Poor Caroline

by Winifred Holtby

  In this new life, Eleanor's first visit to Caroline lost its dream-like fantasy. Caroline soon appeared no stranger an enthusiast than the many other Eleanor encountered. Caroline starved, prayed, toiled and exalted over the Christian Cinema Company with a faith no more foolish than that of Rita Hardcastle, who hunted a crock of gold at the Rainbow's End of family allowances, of Ben Sanders, who cheerfully courted imprisonment while demonstrating on behalf of the Class War Prisoners' Aid Association, or of Brenda Clay who shuddered at Marble Arch on frosty evenings, preaching passionately the gospel of Total Abstinence from Alcoholic Liquors.

  London hummed with the activities of Propaganda and Reform. Wherever Eleanor turned she found societies for the ultimate perfection of Society. She was invited to Youth Rallies for Peace, Feminist Teas, and protest meetings about China. She was asked to address envelopes, buy calendars, act as steward at meetings, sell papers at the street corner, and drive enthusiasts from one revival to another. And whatever society she encountered, she found always that it was short of money, living on the margin of subsistence, bluffing with magnificent effrontery about the size of its membership, the influence of its resolutions, and the condition of its bank balance. The relationship between cause and effect was more remote than her scientific education had led her to believe. Institutions which she had thought concrete and stable enough, such as newspapers, political conferences, and business companies, rested upon a large measure of unsubstantial fantasy. 'Far be it from me to judge Reality,' thought Eleanor, 'when the world is so very much more odd than I had thought it, and when, according to Professor Ipswain's lectures on the Operation of Credit, the most powerful source of wealth and the dominating economic influence is nothing more concrete than a supposition.'

  But if Eleanor was prepared to recognize an element of mysticism in the hidden dynamic which controls society, she was prepared to tolerate nothing but the most brisk and orderly realism in an office. She took to her lessons on business method like a duck to water. Files and book-keeping, card indexes and records were the instruments of a regular and beautiful orchestration. It jarred on her methodical mind to hear a single instrument out of tune. She had no experience of the crises and confusions of an active office, staggering blindly but gallantly from one emergency to another. She had yet to learn how little the life of reform and moral welfare lends itself to the niceties of precise routine. The office of the Christian Cinema Company in Victoria Street shocked her profoundly.

  Too shy and too kind to tell poor Caroline how terrible she thought her unchecked lists and unsorted letters, she contrived to suggest during her second visit that she might come along one evening, after the classes were over, and bring two or three girls who would help to put the office straight. 'It will be such good practice for us. Do let us do it.'

  Caroline's eyes glowed with gratitude and anticipation. She envisaged Youth and Efficiency taking charge of her office and reducing its chaos to order. She saw young girls, fresh as daisies, filing her letters and laughing at her difficulties, and picnicking round her gas fire when the work was done, drinking tea out of the bright orange cups from Woolworth's and sprinkling crumbs of walnut cake joyfully on the floor. Her eager imagination leapt to this vision of gaiety and hope.

  'My dear, my dear. You are too kind to me. Life is too wonderful. You know, I knew from the very moment I first saw you that you were bringing luck to me. I've felt quite differently about life ever since.'

  'Any word about the three thousand?' asked practical Eleanor. It was almost the end of January. Mr. Macafee's ultimatum was due to expire within a week.

  A shadow crossed Caroline's face.

  'No. No. Not yet. But we've got six days more, and I've had sixteen inquiries about the company circulars, and an application from a lady in Brighton for two shares this afternoon, and that brings us up to £542 ios. 0d. up to date. Any day now we may find our millionaire.'

  'But if not?'

  'If not? If not? My dear child, when you've lived as long as I have, fighting and striving for what seems impossible, you'll know that there are some questions best left unasked. It will be. It must be. Faith. I will have faith although the heavens fall. Don't you see, dear, that for people like us, who step off the beaten track and dare to scale the heights, there is no retreat, no turning back? There is no If not. It must be.'

  'Yes. But - surely one has to face the worst, Cousin Caroline.'

  The little lady turned fiercely upon Eleanor, all her beads and pendants clashing together like a soldier's armour. 'The worst, child? What do you know about the worst? Wait until the iron has entered into your soul. Wait until you have gone down to the depths in utter loneliness and risked everything, everything, even your own self-respect, in the Cause of Right. Who are you to tell me about the worst, when you have always led a sheltered life, with capital behind you, and a university education? When have you accepted the conditions that lead to utter nakedness of spirit, when people say, "There can't be much in it or she wouldn't look so shabby?" Yes, and when people say, "She still keeps on at it, poor thing, she must be a bit cracked." When have your relations wondered if it wouldn't be safer and more economical to get you certified and put away quietly in a nice mental home? When have they told you to give up the struggle and live on an old-age pension in a club for decayed gentlewomen? When has there been nothing, nothing left except success? If you could strip yourself naked of all privilege, my dear child, you still couldn't understand the nakedness, the loneliness, the - the unshelteredness of my generation. Even then you'd have youth and health and a good education, and people's approval of you to help you on. But I and women like me, we started from nothing - nothing, I tell you. You've been sheltered all your life. You can't escape from the immunity of your generation. And then you come and talk to me about "facing the worst!" '

  She confronted Eleanor, her breast heaving, her eyes blazing, her face white with emotion. Then suddenly she collapsed, crumpling up into the office chair, her head on her desk, sobbing with an abandon both childish and terrible, with the stormy anger of a child and the difficult, painful weeping of the old.

  Stricken by remorse and embarrassment, Eleanor stood behind her, repeating stupidly, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't understand.'

  For a minute or two, Caroline sobbed uncontrollably. Then she sat up as quickly as she had sunk down, pushing her fringe back from her red-rimmed eyes, endeavouring to compose her distorted face. The strength of prophecy had gone from her and the sudden dignity of revolt. She was as incoherent and garrulous as ever. 'No, no,' she cried. 'It's all right. You couldn't possibly understand. I had no right to expect it. I expect it's because I'm tired — not quite myself to-day — a little difficulty with Mrs. Hales, of course I should have paid the rent. I quite see her position, but going to the same church I thought would make a difference, and always such a nice woman, more like a friend than a landlady even though a woman of that class, and of course rather painful for me in my position to be in debt to the lower classes. I can't help thinking about it at night and then if you don't get your proper sleep they say that it is much harder to bear the responsibilities of big business. I've always understood—' she was pulling herself together, dabbing her eyes, and stifling from time to time a half-suppressed sob—'I've always understood that Mr. Lloyd George was able to bear the great burden of winning the War for us so splendidly, because he always got his sleep at nights.'

  'Oh, Cousin Caroline. I didn't know. Is Mrs. Hales being beastly to you? Can't I - I mean - I'm not offering money or anything - I'm not presuming - but as a loan - just until your director's salary comes in?' Eleanor stammered and blushed, torn by pity and discomfort. Caroline's tears were too painful to be borne. She must take action immediately, and escape.

  'Well, just as loan - I wouldn't ask you. I wouldn't have dreamed of asking you if you hadn't offered. But it makes such a difference to me, when I come in at night tired out, to be able to go down to the basement, always so clean and nicely k
ept to have a word with her and perhaps a cup of tea in front of the fire. Not so lonely as going up to that room alone, night after night. It's only seven pounds, eight and sixpence. But I can't speak to her when I'm in debt like this.'

  'Seven pounds, eight and sixpence - let me write you a cheque. I have my cheque-book here in my bag.'

  Caroline was tidying her dishevelled hair in the little office mirror, but her face remained stained and crumpled as though someone had taken a cardboard mask and crushed it into a ball and thrown it away, and then tried to straighten it out again for use. She was, however, her own mistress again.

  'You might make it out for the eight pounds,' she said. 'It won't make much difference to you and it'll mean I can give the dairyman something on account.'

  'Why of course - I mean — of course. Why didn't you ask me before? It's dreadful of me. I should have asked.'

  'Not at all. It's very natural. You've not seen much of life really yet, I mean to say, I always think that one half of the world doesn't know how the other half lives. It's a loan, of course, and I shall pay you back with interest.'

  Eleanor handed her a cheque for twenty pounds.

  'Well, thank you, dear. I'll make a note of it. Now take no notice of what I said to-night. It's lovely to see youth, I always feel, and you're going to come with me on Sunday night to hear dear Father Lasseter preach, and then coming with me round to the vestry afterwards, aren't you? Because you know at the last Board meeting we decided that we must have a representative of the churches with us. A bishop if possible, and I want to get Father Lasseter to speak to the Bishop of Kensington-Gore about it. You will come, won't

  you?'

  Eleanor had meant to evade the invitation. She had promised to attend a Young Socialists' Social at the 1918 Club. But she could not refuse now.

  'Why yes,' she said. 'Of course I'll come. And you must come round to supper afterwards at the club.'

  She could not escape. As she walked behind Caroline down the two flights of stairs to the lift, she felt that her fortunes were bound up inextricably with those of the Christian Cinema Company. She could not let her cousin starve. She could not let her be snubbed by the unmerciful rectitude of Mrs. Hales. Life would not be tolerable if the three thousand pounds did not materialize before the end of January.

  Yet she did not want to be bound to Cousin Caroline. She did not want to spend much time at Victoria Street when she might be driving propagandists to I.L.P. meetings, or attending lectures on Company law and scientific management. She had not come to London to act as office girl to the Christian Cinema Company. Or had she? What had she come to London for? What did one do anything for? Why was she alive? What did life mean? Why had her father died and she been left alive? Was there any discernible intention behind it all? Immune? Of course she was immune - from poverty, from ignorance, from death itself at present. This was what had been troubling her all the time, ever since she saw Jan du Plessis walk up the path to the stoep, with that queer white face, and heard his strained voice, 'I say, Eleanor. I've got bad news for you.' One could not shake off this intolerable burden of immunity.

  All the way home to the club, Eleanor felt the old familiar pain at her heart. She went up to her room and lay on her bed in the darkness, seeing again the stoep, overgrown with feathery plumbago and deep magenta bougainvilia. She saw her father's big wicker armchair, its one arm broken and bound up with string. She saw the table with its pile of crumpled papers, and the fly whisk, and the empty soda syphon, and the pipe rack and tobacco tin. She could hear again the heavy shuffling tread and laboured breathing of the men who carried the stretcher across the stoep and into her father's room. Every detail of the interval between Jan du Plessis's message and the arrival of the body reacted itself in her awakened memory. 'Immune. Immune.' She beat her small clenched fist against her forehead, hoping to find relief in physical pain. Her father's big signet ring, which she wore on her second finger, cut her eyebrow. She did not care. She welcomed pain. Oh Father, Father!

  There was a knock on her door.

  'Hullo, de la Roux! Are you in?'

  A pause.

  'I say. Hullo!'

  She made no answer. She held her breath, praying that they would go away. She heard Rita's voice saying to someone else, 'She can't have come in yet. Well, she'll miss the meeting.' She heard footsteps vanishing down the stone corridor.

  Hour after hour she lay in the darkness, thinking about her father, and immunity, and poor Caroline.

  §5

  The first thing that struck Eleanor about Saint Augustine's Church was that it might have been a building in the Cape. It was about fifty years old, large, ugly, dark, and built in an awkward combination of Gothic and Classical styles.

  Eleanor had been brought up as a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, but both she and her father had been agnostics without much interest in religion. She had attended Anglican services only twice before.

  She noticed the pictures round the walls - 'The Stations of the Cross,' Caroline whispered. Eleanor thought them crude and rather repulsive. She disliked the smell of incense, and the attitudes of the shabby men and women who dropped almost to their knees facing the chancel before they turned in to the pitch-pine pews.

  She did not know why people wanted to meet together at fixed intervals in the formal discomfort of a church, to kneel down and stand up and sing preposterous words about their bones melting and their enemies flying, and the king's daughter wearing clothing of wrought gold. Those fragmentary readings from the Old and New Testament, those prayers repeated so often that the words flowed smoothly past the consciousness of the congregation, those ridiculous hymns; why did anyone want them? Why did they imagine that such performances could possibly be agreeable to Almighty God - if there was a God? Why didn't they see what a waste of time it all was, when there was so much to be done, infant welfare centres to be established, and indexes to be prepared, street directories to be marked for canvassers, slum landlords to be confronted, facts about India and China and the wickedness of international oil trusts to be made known? All the best people were over-working themselves into nervous breakdowns, and these smug Christians bobbed up and down before a grotesque and ugly altar. There was so much to be done. In four days' time, on Thursday night indeed, Macafee's ultimatum expired. The Christian Cinema Company would be saved or lost. It seemed to Eleanor only too probable that it would be lost. Mr. Isenbaum remained completely inaccessible. Mr. St. Denis had gone to Paris for Christmas, and there had inconsiderately fallen a victim to the influenza epidemic. He was better, and returning at the end of the week, and had wired asking Macafee to postpone his action. But Macafee was obstinate.

  'I see his point. I see his point,' Caroline had said. 'It's his invention. He says he needs the money. He has postponed it once. But then pioneer work is like that. Friends will come with you part of the way. Then they get frightened. They begin to ask for their reward to be given on earth as it is in heaven.'

  'We must pray,' Caroline told Eleanor as they walked to church. Tray for the miracle. I believe that this is being sent to try our faith and that at the eleventh hour we shall be saved. They talk about the excitement of gambling. We could tell them something about that, couldn't we?' Her protest of the previous week was quite forgotten. She drew Eleanor into the circle of her experience by that inclusive 'we.' 'I always say that the ordinary racer or gambler doesn't know what risk is. Why, we've staked everything -everything - on a hundred-to-one chance, we pioneers. And we're going to win, aren't we?'

  It was perfectly true, thought Eleanor. Caroline with her gallantry and enthusiasm and recklessness took enormous risks. Moreover, that one moment of weakness over, she faced the odds with magnificent gusto.

  She seemed even to enjoy the situation. Whatever fears of anguish of spirit assailed her during the long nights when she found herself unable successfully to emulate Mr. Lloyd George's gift of sleep, she showed no signs of faltering by day. On her way to church she had s
eemed radiant, even exalted, as though 'facing the worst' for her meant looking into a vision of forthcoming glory.

  But in church, after the organ had played, and the short procession of choirboys in rumpled lace-trimmed surplices and scarlet cassocks had stumbled along the aisle, Caroline turned to Eleanor with a look of dismay.

  'He's not here,' she whispered. 'Father Lasseter's not here. It's a stranger.'

  'Oh well,' thought Eleanor. 'Even if he had been here, I don't suppose he would have done anything. I wonder how seriously other people do take Caroline? I wish I'd seen this Mr. St. Denis. Well, in any case, it will be all over by Thursday. Nothing really can save them now.'

  For she was very sure that Mr. Isenbaum meant to evade all further responsibility and that the dilettante Mr. St. Denis did not really care. The Christian Cinema Company could collapse unmourned by anyone but Caroline.

  She was not interested in the service. She wanted to get away, from the church, and from Caroline. She told herself that the Christian Cinema Company was nothing to her. If no more fantastic than a dozen other semi-philanthropic enterprises, it was impractical enough. It annoyed Eleanor that Caroline should hitch her wagon to so remote a star.