O. Douglas - Taken by the Hand

After lunch Beatrice stood in the corridor for half an hour, watching the landscape fly past, and when she returned to her compartment found her companion busily knitting.

As the girl settled herself in her corner the older woman said:

“Do you find the journey long?”

“Oh, no. I like it. I wish it were longer.”

“That doesn’t sound as if you were in any hurry to reach your destination.”

“No,” said Beatrice.

“Personally,” her companion went on, “there’s nothing I enjoy more than a day in the train; it’s such a rest.”

This was a new light on travelling. Beatrice had been in the habit of hearing people make rather a fuss about it. Kind Mrs. Lithgow had urged her that morning to eat more breakfast, “because, you know, you’ve a journey before you,” and she had been sent early to bed the night before for the same reason.

“I daresay it is,” she said slowly, “if you’re busy for ordinary.”

“Well, I am,” said the knitting lady, “very busy indeed. I edit a woman’s magazine, you have it there—yes, that one.”

She smiled at the eager interest in her companion’s face, as she took up the paper. “Why,” she said, regarding it almost with awe, “we’ve always taken this. My mother liked it; she said there was something in it to interest every type of women. And you really—Oh, aren’t you lucky?”

“I don’t know about luck, but I certainly don’t pity myself; it’s work I love, though it’s worrying enough at times. . . . But everybody with a job just now should be down on their knees thanking heaven fasting. I’m almost ashamed of the good fortune when I see the misery on the faces of men—and women too—who delight to work, and have nothing now to work at. It must be so difficult to keep your self-respect when it seems there is no longer a place for you anywhere. Some are clever and adaptable and can turn to anything and there’s more hope for them, but so many could only do one job really well—and they’ve lost it. . . . London’s a hard place to live in if you haven’t learned to harden your heart.”

“Have you been long in London? You’re Scots, aren’t you?”

The knitting lady laughed. “That isn’t very tactful of you. How do you know that I’m not trying to bury every trace of my Scots descent? As a matter of fact I was born in Glasgow and educated there, but I’ve been in London for the last twenty years. You don’t speak like the Glasgow born—that’s a fact, not flattery.”

“Don’t I?” said Beatrice. “I’ve lived all my life in Glasgow, except for two years when we were abroad, but I haven’t much ear so perhaps that’s why I didn’t pick up the accent. I didn’t mean that you spoke with any particular accent, simply that your voice was deeper and slower than most English voices. . . . I expect I’ll be very homesick for the Glasgow accent before long!”

“You’re leaving Glasgow then?”

“Yes. You see—I’ve no one left. There was only my mother and myself, and mother died.” Beatrice finished with a gulp, rather surprised at herself for suddenly confiding in a stranger.

Her companion did not make the mistake of attempting to sympathise. She merely nodded and bent her head over her work.

Presently she said: “It’s hard for you. But you’re young.”

“Does that make any difference?” the girl asked.

The older woman smiled. “I think so. In spite of yourself new interests will claim you. Life is before you. . . . Have you any near relations?”

“A step-brother and his wife and family; I’m going there now; I hardly know them.”

“But that’s rather interesting; it’ll be fun for you finding out all about them.”

“Fun!” said Beatrice. “Well, I suppose it might be to some people, but the thought of it simply makes me stiff with fright. It sounds too silly and babyish, for I’m twenty-five, but I’ve hardly done anything on my own till now. Mother had me educated at home, and took me herself to the Continent as I got older, so I’ve never had to rough it among other girls. The consequence is I don’t know enough about them to feel at home with them. Perhaps if I’d taken up Guides, as mother wanted me to. . . . You see mother herself was so splendid that I wanted no one else. I leant on her. She didn’t care how many responsibilities she took on and she failed no one. The people she kept going! Backed them up with her courage! I simply can’t think why God took my mother out of a world where she was so much needed. And only sixty!”

“Did you help your mother in her work?”

“Not much,” Beatrice confessed. “I’m not much good at public work, and I’m shy of poor people. I never think they believe much in my interest. I don’t blame them for I don’t believe in it much myself.”

“Then what are your interests?”

The girl gave a little shame-faced laugh as she said:

“I don’t believe I’ve got any—specially. I was so much a part of mother that her interests were enough for me. She always told me about everything and I liked to listen. . . . Now, of course, it must be different.”

The older woman was touched by the forlorn note in the girl’s voice, but she said bracingly:

“If you don’t interest yourself in people, no one will be interested in you, and you’ll have a very dull time.”

“Oh,” said Beatrice, looking consideringly at her companion, “I wonder if that was why I was a failure when I went to dances?”

“Who said you were a failure?”

“Does one need to be told? The ill-concealed relief of my partners when they had done their duty and danced with me was enough. I never enjoyed going out because I always came home feeling I had been no success. Mother thought it was because I was shy and that may have had something to do with it, but there was more than that. D’you suppose it was because I wasn’t interested enough?”

“Well, you weren’t playing the game, were you? What have we got to be interested in except each other and the way life deals with us? If you think of it—that’s what all the books are about more or less.”

“But a pretence of interest wouldn’t be very convincing?”

“But why shouldn’t it be real? Train yourself to be interested. Realise that it’s more a lack in yourself than a want of appreciation in other people that makes you less popular than you might be. Realise that in standing aloof, keeping yourself to yourself, you miss a lot. And—forgive this flood of advice, but you did ask for it—now that you are alone it’s very important for yourself to get all you can out of living. Though you are alone that’s no reason why you should be lonely. You must make a niche for yourself.”

“Where?” Beatrice asked. “In Portland Place among my step-relatives?”

“You don’t know much about them, you said?”

“My step-brother I know best. He’s a member of Parliament, a knight, a successful business man. He tried to be kind when he came to—to the funeral. His wife I hardly know at all. She seems a very busy person, important enough to have photographs of herself in papers and magazines. The children used to come and stay with us down the Clyde, dear little people they were, but much more sophisticated than I was—a big girl with pigtails. I shudder to think what they are like now. The girl is twenty, and something of a beauty; the boy is at Oxford. So you see, it’s rather an alarming house to enter.”

But Beatrice found her companion determinedly cheerful.

“Oh,” she said, “it seems to me you’ll have a very good time, meeting all sorts of people and going about with your step-sister and her daughter. I know exactly how you are feeling at the moment. It doesn’t seem so very long since I came up to London, a very shy, backward girl. But with me it was needs must; I had my living to make and couldn’t afford to give way. At first I endured tortures, and do even now, when I have to meet some one whose opinion of me and my work is of importance, but I’ve learned to look calm and assured and that is half the battle. Go through the world giving and expecting courtesy and ignoring rudeness and malice. Not that you’re likely to meet with malice. You look as if it should be roses all the way with you. You’re a silly child to get it into your head that you are unattractive. Why, my first thought when you came into the compartment to-day was—No, having given you such a dose of good advice (I believe I must have been meant for a school marm) I won’t spoil the effect with sweetmeats.”