where you might well have paid sixpence for your cup of tea, and they, were shops, as the posters by real artists reminded you, where you could get a superlative cup for twopence.
The Imperial manufactured their own china, under another name, and held the patent rights of the marble substitute. In the newer shops they were paving the floors with it, green and white. The fact that several other restaurants and tea-shops came innocently to him for their cups and saucers gave James a good deal of quiet pleasure, though he didn't attend to that side of the business himself. Nor, as the china factory was naturally not in London, would Mary be likely to have dealings with it, though they employed a good many girls. But he could assure her that go where she would, at any time, whether she was expected or not expected, she wouldn't find a corner of the Imperial's premises that she would be ashamed to see in her own house. James knew all about dirt, and he didn't believe in it.
THE next thing to do, clearly, was to visit the tea-shops. James took Mary to the Oxford Circus depot himself. He was particularly proud of the Oxford Circus depot, because the girls wore frilled aprons and green dresses, and the washing-up was done by machines. Their gay attire was a recognition of the girls' good looks—they had been chosen by a manager who was a real lady and had an eye for a pretty face. She explained the thing to Mary:—At Oxford Circus their clientele was superior to most, and the girls came to them not so much to get married, as they came to shops where the customers were chiefly clerks, but because they liked the feeling of being in fashionable life. So they naturally appreciated the chance of looking more elegant than black woollen dresses permit. Only last year one of them had left to be a mannequin at Ormesby's. A gentleman from Ormesby's had been lunching at the depot and noticed her figure. And of course that had made the others more anxious than ever to be smart. It was very natural, and one couldn't be hard on them, especially as the ladies liked it so—they felt more as if they were in Bond Street, though the prices were the Imperial's usual prices—but she did have to say a word sometimes about high heels. Mrs. Heyham could see for herself that it wasn't safe carrying trays up and down those marble stairs with high heels. And then there was the tap, tap, tapping. Besides, high heels give so much trouble with feet, and they had to think of that, if Mrs. Heyham would forgive her seeming vulgar.
James nodded hastily at this, and changed the subject. He liked to think that the manager looked after the girls' health, but really their feet were not things that he cared to discuss. He preferred to contemplate their trim waists and the clever manipulation of their hair. That was another point in which they differed from the attendants in less stylish places, and Mrs. Creemer, her voice dropped in a manner suited to James's modesty, did not fail to mention it. It appeared that she had said only yesterday, "Miss Perkins, my dear, off with them pads! A simple side parting and a wave over the ear is what you want. Just a touch of black velvet, perhaps, as you're fair, but nothing showy!" She did her best to take only superior young ladies, but you couldn't expect them all to have taste like your own.
Mary would have felt a little overwhelmed by Mrs. Creemer if James had not taken her so coolly. James, of course, met women like this every day. He was their employer, he had business dealings with them, though she had never realised it. There was nothing about James to make her realise it. He lived in this atmosphere, but it did not touch him. Mary looked quickly, almost shyly, at her admirable husband; then she brought her thoughts back to the matter in hand. After all, the woman might be vulgar, but she was also praiseworthy; she seemed to have both a kind heart and sound common-sense. That was a great deal, and meanwhile Mary could sincerely praise the Oxford Circus tea and smile at the Miss Somerville who brought it.
This visit was a social affair, a mere introduction and Miss Percival had not come. James, naturally, did not always care to have Miss Percival about. But next day investigation began in earnest. Mary chose, this time, a branch in Chelsea, and in the early afternoon she drove there with James's order, Miss Percival and Miss Percival's list of questions. It was a long list and Mary did not feel sure that all the questions were necessary. But she said nothing, for she respected experience and certified ability.
The manager of depot C.L. was a harassed looking lady who received them with an air almost of helplessness. Certainly let them come in, and she would do what she could to tell them anything they wanted to know. Perhaps—brightening—they would sit down and let her give them a cup of tea!
Mary praised the tea as she had already praised it, and as she would continue, steadily, to praise it during the next six months. Then she asked the waitress, a pretty girl of about eighteen, what her name was and whether she was happy.
The girl said that her name was Florrie Wilson. She did not seem to know whether she was happy or not. Pressed, she said yes, that she was a lucky one, she had been taken on straight in Coronation year, when there were the Colonial troops in Chelsea and people coming to see them, so she hadn't had to do her year's washing-up. And then Miss Sower getting ill and leaving she was kept on. She liked Chelsea, she thought it was gayer than Maida Hill where she lived.
She worked from eight in the morning to nine at night, with the intervals that the law prescribes, and she came and went very comfortably in the blue motor-bus that runs from the World's End. Florrie's mother hadn't at first quite approved of Florrie's going about so much alone in motor-buses, but then Florrie's mother was a real lady, only her health had failed because she was left a widow. And Florrie had come to work in the depot not because she needed work, but because she liked her independence and a bit of fun. She left home at seven sharp, and she got back about ten. She had Sundays off, and alternate Bank Holidays.
At this point Mrs. Black, the manager, intervened and sent Florrie off to a customer. The manager was of opinion, she said, that Florrie was a talker. She preferred, it was clear, that their information should come reliably from her rather than erratically from Miss Florrie Wilson.
Mary, left to herself, would not have submitted Mrs. Black to any very fierce ordeal. She was feeling pleased, pleased with Florrie for looking so pretty and speaking so nicely, and with herself for obtaining so much information in so pleasant a way. She was glad that she had resolved to make this inquiry, it was interesting, more than interesting, fascinating, and it would not be impossible to make a success of it. But there, at her elbow, was Miss Percival, and on the table before Miss Percival was the list. Mary was reminded that they were there to be thorough and scientific and with the smile of one who does her duty she intimated that Miss Percival's moment had come.
The inquisition began happily. Yes, it was perfectly true that the company only took girls who were not dependent on their wages for their living. Not that they gave bad wages, but you couldn't live as a young lady ought to live on eleven shillings a week, bonus instead of tips, making it up to twelve. The manager thought that was good money, she herself had begun—in another company—as kitchen help at seven shillings, and kitchen work was man's work, not girl's work at all.
Mary thought that sounded satisfactory. If the girls' parents supported them you could set that off against their board and lodging, and that left them with what any of her younger servants would have considered excellent wages. She was surprised when she saw the expression with which Mrs. Black received the next question. Mary had hardly noticed it on the list, but Mrs. Black seemed to think that it was deliberately and pointedly offensive. How did she find out whether the girls were being supported at home or not? She went round to take their characters, just as any lady would, as Mrs. Heyham would herself. And she could assure Mrs. Heyham's secretary that she was just as particular as any lady. How did she know by that that they were being supported?—Well, she used her common-sense. It might be friends of the girls having her on, of course, but she didn't think so. She couldn't be hard on them, of course, she wasn't that sort of woman. In fact, she was only a plain woman not accustomed to answering questions. All the same she knew, though she mightn't be able to explain exactly how, that there wasn't one girl in the place who wasn't living in a comfortable respectable home. She had worked for the Imperial fourteen years, and Mrs. Heyham might take it from her that she knew the difference between a young lady and a low common girl.
Miss Percival took this down without any change of expression and Mary said kindly that the girls looked very happy and contented. Mrs. Black propitiated, replied she did her best for them, and Miss Percival proceeded to the matter of aprons.
Aprons, it appeared, were a burning subject. Opinions differed as to who ought to supply the aprons, who ought to pay for them, who ought to pay for washing them, and how many aprons one ought to be called upon to wear in one week, supposing one were unlucky with splashing urns and dirty tables. Mrs. Black, apparently, was all for peace. She couldn't allow herself to be trampled on, but she didn't go looking for trouble. Some managers made the girls change if they got so much as a little water or milk down them that took the gloss off, but in her opinion, in Chelsea, there was no need except for real stains. And she must say she did not think that could be called unreasonable. For the other rules she was not responsible, they were the firm's regulations.
Mary was accustomed to regard difficulties like this from the employer's point of view, and she did not think the matter of great importance. Miss Percival passed on to the subject of fines for being late.
Here again it was admitted that some managers were tartars. In some tea-shops—not necessarily the Imperial's—the girls were treated really hard. But as long as the work did not suffer and the Inspector was pleased with her returns Mrs. Black did feel that five minutes sometimes in the morning might be passed over. She knew that she was giving herself away to Mrs. Heyham in saying so, but when a lady asked her a question no one should say that she didn't speak the truth. It occurred to her as an afterthought that there weren't any fines, of course, only part of the eleven shillings took the form of a bonus at the end of the weds if the girls had been punctual.
Mary thought that sounded very fair, Miss Percival nodded, and took it down. Among her other accomplishments was that of taking shorthand notes.
When all the questions had been answered, Mary, whose smile was becoming a little mechanical, rose to go. After all she had come to the tea-rooms in order to make life easier for the girls, not to ruffle the feelings of the managers. Miss Percival rose too, but instead of standing back while Mary said good-bye she turned to her employer with the suggestion that they should now see the washing-up.
Mary had forgotten the washing-up and she accepted the reminder as meekly as if it had been a rebuke. "Oh, yes, please, the washing-up!" she agreed.
Mrs. Black assented with a "Certainly if you would care to, Mrs. Heyham," that, together with the sweep of her skirt as she turned, demonstrated sufficiently that she took her orders from the lady and from the lady alone. She led them downstairs, past the kitchens, and Mary reproached herself for feeling glad that the kitchens were served by men and laid her under no obligation to enter them.
As they went the manager explained that it wasn't every company did things like the Imperial. Raised boards for the girls to stand on, and as much clean water as you liked, and a good big room with varnished walls. The manager, before she rose to that dignity, had washed up in places where you stood in a swamp and rats ran between your feet, and the water was more grease than water and as black as ink.
Mary shuddered, then she felt proud of James. They were downstairs now and the manager opened the door of the washing-up room. For a basement it was clean and light, but it was as damp as a bath-room after a hot bath. And it smelled, of stale food, of dirty water, of washing-powder, of well-worn clothes. Steam rose from the sinks, water dripped from the racks of clean china fixed to the walls, the floor was wet, and the paint on the woodwork glistened. There were six girls at work, two scouring saucepans and kitchen utensils, four handling the cherry-coloured china that looked so pretty against the white walls. Their faces were flushed and their hair hung limp over their foreheads.
"They come to this first," the manager was explaining, "and go upstairs afterwards."
The girls washed thoroughly and methodically. Mary felt certain that when the plates and cups left their hands, they were clean.
"That's what I call good conscientious work," she told Mrs. Black.
That lady brightened. "I do my best, Mrs. Heyham," she replied. "You'll not find a smear of mustard on a plate upstairs once in six months. And so it should be, with the beautiful water we get. And the linen the same, as much water as you like, and open-air drying. Customers say that what they get at home don't touch it."
At that moment Miss Percival, who had been watching one of the girls cleaning saucepans, intervened. "Do you have much fainting?" she asked.
"Never had such a thing!" Mrs. Black stared straight in front of her as if Miss Percival were disembodied. "At least," she added, with the air of one who was anxious to be absurdly truthful, "there was a young girl here who fainted once. I put it down to them silly corsets myself." She turned to Mary, as if to invite her sympathy.
The girl with the saucepans straightened herself and tried to appear thoroughly well. Mary, noticing her, looked round for a chair, but discovered that there was none.
"Oughtn't she to sit down for a minute?" she suggested. She felt sorry for the girl, who looked delicate.
"There again!" Mrs. Black's voice suggested that she was put out—"there's two chairs provided for this room, and if you'll believe me they puts them into the passage! Says they get in the way!"
Here one of the girls turned round. "'Tisn't us that puts them into the passage, Mrs. Black! It's the kitchen as takes them, as you know!"
"And what's the kitchen doing in here?" retorted Mrs. Black. "Anyway, you go along and get one for the lady!"
The girl protested. "It's as much as my life is worth to put my head inside the door!"
Her superior looked at her with that fine irony which only the powerful can afford. "I suppose you expect me to do your fetching and carrying," she was beginning, when a voice from the corner made her turn. By this time the girl with the saucepans had succeeded in making the sink and the wooden racks stand still instead of swooping and whirling round her. "Don't get no chair for me, Mrs. Black!" she urged. "I don't want to sit down. It was only a feeling of giddiness like, and if we gets a chair we'll have them fellows in here after it again!"
This seemed the general opinion of the room and Mrs. Black endorsed it.
"You might have the politeness to thank Mrs. Heyham!" she told the sufferer, and then turning to Mary, "What we have to put up with from that kitchen you'd never believe! Why, the girls don't dare go into the pantry to eat their dinner for fear of their impertinence! And good room as this is, it isn't a place for eating, with all the steam and the dirty plates. It puts you off!"
"But they oughtn't to eat in here!" Mary looked round with dismay.
It appeared that the washing-up girls were not supposed, strictly, to take their meals in the building at all, they were supposed to go home. But some of them lived far away, so Mrs. Black, if it hadn't been for the kitchen, would have let them have a bit of dinner in the pantry. The company allowed their employees to have food at half price. The waitresses ate their meals in the serving-room, or they could use the cloak-room, but they didn't care to have the washing-up girls about. They felt that what they had been through others could go through. Not that they were unkind girls, but that was how they saw it.
Again Mary felt very glad that she had come. She did not like annoying people and seeming inquisitive, but she was prepared to put up with anything that would really lead to good. And it was clear to her that there was a great deal that a tactful woman could do here. Some place must be managed where these poor girls could eat their dinner in peace, and they ought to sit at their work. She would tell Miss Percival to note those two points.
As they passed through the restaurant on the way out, Mary saw Florrie standing by one of the tables. Florrie smiled—she had an attractive smile—and Mary nodded and smiled back. She told herself that she would remember Florrie's name.
Mrs. Black took them to the door and said good-bye to them with a wonderful brightening and softening of manner. The gratitude which she expressed with great fervour was clearly not feigned, merely diverted from the providence which had brought her so creditably through a trying time. It would have been easier if she had known what Mrs. Heyham was after. Inspectors she could manage, none better, whether they were enemies from outside or so-called friends from headquarters, but Mary had puzzled her. She oughtn't perhaps to have let on about the girls' dinner, but she hadn't been able to resist the chance of a possible score off the kitchen. Mrs. Heyham herself was all right, she felt sure, but she didn't trust that secretary person. However, it was no use worrying—she banished any remaining uneasiness, when the visitors had gone, by telling Florrie to change her apron at once and never let Mrs. Black see her in such a rag again.
Mary settled herself comfortably in the car. "Of course this has been the most interesting day," she said. "It won't be so amusing when we've been to a dozen of them. I suppose they are all very much alike."
Miss Percival seemed to hesitate for a moment, then she spoke. "It depends a good deal on the manager I think. And in the B depots the wages and hours are different."
"What are the B depots?" Mary was alert to increase her knowledge.
"They're in poor neighbourhoods and open for supper as well. The girls work short hours one day and long the next and have lower wages, 10s. instead of 11s. They get off at five on short days but the work's harder."
Mary smiled at Miss Percival. "You must have studied the subject!" She was pleased to recognise such zeal and initiative.
Miss Percival looked at the note-book that she held in her lap. "Yes," she said, "I was investigating it some time ago—I've worked in two or three tea-shops myself. It's the only way of telling what the life is really like."
Mary looked at her. This was most interesting! "But how useful—" she began, then she checked herself. It would be better, perhaps, if she did not, at any rate for the present, accept information from Miss Percival. A friend of Rosemary's, she was certain to have theories about what she had seen. And James would rather, Mary felt sure, that his wife formed her own ideas from her own experience. She had better not even ask the secretary whether one of the shops she had worked in had been the Imperial's. Then she herself could not be biassed by Miss Percival's chance remarks. "It must have been very exciting," she finished kindly.
Miss Percival did not seem stirred by the memories of its excitements. "It was interesting," she said, and they talked of indifferent subjects for the rest of the drive.
When Mrs. Heyham, hearing voices, looked into the drawing-room on her way upstairs, she found Laura and Rosemary sitting over the fire. They jumped up. "Here she is!" Laura called to her. "Well, mother darling, I should love to think that you've unearthed a perfect hive of scandals! But I don't really believe that your mind is suspicious enough!"
Mary stood by the door for a moment smiling at them. "I am so glad you've come, my dear," she said; "I have some letters to write that will take a quarter of an hour, but if you can wait, Laura, I will come down and have another tea."
"But that's what I'm here for, darling, tea with you!" Laura blew a kiss to her mother before the door shut behind her. Then the two girls went back to their chairs. "She isn't suspicious enough—if there's anything to find out!" Laura added.
Rosemary laughed. "Miss Percival will do the suspicion. But it isn't a matter of finding out—it's merely seeing."
They were silent for a few minutes. Their minds were full of something else, of the delightful topic that they had been discussing—Anthony's career and Rosemary's future. Presently Laura leaned forward. "Rosemary," she said, "are you simply happy and nothing more, or do you find it all rather queer as well?"
Her shy tone made Rosemary feel a little shy. "How do you mean, queer?" she asked, avoiding Laura's eyes. Laura hesitated. "I think it's the way being in love makes you look at things that is so odd—as if nothing mattered but yourself and one other person and a bundle of feelings—what they feel and what you feel and what they feel about what you feel. It is queer—it's the right word—to find these extraordinary new emotions running all over your life. There doesn't seem anything for them to have come out of. I don't feel in the least, sometimes, as if they belonged to me—they've just appeared." She hesitated, and then frowned. It was not easy to find words for her meaning. "And yet because of them," she went on, as Rosemary did not speak, "the whole of the rest of the world seems insignificant and far away, and you've become in a sort of way unresponsive, unexpectant to it—it doesn't really matter. Not like the mornings when one used to wake up and think that anything—the most heavenly adventure—might happen that very day! One doesn't even want the adventures—it's like losing a whole lot of tiny delicate feelers, and getting instead of them a sort of anguished sensitiveness to one set of impressions."
She finished on a questioning note, but Rosemary did not look up. This was a discussion that she ought in theory to have welcomed eagerly. Laura was offering her a new outlook, fresh experience—she had always deplored the fact that women find it hard to be open or even candid with one another about their fundamental emotions. And now that this chance had come for a frank conversation with her sister she was embarrassed. She hoped that Laura would say more—she was ready to listen, with all the sympathy that she could command, to anything that Laura wished to say. But she could not join in, she could not apply Laura's wisdom to herself. She did not want to know, from Laura, what she was feeling or what she was going to feel. That belonged to no one but her and Anthony. Even remotely, Laura must not influence it. She had rather run blind and unwarned into the future than lose the privacy and mystery of her thoughts. Laura, after all, was her elder sister, capable of discussing her with their mother. She ignored her question. "You mean," she said, "that you leave off being interested in outside things."
Laura shook her head. "No, not exactly. You don't lose your interest, if it's really the things you were keen about and not the romance and excitement of being keen, but I think perhaps you grow more selfish towards them." She looked thoughtfully into the fire.
"I don't see why!" Rosemary was not of an age to be skilful at understanding other people's half-expressed subtleties.
Laura became conscious of her sister's reluctance. Rosemary must think, she told herself, that she was complaining! "I suppose," she said quickly, "that it's a phase women tend to go through. A phase of being absorbed in subjective emotional things rather than in objective intellectual ones. What made me think of it is that mother, thanks to your idea, may be going to come out of it. We shall be able to see at last what is really mother and what is only the attitude belonging to what she has been taught. The more I think of it the more splendid I think it will be for her."
Rosemary caught at this. "I am so glad! Only, Laura, did you notice what she said just now? I don't believe she's going to let us see anything at all!"
Laura laughed. "That's her darling conscience. It's father's business, and its black secrets are father's secrets. She won't tell us anything, but the point is that she will change. We have only to wait."
This was not enough for Rosemary. She had been hoping to hear exactly and in detail what Mary thought of the tea-shops and their implications. She had been hoping too, to slip into such talks a few incontrovertible general principles. She was not sure that without some such help Mary might not be carried away by her husband's point of view. "I hate waiting," she said, "it's dull. Trent waits."
Laura laughed.
IT was not until Mary, with her Miss Percival, had visited all the depots that she thought the moment had come for a conversation with James. Up to this time she had scarcely mentioned her activities to him. She did not wish to seem precipitate and she had felt, too, that constant references might worry him. But there was no reason now for putting it off any longer and every reason why the little reforms she had thought of should be carried through at once. She was planning, as well as these, a sort of convalescent home, a cottage by the sea where the palest, weakest girls might be given holidays. And she hoped, too, some day to suggest a system by which the girls should take turns to rest during the slack hours of the day. But she did not mean to say anything about that yet. Time enough when she had seen how James accepted the home and her other suggestions. She meant to ask him now for a better meal in the middle of the day, a nice room to eat it in, and proper regulation shoes. Also, though that might be impossible, where there were long flights of stairs there ought to be lifts for the trays. The matter of wages, in spite of Miss Percival's hints, she did not think important, as all the girls were being kept in their comfortable decent homes. Their wages, therefore, were merely pocket-money and it could not matter much that they had to pay for their fares to and from work and for the cuffs, caps, collars, and aprons supplied to them with the stuff for their black dresses, by the firm. They paid, too, for any food which they ate on the premises; the managers charged them half price for goods which, though not exactly stale, had lost that first exquisite freshness demanded by customers. They paid fines for breaking the rules, and an insurance of sixpence a week against breakages. The firm, its inspectors told Mary, lost heavily over this, but then it was composed of kind-hearted men, and not of ogres.
Mary's investigation was not yet complete for both she and Miss Percival thought that they ought to see something of the girls' home lives. Miss Percival, whom Mary saw to be a suspicious person, did not seem to attach much importance to the manager's declarations that the girls all came from happy, well-to-do homes. But then Miss Percival had seen such terrible things and read so many books upon Socialism that she probably confused the Imperial with less conscientious firms. Mary, on James's advice, had read no books on the subject. James had said that what he wanted were the little mother's own wise little thoughts, not a hash-up of other people's opinions. And Mary had not formed the habit of going to books for information.
Now that the moment had come for a conversation she found herself shrinking a little from the criticism not only of James but of Trent. Trent had regarded her during these months with a disapproving air. He was suffering, Mary thought, from Lady Hester's mother, who, though she sometimes permitted his presence, had a way of successfully repressing his suit. And Trent's fondness for Lady Hester was based on just those qualities in her which would prevent her from rising to the vulgar heights of a row with her mother. Mary fancied that this source of irritation was blackening Trent's view of her own behaviour. If so, she did not see that she was bound to run the risk of annoying him further. To have Trent sitting there annoyed from the beginning would make her too nervous to do herself justice with James. She finally chose, therefore, a time when Trent was out. It was an evening when James had said that he had no work to do, and after dinner she collected Miss Percival's careful notes and went down into the study. The study was a more business-like room than her own or the drawing-room, and one less associated with moments of sentiment. She did not want James to be sentimental that night, she wanted him to be earnestly reasonable, to listen to her as if she were a man. She knew exactly what she meant to say, but she was afraid of being turned aside and only remembering her best points afterwards.
James was detached and good-humoured, perfectly ready to talk things over with her. He seemed to think that it was really very creditable that she should have stuck to the thing like this, and taken such an interest in it. One gets rather too much into the habit of assuming that women do not care about serious things. Well then, to what revolutionary courses did she—dear little person that she was—wish to commit her wretched husband and his old-fashioned business?
She told him that she thought it was a wonderful business—she did. It had touched her imagination, it had filled her with respect for men. This was what men could do when they bent their brains to women's work. Mary remembered her own early struggles with cook-generals on the battle-ground of tea-trays, the drillings, the chivyings, the exhortations, her triumph on days when the silver was clean and the cloth smooth and the bread and butter nicely cut. The making of the tea itself had been her own charge, that pouring of boiling water onto measured leaves was too delicate, too sacred, for the hired and casual fingers of a servant. But let a man turn his attention to the matter and straightway, at Chiswick, in the Strand, at Islington, he could command ten thousand tea-trays each with its pretty plate bearing three impeccable slices of brown bread and butter and three of white, with its six gay pastries elegantly set out, with its unvarying, unsurpassable cup of tea. Woman fussed and there was a table, more or less adequately equipped; man considered and he found a formula and a tradition to which tables conformed in their pleasant hospitality, here or a hundred miles away, yesterday or ten years hence. It seemed to Mary that few tasks could be more noble, more satisfying, than thus to provide a sovereign democracy with dainty and nourishing food. Now that she had seen his great work she could share in the pride that exalted James when he spoke of the bad old times when a single beefy beery meal cost more than you would spend nowadays on a week's supply of stimulating coffee and poached eggs on toast. It was no small thing, and she felt it, to be the wife of a man like James.
James accepted her admiration. It is pleasant, when you show your manhood's work to your wife, to find that she appreciates its greatness. "Found it clean, eh?" he asked her, in a tone that anticipated her reply.
She had not the heart to tell him that perfect cleanliness is inhuman; she relinquished too, her protest against the dubious eggs that made such light sponge-cakes. She must be a woman of business, the kitchens were not within the range of her inquiry. She must not depart from her proper sphere merely because she had seen a kitchen boy sticking his fingers into some dough and licking them clean. That might happen anywhere; it was one of the things that civilised people agree to ignore. So she told James that his business had given her quite new ideas of discipline and method. After all, practically everybody makes their sponge-cakes with eggs that you wouldn't use for boiling. James couldn't be expected to be quite different from anybody else. We all eat game.
James took that easily. "And now what is it we've got to do if we're not to forfeit the old lady's good opinion?" he asked.
She had made a list on a sheet of paper, and she told him. She began with the little home at the seaside—she knew he couldn't object to that. The only thing he had to do was to promise to keep the places of the girls who were there open for them. She would pay for it—it would be a real pleasure to her—and she would undertake the whole responsibility.
She watched him anxiously while she spoke, but he was not looking at her. He was looking at the fire.
In the next place, the girls oughtn't to stand so much. Let him ask a doctor, or even the managers—anyone who understood the work and its effect on women—it really was harmful to them, and they ought also to wear proper shoes.
His face changed a little. It would be perfectly easy to make them wear regulation shoes.
The next point was the dinner—and the room where they could sit comfortably. She seemed to see, suddenly, that it was no use mentioning the lifts. That was all, she said.
James sat forward and looked at her. She saw at once that he was not laughing or feeling unduly affectionate. In fact his voice sounded a little sharp.
"My dear little girl," he laid it down, "we can't make a house have a room that it hasn't got, can we?"
Mary looked back at him courageously. "I thought that perhaps you could take a room outside, or perhaps partition off part of one of the tea-rooms. Some of them are very large."
James chose to answer the last part of this remark.
"And that's why the customers come to them, my dear," he told her more urbanely, but not, she suspected, in a really pleasant spirit. "People hate small, hot, stuffy rooms. Imagine yourself passing by the door of two shops and looking in—wouldn't you choose the one that seemed wide and airy and high rather than the one that was poky?"
Mary stuck to her point. "Then the room outside?"
This time he was frankly irritable. "If you knew a little more of business conditions you would understand that what you are asking is impossible. In business parts of London there aren't 'rooms outside' waiting to be rented next to each of our shops. They're not to be had. Space is gold. We have to wait years sometimes before we can get the sites we want for the depots themselves. Do you think we had only to ask to get a frontage on Oxford Circus?"
When Mary had come into the room she had come humbly. She had been prepared to be told that her demands were out of the question and she had not intended to be obstinate or wrangle about them. Now she did feel obstinate, and she felt too, that she had not been fairly met.
"Of course I can quite understand that it isn't easy to arrange," she admitted, "but I think that girls working as hard as that ought to have some little corner where they can be private and comfortable."
James found himself irritated as he was seldom irritated—even by Trent, or even by the damned fools who wanted him to allow his people to form Trade Unions. "Good Heavens!" he said, "do you imagine I pay them to be private and comfortable! I pay them to do my work! When they go home they can be as comfortable as they please. As long as they are on my premises they ought either to be working or waiting their turn to work—and I'll see that they are!" He almost glared at her.
Mary said nothing. She was astonished.
After a moment James was astonished too. He could never remember speaking to her like this before. It cost him very little effort to admit that he had been hasty. "What a shame," he said, "to fall on the old lady like that because she isn't very experienced in business ways! We asked her for her advice, and now we rate her because some of it isn't quite practicable. I was very bad-tempered, my dear, and I hope you will forgive me. Suppose we talk about one of your other points—you said something about shoes—and sitting down."
Mary did not want to leave the matter of rooms. By this time it seemed to her horrible that when the girls found time for a meal they should have to eat it in a cupboard that served for a cloak-room, at a table in the china room, or standing in the passage. Other firms provided dining-rooms. But when James was looking kindly at her, frankly and generously apologising, offering peace, she could not refuse it because she, being a woman, wanted to worry her point—to "nag."
She told him with a smile as generous as his, that she would discuss standing, or shoes, or anything else that he wanted.
Here James was at his best, quick, attentive, sympathetic. He praised her womanly insight and expressed his gratitude for the trouble she had taken. He understood at once that the girls' feet ought to be looked after, even on the low ground of self-interest, and he told her that he would fix up with a firm that supplied ward shoes to nurses and see that the girls each bought a pair. As for the standing, she laid great stress on it, so he would stretch a point and give way to her. He didn't believe the girls came to any harm by it and it was a fact that customers didn't like the look of girls in uniform lolling on the chairs doing nothing. If Mary ever noticed, no big shop ever allowed its girls to be idle. A customer who came in when the shop was empty would always find the assistants busy at something, in spite of the Shop Acts. But still one wanted to keep them fresh for the busy times—he'd have a circular drafted, and if Mary liked to look at it before it went out to the managers, she could. After all, he'd heard that they were doing great things in America by studying the workers.
Mary thanked him, and then, as if his amiability were still a little stretched, he suggested that they should defer the consideration of her other proposals, as he had one or two things to see to. So would she, dear old thing that she was, let him kiss her, and then leave him.
She went to him for her kiss, and discovered that he was more upset than she had imagined. His hand trembled as he smoothed back her hair, and he murmured over her head that he was a brute, a savage, a horror to bully the most precious thing in his life. As a rule this emotion of his would have melted her; she would have remembered, with a rush of feeling, that after all a man is only a great child, something very simple and clumsy and pathetic, but to-day she stood apart from his remorse and she found herself laughing lightly, telling him that he was a funny sensitive old thing, and that, if he would only think of what he had promised, he would see that she had every reason to be pleased with herself.
Then she left him, still a little absurdly unassured, and went upstairs to her own room. It was only a quarter of an hour since she had gone downstairs to James's study. Then she had thought of James as the beneficent, all-wise authority from whose words there was no appeal; now she was puzzled about him, thinking him over. Why had he been angry with her—what had made him angry? It wasn't that she had chosen a bad moment, she couldn't believe that it was her manner, for that never annoyed him; why was he angry because she had wanted the girls to have a proper room where they might go? She could understand his rejecting her plan, but not his being angry about it. It was not like him; it did not agree with her conception of him as a man who was not only generous but singularly patient and just. After all these years she couldn't be wrong about that—it was absurd to suggest, merely because he had shown momentary irritation, that he had an unknown side that his work called out, but that she, so far, had never seen. She pulled herself up. It was not loyal of her to hunt after this fashion for faults in James. He had been a little sharp—for a minute—and it was her duty, as it ought to have been her natural instinct, to forget a trifling occurrence which had pained him already far more than was necessary.
The only serious thing about the whole incident was that she was afraid that now she would not get her room. It was a great pity; she still felt that the girls ought to have it, but she must, she really must, remember that James knew best. There was no other basis on which her enterprise could possibly be successful.
Nevertheless she could not force her thoughts away from the picture of James's frowning peremptory face, and as she considered it, the whole interview took on, more and more, a flavour of oddness, of unreason. She had lived in complete intimacy with James for more than twenty years, and yet she was left to infer his real thoughts, in a moment of significant emotion, from the twitch of his mouth, the key of his voice, the physical symbols by which his body betrayed him hardly more successfully, on this occasion, to her than to a stranger. It was strange that she should have no more direct access to him than this method of inference, of guesswork, this clumsy process whereby a thought before it can reach another mind must first translate itself into terms of sense. She had read poems that told of lovers whose spirits flamed so brightly that these dark barriers became translucent, shot through with the soul's light, a medium to its ardour. Those beings had known one another as poets know nature, as mystics know God. But such ecstasies were foreign to her, she felt herself to be too prim, too frail, too anxious, for the great fires of the spirit. Her experience had been—would always be—the common experience of common folk. Her wisdom consisted in the building and maintaining of barriers between herself and the sordid, the vicious, the vulgar. She had built barriers round her love, she had kept it fine and pure, untroubled by anything but its own tenderness. She had not asked for ecstasy, she had not asked for knowledge, she had been content to trust. She must continue to trust, she must realise that she did not know her husband, she must let her affection bridge the gaps in her understanding. That was the way of life she had made for herself.
Then from the deep place in her mind where she had thrust it, her uneasiness returned. Why had he been angry? She stirred in her chair, and the movement made her realise that she was still holding her forlorn little bundle of notes. She rose and put them back into their pigeon-hole with a slight feeling of discomfort. To-morrow was one of Miss Percival's days, and she would have to make her admission of defeat. Miss Percival never said much, but Mary's impression was that she cared a good deal about the room.
The proper thing to do now would have been to turn her mind to something else. Unfortunately Mary's knitting did not hold her attention and she did not get as far as finding her place in the novel which succeeded it. Why had James been unreasonable? Why hadn't he met her calmly with his excellent and conclusive arguments? Must she be prepared for a similar reception when she spoke to him about the girls' dinner? She could not banish her troubled sense of his hostility.
While she was wondering, one of the maids brought her a letter. It was a letter in a mauve envelope, unstamped, and the maid said that it had been delivered by a little boy who wanted to give it to the lady himself. But it being late in the evening the maid had sent him away. The marks left by the little boy's finger and thumb on the paper gave some colour of prudence to her decision.
The sheet of paper inside the mauve envelope was white, and the writing was in pencil. It was not very easy to read.
100, EXE ST.,Maida Hill.DEAR AND HONOURED MADAM:I venture to write to you and Mrs. Black the manager at our place you know was kindly give me your address. Or I should not have known how to find you. Honoured madam might I venture to ask you to grant me an interview? I do not want to Take advantage of your kindness only there is no one I can turn to except Mrs. Black and she must think of her place so will you please forgive me troubling you and don't deny me this.Your obedient servant in great distress,FLORRIE WILSON.
100, EXE ST.,
Maida Hill.
DEAR AND HONOURED MADAM:
I venture to write to you and Mrs. Black the manager at our place you know was kindly give me your address. Or I should not have known how to find you. Honoured madam might I venture to ask you to grant me an interview? I do not want to Take advantage of your kindness only there is no one I can turn to except Mrs. Black and she must think of her place so will you please forgive me troubling you and don't deny me this.
Your obedient servant in great distress,
FLORRIE WILSON.
It was too late to do anything that night—and there might not be anything serious to do. Mary told the maid that she could go. She remembered Florrie; she was the child with the nice smile and the pretty flower-like face whom she had seen in the Chelsea depot six months ago. When Miss Percival came next day they would go to Exe Street together. The only thing to be decided now was whether she should show the letter to James. She decided, after slight hesitation, that she would not.