CHAPTER XI
| "Will my strength last me? Did not someone say The way was ever easier all the way?" |
H. C. Beeching.
Youth can nearly always rely upon sleep to build up new strength, new hope, new courage. If you have got to a stage in your life when sleep fails you, if night means merely a long tortured pause from the noises of the world, in which the beating of your heart seems unbearably loud, then indeed you have reached to the uttermost edge of despair. Joan slept, heavily and dreamlessly, save that there was some vague hint of happiness in her mind, till she was wakened in the morning by a most violent bell ringing. The dressing-bell at Shamrock House, which went at seven o'clock, was carried by a maid up and down every passage, so that there was not the slightest chance of anyone oversleeping themselves.
Joan dressed quickly; the faint aroma of happiness which her sleep had brought her, and which amounted to cheerfulness, stayed with her. She remembered how Miss Abercrombie had once said to her: "Oh, you are a Browningite," and smiled at the phrase, repeating to herself another verse of the same poem:
"And I shall thereupon
Take rest ere I be gone,
Once more on my adventure brave and new."
She felt almost confident of success this morning; her mind was busy with plans of the work she would find. She was glad to feel herself one in a giant hive of workers, all girls like herself, cutting out their lives for themselves, earning their own living.
Breakfast brought with it a slight disillusionment. The dining-room in Shamrock House is in the basement; chill and dreary of aspect, its windows always dirty and unopenable, because at the slightest excuse of an open window the small boys of the neighbourhood will make it their target for all kinds of filth. Rotting vegetables, apple-cores, scrapings of mud; there is quite sufficient of all that outside the windows without encouraging it to come in. Six long deal tables occupy the space of the room, and it is one of the few amusements which the children of Digby Street possess to gather at the railings and watch the inhabitants of Shamrock House being fed.
It was the last flight of stairs into the basement which damped Joan's enthusiasm for her new home. As she stood hesitating in the doorway, for there were a great many people in the room, and the tables seemed crowded, she caught Miss Nigel's eye.
"You will find a seat over there," the lady called out to her, waving a hand in the direction of the furthest table. "Help yourself to bacon, which is on the hot case near the fire, and come here for your tea or coffee. By the way, which do you like?"