"It's so awful," she said dejectedly.
"Awful?" exclaimed Mr. Collins. "Do you know the great Napoleon was a book-agent? Do you know that when he was a lieutenant without a red cent he travelled with a work called L'Histoire de la Révolution? My dear young lady, if you go to Paris you can see his canvasser's outfit under a glass case in the Louvre, and the list of orders he succeeded in collaring!"
"I don't suppose he liked it."
"He liked the money it brought in; and you'll like yours directly. You don't imagine I expected you to do any good right off? I should have been much surprised if you'd come in with any different account this afternoon, I can tell you! No, no, you mustn't be disheartened because you aren't lucky at the start; and as to that Victoria Street fellow who was in a bad temper, what of him? He has to make his living, and you have to make yours; remember you're just as much in your rights as the man you're talking to when you make a call anywhere."
"Very good," said Mary; "if you are satisfied, I am. I don't pretend my services are being clamoured for. You may be sure I want to do well with the thing. If, by putting my pride in my pocket, I can put an income there too, I'm ready to do it."
It became a regular feature of her afternoon visit at the publishers' for Mr. Collins to encourage her with prophecies of good fortune; and her anxiety was frequently assuaged by his consideration. On the first few occasions when she returned with her notes of "Out; Out; Doesn't need it; Never reads; Too busy to look," etc., she dreaded the additional chagrin of being rebuked for incompetence; but Mr. Collins was always complaisant, and perpetually assured her that she was enduring only the disappointments inevitable to a beginner. In his own mind he began to doubt her fitness for the occupation, but he liked her, and knowing that, in the trade phrase, some orders "booked themselves," he was willing to afford her the chance of making a trifle as long as she desired to avail herself of it. They were terrible days to Mary Brettan, wearing away without result, while her pitiful store of cash grew less and less; and since each day was so drearily long, it was amazing that a week passed so quickly. This is an anomaly especially conspicuous to lodgers, and when her bill was due again she beheld her landlady with despair.
"Mrs. Shuttle worth," she said, "I have done nothing; I hoped to pay you, and I can't. I'm not a cheat, though it looks like it; I am agent for a firm of publishers, and I haven't earned a single commission." Mrs. Shuttleworth scrutinised her grimly, and she held her breath. She might be commanded to leave, and as omnibus fares were an item of her expenditure now, no more than a shilling remained of the sum raised on the handbag. "What do you say?" she faltered.
"Well," said the other, "it's like this: I'm not 'ard and I don't say as I'd care to go and turn a respectable girl into the streets, for I know what I'd be doing. But I can't afford to lay out for your breakfas' and your tea with never a farthing coming back for it. Keep the room a bit, and the rent can wait; but I must ask you to get all your meals outside till we're straight again."
A lodger on sufferance; left with nothing to pawn, and possessed of a shilling to sustain life till she gained an order for The Album of Inventions, Mary toiled up staircases with the specimen. To economise on remaining pounds may be managed with refinement; to be frugal of the last silver is possible with decency; but to be reduced to the depths of pence means a devilish hunger whose cravings cannot be stilled for more than an hour at a time, and a weakness that mounts from limbs to brain till the throat contracts, and the eyeballs ache from exhaustion. However fatigued her fruitless expeditions might have made her now, she went back to the publishing-house enduringly afoot, grudging every halfpenny, husbanding the meagre sum with the tenacity of deadly fear. The windows of the foreign restaurants with viands temptingly displayed and tastefully garnished, the windows of the English cook-shops, into which the meats were thrown, enchanted her eye as she would never have believed that food could have the power to do. She understood what starvation was; began to understand how people could be brought to thieve by it, and exculpated them for doing so. Without her clothes becoming abruptly shabby, the aspect of the woman deteriorated from her internal consciousness. She carried herself less confidently; she lost the indefinable air that distinguishes the freight from the flotsam on the sea of life. Little things sent the fact home to her. Drivers ceased to lift an inquiring fore-finger when she passed a cab-rank, and once, when an address on her list proved to be a private house, the servant asked her "Who from?" instead of "What name?"
Inch by inch she fought for the ground that was slipping under her, affecting cheerfulness when the specimen was exhibited, and hiding desperation when she restored it, a failure, to its case. The sight of Victoria Street and its neighbourhood came to be loathsome to her. Often her instructions took her on to different floors of the same building day after day; and, fancying that the hall-porters divined why she reappeared so often, she entered with the misgiving that they might forbid her to ascend.