On the fighting line

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER

I. — The Sky Parlour II. — February Violets

III. — ^Jasmine at Kew .

CHAPTER I London, My Sky Parlour, Jan , ist

T WONDER how many people are starting the ^ New Year with nothing left to wish for?

It’s as if I’ve swept into one of those oases of warm still air which aviators talk about: one minute tossed and buffeted in tempestuous uncertainty, and then suddenly swoosh into serene and comfortable steadiness with nothing left to fight about or trouble over.

Last January seems like a bad dream, though the storm that was happening then was a relief after the years of tossing up and down, knowing I should be pitchforked into something terrible one day. When I was a small child I knew we were in debt because father couldn’t sell his writings, and that the only hope of our worrying through at all, depended upon mother. Mother meant safety and home and everything practical; it was she who taught me the value of common-sense and success, although she dreaded the idea that some day I might have to earn my living. If she had not died, I should never have been allowed to go to the Polytechnic. Mother did believe so in girls being feminine and ladies. She always said there would be a home for me with Aunt Minnie and Uncle Samuel; I’m glad mother didn’t live to know the horror I feel now at such a prospect. Being poor and insignificant in London isn’t pleasant, 'but being poor and insignificant in a little country town, is impossible to contemplate.

Of course Aunt Minnie is mother’s sister, and mother never seemed to realize how funny her accent is, and how unspeakably badly dressed both she and Uncle Samuel are. She always talked about the nice home they had and Uncle Samuel’s position in Scroose, and felt it very much that father’s pride prevented him going to stay with them. I always thought father would not go because Aunt Minnie and Uncle Samuel were

XHe SKy Parlour rich and influential, and he was poor and a failure, until mother^s funeral, when they came up, very, very kindly, and offered to take me back with them to recover from the shock.

Aunt Minnie wore shiny gloves and called Uncle Samuel “Mr. Barnet.” They were both terribly afraid of father, and beside them father was like someone of a different breed. I felt him wince at every word they said, and I couldn’t help wincing too, though I wanted so to like them, because of mother.

When I saw them, I understood why father’s people had refused to have anything to do with him, when he married mother and became related to her family. It came over me in a great wave of horror. I was furious that I was related to them. And rather than be dependent on them, I felt I would sweep the streets. Directly after they had gone, I made inquiries about getting work, and just wrenched the money out of father for my Polytechnic classes. I suggested he should sell some of his old books. I was desperate. How glad I am that I insisted. I have a niche in the world now. I support myself.

Poor father; he seemed to go to pieces when mother died, although they never appeared very fond of one another; mother was always so practical and managing. I could think of nothing but my Polytechnic classes and there was no one to send father out to see his editors and keep him up to the mark, and though it must have been a relief to be let alone, in a way, he missed it. He took to sitting looking at the fire all day, and brooding, and when he started a cough, it just took possession of him.

Poor father !

It’s harrowing to be bobbing about in the ocean without a life-belt; it’s imcomfortable tossing about in a cockleshell of a boat which you know the family can’t steer, but it’s grand to be on a great majestic vessel which crushes the waves into foam, and that’s where I am now, in the office of the Imperial Alliance Trust. When at midday buses, drays, and motors bubble roimd the Bank and spill into the streets, the City reminds me of the sea; the currents meet and foam, the buildings stand up like great rocks, and the passers-by are as evanescent and as insignificant as bubbles. Upon this mighty sea, the Imperial Alliance proudly rides, supported by it.

Into the far corners of the world the tides of London flow, stamping our Empire more firmly

THe SKy Parloxir on the universe, like the pattern which the waves make on the sand.

The Alliance Trust underwrites companies formed to promote Imperial interests. Through us, Canadian lumber has been exploited; bananas have come forth in golden freights from the West Indies; railways have stretched steel tentacles across Rhodesia; townships have been built and lit and furnished; rice fields have been planted, wheatfields have been sown; whatever the Alliance thinks well to aid, flourishes promptly, for there is no firm in the City with such power and reputation.

It’s lovely to come home to my little sky parlour after business all day, successful business with successful men; I don’t miss father or mother; I can’t think of anything but the wonder of being the tiniest part of such a firm as the Alliance.

How can people fritter their time away when they get into an office like that. The other girls don’t seem to reahze the magnitude of the whole thing — they don’t care whether our schemes succeed or not; they simply wait for six o’clock so that they can shoot back into their private lives; and bring their trumpery little engrossments with them.

Miss Beckles reeks of scent and keeps a picture postcard of Gertie Millar under her typewriter, and Miss Patten refreshes herself with peeps at women’s papers. To-day she read out an article called “Typists Chances,” in which a gentleman noticed a girl when she took in the letters to her employer, asked for an introduction, and married her; she thought that bit might happen to any of us.

As if anyone with Mr. Grainge would notice his clerks. Miss Heckles and Miss Patten don’t understand how inferior we are. The very look of the room we work in, ought to wake them up to the unsurpassable difference between us and Mr. Grainge. We are at the top in a big room lighted by a skylight, with so small a stove that we have to keep our coats on, and even then, we shiver. The floor is covered with linoleum, the walls are dirty, the chairs are hard and high, and there isn’t a bit of carpet for our feet. But in Mr. Grainge’s room, the doors and fittings and furniture are mahogany and there’s a glow of subdued Eastern colours in the thick-piled rugs ; and there are great leather armchairs, and roll-top desks, and Mr. Grainge sits amongst it all, heavy and paunchy, like an Eastern God. I have only been in once.

It’s a privilege to help him, however humbly.

If I were in Miss Patten’s place and took his letters, — and she complains of the stairs when she has to go down more than once, complains if she is kept late, complains of the rate at which he gabbles when he gets enthusiastic.

But then Miss Patten has about as much imagination as a sparrow. She came home with me one night for supper, and said she should have heart disease if she had to climb all those dark stairs every time she came home, and never saw the charm of my sky parlour is that it’s tucked away in the top of that great warehouse, away from everyone. She hated my dear Httle landing, with its low roof and three black doors in the bulging wall, like animal dens. I could fancy anything coming out of them: a cow in a bonnet or a great fat sheep. But Miss Patten couldn’t appreciate the skylight through which the moon and stars shine, and light up my little door; and said the whole thing gave her the creeps and was it quite nice living up there by myself, next to a gentleman?

I’ve never even seen the tenant of the next rooms; his name. Jack Ford, is printed on the door, but I go straight into my den when I come home and don’t stir out again till morning when I’m off before he gets up. I hear him moving about and talking to his friends; lots of people come to see him in the evenings. I suppose Miss Patten would be always hovering about the landing. I hate the way she talks and thinks about men; it degrades them. From the shouts of laughter that come through the wall, Jack Ford sounds like a man’s man, and I like him to be left alone. I like being alone myself. My parlour reminds me of a ship’s cabin and I keep the bits of brass and china shining as if I were a sailor. The wind roars sometimes in the chimney like the sound of waves. The room is such a darling three-cornered cubby-hole with its great window half-way up the roof, tiny fireplace, and wall cupboards. The bed and father’s chair are dressed in frilly covers, and when I stand on the box, I can look through the window and watch the great clouds speeding through the sky like monster ships, or parting to show peaceful seas of stars, with the lights of London twinkling in a haze far, far below. Yet when I’m tucked up in my chair before the fire, I’m looking at something as significant and vast as the clouds and stars and London. I’ve stuck up the pictures of the bravest, hardest men I’ve read about, to remind me that anything can be done if you work

TKe SKy Parloxir hard enough and never give in. I adore soldiers, sea-dogs, statesmen, and administrators. I sometimes wonder if there were any in father’s family; I should love to be related to men like that. But on the other hand, I don’t want to be reminded of father. I want to be reminded about successful people; I want to study how they got success. Success is my one demand. The office of the Imperial Alliance is a temple of success ; Mr. Grainge breathes out success; Sir Mordaimt Mordaunt is the living symbol of success; and at last my life is a success for I’m in the Alliance office, and drawing twenty-five shillings a week, and banking three shillings every Saturday.

Jan. 4thy Monday.

To-day I’ve been picked out.

I was called in to Mr. Grainge this morning for some extra work: it was so exciting typing his letters that I missed lunch, and was still busy at it, when Miss Beckles and Miss Patten came strolling in, arguing hotly as to whether a wife should make home attractive to her husband. Miss Patten thought she ought to, as that was what she had been married for, but Miss Beckles said it was practically impossible to get a husband out at night under any circumstances, and it was nothing short of lunacy to encourage him to stay at home.

I was typing as loudly as I could to drown their chatter when Mr. Benson looked in and asked who was free. I had just that moment finished. It really was a coup to get all those letters finished by two- thirty, and it was jolly to be rewarded in this way.

So I went down, Mr. Grainge’s letters in my hand.

I nearly fell through the floor; Sir Mordaimt Mordaunt was with him.

Mr. Grainge is Managing Director, and Sir Mordaunt is only a Director, but they say he is the power behind the throne. He is not a bit like Mr. Grainge who is the living image of Cecil Rhodes. Sir Mordaimt is reddish and squirish, though his long drooping nose and sharp small eyes give him the City look. Such a dominant penetrating look it is.

They wanted me to take down a prospectus. An irrigation scheme is now afoot. A wonderful new plant has been invented, and the Alliance Trust has taken up one-fifth of the shares. The remainder has been satisfactorily placed, partly

II through the concessionaires and partly through Sir Mordaunt’s agency. It was breath-taking to be sitting there, hearing them discussing millions as casually as if they had been shillings. We have to place 100,000 shares at 7>^% and we get io%; so the Alliance stands to make a good thing out of it. I’m not so interested in that part, however, as in the idea of buying up the waste and desert comers of the Empire and irrigating them until they become fertile dwelling-places and granaries and orchards. It’s too wonderful to think what one can do, by just sitting still in a city office, and thinking, and writing, and talking. Millions of acres will be populated through the talk those two men had this afternoon, and the prospectus I took down is the messenger that will tell people about it, and win their co-operation.

The way it is to be done, soimds confusing, for money has to be raised through foreign banks and mortgages one on top of the other like a juggler’s pile of plates. First you get concessions by promising money, and then you get promises of money by promising concessions, — but it’s no use, I can’t make head or tail of the complications; all I’ve gathered is the splendid idea of the scheme, and the fact that the Alliance has to place 100 , 000 , and Mr. Grainge thinks it’s easy, and Sir Mordaunt snarls and grunts and evidently doesn’t.

Even if he is a great financier, the way Sir Mordaunt speaks to Mr. Grainge makes me hot. Mr. Grainge is too big a man to be annoyed; he is genial even to me, and he is simply charming with Sir Mordaunt, refusing to take his ill-humour seriously, and always saying the one thing which can mollify him. Mr. Grainge never flatters. Sir Mordaunt would be annoyed at anything as crude as that. And Mr. Grainge doesn’t always accept Sir Mordaunt’s ideas by any means, but he plays him gently, as if Sir Mordaunt was a ticklish fish.

“Now give us something succinct for the last paragraph,” said Mr. Grainge, “something that will stir the imagination. ” He leaned back in his chair like a genial King Henry the Eighth.

‘ ‘ I distrust imagination in prospectuses, ’ ’ snapped out Sir Mordaunt as if Mr. Grainge were a defaulter.

I should have shrivelled up into a pellet, but Mr. Grainge only leaned back, laughing, and said: “ My dear Sir Mordaunt, one of your short pithy phrases stimulates my imagination more than anything I know. I always say you’re a wizard at words. ” It was as if someone had aimed

THe SKy Parloxar at him and struck, and he was handing the shaft back, congratulating the marksman.

Sir Mordaunt grunted, and presently evolved a sentence which I could see nothing particular in.

Sir Mordaunt may have more money, but Mr. Grainge is far and away the greater man. Sir Mordaunt is perpetually prickling with the knowledge of his money and importance ; Mr. Grainge doesn’t think about himself, only of the great works he’s carrying through. Sir Mordaunt picks and pecks and hums and haws about whether this will pay, and will they be left with this on their hands, and is that too big a price for that concession, and couldn’t they squeeze a wharfage out of this concession, and so on, riddling the scheme to see if he can possibly perforate it so that it won’t hold water. Mr. Grainge plans and builds, the master of every obstacle that rises; he has the ideas, he sees the perfect work beyond the struggle all the time. If he hadn’t a shilling in the world, I believe he would set out to build a fleet of liners, or a railway from Persia to Hong Kong.

I can’t say what it meant to me when Mr. Grainge picked up my pile of letters, and asked me how long I should be with the rest, and I was able to say those were the lot.

'‘That’s quick,” said he. “No one here has a speed like that.”

“ Let’s look at ’em, ” snarled Sir Mordaunt ; he is the sort of person who will never let the slightest detail pass. He picked up the letters now, and his gimlet eyes peered at them, trying to perforate them, but in vain. I do type well.

And then I suddenly realised I had typed through lunch. It was horrid to have to tell them. “Ah, of course, in that case,” snapped Sir Mordaunt, dismissing my presumptions.

But Mr. Grainge nodded as if he were pleased “I never want to leave off,” said he. Sir Mordaunt was staring at the fire, but as I turned I felt his sharp eyes on me, and then he said: “ She’d better take Richard’s.”

“Let’s see, he is to have Benson’s room — I had thought Miss Patten might manage both,” said Mr. Grainge.

I stood waiting for my fate to be decided; a word might swing it one way or the other. Who was Richard?

“Put this girl on: she seems capable,” said Sir Mordaunt in a voice there could be no contradicting.

“All right, then. Report yourself to Mr.

Mordaunt to-morrow morning after he’s finished with me,” said Mr. Grainge, “and I want that prospectus at the printers’ by five-thirty. Can you do it?”

Could I do it !

Then I was out of the room with the news that young Mr. Mordaunt is coming to the Alliance, and I am to take his letters.

It’s so exciting that something else which has happened is scarcely exciting at all.

Jack Ford and I have met in a touchingly domestic manner. When I came home, someone was going upstairs, two flights in front of me ; I was thinking Jack Ford would be well in his room by the time I reached the landing, when bumpity bump, down the stairs rolled something. I had gained one flight, and now flew up the other and fielded an onion. It wasn’t news that Jack Ford liked onions, for one can’t help knowing what neighbors on the same landing have for supper. But he must be afflicted by a perfect mania for them. The first was the precursor of a torrent.

Jack Ford came running down. He turns out to be young, square, and chubby, Hke a goodtempered small boy only that his square-set jaw and weather-beaten eyes indicate he’s knocked i6 On tKe Fi^Htin^ Line

about the world a bit. He speaks in a calm drawl and didn’t seem to mind being caught carrying onions. He swore gently when two left his arms suddenly, after I had piled the last ones on. I had to go down after them, for he was loaded to his chin, and he calmly trudged up to his room. I don’t know if he expected me to keep the onions as a sort of tip, but he shut his door after him, and I actually had to knock to give him back his precious possessions. He really might have waited. He thanked me in a confidential way but not nearly so much as I should have expected. He appeared to think it quite natural for a girl to pick up a man’s onions. I can’t help feeling he is rather cool; I should say, perhaps, unmanly. I do like manly men.

I have been smelling the onions the last hour. I should never bother to fry onions for myself. How funny men are.

Not that I think a manly man would bother.

How could he sit in his room after, even smoking?

Oh dear, I wish to-morrow would come. I’m yearning to begin my first real job. I wonder if young Mr. Mordaunt snaps like his father. Miss Patten is thrilled he’s coming. I suppose she has begun a new dream of young Mr. Mordaunt seeing

TKe SKy Parlo-ur her clicking, and thinking how sweet she’d look at a sewing-machine.

Jan. Tuesday.

Mr. Richard is brusque but he doesn’t snap. His nose doesn’t droop like Sir Mordaunt’s; it’s straight, like his eyebrows which almost meet, over dark, bright eyes. He’s like Sir Mordaunt in his squirishness and brownness, and tall upright figure. He would look glorious in flannels. He is the typical captain of cricket teams. His authoritative air reminds me of Sir Mordaimt, but Mr. Richard is pleasanter; his curtness is due to nervousness, I fancy, for he is only a boy and doesn’t want to show his inexperience. Though it’s wonderful how he has tumbled into things his first day. When I went in this morning, he was sitting at his desk as if the office belonged to him, and glanced at me as carelessly as if he had been used to seeing me every day of his life. Yet I don’t believe he had ever given a letter in shorthand before. I took down the first sentence in three dots or so, and then waited, and waited, till he became red, and asked if I’d got that. Anyone who knew anything about dictating, would have known I had. He kept looking at me out of the comer of his eye, trying to bluff, after that, but I Hke people who have no doubts as to their right to mle, and will never own they’re wrong, or don’t know anything they ought to know. It is plain Mr. Richard will never be treated as an ordinary person by anyone. He has come straight into a position of authority, as Mr. Grainge’s confidante, apparently. He is to work with Mr. Grainge on the new scheme. It will be almost as good as working with Mr. Grainge himself.

The only remark that Mr. Richard made to me, was that the blotting-paper was beastly ; the pink swore with the wallpaper. When I brought in his letters after lunch I noticed he had invested in a packet of delicate grey, and an ebony mler. One can see he has been used to everything of the very best.

Jan. Qthy Saturday.

I can’t think how I ever thought Mr. Richard like his father. He sees eye to eye with Mr. Grainge in everything, regarding him as a young soldier would regard his superior officer, ready to obey and trust him implicitly, and yet, thrilling with the meaning of it all. After the supine indifference of the girls, it is meat and drink to be working with Mr. Richard.

XKe SKy Parlovir

He is wild with excitement over this new scheme ; of course it’s his first job, but I can see already he is the sort of person who can become truly enthusiastic over things. Mr. Grainge and he are shut up for hours together, and then Mr. Richard comes out with lists of names and I take down letters to such interesting people. Mr. Grainge and Mr. Richard seem to know ever so many. Mr. Richard writes to men he doesn’t know, too, for Mr. Grainge feels the nation must awake to its Imperial responsibilities, and this irrigation business is of great importance to every loyal member of our nation. Above all the Alliance deals with Englishmen and English capital; we always mention that; “All for England” is our slogan; our lands must not be allowed to be exploited by foreign bandits, otherwise financiers. I suppose the foreign banks that are in the scheme represent the capital of Englishmen who live abroad.

The letters make me quite excited as I write them. After we have spent millions and poured out our blood to colonize, and civilize the untamed comers of the world, it does seem a sin that the country should apathetically allow the profits and control to go elsewhere.

It makes such a difference if one takes down letters consecutively, and can follow the whole plan day by day. I sit like an automaton, of course, but it’s fine to think one is a useful, reliable machine, and now and then, Mr. Richard glances at me in a furtive sort of way, as if he wants to know if I am stirred by his letters. I seem to understand him exactly, perhaps because this is my first big job too. And then there’s such a sense of team-work about a scheme of such magnitude. For I’m English and its as much my Empire as anyone’s.

Jan. 2gth^ Friday.

Mr. Richard and I have talked to-day like human beings.

Things haven’t been going as well as they should, with the great scheme. The general tone of the replies hasn’t been satisfactory, people look at the project as a mere commercial venture, and like Sir Mordaunt, are sceptical of quick return on capital. As if that mattered !

Some people approve, but not the most influential ones, and the people on whom Mr. Grainge depended for immediate support, appear to be tied up for the moment. Two are away, one has come into a legacy of death duties, and another

TKe SKy Parlo\jir has been hit heavily in Peruvians. Everyone puts personal interests before the Empire. Sir Mordaunt is away, fortunately, and is going to be away for a month or more, but these last days Mr. Grainge has looked worried, and Mr. Richard isn’t as fresh and debonair as he ought to be and is starting a permanent frown.

There was another big disappointment to-day, and he sat pulling at his lip as if he had forgotten I was in the room. Suddenly he jumped up and walked up and down the room like a young knight who’s overcome with the rottenness of everything, and at last he couldn’t help letting out. I had never realized how unpatriotic we are as a nation, till Mr. Richard flung out the words, and I saw a nature like his being hurt.

Before I thought, I said, *‘Yes, it’s too bad”; I’m glad I didn’t stifle my feelings for that word just set him off.

He said everyone was asleep and soft and comfortable, and it was like trying to educate a lot of kids. No one expected thanks, but one did expect people to see what was going on under their noses. In the Alliance, the nation had men who could be trusted to push their own country before everything and not play fast and loose with British prestige for the sake of a few dirty shekels. But instead of appreciating what was being done, people only thought about their miserable dollars and the men who were trying to build up the Empire were left absolutely unbacked. It was enough to make a man chuck the whole beastly business and stick to coining money and selling his soul and nation as everyone else was doing.

It was as if I heard the Alliance speaking to me, the smallest, most unnoticed little cog in the whole machine ; a torrent of fighting energy rushed through me, and I felt the Alliance must bring this scheme to pass, however blind and apathetic the public was.

“Mr. Grainge will pull things through,” said I.

“Yes, if he were left a free hand,” chafed Mr. Richard. “But the hell of it is, my father’s not with him in this, not really with him. He could put the whole thing right if he liked. But he won’t put a cent of his own money into it.”

“Doesn’t he believe in it?” said I, a little scared, I must confess, by this.

“Oh, he believes in it, in a way, but he’s not doing what he might do,” said Mr. Richard, worried and dark with fear.

Yes, fear. Although he trusted Mr. Grainge’s

THe SKy Parlo\ir plans, I saw that he was thinking of his father's money all the time.

^‘Mr. Grainge will find a way out," said I; ^‘Money's nothing compared to the idea. Mr. Grainge can meet any contingency, he can think out a way of getting anything he wants. Your father isn’t the only person in the world with money. I think it’s“splendid that Mr. Grainge is left alone to carry the whole thing through. Now you’ll all see he’s independent of anybody’s money.’’

“Unfortunately, money’s everything in this world,’’ said Mr. Richard.

“It’s not, it’s just the servant, it’s nothing in itself. Mr. Grainge has thought out how to make the deserts full of use and life, for the glory of the Empire ; all the money in the world couldn’t think out the tiniest plan of improving or helping anything; Mr. Grainge will have what money he needs, you see,’’ said I.

Mr. Richard stood and looked at me as if I were a desk or chair which had suddenly spoken intelligibly.

“You look as if you’d come into a fortune, ’’ said he.

“ It’s the sun on my face, it’s so jolly and warm,’’

said I, feeling unaccountably happy, as if we had really all the money in the world behind us.

“It’s the sun in your face,” said Mr. Richard; “you’ve quite bucked me up,” and then suddenly the sim came out in his face, and he smiled at me, the nicest, friendliest sort of smile.

I looked down on my pad ; I wanted to cry with happiness. I felt as if I had been taken into the whole splendid business and accepted by my chiefs as a living, breathing helper instead of a machine.