LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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