The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 30

On the third day of her search for work Anne was obliged to contend with discouragement. People wanted to know what you had been doing, and she didn’t know herself. She began to wonder whether she couldn’t make up something, but really when you came to look into it there was altogether too much to make up. If it had only been her name-if she could only produce one person who could speak for her-She thought of Miss Silver, at first to feel that she couldn’t ask her for a reference, but with each successive day to come nearer and nearer to trying her. ‘But she doesn’t really know anything about me.’ And then, hard on that, ‘Nobody does-’ The thought took her into a sort of giddy spin. For a moment she was all alone with no one to help her. No one who knew who she was or where she was. It was like being giddy, only much, much worse. She was out in the street when it happened to her, and she had to stand still and let the crowd go by. She groped her way to a railing and stood there till her head cleared. She must never let herself think like that again. She would remember-some day. And meanwhile she must go on-

And then someone was speaking to her. A voice said, ‘Are you feeling ill?’ and she lifted her head and saw a girl of about her own age looking at her with concern.

‘No, I’m all right-now.’

The girl said in a deep, strong voice. ‘You don’t look all right to me. Come in and have a cup of tea. There’s a shop just here.’

Anne felt a curious relief. Here was someone else making a decision for her. The girl slipped a hand in a rather shabby dark brown glove inside her arm, and she turned and went with her no more than a dozen steps along the pavement, where they turned, and another dozen steps. There was an interval when she really didn’t know what was happening, and then her head cleared and she lifted it. She was sitting on a bench with a little marble-topped table in front of her. Her head was almost down upon her hands. The girl was speaking to her.

‘Are you better? I should keep my head down a little longer. Can you take cocoa-because that’s what I’ve ordered. You look as if it would do you good. Don’t bother to answer if it’s all right.’

Anne felt relaxed and relieved. A curious indifference seemed to have come over her. She didn’t know it, but she was almost at the end of her strength. This girl could take over for a time. There was nothing she herself could do.

When the cocoa came she drank it and came slowly back. The girl was looking at her with frank curiosity.

‘What on earth have you been doing to yourself?’

Anne said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Yes, I do. I don’t know who I am.’

The girl pursed her lips and whistled.

‘I say that’s bad! You don’t really mean that, do you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘But how?’

Anne found herself telling her. Not all of it. Not about the girl at the foot of the steps. She began where she got on to the bus and met Miss Silver. When she got to Chantreys, she found herself in difficulties. She had to leave Jim out. Curiously enough, that hurt. It hurt so much that she didn’t know how to do it. She stopped, and looked at the girl. She didn’t know what a hurt, shocked look it was, but the girl said quickly, ‘Just leave out anything you don’t want to say.’

Anne’s look melted in gratitude.

‘It’s difficult-’ she said under her breath.

The girl said quickly, ‘Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.’

‘I-I had to come away again-in the middle of the night. It-it wasn’t my fault.’

‘What did you do?’

‘A girl took me in till the early morning. Then I came up to town.’

The round eyes gave her a searching look.

‘Had you anywhere to go?’

Anne shook her head.

The girl said, ‘Now you must eat something. Those are quite plain buns.’ And, when Anne had helped herself, ‘What did you do?’

‘I found a room. It took nearly all day’

The girl frowned.

‘You don’t sound enthusiastic’

Anne gave her the sort of smile which breaks into tears before you know where you are. She felt it going that way and bit her lip quickly.

‘It isn’t the sort of room that anyone could feel enthusiastic about. It was-dirty. So was the landlady.’

The girl frowned more deeply.

‘Don’t you know anyone?’

Anne said, ‘Miss Silver.’

The girl clapped her hands together.

‘Is that the same Miss Silver I know about? She’s better than dozens of references!’

Anne said, ‘15 Montague Mansions,’ and the girl clapped her hands again and burst out laughing.

‘That’s the one-the one and only! I’ve only met her once, but she did wonderful things for a cousin of mine, Evelyn Baring, so you see we’re introduced, all quite properly. My name is Janet Wells. And yours is Anne-Anne what?’

The colour rose in Anne’s face.

‘I’ve been calling myself Anne Fancourt. I think the Anne part of it is right. The other isn’t, but one must have a surname.’

Janet frowned.

‘Look here, you can’t stay in that horrid dirty room you’re in. I’ll come with you and get your things, and if you’d like to-well, there’s a room in the house we’re in. One of the girls went away last week, and the room wasn’t let when I came out this morning. So if you’d like-’

Anne put out a hand and half drew it back again. She didn’t know how her eyes lighted up.

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘Miss Silver doesn’t either-not really-only since she met me.’

Janet Wells took the hand, held it firmly for a moment, patted it, and let it go again.

‘You’d do as much for me, I expect,’ she said in a plain matter-of-fact sort of voice.