CHAPTER VIII.

A WOMAN’S DIARY.

“Tuesday, Dec. 7th.

“I never knew how much I read till now, when I have no books. Time hangs and hangs; writing this thing helps to pass it, though there is nothing to put down. I can’t think; I feel as if all this were a dream. This horrid room in Chelsea, and all those boxes left ‘to be called for’ at Paddington station. When they come to sell them--for that’s what they do with unclaimed things--they will wonder how the owner had the heart to forget them. But perhaps they won’t know each one of those plain dresses cost twenty pounds.

“I wish I had what they cost; I never realized what it took to live. I am going to realize it well enough next week, when I must get something to do, or starve.

“I write down all these sordid little sentences because I daren’t write the only thought that is in my mind. I would go mad if I let myself remember--and I can’t forget. Better to put down how I’ve lived for a month on ten pounds. I, who threw away as much of a morning to pass the time!

“I pay, let me see, fifteen shillings a week here, and buy my food besides. I ought never to have taken this room, but it looked dreadful enough; how was I to know that I could have got one for eight in a worse place? I’ve been here four weeks; that disposes of five pounds, counting my food, though I know the woman cheats me. My bread and tea never cost ten shillings from Saturday to Saturday. There are two pounds in my purse, and the other three have melted. How many fees have I paid at registry-offices? How many women have looked me up and down when I asked for a governess’ place, have seen through me with their disapproving eyes? I don’t know and I don’t care--but I’ll care to-morrow. I’m too tired to-night from tramping in search of an engagement and too cold in this room. And I’m afraid. Afraid of meeting him in the streets and having him pass me by. I’ve no spirit. I believe I could forgive him, but in an hour I may be just as sure I never could.

“The loneliness of it all frightens me, too. This room, where no one ever comes, the streets I walk all day in terror of meeting some man who knows. To-morrow I must get work. I’m losing all my courage. I’d give half my life to-night just to----”

* * * * *

The writing broke off, the page smeared where a quick hand had closed the book while the ink was wet. But on the other side it began again.

* * * * *

“Thursday.

“What have I done? And why does such a simple piece of business make me feel creepy, as if I had entered into a bargain with the devil! I’m saved! I’ve found a situation! But I feel something saying to me that I would have done better to starve in the streets.

“It was yesterday, two days after I last wrote in this diary. I was standing in the register’s office and two women who had wanted governesses had told me I would not do. I felt dizzy, for I had been walking too far. I leaned against the wall, too tired to go home, and the registry-office was warm.

“I was not noticing anything because my head swam. I was thinking that for women like me the world had only one path, and I would die before I walked on it--any farther. I was fighting off the horror of it when some one touched me on the arm.

“It was the registry woman. She had left her desk and there was no one in the room but her and me, and a middle-aged man.

“‘Miss Holbeach,’ she was saying--I dared not go back to Heathcote when I found I had no right to Erle. Every one knew Andria Heathcote’s story, and Holbeach was not noticeable--‘Miss Holbeach, don’t you hear Mr. Egerton speaking to you?’”

“‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, for I was stupid.

“The man handed me a chair as if I were a lady and not a would-be governess. I sat down and then I looked at him. I don’t know now what there was in his face that seemed familiar. I only saw it in that first glance; afterward I knew perfectly well that he was an utter stranger.

“He was rather tall and rather dark and thin. I think now that if he had let it his hair would have been gray, but then I just saw it was black. He had a pale face, wrinkled and full of crow’s-feet round the eyes, and they were very dark, almost black. They puzzled me--their shape--I seemed to know that. But the way they looked at me was not like any eyes I know or ever have known. He wore beautiful clothes and had a London man’s manner. I mean those men you meet in the season who are so civil and so quiet, as if no one in the world was their superior and there was no occasion to assert themselves. I ought to know that manner by this time.

“This man seemed to take me in without looking at me. I remembered I had on old gloves.

“‘This lady, I think,’ he said to the registry woman, ‘wishes to be a governess?’

“‘Miss Holbeach? Yes, sir,’ She frowned at me to stand up, but I couldn’t. The man sat down by me, and it was then I saw how lined his face was. He looked fifty when you were close to him.

“‘Miss Holbeach; thank you!’ He just glanced at her, but she went away as if he had pushed her. Then he spoke to me. He wanted a governess, or rather a companion, for his ward, a girl of sixteen. Lessons were not so much an object as being willing to go abroad. His ward was obliged to winter in the South. She was not strong. I could only stare at him; the thought of getting a situation and getting out of England at the same time nearly made me cry with joy--till I remembered a man like this would never take me for his ward’s governess.

“‘I won’t do,’ I said. ‘You will not want me. I have not any--any references!’ My own voice sounded so odd to me, as if I had never heard it before.

“‘Oh,’ he said slowly, ‘you have no references,’ and I saw something so queer in his look that I could not answer from astonishment.

“A woman like me, who watches a man’s face for sunshine or bad weather, learns little things. This man’s forehead, instead of contracting between the eyebrows with annoyance, had grown smooth with relief. I couldn’t understand it then, and I can’t now; but I know he was relieved that I had no references.

“‘This woman knows you?’ he said.

“‘Only because I came here for work,’ it was no use pretending things, and I didn’t try.

“‘You have not always been a governess, is that it?’ He spoke so quietly that I knew the woman at the desk could not hear him, but I answered out loud:

“‘I was educated for a governess, but I have had no need to earn money for some years. Now I must--do something,’ and I couldn’t keep my lips steady.

“‘Ah!’ he said. ‘And without a character you have been unsuccessful!’ But I saw he was not sorry for me, only thinking what to do or how to do it. For I knew, as I know that I sit here in this room with its fire and the rain on the window, that he was going to engage me.

“And he did. Without a rag of reference, with only a few questions--and now that I come to think of it he never asked me where I was educated. I couldn’t have told him. I suppose Mother Benedicta knows how I ran away from Lady Parr’s with--but I won’t write that name.

“But it has all come to this: I, who had no hope of ever getting an engagement, am to be companion to a girl at a salary of a hundred pounds a year. And I know that I’m not fit to be with any girl; the five pounds that he gave me for expenses looks like a fee from the devil as it shines on the table. For the more I think of it, the more sure I am that he was certain I was a woman with a past and not anything else in the world.

“But past or no past, I will write it down here in this book, and sign my name to it, that no girl shall ever learn harm from me, or anything but hatred for evil. My schooling has been hardly paid for; it can at least be useful in helping some poor girl to keep out of the agony I have known. There is no peace or joy for women like me, and I would never see any girl stray on the bitter road that I trod. If Mr. Egerton, for reasons of his own, has engaged me because I am what I am, he has burned his own boats. If the girl is as sly and sullen as he hints, I will be a better guardian for her than a saint like Mother Benedicta was for me.

“I have read this over, and it seems far-fetched and ungrateful. The man is kind and he is giving me a chance to live honestly; but yet I cannot feel that in my heart. There is something behind his kindness.

“Whether there is or not, I can’t get out of my bargain now. I am to go to Southampton to-morrow, to join Mr. Egerton and his ward on his yacht; a steam-yacht, thank goodness! I hate the sea. We are to go to Bermuda, of all places in the world! Not that I know any one there, but it seems the very end of the world.

“Mr. Egerton has a house there, and if his ward likes it, we may stay till spring. It is all one to me, since I shall be out of England. To-morrow I must get those boxes at Paddington that I never meant to call for. I would be glad never to wear any of those clothes again, but I have no choice. The five pounds he gave me would not buy my ticket to Southampton and get me a governess’ outfit ‘warranted to wear’ into the bargain.

“I write very prettily. As I look at the neat, close pages of this book, I wonder how they could have been written with so heavy a heart. The past sickens me and the future frightens me, though it may be with a senseless terror that I shall laugh at by and by.

“The future! I laugh now when I see I have written that word. There is no future, Andria Heathcote, alias Holbeach, for such women as you; if you dare but touch the smallest joy that may be offered you a hand will come from the past when you least expect it and snatch the new wine from your lips.

“‘This is your solace and your reward, That have drained life’s dregs from a broken shard,’

“Good-night, Andria, and no dreams to you!

“May you do your work and live decently, till such time as your story comes out!”