The Lady of the Basement Flat | Page 6

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