The make-believe gentility of Miss Green’s Paying-Guest-House became intolerable to me. An injury received to my foot out in Canada was causing me great pain. Transportation from Miss Green’s to the Westminster School was difficult and indirect. I made this my excuse to change my living quarters. Miss Green was terribly offended at my leaving her house. She made scenes and shed tears.
I took a room in a house in Vincent Square where two other Art School students lodged. One of these girls, Alice Watkin, was the girl in the school I liked above any other. The other student was the disagreeable head of the Life room. We three shared an evening meal in their sitting room. The disagreeable student made it very plain that I was in no way entitled to use the sitting room, except to eat the miserable dinner with them, sharing its cost. The room was dismal.
It was furnished with a table, three plain kitchen chairs of wood, a coal-scuttle and a sugar basin. The sugar basin was kept on the mantelpiece. It was the property of “Wattie” and me who kept it full to help to work our puddings down. Because the disagreeable student was on diet and did the catering our meals were sugarless and hideous. Our grate fire always sulked. Old Disagreeable would often pour some of our sugar on the black coals to force a blaze.
Vincent Square was grimly respectable though it bordered on the Westminster slums. The Square lay just behind Greater Victoria Street. You could reach the Architectural Museum in an entirely respectable way by cutting through a little street into “Greater Victoria” which was wide, important and mostly offices. When you came to the Abbey you doubled back through Dean’s Yard into Tufton Street and so to the Architectural Museum but this way was circuitous.
The others always took it, but I cut through the slum because every saved footstep spared me pain. The slum was horrible—narrow streets cluttered with barrows, heaped with discards from high-class districts, fruit having decay-spots, wilted greens, cast-off clothing. Women brushed their hair in the street beside their barrows while waiting for trade. Withered, unwashed babies slept among shriveled apples on the barrows.
I tried not to see too much slum while passing through. It revolted my spirit. Wattie said, “Don’t go that way, Carlight”—that was always her name for me. When I came to the School motor-cars were just coming into use; they were fractious, noisy, smelly things. It was not a compliment to be called “Motor”. Wattie had invented her own name for me. She never called me “Motor” like the others, always “Carlight”!
“Carlight,” Wattie pleaded, “don’t go through the slum! How can you!”
“Oh, Wattie, my foot hurts so!”
I continued to limp through the murk, odours, grime, depravity; revolting ooze, eddying in waves of disgustingness, propelled by the brooms of dreadful creatures into the gutters, to be scooped into waiting Corporation waggons dripping in the street.
One raw, foggy morning, as I hobbled along, a half-drunk street-sweeper brought his broom whack across my knees. They bent the wrong way, my bad foot agonized! Street filth poured down my skirt.
“ ’Ere you! Obstructin’ a gent’s hoccipation.”
“Yer mucked the swell good, ’Enery,” chuckled a woman.
“Let ’er look out, what ’er ’ere for, any’ow? Me, I’m a doin’ of me dooty.”
I boiled but dared not speak, dared not look at the creature. I could have fought. I think I could have killed just then. Doubling over, the nearest I could to a run, I managed to get to the school cloak-room.
Wattie found me crying over the wash-basin swishing my skirt about in the water, crying, crying!
“Carlight!”
“I got muddied, Wattie.”
She groaned, “That wretched foot!” She thought I had tripped. She finished washing the skirt, took it off to the fire to dry, draped a cover-all apron over my petticoat, took me into her arms and rocked. That was Wattie’s way. When one was in great tribulation she faced you, crooned, wound her arms round and rocked from side to side. She was such a pretty girl and gentle; had it not been for that clear-cut hardness of English voice, I could have forgotten her nationality.
Wattie would never have cried from being muddied. She would have squared her chin, stuck her high-bridged nose in the air but she would have kept out of slums and not have got herself muddied to begin with. English girls were frightfully brave in their great cities, but when I even talked of our big forests at home they shivered just as I shivered at their big, dreadful London.
While I lived in Vincent Square I breakfasted in my own room. The view from my window was far from nice. I looked directly across a narrow yard into a hospital. Nurses worked with gas full on and the blinds up. I saw most unpleasant things. I could not draw my own blind or I was in complete black—my landlady cut the gas off at dawn. She went by the calendar, not the weather, and daylight was slow piercing through the fogs of Westminster.
The landlady got a notion.
“ ’Ere’s wot,” she said. “You eat in my ‘sittin’ ’ downstairs; save me luggin’ up, cosy fer yous.”
I breakfasted there once only. Her “sittin’ ” window looked into a walled pit under the street which was grated over the top. The table was before it. Last night’s supper remnants had been pushed back to make room for my cup and plate. A huge pair of black corsets ornamented the back of my chair. There was an unmade bed in the room. The air was foul. The “sittin’ ” was reached by a dreadful windowless passage in which was the unmade bed of the little slatternly maid-of-all-work. I rushed back up the stair, calling to the woman, “I prefer to breakfast in my own room.”
The woman was angry; she got abusive. I did not know how to tackle the situation, so, as was now my habit, I went to Mrs. Radcliffe, who immediately set out and found nice rooms near to her own. Wattie and I moved into them. Old Disagreeable remained in Vincent Square.
I could scarcely bear to put my foot to the ground. I had to stay at home, penned in dreariness, eating my heart out to be back at work. Wattie was away all day. London landladies are just impossible! Lodgers are their last resort. This woman had taken to drink. She resented my being home all day; there was no kindness in her. I had to have a mid-day meal. She was most unpleasant about it. She got drunk. With difficulty I hobbled to Mrs. Radcliffe. She was seated under an avalanche of newspapers when I burst in. The Boer War was at its height. Mrs. Radcliffe followed its every up and down, read newspapers all day.
Flopping onto the piano stool I burst into tears. “I can’t bear it!”
Mrs. Radcliffe looked up vexed.
“What now, Klee Wyck! Dear me, dear me, what a cry-baby! Pull yourself together. A brisk walk is what you need. Exercise—exercise—That stuffy Art School!”
“My foot is bad. I can’t walk.”
“Corns? Nonsense, every one has them.”
“It is not corns. Where is there a doctor? My foot will have to be cut off or something—I must get back to school.”
“Doctor, fiddlesticks! You homesick baby! Stop that hullabaloo! Crying over a corn or two!”
The portière parted—there stood Fred. He had heard. I nearly died of shame. He was never home at this hour. I had not dreamed he would be in the dining room.
“Mother, you are cruel!”
I felt Mrs. Radcliffe go thin, cold, hard. Hiding my shamed, teary face in the crook of my arm I slithered off the piano stool. Fred held the door for me, patted my shoulder as I passed out.
“Cheer up, little Klee Wyck.”
I did not cheer. Afraid to face the drunk landlady I crawled to a bus, scrambled to its top somehow, got close to the burly, silent driver, rode and rode. The horses were a fine pair of bays. I watched their muscles work. At the end of the route I put fresh pennies in the box and rode back to the start. Back and forth, back and forth, all afternoon I rode. The jogging horses soothed me. At dusk I went home.
“Mrs. Radcliffe has been twice,” Wattie said. “She seemed worried about you—left these.”
She held up a beautiful bunch of the red roses with the deep smell Mrs. Radcliffe knew I loved so well.
“I don’t want her old roses. I hate her, I am never going near her again. She is a cruel old woman!”
“She loves you, Carlight, or else she would not bother to scold. She thinks it is good for you.”
Wattie rocked, dabbing the red roses against my cheek as she rocked. Something scratched my cheek. It was the corner of a little note nestling among the blooms.
“Come to dinner tonight, Klee Wyck.”
“Wattie, d’you know what hell would be like?”
“Father does not like us to joke about hell, Carlight; he is a clergyman, you know.”
“This is not a hell joke, Wattie, at least it is only London hell! London would be hell without you and without Mrs. Radcliffe. But I must hurry or I shall be late for Mrs. Radcliffe’s dinner, and she’ll scold all over again.”
“Good old Carlight. I am glad you are going.”
All the houses in Mrs. Radcliffe’s street looked exactly alike. I hobbled up the steps I thought were Mrs. Radcliffe’s. A young man came out of the door. He stepped aside—I entered. The door closed, then I saw I was in the wrong house. I could not open the door so I went to the head of the stair and rang a bell. A woman came hurrying.
“I got in by mistake, please let me out.”
“That’s your yarn is it, Miss Sneak-thief; tell it to the police.”
She took a police whistle from the hook and put it to her lips; her hand was on the door knob.
“Wait, really, honestly! A man came out and I thought he was the lodger above Mrs. Radcliffe, next house. I ran in before he shut the door. I am going to dine with Mrs. Radcliffe. Please let me out quick. She hates one to be late.”
“A likely story!”
“It’s true.”
She opened the door but stood in front so there was no escape. Taking a leap in the dark, I said, “You know Mrs. Radcliffe; she often sends you roomers. Please ask Mrs. Radcliffe before you whistle the police.”
The woman paused, she did not wish to lose custom. My chance leap had been lucky. I had not really known which side Mrs. Radcliffe lodged her visitors. I knew only that it was next door. The woman let me out, but she watched, whistle to lips, till I was admitted to Mrs. Radcliffe’s.
Dinner had just been brought up. Fred laughed when I told my story. Mrs. Radcliffe frowned.
“You always manage to jump into situations, Klee Wyck! My nieces don’t have these experiences when they come to London.”
“They are not Canadian, perhaps.”
“Some are.”
“But Eastern Canadians. I come from far, far West.”
Mrs. Radcliffe smiled, gentler than I had ever seen her smile.
“I have made an appointment with my surgeon-cousin. He is going to have a look at that foot of yours tomorrow,” she said.
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