And just then--we were in the narrow ground floor passage--the mother arrived, bringing with her an unmistakable whiff of a public-house bar. This stiffened my relaxing prudence considerably. I had no kindly feeling left for taverns, especially where women were concerned. But, by an odd chance, it happened that Mrs. Pelly was not only in a talkative mood, but also in higher spirits than I ever saw her afterwards. She insisted on reinspection of the room, a sufficiently dangerous thing in itself for me. And then, standing beside its open window, with arms folded over the place in which her waist once had been, she avowed that she thought the room would suit me, and that I should suit the room.
'There's a writing-table in it, an' all, ye see,' she said, having received a hint as to my working habits.
There was indeed. I was little likely to forget it. It now seemed the charge for the room was eleven shillings weekly, without 'attendance.' But Mrs. Pelly had never been a woman to stick out over trifles, that she hadn't; and, right or wrong, though she hoped she might never live to rue the day, she would let the gentleman this room for nine shillings a week, and include 'attendance' in that merely nominal rate-- 'So there, Miss!' This, to her daughter Fanny, and in apparent forgetfulness of my presence.
It was a thrilling moment for me, standing there with one hand on the writing-table, my gaze fixed over the scantily covered top of Mrs. Pelly's head--she wore no hat--upon the trees in the distance. Prudence gabbled at me: 'You can't afford it. You must eat. You'll be sold up, and serve you right.' But, of course, the table and the window won. After all, had I not earned five pounds in the past month? And, excepting boots, my outfit was still pretty good!
I could not wait for Monday. The window and the table pulled too hard. So I installed myself at No. 37 on the Saturday afternoon, and thanked God sincerely that I was no longer in a slum.
VII
On fine mornings I used to leave door and window blocked open in my room, and take half an hour's walk in the park before breakfast. The weather was sometimes unkind, of course, but Fanny never, and she would neglect the rooms of other lodgers in order to hasten the straightening of mine. The other lodgers were all folk whose business took them away from Howard Street as soon as breakfast was dispatched, and kept them away till evening.
It often happened that I would work at my little writing-table until the small hours of the morning; and in such cases, more often than not, I would leave the house directly after breakfast, walk down Tottenham Court Road, and tack through Bloomsbury to Gray's Inn and Fleet Street, or wherever else the office might lie for which the manuscript I carried was destined. Where possible, I preferred this method of disposing of manuscripts. Not only did it save stamps--a considerable item with me--but it seemed quicker and safer than the post. I had a dishonest little formula for porters and bell boys in these offices, from the enunciation of which I derived a comforting sense of security and dispatch.
'You might let the editor have this directly he comes in,' I would say as I handed over my envelope; 'promised for to-day, without fail.'
Well, I had promised--myself. And this little formula, in addition to making for prompt delivery, I thought, gave one a sense of actual relationship with the editor. Save for the trifling fact that the manuscript would, probably, in due course be returned, or even consigned to the waste-paper basket, my method seemed to put me on the footing of one who had written a commissioned article. The dramatic value of the formula was greatly enhanced where one happened to know the editor's name, and could say in a tone of urgent intimacy: 'You might let Mr. ---- have this directly he comes in,' etc. In those cases one walked down the office stairway humming an air. It was next door to being one of the Olympians, and that without sacrificing one's romantic liberty as a free-lance.