MENDING THE QUILT.
“And now let us produce our credentials,” said her new friend. “I am Margaret Gray. I live by my wits, namely journalism; that is, I write ‘Answers to Correspondents’ for half-a-dozen ladies’ papers. My brother is also engaged in the pursuit of letters. He is, in fact, Lord Mayne’s private secretary. He is very clever, as all brothers ought to be, and took a First in Greats. He is to marry, of course, an heiress, and go into Parliament, and make a name for himself and the family, the family being at present comprehended by himself and me. Finally, we are too poor at present to think of heiresses or even to approach the only available one, having piles of other people’s debts to pay off. Now for yours.”
Catherine told her simply and frankly all her short history. How, left an orphan, with just sufficient money to pay for her education, she had been brought up at an endowed school, and had then won a scholarship to Cambridge, and how, on leaving college, she had found a post in a High School in a large manufacturing town, where she lived by herself in rooms. She had only been there a short time, and did not know many people; there were so few people that she could know, except the other mistresses, living for the most part alone or sharing rooms together. It was less by what she was told than by her quick imagination, aided by her knowledge of other professional women, that Margaret was able to conjure up to herself the long harassing days, the physical fatigue that could seldom find relief, and then the solitary evenings in a dreary lodging-house. She contrasted it with her own life spent in London, among interesting people, and full of change and movement. Certainly she worked hard, but the possession of some private means and the knowledge that her future was comfortably provided for took away the anxiety that haunts the working days of so many women. Her heart went out in sympathy to this girl, who hardly realised as yet the whole significance of her position.
“Isn’t it dreadfully monotonous sometimes? Don’t you long to get away?”
“Sometimes I feel as if I could endure it no longer, especially in the evening, when I have finished my corrections and am too tired even to read. But then there are the children, and children are so delightful; though at the end of the term I do feel as if I never wanted to see another child all my life. But that feeling soon wears off; they are so innocent and fascinating, and never mind showing what they think. Oh, yes; of course it is only the children who make things bearable.”
“Now I can understand the apparent absurdity of a girl like you rushing off on a Swiss tour by yourself. Even I, who am several years older, and have much more knowledge of the world, and no pretension to beauty, should hesitate about such a thing. Did it never strike you that people might misunderstand you, that you were laying yourself out to be misunderstood?”
“Never! Why should it? I did not think the world so cruel. Must we wait till we are too old to enjoy things, from fear of what people will say? In twenty years I shall be too old to climb mountains and travel cheaply. Then it will be quite proper, I suppose, but quite impossible.”
There was a touch of bitterness in her tone that threw a new light on her character to Margaret.
“The world is hard on us women,” she answered gently. “We are in a transition state at present. Only the most enlightened and sympathetic men understand the independent woman. The very fact of her independence makes her a prey to men like that cad in the railway carriage, or quite incomprehensible to chivalrous men like my brother. You understand; he would do anything to help you out of a difficulty, but would not understand your preference for all the perils of a solitary tour over the security and boredom of those dreadful lodgings. Most men still prefer the clinging trustful girl who claims their protection at every other step. She makes them so conscious of their own superior power. But the woman who strikes out for herself and asserts her own individuality is a challenge to the cad and an unknown quantity to most men of honour.”
“I suppose that we can only suffer and wait for better things.”