The Independence of Claire Part 6

"Indeed I shan't. Why should I? I shan't try. There's no virtue in drinking such stuff. We provide the coffee--what's to hinder us making it for ourselves?"

"No fire, as a rule. Can't afford one when you are going out immediately after breakfast."

Claire stared in dismay. It had never occurred to her that she might have to be economical to this extent.

"But when it's very cold? What do you do then?"

"Put on a jersey, and nurse the hot-water jug!"

Claire grimaced, then nodded with an air of determination.

"I'll buy a machine! There can be no objection to that. You would prefer good coffee, wouldn't you, if you could get it without any more trouble?"

"Oh, certainly. I'll enjoy it--while it lasts!"

"Why shouldn't it last?"

Miss Rhodes stared across at the eager young face. She looked tired, and a trifle impatient.

"Oh, my dear girl, you're _New_. We are all the same at first--bubbling over with energy, and determined to arrange everything exactly as we like. It's a phase which we all live through. Afterwards you don't care. You are too tired to worry. All your energy goes on your day's work, and you are too thankful for peace and quietness to bother about details. You take what comes, and are thankful it's not worse."

Claire's smile showed an elaborate forbearance.

"Rather a poor-spirited att.i.tude, don't you think?"

"Wait and see!" said the English mistress.

She rose and threw herself in a chair by the window, and Claire left the despised coffee and followed her example. Through the half-opened panes she looked out on a row of brick houses depressingly dingy, depressingly alike. About every second house showed a small black card on which the word "Apartments" was printed in gilt letters. Down the middle of the street came a fruiterer's cart, piled high with wicker baskets. The cry of "Bananas, cheap bananas," floated raucously on the air. Claire swiftly averted her eyes and turned back to her companion.

"It is very good of you to let me share your _appartement_. Miss Farnborough said she had arranged it with you, but it must be horrid taking in a stranger. I will try not to be too great a bore!"

But Miss Rhodes refused to be thanked.

"I'm bound to have somebody," said she ungraciously. "Couldn't afford them alone. You know the terms? Thirty-five s.h.i.+llings a week for the three rooms. That's cheap in this neighbourhood. We only get them at that price because we are out all day, and need so little catering."

She looked round the room with her tired, mocking smile. "Hope you admire the scheme of decoration! I've been in dozens of lodgings, but I don't think I've ever struck an uglier room; but the people are clean and honest, and one has to put that before beauty, in our circ.u.mstances."

"There's a great _deal_ of pattern about. It hasn't what one could call a restful effect!" said Claire, looking across at an ochre wall bespattered with golden scrawls, a red satin mantel-border painted with l.u.s.tre roses, a suite of furniture covered in green stamped plush, a collection of inartistic pictures, and unornamental ornaments. Even her spirit quailed before the hopelessness of beautifying a room in which all the essentials were so hopelessly wrong. She gave it up in despair, and returned to the question of finance.

"Then my share will be seventeen and six! That seems very cheap. I am to begin at a hundred and ten pounds. How much extra must I allow for food?"

"That depends upon your requirements. We have dinner at school; quite a good meal for ninepence, including a penny for coffee afterwards."

"The same sort of coffee we have had this morning?"

"Practically. A trifle better perhaps. Not much."

"Hurrah!" cried Claire gaily. "That's a penny to the good! Eightpence for me--a clear saving of fivepence a week!"

Miss Rhodes resolutely refused to smile. She had the air of thinking it ribald to be cheerful on the serious question of pounds, s.h.i.+llings and pence.

"Even so, it's three-and-four, and you can't do breakfast and supper and full board on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday under seven s.h.i.+llings. It's tight enough to manage on that. Altogether it often mounts up to twelve."

"Seventeen and twelve." Claire pondered deeply before she arrived at a solution. "Twenty-nine. Call it thirty, to make it even, and I am to begin at a hundred and ten. Over two pounds a week. I ought to do it comfortably, and have quite a lot over."

Miss Rhodes laughed darkly.

"What about extras?" she demanded. "What about laundry, and fires, and stationery and stamps? What about boot-mending, and Tubes on wet days, and soap and candles, and dentist and medicines, and subs, at school, and collections in church, and travelling expenses on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays, when you invariably want to go to the very other side of the city? London is not like a provincial town. You can't stir out of the house under fourpence or sixpence at the very least. What about illness, and amus.e.m.e.nt, and holidays? What about--"

Claire thrust her fingers in her ears with an air of desperation.

"Stop! Stop! For pity's sake don't swamp me any more. I feel in the bankruptcy court already, and I had imagined that I was rich! A hundred and ten pounds seemed quite a big salary. Everybody was surprised at my getting so much, and I suppose you have even more?"

"A hundred and fifty. Yes! You must remember that we don't belong to the ordinary rut of worker--we are experts. Our education has been a long costly business. No untrained worker could take our place; we are ent.i.tled to expert's pay. Oh, yes, they are quite good salaries if you happen to have a home behind you, and people who are ready to help over rough times, instead of needing to be helped themselves. The pity of it is that most High School-mistresses come from families who are _not_ rich. The parents have made a big effort to pay for the girls'

education, and when they are fairly launched, they expect to be helped in return. Some girls have been educated by relations, or have practically paid for themselves by scholars.h.i.+ps. Three out of four of us have people who are more in need of help than able to give it. I give my own mother thirty pounds a year, so we are practically on the same salary. Have _you_ a home where you can spend your holiday?

Holidays run away terribly with your money. They come to nearly four months in the year."

For the first time those prolonged holidays appeared to Claire as a privilege which had its reverse side. Friends in Brussels might possibly house her for two or three weeks; she could not expect, she would not wish them to do more; and at the end there would still remain over three months! It was a new and disagreeable experience to look forward to holidays with _dread_! For a whole two minutes she looked thoroughly depressed, then her invincible optimism came to the top, and she cried triumphantly--

"I'll take a holiday engagement!"

The English mistress shook her head.

"That's fatal! I tried it myself one summer. Went with a family to the seaside, and was expected to play games with the children all day long, and coach them in the evening. I began the term tired out, and nearly collapsed before the end. Teaching is nerve-racking work, and if you don't get a good spell off, it's as bad for the pupils as yourself. You snap their heads off for the smallest trifle. Besides, it's folly to wear oneself out any sooner than one need. It's bad enough to think of the time when one has to retire. That's the nightmare which haunts us more and more every year."

"Don't you think when the time comes you will be _glad_ to rest?" asked innocent Claire, whereupon Miss Rhodes glared at her with indignant eyes.

"We should be glad to rest, no doubt, but we don't exactly appreciate the prospect of resting in the workhouse, and it's difficult to see where else some of us are to go! There is no pension for High School- mistresses, and we are bound to retire at fifty-five--if we can manage to stick it out so long. Fifty-five seems a long way off to you--not quite so long to me; when you reach forty it becomes to feel quite near.

Women are horribly long-lived, so the probability is that we'll live on to eighty or more. Twenty-five years after leaving off work, and--_where is the money to come from to keep us_? That's the question which haunts us all when we look into our bank-books and find that, with all our pains, we have only been able to save at the utmost two or three hundred pounds."

Claire looked scared, but she recovered her composure with a swiftness which her companion had no difficulty in understanding. She pounced upon her with lightning swiftness.

"Ah, you think you'll get married, and escape that way! We all do when we're new, and pretty, and ignorant of the life. But it's fifty to one, my dear, that you _won't_? You won't meet many men, for one thing; and if you do, they don't like school-mistresses."

"Doesn't that depend a good deal on the kind of school-mistress?"

"Absolutely; but after a few years we are all more or less alike. We don't _begin_ by being dowdy and angular, and dogmatic and prudish; we begin by being pretty and cheerful like you. I used to change my blouse every evening, and put on silk stockings."

"Don't you now?"

"I do _not_! Why should I, to sit over a lodging-house table correcting exercises till ten o'clock? It's not worth the trouble. Besides, I'm too tired, and it wears out another blouse."

Claire's attention was diverted from clothes by the shock of the reference to evening work. She had looked forward to coming home to read an interesting book, or be lazy in whatever fas.h.i.+on appealed to her most, and the corrections of exercises seemed of all things the most dull.

"Shall I have evening work, too?" she inquired blankly, and Miss Rhodes laughed with brutal enjoyment.

"Rather! French compositions on the attributes of a true woman, or, 'How did you spend your summer holiday?' with all the tenses wrong, and the idioms translated word for word. And every essay a practical repet.i.tion of the one before. It's not once in a blue moon that one comes across a girl with any originality of thought. Oh, yes! that's the way we shall spend five evenings a week. You will sit at that side of the table, I will sit at this, and we'll correct and yawn, and yawn and correct, and drink a cup of cocoa and go to bed at ten. Lively, isn't it?"

"Awful! I never thought of homework. But if Sat.u.r.day is a whole holiday there will still be one night off. I shall make a point of doing something exciting every Sat.u.r.day evening."