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Lady of the Basement Flat

<h3>Chapter Two.</h3> <h4>Aunt Eliza Speaks.</h4> It is two days after the wedding. Kathie has been Mrs Basil Anderson for forty-eight hours, and no doubt looks back upon her spinster existence as a vague, unsatisfactory dream. She is reclining on a deck-chair on board the great ship which is bearing her to her new home, and her devoted husband is hovering by her side. I can just imagine how she looks, in her white blanket coat, and the blue hood—just the right shade to go with her eyes—an artful little curl, which has taken her quite three minutes to arrange, falling over one temple, and her spandy little shoes stretched out at full length. I know those shoes! By special request I rubbed the soles on the gravel paths, so that they might not look too newly married. Quite certainly Kathie will be throwing an occasional thought to the girl she left behind her, a “poor old Evelyn!” with a dim, pitiful little ache at the thought of my barren lot. Quite certainly, too, for one moment when she remembers, there will be twenty when she forgets. Quite right, of course! Quite natural, and wife-like, and just as it should be, and only a selfish, ungenerous wretch could wish it to be otherwise. All the same— I wrenched myself out of the aunts’ clutches yesterday morning on the plea of going home to tidy up. Though the wedding took place from their house, all the preparatory muddle happened here, and it will take days and days to go through Kathie’s rooms alone, and decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to burn outright. The drawers were littered with pretty rubbish—oddments of ribbon, old gloves, crumpled flowers, and the like. It goes against the principles of any right-minded female to give away tawdry fineries, and yet—and yet—Could I bear to destroy them? To see those little white gloves shrivel up in the flames, the high heeled little slippers crumple and split? It would seem like making a bonfire of Kathie herself. I tidied, and arranged, and packed into fresh parcels, working at fever heat with my hands, while all the time the voice in my brain kept repeating, “Now, Evelyn, what are you going to do? What are you going to do, my dear, with your blank new life?” To leave the old home and start afresh—that is as far as I have got so far—but I must make up my mind, and quickly too, for this house is too full of memories to be a healthy shelter. Kathie and I have lived here ever since we left school, first with father, then after his death with an old governess-companion. Since her marriage a year ago we have been alone, luxuriating in our freedom, and soothing the protestations of aunts by constant promises to look out for a successor. Then Kathie met Basil Anderson, and no one was cruel enough to grudge us our last months together. Now I am alone, with no one in the world to consider beside myself, with my own home to make, my own work to find, my own happiness to discover. Does it make it better or worse, I wonder, that I am rich, and the question of money does not enter in? Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would answer at once that it is better, but I’m not so sure. If I had a tiny income, just enough to ensure me from absolute want, hard regular work would be necessary, and might be good for body and brain. I want work! I must have it if I am to keep going, but the mischief is, I have never been taught to be useful, and I have no idea what I could do! I can drive a car. I can ride anything that goes on four legs. I can dance, and skate, and arrange flowers with taste. I can re-trim a hat, and at a pinch make a whole blouse. I can order a nice meal, and grumble when it is spoiled. I can strum on the piano and paint Christmas cards. I can entertain a house-party of big-wigs. I have also (it seems a queer thing to say!) a kind of genius for simply—being kind! The poor people in the village call me “the kind one,” to distinguish me from Kathie, who, poor lamb! never did an unkind thing in her life. But she didn’t always understand, that was the difference. When they did wrong she was shocked and estranged, while I felt dreadfully, dreadfully sorry, and more anxious than ever to help them again. Kathie used to think me too mild, but I don’t know! The consequences of sin are so terrible in themselves, that I always long to throw in a lot of help with the blame. The people about here seem to know this by instinct, for they come to me in their troubles and anxieties and—shames, poor souls! and open their hearts as they do to nobody else. “Sure then, most people are kind in patches,” an old woman said to me one day; “’tis yourself that is kind all round!” I don’t know that it’s much credit to do what is no effort, and certainly if I could choose a rôle in life it would be to play the part of a good fairy, comforting people, cheering them up, helping them over stiles, springing delightful little surprises upon them, just where the road looked blocked! The trouble is that I’ve no gift for organised charity. I have a pretty middling strong will of my own (“pigheadedness” Aunt Emmeline calls it!) and committees drive me daft. They may be useful things in their way, but it’s not my way. I want to get to work on my own, and not to sit talk, talk, talking over every miserable, piffling little detail. No! If I play fairy, I must at least be free to wave my own wand, and to find my own niche where I can wave it to the best advantage. The great, all-absorbing question is—where and how to begin? Advertisements are the orthodox refuge of the perplexed. Suppose, for the moment, that I advertised, stating my needs and qualifications in the ordinary shilling-a-line fashion. It would run something like this:— “Lady. Young. Healthy. Good appearance. Seeks occupation for a loving heart. Town or country. Travel if required.” It sounds like an extract from a matrimonial paper. I wonder how many, or, to speak more accurately, how few bachelors would exhibit any anxiety to occupy the vacancy. I might add “private means,” and then the answers would arrive in sacks, I should have the offer of a hundred husbands, and a dozen kind homes, with hot and cold water, cheerful society, a post office within a mile, and a golf course in the neighbourhood. A hundred mothers of families would welcome me to their bosoms, and a hundred spinsters would propose the grand tour and intellectual companionship; but I want to be loved for myself, and in return to love, and to help— I am not thinking of marriage. Some day I shall probably fall in love, like everyone else, and be prepared to go off to the Ural Mountains or Kamtschatka, or any other remote spot, for the privilege of accompanying my Jock. I shall probably be just as mad, and deluded, and happy, and ridiculous as any other girl, when my turn comes; but it hasn’t come yet, and I’m not going to sit still and twiddle my thumbs pending its approach. I’m in no hurry! It is in my mind that I should prefer a few preliminary independent years. Aunt Eliza drove over this afternoon to “cheer me up”. She means well, but her cheering capacities are not great. Her mode of attack is first to enlarge on every possible ill, and reduce one to a state of collapse from pure self-pity, and then to proceed to waft the same troubles aside with a casual flick of the hand. She sat down beside me, stroked my hand (I hate being pawed!) and set plaintively to work. “Poor dear! I know you are feeling desolate. It’s so hard for you, isn’t it, dear, having no other brother or sister? Makes it all the harder, doesn’t it, dear! And Kathie leant on you so! You must feel that your work is gone. Stranded! That’s the feeling, isn’t it? I do understand. But”—(sudden change to major key)—“she is happy! You must forget yourself in her joy!” I said, “Oh! yes,” and removed my hand under pretence of feeling for a handkerchief. Her face lengthened again, and she drew a deep sigh. (Minor.) “I always feel it is the last straw for a woman when she has to give up her home in a time of trouble. A home is a refuge, and you have made The Clough so charming. It will be a wrench to move all the dear old furniture, and to leave the garden where you and Kathie were so happy together. Wherever you look, poor dear, you must feel a fresh stab. Associations!—so precious, aren’t they, to a woman’s heart? (Major.) But material things are of small value, after all, dear. We learn that as we grow old! A true woman can make a home wherever she goes—” “I—I suppose she can.” (Minor.) “But of course the loneliness is a handicap. Having no one who needs you, no one to welcome you home. So sad! Especially in the evenings! Solitary people are apt to grow morose. You will miss Kathie’s bright happy ways. (Quick change!) Well! Well! No one need be lonely in this world. There are thousands of suffering souls fainting by the wayside for lack of the very help which it is in your power to give. If I could just tell you of some cases I know!” I pricked up my ears. “I wish you would. I like to hear about other people’s troubles!” “My dear! Such a startling way of putting things! You don’t mean it. I know your tender heart! Of course the worst cases are in the big cities. London, now! Every time I go to London, and travel as one is obliged to do from one end of the city to the other, I look out upon those endless rows and rows of streets of small houses, and at the great towering blocks of flats at every turn, and feel appalled at the thought of the misery that goes on inside!” “And the joy!” “My dear, what kind of joy can there be in such places?” “Not your kind perhaps, nor mine, but real enough all the same. People love one another, and have their own pleasures and interests. Little clerks come home to little wives and tell of little successes. Women in ugly houses buy some new piece of ugliness, and find it beautiful, and rejoice. Babies toddle about—fat, pretty things, with curly mops.” She stared at me blankly. “Curly mops! What does it matter whether their hair curls or not? Ah, my dear, in such circumstances children are not all joy. I had a letter from a friend the other day—Lady Templar. We were at school together. Her nephew, Wenham Thorold, has lost his wife. Married at twenty-three. So silly! A clergyman’s daughter, without a sou. Now, of course, she dies, and leaves him with five small children.” “Very inconsiderate!” “Very inconvenient for the poor man! Only thirty-five, and a baby in arms. How will it help him if its hair curls? He puts the elder children to bed himself after his day’s work. Quite pathetic to hear of! Wouldn’t he have been happier with one?” “Possibly—for the present. Later on the five will help him, and he will be glad and proud.” “Children dragged up by strangers are not always a credit and pride. I hope these may be, but—If you’d heard my friend’s tales! They live in a flat. Quite a cheap block in some unfashionable neighbourhood. No society. He has one small maid and a housekeeper to look after the children. Most inefficient, Adela says. Holes in their stockings, and shrieks the moment their father is out of the building!” “What was he like?” “He? Who? Oh, the poor father! Handsome, she said, but haggard. The Templar nose. Poor, helpless man!” A horrible feeling surged over me. I felt it rise, swell, crash over my head like a flood of water—a conviction that I was listening to no tale, but to a call—that Providence had heard my cry for work, and had answered it in the person of Wenham Thorold—handsome and haggard—in the person of little Thorold girls with holes in their stockings, of little Thorold boys who shrieked, and a Thorold baby with problematic hair that might, or might not, curl. I cowered at the prospect. All very well to talk of my own way, and my own niche, all very well to dream of fairy wands, and of the soothing, self-ingratiating rôle of transforming other people’s grey into gold, while the said people sat agape, transfixed with gratitude and admiration, but—how extraordinarily prosaic and unromantic the process became when worked out in sober black and white. To mend stockings, to stifle shrieks, to be snubbed by a cross housekeeper; probably, in addition, to be sent to Coventry by the handsome and haggard one, under suspicion of manoeuvring for his affections. Yes, at the slightest interference he would certainly put me down as a designing female, with designs on his hand. At this last thought I sniggered, and Aunt Eliza looked severe. “No subject for mirth, Evelyn. I’m surprised! You who are always talking of wanting to help—” “But could I help him? I will, if I can. I have money and time, and am longing for work. Could I banish the housekeeper, and introduce a variation by paying to take her place?” Aunt Eliza looked at the ceiling, and informed it obviously, though dumbly, that when nieces talked nonsense it was waste of breath to reply. Outraged dignity spoke in her rigid back, in the thin contour of her cheek. “A Wastneys to speak of being a housekeeper!” I realised that I had gone too far, for to jest at the expense of the family pride was an unpardonable offence, so I added hastily:— “Or I might take a flat hard by, and do good by stealth! Win the housekeeper’s heart, and then take charge of the five when she gads forth. Some of the other tenants might need help too. In those great big buildings, where scores of families live under one roof, there must always be somebody who needs a helping hand. It would be rather a charming rôle to play good fairy to the mansions!” Even as I spoke a flash of inspiration seemed to light up my dark brain. My own careless words had created a picture which charmed, which intrigued. It was as though a veil had lifted, and I caught sight of beckoning hands. I saw before me a great, grim building, storey after storey rising in unbroken line, the dusty windows staring into the windows of a twin building across the road, just as tall, just as unlovely, just as desolate. I saw a bare entrance hall, in which pale-faced men and women came and went. I passed with them into so-called “homes” where electric light burned day and night, and little children played in nurseries about the size of a comfortable bed. Everybody, as it seemed, was worn down with the burden of the inevitable daily task, so that there was no energy left for beauty, for gaiety, for joy. Suppose—oh, suppose there lived in that building one tenant whose mission it was to supply that need, to be a Happiness-Monger, a Fairy Godmother, a—a—a living bran pie of unexpected and stimulating helps. For the first moment since that motor car turned out of the gate, bearing away the bride and bridegroom, a glow of warmth took the place of the blank ache in the place where my heart used to be. It hurt a little, just as it hurts when the circulation returns to frozen limbs, but it was a wholesome hurt, a hundred times better than the calm that had gone before. There glowed through my veins the exultation of the martyr. Now farewell to ease and luxury, to personal desires and ambitions. Henceforth I lived only to serve the race! “Oh, Auntie, it’s a glorious idea. Why didn’t I think of it before? My vocation is ready and waiting for me, but I should never have found it if it hadn’t been for you! Why shouldn’t I take a little flat in some unfashionable block, and play good fairy to my neighbours? A free, unmarried woman is so useful! There ought to be one in every family, a permanent ‘Aunt Mary,’ to lend a hand in its joys and sorrows, its spring cleanings, and its—jams! Nowadays Aunt Marys are so scarce. They are absorbed in their own schemes. Why shouldn’t I take up the rôle, and be a universal fairy to the mansions—devoting my idle time to other people who need me, ready to love and to scold, to bake and to brew, to put my fingers in other people’s pies, leaving behind sugar for them, and pulling out plums for myself of soothing, and comfort, and joy!” My voice broke suddenly. I was awfully lonely, and the thought of those figurative plums cut to the heart. The tears trickled down my cheeks; I forgot where I was, and to whom I was speaking, and just sobbed out all that was in my heart. “Oh! Oh! To be needed again! To have some one to care for! That would help—that would fill the gap—that would make life worth while.” Instinctively I stretched out my hands, in appeal for sympathy and understanding. “Oh, don’t be silly!” said Aunt Eliza. <hr /></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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