Part 44 (1/2)

CHAPTER I

THE GIRLS IN THE FOURTH STORY FLAT

”We were two daughters of one race; She was the fairest in the face;”

--_Tennyson._

In the sitting room of a small forty-five pound flat, upon the fourth floor of a tall red-brick building in West Kensington known as Queens Mansions, Ethel Harrison, the girl who lived with Rita Wallace, sat sewing by the window.

It was seven o'clock in the evening and though dusk was at hand there was still enough light to sew by. The flat, moreover, was on the west side of the building and caught the last rays of the sun as he sank to rest behind the quivering vapours of London.

Last week in August as it was, the heat which hung over the metropolis for so long was in no way abated. All the oxygen was gone from the air, and for those who must stay in London--the workers, who could only read in the papers of translucent sunlit seas in Cornwall where one bathed from the beaches all day long; of bright northern moors where dew fell upon the heather at dawn--life was become stifling and hard.

In the window hung a bird-cage and the canary within it--the pet of these two lonely maidens--drooped upon its perch. It was known as ”The Lulu Bird” and was a recurring incident in their lives.

Ethel was six and twenty, short, undistinguished of feature and with sandy hair. She was the daughter of a very poor clergyman in Lancas.h.i.+re, and she was the princ.i.p.al typist in the busy office of a firm of solicitors in the city. She had ever so many certificates for shorthand, was a quick and accurate machine-writer, understood the routine of an office in all its details, and was invaluable to her employers. They boasted of her, indeed, trusted her in every way, worked her from nine to six on normal days, to any hours of the night at times of pressure, and paid her the highest salary in the market.

That is to say, that this girl was at the very top of her profession and received two pounds ten s.h.i.+llings a week. Dozens of girls envied her, she was more highly paid than most of the men clerks in the city.

She knew herself to be a very fortunate girl. She gave high technical ability, a good intelligence, unceasing, unwearying and most loyal service for fifty s.h.i.+llings a week.

Each year she had a holiday of fourteen days, when she clubbed with some other girls and they all went to some farmhouse in the country, or even for a cheap excursion abroad, with everything calculated to the last s.h.i.+lling. This girl did all this, dressed like a lady, had a little home of her own with Rita, preserved her dignity and independence, and sent many a small postal order to help the poor curate's wife, her mother, with the hungry brood of younger ones. Mr.

and Mrs. Harrison in Lancas.h.i.+re spoke of their eldest daughter with pride. She had ”her flat in town.” She was ”doing extraordinarily well”; ”Sister Ethel” was a fairy G.o.dmother to her little brothers and sisters.

She was a good girl, good and happy. The graces were denied her; she had made all sweet virtues her own. No man wooed her, no man looked twice at her. She had no religious ecstasies, and--instead of a theatre where one had to pay--asked no thrills from sensuous ceremonial. She simply went to the nearest church and said her prayers.

It is the shame of most of us that when we meet such women as these, we pa.s.s them by with a kindly laugh or a patronising word. Men and women of the world prefer more decorative folk. They like to watch holiness in a picturesque setting, Elizabeth of Hungary was.h.i.+ng the beggar's feet upon the palace steps... .

A little worker-bee saint, making a milk pudding for a sick washerwoman on a gas-stove in a flat--that comes rather too close home, does it not?

The light was really fading now, and Ethel put down her sewing, rose from her basket-work chair, and lit the gas.

It was an incandescent burner, hanging from the centre of the ceiling, and the girls' living room was revealed.

It was a very simple, comely, makes.h.i.+ft little home.

On one side of the fireplace--now filled with a brown and gasping harts-tongue fern in an earthen pot--was Ethel's bookshelf.

Up-to-date she had a hundred and thirty-two books, of the ”Everyman”

and ”World's Cla.s.sics” series. She generally managed a book and a half each fortnight, and her horizon was bounded by the two-hundredth volume. d.i.c.kens she had very much neglected of late, the new Ruskin had kept the set at ”David Copperfield” for weeks, but she was getting on steadily with her Thackeries.

Rita had no books. She was free of that Kingdom at the Podley Inst.i.tute, but the little black piano was hers. The great luxury of the Chesterfield was a joint extravagance. Both ends would let down to make a couch when necessary, and though it had cost the girls three pounds ten, it ”made all the difference to the room.”

All the photographs upon the mantel-shelf were Ethel's. There was her father in his ca.s.sock--staring straight out of the frame like a good and patient mule... . Her sisters and brothers also, of all ages and sizes, and all clothed with an odd suggestion of masquerading, of attempting the right thing. Not but what they were all perfect to poor Ethel, whose life was far too busy and limited to understand the tragedy of clothes.

Rita's photographs were on the piano.

There were several of her school-friends--lucky Rita had been to a smart school!--and the enigmatic face of Muriel Amberley with its youthful Mona Lisa smile looked out from an oval frame of red leather stamped with an occasional fleur-de-lys in gold.

There was a portrait of Mr. Podley, cut from the _Graphic_ and framed cheaply, and there were two new photographs.