Twm o'r Nant (Thomas Edwards) - "The Works of Twm o'r Nant, Volume II"

Robert Gordon Anderson - "Seven O'Clock Stories"

William Shakespeare - "The Tempest"

May Agnes Fleming - "A Terrible Secret"

This Freedom

A >> A. S. M. Hutchinson >> This Freedom




Then one day she took a step towards applying the fascination that
she found.

It was the day of the conversation that has been recorded. How,
Rosalie had asked, was the seeker after insurance to find the
policies best suited to his case? Rosalie had asked; and had been
told--he must go round but he never does; he must know what there
is to be had but he never does know; he must realise exactly what
he really wants but he never does realise it; and if he does realise
it he must be able to state it clearly but he never can state it
clearly.

Mr. Simcox, detailing this, permitted himself an amused contempt.
The public were ignoramuses, mere children; they knew nothing
whatever about insurance.

Rosalie said in a voice consonant with the grave measure of her
nods: "Of course, if it was a man, as you said, looking for a house,
he'd go to an agent. A house agent would tell him of houses best
suited to his needs that he could choose between. Well, there are
insurance agents. You've told me about them."

"Ah, but not the same thing, not the same thing," corrected Mr.
Simcox. "An insurance agent, the ordinary insurance agent, is agent
for a particular company. He only knows what his own company can
do and he only wants his own company to do it. That's no good to
the kind of man in the position we're speaking of. He wants some
one who can tell him what all the companies will do for him. Some
one who can hear his case, analyse it, put it before him in the
right light and advise him the best way of placing it. That's what
he wants. Exactly the same as these letters I send out--as you and
I send out, I should say. Why, I've had practical examples of it.
There was a young fellow I met at your aunt's house. There've been
three or four cases of it for that matter but this happens to be
some one you know--"

He proceeded to tell her of a visitor at Aunt Belle's, a young man
home on leave from the Indian army and recently married, with whom
he had got into conversation on the subject of insurance and had
most ably helped. The young man had a certain policy in view. Mr.
Sim-cox had put an infinitely better before him. "If he had come
to me before his marriage when he was first taking out a policy in
his wife's favour, I could have saved him and gained her hundreds,
literally hundreds," said Mr. Simcox. "He'd made a most awful mess
of the business. As it was I helped him very considerably. He was
very grateful, devilish grateful. He went straight to an agent of
the office I recommended and did it."

"There must be hundreds like him that would be grateful," said
Rosalie.

"Thousands," said Mr. Simcox. "Tens of thousands. Every single soul
who insures, you may say."

"Who got the commission?" said Rosalie.

"The agent, of course," said Mr. Simcox.

"Oh," said Rosalie.

"Why?" said Mr. Simcox.

"Nothing," said Rosalie. "Only 'oh '."






CHAPTER V





There's much virtue in an If, says Touchstone; and there's much
virtue in an "Oh"--a wise, a thoughtful, a speculative, a discerning
"Oh" such as that "Oh" pronounced by Rosalie to Mr. Simcox's
information that agents, and not he, drew the commissions for the
insurance policies which, out of his knowledge and experience, he
had advised. There followed from that "Oh" its plain outcome: her
suggestion to Mr. Simcox of why not make a business, a real business,
of expert advice upon insurance, and (out of the make-believe
intercourse with schools) a business, a real business, of expert
advice upon schools? And there shall follow also from that "Oh" a
sweeping use of the intention that has been mentioned to tell only
of her life that which contributed to her life. We'll fix her stage
from first to last, then see her walk upon it.

This was her stage: Her suggestion was adopted. It has, astonishingly
soon, astonishing success. Advice upon insurance, advice upon
schools, commissions from each, are found wonderfully to work in
together, each bringing clients to the other. Aunt Belle's swarms
of friends, their swarms of friends, the swarms of friends of
those swarms of friends, and so on, snowball fashion, are the first
nucleus of the thing. It succeeds. It grows. Real offices are taken.
"Simcox's." Advertisements, clerks, banking-accounts. Appearance of
Mr. Sturgiss, partner in Field and Company--"Field's"--the bankers
and agents. Field's is a private bank. Its business is principally
with persons resident in the East, soldiers, civil servants,
tea planters, East India merchants. Field's is in Lombard Street.
(Lombard Street!) Later Field's opens a West End office. Field's
is frequently asked to advise its clients and their wives on all
manner of domestic matters,--schools for their children, holiday
homes, homes for clients over on leave, insurance, investment,
whatnot, a hundred things. Comes to this Sturgiss, partner in
Field's, an idea of great possibilities in this advisory business
if developed as might be developed and run as might be run.
Tremendously attracted by Rosalie as the person for the job. Makes
her an offer. She declines it. Mr. Simcox's death. Sturgiss comes
along again. Ends in Rosalie going to Field's. Lombard Street! Room
of her own in the big offices. Glass partitioned. Huge mahogany
table. Huge mahogany desk. Field's open the West End office, in
Pall Mall. More convenient for wives of clients. Rosalie is moved
there. Manager of her own side of the business. The war comes.
Sturgiss goes out. Other important officers of the bank go out.
Her importance increases very much in other sides of the bank's
business than her own. Press scents her out and writes her up.
"The only woman banker." "Brilliant woman financier." Contributes
articles to the reviews. Very much a leading woman of her day. Very
much a most remarkable woman.

That's her stage. Thus she walked upon it:

The beginning part--that tumult of youth, those dizzy jumps that we
have seen her in--was frightfully exciting, frightfully absorbing.
She was so tremendously absorbed, so terrifically intent, so
tremendously eager, that the transition from the Sultana's to Aunt
Belle's, and the start with Mr. Simcox, and the transition from
Aunt Belle's to independence in the boarding house, was done with
scarcely a visit--and then a rather grudged and rather impatient
visit--to the rectory home.

No, the absorption was too profound for much of that: indeed, for
much of home in any form. Letters came from Rosalie's mother three
and four times a week. In the beginning, when fresh left school
and at Aunt Belle's, Rosalie always kissed the dear handwriting on
the envelope, and kissed the dear signature before returning the
letters to their envelopes; and she would sit up late at night
writing enormously long and passionately devoted letters in reply.
But she wasn't going back; she wasn't going down; no, not even for
a week-end, "my own darling and beloved little mother," until she
had found an employment and was established on her own feet, "just
like one of the boys." Then she would come, oh, wouldn't she just!
She would have an annual holiday, "just as men have," and she would
come down to the dear, beloved old rectory and she would give her
own sweet, adored little mother the most wonderful time she ever
could imagine!

Rosalie would sit up late at night writing these most loving letters,
pages and pages long; and her mother's letters (which always arrived
by the first post) she would carry about with her all day and read
again before answering.

And yet....

The fond intention in thus carrying them on her person instead of
bestowing them in her writing case was to read them a dozen times
in the opportunities the day would afford. And yet... Somehow it
was not done. The day of the receipt of the very first letter was
generous of such opportunities and at each of them the letter was
remembered... but not drawn forth. Rosalie did not attempt to analyse
why not. Her repression, each time, of the suggestion that the
letter should now be taken out and read again was not a deliberate
repression. She merely had a negative impulse towards the action and
accepted it; and so negligible was the transaction in her record
of her thoughts, so mere a cypher in the petty cash of the day's
ledger, that in the evening when, gone up to bed, the letter was
at last drawn out and kissed and read and answered, and then kissed
and read again, no smallest feeling of remorse was suffered by her
to reflect that the intended reading in the dozen opportunities of
the day had not been done.

And yet... Was it, perhaps, this mere acceptance of a negative
impulse, a cloud no bigger than the size of a man's hand upon the
horizon of her generous impulses? There is this to be admitted--that
the letters, accumulating, began to bulk inconveniently in her
writing case. What a lot dear mother wrote! Room might be made for
them by removing or destroying the letters from friends who had
left the Sultana's with her, but about those letters there was
a peculiar attraction; they were from other emancipated One Onlys
who watched with admiration the progress in her wonderful adventure
of brilliant, unconventional Rosalie, and it was nice thus to be
watched. Or room for her mother's letters might be made by removing
or destroying letters that began to amass directly touching her
desire for employment--from city friends of Uncle Pyke, from Mr.
Simcox. But, no, unutterably precious those! Unutterably precious,
too, of course, those accumulating bundles of letters from her
dear mother; but precious on a different plane: they belonged to
her heart; it was to her head, to the voice in her that cried "Live
your life--your life--yours!" that these others belonged.

She was tingling to that voice one night, turning over the employment
letters; and, tingling, put her mother's letters from her case to
her box.

Yes, upon the horizon of her generous impulses perhaps the tiniest
possible cloud. And then perhaps enlarging. You see, she was so very
full of her intentions, of her prospects. She had read somewhere
that the perfect letter to one absent from home was a letter stuffed
with home gossip,--who had been seen and who was doing what, and
what had been had for dinner yesterday and whence obtained. But she
did not subscribe to that view. She was from home and her mother's
letters were minutest record of the home life; but she began to
skip those portions to read "afterwards." One day the usual letter
was there at breakfast and she put it away unopened so as to have
"a really good, jolly read" of it "afterwards." In a little after
that she got the habit of always, and for the same reason (she told
herself) keeping the letters till the evening. One day she gave the
slightest possible twitch of her brows at seeing the very, very
familiar handwriting. She had had a letter only the previous day
and two running was not expected: more than that, this previous
letter had slightly vexed her by its iteration of the longing to
see her and by very many closely written lines of various little
troubles. She was a little impatient at the idea of a further edition
of it so soon. She forgot to open it that night. She remembered
it when she was in bed; but she was in bed then... When, next day,
she read the letter it was, again, an iteration of the longing to
see her and, again, more, much more, of the little troubles: the
residue was of the gossipy gossip that Rosalie already had formed
the habit of skipping till "afterwards." Altogether a vexatious
letter.

After that, when the letters were frequent, it was frequent for
Rosalie to greet the sight of them with just the swiftest, tiniest
little contraction of her brows. Nothing at all really. Meaning
virtually nothing and of itself absolutely nothing. Possessing
a significance only by contrast, as a fine shade in silk or wool
will not disclose a pronounced hue until contrasted with another.
The contrast here, to give the thing significance, was between
that swiftest, tiniest contraction of the brows at the sight of her
mother's letters and the eager spring to them, the quick snatching
up, and the impulsive pressing to her lips when first those letters
began to come. Likewise answering them, that had been an impulsive
outpouring and brimming over, now was a very slightly laboured
squeezing. The pen, before, had flooded love upon the page. Now
the pen halted, paused, and had to think of expressions that would
give pleasure.

The change did not happen at a blow. If it had, Rosalie would have
noticed it. It slipped imperceptibly from stage to stage and she
did not notice it.






CHAPTER VI





There was a thing she said about men once (in the boarding house
now) and often repeated. "They're very fond of saying women are
cats," she once said. "Fools! It's men that are the cat tribe:
tame cats, tabby cats, wild cats, Cheshire cats, tomcats and stray
cats! Aren't they just? And look at them--tame cats are miserable
creatures, tabby cats the sloppy creatures, wild cats ferocious
creatures, Cheshire cats fool creatures, tomcats disgusting
creatures, stray cats--on the whole the stray cats are the least
objectionable, they are bearable: at the right time and for a short
time."

This characterisation of men as Rosalie, in sequent development of
her attitude towards men, had come to regard them was delivered to
the girl with whom (for cheapness) her room in the boarding house
was shared. Rosalie went from Aunt Belle's to this boarding house
to assert and to achieve her greater independence. A man, Rosalie
debated, would have gone into bachelor rooms; but young women did
not go into bachelor rooms in those days and the singularity of
Rosalie's attitude towards life is rather well presented in the
fact that she never set herself against conventions inhibitory of
her sex merely because they were inhibitory of her sex. When the
years brought those violent scenes and emotions of what has been
called the suffragette campaign, Rosalie, who might have been
expected to be a militant of the militants, took no part nor even
interest in it whatever. She did not desire the privileges of men
merely because they were the privileges of men; she desired a status
which happened to be in the right of men and she went towards it
without seeking to change the established order of things, just as,
from one field desiring a flower in another field, she would have
gone to fetch it without changing her dress.

A man, anxious for full independence, would have gone into bachelor
rooms; but young women did not go into bachelor rooms. They achieved
their independence perfectly well, and far more cheaply, by going
into a boarding house. She therefore, very excitedly, went into a
boarding house.

There was no difficulty about leaving Aunt Belle's. Once Rosalie was
established in business with Mr. Simcox, tied to business hours,
and earning a weekly salary, she no longer occupied in Aunt Belle's
house the position of dependence which was in Aunt Belle's house
the first, and indeed the only, qualification for all who occupied
her house. Aunt Belle's guests had to be guests: wealthy guests who
could be entertained from early morning tea (beautifully served)
to bedtime and made graciously to admire; or if poor guests,
and particularly poor relations, guests who could be even more
impressed and were naturally much more enthusiastically delighted
and profoundly admiring. Rosalie, in business, could not be entertained
and did not sufficiently admire. She had to have a special early
breakfast; she disappeared; she was not in to lunch or tea; she
was not sufficiently impressed by what cook had prepared but had
rather too much to say about what she had been doing, at dinner;
and she excused herself away to early bed on the ground of fatigue
or of having certain books to study. Rosalie, in business, was not
a guest at all in Aunt Belle's sense of the word: indeed there came
an occasion--Rosalie twice in one week late for dinner--when Aunt
Belle said awfully, "My house is not a hotel, Rosalie. I cannot
have my nice house turned into a hotel."

It was the nearest thing to an unkind word ever spoken by Aunt
Belle to Rosalie, and it was so near that it brought Aunt Belle
up to Rosalie's bed that night--solicitude in a terrific dressing
gown of crimson silk--to express the hope that Rosalie was not
crying (she was not; she had been sound asleep) at anything Aunt
Belle "might have said." "But you see, dear child, there are the
servants to consider, all that delicious soup and all that most
tasty turbot au gratin to be kept warm for you, and there is your
kind Uncle Pyke to consider; men do not like their meals to be..."

The boarding house, which Rosalie, with qualms as to its reception
by Aunt Belle, had for some time been secretly meditating, came
easily after that. The boarding house had moreover for Aunt Belle
a double attraction. It not only removed Rosalie in her capacity
of one threatening to turn Aunt Belle's nice house into a hotel;
it also restored Rosalie in her capacity of overwhelmed, grateful
and admiring poor relation. Rosalie was now invited from the boarding
house just as previously she had been invited from the Sultana's;
the table and the appointments of Aunt Belle's house were now
lavishly displayed in contrast to the display and the table endured
by Rosalie at the boarding house; Aunt Belle was again supremely
happy in Rosalie and abundantly kind; dinner each Saturday night
was a standing invitation and frequently for these dinners Aunt
Belle arranged "a little dinner party for you, dear child, just
one or two really nice people that it is nice for you to meet and
that you can tell your friends at the boarding house about, dear
child."

Aunt Belle helped Rosalie to choose the boarding house and saw that
it was "nice." Nice people went there and the proprietress, Miss
Kentish, was nice. Miss Kentish had a grey, detachable fringe which
became, and re-mained, semi-detached immediately after breakfast,
and a mobile front tooth which came out surprisingly far when she
talked and went in with a sharp click when she stopped. She had for
newcomers a single conversational sentence--"My name is Kentish,
though funnily enough we come from Sussex"--and, for all purposes,
a single business principle, that of willingness "to come to an
arrangement." "I am afraid I cannot remedy your water not being hot
at eight o'clock," she would say to a boarder, "but I will gladly
come to an arrangement with you. Ten minutes to eight or ten minutes
past eight" (click). She would come to an arrangement on anything.
She became very fond of Rosalie in course of time and once told
her that though her duties never permitted her to attend church
she had "come to an arrangement" with the vicar and felt that she
had "come to an arrangement with Our Lord" (click). She came to
an arrangement with Rosalie in the matter of tariff, receiving her
and a Miss Salmon, who also sought arrangement, as "two friends
as one." This was two persons sharing a room at the tariff of a
person and a half. Living was very cheap in those days. Rosalie,
at the beginning, with Miss Salmon, paid 18/6 a week, and out of
the twenty-five shillings paid her, at first, every Friday by Mr.
Simcox there remained what seemed to Rosalie great wealth.

She set herself to save on it and her first purpose in thus saving
was to accumulate money on which she could draw so as to be able
to pay for a room private to herself. That would have taken some
time. Her successive increases in her earnings, as Mr. Simcox's
hobby developed into a business, brought privacy, and in time what
amounted to luxury, by much swifter process. Rosalie was a very
long time at the boarding house. From being two friends as one she
passed to a small remote room of her own, then to a larger and more
accessible room, then to a bed-sitting-room, finally to a very
delightful arrangement. There was on the second floor a fine roomy
apartment having a dressing-room opening out of it. Rosalie, by
then in much favour with Miss Kentish, not only secured the suite
but "came to an arrangement" with Miss Kentish by which the furniture
and fittings were removed from the rooms and Rosalie permitted to
fit, decorate and furnish them herself. Rosalie never knew happier
hours than in the furnishing of those two rooms into a little
kingdom of her own: she never in all her life knew days as happy
as the days there spent.

But at the beginning, two friends as one with Miss Salmon and first
contact with life from the angle presented by some twenty various
individuals met at meals and in the public rooms. Miss Salmon was
a pale, fussy creature with pince-nez in some mysterious way set
so far from her eyes that she always appeared to be running after
them as if to keep them balanced. Whenever anything of which she
did not approve was being said to Miss Salmon or was being done
before Miss Salmon, she maintained throughout it, moving about in
pursuit of her pince-nez, a rather loud, constant, tuneless humming.
When her moment came she would always begin "Well, now" and then
swallow forcibly as though the swallowing gave her pain. "Well,
now" (gulp). This introduction was always precedent to speech by
Miss Salmon, whether after humming or not. Rosalie frequently went
to Sunday church service with her and there was an occasion in
the Litany on which Miss Salmon, who either had been wandering or
sleeping, suddenly came to herself at the correct moment and said:
"Well, now"--(gulp)--"We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord."

Miss Salmon was employed as a daily nursery governess by a family
resident across the park who, not hav-ing room for her, had "come
to an arrangement" with Miss Kentish for her accommodation at
the boarding house; and with her fussiness, her nose pursuit, her
humming and her general ineptitude of habit and of thought, she
was as it were a fated companion for Rosalie; and it was the case
that all the other inmates of the boarding house were, in regard
to Rosalie, equally and in the same sense fated. Miss Salmon and
they were fated, or fatal, to Rosalie, in the sense that it would
have been well then for Rosalie, as always well for any developing
young thing, to have been among companions who drew upon her
sympathies and called for her consideration. The contrary was here
presented to her. She was ripe to be intolerant for she was very
full of purpose and purpose is a motive power of much impatience.
Miss Salmon, who would have made a saint impatient, made Rosalie,
who was not a saint, very impatient and the virus of this impatience
was that very soon Rosalie made no attempt to conceal it. It seemed
to Rosalie that whenever she projected any plan to Miss Salmon--as
to "do" a pit at a theatre--or any theory--as that men and not women
were manifestly the cat tribe--it seemed to her that Miss Salmon
always hummed with the maddening humming denotive of disapproval,
and always prefaced stupendously stubborn idiocy with the "Well,
now" and the gulp that alone were sufficient to drive enthusiasm
crazy.

"Mmmmm--mm. Mmm--mmmm--mm--mm," would go Miss Salmon, following her
pince-nez up and down the little bedroom. And then, the pince-nez
poised, "Well, now" (gulp).

And Rosalie came to cry, "Oh, never mind. Never mind, for goodness'
sake. I know exactly what you're going to say so what is the good
of saying it?" Miss Salmon nevertheless would say it, in full
measure, pressed down at intervals in solid lumps with reiterated
"Well, now" (gulp). And then Rosalie would hum to show she was not
listening and thus in time to the position that Rosalie, beyond the
ordinary changes of everyday conversation, took not the slightest
notice of Miss Salmon but busied herself in their room, or came
into it or went out of it, precisely as if Miss Salmon, who with
her gulps, her fussiness and her balancing was very much there,
was in fact not there at all. When Rosalie for the weekly dinner
at Aunt Belle's used to dress in the evening frock of Laetitia's
given her for the purpose by Aunt Belle, she used, at first, to say
to Miss Salmon, "There, how do I look, Gertrude? Can you see that
mend in the lace?"

"Well, now--" (gulp).

Very soon she was dressing (at the common dressing table) with no
more regard for Miss Salmon or for the continuous humming of Miss
Salmon (signification of Miss Salmon's disapproval of the monopolisation
of the dressing table) than if Miss Salmon had been an automaton
wound up to balance a pince-nez around the room, to hum, and at
intervals to gulp.

This was a small thing, but it was an important small thing. Rosalie
was entirely insensible to the opinions and the existence of Miss
Salmon, and it followed that she became entirely insensible to the
feelings of Miss Salmon. To begin by ignoring a person with whom
you are in daily contact is certainly to end by not caring at all
what happens to that person. It was the misfortune of Miss Salmon
to suffer periodically and acutely from biliousness (which she
called neuralgia). In an attack, she took instantly to her bed and
lay there flat on her back, absurdly and unnecessarily poising her
pince-nez, and looking, unquestionably, very unpleasant. Rosalie,--who
believed that Miss Salmon on these occasions had overeaten herself,
the attacks invariably coinciding with pork in winter and with a
fruit trifle known in the boarding house as "Kentish Delight" in
the summer, of both of which Miss Salmon was avowedly fond, was
at first warmly sympathetic and attentive on their occurrence,
anointing the fevered brows with eau-de-Cologne, nipping the
unnecessary pince-nez off the pallid nose, darkening the room, and
stealing about on tiptoe. In time her attitude came to be expressed
by her reception of the sight of Miss Salmon prone, stricken,
yellow, pince-nez, poising. "What, again?"

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