To Love Part 13

Edith interrupted Joan's disclaimer by a shrill laugh. "Lor' bless you, no, she is one of the pupils, same as me." She turned to Joan. "Did you pay anything to join?" she asked. Joan resented the familiarity of her tone. "Would have liked to have warned you the other night, but Bacon was too nippy."

Joan flushed slightly. Disregarding the interruption she spoke quickly, answering the man's question:

"Miss Bacon must be ill, I am afraid," she said; "it is so very late for her, she is nearly always here by ten. She will probably be here to-morrow if you care to come again."

Again Edith giggled and the man frowned heavily.

"Well, she probably won't," he answered. "She has done a bunk, that's the long and short of it, and there is not a blasted penny of what she owes me paid. d.a.m.n the woman with her whining, wheezing letters, 'Do give me time--I'll pay in time.' Might have known it would end in her bunking."

"I don't think you ought to speak of her like that," Joan attempted; "after all, it is only that she does not happen to be here this morning.

She would have let me know if she had not been coming back."

"Oh, would she?" growled the man; "well, I don't care a blasted h.e.l.l what you think. I don't need to be taught my business by the likes of you."

From the pa.s.sage to which she had retired Edith attracted Joan's attention by violent signs. "There is no use arguing with him," she announced in an audible whisper, "he's fair mad; this is about the tenth time he's missed her. Come out here a minute, I want to talk to you."

Joan went reluctantly. She disliked the girl instinctively, she disliked the dirty white blouse from which the red neck rose, ornamented by a string of cheap pearls, and the greasy black ribbon which bound up Edith's head of curls.

"Are you being a fool?" the girl asked, "or are you trying to kid that man? Haven't you cottoned to old Bacon's game yet?"

"I am sorry for Miss Bacon, if that is what you mean," Joan answered stiffly.

"Sorry!" Edith's face was expressive of vast contempt. "That won't save you from much in this world. I tell you one thing, if you lent the old hag any money yesterday you won't see her again this side of the grave, so there isn't any use your hanging about here waiting for that."

Joan favoured her with a little collected stare. "Thank you," she said, "it is very thoughtful of you to think of warning me." She left her and walked back deliberately into the room where the man was sitting. "There were some typed sheets lying on the top of the paper," she said; "do you mind letting me have them back."

"Yes I do," he answered briefly; "man called in for them a little while back and that is five s.h.i.+llings towards what the old hag owes me, anyhow."

It was in its way rather humorous that she should have worked so hard to put five s.h.i.+llings into such an objectionable pocket. Joan felt strongly tempted to argue the matter with him, but discretion proving wiser than valour, she left him to his spoils and retired into the other room. She would not leave the place, she decided, in case Miss Bacon did turn up; it would be very disagreeable for her to have to face such a man by herself.

By lunch time the man stalked away full of threats as to what he would do, and Edith went with him. Joan stayed on till six, and there was still no sign of Miss Bacon. It was strange that she should neither have telephoned nor written.

Over dinner at Shamrock House that night she told Rose Brent the story of her fortnight's adventure, ending up with the rash impulse which had led her to pay up the four guineas because Miss Bacon had seemed in such bitter need. The girl met her tale with abrupt laughter.

"I am afraid what your unpleasant acquaintance of this morning told you is probably true," she said. "After all, if you went and handed out four guineas it was a direct temptation to the poor old woman to get away on."

"I don't believe she would take it just for that," Joan tried to argue.

"I know she wanted it awfully badly, but it was to help her pull through and things were going to run better afterwards. I don't believe she would just take it and slip away without saying a word to me."

"Faith in human nature is all very well," the other answered, "but it is awfully apt to let you down, especially in the working world."

"I shall go on believing for a bit," Joan said; "she was looking so awfully ill yesterday, it may just be that she could not come up to office to-day."

"May be," Rose agreed. "When you are tired of waiting for the return of the prodigal let me know and I will see if I cannot get you in somewhere. I ought to be able to help. And look here, my child, never you pay another penny for tuition on those lines; you could get all the learning you need at the County Council Night Schools, and it is a good deal cheaper."

Joan put in two days at No. 2, Baker Street, waiting for the return of Miss Bacon or for some message which might explain her absence, but nothing and no one came. On the morning of the third day she found that the stout and bad-tempered man had carried out his vague threats. The place had been taken possession of, already they were removing the typewriters and tables under the direction of a bailiff. Even the plate bearing Miss Bacon's name had vanished, and boards announcing the top flat to let flaunted themselves from the area railings.

After that Joan gave up the hope. Sometimes she wondered if after all Miss Bacon had found the necessary courage to be done with it all, and if her silence betokened death. It was more likely though that the poor old lady had merely sunk one rung lower on the ladder of self-esteem and was dragging out a miserable existence somewhere in the outside purlieus of London.

CHAPTER XIII

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

R. BROWNING.

Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks--clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all round them.

The boy and girl section of the community indulged in a little rough and tumble love-making. Even long office hours and the deadly monotony of standing behind desk or counter all day could not quite do away with the riotous spirit of youth. They giggled and chattered among themselves, and pa.s.sed surrept.i.tious notes from one form to the other when Mr.

Phillips was not looking.

Mr. Phillips, the shorthand master, was a red-faced, extremely irascible little man. He came to these cla.s.ses from some other school in the city where he had been teaching all day, and naturally, by the time evening arrived, his none too placid temper had been stretched to breaking-point. He was extremely impatient with any non-comprehension of his complicated method of instruction; and he would pa.s.s from row to row, after his dictation had been finished, s.n.a.t.c.hing away the papers from his paralysed pupils and tearing them into fragments had the exercise been badly done.

Joan noticed the man who sat next her on the first and every night. He was quite the worst person she had ever seen at learning anything. He was not by any means young, grey already showed in the hair above his ears, and his forehead wrinkled with innumerable lines. He had, she thought, the most pathetic eyes, large and honest, but quite irredeemably stupid.

"I can't make head or tale of it," he confessed to her on the second night. "And Mr. Phillips gets so annoyed with me, it only muddles me more."

"Why do you bother to learn?" she asked. It seemed rather strange that a man of his age should have to struggle with so elementary a subject.

"I have worked in an office for the last ten years," he explained. "The new boss has suddenly decided that shorthand is necessary. I don't know," he spoke rather vaguely, his eyes wandering round the room, "but it is just possible he might ask me to go if I did not master it. I have been there so long I hardly like to have to look for another place."

"It seems such a shame," Joan told Rose afterwards, "that these people can never get a place where they feel really safe. They live always expecting to be turned off at a moment's notice, or to have somebody put in on top of them. Everybody seems to be fighting against everybody else; doesn't anyone ever stop to help?"

The older girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said. "The world, or at least the people in it, are not so bad as all that. Only life is a case of push and struggle, and it is only natural that people should want to get the best they can for their money. Also it wouldn't be fair if the ones who worked best were not preferred to the others."

Mr. Simpson, Joan's perplexed friend of the shorthand cla.s.s, was certainly one of the stupidest people she had ever met, yet she was terribly sorry for him. He was the b.u.t.t of the cla.s.s, which did not add to the hilarity of his position, because of the torrent of abuse which he always drew from Mr. Phillips at some stage in the evening.

"Now," Mr. Phillips would call out, starting the lesson by a blackboard demonstration, "silence and attention, please."

He would draw a series of strokes and dashes on the blackboard, calling out their various meanings, and the cla.s.s would set itself to copy them.

The lesson would proceed for some time in silence, save for Mr.

Phillips' voice, but presently the bewilderment caused by so many new outlines would terrify Mr. Simpson and he would lean forward to interrupt, stammering, as he always did when nervous.

"Why is 'M' made like that?" he would say. "Wouldn't it be much better if it were made the other way?"

"Why, why?" Mr. Phillips would thunder. "If you would just learn what you are taught, sir, and not try to think, it would be a great deal pleasanter for the rest of us."

Mr. Simpson would get a little red under the onslaught, but his eyes always retained their patient, perplexed expression. He seemed impervious to the impression he created in the back row. "Laughing-stock of the whole cla.s.s," Mr. Phillips called him in a moment of extreme irritation, and the expression caught on.

"I am so silly," he said to Joan. "I really am not surprised that they think me funny."

She was the one person who was ever nice to him or who did attempt to explain things to him. Sometimes they would get there a little early and she would go over his exercises with him. He might be thick-skinned to the want of tolerance which the rest of the cla.s.s meted out to him; he was undoubtedly grateful to Joan for the kindness she showed him.

One evening on his way to cla.s.s he plucked up courage to purchase a small b.u.t.tonhole for her, and blushed a very warm red when Joan took his offering with a smile and pinned it into her coat.

"How nice of you," she said. "I love violets, and these smell so sweet."