Now between asking what to do and doing it, there is a wide gulf fixed. I had an awful tussle with myself before I plucked up courage to knock at the Hostel door. But I wasn’t going to be beaten before I had begun the fight, and having walked up and down the street a few times I put my faith to the test.
The portress told me that there was no accommodation for itinerant wayfarers—the Hostel was reserved for women in regular situations, who could pay a reasonable sum.
“But I’ve nowhere to go,” I pleaded. “Isn’t there any place where I can put up?”
“There’s a Salvation Army Shelter in Mare Street, Hackney, where they’ll give you free bed and breakfast. It’s a long way, though,” she added, “and I can’t be sure they’ll take you in, because they may not have a bed.”
It was rather a miserable prospect. Mare Street, Hackney, is a hideous distance from Tottenham Court Road, especially if you walk all the way, and the cold was growing every moment more intense. Just for a second I was tempted to go home. Never had the prospect of a comfortable bed held such allurement. But I stiffened my will and went on. I had vowed to take adventure where it found me, in my struggle to earn a living, and there was nothing for it but to walk.
It was my first experience of destitution, and it sank deep into my consciousness. It is one thing to walk through London with the knowledge of a comfortable fireside awaiting you—it is another to drag the weary length of interminable streets not knowing what lies at the end of the journey. Along the Euston Road, up Pentonville Hill, on to the Angel, that was the first lap, and I enjoyed it. It was when I began the ghastly stretch of the Essex Road that I grew unhappy. It is a road that, to this day, I think has no ending. To me it goes on and on into infinity. In the cold moonlight of that bitter night, the houses stood out gaunt and hungry, the few wayfarers I passed, huddled themselves against the cold, hurrying along to shelter.
By this time it was past midnight. I had not had a meal for some hours, and I was growing more and more infuriated with a system of society that makes a woman walk for miles to get a bed.
I suddenly stopped dead. I was new to the form of endurance necessary to walk on a hopeless quest for hours, and felt I could not carry on. Once more I went up to the nearest policeman, standing like a tower in the empty street, and asked if I were right for Hackney.
“It’s a long way yet,” said he. “You’d better take a twopenny tram, there’ll be one along directly.”
“I’ve no money,” I said bitterly, “and I want to get to the Salvation Army Shelter; they may give me a bed.”
He looked me up and down, and then he put his big hand into his pocket. “Here you are,” said he, and gave me twopence. “Look sharp now, there’s a tram coming along.”
One gets into the habit of using words almost as if they were dead things, and then suddenly they quicken into life. Gratitude is a word of easy coinage, it rises so glibly to the lips. I had never acutely felt that thing for which it stands, before. But when the policeman gave me twopence I understood and I wanted at that moment to do something to show what I felt. It was not only that the money saved me a heartbreaking tramp in the bitter wind, it was the recognition of humanity which means so much to the outcast. I might have been lying to him in the letter, as I was in the spirit, but I was still a woman, very tired and forlorn. His gift without question or suspicion reconciled me to my fellow man.
Now Mare Street is at the end of the world and the tram rolled on and on and on, it seemed to me, to the next century. I had lived many lives when I came to my terminus, and found myself in a broad thoroughfare with high old-fashioned houses and important looking shops. But though I was in Mare Street I was by no means at the end of my quest; and here I would like to state a very real grievance from which the outcast suffers. The Salvation Army Shelter was No. 259. That sounds easy, but it isn’t. None of the shops or houses have any number that is visible, the only exception to this dismal rule being the tobacconists. I counted up the number from one particular lighthouse and finally found myself outside a big barrack-like building in a gaunt garden with a gravel path. The gate clanged behind me, and I went up a long flight of stone steps and gazed at the windows, staring from the three floors above.
They were all dead, in the sense that only windows can be—not a spark of life showed through the panes. The place was terribly still, and when, summoning courage, I pulled the bell, its tingling echoes frightened me. What was I to do if they would not let me in? Had I the will, let alone the strength, to walk about until the morning?
A light gleamed out of a window and a pleasant voice with a North Country burr asked what I wanted.
“A bed,” said I.
“Have you been here before?” said the voice.
“Never,” I protested, eagerly.
“Wait a minute, and I’ll come down and let you in.”
It seemed a long time before door was opened and a rosy-cheeked little lieutenant bade me enter. She carried a candle and its dim light showed a wide, bare hall in which were hanging spectral coats and hats. She told me to hang mine beside them.
“Have you anything of
