Transcriber’s Note

In this transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_ while
small capitals in the original text are transcribed as Title Case.

See end of this document for details of corrections and other changes.


              —————————————— Start of Book ——————————————




                         ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

                           COMPTON MACKENZIE




  By COMPTON MACKENZIE
  ————————————————————
    Rogues and Vagabonds
    Fairy Gold
    Coral
    Santa Claus in Summer
    The Heavenly Ladder
    The Old Men of the Sea
    The Altar Steps
    Parson’s Progress
    Rich Relations
    The Seven Ages of Women
    Sylvia Scarlett
    Poor Relations
    Sylvia and Michael
    The Vanity Girl
    Carnival
    Plashers Mead
    Sinister Street
    Youth’s Encounter
    The Passionate Elopement




                         ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

                                  By

                           COMPTON MACKENZIE


                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
                      ON MURRAY HILL : : NEW YORK




                           COPYRIGHT, 1927,
                      BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                            [Illustration]


                         ROGUES AND VAGABONDS
                                  —B—
                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                               To A. H.




                               CONTENTS

     CHAPTER                                           PAGE
           I Neptune’s Grotto                           11
          II The Factory                                26
         III The Proposal                               36
          IV Married Life                               43
           V Tintacks in Brigham                        55
          VI The Diorama                                74
         VII True Love                                  83
        VIII Rogues and Vagabonds                       96
          IX A Merry Christmas                         110
           X The Pantomime                             121
          XI The End of the Harlequinade               127
         XII Looking for Work                          135
        XIII Lebanon House                             144
         XIV Letizia the First                         163
          XV The Tunnel                                172
         XVI Blackboy Passage                          182
        XVII The Two Roads                             195
       XVIII Triennial                                 215
         XIX Nancy’s Contralto                         222
          XX Southward                                 232
         XXI Classic Grief                             240
        XXII Sorrento                                  248
       XXIII Cœur de Lion                              267
        XXIV Decennial                                 274
         XXV The Common Chord                          286




                         ROGUES AND VAGABONDS




                     ROGUES     AND     VAGABONDS

                     CHAPTER I   NEPTUNE’S GROTTO


                               SUPERIOR
                              FIRE WORKS
                                at the
                           NEPTUNE’S GROTTO
                        Tavern and Tea Gardens
                                PIMLICO
                on Thursday Evening, 20th, July, 1829.

                                  By
                             MADAME ORIANO
               The Celebrated Pyrotechnic to HIS MAJESTY

                      The Exhibition will include
                  A Grand Display of various kinds of
                           WATER FIRE WORKS
                        On the Grosvenor Basin.


                            ORDER OF FIRING

             1. A Battery of Maroons, or imitation Cannon
             2. A Bengal Light
             3. Sky Rockets
             4. A Saxon Wheel
             5. Tourbillions
             6. Phenomenon Box and Mime
             7. Line Rockets
             8. A Metamorphose with alternate changes, and a
                beautiful display of Chinese Lattice Work
             9. Sky Rockets
            10. Horizontal Wheel with Roman Candles and Mine
            11. Tourbillions
            12. A regulating piece in two mutations, displaying
                a Vertical Wheel changing to five Vertical Wheels
                and a figure piece in Straw and brilliant fires
            13. Grand Battery of Roman Candles & Italian
                Streamers
            14. A regulating piece in four mutations displaying a
                Vertical Wheel changing to a Pyramid of Wheels,
                a Brilliant Sun, and a superb shower of fire
            15. Sky rockets


                             GRAND FINALE

                      MADEMOISELLE LETIZIA ORIANO
         Will with a temerity hitherto unknown in the blazing
         annals of her profession slide down an inclined rope
         350 feet high, erected on the firework platform,
         wreathed in Fizgigs and Fiery Serpents and accompanied
         by the awful thunder of a Battery of Maroons.

                          Admission 1_s_ each

           Gardens open at half-past seven, and commences at
                        Nine o’clock precisely.


“Neptune’s Grotto” was one of the many pleasure-gardens that in the
days when the Londoner was comparatively a free man helped to amuse his
leisure. Yet even by the ninth year of the reign of King George IV
most of the famous resorts of the preceding century had already been
built over, and now that Lord Grosvenor was developing the Manor of
Ebury (Buckingham Palace appearing fixed as the metropolitan abode of
the Sovereign) “Neptune’s Grotto” was likely to vanish soon and leave
no more trace of its sparkling life than the smoke of a spent rocket.
Indeed, change was already menacing. For two years Cubitt, the famous
builder, had been filling up the swampy land between Vauxhall Bridge
Road and Ranelagh with the soil he had excavated in the construction
of St. Katharine’s Docks. His cadaverous grey plastered terraces were
creeping nearer every week. Willow Walk, a low-lying footpath between
the cuts of the Chelsea Water Works, in a cottage hard by which Jerry
Abershaw and Gentleman James Maclaine the highwaymen once lodged, would
soon be turned into the haggard Warwick Street we know to-day. The
last osier bed would ultimately be replaced by the greasy aucubas of
Eccleston Square, and Lupus Street would lie heavy on ancient gardens.
The turnpike at Ebury Bridge had been gone these four years; the old
country road to Chelsea would within a lustrum be lined by houses on
either side and become Buckingham Palace Road. Even the great basin
of the Grosvenor Canal would run dry at last and breed from its mud
Victoria Station.

However, in 1829 “Neptune’s Grotto” still remained much as it had
been for over a century. The house of mellow red brick was covered
with lattice-work, which on this warm July evening was all fragrant
and ablow with climbing roses. Only the box trees had changed the
pattern of their topiary. In place of earlier warriors or statesmen you
would have found Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington at this date,
the general more freshly trimmed than the admiral, but likely to go
unpruned in the years of his unpopularity that were coming. His sacred
Majesty King George III had been allowed to sprout into the rounder
bulk of his sacred Majesty King George IV, but the new portrait was
hardly more attractive than the blowsy original. The garden paths were
bordered with stocks and hollyhocks. There were bowling-greens and
fishponds, and a dark alley in emulation of the notorious dark alley
of Vauxhall. Most of these amenities, however, had been made familiar
by a score of other pleasure-gardens all over London. What gave
“Neptune’s Grotto” its peculiar charm was the wide green lawn running
down to the edge of the great reservoir. In the middle of this was the
grotto itself, under the ferny arches of which an orchestra of Tritons
languorously invited the little world of pleasure to the waltz, or more
energetically commanded it to the gallopade. The firework platform was
built out over the water on piles; and the lawn was surrounded on three
sides by small alcoves lined with oyster shells, in some of which the
lightest footstep on a concealed mechanism would cause to spring up
a dolphin, or a mermaid, a harlequin or a Mother Shipton, startling
intruders for the maiden who first encountered them, so startling that
she would usually fling herself into the arms of the beau in escort and
require to be restored with various liquors much to the satisfaction of
Mr. Seedwell, the owner of the gardens.

High tortoiseshell combs and full curled hair, wide skirts of Gros de
Naples flounced and pinked and scalloped and fluted, white stockings
and slippers of yellow prunella, Leghorn hats of transparent crape
bound with lavender sarsenet or puffed with small bouquets of marabout,
bonnets of jonquil-yellow with waving ostrich plumes, bonnets of
marshmallow-rose with ribbons of lilac and hortensia floating loose,
double Vandyke collars of Indian muslin, grass-green parasols and
purple reticules, leg-of-mutton sleeves and satin roulades, pelisses
and pèlerines most fashionably of camelopard-yellow, ivory shoulders,
Canezon spencers and gauze capotes, fichus of ethereal-blue barège,
laughter and whispers and murmurs and music (ah, yes, no doubt and
plenty of simpers too), where now trains thunder past filled with jaded
suburbans, whose faces peep from the windows as their owners wonder
if the new film at the picture-theatre will be worth the trouble of
visiting after tea in our modish contemporary shades of nude, French
nude, sunburn, and flesh. Would that Stephenson had never cursed
humanity with his steam-engine, and would that this tale might never
creep nearer to the present than that July night of 1829! Alas, it has
more to do with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who
fluttered out like moths in that summer dusk to watch Madame Oriano’s
fireworks; and these at whom you gaze for the moment are but creatures
in a prologue who will all be ghosts long before the last page is
written.

However, here come those ghosts, still very much alive and shilling
in hand, some from Knightsbridge, some from Chelsea, some from
Westminster. “Strombolo House,” which used to charge half-a-crown for
its fireworks, so famous were they, is closed. To be sure the “Monster”
is still open, but there are no fireworks in the entertainment there
to-night; a performing bear is all that the “Monster” can offer
to-night. The “Orange Tea Gardens” are gone for good: St. Barnabas’
Pimlico, will occupy their site, and on it cause as much religious
rowdiness in another twenty years as ever there was of secular
rowdiness in the past. “Jenny’s Whim” hard by the old turnpike has
already been covered with builder Cubitt’s beastly foundations. There
is no longer much competition with “Neptune’s Grotto” in the manor
of Ebury. A few pause in Vauxhall Bridge Road when they see the
hackney-coaches filled with merry parties bound for the most famous
gardens of all; but they decide to visit them another evening, and
they cross the road to Willow Walk, where one remembers seeing Jerry
Abershaw’s body swinging from the gibbet on Putney Common and that
scarcely thirty years ago, and another marvels at the way the new
houses are springing up all round. Some shake their heads over Reform,
but most of them whisper of pleasure and of love while ghostly moths
spin beside the path, and the bats are seen hawking against the
luminous west and the dog-star which was glimmering long before his
fellows is already dancing like a diamond in the south.

While the public was strolling on its way to “Neptune’s Grotto,” within
the gardens themselves Mr. Seedwell, the proprietor, and Madame Oriano
made a final inspection of the firework platform.

“You think she can do it?” he was saying.

“Offa coursa she can do it,” Madame replied sharply.

Mr. Seedwell shook his head in grave doubt. Weighing eighteen stone and
a bit over he found it hard to put himself in Mademoiselle Letizia’s
place.

“I don’t want an accident,” he explained. “The magistrates are only too
glad of an excuse to close us down these days.”

“Dere willa not be no accident,” Madame Oriano assured him.

And Mr. Seedwell, looking at the raven-haired and raven-beaked and
raven-eyed woman beside him, took her word for it and went off to see
that all was ready inside the house for the entertainment of his guests.

Madame Oriano squeezed a handful of her yellow satin gown.

“_Bagnato!_”[1] she murmured to herself. Then looking across to one
of the alcoves she called out in a shrill harsh voice, “Caleb! Caleb
Fuller!”

  [1] Wet.

A beetle could not have left his carapace more unwillingly than
Caleb Fuller that alcove. He was a young man—certainly not more than
twenty-five, perhaps not as much—whose lumpish and pasty face suggested
at first an extreme dulness of mind until one looked a little closer
and perceived a pair of glittering granite-grey eyes that animated the
whole countenance with an expression that passed beyond cunning and
touched intelligence. Beside the dragon-fly vividness of his employer
he appeared, as he shambled across the lawn to hear what she wanted of
him, like an awkward underground insect, with his turgid rump and thin
legs in tight pantaloons and his ill-fitting tail-coat of rusty black.

“Dissa English cleemat _non è possibile_,” Madame shrilled. “Everyting
willa be wet before we beginna to fire.”

“It’s the heavy dew,” said Caleb.

“Oh, _diavolo_! What do it matter which it is, if de fireworks will
alla be—how you say—spilt?”

“Spoilt,” he corrected gloomily.

“_Che lingua di animali, questa_ English linguage! Where issa John
Gumm?”

“In the tap-room,” Caleb informed her.

“Drinking! Drinking,” she shrilled. “Why you don’ta to keep him notta
to drink before we are finished?”

John Gumm who was Madame’s chief firer had already imperilled by his
habits several of her performances.

“Somebody musta go and putta clothes on de fireworks. _Non voglio che
abbiamo un fiasco_,[2] I don’ta wish it. You hear me, Caleb?”

  [2] “I do not want us to have a fiasco.”

Caleb was used to these outbursts of nervous anxiety before every
display, and on most evenings he would have humoured Madame by bullying
the various assistants and have enjoyed giving such an exhibition of
his authority. But this evening he would not have been sorry to see the
damp air make the whole display such a fiasco as Madame feared, for
he bitterly resented the public appearance of Letizia Oriano, not so
much for the danger of the proposed feat, but for the gratification the
sight of her shapely legs would afford the crowd. In fact when Madame
had summoned him to her side, he was actually engaged in a bitter
argument with Letizia herself and had even gone so far as to beg her to
defy her mother and refuse to make the fire-clad descent.

“There won’t be enough dew to prevent the firing,” he argued. “And
more’s the pity,” he added, gathering boldness as jealousy began once
more to rack him. “More’s the pity, I say, when you’re letting your
only child expose her—expose herself to danger.” He managed to gulp
back the words he just lacked the courage to fling at her, and though
his heart beat “Jezebel! Jezebel!” he dared not say it out.

“Dere is nottings dangerous,” she snapped. “She has walked the slacka
rope and the tighta rope since she was a _bambina_. Her fazer has
learnt her to do it.”

Caleb groaned within himself. Letizia’s father was as mythical and as
many-sided as Proteus. Italian prince, English nobleman, play-actor,
ballet-master, acrobat, with as many aliases as a thief, he was
whatever Madame chose he should be to suit her immediate argument.
Nobody knew his real name or his real profession. Once, when Caleb had
remonstrated with her for being apparently willing to sell Letizia to a
rich and snivelling old rake, she had actually dared to argue that she
was better capable of guarding her daughter’s virtue than anybody else
because the father of her had been a cardinal. Caleb, who was sick with
love for Letizia and sick with hate for Popery, was near losing his
reason. Luckily, however, the old suitor fell into a hopeless palsy,
and since then Madame’s financial affairs had prospered sufficiently
to make her independent of Letizia’s cash value. That her affairs had
prospered was largely due to Caleb himself, who, entering her service
as a clerk when he was hardly nineteen, had lost no time in gathering
into his own plump white hands the tangled skeins of the business so
that he might unravel them at his own convenience without ever again
letting them go.

Madame Oriano had been glad enough to put the financial side of the
business in Caleb’s hands, for, having inherited from her father,
Padua’s chief artist in pyrotechny, a genuine passion for inventing
new effects, she devoted herself to these with renewed interest, an
interest moreover that was no longer liable to be interrupted by
amours. She had grown gaunt and her temper, never of the sweetest,
had long made her an impossible mistress for any man however young
he might be. At the age of sixteen she had eloped from her father’s
house in Padua with an English adventurer. After a year of doubtful
bliss he had left her stranded in a Soho garret with a cageful of
love-birds and twenty pairs of silk stockings—he had intended these
as a present for the schoolgirl he was planning to abduct, but in the
confusion of escaping from his old sweetheart he had left them behind
him. Maria Oriano entered upon a period of fortune-telling, then went
into partnership with an Italian pyrotechnist to whom with intervals
of amorous escapades she remained loyal for ten years, in fact till he
died, after which she carried on the business in her own name. Letizia
was born when her mother was approaching forty, and since neither
Letizia nor anybody else ever discovered who the father was, it may
safely be assumed that Madame really did not know herself which of her
lovers might be congratulated. She had a dozen in tow about this time.
No solution of the mystery had ever been provided by Letizia herself,
who now, at seventeen, was the image of her own mother when she, a
year younger, ran away from Padua, a dark and slim and supple and
lustrous-eyed young termagant.

There she was now, fretfully tapping the floor of the alcove with her
dainty foot and wondering what her mother could want with Caleb. It
was not that she wanted Caleb so much for herself, not at any rate
for the pleasure of his conversation. But she was used to quarrelling
with him, and she missed his company much as a child might miss a toy
that it could maltreat whenever it was in the mood to do so. She might
laugh at his awkward attempts to make love to her, but she would have
been piqued by his indifference, piqued and puzzled by it as she would
have been puzzled by the failure of her spaniel to wag its tail when
she entered a room. There was Caleb bowing and scraping to her mother
(who looked a pretty sight in that yellow satin gown) while she who
after all was this evening indubitably _the_ attraction was left alone
in this dull alcove without so much as a glass of champagne to sip.
How much would her mother worry about the dampness of the fireworks,
were she to announce that she could not make the descent that was to
bring the display to such a grand conclusion? It would serve them all
right if she did rebel. They would appreciate her much more were she
sometimes to assert herself. Letizia pulled open the cloak of light
blue velvet that she was wearing over her costume and contemplated her
slim legs and the beautifully unwrinkled tights. The upper part of her
dress consisted of an abbreviated tunic of asbestos round which the
unlit fireworks coiled like blue snakes.

“Or sausages,” murmured Letizia resentfully. “If I did not look like
Guy Fawkes and if it were a little darker, I’d put on a mask and have
such fun amongst the crowd. Oh gemini, wouldn’t I just!”

She jumped up in a fit of impatience. Her foot pressed the concealed
mechanism in the floor of the alcove, and immediately there sprang up
before her a life-size Mother Shipton, quivering all over and shaking
her steeple hat, and seeming in the twilight most horribly real.

“Gesù Maria, Giuseppe!” she shrieked, crossing herself in an agony of
terror.

Caleb, whose first thought was that some young buck was trying to kiss
Letizia, paid no more attention to Madame Oriano’s complaints of Gumm’s
drunkenness and the dewy nightfall, but plunged off to the rescue,
splitting the seat of his pantaloons in an effort to move his clumsy
legs really fast.

“Oh gemini, Caleb, the Devil’s been sitting beside me all the time and
I never knew it,” Letizia cried, when she saw him.

“I make no doubt he has,” said Caleb in lugubrious agreement. “But this
ain’t him. This ain’t no more than one of those fortune-telling figures
you’ll see at fairs. That’s what they call fun, that is,” he groaned.

“It sprang up so sudden, Caleb. The Devil couldn’t have sprung up no
faster. Oh gemini, it set me off praying, Caleb.”

“Praying!” he scoffed. “I wouldn’t give much for you if the Devil did
come to take you, and you had to trust to your prayers.”

“It’s made my heart thump, Caleb. Only feel how fast it beats.”

The young man snatched his hand away from her.

“Hussy! Nought would please you so well as to lead me on into sin.”

It was Caleb’s heart that was beating now, so fast indeed that he
turned in desperation to strike down the puppet that seemed to be
leering at him like an old bawd in a dark entry.

“Oh, you sicken me,” she pouted. “I’ll surely never have the courage to
mount to the top of the mast now. At least, I won’t unless I have some
champagne, Caleb.”

There was no answer.

“Did you hear me, Caleb?” she pressed softly. “I said champagne.”

He turned his back and feigned not to hear. But a passing waiter heard
and came into the alcove, rubbing his hands in anticipation of serving
them.

“Champagne, Caleb.”

“Yes, ma’am. Certainly, ma’am.”

“No,” Caleb shouted.

The waiter inclined his head in sarcastic acknowledgment.

“And light the lamp,” Caleb told him.

Above the circular stone hung a great green globe painted over with
fish, which when lighted up shed a kind of subaqueous sheen upon the
alcove.

“And the champagne, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Bring a bottle quickly,” Letizia commanded with a laugh of mockery.

“Bring nothing at all,” cried Caleb, swinging round on his heels in a
rage.

“Oh gemini, Caleb,” Letizia cried. “Your handkerchief’s falling out of
your pocket.”

She grabbed at it, and pulled out the tail of his shirt.

Letizia flung herself into a chair, clapping her hands and throwing
her legs into the air in a very ecstasy of delight.

“Oh gemini, Mr. Waiter; bring two bottles,” she cried. “And a needle
and a thread, for I’ll burst my own trunks next and never dare stand on
a chair, let alone come sliding down to the ground from a mast.”

The waiter departed to obey her commands, a wide grin on his insolent
face.

“Listen to me, Letizia,” Caleb cried in a rage, seizing her wrist.
“I’ll pay for not one drop of champagne, d’ye hear me? Little Jezebel
that you are! You love to make me suffer for your wantonness. I was
pure till your Popish gipsy eyes crossed mine and turned them to
thoughts of sin. Isn’t it enough that you’re going to mount that
accursed firework platform for every gay young sprig to stare at you
carnally and gloat on your limbs and lust after you? Isn’t it enough, I
say, for one evening?”

“You’re a fine one to accuse me of making myself a show,” she retorted,
wresting herself from his grasp. “And you with the tail of your shirt
sticking out of your breeches! You’d better call it your flag of truce,
Caleb, and cry peace.”

“I’ll make no peace with you, young Jezebel, in this wanton humour.”

“Why then, catch me if you can, Mr. Preacher, for I’ll have my
champagne, and Mr. Devil can pay for it, if you won’t.”

With this she stood mocking him from the lawn outside.

“Come back,” he groaned, the sweat all beady on his forehead.

“I won’t come back neither,” laughed Letizia, pirouetting.

“Pull your cloak round you, shameless minx.”

“No, and I won’t do that, neither.”

She flung it farther from her and taunted him with the sight of her
legs so slim and so shapely in the light blue silk.

“You dursn’t run after me, Caleb, or you’ll be taken to Bedlam for a
lunatic when the people see you running after me like a draggle-tailed
duck. Quack-quack, Caleb! I’m the grand finale to-night, and if you
won’t give me champagne I’ll find some one who will, and he’ll have the
grandest finale of all.”

Unfortunately for Letizia when she turned round to run away she ran
into her mother, who caught her by the ear and led her back into the
alcove.

“_Sei pazza?_” she demanded.

“If I am mad, it’s his fault,” protested Letizia angrily. “Let go of my
ear, mamma! You’re hurting me.”

“_Vuoi far la putanella, eh?_”[3] cried Madame Oriano furiously,
squeezing her daughter’s ear even harder.

  [3] “You want to play the little wanton, eh?”

“Eh, _basta_,[4] mamma! Or I’ll be no grand finale to-night for you or
nobody else. I only asked for champagne because that old witch jumped
up out of the floor and frightened me. If you hadn’t been screaming so
loud yourself, you might have heard me scream.”

  [4] Enough.

“_Insolente_,” cried Madame, making coral of her daughter’s ivory
cheeks with several vicious slaps.

Luckily for Letizia the waiter came back at this moment with a tray on
which were glasses and the bottle of champagne. This gave Madame Oriano
a real opportunity. Picking up her skirt as if she were going to drop a
curtsey, she raised one foot and kicked the tray and its contents up to
the oyster-inlaid ceiling of the alcove. She might have been giving the
signal for the fireworks to begin, for just as the contents of the tray
crashed to the ground the thunder of the maroons reverberated about the
pale sapphire of the nine o’clock sky.

Madame hurried out into the excited crowd of spectators, clapping her
skinny hands and crying, “_Bravo! Bravimissimo!_” at the top of her
voice. She believed in the power of the claque and always led the
applause of her own creations. Immediately after the maroons the Bengal
light flared and turned the upturned faces of the crowd to a lurid
rose, the glassy waters of the basin to garnets. Letizia, who had been
sobbing with pain and fury while the maroons were exploding, responded
with all her being to the excitement of the Bengal light. She forgot
her pain, her rage, her disappointment. She quivered like the Mother
Shipton, became like the puppet a mere dressed-up spring. She longed
for the moment when she should be summoned to ascend the platform and
climb the mast to the crow’s-nest on the summit, and most of all for
the moment she should hear the sausages round her asbestos tunic fizz
and cackle and spit, and when wreathed in flames, balancing herself
with a flashing Italian streamer in each hand, she should slide down
the long rope into the tumultuous cheers of the public below.

Caleb was aware of her eagerness and, having in himself nothing of the
mountebank, supposed that she was merely longing to display her legs to
the mob. He vented the bile of his jealousy upon the waiter.

“I’ll report you to Mr. Seedwell,” he stormed. “How dare you bring
champagne without an order?”

“Madame....”

“Get out of here,” Caleb shouted. “This is no madam, you lousy wretch.
I’ll have no rascals like you come pimping round this young lady.”

Sky rockets were shedding their fiery blossoms upon the air, and the
water below was jewelled with their reflections. Tourbillions leapt up
to tremble for a moment in golden spirals. Mutation followed mutation
as shivered wheels of rubies turned to fountains of molten emeralds and
amethysts and blazing showers of topaz. Above the explosions, above
the applause, the shrill voice of Madame Oriano rang out continually,
“_Bravo! Bravissimo! Ancora! Bene! Benissimo! Che Splendore! Che
magnificenza!_”

Letizia stood rapt like a saint that expects a corporeal assumption to
the seventh heaven.

“It’s time I went up,” she breathed.

“Not yet,” Caleb pleaded, in horror of the moment when that lewd and
accursed mob should gloat upon her slim form.

“It is. It is! Let me go, Caleb! Gemini, you crazy fool, you’ll make me
late.”

Letizia sprang away from his detaining arms.

“Why don’t you set fire to your shirt, Caleb, and slide down behind
me?” she called back to him in mockery.

There were shouts of enthusiasm when the figure of Letizia stood up
dimly against the stars. Followed a silence. Old John Gumm fired the
fizgigs and the serpents. With a shriek of triumphant joy Letizia
launched herself from the mast. High above the wondering murmurs of the
crowd her mother’s voice resounded.

“_Che bella ragazza!_[5] _Brava! Bravissima! Avanti, figlia mia! Che
forma di Venere!_”[6]

  [5] “What a lovely girl!”
  [6] “Forward, my daughter! What a figure of Venus!”

“Almighty God,” Caleb groaned. “She might be naked.”

When the flaming vision touched earth, he rushed forward to recapture
it; but Letizia, intoxicated with success, flung herself into the arms
of three or four young bucks who were waiting to carry her off to
champagne, while from the grotto in the middle of the lawn the Triton
orchestra struck up Weber’s seductive _Invitation to the Waltz_.




                              CHAPTER II

                              THE FACTORY


Caleb was in such a turmoil of jealous agitation for several hours
after the grand finale as to be almost beside himself; and although
Madame Oriano, in high good humour over the success of the fireworks,
offered to sew up the split in his pantaloons, she could not sew up the
rents that Letizia’s behaviour was tearing in her manager’s peace of
mind. Once he ventured to approach the alcove where she sat drinking
and flirting with half-a-dozen hopeful courtiers, and asked her to
come with him. Letizia shrieked with laughter at such a notion and
shrieked louder when her companions began to pelt Caleb with crusts of
bread; and maybe she would not have laughed much less loudly if they
had gone on to pelt him with bottles as they threatened they would do
unless he quickly took himself off and ceased to annoy them. Caleb, to
do him justice, would not have cared a jot if he could have rescued
Letizia from their company at the cost of a broken crown; but he did
not want to expose himself to the mortification of being vanquished
and, since he felt positive that this could be the only result of his
intervention, he retreated to brood over his wrongs in a secluded
arbour, from which he had the minor satisfaction of driving away the
amorous couples that in turn hopefully sought its dark protection
throughout that warm and starry July night.

Was Madame Oriano dependent enough yet upon his help in the business
to insist on her daughter’s marrying him? That was the question. Caleb
felt convinced that she would not object, but if the little hussy
herself refused, would her mother compel her? Brought up in the
egocentric gloom of an obscure Protestant sect known as the Peculiar
Children of God, Caleb’s first thought was always the salvation of
his own soul. This, as often happens, had become a synonym for the
gratification of his own desires. He desired Letizia. Therefore he must
have her, or his soul would be imperilled. What she felt about it was
of little importance. Besides, she so clearly had in her the makings of
a wanton that it was his duty to save her soul as well, which he had
every reason to suppose he should be able to do could he but safely
secure her for a wife. The state of affairs could not continue as it
was at present. His imagination must not remain for ever the tortured
prey of carnal visions. Letizia’s white neck ... Letizia’s girlish
breasts ... Letizia’s red alluring lips ... Letizia’s twining fingers
... and at this moment in the alcove those drunken sons of Belial
were gloating upon her.... No, it could not go on like this! She must
be his with God’s benign approval. Caleb sat for an hour, two hours,
three hours maybe, in a dripping trance of thwarted passion, burning as
fiercely with the hot itch of jealousy as if he had actually been flung
into a steaming nettle-bed.

Dawn, a lucid primrose dawn, was bright beyond the towers of Lambeth
Palace when the hackney-coach with Madame Oriano, Letizia, and Caleb
went jogging homeward over Westminster Bridge. Even now, though Letizia
had fallen deliciously asleep on his shoulder, Caleb was not at peace,
for the semioctagonal turrets which were set at intervals along the
parapet to serve as refuges for the homeless, reminded him of the
alcoves at “Neptune’s Grotto,” and his mind was again tormented by the
imagination of her behaviour that night. She reeked too, of wine, in
this fresh morning air. He shook her roughly:

“Wake up! We’re nearly home.”

Madame Oriano was snoring on the opposite seat.

“Why don’t you poke mamma like that?” Letizia cried out resentfully.

An impulse to crush her to his heart surged over Caleb, but he beat
off the temptation, panting between desire of her and fear for himself.
Kisses would forge no chain to bind this wanton, and he, should he
once yield to kissing her, would be led henceforth by a Delilah. The
hackney-coach jogged on into the Westminster Road.

Madame Oriano’s factory consisted of the unused rooms in an ordinary
York Street dwelling-house. Special precautions to isolate the
dangerous manufacture were practically unknown at this date. All
firework-making by an Act of Dutch William was still illegal, and from
time to time prosecutions of pyrotechnists were set on foot at the
instigation of the magistrates when the boys of a neighbourhood became
too great a nuisance on the Fifth of November. Inasmuch, however, as
firework displays were a feature of coronations, peace declarations,
births of royal heirs, and other occasions of public rejoicing, the
Law adopted then as ambiguous an attitude as it does now in this early
twentieth century, toward betting. Until Caleb arrived in London from
the Cheshire town where he had been born and bred, Madame Oriano
produced her fireworks in fits and starts of inventive brilliance that
were symbolical of the finished product. Most of her workmen were
habitual drunkards. No kind of attempt was made to run the business
side with any financial method. From time to time the proprietress put
a card in the window advertising her need for an accountant. Clerks
came and clerks went until she began to look on the whole class as no
better than predatory nomads. It was in answer to one of these cards in
her window that Caleb presented himself. His conscience troubled him at
first when he found with what mountebank affairs firework-making was
likely to bring him into contact, but he was seized by a missionary
fervour and began to devote all his energy to making the business
respectable. Only John Gumm, the chief firer, managed to survive
Caleb’s cleansing zeal. The rest of the drunken workmen were sacked
one after another, and their places taken wherever it was possible
by young lads and girls that Caleb procured from the poorhouse. The
long hours and bad food he inflicted upon these apprentices seemed to
bring the business nearer to genuine respectability. It showed sound
economy, and the most censorious Puritan could not discover in those
workrooms filled with listless children anything that pandered to the
gratification of human pleasure. One could feel that when the fireworks
left the factory there was nothing against their morality. Their
explosion under the direction of Madame Oriano and drunken John Gumm
was of course regrettably entertaining, but the rest of the business
was impeccably moral. Not only did Caleb attend to the accounts, to the
management of the workers, and to the judicious purchase of materials,
but he also studied the actual art of pyrotechny, and early this
very year he had discovered how to apply chlorate of potash to the
production of more brilliant colours than any that had hitherto been
seen. He had not yet revealed this discovery to Madame Oriano, because
he was planning to use the knowledge of it as a means of persuading her
to insist on Letizia’s marrying him. She would be so much astonished by
the green he had evolved by combining nitrate of baryta with chlorate
of potash that she would give him anything he demanded. And as for the
red he could now produce by adding nitrate of strontia to his chlorate
of potash, why, if such a red could only be bought in the ultimate
depths of Hell, Madame would have to buy.

The hackney-coach drew up in front of the dingy house in York Street,
and by the time Caleb had done arguing with the driver about his fare
mother and daughter had tumbled into bed. In spite of the nervous
strain he had been enduring all night Caleb could not make up his
mind to go to sleep himself. He was indeed feeling very much awake.
It was now full day. The sunlight was glinting on the grimy railings
of the area, and the footsteps of early workers shuffled past along
the pavement at intervals. Caleb looked round the room and frowned at
the tools lying idle on the tables and benches. He was filled with
indignation at the thought that all those misbegotten apprentices
should be snoring away these golden hours of the morning in their
garret. He was too lenient with them, far too lenient. It would do
the brats good to be awakened a little earlier than usual. He was up
and dressed; why should they still be snoring? The back of his mind,
too, itched with an evil desire to make somebody pay for what he had
suffered last night. Caleb set off upstairs to rouse the apprentices.
As he drew near the bedroom where Madame Oriano and Letizia slept
together in that gilded four-poster which so much revolted his sense
of decency, Caleb paused, for the door was wide open. He tried to keep
his face averted while he hurried past; but his will failed him and,
turning, he beheld the vision of Letizia, so scantily wrapped in her
cloak of sky-blue that her white body appeared as shamelessly unclad as
the vicious little Cupids that supported the canopy of the bed. Caleb
staggered back. Had there been a knife in his hand, he might have cut
Letizia’s throat, such an intolerable loathing of her beauty seized
him. He rushed madly past the open door, and a moment or two afterwards
he stood in the garret, surveying with hate the sleeping forms of the
apprentices. A sunbeam glinting through the broken lattice of the
dormer lit up the four flushed faces, spangled the hair of the youngest
and fairest, and for Caleb pointed at the spectacle of brazen sloth.

“Get up, you charity brats,” he shouted, pulling off the dirty
coverlet. “Get up and work, or I’ll report you to the overseers for
incorrigibles.”

The children sat up in bed dazed by this sudden awakening.

“Don’t loll there, rubbing your eyes and staring at me,” Caleb snarled.
“If you aren’t downstairs and hard at work on those composition stars
in five minutes, I’ll see what a good flogging will do for you.”

From the boys’ garret Caleb went across to visit the girls’.

“Get down to your scissors and paste, you lazy hussies,” he bellowed in
the doorway.

The little girls, the eldest of whom was hardly twelve, sat up in a
huddle of terror. The shift of the youngest, who might be ten, was torn
so that her bare shoulder protruded to affront Caleb’s gaze. He strode
into the room and struck the offending few inches of skin and bone.

“Will nothing teach you modesty?” he gibbered. “Aren’t you afraid of
burning in Hell for your wickedness? Shame on you, I say. Have you no
needle and thread, Amelia Diggle? You ought to be whipped, and I hope
Madame will whip you well. Now stop that blubbering and dress yourself,
and in five minutes let me find you all hard at work.”

Caleb retired to his own bedroom, where after a miserly use of soap
and water he changed out of his rusty black evening clothes into the
drab of daily life. He was then able to bend down and say his prayers,
partly because the drab breeches were not as tight as the black
pantaloons and partly because they did not show the dust so easily.

In contemplating Caleb while he is kneeling to ask his savage deity to
give him Letizia and to bless his discovery of chlorate of potash as a
colour intensifier and to fructify his savings and to visit His wrath
upon all unbelievers, one may feel that perhaps it was being unduly
sentimental last night, a trifle wrought upon by music and starshine
and coloured lamps, to wish that this tale might remain in the year of
grace 1829.

Caleb rose from his knees and, fortified by his prayers, succeeded this
time in passing the open door of Letizia’s bedroom without so much as
one swift glance within. He came down to the basement and with a good
deal of complacency gloated over the sight of those children all so
beautifully hard at work. He would have liked to tell them how lucky
they were to be in the care of somebody who took all this trouble to
rouse them early and teach them the joys of industry. The thought of
how many more composition stars would be made to-day than were made
yesterday was invigorating. He regarded the tousled heads of the
apprentices with something like good-will.

“That’s the way, boys, work hard and well and in three hours you’ll be
enjoying your breakfast,” he promised. Then suddenly he looked sharply
round the room. “Why, where’s Arthur Wellington?”

At this moment the foundling thus christened, a fair-haired child of
eleven, appeared timidly in the doorway, and shrank back in terror when
his master demanded where he had been.

“Please, Mr. Fuller, I was looking for my shoe,” he stammered,
breathing very fast.

“Oh, you were looking for your shoe, were you, Arthur Wellington? And
did you find your shoe?”

“No, Mr. Fuller,” the boy choked. “I think it must have fell out of the
window.”

His blue eyes were fixed reproachfully, anxiously, pleadingly, on Joe
Hilton the eldest apprentice who bent lower over his task of damping
with methylated spirit the composition for the stars, the while he
managed to scowl sideways at Arthur.

“So you’ve been loitering about in your room while your companions have
been hard at work, Arthur Wellington?”

“I haven’t been loitering. I’ve been looking for my shoe.”

“Contradict me, will you, Arthur Wellington?” said Caleb softly. “Show
me your other shoe. Come nearer, Arthur. Nearer. Take it off and give
it to me.”

The boy approached, breathing faster; but he still hesitated to take
off the shoe.

“Don’t keep me waiting, Arthur,” Caleb said. “You’ve kept me waiting
long enough this lovely summer morning. Give me the shoe.”

Arthur did as he was told.

“Don’t go away, Arthur Wellington. I’m talking to you for your good.
This lovely summer morning, I said. Perhaps you didn’t hear me? Eh?
Perhaps you’re deaf? Deaf, are you, you workhouse brat?”

Caleb gripped the boy’s puny shoulder and banged him several times on
the head with the shoe.

“Perhaps you won’t be so deaf when I’ve knocked some of the deafness
out of you,” he growled. “Blubbering now, eh, you miserable little
bastard? Look up, will you! Look up, I say! Oh, very well, look down,”
and Caleb pushed the boy’s head between his own legs and thrashed
him with the first weapon that came to hand, which was a bundle of
rocket-sticks.

“Button yourself up, Arthur Wellington,” said Caleb, when he had
finished with him and flung him to the floor where he lay writhing
and shrieking and unbraced. “If I were you, Arthur Wellington, I’d be
ashamed to make such an exhibition of myself in front of girls. That’s
enough! Stop that blubbering. Do you hear? Stop it, and get to work.
Stop it, will you, Arthur Wellington, unless you want another thrashing
twice as bad.”

One of the apprentices was placing the stars on the fender to dry them
before the fire which Caleb had lighted to make himself the tea.

“Be careful, Edward Riggs, not to put those stars too close, or you’ll
be having an accident.”

“They’re all right where they are, aren’t they, Mr. Fuller?”

“Yes, as long as you’re careful,” said Caleb. “Now I’m going upstairs
to my office to work. We all have our work to do, you know. And if I
hear any laughing or chattering down here, I’ll make some of you see
more stars than you’ll ever make in a week.”

One of the girls managed to titter at this and was rewarded by one of
Caleb’s greasy smiles. Then he left the apprentices to their work and
went into the question of accounts, hidden in his sanctum, which was on
the first floor and hardly bigger than a powder-closet. Indeed, Caleb’s
high stool and desk with two ledgers and an iron box chained to a
staple in the floor filled it so nearly full that when the manager was
inside and hard at work nobody could get in unless he squeezed himself
into the corner. Caleb’s expressed object in keeping Madame Oriano’s
books so meticulously was that if at any moment a purchaser came along
with a firm offer for the business, lock, stock, and barrel, he would
obtain a better price for it. It was useless for the owner to protest
that no inducement or offer of any kind would tempt her into a sale,
Caleb insisted. He was as always outwardly subservient to his mistress,
but he insisted. And she would tire of arguing with him when she had
fired off a few Italian oaths and shrugged her shoulders in contempt of
such obstinacy.

“Besides,” Caleb used to point out, “so long as I keep my books
properly, anybody can see my honesty. If I kept no books, people would
be saying that I was robbing you.”

“I would notta believe them.”

“No, you mightn’t believe them until you were angry with me about
something else; but you might believe it then, and I shouldn’t care to
be accused of robbing you. It would hurt me very deeply, ma’am.”

As a matter of fact Caleb had robbed Madame Oriano with perfect
regularity for the last five years. The humble savings, to which from
time to time with upturned eyes he would allude, were actually the
small clippings and parings he had managed to make from her daily
profits. He did not feel the least guilt in thus robbing her, for not
merely could he claim that he was the only person who did rob her
nowadays, but he could also claim that these robberies practically
amounted to the dowry of her daughter. It was not as if the money
were going out of the family. Whether, in the event of his failing to
marry Letizia, Caleb would have made the least reparation is doubtful.
He would have found another excuse for his behaviour. One of his
principles was never to admit even to his tribal deity that he had
been or was wrong. He could imagine nothing more corruptly humiliating
than the Popish habit of confession. On the other hand, he was always
willing to admit that he was liable to err, and he always prayed most
devoutly to be kept free from temptation.

In his dusty little office that morning the various emotions to which
he had been subjected since yesterday began to react at last upon
Caleb’s flabby body. Leaning forward upon his desk, he put his head
down upon his folded arms and fell into a heavy sleep.

He was awakened by a series of screams, and jumping off his stool
he hurried out into the passage just as one of the girl apprentices
enveloped in flames came rushing up the stairs from the basement. He
tried to stop her from going higher, but she eluded him, and as she
went flashing up the stairs toward the upper part of the house she
screamed:

“It was Arthur Wellington done it! Don’t laugh at him, Joe Hilton.
Don’t laugh at him no more, or he’ll throw the stars on to the fire.
Where’s a window? Where’s a window?”

The wretched child vanished from sight, and the moment after a ghastly
scream announced that she had found a window and flung herself from it
into the street.

Letizia’s spaniel came barking down from the room above. Simultaneously
there was a frenzied knocking on the front door, flashes and crashes
everywhere, smoke, more shrieks of agony, and at last a deafening
explosion. It seemed to Caleb that the whole house was falling to
pieces on top of him, as indeed when he was dragged out of the ruins he
found that it had.




                              CHAPTER III

                             THE PROPOSAL


Accidents in firework factories occurred so often in those days, when
the law had not yet recognised gunpowder as a means to provide popular
diversion and taken steps in the Explosives Act to safeguard its
employment, that for six poorhouse children to lose their lives and for
two others to be permanently maimed was hardly considered as serious as
the destruction of two comparatively new houses in York Street. Madame
Oriano’s own escape was voted miraculous, especially when it was borne
in mind that both her legs had to be amputated; and while some pointed
out that if she had not been sleeping in that florid four-post bed she
need not have had her legs crushed by the canopy, others were equally
quick to argue that it was precisely that canopy which saved the rest
of her body from being crushed as completely as her legs. The bed
certainly saved Letizia.

The accident was attributed to the inhuman carelessness of a parish
apprentice known as Arthur Wellington, whereby he had placed a
composition star on the hob of a lighted fire in order to dry it more
expeditiously before being rammed into the casing of a Roman candle.
Caleb in his evidence suggested that parish apprentices were inclined
to make up for lost time in this abominable way. Everybody shook his
head at the wickedness of parish apprentices, but nobody thought of
blaming Caleb for the arrangement of a workroom that permitted such a
dangerous method of making up for lost time. As for Caleb himself, when
he had recovered from the shock of so nearly finding himself in Heaven
before he had planned to retire there from the business of existence,
he began to realise that the destruction of the factory was the best
thing that could have happened for an earthly future that he hoped long
to enjoy. He took the first opportunity of laying before Madame Oriano
his views about that future. Should his proposal rouse her to anger,
he could feel safe, inasmuch as she could certainly not get out of bed
to attack him and was unlikely to leave the hospital for many weeks to
come.

“Well, I willa always say dissa one ting, my friend, and datta is I
have never had no _esplosione_ in alla my life before dissa one. Such
_fortuna_ could never last for ever, I am secure. My legs, they makka
me a little bad, datta is all.”

Caleb regarded his mistress where she was lying in bed looking like a
sharp-eyed bird in tropical vegetation, under the gaudy satin coverlet
of her four-poster which she had insisted on having mended and brought
to the hospital.

“I’m sure we ought all of us to be very thankful to our Father Who put
His loving arms around us and kept us safe,” he oozed.

Madame Oriano, become an old lady since her accident, smiled grimly.

“_Peccato che Nostro Padre non ha pensato per mie povere gambe!_” she
muttered.

“What did you say?” Caleb asked timidly. He could never quite rid his
mind of the fancy that the Italian language had a dangerous magic, an
abracadabral potency which might land him in Hell by merely listening
to it.

“I say it issa damn pity He does not putta His arms around my legs. Dat
is what I say, Caleb.”

“He knows best what is good for us,” Caleb gurgled, turning up his eyes
to the ceiling.

“_Può essere_,” the old lady murmured. “Perraps He do.”

“But what I’ve really come to talk about,” Caleb went on, “is the
future of the business. Your presence, of course, will be sadly missed;
but you’ll be glad to hear that I have managed to fulfil all our
engagements up to date, though naturally with such a terrible loss of
material the profits will be small—dreadfully small.”

No doubt Caleb was right, and even what profit there was he probably
put in his iron box which had comfortably survived the destruction of
the factory.

“I don’ta aspect no profit,” said Madame Oriano.

“But I have been turning things over in my mind,” Caleb pressed,
“and I hope very much that you will be pleased with the result of
my—er—turnings. Yes, I’m hoping that very much indeed.” Caleb took a
deep gulp before he went on, staring away out across the chimney-stacks
to escape the old lady’s arched eyebrows.

“Madame Oriano, when I came to London six years ago and entered your
service, you were a mother to me. I can never forget your beautiful
maternal behaviour, ma’am, and, oh, ma’am, I am so anxious to be a son
to you now in the hour of your trouble—a true son.”

“You never could notta be a son for me, Caleb. _Siete troppo grasso,
caro._ You are too big. How you say? Too fat.”

“Ah, Madame Oriano, don’t say you won’t let me be a son to you till
you’ve heard all I have to tell you. I want to marry your daughter,
ma’am. I want to marry your Letizia. I loved her from the first moment
I set eyes on her, although of course I knew my position too well to
allow myself to indulge in any hopes that would have been wanting
in respect to my employer. But I have worked hard, ma’am. Indeed,
I venture to think that my love for your daughter is not near so
presumptuous at this moment as it would have been when I first entered
your service.”

“_Sicuro!_ She hassa seventeen years old now,” said Madame Oriano
sharply. “She hadda only eleven years then.”

“Sweet seventeen!” Caleb sighed.

“_Non credo che sia tanto dolce._”

“Oh, I do wish that I understood Italian a little better,” Caleb
groaned unctuously.

“I say I do notta tink she issa so very damn sweet. I tink she issa—how
you say in English—one beech.”

No doubt, Caleb profoundly agreed with this characterisation of
Letizia, held he up never so plump a protestant hand.

“Oh, do give your consent to our marriage,” he gurgled. “I know that
there is a difference of religion. But I have ventured to think once
or twice that you could overlook that difference. I have remarked
sometimes that you did not appear to attach very great importance to
your religion. I’ve even ventured to pray that you might come in time
to perceive the errors of Romanism. In fact, I have dreamed more than
once, ma’am, that you were washed in the blood of the Lamb. However,
do not imagine that I should try to influence Letizia to become one of
the Peculiar Children of God. I love her too dearly, ma’am, to attempt
any persuasion. From a business point of view—and, after all, in these
industrious times it is the business point of view which is really
important—from a business point of view the match would not be a very
bad one. I have a few humble savings, the fruit of my long association
with you in your enterprises.”

Caleb paused a moment and took a deep breath. He had reached the
critical point in his temptation of Madame Oriano, and he tried to
put into his tone the portentousness that his announcement seemed to
justify.

“Nor have I been idle in my spare time, ma’am. No, I have devoted much
of that spare time to study. I have been rewarded, ma’am. God has been
very good to me and blessed the humble talent with which he entrusted
me. Yes, ma’am. I have discovered a method of using chlorate of potash
in combination with various other chemicals which will undoubtedly
revolutionise the whole art of pyrotechny. Will you consider me
presumptuous, ma’am, when I tell you that I dream of the moment when
Fuller’s Fireworks shall become a byword all over Great Britain for all
that is best and brightest in the world of pyrotechny?”

Madame Oriano’s eyes flashed like Chinese fire, and Caleb, perceiving
that he had made a false move, tried to retrieve his position.

“Pray do not suppose that I was planning to set myself up as a
manufacturer of fireworks on my own. So long as you will have me,
ma’am, I shall continue to work for you, and if you consent to my
marrying your Letizia I shall put my new discovery at your service on a
business arrangement that will satisfy both parties.”

Madame Oriano pondered the proposal in silence for a minute.

“Yes, you can have Letizia,” she said at last.

Caleb picked up the hand that was hanging listlessly over the coverlet
and in the effusion of his gratitude saluted it with an oily kiss.

“And you’ll do your best to make Letizia accept me as a husband?” he
pressed.

“If I say you can have Letizia, _caro_, you willa have her,” the mother
declared.

“You have made me the happiest man in England,” Caleb oozed.

Whereupon he walked on tiptoe from the room with a sense even sharper
than usual that he was one of the Lord’s chosen vessels, a most
peculiar child even among the Peculiar Children of God.

Just when the hot August day had hung two dusky sapphire lamps in the
window of the room, Madame Oriano, who had been lying all the afternoon
staring up at the shadows of the birds that flitted across the ceiling,
rang the bell and demanded her daughter’s presence.

“_Letizia, devi sposarti_,” she said firmly.

“Get married, mamma? But I don’t want to be married for a long time.”

“_Non ci entra, cara. Devi sposarti. Sarebbe meglio—molto meglio. Sei
troppo sfrenata._”[7]

  [7] “That doesn’t come into it, my dear. You must get married. It
      would be better—much better. You are too harum-scarum.”

“I don’t see why it should be so much better. I’m not so harum-scarum
as all that. Besides, you never married at my age. You never married at
all if it comes to that.”

“_Lo so. Perciò dico che tu devi sposarti._”[8]

  [8] “I know that. That’s why I say that you must get married.”

“Thanks, and who am I to marry?”

“Caleb.”

“Caleb? Gemini! Caleb? Marry Caleb? But he’s so ugly! And he don’t wash
himself too often, what’s more.”

“_Bello non é ... ma che importa? La bellezza passa via._”

“Yes, I daresay beauty does pass away,” said Letizia indignantly. “But
it had passed away from Caleb before ever he was born.”

“_Che importa?_”

“I daresay it don’t matter to you. But you aren’t being expected to
marry him. Besides, you’ve had all the beaux you wanted. But I haven’t,
and I won’t be fobbed off with Caleb. I just won’t be, and you may do
what you will about it.”

“_Basta!_” Madame Oriano exclaimed. “Dissa talk is enough.”

“Basta yourself and be damned, mamma,” Letizia retorted. “I won’t
marry Caleb. I’d sooner be kept by a handsome gentleman in a big clean
cravat. I’d sooner live in a pretty house he’d give me and drive a
crimson curricle on the Brighton Road like Cora Delaney.”

“It does not import two pennies what you wish, _figlia mia_. You willa
marry Caleb.”

“But I’m not in love with him, the ugly clown!”

“Love!” scoffed her mother. “_L’amore! L’amore!_ Love is mad. I have
hadda so many lovers. _Tanti tanti amanti! Adesso, sono felice? No!
Ma sono vecchia assai._ Yes, an old woman—_una vecchia miserabile
senza amanti, senza gambe—e non si fa l’amore senza gambe, cara, ti
giuro—senza danaro, senza niente_.”

Sans love, sans legs, sans money, sans everything, the old woman
dropped back on her pillows utterly exhausted. A maid came in with
candles and pulled the curtains to shut out the dim grey into which the
August twilight had by now gradually faded. When the maid was gone, she
turned her glittering, sombre eyes upon her daughter.

“You willa marry Caleb,” she repeated. “It willa be better so—_molto
meglio cosi. Gli amanti non valgono niente._ All who I have been
loving, where are dey now? _Dove sono? Sono andati via._ Alla gone
away. Alla gone. You willa marry Caleb.”

Letizia burst into loud sobs.

“But I don’t want to marry, mamma.”

“_Meglio piangere a diciasette che rimpiangere a sessanta_,”[9] said
Madame Oriano solemnly. “You willa marry Caleb.”

  [9] “Better to weep at seventeen than to repine at sixty.”

Letizia felt incapable of resisting this ruthless old woman any longer.
She buried her head in the gaudy satin coverlet and wept in silence.

“_Allora dammi un bacio._”

The obedient daughter leaned over and kissed her mother’s lined
forehead.

“_Tu hai già troppo l’aria di putana, figlia mia. Meglio
sposarti. Lasciammi sola. Vorrei dormire. Sono stanca assai ...
assai._”[10]

  [10] “You have already too much the air of a wanton, my daughter.
       Better to get married. Leave me alone. I want to sleep. I’m
       very tired.”

Madame Oriano closed her eyes, and Letizia humbly and miserably left
her mother, as she wished to be left, alone.




                              CHAPTER IV

                             MARRIED LIFE


So, Caleb Fuller married Letizia Oriano and tamed her body, as without
doubt he would have succeeded in taming the body of any woman of whom
he had lawfully gained possession.

Madame Oriano did not long survive the marriage. The effort she made
in imposing her will upon her daughter was too much for a frame so
greatly weakened. Once she had had her way, the desire to live slowly
evaporated. Yet she was granted a last pleasure from this world before
she forsook it for ever. This was the satisfaction of beholding with
her own eyes that her son-in-law’s discovery of the value of chlorate
of potash as a colour intensifier was all that he claimed for it. That
it was likely to prove excessively dangerous when mixed with sulphur
compounds did not concern this pyrotechnist of the old school. The
prodigious depth and brilliant clarity of those new colours would be
well worth the sacrifice of a few lives through spontaneous ignition in
the course of manufacturing them.

The first public demonstration that Caleb gave was on the evening of
the Fifth of November in a Clerkenwell tea-garden. It is unlikely that
Madame Oriano ever fully comprehended the significance of these annual
celebrations. If she ever did wonder who Guy Fawkes was, she probably
supposed him to be some local English saint whose martyrdom deserved to
be commemorated by an abundance of rockets. As for Caleb, he justified
to himself some of the pleasure that his fireworks gave to so many
people by the fact that the chief festival at which they were employed
was held in detestation of a Papist conspirator.

On this particular Fifth of November the legless old lady was
carried in an invalid’s chair through the press of spectators to a
favourable spot from which she could judge the worth of the improved
fireworks. A few of the rabble jumped to the conclusion that she was a
representation of Guy Fawkes himself, and set up the ancient chorus:

    Please to remember the Fifth of November
    Gunpowder treason and plot;
    We know no reason why gunpowder treason
    Should ever be forgot!
    A stick and a stake for King George’s sake,
    A stick and a stump for Guy Fawkes’s rump
    Holla, boys! holla, boys! huzza-a-a!

Madame Oriano smiled grimly when Caleb tried to quiet the clamour by
explaining that she was flesh and blood.

“Letta dem sing, Caleb. _Non fa niente a me._ It don’ta matter notting
to me.”

A maroon burst to mark the opening of the performance. This was
followed by half-a-dozen rockets, the stars of which glowed with such
greens and blues and reds as Madame Oriano had never dreamed of. She
tried to raise herself in her chair.

“Bravo, Caleb! _Bravissimo! Ah dio, non posso più!_ It is the besta
_colore_ I havva ever seen, Caleb. _E ottimo! Ottimo, figlio mio._”

She sat entranced for the rest of the display; that night, like a spent
firework, the flame of her ardent life burnt itself out.

The death of his mother-in-law allowed Caleb to carry out a plan he
had been contemplating for some time. This was to open a factory in
Cheshire on the outskirts of his native town. He anticipated trouble
at first with the Peculiar Children of God, who were unlikely to view
with any favour the business of making fireworks. He hoped, however,
that the evidence of his growing prosperity would presently change
their point of view. There was no reason to accuse Caleb of hypocrisy,
or to suppose that he was anything but perfectly sincere in his desire
to occupy a high place in the esteem of his fellow believers. Marriage
with a Papist had in truth begun to worry his conscience more than a
little. So long as Letizia had been a temptation, the fact of her being
a daughter of Babylon instead of a Peculiar Child of God had only made
the temptation more redoubtable, and the satisfaction of overcoming
it more sharp. Now that he was licensed to enjoy her, he began to
wonder what effect marriage with a Papist would have on his celestial
patron. He felt like a promising young clerk who has imperilled his
prospects by marrying against his employer’s advice. It began to seem
essential to his salvation that he should take a prominent part in the
prayer-meetings of the Peculiar Children of God. He was ambitious to
be regarded himself as the most peculiar child of all those Peculiar
Children. Moreover, from a practical standpoint the opening of a
factory in the North should be extremely profitable. He already had the
London clients of Madame Oriano; he must now build up a solid business
in the provinces. Fuller’s Fireworks must become a byword. The King was
rumoured to be ill. He would be succeeded by another king. That king
would in due course have to be solemnly crowned. Liverpool, Manchester,
Sheffield, Leeds, and many other large towns would be wanting to
celebrate that coronation with displays of fireworks. When the moment
arrived, there must be nobody who would be able to compete with Fuller
and his chlorate of potash.

So to Brigham in Cheshire Caleb Fuller brought his wife. In some fields
on the outskirts of the town in which he had spent a poverty-stricken
youth he built his first sheds, and in a dreary little street close
to Bethesda, the meeting-house of the Peculiar Children of God, he
set up his patriarchal tent. Here on a dusty September dawn just over
two years after her last public appearance at “Neptune’s Grotto,”
Letizia’s eldest daughter was born. The young wife of Caleb was not
yet thoroughly tamed, for she produced a daughter exactly like herself
and called her Caterina in spite of the father’s objection to a name
associated with the wheels of which he made so many. Not only did she
insist on calling the child Caterina, but she actually took it to the
nearest Catholic chapel and had it baptised by a priest.

It happened about this time that one of the apostles of the
meeting-house was gravely ill, and Caleb, who had designs on the vacant
apostolic chair, decided that his election to it must not be endangered
by the profane behaviour of his young wife. When he remonstrated with
her, she flashed her eyes and tossed her head as if he were still Caleb
the clerk and she the spoilt daughter of his employer.

“Letizia,” he said lugubriously, “you have destroyed the soul of our
infant.”

“Nonsense!”

“You have produced a child of wrath.”

“My eye!” she scoffed.

Caleb’s moist lips vanished from sight. There was a long silence while
he regarded his wife with what seemed like two pebbles of granite. When
at last he spoke, it was with an intolerable softness.

“Letizia, you must learn to have responsibilities. I am frightened for
you, my wife. You must learn. I do not blame you entirely. You have had
a loose upbringing. But you must learn.”

Then, as gently as he was speaking, he stole to the door and left
Letizia locked behind him in her bedroom. Oh, yes, he tamed her body
gradually, and for a long time it looked as if he would tame her soul.
She had no more daughters like herself, and each year for many years
she flashed her eyes less fiercely and tossed her head less defiantly.
She produced several other children, but they all took after their
father. Dark-eyed Caterina was followed by stodgy Achsah. Stodgy
Achsah was followed by podgy Thyrza. These were followed by two more
who died almost as soon as they were born, as if in dying thus they
expressed the listlessness of their mother for this life. Maybe Letizia
herself would have achieved death, had not the way Caleb treated little
Caterina kept her alive to protect the child against his severity.

“Her rebellious spirit must be broken,” he declared, raising once more
the cane.

“You shall not beat her like this, Caleb.”

“Apostle Jenkins beat his son till the child was senseless, because he
stole a piece of bread and jam.”

“I wish I could be as religious as you, Caleb,” said his wife.

He tried to look modest under the compliment.

“Yes,” she went on fiercely, “for then I’d believe in Hell, and if I
believed in Hell I’d sizzle there with joy just for the pleasure of
seeing you and all your cursed apostles sizzling beside me.”

But Letizia did not often break out like this. Each year she became
more silent, taking refuge from her surroundings in French novels
which she bought out of the meagre allowance for clothes that her
husband allowed her. She read French novels because she despised the
more sentimental novelists of England that were so much in vogue at
this date, making only an exception in favour of Thackeray, whom she
read word for word as his books appeared. She was learning a bitter
wisdom from literature in the shadows and the silence of her wounded
heart. After eight years of married life she bore a son, who was called
Joshua. There were moments when Letizia was minded to smother him
where he lay beside her, so horribly did this homuncule reproduce the
lineaments of her loathed husband.

Meanwhile, the factory flourished, Caleb Fuller became the leading
citizen of Brigham and served three times as Mayor. He built a great
gloomy house on the small hill that skirted the mean little town.
He built, too, a great gloomy tabernacle for the Peculiar Children
of God. He was elected chief apostle and sat high up in view of the
congregation on a marble chair. He grew shaggy whiskers and suffered
from piles. He found favour in the eyes of the Lord, sweating the poor
and starving even the cows that gave him milk. Yes, the renown of
Fuller’s Fireworks was spread far and wide. The factory grew larger
year by year. And with it year by year waxed plumper the belly and the
purse of Caleb himself, even as his soul shrivelled.

In 1851 after twenty years of merciless prosperity Caleb suffered
his first setback by failing to secure the contract for the firework
displays at the Great Exhibition. From the marble chair of the chief
apostle he called upon the Peculiar Children of God to lament that
their Father had temporarily turned away His countenance from them.
Caleb beat his breast and bellowed and groaned, but he did not rend
his garments of the best broadcloth, because that would have involved
his buying new ones. The hulla-balloo in Bethesda was louder than
that in a synagogue on the Day of Atonement, and after a vociferous
prayer-meeting the Peculiar Children of God went back to their stuffy
and secretive little houses, coveting their neighbours’ wives and their
neighbours’ maids, but making the best of their own to express an
unattainable ideal. Horrid stuffy little bedrooms with blue jets of gas
burning dimly through the night-time. Heavy lumps of humanity snoring
beneath heavy counterpanes. Lascivious backbiting of the coveted wives
and maids on greasy conjugal pillows. Who in all that abode of prurient
respectability and savage industrialism should strip Caleb’s soul
bare? Who should not sympathise with the chief apostle of the Peculiar
Children of God?

Yet, strange to say, Caleb found that God’s countenance continued to
be averted from his own. He was still licking the soreness of his
disappointment over the Exhibition fireworks when one morning in the
prime of June his eldest daughter left the great gloomy house on the
hill, never to return. While Caleb stormed at his wife for not taking
better precautions to keep Caterina in bounds, he was aware that he
might as well be storming at a marble statue. He lacked the imagination
to understand that the soul of Letizia had fled from its imprisonment
in the guise of Caterina’s lissom body. But he did apprehend, however
dimly, that henceforth nothing he might say or do would ever again
affect his wife either for good or for ill.

Cold dark eyes beneath black arched brows surveyed him contemptuously.
He had never yet actually struck Letizia; but he came near to striking
her at that moment.

“She wanted to go on the stage.”

“A play-actress! My eldest daughter a play-actress!”

“Alas, neither she nor I can cup those drops of blood she owes to you.
But her soul is hers and mine. You had no part in making that. Even if
you did crawl over my body and eat the heart out of me, you slug! Do
what you like with the others. Make what you can of them. But Caterina
is mine. Caterina is free.”

“As if I had not suffered enough this year,” Caleb groaned.

“Suffered? Did you say that you had suffered?” His wife laughed. “And
what about the sufferings of my Caterina all these years of her youth?”

“I pray she’ll starve to death,” he went on.

“She was starving to death in this house.”

“Ay, I suppose that’s what the Church folk will be saying next. The
idle, good-for-nothing slanderers! Not content with accusing me of
starving my cows, they’ll be accusing me of starving my children now.
But the dear Lord knows....”

“You poor dull fool,” Letizia broke in, and with one more glance from
her cold dark eyes she left him.

Caterina had as dissolute a career as her father could have feared and
as miserable an end as he could have hoped, for about twelve years
later, after glittering with conspicuous shamelessness amid the tawdry
gilt of the Second Empire, she died in a Paris asylum prematurely
exhausted by drink and dissipation.

“Better to die from without than from within,” said her mother when the
news was brought to Brigham.

“What do you mean by that?” Caleb asked in exasperated perplexity.
“It’s all these French novels you read that makes you talk that
high-flown trash. You talk for the sake of talking, that’s my opinion.
You used to talk like a fool when I first married you, but I taught you
at last to keep your tongue still. Now you’ve begun to talk again.”

“One changes in thirty-four years, Caleb. Even you have changed. You
were mean and ugly then. But you are much meaner and much uglier now.
However, you have the consolation of seeing your son Joshua keep pace
with you in meanness and in ugliness.”

Joshua Fuller was now twenty-six, an eternal offence to the eyes of his
mother, who perceived in him nothing but a dreadful reminder of her
husband at the same age. That anybody could dare to deplore Caterina’s
life when in Joshua the evidence of her own was before them enraged
Letizia with human crassness. But Joshua was going to be an asset to
Fuller’s Fireworks. Just as his father had perceived the importance
of chlorate of potash in 1829, so now in 1863 did Joshua perceive
the importance of magnesium, and the house of Fuller was in front
of nearly all its rivals in utilising that mineral, with the result
that its brilliant fireworks sold better than ever. The Guilloché and
Salamandre, the Girandole and Spirali of Madame Oriano, so greatly
admired by old moons and bygone multitudes, would have seemed very
dull affairs now. Another gain that Joshua provided for the business
was to urge upon his father to provide for the further legislation
about explosives that sooner or later was inevitable. With an ill
grace Caleb Fuller had complied with the provisions of the Gunpowder
Act of 1860; but, when the great explosion at Erith occurred a few
years later, Joshua insisted that more must be done to prepare for the
inspection of firework establishments that was bound to follow such a
terrific disaster. Joshua was right, and when the Explosives Act of
1875 was passed the factory at Brigham had anticipated nearly all its
requirements.

By this time Joshua was a widower. In 1865, at the age of twenty-eight,
he had married a pleasant young woman called Susan Yardley. After
presenting him with one boy who was christened Abraham, she died two
years later in producing another who was christened Caleb after his
grandfather.

The elder of these two boys reverted both in appearance and in
disposition to the Oriano stock, and old Mrs. Fuller—she is sixty-three
now and may no longer be called Letizia—took a bitter delight in never
allowing old Mr. Fuller to forget it. She found in the boy, now a flash
of Caterina’s eyes, now a flutter of Madame Oriano’s eyelids. She
would note how much his laugh was like her own long ago, and she would
encourage him at every opportunity to thwart the solicitude and defy
the injunctions of Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza. When her son protested
against the way she applauded Abraham’s naughtiness, she only laughed.

“Bram’s all right.”

“I wish, mamma, you wouldn’t call him Bram,” Joshua protested. “It’s
so irreverent. I know that you despise the Bible, but the rest of
us almost worship it. I cannot abide this irreligious clipping of
Scriptural names. And it worries poor papa terribly.”

“It won’t worry your father half as much to hear Bram called Bram as
it’ll worry poor little Bram later on to be called Abraham. That boy’s
all right, Josh. He’s the best firework you’ve turned out of this
factory for many a day. So, don’t let Achsah and Thyrza spoil him.”

“They try their best to be strict, mamma.”

“I’m talking about their physic, idiot. They’re a pair of pasty-faced
old maids, and it’s unnatural and unpleasant to let them be for ever
messing about with a capital boy like Bram. Let them physic young
Caleb. He’ll be no loss to the world. Bram might be.”

Joshua threw his eyes up to Heaven and left his unaccountable mother
to her own unaccountable thoughts. He often wondered why his father
had never had her shut up in an asylum. For some time now she had been
collecting outrageous odds and ends of furniture for her room to which
none of the family was allowed access except by special invitation.
Ever since Caterina had run away old Mrs. Fuller had had a room of
her own. But she had been content with an ordinary bed at first. Now
she had procured a monstrous foreign affair all gilt and Cupids and
convolutions. If Joshua had been his father he would have taken steps
to prevent such a waste of her allowance. He fancied that the old man
must be breaking up to allow such furniture to enter the house.

Not long after the conversation between Joshua and his mother about
Bram, a travelling circus arrived at Brigham on a Sunday morning.
The Peculiar Children of God shivered at such a profanation of the
Sabbath, and Apostle Fuller—in these days a truly patriarchal figure
with his long white food-bespattered beard—preached from the marble
chair on the vileness of these sacrilegious mountebanks and the
pestilent influence any circus must have on a Christian town. In spite
of this denunciation the chief apostle’s own wife dared to take her
elder grandchild on Monday to view from the best seats obtainable the
monstrous performance. They sat so near the ring that the sawdust and
the tan were scattered over them by the horses’ hoofs. Little Bram, his
chin buried in the worn crimson velvet of the circular barrier, gloated
in an ecstasy on the paradisiacal vision.

“_Brava! Bravissima!_” old Mrs. Fuller cried loudly when a demoiselle
of the _haute école_ took an extra high fence. “_Brava! Bravissima!_”
she cried when an equestrienne in pink tights leapt through four
blazing hoops and regained without disarranging one peroxide curl the
shimmering back of her piebald steed.

“Oh, grandmamma,” little Bram gasped when he bade her good night, “can
I be a clown when I’m a man?”

“The difficulty is not to be a clown when one is a man,” she answered
grimly.

“What _do_ you mean, grandmamma?”

“Ah, what?” she sighed.

And in their stuffy and secretive little bedrooms that night the
Peculiar Children of God talked for hours about the disgraceful amount
of leg that those circus women had shown.

“I hear it was extremely suggestive,” said one apostle, smacking his
lips with lecherous disapprobation.

“Was it, indeed, my dear?” the dutiful wife replied, thereby offering
the man of God an opportunity to enlarge upon the prurient topic before
he turned down the gas and got into bed beside her.

“Bram was very naughty to go to the circus, wasn’t he, Aunt Achsah?”
young Caleb asked in a tone of gentle sorrow when his pasty-faced aunt
leaned over that Monday night to lay her wet lips to his plump pink
cheeks.

“Grandpapa was very cross,” Aunt Achsah mournfully replied, evading the
direct answer, but implying much by her expression.

“Gran’papa’s not cross with me, is he, auntie?” young Caleb asked with
an assumption of fervid anxiety.

“No, my dear child, and I hope that you will never, never make your
dear grandfather cross with you.”

“Oh, I won’t, Aunt Achsah,” young Caleb promised, with what Aunt Achsah
told Aunt Thyrza was really and truly the smile of one of God’s most
precious lambs.

“Thyrza, Thyrza, when that blessed little child smiles like that,
nobody could deny him anything. I’m sure his path down this vale of
tears will always be smoothed by that angelic smile.”

She was talking to her sister in the passage just outside young Caleb’s
bedroom—he had already been separated from his elder brother for fear
of corruption—and he heard what she said.

When the footsteps of his aunts died away along the passage, the fat
little boy got out of bed, turned up the gas, and smiled at himself
several times in the looking-glass. Then he retired to bed again,
satisfied of his ability to summon that conquering smile to his aid
whenever he should require it.




                               CHAPTER V

                          TINTACKS IN BRIGHAM


On a wet and gusty afternoon in the month of March, 1882, Bram Fuller,
now a stripling of sixteen, sat in one of the dingiest rooms of that
great gloomy house his grandfather had begun to build forty years
before. It looked less stark, now that the evergreen trees had grown
large enough to hide some of its grey rectangularity; but it did not
look any more cheerful in consequence. In some ways it had seemed less
ugly at first, when it stood on top of the mean little hill and was
swept clean by the Cheshire winds. Now its stucco was stained with
great green fronds and arabesques of damp caused by the drip of the
trees and the too close shrubberies of lanky privet and laurel that
sheltered its base. Old Mr. Fuller and his son were both under the
mistaken impression that the trees planted round Lebanon House—thus
had the house been named—were cedars. Whereas there was not even so
much as a deodar among the crowd of starveling pines and swollen
cryptomerias. Noah’s original ark perched on the summit of Ararat amid
the surrounding waters probably looked a holier abode than Lebanon
House above the sea of Brigham roofs.

The town had grown considerably during half a century, and old Mr.
Fuller had long ago leased the derelict pastures, in which his cows
had tried to eke out a wretched sustenance on chickweed and sour dock,
to accommodate the enterprising builder of rows of little two-storied
houses, the colour of underdone steak. The slopes of the hill on
which the house stood had once been covered with fruit-trees, but the
poisoning of the air by the various chemical factories, which had
increased in number every year, had long made them barren. Joshua had
strongly advised his father to present the useless slopes to Brigham as
a public recreation ground. It was to have been a good advertisement
both for the fireworks and for the civic spirit that was being fostered
by the Peculiar Children of God. As a matter of fact, Joshua himself
had some time ago made up his mind to join the Church of England as
soon as his father died. He was beginning to think that the Bethesda
Tabernacle was not sufficiently up-to-date as a spiritual centre for
Fuller’s Fireworks, and he was more concerned for the civic impression
than the religious importance of the gift. On this March afternoon,
however, the slopes of Lebanon were still a private domain, for old Mr.
Fuller could never bring himself to give away nine or ten acres of land
for nothing. He was much too old to represent Brigham in Parliament
himself, and it never struck him that Joshua might like to do so.

So, Bram Fuller was able to gaze out of the schoolroom window, to
where, beyond the drenched evergreens hustling one another in the
wind, the drive ran down into Brigham between moribund or skeleton
apple-trees fenced in on either side by those raspberry-tipped
iron railings that his grandfather had bought so cheaply when the
chock-a-block parish churchyard was abolished and an invitingly empty
cemetery was set apart on the other side of the town for the coming
generations of Brigham dead. Bram was still a day-boy at the grammar
school, and as this afternoon was the first half-holiday of the month
he was being allowed to have a friend to tea. Jack Fleming was late,
though. There was no sign of him yet coming up the slope through the
wind and wet. Bram hoped that nothing had happened to keep him at home.
He was so seldom allowed to entertain friends that Jack’s failure
to appear would have been an overwhelming disappointment. He looked
round the schoolroom dejectedly. Never had it seemed so dingy and
comfortless. Never had that outline portrait of Queen Victoria, filled
in not with the substance of her regal form, but with an account
of her life printed in minute type, seemed such a futile piece of
ingenuity; never had the oilcloth seemed infested with so many crumbs,
nor the table-cloth such a kaleidoscope of jammy stains.

Old Mrs. Fuller had been right when she recognised in the baby Bram her
own race. She and he had their way, and Abraham was never heard now
except in the mouth of the grandfather. Yes, he was almost a perfect
Oriano, having inherited nothing from his father, and from his mother
only her pleasant voice. He was slim, with a clear-cut profile and fine
dark hair; had one observed him idling gracefully on a sun-splashed
_piazza_, he would have appeared more appropriate to the setting
than to any setting that Brigham could provide. He was a popular and
attractive youth with a talent for mimicry, and a gay and fluent wit.
His young brother, who fortunately for the enjoyment of Bram and his
friend had been invited forth himself this afternoon, was a perfect
Fuller save that he had inherited from his mother a fresh complexion
which at present only accentuated his plumpness. All the Fuller
characteristics were there—the greedy grey eyes, the podgy white hands,
the fat rump and spindle legs, the full wet lips and slimy manner.
To all this young Caleb could add his own smile of innocent candour
when it suited his purpose to produce it. At school he was notorious
as a toady and a sneak, but he earned a tribute of respect from the
sons of a commercial community by his capacity for swopping to his own
advantage and by his never failing stock of small change, which he was
always willing to lend at exorbitant interest on good security. Bram
was badly in debt to his young brother at the present moment, and this
added something to the depression of the black March afternoon, though
that was lightened at last by the tardy arrival of his expected friend
with the news that Blundell’s Diorama had arrived in Brigham and would
exhibit itself at seven o’clock.

“We must jolly well go, Bramble,” Jack declared.

Bram shook his head despondently.

“No chink!”

“Can’t you borrow some from young Caleb?”

“I owe him two and threepence halfpenny already, and he’s got my best
whalebone-splice bat as a security till I pay him back.”

“Good Lord, and I’ve only got sixpence,” Jack Fleming groaned.

“Anyway, it’s no use,” Bram went on. “The governor wouldn’t let me go
into Brigham on a Saturday night.”

“Can’t you find some excuse?”

Bram pondered for a few seconds.

“I might get my grandmater to help.”

“Well, buck up, Bramble. It’s a spiffing show, I hear. They’ve got two
girls with Italian names who play the guitar or something. We don’t
often get a chance of a decent evening in Brigham.”

“You’re right, Jack. All serene! Then I’ll have a try with the
grandmater. She’s such an old fizzer that she might manage it.”

Bram went up cautiously to old Mrs. Fuller’s room. She was seventy now,
but still able to hate fiercely her octogenarian husband who was for
ever browsing among dusty commentaries on the Old Testament nowadays,
and extracting from the tortuous fretwork of bookworms such indications
of the Divine purpose as the exact date and hour of the Day of
Judgment. He was usually clad in a moth-eaten velveteen dressing-gown
and a smoking cap of quilted black silk with a draggled crimson tassel.
The latter must have been worn as a protection to his bald and scaly
head, because not a puff of tobacco smoke had ever been allowed to
contend with the odour of stale food that permeated Lebanon House from
cellar to garret.

The old lady was sitting by the fire in her rococo parlour, reading
Alphonse Daudet’s new book. Her hawk’s face seemed to be not so much
wrinkled as finely cracked like old ivory. Over her shoulders she wore
a wrap of rose and silver brocade.

“Why, Bram, I thought you were entertaining visitors this afternoon.”

“I am. He’s downstairs in the schoolroom. Jack Fleming, I mean.”

“Is that a son of that foxy-faced solicitor in High Street?”

Bram nodded.

“But Jack’s rather decent. I think you’d like him, grandmamma.”

“Ah, I’m too old to begin liking new people.”

Bram kicked his legs together, trying to make up his mind what line to
adopt for enlisting the old lady’s sympathy.

“Blundell’s Diorama is here,” he announced at last.

“What’s that? A new disease?”

The boy laughed.

“It does sound rather like a disease, doesn’t it? No, it’s the same
sort of thing as Poole’s Myriorama.”

“I’m no wiser.”

“Well, it’s a set of large coloured pictures of places in foreign
parts. And there are some singers with guitars. Italian perhaps.” Ah,
cunning Bram!

“Italian, eh? And you want to gaze into their liquid and passionate
orbs, eh?”

“I would rather like to—only as a matter of fact I haven’t got any
chink. Caleb lent me some, but he won’t lend me any more till I pay him
back. I’ve had to give him my best bat till I do.”

“How much do you owe the little alligator?”

“Two and threepence halfpenny, and sixpence interest up to date, and
twopence for the linseed oil for oiling the bat, because he said
he’d have to keep it in good condition during the winter. Two and
elevenpence halfpenny altogether.”

Mrs. Fuller grunted.

“And anyway papa won’t let me go down into Brigham unless I can get a
good excuse.”

“And so you want an excuse from me? _Ho capito._ Well, Bram, it’s a
strange thing, but my rheumatism has suddenly become very bad and I’d
be much obliged if you’d go down into Brigham and buy me a bottle
of embrocation. Here’s five shillings. I don’t want the change. St.
Jumbo’s Oil is the name of the embrocation. It’ll probably take you all
the evening to find it, and if you don’t find it I shan’t really mind,
because my rheumatism is bound to be much better by the time you come
back.”

“I say, grandmamma, you are ... you are....”

But Bram could not find any word to describe her suitably without
blushing too deeply to attempt it.

Blundell’s Diorama which filled the Brigham Corn Exchange (not much
corn was sold there by this date) was an entertainment at which the
least sophisticated would scoff in these cinematographic days. It
consisted of a series of crude and highly coloured views of the world’s
beauty spots treated in the panoramic manner of the drop-curtain. The
lighting was achieved by gas footlights and floats with occasional
assistance from amber, green, and crimson limes. Mr. Blundell himself,
a gentleman with a moustache like an Aintree hurdle, and dressed in a
costume that was something between a toreador’s, a cowboy’s, and an
operatic brigand’s, stood in front to point out with a stock-rider’s
whip the chief objects of interest in each picture that was unrolled
for an absorbed audience.

“This scene to which I now have the pleasure of inviting your earnest
attention represents the world-famous Bay of Naples. ‘Veedy Napowly
ee poy morry,’ as Dante said. Dante, I may remind you was the Italian
equivalent of our own William Shakespeare, the world-famous dramatic
genius at whose house in Stratford-on-Avon we have already taken a
little peep this evening. Yes, ‘See Naples and die,’ said the Italian
poet. In other words, ‘Don’t waste your time over sprats when there’s
whales to be caught.’ The world-famous fir-tree, on the extreme right
of the picture as I stand, is reputed to be two thousand years old,
and under its hoary branches it is said that the Emperor Nero held
many of his most degraded orgies, which I shall not sully your eyes by
exhibiting at an entertainment to which I flatter myself the youngest
infant in Brigham can come without a blush. The waters of the Bay of
Naples as you will note are always blue, and the inhabitants of the gay
city are renowned for macaroni and musical abilities. With your kind
permission the Sisters Garibaldi will now give you a slight impression
of the atmosphere of Beller Napowly as it is affectionately called.”

Two young women dressed in ribbons and sequins immediately pranced on
to sing _Santa Lucia_, while the lecturer beat time with his stockwhip,
rolling occasionally a sentimental eye at the audience. When the music
was over, he invited their attention to various architectural features
in the landscape, and then, assuming a tragic profundity of tone, he
continued:

“Hitherto all has been fair, but the words ‘See Naples and die’ have
sometimes been fraught with a much deeper significance. On the extreme
left as I stand you will observe towering above the unconscious city
the mighty peak of Vesuvius, the world-famous volcano which from time
to time commits the most horrible eruptions and threatens to overwhelm
with boiling lava the gay city at its base. With your kind permission I
shall now have the pleasure of giving you a realistic representation of
the city of pleasure when threatened by one of the burning mountain’s
all too frequent outbursts.”

He signalled with his whip to the limelight man at the back of the
hall. Whereupon after a loud preliminary fizzing a crimson glow
suffused the whole picture, while the orchestra, consisting of a piano,
a flageolet, and a double-bass, played the “Dead March” from _Saul_.

“Our next picture shows you the world-famous Alhambra of Granada by
moonlight....”

No tragedy here, but a transparency moon and a _pas de deux_ by the
Sisters Garibaldi accompanied by castanets, which on the authority
of Mr. Blundell was a lifelike rendering of the world-famous Spanish
fandango....

When the performance was over, Bram emerged from his circumgyration
of the illustrated world feeling that something must be done about
Brigham. After the sequins and ribbons and cobalt seas, after
bullfights and earthquakes, juggernauts, pagodas, and palms, Brigham
in the wind and wet of a Saturday night in March was not to be
endured without some kind of protest. To go meekly back to Lebanon
House and a long jobation from his father on the sin of attending
a public performance in which female dancers actively participated
was unimaginable in this elated mood. If there had to be a row, why
couldn’t there be a row over something that really deserved it?

“My gosh, Jack, I’m just itching to do something,” he confided to his
chum. “Don’t you wish we had wings and could fly right away to the
other end of the world now?”

“What’s the use of wishing for wings?” objected young Fleming, who
had enjoyed the entertainment, but was not prepared to be mentally
extravagant in its honour.

“Well, of course I don’t mean real wings,” Bram explained. “Only, I
simply can’t stick Brigham much longer. I couldn’t stick it even if I
left school.”

They were passing Bethesda as Bram was speaking, and the sight of its
hideousness looming up in the empty wet gaslit street revolted the boy.

“I wish I could burn that down,” he exclaimed savagely.

“Well, you can’t do that either,” said his friend. “So what’s the good
of wishing?”

“I say, Jack, there’s a window open! I believe I could climb in,”
declared Bram in sudden excitement.

Jack Fleming was not one of the Peculiar Children of God, nor had he
any clear notion how severe a penalty was entailed by sacrilege; but
the idea of climbing into any place of worship by night—church, chapel,
or meeting-house—filled him with superstitious dread, besides alarming
him in its legal aspect.

“Don’t be a mad ass,” he adjured his friend. “What would you do if you
did climb in?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just mess it up,” said Bram.

“But supposing you were caught?”

“Well, it would be worth a row. You don’t know my governor, Jack. If
you knew him, you’d do anything that was worth while getting pi-jaws
for. I get pi-jaws now for nothing. If you funk it, don’t stay with me.
But I’m going to climb into that rotten old tabernacle, and if I can
burn it up, I jolly well will burn it up.”

Jack Fleming was seized with panic. Bram was always a mad sort of chap,
but this project was far madder than anything of which he had fancied
him capable.

“Look here, I’ve got to be in soon,” he protested. “And you’ve farther
to go than I have. Don’t play the giddy goat.”

But Bram’s mind was dancing with the brightness of Blundell’s Diorama.
He had no patience with the dull brain of his friend.

“I tell you I’m going to climb in,” he insisted.

“Well, I tell you I’m going home,” said Jack.

“All right then, go!” Bram could not forbear shooting a poisoned shaft.
“Only if there’s a row, don’t peach, that’s all I ask.”

“You needn’t sneer at a fellow just because he doesn’t happen to be
quite such a giddy goat as yourself,” said Jack.

But Bram was riding over the deserts of Arabia: he was away on the
prairies farther than Fenimore Cooper or Mayne Reid had ever taken him;
Chimborazo towered above his horizon, not the chimney-pots of Brigham.

“See you on Monday as usual,” he called back cheerfully to his friend
as he leapt up and caught hold of the sill. A moment later his lithe
shape had vanished in the darkness of Bethesda. Jack Fleming hesitated
a moment: but after all he was not one of the Peculiar Children of God,
and if it became a case for the magistrates, they might take a more
serious view of his behaviour as the son of a church-going solicitor
than of Bram’s, who was the grandson of a chief apostle. Jack turned
his face homeward.

Meanwhile, inside the tabernacle Bram was wondering what he should
do with the beastly place. He struck a match, but the shadows it
conjured all over the great gaunt building made him nervous, and he
soon abandoned the project of burning the whole place to the ground. He
thought and thought how to celebrate his adventure at the expense of
the worshippers when they gathered together to-morrow morning to groan
loudly over their own sins and louder still over the sins of other
people. He could think of nothing. Inspiration was utterly lacking.
Had he known beforehand that he was going to break into Bethesda like
this, what a multitude of tricks he would have been ready to play. As
it was, he would just have to climb out again and be content with the
barren triumph of having climbed in. He had struck another match to
light his path out among the benches without barking his shins as he
had barked them feeling his way in from the window, and it illuminated
a cardboard packet of tintacks evidently left there by the caretaker,
who must have been renovating something or other in honour of the
approaching Sabbath. Bram did not hesitate, but forthwith arranged four
tintacks on each of the pitch-pine chairs of the eleven apostles and
actually half-a-dozen, and these carefully chosen for their length and
sharpness, on the marble chair of the chief apostle himself. For once
in a way he should look forward to Sunday morning; for the first time
in his life he should be able to encounter with relish the smell of
veils and varnish in Bethesda. Of course, it would be too much to hope
that all the fifty tintacks would strike home, but the chances were
good for a generous proportion of successes, because it was the custom
of the twelve apostles to march in from the apostolic snuggery and
simultaneously take their seats with the precision of the parade-ground.

While Bram was having to stand up and listen to a long pi-jaw that
night on his return, he nearly laughed aloud in thinking that to-morrow
morning in Bethesda his father who occupied at present the chair of
James the Less would wish that he was standing too. Before going to bed
Bram went to wish good night to his grandmother and thank her for the
way she had helped him.

“I wish I could travel round the world, grandmamma.”

“Ah, child, be glad that you can still have wishes. It’s when all your
wishes turn to regrets that you can begin sobbing. Here am I, with only
one wish left.”

“What’s that?”

“The grave,” said the old lady.

Bram was startled when his grandmother said this with such simple
earnestness. Death presented itself to his young mind as something so
fantastically remote that thus to speak of it as within the scope of a
practical wish seemed to demand some kind of distraction to cure such
excitability.

“You never go to Bethesda, do you, grandmamma?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“I wish you’d come to-morrow morning.”

“What, at seventy become a Peculiar Child of God? No, Bram, I may be
in my second childhood, but it’s not going to be a peculiar second
childhood.”

“All the same, I wish you would come. I think you’ll laugh.”

Bram’s dark eyes were twinkling so brightly in anticipation of the
scene to-morrow morning that his grandmother’s curiosity was roused.
However, he would not tell her why he advised her to sample the
meeting-house for the first time in her life to-morrow. He still
retained enough of the child’s suspicion of the grown-up’s theory of
what is and what is not a good joke to make him cautious even with her,
though he was extremely anxious to give the old lady the benefit of the
diversion he had prepared. He was so urgent indeed that in the end she
actually promised to come if she felt able to stand the prospect in the
morning.

Before going to bed Bram went into his brother’s room and paid him back
the loan with interest.

“And I’ll have my bat to-night, thank you very much,” he said.

Caleb did not play cricket himself, but he was much disgusted at losing
the bat, because he had planned to sell it for at least five shillings
at the beginning of the summer term.

“Look here, I’ll give you three shillings for it, if you don’t want to
pay me back the money, Bram.”

“No, thanks.”

Caleb tried his last resource. Sleep was heavy on his eyelids, yet
he managed to suffuse his pink podgy countenance with that bland,
persuasive smile.

“It isn’t really worth more than two shillings, Bram, but as you’re my
brother I don’t mind giving you three for it.”

Bram had one tintack left in his pocket. This he dug into Caleb’s fat
leg.

“Ouch! You cad,” Caleb squealed. “You cad! You cad! What is it?”

“A tintack,” said Bram coolly. “Want it in again? No? All serene. Then
hand over the bat.”

He retired with his rescued treasure to his own room, and for five
minutes in the joy of repossession he practised playing forward and
back to the most devilishly tricky bowling until at last he caught the
leg of the bedstead a whack which clanged through the nocturnal quiet
of Lebanon House like an alarm bell. Whereupon Bram hurriedly put out
the gas and jumped into bed. People were right when they said he was
very young for his age and wondered how Joshua Fuller ever produced
such a flipperty-gibbet of a son.

The next morning was fine, and old Mrs. Fuller’s announcement that she
was going to visit Bethesda threw the household into consternation.

“Mamma!” the eldest daughter gasped. “Why, you’ve never....”

Mrs. Fuller quelled poor Achsah instantly.

“Thank you, my dear, I am not yet in my dotage. I know precisely what I
have done and what I have not done in my life.”

“You don’t think you’ll catch cold?” suggested Thyrza.

“Not if your father preaches about Hell,” said the old lady.

“If you’re coming to mock, mamma,” her son interposed, “I can’t help
feeling it would be better if you stopped away.”

“Hoity-toity, Master Joshua,” the old lady chuckled.

What the chief apostle thought about his wife’s intention did not
transpire, for he was so deaf nowadays that his family considered it
wiser not to apprise him of the sensational news. He would probably
never understand what they were trying to tell him, but if he should,
the nervous shock might easily render him as mute as he was deaf, to
the detriment of his weekly discourse, which was the delight of the
older Peculiars, flavoured as it was with the brimstone and sulphur of
the sect’s early days. The chief apostle, no doubt partly on account of
his pyrotechnical knowledge, could conjure hellish visions against any
preacher in the land.

There was some discussion about who should drive to chapel in the
Fuller brougham, a dreadful old conveyance looking like a large
bootblack’s box, which had been picked up cheap at the sale of a
deceased widow’s effects. Either Achsah or Thyrza usually accompanied
their father. There was no room for a third person when Mr. Fuller and
his beard were inside.

“Don’t disturb yourselves,” said Mrs. Fuller. “I’ve sent the boy to
fetch a fly from the hotel. Bram can be my beau.”

When she and her grandson were driving off together, she turned to him
and said:

“Now what is the reason for having dragged me out in this musty fly on
a Sunday morning?”

Her regard was so humorous and candid that the boy surrendered his
suspicion and confided to her what he had prepared for the apostles.

“I’ll give you sixpence for every tintack that goes hard home,” the old
lady vowed. “I’d give you a sovereign apiece, if I had the money.”

The congregation of Bethesda seemed to be composed of candle-faced
men and fiery-nosed women. The atmosphere literally did stink of
respectability, for even scented soap was considered a diabolic weapon.
However, in spite of the discouragement that the male Peculiars
accorded to the vanity of female dress, the female Peculiars were as
well equipped with panniers and bustles as the fashionable females of
other sects. In view of what was waiting for them, it was unfortunate
for the men that they too did not wear bustles. Bram cast an eye on the
apostles’ chairs and whispered to his grandmother that the tintacks
were undisturbed. She emitted a low chuckle of approbation such as that
with which a parrot welcomes some special effort of ventriloquism by a
human being.

The door of the apostolic snuggery opened. Shambling along with an
exaggeration of the way he used to shamble as a young man, followed
by a trail of dismal men, most of whom had mutton-chop whiskers,
came Caleb Fuller making for the chair of Simon Peter—oblivious
presumably of the Popish claims thereby implied. The sons of Zebedee
were represented by two grocers in partnership—Messrs. Giddy and
Dopping. Andrew suitably had an expatriated Scotsman in the person of
Maclozen the chemist. Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas were
earthily represented by Mr. Hunnybum, Mr. Rabjohn, Mr. Campkin, and
Mr. Balmey. The seat of James the Less was Joshua Fuller’s. Simon and
Jude found their types of apostolic virtue in Mr. Pavitt and Mr. Pead,
and finally Mr. Fricker, a sandy-haired young man who walked the shop
of Mr. Rabjohn the draper, followed humbly in the rear as the coopted
Matthias, hoping no doubt one day to lead the lot as patriarchally as
Mr. Fuller was leading them this morning.

“Brethren,” the chief apostle groaned. “I am four score years and two
in the sight of the Lord, and my sins are as scarlet.”

“Made with chlorate of potash,” muttered Mrs. Fuller, “so bright a
scarlet are they.”

“Brethren, groan with me.”

The Peculiar Children of God groaned lustily.

“Brethren, we will now be seated until one of us shall be moved by the
Spirit of the Lord to testify.”

The congregation rustled down into their seats. The apostles sat down
firmly and austerely as became leaders of religion. The congregation
remained seated. The apostles rose with a unanimous howl, moved not by
the Spirit, but by the fifty tintacks, every one of which, by old Mrs.
Fuller’s reckoning when she paid over twenty-five shillings to Bram,
must have struck hard home.

Of course, there was an investigation into the lamentable affair by
the apostolic body of the Peculiar Children of God. The caretaker
was invited to explain the presence of all these tintacks on the
apostolic chairs. It was idle for the caretaker to deny all knowledge
of tintacks, because in the chapel accounts there was an item against
her, proving that she had only this week purchased for use in Bethesda
a large packet of tintacks. This purchase of tintacks she made no
attempt to deny, but she maintained, without her evidence being in the
least shaken, that when she last saw the tintacks the bulk of them
remained in the cardboard box from which she had taken only two or
three to nail down the strips of carpet on the benches where they had
come loose. It seemed equally idle for the apostles to accuse such
a ramshackle old woman of having deliberately arranged the tintacks
as weapons of offence, nor could it seriously be argued that mere
carelessness was responsible for leaving them about point upward in
groups of four. Some of the older apostles were inclined to blame the
Devil for the assault; but the younger members of the apostolic body,
reacting to the spirit of intellectual progress that was abroad, could
not accept the theory of so literally diabolic a practical joke. Mr.
Fricker, the junior apostle, put forward an opinion that the outrage
had been committed by members of the Salvation Army, a body which was
making considerable and most unwelcome progress in Brigham. The result
of the investigation, however, was to leave the horrid business wrapt
in mystery, in which costume it would doubtless have remained for ever
if that afternoon young Caleb Fuller had not said to his father with a
smile of radiant innocence:

“Papa, how funny it should have been tintacks on your chair.”

“What do you mean by ‘funny,’ my boy?” demanded Joshua angrily. “What
are you grinning at?”

“I didn’t mean to grin, papa,” said Caleb, turning out his smile as
swiftly as if it were a flaring gas-jet. “What I meant was ‘funny’ was
that last night Bram had a tintack in his pocket, because he ran it
into my leg.”

“Bram had a tintack?” repeated the father.

“Yes, and he was out late last night, and Mrs. Pead was saying outside
Bethesda that she’d noticed one of the windows in the chapel was left
open all last night.”

Joshua Fuller’s pasty face pulsed and sweated like a boiling beefsteak
pudding.

“Where’s Bram now?”

“He’s upstairs in grandmamma’s room, and they were laughing, papa.
I thought it funny they should be laughing like that on a Sunday
afternoon.”

“You thought it funny, did you?” Joshua growled. “If you don’t look out
for yourself, my boy, I’ll thrash you soundly when I’ve finished with
your brother.”

“What have _I_ done, papa?” Caleb began to blubber. “I thought you
wanted to find out who put the tintacks on the apostles’ chairs.”

But his father did not stop to listen. His only idea was to
punish Bram. The threat to Caleb was really nothing more than
the effervescence of his rage. In the hall he picked out from the
umbrella-stand a blackthorn stick, armed with which he entered his
mother’s parlour, where he found her feeding Bram with crumpets.

“So it was you, was it?” he chattered. “Go up to your bedroom and wait
for me.”

“What are you going to do to the boy?” old Mrs. Fuller demanded.

“What am I going to do to him? I’m going to teach him a lesson with
this.” He banged the floor with the blackthorn.

“You’ll never use that on him, Joshua,” said his mother.

“Won’t I?”

“Never! Bram, don’t let your father touch you with that stick. If he
strikes you, strike him. You’re as good a man as he is in a fight.
Strike him hard, hard, d’ye hear?”

“Are you mad, mamma, to encourage the young ruffian in this way?”

“He’ll be mad if he lets you strike him.”

While the other two were talking, a very white Bram was settling his
future as rapidly as a drowning man is supposed to review his past.
Fifty tintacks at sixpence apiece? Twenty-five shillings in his pocket.
The only time he had ever been rich in the whole of his life! This
would mean leaving the grammar school. He would have to work in the
factory. “The bottom of the ladder, my boy; that’s the way to begin.”
No pocket money. Sticking at accounts, Brigham, eternally, hopelessly.
Always Brigham. And Lebanon House. And the flogging. The pain wouldn’t
matter. But the disgrace of it at his age! And begging grandpapa’s
pardon. Shouting his apologies in those hairy ears. Coming always a
little closer and trying to make himself understood, closer still. So
close that he would be sick with the smell of stale food on that filthy
old white beard. Apologising to the rest of them. To Giddy and Dopping
and Hunnybum and Pead. Apologising to that horrible brute Fricker? No!
Prayed for publicly by the Peculiars as last Sunday they prayed for
that girl who had a baby? No!

“How did you find out, papa?” Bram heard himself saying from an
infinitely remote distance. He was shivering lest he should hear that
Jack Fleming had betrayed him.

“Because, thank the dear Lord, I have one son who knows his duty as a
Christian,” his father was saying.

Of course! Caleb had had a taste of tintack last night. No! No! No!
He could not give that little sneak the pleasure of gloating over his
punishment. No! The pictures of Blundell’s Diorama rolled across his
memory. Cobalt seas and marble halls, pagodas, palms ... twenty-five
shillings in his pocket and the world before him if he could only make
up his mind.

“Did you hear me tell you to go up to your bedroom, my boy?”

“Grandmamma, grandmamma, let me kiss you good-bye,” Bram cried by the
door.

The old lady drew near.

“Grandmamma,” he whispered as she folded him to her withered breast,
“I’m going to run away. Can you keep him in?”

Bram heard the key turn in the lock and a loud chuckle beyond the
closed door. Then he heard the sound of his father’s voice raised
in anger. Bram paused. Surely he would not strike grandmamma. He
listened a moment at the keyhole, smiled at what he heard his father
being called, and, blowing back a kiss to reach through the closed
door the old lady’s heart, hurried up to his room. But not to wait
there for his father to come with the blackthorn. No, just to throw
a few clothes into an old carpet-bag and a minute or two later to go
swinging out of Lebanon House for ever. On his way down the drive he
remembered that he had not licked Caleb for peaching. It was a pity to
let the little brute escape like that. He hesitated, decided that it
was not worth while to run the risk of being caught merely in order
to lick Caleb, and swung on down the drive. He had no plans, but he
had twenty-five shillings in his pocket, and there was a train to
Liverpool in half-an-hour. As a dissipation he had sometimes watched
its departure on the Sunday afternoons when he managed to escape from
Lebanon House and Bible readings, which was not often. Of course, there
would be plenty of people to tell his father where he had gone. But
Liverpool was a larger place than Brigham, and, if he could not get
taken on by the captain of an outward-bounder, he would be a stowaway.
Something would turn up. Bram hurried on. It was a good mile from
Lebanon House to the railway station. The booking-clerk stared through
his pigeon-hole when Bram asked for a single to Liverpool. The idlers
on the platform stared when they saw Bram Fuller, the grandson of the
great Caleb, shoulder his carpet-bag and enter the Liverpool train.
But Bram himself stared hardest of all when he found himself in a
compartment with Mr. Blundell of Blundell’s Diorama and the Sisters
Garibaldi.




                              CHAPTER VI

                              THE DIORAMA


Mr. Blundell did not believe in allowing the public to suffer in
ignorance of who he was. This was not merely due to a desire to
advertise himself and his goods. He was genuinely anxious to give
the public a treat, and his progress from town to town was a kind of
unlimited extension of the free-list. There he sat opposite Bram as if
the wooden seat of the third-class compartment were a Mexican saddle,
the train a bronco. On the other hand, the Sisters Garibaldi had lost
most of their exotic charm now that they were dressed like other women
in panniers and bustles instead of the ribbons and sequins of Southern
romance. What was left of it vanished for Bram when he heard one of
them say to the other in an unmistakably cockney accent:

“Did that masher in front send you the chocolates he promised, dear?”

“No, he didn’t, the wretch.”

“I told you he’d have to pawn his trousers before you ever saw those
chocolates, didn’t I, dear?”

“I wouldn’t like to say what you’ve told me and what you haven’t told
me, dear. You wag your tongue a good deal faster than what a dog wags
its tail.”

Mr. Blundell doffed his sombrero and revealed a head of hair that was
ridiculously out of keeping with that haystack of a moustache, for it
looked as if somebody had unwound the shining black twine from the
handle of a cricket bat and tried to wind it again with less than half
the quantity.

“Now, girlies,” he remonstrated in a fruity voice, “don’t make things
uncomfortable all around by arguing. Us men don’t like to see little
birdies pecking at one another. That’s right, isn’t it?”

This appeal was addressed to Bram, who smiled as politely as he knew
how and received in exchange a wink from Mr. Blundell so tremendous as
almost to give the impression that he had pulled down the curtain of
the compartment window and let it go up again with a snap.

“Going far?” he continued genially.

“Liverpool.”

“By thunder, so are we. The long arm again! You can’t get away from it
in this world. My name’s Blundell.”

This information was vouchsafed with an elaborate nonchalance.

“Unwin U. Blundell,” he added.

“I was enjoying the Diorama last night,” Bram said. “It was simply
splendid.”

“Ah, you were in front? Dainty little show, isn’t it? Instructive, yet
at the same time trees amusong as the Froggies say. Bright, but never
coarse. Rich, but never ostentatious. Funny thing, I suppose I’ve
knocked about the world more than most of us have, and yet I’ve always
set my face against anything the teeniest tottiest little bit coarse.
Did you notice I said my name was Unwin U. Blundell? Got me, as our
cousins the Americanos say? The initials by themselves would be coarse,
and my entertainment is refined from start to finish.”

One of the Sisters Garibaldi giggled.

“Now, Clara,” he said severely. “By the way, permit me, Miss Clara
Garibaldi, Miss Mona Garibaldi, Mr....”

“Bram Fuller.”

“No relation to Fuller’s Fireworks, I suppose?”

Bram explained that he was.

“By Jenkins, the long arm again! Why, only last week at Burton-on-Trent
I used a packet of Fuller’s squibs for the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
But I had to give it up. Yes, I found it frightened the women and
children too much. They were so shook by the effect that when the moon
rose behind the Alhambra they thought _that_ was going off with a bang
and started screaming again, so the fandango went rotten.”

“It certainly did,” the Sisters Garibaldi agreed in a huffy chorus.

“Coming back to my name,” said Mr. Blundell. “What do you think my
second name is? I’ll give you a sovereign if you can guess it in three.
That offer’s on tap to any stranger with who I have the pleasure of a
heart to heart. Give it up? I thought you would. Ursula!”

“But that’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?” Bram said in astonishment.

“Of course it is. But my dear old mother got it into her head that it
was a boy’s name. The parson argued with her. The sexton argued. The
godfathers and godmothers argued. The only one that didn’t argue was my
poor old dad, who knew better. So, Ursula I was christened, by thunder.
Unwin Ursula Blundell.”

The confidential manner of the showman invited confidence in return,
and before the train had puffed out of more than two of the stations
between Brigham and Liverpool he was in possession of Bram’s history.

“So you’re thinking of going to sea? It’s a hard life, my young friend.
Can’t you think of a better way of earning a living than rolling down
to Rio? What about the boards?”

Bram looked puzzled.

“The stage. The profession. Tragedy! Drama! Comedy! Farce!”

“Well, I’d like to be an actor,” said Bram eagerly. “But could I act?
My grandmater said I was a jolly good mimic.”

“There you are! What more do you want?”

“But aren’t I rather young?” Bram asked, in a sudden panic that he was
making a fool of himself. “I mean, who would give me anything to act?”

“That’s where Unwin U. Blundell enters, my young friend. Let’s figure
out your case. You want to keep out of the way of your father. You
don’t want to be hauled back to Brigham and set to work in an office.
Am I right?”

Bram nodded.

“So far, so good. Now we’re up against the long arm again. _I_ want
a young cannibal chief as an extra attraction for the Diorama. Why
shouldn’t you take on the job? It’ll mean staining yourself brown and
talking some kind of gibberish when I give the cue. I’ll stand you
in board and lodging and pay you five shillings a week for yourself.
What’s more, I’ll teach you how to look like a cannibal chief, and how
to act like a cannibal chief. I’d want a short war dance every night.
The girls will fake up something tasty there. Then before the show
begins you could shake hands with the audience at twopence a head.
Mind you don’t forget to shiver all the time. That’ll make the women
take an interest in you. But you mustn’t forget you’re a cannibal. If
anybody with a bit of ombongpong comes in to take a peep at you, you’ll
want to gloat some. You know what I mean? Look as if you was thinking
which was the best slice. That’ll go great. I _was_ thinking of touring
a big baboon, but a cannibal chief’s worth two baboons. Nothing
derogatory, if you follow my meaning. We’ll make you a prince, so as
you’ll be treated with respect. Prince Boo Boo. You want to give ’em a
nice easy name so as they can talk about it to their friends without
thinking that some Mr. Knowall in the corner’s going to jump up and
correct them all the time. Nobody could go wrong over a name like Boo
Boo. An infant in arms could say it. Prince Boo Boo, the world-famous
cannibal chief from the savage Solomon Islands. The youngest son of
the world-famous King Noo Noo who boasts of having eaten twenty-three
missionaries, nine traders, and fourteen shipwrecked mariners since he
ascended the throne. Prince Boo Boo himself was taken as a hostage for
the lives of three French sailors who had been captured by his father.
Unfortunately the king’s appetite was so ferocious and the sailors were
so fat that without thinking about his youngest son he went and ate the
lot. Prince Boo Boo was carried off to Europe where Unwin U. Blundell,
always on the quee vyve for novelties that will attract his many
patrons all over the civilised world, secured his exclusive services.
Come on, say the word, and we’ll get the bills printed and the costume
made in Liverpool, and on Monday week we’ll show ’em what’s what when
we open in St. Helens.”

The runaway did not hesitate. Mr. Blundell’s offer solved the problem
of his immediate future far more swiftly and far more easily than he
would ever have dared to hope.

Bram was a great success as a young cannibal chief. His natural shivers
during the excesses of an English summer filled the hearts of all
the women with the warmest sympathy, and a moment later the way he
gloated over imagined titbits of their anatomy made them shiver as
realistically as himself.

“It’s going great, laddie,” Unwin U. Blundell declared. “To rights,
it’s going. Props at the Royalty, Blackburn, who’s an old pal of mine,
is making me a two-pronged wooden fork, which was used by your dad,
King Noo Noo. With a bit of bullock’s blood we’ll have the ladies of
Bolton in a state of blue horrors next week. And if one of ’em faints,
laddie, there’s a shilling onto your salary when the ghost walks next
Friday night.”

The Sisters Garibaldi were inclined to be jealous of Bram at first,
but their feelings were appeased by being given a special new dance
in which they were dressed in costumes that looked like rag mats
trimmed with feather dusters, a dance that began with a seated swaying
movement and ended with wild leaps into the air to the accompaniment of
cannibalistic whoops.

Bram stayed with Unwin U. Blundell for nearly two years; but he did not
remain a young cannibal chief to the exclusion of everything else.

“It’s not good for any actor to play one part too long. My old granddad
was considered the finest Hamlet ever seen on the Doncaster circuit.
Well, I give you my word, after you’d heard him in ‘To be or not to
be,’ you didn’t know yourself if you were or if you weren’t. But he
played it too often, and he thought he’d vary things a bit by playing
Richard III and Macbeth on the Shakespeare nights. But it was too late.
He knew he’d waited too long the very first night he played Macbeth,
because instead of saying ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’ he
started off ‘Is this a bodkin that I see before me?’ It humiliated
him, poor old chap, and he gave up tragedy and took to farce, and that
killed him. Yes, it’s a mistake to get into a groove.”

So one day Prince Boo Boo disappeared from the programme of Blundell’s
Diorama and was succeeded by Wo Ho Wo, a Chinese philosopher. The
Celestial did not prove an attraction, and Wo Ho Wo soon gave place to
Carlo Marsala, the boy brigand of Sicily, a part which suited Bram to
perfection, so well indeed that the Sisters Garibaldi could not bear
it and were only persuaded to stay on with the Diorama by turning Bram
into a young Red Indian brave, and featuring him in a dance with his
two squaws before the tableau of Niagara.

In addition to the various geographical rôles he enacted with Unwin
U. Blundell, Bram learnt something about theatrical publicity, and
no doubt, if he had cared, he might have learnt from Mona and Clara
Garibaldi a good deal about love. Although their obvious inclination
to make him a bone of contention did not give Bram the least pleasure
or even afford him the slightest amusement, Mr. Blundell, who had
evidently been observing the pseudo-sisters becoming quite like real
sisters in the fierceness of their growing rivalry, ventured to utter a
few words of worldly admonition to the endangered swain.

“Don’t think I’m trying to interfere with you, laddie. But I’ve had so
much of that kind of thing myself, and I’d like to give you the benefit
of my experience. Never try and drive women in double harness. You
might as well try and drive tigers. They’ll start in fighting with each
other, but it’s _your_ head that’ll get bit off, that’s a cinch. I
wouldn’t be what I am now—Unwin U. Blundell of Blundell’s world-famous
Diorama—if I’d have let myself go galloping after the ladies. Two
whiskies, and a man’s a man. Two women, and he’s a miserable slave.
What does Bill Shakespeare say? ‘Give me the man that is not passion’s
slave.’ Take it from me, laddie, if Bill said that, he meant it. He’d
had some. That’s what I like about the One and Only. He’s had some of
everything.”

Bram assured Mr. Blundell that he well understood how easily a
young man could make a fool of himself and thanked him for his good
advice, which he followed so well during the whole of the time he was
travelling round Great Britain with the Diorama, that when at the end
of it he left to tread the legitimate boards he found that the Sisters
Garibaldi, if not sisters to each other, were wonderful sisters to him.

“I’m sorry to lose you, Bram,” said the showman when he was told of his
assistant’s engagement in a melodrama called _Secrets of a Great City_.
“But I won’t try and persuade you to stop. You’ve got the sawdust in
you, laddie. You’re likely to go far, if you stick to your work.”

“You’ve been a good friend to me, Mr. Blundell,” said Bram warmly.

“No man can wish to hear sweeter words than those,” the showman
replied: “You’ve listened to me every night spouting on antiquities,
old man. But the best antiquities in the whole blooming world are old
friends.”

The Sisters Garibaldi wept; Mr. Blundell blew his nose very hard; the
young actor passed into another sphere of theatrical life.

During the last two years Bram had written to his grandmother from
time to time, and had had from her an occasional letter in return, in
which he heard no news of Lebanon House beyond an occasional assurance
of its eternal sameness. However, just before he left Blundell to
join the melodrama company he did receive a letter, in which her large
spidery handwriting crossed and sometimes recrossed was spread over
several sheets of notepaper.

                                                     Lebanon House
                                                        Brigham.
                                                   April 20th, 1884.

  Dear Bram,

  I thought it might interest you to hear that your grandfather died
  last week. Please don’t write and tell me that you are sorry,
  because that would not be true and there is no need to make
  the death of a relation an occasion for an insincere piece of
  politeness. You will notice that there is no black edge to this
  notepaper. Remember that, when you next write to me. What is more,
  if there were any red ink in the house I would use it. Your brother
  is leaving school to take up a chair in your father’s office. There
  will not be room on the seat of that chair for anybody else. You
  need not worry that anybody in this house will ever try to kill the
  fatted calf for you. They wouldn’t give you a slice of cold mutton
  if you came back to-morrow. They wouldn’t give you a pickled onion.
  So stay where you are, and write sometimes to that withered leaf,

                                 Your loving
                                           Grandmother.

Bram made rapid strides in his profession—too rapid really, for by the
time he was twenty-three he already had a reputation in the provinces
as what was, and no doubt still is, known as a utility man. Such a
reputation, serviceable enough in the provinces, is likely to prove a
barrier to ultimate success. Paradox though it be, the better actor all
round a man is, the less likely he will be ever to achieve success in
London. It is the old tale of the general practitioner and the Harley
Street specialist. However, to be playing good parts at so early an age
was enough for Bram. He had no ambition to become famous for a novel
mannerism, and he was always ready to act anything—low comedy, light
comedy, heroes, villains, heavy fathers, and walking gentlemen. He was
never out of an engagement, and as he would have starved rather than
ask help of his relations, this was his chief concern. To fame and
fortune on a grand scale he did not aspire.




                              CHAPTER VII

                               TRUE LOVE


It was when Bram was twenty-three that he first found himself in the
same company as Nancy O’Finn. She was then a tall dark-haired girl of
eighteen with misted blue lakes for eyes and cheeks rose-burnt to the
sharp crimson of a daisy’s petals. Her voice with just a touch of a
brogue in it had the rich tones of a violoncello; her figure was what
was called fine in those days when women were not anxious to look as
if a steam-roller had passed over their bodies during the night. She
was with her father, Michael O’Finn, who had been supporting Mrs.
Hunter-Hart in heavies for fifteen years—ever since Mrs. Hunter-Hart
had set out to tour the provinces with a repertory of Shakespeare’s
comedies. Mrs. Hunter-Hart was now nearly fifty—some declared she
was several years over—but her Portia, her Viola, her Rosalind, her
Beatrice, and her Katherina, were ageless. This admirable veteran did
not fear the rivalry of youth. So here was Bram at twenty-three playing
Gratiano, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Corin, Verges, and Biondello, and Nancy
O’Finn at eighteen playing Nerissa, Maria, and Audrey. Indeed most of
Mrs. Hunter-Hart’s company, with the exception of Michael O’Finn and
herself, were under thirty. Bram was enjoying himself so much that out
of sheer good-will toward life he fell deep in love with Nancy. For a
while, everybody in the company watched the affair sympathetically.
Even Miss Hermione Duparc, the second lady, who had never understood
why Mrs. Hart had cast Nancy for the part of Nerissa and herself for
Jessica, was heard to murmur intensely that the little affair lent
quite a sparkle of romance to Spring in the Black Country and that it
was pretty to see the way those two children were enjoying themselves.
However, the affair presently became serious when the young lovers
announced that they were going to be married and Michael O’Finn woke up
to the fact that he was in danger of losing his only daughter.

“But, O’Finn, you’ve only had Nancy touring with you for a few months,”
Bram protested, when the heavy father, one hand thrust deep into
his buttoned frock-coat, strode up and down the unusually spacious
sitting-room he and Nancy were sharing that week in Birmingham, and
proceeded to give a performance of a character that had slipped between
King Lear and Shylock and fallen into melodrama.

“I had dreamed,” the old actor declaimed in a voice that rustled with
Irish foliage and was at the same time fruity with pompous tragic
tones, “I had dreamed of many harpy yeers before us, harpy, harpy yeers
in which I would behold my only daughter growing more like her beloved
mother whose loss has darkened the whole of my existence, since I laid
her to rest to wait for the last trump to ring out above the moil and
toil of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Young man, you have wounded a father in his
tenderest spot. You have shattered his hopes. You have torn the fibres
of his heart. In my mind’s eye I perceive my little daughter still
clutching at the dear maternal breast, and you blast that sacred vision
by proposing to commit matrimony with this tender suckling.”

“But, O’Finn, you didn’t object to her acting in other companies till
she was twelve years old; and for four years after that she lived with
an aunt in Dublin, so that you hardly ever saw her.”

“Young man, do not taunt an unhappy parent with what he has missed. She
and I were clutched by the iron hand of circumstance. The practical
considerations of finance ruled that we should live sundered until
now; but now, now at the very moment when the clouds are breaking to a
glorious day, you descend upon us like a thunderbolt out of a clear
sky and propose to marry this motherless child and drench the cheeks of
a stricken father with tears, idle tears.”

“But, O’Finn, Nancy isn’t as young as all that,” Bram protested.

“Spare your taunts, young man. I charge you, spare them. Be content
with the havoc you have wrought, but do not gloat like a vulture upon
the reeking ruins.”

“Look here, O’Finn, can’t we discuss this matter sensibly?”

“Sensibly?” cried the heavy father, throwing up his arms as a suppliant
at the throne of Heaven. “Sensibly? Ha-ha! Tarquin’s loathly form
steals into my domestic hearth and ravishes my daughter’s love, and
I, I the broken-hearted parent, am invited by the ravisher himself to
discuss the matter sensibly! Tempt me not to violence, young man. Do
not tempt me, I say. For twenty years, whenever I have had occasion to
visit the metropolis of the Midlands, I have stayed in Mrs. Prattman’s
comfortable lodgings without ever breaking so much as a humble egg-cup.
Do not tempt me to bring the whole house about my ears in the wild and
uncontrollable fury of despair.”

Bram began to laugh.

“He laughs! Ha-ha! He laughs! He surveys the havoc he has made and
laughs! A hyena wandering in a desert might abstain from laughter at
such a moment, but not this young man. No, no! _He_ laughs.”

“I’m really very sorry, O’Finn, but if you will go on talking like
that, I simply can’t help laughing.”

At this moment Nancy herself entered the sitting-room.

“Hello, boys, what’s the joke? Do tell a pal,” she cried in a radiance
of good-fellowship.

The heavy father sank down into one of Mrs. Prattman’s armchairs and
buried his head in his knees.

“It isn’t a joke at all, Nancy. It’s very serious. Your father won’t
hear of letting us get married, he says we’re too young.”

“The dear old duffer,” said Nancy. “Why, then we’ll just have to get
married without saying any more about it.”

“Never!” thundered the heavy father, springing to his feet.

“Then I’ll go back to Aunt Kathleen,” Nancy vowed. “If I’m old enough
to make love on the stage, I’m old enough to make love off it.”

Michael O’Finn, having taken up this attitude in his lodgings, could
not resist elaborating it before the performance in the cosy little
saloon bar of the “Saracen’s Head” just round the corner from the
stage-door. The result was that his delivery of Jacques’s great speech
in the Forest of Arden lost much of its austere melancholy and most
of its articles definite and indefinite. A pronounced thickening of
all the sibilants with a quantity of unnecessary tears left Jacques
himself, at the end of that strange eventful history, in a state of
mere oblivion and apparently sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans
everything. When the curtain fell on the second act, Mrs. Hunter-Hart,
who had been watching him from the wings, invited her heavy man to step
up to her dressing-room and explain what he meant by it.

“I am ecsheedingly dishtreshed, Mrs. Hart, but a domeshtic mishfortune
overtook me thish afternoon and I’m afraid that I drank rather more
than wash good for me in the ‘Sharashen’s Head.’”

He proceeded to give Mrs. Hunter-Hart an account of the shock which had
led him into such unprofessional conduct.

“O’Finn, I’m astonished at you! I would not believe that a man of your
age could make such an unmitigated ass of himself. Come, let me try you
with your cues.

“_Even a toy in hand here, sir: nay, pray be covered._”

“_Will you be married, motley?_” O’Finn muttered thickly.

“_As the ox hath his bow, sir_,” Mrs. Hart went on, “_the horse his
curb, and the falcon her bells, so hath man his desires; and as
pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling_.”

“Yes, I perceive the point you’re making, ma’am,” the old actor
admitted. “But with your permission I would....”

“Beginners third act,” cried the junior member of the company, hurrying
along the stone corridors past the dressing-room doors.

Perhaps if the interval had been longer, Mrs. Hunter-Hart might
have persuaded Michael O’Finn that he was behaving unreasonably and
absurdly. As it was, he recovered his sense of outraged paternity, and
on the following night he worked up his feelings in the bar of the
“Saracen’s Head” to such a pitch that several members of the company
began to think that Bram really must have been behaving rather badly
with Nancy. O’Finn played Sir Toby Belch that night, and, as the
_Birmingham Daily Post_ said, it was probably as ripe a performance as
had ever been seen on any stage.

However, what had begun not exactly in jest, but to some extent as
a piece of play-acting, became serious; for Michael O’Finn, who had
nearly ruined his youthful career by hard drinking, seemed inclined
to revert to the wretched habit in his maturity. Bram began to feel
thoroughly upset, in spite of Nancy’s protestations of undying love and
her promise to run away and be married to him the moment he gave the
word. Mrs. Hunter-Hart herself continued to be kind, and was always
assuring them of her great influence over the intransigent father and
of the certainty that he would soon come to his senses. The rest of
the company was on the whole unfavourable to the lovers, so sad was
the picture that O’Finn drew of a desolate future bereft of his only
daughter and doomed for ever to tour the provinces in lonely lodgings
without being allowed to buy that little cottage in the country,
where with Nancy in affectionate ministration he was to rest during
the rose-hung Junes of conventional idealism, and to which he was
ultimately to retire on his savings for a peaceful pipe-smoking old
age. As a matter of hard fact, Michael O’Finn had exactly two weeks’
salary in his bank, barely enough to pay the lawyer for the conveyance
of a two-roomed bungalow on the banks of the Thames.

A week or two later in the middle of this situation Bram received a
letter from his grandmother:

                                                     Lebanon House
                                                        Brigham.
                                                     May 31st, 1889.

  Dear Bram,

  Your father is dead. He was humbly presenting a loyal address to
  the Duke of Edinburgh and having always had, as you know, a wretched
  crop of hair, he caught a cold which developed into pneumonia, and
  that’s the end of my son Joshua. I understand that Caleb is the
  sole heir subject to certain annuities payable to your aunts and an
  injunction not to let his mother starve. You are not mentioned in
  the will. However, since Caleb won’t come of age for a month or two,
  the executors (neither of whom are Peculiars) think that, if you
  were to return home immediately, pressure could be brought to bear
  on your brother to come to an equitable arrangement by which, if you
  consented to devote yourself to the business, you should be made a
  partner in the firm. It lies with you, my dear boy. Is it worth while
  to make yourself pleasant to that sleek Jacob for the sake of perhaps
  a thousand pounds a year (I don’t think you’d get more out of it),
  or would you prefer to remain poor, free, and honest? I know which I
  should choose if I were you. You know that I would like to see you
  before I die, though I’m bound to say that at the present there is
  no sign of my dying. More’s the pity, for I am heartily sick of this
  life, and though I admit I am now faced with the dread of another
  much longer one hereafter, I’m hoping that the rumour prevalent about
  eternity has been grossly exaggerated. I rarely leave my own room
  nowadays, and my eyes have been giving me a good deal of trouble,
  so that I find it almost impossible to read. However, luckily I
  have unearthed in Brigham a pleasant young woman with a respect for
  commas and colons who reads aloud to me in a not quite intolerable
  French. She winces at Zola, but then so do I, for he’s such a rank
  bad writer. Nevertheless, I cannot resist the rascal just as once
  upon a time I could never resist staring into shop windows. How your
  grandfather hated that habit of mine! He never knew what it might
  lead to. People feel the same about Zola, I suppose. Strange your
  father dying abruptly like this. I had figured him as a perpetual
  phenomenon like the smoke of the Brigham chimneys. If you _do_ decide
  to come home, you should come quickly.

                                  Your loving
                                           Grandmother.

Bram contemplated the sheets of sprawling spidery handwriting and
wondered what he ought to do. His grandmother did not know what a
problem she was putting before him. It was not so easy to laugh at the
idea of a thousand pounds a year, now that he was engaged to Nancy. A
settled prospect was likely to make her father take another view of
their marriage. It would be deuced hard to eat humble-pie to Caleb, but
with Nancy as a reward he could achieve even that. And life in Brigham?
Ugh! Well, even life in Brigham with Nancy laughing beside him would be
sweeter and lovelier than life in Paradise without her.

He showed the letter to his sweetheart and asked her advice.
Afterwards, he used to wonder how he could ever have doubted for a
moment what her answer would be.

“Go home?” she exclaimed. “Why, Bram darling, you must be mad to
think of such a thing. What’s a thousand a year compared with your
self-respect?”

“I thought your father might take a more reasonable view of our
marriage, if I could be doing something more solid than acting in the
provinces.”

“Has _he_ ever done anything more solid himself? Never in his life.
Well, listen to me, Bram, if you go back home and crawl to that brother
of yours, I swear I’ll break off our engagement. Now there it is
straight.”

“You know there’s only one reason would make me go home.”

“Well, you’ll have to marry a squib, my dear, for you’ll certainly
never marry your Nancy if you do.”

“There doesn’t seem much chance of my ever marrying you as things are
now,” Bram sighed.

“Will you elope? Now listen to me, I’m serious. I’m after thinking that
an elopement is the only solution for us. What is it Touchstone sings
to Audrey:

    Come, sweet Audrey:
    We must be married, or we must live in bawdry!

At least he doesn’t sing it in our version, because dear old Ma Hart
is so damned genteel she wouldn’t have such a sentiment uttered by a
member of her pure company. But it’s in Shakespeare, for I read it when
I was studying the part.”

“But your father, you lunatic?”

“Och, my father! He can’t drink any more than he’s drinking now, and
it would give him a gentlemanly excuse for getting drunk if he was to
celebrate his daughter’s wedding. Listen. You’ve enough money to buy
the ring and the license?”

“Oh, I’ve saved twelve pounds this tour already.”

“Next week’s Leamington and Coventry, and the week after’s Leicester.
Let’s be married in Leicester on Saturday week. That’s the only way
to deal with father, and indeed it’s a kindness to the man, for he’s
getting tired of playing the ill-used father, and a little bit of
geniality for a change will do him all the good in the world.”

Bram caught her to him.

“You won’t regret it, Nancy?”

“Why should I regret it?”

“You shan’t, you shan’t, dear Nancy. Listen, I haven’t said anything
about this before, because I didn’t want to give you the idea that I
was trying to make a bargain over you. But I don’t believe in mixed
marriages, and I think I’d like to be a Catholic. My grandmother’s a
Catholic, you know, and she’s the only creature in the world I really
care for, except you, my sweetheart.”

“Ah, now, don’t think it’s so easy to become a Catholic. You’ll have to
have the devil’s own amount of instruction first. You can be married
without knowing a thing at all about it. But the priest won’t baptise
you so easy as he’ll marry you. Conversion can wait till we have a
little more time to ourselves.”

So, on the sixteenth of June at Leicester Bram and Nancy were married.
The ceremony achieved, they went for a long drive in a fly through the
not very beautiful Leicestershire country and arrived back at Michael
O’Finn’s lodgings about five o’clock to announce the state of affairs
at the favourable hour when he should be digesting his dinner over a
cigar. It was the last evening of the tour and _Twelfth Night_ was
in the bill, so that, if he should go out and get drunk before the
performance, he was less likely to disgrace himself as obviously as in
any of his other parts.

“Well, we’ve done it, father,” Nancy began.

“Done what?” he demanded, crackling the leaves of _The Stage_ and
scowling at Bram over the top of it.

“We’re married. Yes, we were married in St. Aloysius’ Church this
morning at twelve o’clock. There’s nothing to be done about it, father.”

“Nothing to be done about it?” repeated O’Finn. “There is a very great
deal to be done. Come to my arms, my beloved child. Weep upon my
shoulder in the excess of your new-found happiness. Weep, I say. Spare
not one single tear. Weep, weep. Young man, give me your hand. I have
entrusted you with the guardianship of the being I hold most sacred of
earth’s creatures. Honour that trust, young man. Rejoice a father’s
heart by your devotion. God bless you both, my children. And now let
us make arrangements to celebrate this auspicious event by a supper to
our friends and intimates at that best of hostelries, the old ‘Blue
Boar.’ There is not a moment to be lost. Mine host will want to make
his arrangements with the authorities for an extension of the license
to some seasonable small hour that will suitably hallow the occasion. I
will leave you here to bill and coo. Did you see what _The Stage_ said
about my Tranio this week? Read it, my boy. You’ll be delighted with
the way the notice is written. Judicial—very, very judicial.”

With this O’Finn, humming the _Wedding March_ in his rich bass, left
the newly wed pair to themselves.

“Well, I’m bothered,” Bram gasped. “He’s completely turned round.”

“I rather thought he would,” Nancy said. “I’ve never known him refuse a
fat part. He was getting tired of gloom.”

When Nancy and Bram went down to the theatre that night, O’Finn met
them at the stage-door, beaming with good-will.

“I’ve seen my dear old manageress. She has consented to grace the
festivity in person, and the acting-manager of the theatre has insisted
on our using the green-room. The supper is being sent in from the ‘Blue
Boar.’ Ham. Chicken. Lobster. All the appropriate delicacies. Several
of the orchestra are coming. Very jolly fellows. We’ll have some
capital fiddling. My dear old pal Charlie Warburton will give us Hood’s
_Bridge of Sighs_, and I daresay we can persuade him into _Eugene Aram_
as well. I’ve asked Mrs. Hart to recite us one of her gems. In fact,
the whole crowd will oblige. We are going to make a memorable night of
it. You couldn’t have chosen a better time to get married. We’ve had
a splendid Whitweek, and that showery Whit Monday put Mrs. H.-H. into
such a delightful humour. The last day of the tour. By gad, girl, I’m
proud to be your poor old father. And the booking to-night is splendid,
I hear. We shall have a bumper house for _Twelfth Night_.”

It was a merry evening in the old green-room of the Opera House,
Leicester, now, alas! fallen from its companionable status and turned
to some practical and business-like purpose. Gilded mirrors on the
walls, glittering gasoliers, bright silver, and shining faces, warmth
and happiness of careless human beings gathered together for a few
hours in fellowship, all are vanished now. Files and dockets and
roll-top desks have replaced them.

There is no doubt that the central figure on that genial night was
Michael O’Finn. The bride and bridegroom were teased and toasted,
but the central figure was the erstwhile dejected father. How many
speeches he made it would be hard to say, but he certainly made a
very great many. He proposed everybody’s health in turn, and when
everybody’s health had been proposed and drunk, he proposed corporate
bodies like the theatre orchestra, the town council of Leicester, and
Mrs. Hunter-Hart’s Shakespearian Company. And when he had exhausted
the living he sought among the dead for his toasts, raising his glass
to the memory of Will Shakespeare, Davy Garrick, Ned Kean, and Mrs.
Siddons. When the mighty dead were sufficiently extolled he proposed
abstractions like Art and the Drama. His final speech was made about
four o’clock in the morning—to the memory of the happy days, old
friends, and jolly companions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure that you will agree with me that we
have all spent a very enjoyable and—er—delightful evening. Those who
have not, hold up their hands. As I suspected _nemine contradicente_,
carried unam.... But there is one more toast to which I will invite
you to raise your glasses. Ladies and gentlemen, another night of our
earthly pilgrimage has waned. The sun of to-morrow already gilds the
horizon, though we may still seem to be living in to-night. We have
all wished long life and happiness to my beloved daughter and the
excellent young man—may I add excellent young actor—who has—er—joined
his future with hers, in short, who has married her. But there is yet
another toast to which I must bid you raise your glasses. Ladies and
gentlemen, we have reached the end of a happy tour with my dear old
friend and manageress, Mrs. Hunter-Hart. Some of us will meet again
under her banner in the last week of July on the sunny South Coast;
others will not. We shall probably never find ourselves all together
at the same festive board. Let me beg you therefore to drink all
together, for perhaps the last time in this mortal life, to the toast
of happy days and sweet memories, old friends and jolly companions.
Ladies and gentlemen, I confess without shame that a teardrop lurking
in the corner of my eye has coursed down my cheek and alighted upon the
lapel of my coat as I give you this solemn toast. Happy memories! What
a world of beautiful images those two words conjure up! I see again
the little cradle in which my mother rocked me to sleep. I kneel once
more by her knees to say my childish prayers. Anon I am a happy urchin
tripping and gambolling down the lane to the village school. Anon I
stand before the altar with my dearly beloved and alas! now for ever
absent wife beside me. I hear once more the vociferous plaudits of the
crowded pit as I cry to Macbeth, ‘Turn, hell-hound, turn.’ I live again
through the delightful moments of first meeting my dear old friend and
manageress, Emmeline Hunter-Hart, who has upheld the banner of the
legitimate drama against odds, ladies and gentlemen, odds, fearful,
tremendous, overwhelming odds. She has seen on all sides the hosts of
evil in the shape of these vile problem plays that have degraded, are
degrading, and will continue to degrade the sacred fane of Thespis.
Happy memories, ladies and gentlemen! And surely I may ask you to count
this night as one of your happiest memories. To the young couple who
this morning resolved to face the storms of life together, surely this
night will be a happy memory. Happy memories and—let us not forget
them—old friends, for are not all our happiest memories bound up with
old friends? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the double toast to which
I hope you will accord full musical honours by joining with me in
singing friendship’s national anthem, the moving song of the immortal
Robbie Burns, _Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot_.”

The party broke up. The footsteps of the company died away along the
cobbled streets of Leicester. The night became a happy memory. The
bride and bridegroom went dreaming homeward, life before them, the dewy
freshness of June around them, and overhead the faded azure of the
empty morning sky.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                         ROGUES AND VAGABONDS


The first thing that Bram and Nancy vowed to each other was that they
would never accept anything but a joint engagement. It sounded so easy
at first, but during the next four years many anxious moments were
caused by that rose-flushed resolution of early married life. However,
they did manage it, and not only that but they managed somehow to take
with them on tour the baby girl who was born on the sixteenth of July,
just a year and a month after they were married.

Letizia was born in a tiny cottage buried among the cherry orchards of
Kent. The original Letizia’s letter on being informed of the proposed
tribute to herself was characteristic:

                                                     Lebanon House
                                                        Brigham.
                                                    July 20th, 1890.

  Dear Bram,

  Why you should burden your wretched infant with the name that
  nearly eighty years ago was so unsuitably bestowed upon her
  great-grandmother I cannot imagine. I hope that the challenge you
  offer to Fate by calling any child Gladness will not be vented on
  her head.

  Lying here in bed, for I am become a bedridden old bag of bones, I
  look back at my wasted life and wonder why it should be prolonged in
  this unreasonable manner. Letizia! Did either of you young people
  realise that Letizia means gladness? However, as you insist on an
  exchange of compliments between this poor infant and myself, why, let
  your wife kiss her with her own fresh lips and tell her that once
  the lips of another Letizia were as fresh. I have just picked up
  the mirror and looked at myself. When I die, ah, _mon dieu_, when,
  when ... let me be crumpled up and flung into the nearest wastepaper
  basket.

                             Your affectionate ancestor,
                                              Letizia the First.

  By the way, I don’t think I’ve written since Master Caleb celebrated
  his coming of age by sacking all of the older workmen in the factory
  three months after they presented him with a token of esteem and
  respect. I understand they were informed that he only took this step
  for their own good, because he was afraid that they were getting too
  old for the dangerous trade of making rockets! The Peculiars made an
  attempt to recapture him from the Church of England (in which your
  father had recently invested) by offering him a vacant apostolic
  seat. Caleb replied that he could not see his way to occupy such a
  position satisfactorily. True enough, for his behind has swollen like
  a pumpkin in the sun. The pleasant-faced young woman who reads aloud
  to me is a most capable gossip. I am getting a new insight into local
  affairs.

Nancy wished that she could meet this strange old woman whose fierce
blood ran in the veins of the raspberry-coloured monkey at her breast
that was growing daily so much more like a human being. But she and
Bram agreed that it would be foolish to involve themselves in the
domesticity either of his family or of hers. They must only have one
aim, and that must be the joint engagement.

“Once we separate, things will never be the same again,” Nancy said.

“Oh, don’t I know it, dearest! But we won’t separate.”

Nor did they. Difficult though it was sometimes, they did always manage
to keep together, those rogues and vagabonds, and what is more they did
manage to keep Letizia with them.

“I wonder you don’t let your little girl stay with some relation while
you’re on tour,” a jealous mother would observe.

“I like to have her with me during these first years. Time enough to
lose her when she goes to school,” Nancy would reply.

“But surely the continual change and travelling cannot be good for so
young a child?” the critic would insist.

“I think change of air is good for everything,” Nancy would reply
firmly.

So, up and down the length of England, in and out of Wales, across
to Ireland and over the border to Scotland, for the next four years
Bram and Nancy wandered. In every new company the first thing they
pitched was Letizia’s canvas travelling-cot with its long poles and
short poles and cross pieces and canopy which all fitted ingeniously
together until the final business of lacing up the back like a pair
of stays was finished and Letizia was tucked away inside. Always the
same luggage—the tin bath packed so full of Nancy’s clothes that it
was a great struggle to fasten it—Bram’s second-hand portmanteau with
its flap like an elephant’s ear and bulging middle—the trim wicker
luncheon-basket, and big wicker theatrical-basket smelling of grease
paint and American cloth and old wigs. Endless journeys on Sundays in
trains without corridors and on some lines still lighted with oil-lamps
so that the baby Letizia, lying on the horsehair cushions of the
railway-carriage, would drop asleep to the rhythmic movement of the oil
swaying to and fro in the glass container. Long waits at stations like
York and Crewe, where the only Sabbath traffic in those days seemed to
be touring companies and all the compartments in all the trains were
labelled engaged. Long waits while stout men with red noses and blue
chins greeted old pals and ran up and down the length of the train,
and cracked jokes over flasks of whisky or brandy. Long waits in big
smoky junctions, sometimes catching sight of the _Dorothy_ company with
its pack of hounds—to the great excitement and joy of Letizia, who
would be held up to admire the barking of the bow-wows. Late arrivals
in smoky northern towns when the only fly at the station would be
collared by the manager and the humbler members of the company would
have to shoulder their light luggage and walk to their lodgings. Late
arrivals in snowstorm and rainstorm, in fog and frost, when the letter
ordering the meal had miscarried and the landlady was a gaunt stranger
who thoroughly enjoyed telling the weary vagabonds that, not having
heard from them, she had not lighted the fire in the sitting-room. Late
arrivals when the landlady was an old friend and came down the steps
to embrace both her lodgers and lead them into a toasting, glowing
room with the table laid and a smell of soup being wafted along the
little passage from the kitchen. Early morning starts when every lady
in Nancy’s carriage wanted a different corner and signified her choice
with an exaggerated and liverish politeness. Early morning starts when
some familiar little thing was left behind and the next lodgings did
not look like home until the missing article was forwarded on from the
last town. Every week a new town, and sometimes two or three small
towns in one week. Every Monday morning at eleven a music call, and
after that a walk round the new town to discover the best and cheapest
shops. Every day dinner at three o’clock and tea at six. Every evening
Letizia left to the guardianship of the landlady while Bram and Nancy
set out arm-in-arm to the theatre. Every night except Sunday the swing
of a dingy door and the immemorial smell of the theatre within. Our
modern young actors and actresses do not know that smell. It vanished
in its perfection when electric light took the place of gas, and
unretentive encaustic tiles lined the corridors instead of bare stone
or whitewashed bricks. It requires something more than the warmth of
hot-water pipes to ripen and conserve that smell. It may have lost
some of its quintessential peculiarity when gas supplemented candles;
but those gas-jets covered with wire guards, on which the ladies and
gentlemen of visiting companies were requested by the management not to
boil kettles, must have added a beautiful richness of their own.

Thou glorious ancient smell of the theatre, thou sublime pot-pourri of
grease-paint, wig-paste, vaseline, powder, perspiration, old clothes,
oranges, tobacco, gas, drains, hair, whitewash, hot metal, and dusty
canvas, where mayest thou still be savoured instead of that dull odour
of Condy’s fluid and fire extinguishers which faintly repels us as we
pass through the stage-doors of our contemporary palaces of amusement?

                   *       *       *       *       *

Our particular vagabonds found it easier to obtain joint engagements
in musical shows. Nancy’s contralto voice, untrained though it was,
grew better and better each year, and Bram had developed into a capital
comedian. In the third and fourth winters after they were married they
played together in pantomime, and for the Christmas season of 1894
they were engaged at the Theatre Royal, Greenwich—Bram as Idle Jack
in _Dick Whittington_ and Clown in the Harlequinade, Nancy as Fairy
Queen and Columbine. It was a pity that by now the Harlequinade was
already a moribund form of entertainment, for Bram had a genuine talent
for getting that fantastic street-life over the footlights. One may
be allowed a fleeting suspicion that the English stage has lost more
than it has gained by its banishment of the clown from its boards. The
French, who are dramatically so much superior, have preserved their
clowns.

Bram and Nancy found exceptionally pleasant lodgings in Greenwich.
Starboard Alley was a row of diminutive Georgian houses running down
to the river and overlooking at the back the grounds of the Trinity
Hospital. The bow windows which gave just such a peep of the wide
Thames as one may get of the sea itself in little streets that lead
down to ancient harbours, had no more than a genteel and unobtrusive
curve; it was the very place in which an outward-bound mariner would
have felt safe in leaving his wife to wait for his return. Starboard
Alley was too narrow for vehicles, so that there was never any sound
there but of the footsteps of people walking past on their way to
stroll along the embankment above the river—a pleasant place, that
embankment, even in this cold December weather, with the seagulls
wheeling and screaming overhead and the great ships coming home on
the tide, coming home for Christmas on the flowing tide. Not only was
the house in Starboard Alley itself attractive, but Mrs. Pottage, the
landlady, was as much a feature of it as the bow window, though, to say
truth, she had a more obtrusive curve. She was a widow of forty years’
standing, her husband, a gunner in one of Her Majesty’s ships having
been killed off Sebastopol; but she was still comely with her fresh
complexion and twinkling eyes, and her heart was young.

“I was hardly eighteen at the time my poor husband vanished out of
this world,” she told her lodgers, “and the offers of marriage I’ve
had since—well, I assure you the men have always been round me like
flies after sugar. But I’ve never melted like sugar does in the heat. I
said ‘no’ to the first in 1855 within four months of my pore William’s
death—well, it was death and burial all in one as you might say,
because he’d been talking to his mate as cheerful as a goldfinch the
moment before and the next moment there was nothing of him left. It
was his mate I said ‘no’ to, four months later, when he was invalided
home with a wooden leg. He was the first, and I said ‘no’ to the last
only yesterday afternoon just before tea—a Mr. Hopkins he is, a ship’s
chandler in a small style of business with a head like the dome of the
Observatory, but no more in it than an empty eggshell. Oh, I ashore
you I gave him a very firm ‘no,’ and he went back to his chandling as
dumb as a doornail. Yes, you might really call it quite a hobby of
mine refusing eligibles. I used to put the dates down in the butcher’s
book or the baker’s book as the case might be, but I got charged for
them one year as extra loaves and ever since then I’ve kept the dates
in my head. Off to rehearsal now, are you? Well, fancy them having
a rehearsal on Christmas Eve. I call that making a great demand on
anybody’s good nature. In fact, if anybody didn’t mind being a bit
vulgar, it’s what they might call blooming sauce. And you’ll leave your
little girl with me? What’s her name, Letishyer? Said with a sneeze, I
suppose? Never mind, I’ll enjoy having her hanging on to my skirts. I
never had no children myself. Well, I was just getting over the first
shyness and beginning to enjoy married life when all of a sudden that
Crimeen war broke out and my poor William had to leave me. Well, it
was a mean crime, and no mistake. Got to start off to the theatre now?
Wrap yourselves up well, for it’s biting cold to-night. It’s my opinion
we’re in for a real old-fashioned Christmas. Good job, too, I say, the
size women are wearing their sleeves nowadays. Balloon sleeves they
call them. Balloonatic sleeves I should say. Well, toora-loora!! I’ll
pop your little girl into her cot and have the kettle on the boil for
you when you come back. Ugh! What a perishing evening!”

The vagabonds arm-in-arm set out toward the theatre, the north wind
blowing fiercely up Starboard Alley across the Thames from Barking
Flats—a searching wind, fierce and bitter.

The _Dick Whittington_ company had been rehearsing hard during the
previous week, and now two days before the production on Boxing Day
it was seeming incredible that the management would ever have the
impudence to demand the public’s money to see such a hopelessly
inadequate performance.

“We’ve been in some bad shows, my dear,” Bram said to Nancy on their
way to the theatre, “but I think this is the worst.”

“I’m too tired to know anything about it. But your songs will go all
right, I’m sure.”

He shook his head doubtfully.

“Yes, but that fellow Sturt who plays the Dame is a naughty actor. He
really is dire. I simply cannot get him to work in with me. That’s the
worst of taking a fellow from the Halls. He hasn’t an elementary notion
how to help other people. He can’t see that it takes two people to make
a scene funny.”

“Never mind,” said Nancy, yawning. “It’ll all be splendid, I expect, on
Wednesday. Oh, dear, I am tired. They’ve given you a good trap-act in
the Harlequinade.”

“Yes, that’s all right. But do you know, Nancy, it’s a queer thing, but
I funk trap-acts. I’m never happy till I’ve gone through the last one.”
He stopped short and struck his forehead. “Great Scott!”

“What is the matter?”

“We haven’t got anything for Letizia’s stocking?”

“Bram!”

“What time were we called again?”

“Six o’clock.”

“Look here,” he said, “you go round and collect some toys from a
toyshop. I’ll make an excuse to Worsley if by any chance he wants
the Fairy Queen at the beginning. But he won’t. He wants to get the
shipwreck right. We shall probably be on that till nearly midnight.”

So Nancy left Bram at the stage-door and went on to do her shopping.
The streets were crowded with people, and in spite of the cold wind
everybody was looking cheerful. The shops, too, with their brightly lit
windows all decorated with frosted cotton-wool and holly, exhaled that
authentic Christmas glow, which touches all but hearts too long barren
and heads too long empty. The man who sneers at Christmas is fair game
for the Father of Lies.

Nancy revelled in the atmosphere, and for a while she allowed herself
to drift with the throng—hearing in a dream the shrill excited cries of
the children, the noise of toy instruments, the shouts of the salesmen
offering turkeys and geese; smelling in a dream that peculiar odour of
hung poultry mixed with crystallised fruit, oranges, and sawdust; and
perceiving in a dream the accumulated emotion of people who were all
thinking what they could buy for others, that strange and stirring
emotion which long ago shepherds personified as a troop of angels
crying, “Peace, good-will toward men.” She felt that she could have
wandered happily along like this for hours, and she was filled with
joy to think that in a short while she should be welcomed by some of
these children as the Spirit of Good. The part of the Fairy Queen had
never hitherto appealed to her; but now suddenly she was seized with
a longing to wave her silver wand and vanquish the Demon King. She
passed four ragged children who were staring at a heap of vivid sweets
on the other side of a plate-glass window. She went into the shop and
bought a bagful for each. It was wonderful to pass on and leave them
standing there on the pavement in a rapture of slow degustation. But
her time could not be spent in abandoning herself to these sudden
impulses of sentimental self-indulgence. She entered a bazaar and
filled her bag with small toys for Letizia’s stocking—a woolly lamb,
a monkey-on-a-stick, a tin trumpet, a parti-coloured ball—all the
time-honoured cargo of Santa Claus. She had already bought a case
of pipes for Bram’s Christmas present. But now she was filled with
ambition to give him some specially chosen gift that would commemorate
this cold Greenwich Yuletide. What should it be? She longed to find
something that would prove to him more intimately than words all that
he had meant to her these years of their married life, all that he
would mean to her on and on through the years to come. Bram was such a
dear. He worked so hard. He was never jealous. He had nothing of the
actor’s vanity, and all the actor’s good nature. What present would
express what she felt about his dearness? Ash-trays, cigarette-holders,
walking-sticks—what availed they to tell him how deep was her love?
Pocket-books, card-cases, blotters—what eloquence did they possess?
Then she saw on the counter a little silver key.

“Is this the key of anything?” she asked the shopman.

“No, miss, that is what they call a charm. We have a large assortment
this season. This silver puppy-dog, for instance. You’d really be
surprised to know what a quantity of these silver puppy-dogs we’ve
sold. They’re worn on bracelets or watch-chains. Quite the go, miss, I
can assure you.”

“No, I like this key better. Could you let me have a box for it?”

“Certainly, miss.”

“And I want to write something on a card and put it inside if you’d
kindly seal it for me.”

“With pleasure, miss.”

Nancy leant over the counter and wrote, with a blush for her folly:
_This is the key of my heart. Keep it always, my darling._

The key and the card were put inside the box; and she hurried off to
the theatre, laughing to herself in an absurdly delicious excitement at
the thought of hiding it under Bram’s pillow to-night.

The dress rehearsal was not over till three o’clock on Christmas
morning. The ladies and gentlemen of the company were all so tired when
at last they were dismissed that when they came out of the theatre and
found Greenwich white and silent under a heavy fall of snow, not even
the comedians had any energy to be funny with snowballs.

“What time’s the call to-morrow, dear?” one of the chorus called back
to a friend in a weary voice.

“There’s no call to-morrow, duck. It’s Christmas Day.”

“Gard, so it is!”

“Don’t forget the curtain goes up for the matinée on Boxing Day at
half-past one, dear.”

“Right-o!”

“Queenie’s got her boy staying at the ‘Ship,’” the chorus girl
explained to Nancy. “And she’s the limit for forgetting everything when
he’s about. She’s potty on him. Merry Christmas, Miss O’Finn.”

“Merry Christmas to you.”

All the way back up the court, at the end of which was the stage-door,
the Christmas greetings of one to another floated thinly along the
snowy air.

“A merry Christmas! A merry Christmas.”

Bram took Nancy’s arm, and they hurried away back as fast as they could
to Starboard Alley, where they found Letizia safe in her cot, one of
Mrs. Pottage’s stockings hanging like a coal-sack over the foot of it.

“You never told me which stocking to put out,” said the landlady. “So I
hung up one of my own. Of course, I hung up one of hers as well, pore
mite, but hers wouldn’t hold more than a couple of acid-drops. Mine is
a _little_ more convenient.”

“How kind of you to sit up for us, Mrs. Pottage,” the two vagabonds
exclaimed.

“Oh, I’ve been thinking over old times. You know. On and off the doze,
as you might say. My friend Mrs. Bugbird didn’t hop it till past
midnight. She generally comes in for a chat of a Monday evening, and
being Christmas Eve she stayed on a bit extra. She’s a real comic, is
Mrs. Bugbird; but she had to be a bit careful how she laughed to-night,
because last week she ricked the plate of her teeth laughing over a
story I told her. Yes, the soup’s lovely and hot. But I did let the
fire out in your sitting-room. So if you wouldn’t mind coming into my
kitchen....”

“Was Letizia good?” the mother asked.

“She hasn’t moved an inch since I put her to bye-bye. I’ve popped up
to look at her several times. In fact, Mrs. Bugbird and me both popped
up, and Mrs. B. said a more sweetly pretty infant she never did wish
to see. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Mrs. Bugbird,’ I said, ‘that’s something for
you to say with the fourteen you’ve had.’ Fancy, fourteen! Tut-tut-tut!
Still if I’d accepted half my proposals, I’d have had more like forty
by now.”

A canary stirred upon his perch and chirped.

“Hear that?” said Mrs. Pottage. “That blessed bird understands every
word I say. Don’t you, my beauty? Now come along, drink up your soup,
and do eat a little bit of the nice cold supper I’ve put out for you.”

While her lodgers were enjoying the cold roast beef, Mrs. Pottage
examined the purchases made for Letizia’s stocking.

“Oh, dear, how they do get things up nowadays!” she exclaimed, holding
at admiring arm’s length the monkey-on-a-stick. “Lifelike, isn’t it?
You’ll want an orange and an apple, don’t forget. And I wouldn’t put
in too many lollipops if I was you, or she won’t be able to eat any
turkey. I got you a lovely little turkey. Nine pounds. Well, you don’t
want to sit down to an elephant. I remember one Christmas I invited
my sister to come up from Essex, and I thought she’d appreciate some
turkey, so I told the fishmonger to send in a really nice dainty
little one. Well, by mistake his boy brought round one that weighed
thirty-two pounds and which had won the prize for the biggest turkey
in Greenwich that year. In fact, it come round to me with a red and
white rosette stuck in its how-d’ye-do as big as a sunflower. Well, it
didn’t arrive till past eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve, and I was down
at the ‘Nelson’s Head’ with my sister till closing time, and there it
was waiting for us when we got back, tied onto the knocker. It gave
me a bit of a start, because I’d had one or two for old sake’s sake,
and I thought for the minute some pore fellow had gone and suicided
himself on my front door. Well, there was nothing to be done but cook
it, and my sister’s a small-made woman, and when we sat down to dinner
with that turkey between us she might have been sitting one side of
St. Paul’s and me the other. I give you my word that turkey lasted me
for weeks. Well, the wish-bone was as big as a church window, and I
could have hung my washing out on the drumsticks. It _was_ a bird. Oh,
dear, oh, dear! Well, I know when I threw the head out to the cat the
pore beast had convulsions in the backyard, and as for the parson’s
nose, well, as I said to my sister, the parson as had a nose like that
must have been a Jewish rabbit. What a set out it was, to be sure!
And my turkey which I ought to have had was sent up to a large family
gathering in the Shooter’s Hill Road, and half the party never tasted
turkey at all that Christmas.”

Mrs. Pottage continued in a strain of jovial reminiscence until her
lodgers had finished supper, after which she wanted to accompany them
upstairs to their room that she might help in the filling of Letizia’s
stocking.

“The fact is,” she whispered hoarsely, “I put that stocking of mine
out, because I’d bought a few odds and ends for her myself.”

She dived into the pockets of her voluminous skirt. “Here we are,
a bouncing dog with a chube at the end of it to squeeze. She can’t
swallow it unless she swallows the dog too, and I don’t think she’ll
do that. The _Story of the Three Bears_, warranted untearable, which
it isn’t, for I tore up two in the shop with my own hands just to show
the young man he didn’t know what he was talking about. A toy violing.
She won’t be able to play on it, but the varnish won’t hurt her. A
drum—well, it was really that drum which decided me to use one of my
own stockings. My calves have grown whopping. In fact, I’ve often said
jokingly to Mrs. Bugbird that I ought to call them cows nowadays.
That’s the lot, I think. Well, I shan’t wake you in the morning till
you ring. Just one tinkle will be enough. There’s no need to turn it
round as if you was playing a barrel organ, which is what the fellow
who played the villain in _His Life for Her_ did last November. He
wound up all the wire somewhere inside the wall. A nice set out we had,
and then he grumbled because I charged him in the bill for the work
the plumber did to get it right again. Well, good night, and a merry
Christmas.”

When the sound of Mrs. Pottage’s hoarse whispering had departed, the
little candlelit room glowed in the solemn hush of the great white
world, of which it seemed to be the warm and beating heart. Mother
and father bent low over the cot and listened to the faint breathing
of Letizia, watching lovingly those dark tangled curls and red-rose
cheeks. The father bent lower to touch them with his lips.

“No, no, don’t kiss her, boy,” said the mother. “You might wake her,
and she’ll be having such an exciting day to-morrow.”

Nancy blew out the candle on the table by the bed, and slipped her
silver key beneath Bram’s pillow. A shaft of moonlight pierced the
drawn curtains and struck the canopy of Letizia’s cot. The radiance
vanished as gathering snow-clouds obscured the face of the moon.
Nancy fell asleep to the sound of Bram’s watch carrying on a fairy
conversation amid the echoes of Mrs. Pottage’s absurd stories.




                              CHAPTER IX

                           A MERRY CHRISTMAS


The snowy air had painted the ceiling of the room a lurid grey when
Letizia woke her father and mother next morning. She was standing up in
her cot, holding the footrails of the big bed with one hand and waving
the toy dog in the other.

“Look, muvver, look at my dog? I’ve got a dog, muvver! Look, faver,
I’ve got a dog! Look, I say! Look, look!”

Her parents had just focussed their sleepy eyes on the dog when it was
flung on the floor, and the monkey was being waved in its place.

“Look, muvver, I’ve got a monkey! And he’s climbing up and down. Look,
faver, look at my monkey. Oh, do look!”

The monkey’s triumph was brief, his degradation swift. The fickle mob
had found another favourite.

“Oh, muvver, look at my baa-lamb. I’ve got a little baa-lamb, faver.
Look at my pretty little woolly baa-lamb, faver,” she shouted
imperiously.

But the lamb immediately followed his colleagues to the floor.

“And I’ve got a rub-a-dub-dub and a wheedle-wheedle and an apple and
an orange. And I saw Santy Claus come down the chiminy, and had a most
anormous beard you ever saw and he said, ‘How d’ye do, Tizia, will you
give me a nice kiss?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and he gived me a kiss, and he
put fousands and fousands of lovely fings into my stocking. Wasn’t Mrs.
Porridge kind to give me her stocking because it was so anormous? And
please can I come and get into bed with you and bring my trumpet?”

“Come along, darling,” invited Nancy, holding out her arms.

Letizia climbed very cautiously out of her cot and was lifted up on the
bed and deposited between her father and mother, where she sat and blew
her trumpet without a stop until her father picked up his pillow and
pretended to smother her.

“Hullo,” Bram exclaimed, looking at the little box which was thus
uncovered. “Here’s something of mother’s under father’s pillow.”

Nancy smiled and shook her head.

“No, boy, that’s yours.”

Bram smiled and shook his head.

“No, it’s yours. I put it under your pillow last night.”

“But, Bram, I put it under yours.”

By this time Letizia had disentangled herself from the pillow and was
sounding another tucket, so that she had to be smothered all over again
with Nancy’s pillow. And there was revealed another little box exactly
like the first.

“Open it, muvver. Oh, do open it!” Letizia urged. “Perhaps there’s
choc-chocs inside.”

“Strange,” Bram exclaimed. “What’s inside mine, I wonder?”

Nancy and he opened the two boxes. In each one was a silver key.

“Bram!”

“Nancy!”

“_This is the key of my heart. Keep it always, my darling_,” he read in
an awed voice.

“_With this key you unlocked my heart_,” she read in equal awe.

They wished each other a merry Christmas, and with their eyes they
vowed eternal love, those unlocked hearts too full for words, while
Letizia blew such a resounding alarum on her trumpet that she fetched
up Mrs. Pottage.

“Well now, fancy that! I heard her right downstairs in the kitchen.
Well, it’s real Christmas weather, and no mistake. Good morning, my
beauty, and how are you?”

This to Letizia.

“Mrs. Porridge, Santy Claus brought me a dog and a lamb and a monkey
and a rub-a-dub-dub and a wheedle-wheedle and a trumpet and a book and
an orange and an apple and some sweeties and fousands of fings. And he
came down the chiminy, and I wasn’t a bit frightened.”

Mrs. Pottage shook her head in delighted admiration.

“Did he come down head first or feet first?”

“Bofe,” Letizia declared, after a moment’s pause.

“You can’t catch her out, can you? Why, she’s as cunning as King
Pharaoh,” Mrs. Pottage chuckled, and with this she departed to fetch
the morning tea.

Nancy was suddenly seized with a desire to go to Mass and take Letizia.

“I’ll come too,” Bram volunteered. “Now, don’t discourage me.”

It was true that Nancy always was inclined to discourage him from
taking an interest in her religion. Not that she took such a very
profound interest in it herself, to tell the truth. But she had a
dread of people’s saying that she had forced her husband to become a
Catholic. He did at intervals bring up the subject of being received;
but there never seemed to be time to take any steps in the matter when
they were on tour, and when they were resting it seemed a pity to
worry their heads about religion. However, that morning Nancy did not
discourage Bram from accompanying her and Letizia to Mass.

Letizia was very full of her visit to the Crib, when she saw Mrs.
Pottage again.

“And I saw the baby Jesus in his nightygown, Mrs. Porridge.”

“You did?”

“Yes, and He was lying on His back and kicking His legs up in the air
ever so high. And there was a moo-cow smelling Him.”

“No, darling,” her mother interrupted, “the moo-cow was praying to Him.”

“Well, he was smelling Him too.”

“You’d have to start walking the week before last to get in front of
her,” said Mrs. Pottage.

There was a letter from Nancy’s father to greet with seasonable wishes,
her and hers, and as a kind of Christmas present there was an extra
flourish to his already florid signature. He had been engaged to
play Sir Lucius O’Trigger in a production of _The Rivals_ at a West
End theatre, and he felt sure that this meant finally abandoning the
provinces for London. There was, too, a letter from old Mrs. Fuller
written by her companion.

                                                     Lebanon House
                                                        Brigham.
                                                    Dec. 23rd, 1894.

  Dear Bram,

  I can no longer hold a pen, even to wish you a merry Christmas and
  a fortunate New Year, and as much to your Nancy and that unhappily
  named Letizia. Although I am indecently old—eighty-two—I ought still
  to be able to write, but I’ve had a slight stroke and I who  once
  died to live now only live to die.

                                  Your loving
                                           Grandmother.

Besides these two letters there were a few cards from friends, but not
many, for it is difficult to keep up with people’s whereabouts on tour.

The Christmas dinner was entirely a small family affair, but only the
more intensely enjoyed for that very reason. Mrs. Pottage was invited
in to dessert, and also Mrs. Pottage’s assistant, a crippled girl, who
was imported to help in the household work on occasions of ceremony.
Quite what help Agatha Wilkinson was no one ever discovered, for she
could only move with extreme slowness and difficulty on a pair of
crutches. Perhaps her utility lay in being able to sit quietly in a
corner of the kitchen and listen to Mrs. Pottage’s conversation, which
increased in volubility, the more she had to do. There was a pineapple
on the table, a slice of which the landlady emphatically declined.

“No, thanks, not for me. That’s a thing I only eat from the tin. Raw,
I’d sooner eat a pinecomb any day. Would you like to try a slice,
Aggie?”

Agatha was too shy to refuse when Bram put a slice on her plate, and
Mrs. Pottage watched with obvious gratification her fearful attempts to
manipulate it.

“Ah, I thought she wouldn’t like it. You needn’t eat any more, Aggie,
if it puts your teeth on the edge. Yes, it’s my opinion if pineapples
cost twopence apiece instead of ten shillings people might buy a few
just to throw at strange cats. To scrape your boots on? Yes. To eat?
No. That’s my opinion about pineapples.”

In the evening, when Letizia had been put to bed after a number of
uproarious games in which Bram had surpassed even his own wonderful
record as an animal impersonator, Mrs. Pottage came in as magnificent
as a queen-dowager in black satin to ask if her lodgers would give her
the pleasure of their company in the parlour.

“I’ve got a few friends coming in to celebrate Christmas. Mrs.
Bugbird’s here, and two of my unintendeds—Mr. Hopkins, the
chandler—well, I thought I’d ask him, though he’s no more addition to
anything than a nought, which is what he looks like—and then there’s
Mr. Watcher. Yes, Watcher’s a good name for him, for he watches me
like a dog watches a bone. He and Mr. Hopkins can’t bear the sight of
one another. Well, I daresay there’s a bit of jealousy in it, if it
comes to that, just because I happened to refuse him before I refused
Hopkins. His business is coal. Sells it, I mean. I don’t think even
Watcher would have had the nerve to propose to me if he’d have actually
been a coalman. Oh, dear, oh, dear, who does marry coalmen, that’s what
I ask myself. Or sweeps, if it comes to that? And then there’s Mr. and
Mrs. Breadcutt, who’s an inspector of nuisances for the London County
Council. So, if you’ll come in and join us, we shall be a very nice
merry little party.”

Though they were feeling rather tired, Bram and Nancy accepted the
invitation, because Mrs. Pottage had been so kind to them and they
knew she would be terribly disappointed if they refused. However, they
stipulated that she must not persuade them to stay very late on account
of the matinée, to which, they reminded her, she had promised to take
Letizia to-morrow.

“Oh, I hadn’t forgotten. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy a good pantomime.
It’s a pity Mrs. Bugbird’s got to go and see her relations over in
Putney, because that woman so loves a bit of fun and always laughs so
hearty that she’d make any panto a success just by being there.”

Mrs. Bugbird, who was in the parlour when Bram and Nancy walked
downstairs, was built on an altogether larger scale than Mrs. Pottage.
The latter was plump and for her age still remarkably buxom; but she
was not noticeably too fat. On the other hand, Mrs. Bugbird’s immense
face crowned a really massive campanulate base. When she laughed,
which was practically all the time, her little eyes kept bubbling up
out of her cheeks and then apparently bursting as they were once more
swallowed up by the rolls of fat. This likeness to bursting bubbles was
accentuated by the drops of moisture that during her spasms of mirth
kept trickling down Mrs. Bugbird’s cheeks, so that she had from time to
time to wipe them away with an extensive red silk handkerchief on which
was printed in bright yellow a view of the Pool of London.

A feature of Mrs. Pottage’s best parlour was one of those Victorian
triple chairs, two of which were occupied by Mr. Hopkins and Mr.
Watcher. This meant that they were practically sitting back to back, an
attitude which did nothing to allay the rumour of their mutual lack of
esteem. Sitting thus, with their polished bald heads, they looked like
two boiled eggs in a china stand. No doubt, Mrs. Bugbird had perceived
this ridiculous resemblance, for every time she threw a glance in
the direction of the two rivals her eyes bubbled in and out with the
rapidity of soda-water. The outward appearance of Mr. Breadcutt, the
inspector of nuisances, bore no signs of his profession; indeed he
looked as tolerant and as genial a man as one might expect to meet in
a month. Perhaps the nuisances were ferreted out by Mrs. Breadcutt, an
angular woman with a pair of intelligent, pink-rimmed eyes, who sat up
on the edge of her chair like an attentive bull-terrier. The party was
completed by Agatha Wilkinson.

“Well, now we’re all here, what game shall we play?” Mrs. Pottage asked
expansively.

“Kiss in the ring,” Mr. Breadcutt suggested without a moment’s
hesitation. Whereupon Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Watcher both scowled, the
one at the ceiling, the other at the floor, while Mrs. Bugbird rocked
backward and forward in a convulsion of irrepressible mirth.

“George,” said Mrs. Breadcutt sharply.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Behave yourself, even if it is Christmas. You ought to know better at
your age than suggest such a game in a little room like this.”

“That’s just why I did suggest it,” Mr. Breadcutt retorted. “I’d have a
chance of catching Mrs. Pottage and helping myself to a good one.”

Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Watcher turned simultaneously at this outrageous
admission to glare at the inspector of nuisances. Unfortunately Mr.
Hopkins turned his head to the left and Mr. Watcher turned his head
to the right, so that their eyes met, and instead of glaring at Mr.
Breadcutt they glared at each other.

“Well, I’m going to call on Mr. Fuller for a song,” said Mrs. Pottage.
She apologised later for thus dragging him into a performance on his
night off. “But really,” she said, “I thought Hopkins and Watcher
was going to fly at one another. They looked like a couple of boxing
kangaroos.”

Bram obliged the flattered company with two or three songs which Nancy
accompanied on the ancient piano, the noise of which was the occasion
of another apology by the hostess.

“More like teeth clicking than music, isn’t it? Well, it hasn’t really
been used since the year dot excepting for a bookcase. It belonged to
my dear old dad, and he only bought it to cover up a spot in the wall
where the roof leaked. He couldn’t bear music, the dear old man. When
he was over seventy, he nearly got fined for squirting a syringe full
of the stuff he washed his greenhouse with into the big end of a cornet
and which a blind man was playing outside his house. Of course, as he
explained, he wasn’t to know the pore fellow was blind or he’d have
spoke before he spouted. But _I’m_ very fond of music, I am.”

And to prove her sincerity Mrs. Pottage sang _Two Lovely Black Eyes_, a
performance which so utterly convulsed Mrs. Bugbird that she fell off
her chair, and sat undulating on the floor for nearly five minutes,
until the united efforts of the male guests got her back again, when
in order to deal with the moisture induced by such excess of mirth,
she had to produce her reserve handkerchief, on which was printed a
gruesome picture of the execution of Mr. and Mrs. Manning.

Then Nancy sang to Bram’s accompaniment, after which Bram gave
imitations of familiar animals to the intense pleasure of Mr.
Breadcutt, who slapped his leg and declared he was a blooming marvel.

“George!” snapped his wife.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Don’t swear!”

“Blooming isn’t swearing.”

“It’s as near as not to be worth an argument,” she said severely.

This caused Mr. Breadcutt to wink at Mr. Watcher, who thought he was
winking at Mrs. Pottage and did not respond.

Then Mr. Hopkins tried to remember for the benefit of the company what
he assured everybody was a capital game that he often used to play at
social gatherings twenty years ago.

“We all sit round in a circle,” he began in a doleful voice. “Wait a
minute, what do you do next? Oh, yes,” he went on, as soon as he was
sure that Mr. Watcher had been successfully isolated from Mrs. Pottage.
“Now we all join hands.” Perhaps the emotion of finding her plump
hand firmly imprisoned in his own was too much for the ship-chandler,
for he could not remember what was the next move. “Wait a minute,” he
implored, holding Mrs. Pottage’s hand tighter than ever. “Don’t move,
and I’ll remember in a jiffy. Oh, yes, I’ve got it! I knew I would!
Somebody has to be in the middle of the circle. Mr. Watcher, perhaps
you’d stand in the middle, will you?”

“Hadn’t you better stand in the middle yourself?” the coal-merchant
replied. “You thought of this game. We aren’t guilty.”

“Don’t be so gruff, Watcher,” said Mrs. Pottage sternly. “You’ve been
sitting like a skelington at the feast ever since you arrived. Wake up
and be a man, do.”

Thus adjured Mr. Watcher unwillingly stood up in the middle of the
circle.

“What’s he do now, Hopkins?” Mrs. Pottage asked.

“I’m trying to remember. Oh, yes, of course, I know. I know. I know!
He’s blindfolded,” Mr. Hopkins exclaimed in a tone as near to being
cock-a-whoop as his low-pitched funereal voice could achieve.

“Mrs. B., you’ve got a nice big handkerchief. Tie Watcher up, there’s a
good soul,” the hostess ordered.

Mrs. Bugbird in a gurgle of suppressed laughter muffled the
coal-merchant’s disagreeable countenance with her reserve handkerchief,
from which his bald head emerged like one of those costly Easter eggs
that repose on silk in the centre of confectioners’ shops.

“Now what does he do, Hopkins?”

“Just a minute, Mrs. Pottage. I’m stuck again. No, I’m not. I remember
perfectly now. Turn him round three times.”

This was done, and there was another pause.

“Well, what next?” everybody asked impatiently.

“That’s just what I’m bothered if I can remember,” said the chandler at
last. “It’s on the tip of my tongue too ... but wait ... yes, no ...
yes, I’ve got it ... he asks ... no, that’s wrong, _he_ doesn’t ask
anything, we ask _him_.... Now what the juice is it we do ask him?...
Don’t say anything, because I’ll remember in a minute.... I’m bound to
remember.... You see, it’s such a long time since I played this game
that some of the rules....”

“Look here,” Mr. Watcher’s irate voice growled through the folds of the
handkerchief, “if you think I’m going to stand here wrapped up like a
Stilton cheese while you remember what game you played with Nore in the
Ark, you’re blooming well mistaken. And that’s that.”

“If you’d only have a morsel of patience, Mr. Watcher. I can’t remember
the whole of a big game all at once,” protested the chandler, still
clinging desperately to Mrs. Pottage’s hand. “But I will remember it.
It’s on the tip of my tongue, I tell you.”

“Well, what’s on the tip of my tongue to tell you,” shouted Mr.
Watcher, “I wouldn’t like to tell anybody, not in front of ladies.”
With which he pulled down the handkerchief round his neck and stood
glaring at the other players with the expression of a fierce cowboy.

Mr. Breadcutt in order to quiet the coal-merchant proposed as a game
familiar to everybody blind man’s buff.

“Not me you don’t blindfold again,” said Mr. Watcher. “And if Mr.
Hopkins starts in to try I’ll blindfold him without a handkerchief.”

“Well, what about a snack of supper?” suggested the hostess, who felt
that the situation required a diversion.

And her supper was such a success that before it was over the two
rivals were confiding in each other various ways of getting the better
of their common enemy, the purchaser.

When it was time to adjourn again to the parlour, Bram and Nancy begged
to be excused from enjoying themselves any longer in Mrs. Pottage’s
company in view of the hard day before them at the Theatre Royal.

“You’ve given us such a jolly Christmas, dear Mrs. Pottage,” said Bram.

“A lovely Christmas,” Nancy echoed.

“Well, I’m sure I’ve enjoyed _my_self, and Mrs. Bugbird said she’s
never laughed so much in all her life as what she did when Mr. Fuller
was imitating them animals. ‘Lifelike,’ she said they was, and she
spent her girlhood on a farm, so that’s a bit of a compliment coming
from her. Well, good night. Oh, dear, oh, dear, before we know where we
are we shall be seeing in the New Year. I’m bound to say, what with one
thing and another life’s full of fun.”




                               CHAPTER X

                             THE PANTOMIME


“Now listen, Letizia, you’re to be a very good little girl and do
anything that Mrs. Pottage tells you without arguing,” Nancy admonished
her small daughter before she left Starboard Alley next morning to
dress for the matinée.

“Can I take my lamb what Santy Claus gave me to the pantomine?”

“Yes, I daresay Mrs. Pottage will let you.”

“And my dog? And my monkey? And my rub-a-dub-dub and my wheedle-wheedle
and my....”

“No, darling, you can take the lamb, but the others must stay at home.”

“I aspeck they’ll cry,” Letizia prophesied solemnly. “Because they
guessed they was going to the pantomine.”

“If she isn’t a regular masterpiece,” the landlady exclaimed. “Oh,
dear, oh, dear! She’s got an answer for every blessed thing. Listen, my
beauty, we’ll leave the rest of the menargerie to keep John company.”

John was the canary, and fortunately this solution commended itself to
Letizia, who seemed more hopeful for the happiness of the toys that
were going to be left behind.

There is no doubt that the presence of Mrs. Pottage and Letizia
contributed largely to the success of the Theatre Royal pantomime that
afternoon. No false shame deterred Letizia from making it quite clear
to the audience that it was her own mother who bearded the Demon King
Rat in his sulphurous abode.

    “Stop, ere you any viler magic potions brew,
    For I declare such wickedness you soon shall rue.”

“Muvver!” cried Letizia, clapping her hands in an ecstasy of welcome.

“Ush!” said a solemn and deeply interested woman sitting in the row
behind.

“It _is_ my muvver, I tell you,” said Letizia, standing up on the seat
of the stall and turning round indignantly to address the woman over
the back of it.

“Of course, it’s her mother,” Mrs. Pottage joined in even more
indignantly. “Nice thing if a child can’t call out ‘mother’ in a free
country without being hushed as if she was nobody’s child.”

The solemn woman took an orange out of a bag and sucked it in silent
disapproval.

    “No use for you to raise the least objection,
    Dick Whittington is under my protection,”

declared the Fairy Queen, waving her wand to the accompaniment of a
white spot-light.

    “In vain you seek to make my plans miscarry,
    For Dick his master’s daughter shall not marry,”

declared the Demon King Rat, waving his sceptre to the accompaniment of
a red spot-light.

“That man’s bad,” Letizia announced gravely.

If the traditional scene of alternate defiance of each other by the
powers of Good and Evil had lasted much longer, she might have made
an attempt to reach the stage and fight at her mother’s side; but the
Demon King Rat vanished down a trap and the Fairy Queen hurried off
Left to make way for Cheapside.

“Why has faver got a red nose?” Letizia inquired, when Bram entered
made up for Idle Jack. “I don’t like him to have a red nose. My lamb
what Santy Claus gave me doesn’t like him to have a red nose.”

Whereupon Letizia climbed up on the seat of the stall once more and
turned her back on the stage in disgust.

“Would you mind telling your little girl to kindly sit down,” the
solemn and deeply interested woman behind requested of Mrs. Pottage.

“This is my lamb what Santy Claus gave me,” Letizia informed the solemn
woman in her most engaging voice, at which the solemn woman turned
to her neighbour and declared angrily that children oughtn’t to be
allowed into pantomimes if they couldn’t behave theirselves a bit more
civilised.

“Get down, duckie, there’s a love,” said Mrs. Pottage, who in spite of
her contempt for the solemn woman could not but feel that she had some
reason to complain.

“Well, I don’t want to see faver with that red nose,” objected Letizia,
who thereupon sat down in her stall, but held her hands in front of
her eyes to shut out the unpleasant aspect of her father in his comic
disguise. However, Idle Jack did so many funny things that at last his
daughter’s heart was won, so that presently she and Mrs. Pottage were
leading the laughter of the house.

Finally when Idle Jack emptied a bag of flour on the Dame, Letizia was
seized by such a rapture of appreciation that she flung her lamb into
the orchestra and hit the first violin on the head.

“Faver,” she shouted. “I’ve frowed my lamb what Santy Claus gave me,
and the wheedle-wheedle in the band has tooked him somewhere.”

Bram came down to the footlights and shook his fist at his small
daughter, an intimate touch that drove the house frantic with delight
and caused the solemn woman to observe to her neighbour that she didn’t
know who did come to the theatre nowadays, such a common lot of people
as they always seemed to be.

One of the features of pantomimes about this period was the
introduction of a sentimental song, usually allotted to the Fairy Queen
as having some pretensions to a voice, in the course of which a boy of
about twelve, chosen no doubt from the local church or chapel choir,
rose from his seat in the front row of the circle and answered the
singer on the stage, to the extreme delectation of the audience.

The refrain of the song this year went:

    Sweet Suzanne,
    I’ll be your young man,
    They’ve never made your equal
    Since the world began.
    Won’t you take my name?
    For my heart’s aflame
    For love of you,
    My pretty Sue,
    My sweet Suzanne.

and again:

    Your lips are red as rubies,
    Your eyes are diamonds rare,
    So while I have you,
    My lovely Sue,
    I’m as rich as a millionaire.

Why the Fairy Queen should suddenly enter and break into this
drivelling song was an unanswerable enigma, and why a little boy in an
Eton suit with a very white collar and a very pink face should rise
from the front row of the circle and sing each verse over again, while
the Fairy Queen walked backward and forward with one hand held to her
apparently entranced ear, was an equally unanswerable enigma.

At any rate Letizia thoroughly disapproved of the anomaly. While all
the women in the pit and gallery and stalls and circle were exclaiming:

“Oh, isn’t he a little love? Well, I declare, if he isn’t reelly
lovely. Oh, do listen to the little angel,” Letizia was frowning.
Then with great deliberation, unobserved by Mrs. Pottage, who was
languishing upon the sibilant cockney of this detestable young treble,
she stood up on the seat and shouted:

“Muvver!”

The Fairy Queen, while still holding one hand to an entranced ear,
shook her wand at her little mortal daughter. But Letizia was not to be
deterred from the problem that was puzzling her sense of fitness.

“Muvver!” she shouted again. “_Why_ is that boy?”

Then Mrs. Pottage woke from the trance into which the duet had flung
her and pulled Letizia down again into a sitting posture.

“Duckie, you mustn’t call out and spoil the lovely singing.”

“I don’t like that boy,” said Letizia firmly.

“Yes, but listen.”

“And my lamb what Santy Claus gave me doesn’t like him.”

“Hush, duckie, hush!”

“And I won’t listen. And I won’t look, Mrs. Porridge.”

“Come, come, be a good girl.”

But Letizia struggled out of Mrs. Pottage’s arms and retreated under
the seat of the stall from which she did not emerge until this
enigmatic interlude in the life of the Fairy Queen came to an end amid
a tumult of applause from the profoundly moved audience.

Letizia failed to recognise her father when he came rushing on for
the Harlequinade at the end of the Transformation Scene with the
time-honoured greeting of “Here we are again!” And when Mrs. Pottage
told her who the clown was, she merely shook her head violently and
reiterated “No, no, no, no, no!”

However, the Harlequinade itself thoroughly amused her, although she
did not approve of the Harlequin’s dance with her mother the Columbine.

“Who is that spotted man?” she asked. “Why does he frow muvver up like
that? I don’t like him. I don’t like his black face. I won’t let him
frow up my lamb what Santy Claus gave me.”

“Well, you threw it up yourself just now and hit the poor fiddle.”

“Yes,” Letizia acknowledged in a tone of plump contentment.

The Harlequinade came to an end with a wonderful trap-act, in which the
Clown was pursued by the Policeman head first through one shop window,
head first out through another, up a long flight of stairs that turned
into planks just as they both reached the top, so that they both rolled
down to the bottom and disappeared into a cellar. Out again and diving
through more windows, whirling round doors without hinges, climbing
over roofs, sliding down chimneys, until at last the Policeman’s
pursuit was shaken off and the Clown, after bounding up ten feet into
the air through a star-trap, alighted safely on the stage whence, after
snatching a basket that was hanging up outside a shop window, he began
to pelt the audience with crackers while the orchestra stood up to
play _God Save the Queen_ and the curtain slowly descended on a great
success at the Theatre Royal, Greenwich.




                              CHAPTER XI

                      THE END OF THE HARLEQUINADE


“I don’t think you _were_ a very good little girl,” said Nancy
reproachfully to her daughter when she was brought round to the
dressing-room by Mrs. Pottage after the matinée.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” averred Letizia entirely impenitent. “My
lamb what Santy Claus gave me saided I was a very good little girl. He
saided ‘Oh, Tizia, you _is_ a good little girl!’”

The landlady beamed.

“There’s one thing, she thoroughly enjoyed her little self, and so did
I, I’m bound to say, even if we _was_ a bit noisy.”

“I’m afraid Letizia was very noisy indeed.”

“Yes, but nobody minded two penn’orth of gin except a dismal-faced
widow-woman sitting just behind us, and she’d had more than two
penn’orth before ever she come out which is my opinion.”

“My husband and I won’t have time to dress and come home between the
shows,” said Nancy. “We’re having some dinner sent in to us here. The
curtain goes up again at seven, and it’s nearly six now.”

There was a tap on the door, and Bram, still in his clown’s dress but
without the tufted wig, peeped round the corner.

“Well, you’re a nice one,” he said to his daughter. “I nearly sent the
policeman down to you.”

“_Was_ you that white man with a funny face?” Letizia asked
incredulously.

“There you are, I told you it was your dadda,” Mrs. Pottage put in.

“Yes,” said Letizia, and in the tone of the affirmation a desire
to admit frankly that she had been wrong was mingled with a slight
resentment that Mrs. Pottage should have been right.

When Letizia had departed with the landlady, Bram and Nancy joined
several other members of the company at a picnic meal. The talk was
mostly of the pantomime, of how this song had gone and how that joke
had got across, of whether it would not be wiser to cut this scene out
altogether and shorten that one.

“Of course it’ll play closer to-night,” said one of the company. “And
they’ll be a little quicker with the changes. Or it’s to be hoped they
will.”

“That limelight man is a bit of a jay,” said the Demon King gloomily.
“Would he follow me with that spot? Not he. And when I was singing my
song, the fool was jigging it all over the stage like a damned rocket.
His mate was better with you, Miss O’Finn.”

“He was on me all right,” Nancy allowed. “But he ruined the last verse
of my first song by letting it fizz till I could have knocked him off
his perch with my wand.”

“I think our trap-act went great, old boy,” said the Policeman to the
Clown. “I’ve never known a trap-act go so smooth the first time. The
house was eating it.”

Bram nodded.

“Yes, it went all right,” he admitted without enthusiasm. “But that
star didn’t seem to me to be working properly again. Which reminds me,
I must get hold of Worsley and tell him to have a look at it.”

“Who wants Worsley?” inquired the stage-manager, coming into the
dressing-room at that moment.

“It was about that star-trap, old man,” said Bram.

“Now, that’s all right, old chap. Don’t you worry. I’ve been down under
the stage, and it’s working to rights now. Lovely.”

“I thought I wasn’t coming through this afternoon,” Bram grumbled.

“Why, you came up like a bird,” Worsley assured him. “What are you
talking about?”

“Yes, I know I _did_ come up,” Bram replied irritably, for he was
feeling thoroughly tired. “But it did stick for a second or two, and
you know what it would mean if I got caught.”

“Oh, Mr. Worsley,” Nancy exclaimed in a panic, “for God’s sake see it’s
all right to-night.”

“Now, don’t you worry yourself, Miss O’Finn,” the stage-manager begged.
“Good Lord, you don’t suppose _I_ want to have an accident?”

“I wish you’d speak to that blasted limelight man about getting his
red spot on me,” said the Demon King. “He ruined every entrance I’ve
got—and I haven’t got too many.”

The stage-manager decided that he should be happier elsewhere, and left
the assembled diners.

“Have a drink, old man,” somebody called after him. But Mr. Worsley
suspected a _quid pro quo_ and shouted back:

“Haven’t time now, old man. I’ll join you after the evening show. I’ve
got to see the property man.”

And they heard his voice go shouting along the corridors.

“Props! Props! Where the deuce is Props?”

“Poor old Mangel Worsley,” said the Demon King, with a gloomy shake of
the head. “He never ought to have gone in for panto. He’s not up to it.
He’d have done better to stick to Shakespeare. I saw his production of
_Macbeth_ for Wilson Forbes. Very pretty little show it was, too. Very
pretty. But this sort of thing is too big for him altogether. He can’t
grasp the detail. Result? My entrances go for nothing. For absolutely
nothing! It stands to reason, if a red spot-light’s thrown Right Centre
when I come on Down Stage Left it kills me dead. But that doesn’t
trouble Worsley, because he doesn’t realise the importance of ensemble.
He niggles, and it’s a pity, because within limits he’s quite a good
stage-manager.”

How full the Theatre Royal was that Boxing Night! And Morton’s Theatre,
the rival house, was just as full. People went to the pantomime
even in days as near to us as the early nineties. They could not
amuse themselves then by sporting with Amaryllis in the shade of a
picture-palace while black-eyed heroes dreamed in profile during two
hours of a monotonous reel or black-lipped heroines smeared their
cheeks with vaseline and, intolerably magnified, blubbered silently at
an unresponsive audience. The audience of the Theatre Royal that night
was there to enjoy the performance, even though it lasted from seven
o’clock till midnight. People went to the theatre in those days to see
and to hear, to love and to hate. They were not sitting jam-packed in
that reek of oranges and dust for the sake of cuddling one another.
Nobody dressed up like a fireman came and squirted antiseptic perfumes
over them. The odor of its own wedged-in humanity was grateful, an
entity that breathed, cheered, laughed, and wept as one. The Grand,
Islington, the Britannia, Hoxton, the Standard, Shoreditch, the
transpontine Surrey, yes, and in those days Old Drury itself still
defiant of change—all these theatres held people, not fidgety shadows
gazing with lack-lustre eyes at a representation of fidgety shadows.

In spite of their fatigue the company played _Dick Whittington_ that
night at Greenwich with treble the vigour of the afternoon performance.
Everything went better, in spite of the absence of Mrs. Pottage and
Letizia. Even the limelight men managed to keep their beams steadily
fixed on the object of their enhancement whencesoever he might enter,
whithersoever he might move, wheresoever he might stand. The billows
of the Demon King’s bass rolled along twice as majestically. Nancy’s
song with the overwashed chorister in the circle earned a double
encore. Principal boy, principal girl, dame, knockabout comedians, all
gained the good-will of the house. But _the_ success was Bram. After
his first scene Idle Jack had only to appear on the stage to send the
audience into a roar. The tritest line of dialogue was received as
heavenly wit. The stalest piece of fooling was welcomed in a rapture.

“Darling, you are being so funny to-night,” Nancy told him, when for a
moment they found themselves side by side in the wings.

“I don’t feel at all funny,” Bram said. “In fact, it’s because I’m
feeling so tired and depressed off, I suppose, that I’m trying to cheer
up by being extra funny on.”

He squeezed her hand, and a moment later she heard the deep-voiced
laughter of the house greeting another of his entrances.

Bram’s success as Idle Jack that night was consolidated by his Joey.
He was not just the traditional clown with wide red mouth, bending
low in exaggerated laughter and treading always on hot bricks. There
was something of the Pierrot in his performance. Not that he scorned
tradition overmuch. The whole audience recognised him as the authentic
Joey of their imagination; but he did contrive to be somehow the
incarnate spirit of that London street much more essentially than the
heavy-footed Harlequin, much more essentially than Columbine, whose
short pink tarlatan skirt did not become Nancy’s height, though she
pirouetted on and off the stage gracefully enough. Pantaloon, too,
was good, and the actor did manage to represent that hoary-headed
ancient Londoner in his absurd Venetian disguise. But Bram was the
ghost of old London itself—a London that was fast dying, though here in
Greenwich it might seem to be as full of vitality as ever. It was the
London of sweet lavender and cherry ripe, the London of hot cockles,
of Punch and Judy shows and four-wheelers and lumbering knife-board
omnibuses, of gas-lamps and queer beggars. Bram’s incarnation of this
vanishing city had that authentic whimsicality (the very term is nearly
unintelligible now) of old cockney humour, an urban Puckishness as if
for a while Robin Goodfellow had tried to keep pace with the times and
live in great cities. He made his audience feel that sausages were only
strung together because it was more amusing to steal a string than a
single sausage. His red-hot poker itself glowed with such a geniality
of warmth as made the audience feel that everybody to whose seat it
was applied was being slapped on the back in the spirit of the purest
good-fellowship.

Nancy had flitted for the last time across that most fantastic yet so
utterly ordinary street; and she paused in the wings for a moment,
before going up to her dressing-room, to listen to the tumultuous
laughter of the house at the great trap-act which was the climax of
the Harlequinade. She saw Bram’s white figure come diving through the
shop window and safely caught by the scene-hands stationed on the other
side. She saw the Policeman follow close upon his heels, and watched
the pair of them chase each other round and round the revolving door.
She heard the thunders of applause as the trick staircase shot the
protagonists from top to bottom, and the still louder thunder when Bram
appeared among the chimney-pots. Then she turned away and had just
reached the door of her dressing-room when the corridors which had been
echoing with the distant applause became suddenly still as death.

“I hope that husband of mine’s not doing some particularly breakneck
feat to thrill the Bank Holiday crowd,” she said to the principal girl
with whom she shared a room and who was by now nearly dressed. “What
has happened?” Nancy repeated. This quiet was unnatural. A gust of
overwhelming dread sent her hurrying back down the corridor, as she
heard the agonised voice of Worsley crying:

“Ring down! Ring down! For the love of God, ring down!”

At the head of the stairs she met the Pantaloon, beardless, with
startled eyes, who waved her back.

“Don’t come down on the stage for a minute, Miss O’Finn. There’s been
an accident. He was caught in the star-trap. The spring must have
broken.”

“Bram....”

He nodded, and burst into tears.

Nancy hurried past him toward the stage. Beyond the dropped curtain she
could hear the murmur of the anxious and affrighted audience. Bram was
lying beside the closed trap, the pointed sections of which were red.

“There isn’t a doctor in the whole audience,” Worsley was saying. “But
several people have run to fetch one. How do you feel now, old man?”

Nancy pushed her way through the staring group, and knelt beside Bram,
now unconscious, a bloody belt round his white dress, his head pillowed
on the string of sausages.

“My precious one,” she cried. “Oh, my precious one!”

His eyelids flickered at her voice, and his limp body quivered very
faintly.

“A doctor will be here in a minute, Miss O’Finn,” Worsley said.

“A doctor,” she cried. “Damn you, damn you! A doctor! He told you the
trap wasn’t working properly. If he dies, it will be you that has
killed him.”

By now, several of the ladies of the company had joined the group round
the prostrate clown.

“Hush, dear,” said one of them, “don’t say anything you may regret
afterwards.”

Nancy did not answer this pacific woman, but bent low over her husband.

“My precious one, my precious one.”

The doctor came at last. When he had finished his examination, he shook
his head.

“He is injured mortally.”

“Dying?” Nancy whispered.

“He can hardly live many more minutes with these injuries. Has he any
relations here?”

“I am his wife.”

“My poor girl,” said the doctor quickly. “I didn’t realise that. But
I couldn’t have hidden the truth. He must lie here. He’s unconscious.
Even to move him to a dressing-room would probably kill him.”

The group round the dying man moved away and left him alone with his
wife and the doctor, on that silent bright unnatural stage.

“And is there nothing we can do?” she asked.

“Nothing, my poor girl. It is kinder to leave him unconscious and not
try to revive him. He will suffer less.”

But presently Bram’s lips moved, and Nancy bending low to his mouth
heard the dim voice speaking with a fearful effort.

“I’m dying—Nancy darling—I wish—I wish....”

The dim voice died away.

“Oh, my only love, my darling, what do you wish? Do you want to see
Letizia?”

“No—no—better not—not kind for baby girls to see death—better
not—better not—Mrs. Pottage very kind—kind and good—I wish—I wish....”

Again the dim voice was lost.

“What, my precious one? What do you wish?”

“Nancy—if things are difficult—we haven’t saved much money—difficult—go
to Caleb—too bitter about my people—too hard—faults on both
sides—Nancy, kiss me once—quick—quick—I don’t think I shall know soon
if you kiss me....”

She touched his cold lips with hers.

“Such a darling wife—always such a darling—very happy together—happy
memories—your father’s speech—yes, Caleb will look after you if things
very difficult—give my love to grandmamma—always kind to me—happy
memories—Nancy! Nancy! I wish—oh, my own Nancy, I do wish....”

The dim voice was lost in the great abyss of eternity that stretched
beyond this fantastic ordinary street, beyond this silent bright
unnatural stage.

“Sweetheart, what do you wish? What do you wish?”

But the Clown was dead.




                              CHAPTER XII

                           LOOKING FOR WORK


There was not much money left when the funeral expenses had been paid
and Nancy had bought her mourning—those poor black suits of woe that
in their utter inadequacy even to symbolise still less to express her
grief seemed like an insult to the beloved dead. It was a desperate
challenge to fortune to abandon the Greenwich engagement. But Nancy
could not bring herself to the point of returning to the cast of the
pantomime. That was beyond the compass of her emotional endurance.
The management offered her a larger salary to play the Fairy Queen
only, without appearing as Columbine; but she refused. The Employers’
Liability Act did not exist at this date; and when the management
suggested, as a reason for not paying her direct compensation, that the
accident had already cost them dearly enough in the gloom it had shed
over what promised to be a really successful production, Nancy’s grief
would not allow her even to comment on such a point of view. Bram was
dead. People told her that she had a good case against the theatre. But
Bram was dead. He was dead. He was dead. All she wanted was to leave
Greenwich for ever, and when Mrs. Pottage offered her hospitality she
refused.

“It’s not pride, dear Mrs. Pottage, that prevents my staying on with
you. You mustn’t think that. It’s simply that I could not bear to go
on living alone where he and I lived together. I’m sure to find an
engagement presently. I have enough money left to keep Letizia and
myself for quite a little time.”

“Well, don’t let’s lose sight of each other for good and all,” said
the landlady. “Let’s meet some day and go down to Margate together
and have a nice sea blow. I’ve got a friend down there—well, friend, I
say, though she’s a relation really, but she is a friend for all that,
a good friend—well, this Sarah Williams has a very natty little house
looking out on the front, and we could spend a nice time with her when
she’s not full up with lodgers. I’d say ‘come down now,’ but Margate in
January’s a bit like living in a house with the windows blown out and
the doors blown in and the roof blown off and the walls blown down.”

So, Nancy left Starboard Alley and went to live in rooms in Soho,
perhaps in the very same house where more than a century ago Letizia’s
great-great-grandmother had been left with that cageful of love-birds
and the twenty pairs of silk stockings.

The houses in Blackboy Passage were flat-faced, thin, and tall like the
houses in Hogarth’s “Night.” At one end an archway under the ancient
tavern that gave its name to the small and obscure thoroughfare led
into Greek Street. At the other end a row of inebriated posts forbade
traffic to vehicles from Frith Street. The houses had enjoyed a brief
modishness in the middle of the eighteenth century, but since then
their tenants had gradually declined in quality while at the same time
steadily increasing in quantity. By this date nearly every one of the
tall houses had a perpendicular line of bells beside its front door and
a ladder of outlandish names. The house in which Nancy found lodgings
was an exception, for all of it except the basement belonged to Miss
Fewkes, who was her landlady. Miss Fewkes was a dried-up little woman
of over fifty, with a long sharp nose, and raddled cheeks so clumsily
powdered as to give to her face the appearance of a sweet which has
lost its freshness and been dusted over with sugar. Incredible as it
now might seem, Miss Fewkes had had a past. She had actually been
in the Orient ballet once, and the mistress of several men, each of
whom was a step lower in the scale than his predecessor. From each of
these temporary supporters she had managed to extract various sums of
money, the total of which she had invested in furnishing this house
in Blackboy Passage, where for many years she had let lodgings to the
profession. In spite of her paint and powder and past, Miss Fewkes wore
an air of withered virginity, and appeared to possess little more human
nature than one of her own lace antimacassars. Her thin prehensile
fingers resembled the claws of a bird; her voice was as the sound of
dead leaves blown along city pavements. Letizia disliked Miss Fewkes as
much as she had liked Mrs. Pottage. Nor did Miss Fewkes like Letizia,
whose presence in her lodgings she resented in the same way that she
would have resented a pet dog’s.

“I noticed your little girl’s finger-marks on the bedroom-door this
morning. Two black marks. Of course, as I explained to you, Miss
O’Finn, I don’t really care to have children in my rooms, but if I do
take them in I rather expect that they won’t make finger-marks. It’s
difficult enough to keep things clean in London, as I’m sure you’ll
understand.”

Nancy would have left Miss Fewkes after a week if she had had to leave
Letizia in her charge while she hung about in the outer offices of
theatrical agents in Garrick Street and Maiden Lane. Fortunately,
however, there were staying in the same house a Mr. and Mrs. Kino,
who took a great fancy to Letizia and insisted on having as much of
her company as they could obtain. Mr. Kino was the proprietor and
trainer of a troup of performing elephants, which were then appearing
at Hengler’s Circus. Mrs. Kino, a large pink and yellow woman, had
domestic ambitions and a longing for children of her own. Possibly
her dependency on elephants had begotten in her a passion for
diminutiveness. At any rate, until Letizia won her heart, she spent
all her time in stringing beads for little purses. Even when she made
friends with Letizia, the toys she always preferred to buy for her
were minute china animals and Lilliputian dolls, for which she enjoyed
making quantities of tiny dresses.

“Too large, duckie, much too large,” was her comment when Letizia
showed her the cargo of her Christmas stocking.

Miss Fewkes sniffed when she saw the china animals.

“Silly things to give a child,” she said. “Next thing is she’ll be
swallowing them and have to be taken in a cab to the hospital, but,
then, some people in this world go about looking for trouble and, when
they get it, expect every one else to sympathise. Ugh! I’ve no patience
with them, I haven’t.”

Nancy had found it impossible to persuade Letizia that she would never
see her father again in this world.

“I aspeck he’s only wented away,” she insisted. “I aspeck he’ll come
back down the chiminy one night. My lamb what Santy Claus gave me
saided he was perfickatally sure faver would come back down the chiminy
one night. So, I fink we’d better leave the gas burning, don’t you,
because he wouldn’t like to come back all in the dark, would he?”

Mrs. Kino was in the room when Letizia put forward this theory and with
a dumpy hand she silently patted the black sleeve of Nancy, who had
turned away to hide the tears.

Perhaps the kindest thing that fortune could have done for the young
widow was to throw difficulties in the way of her obtaining an
engagement. Had she found a “shop” immediately and gone out on tour
alone after those happy years of joint engagements the poignancy of her
solitude might have overwhelmed her. The battle for a livelihood kept
her from brooding.

But it was a battle through that icy winter, with the little pile of
sovereigns growing shorter and shorter every day and Nancy nearly
starving herself that Letizia might lack nothing.

“Some people burn coal as if it was paper,” Miss Fewkes sniffed. She
did not know that every half-hundredweight meant no lunch for her
lodger, and if she had, she would only have despised her for it.

“Nothing this morning, I’m afraid,” the agent would say. “But something
may be turning up next week. Two or three companies will be going out
presently. Look in again, Miss O’Finn. I’m not forgetting you. You
shall have a chance for the first suitable engagement on my books. Cold
weather, isn’t it? Wonderful how this frost holds. Good morning.”

Down one long flight of draughty stone stairs in Garrick Street. Up
another flight of tumbledown wooden stairs in Maiden Lane. Two hours’
wait in an icy room with nothing to warm one but the flaming posters
stuck on the walls.

“Ah, is that you, Miss O’Finn? I’m glad you looked in to-day. Mr.
Howard Smythe is taking out _The New Dress_. Have you seen it? Capital
little farce. There’s a part that might suit you.”

Any part would suit her, Nancy thought, for she was beginning to lose
hope of ever being engaged again.

“Look in this afternoon, Miss O’Finn, round about three. Mr. Howard
Smythe will be here then to interview a few ladies.”

Down the long flight of tumbledown wooden stairs and out past the
Adelphi stage-door into the Strand. What was the time? Half-past one.
Mrs. Kino was taking Letizia to the circus. Not worth while to go
home. She would find a tea-shop for lunch. A damp bun and a glass of
London milk. A greasy marble table, and opposite a hungry-eyed clerk
reading Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ while he eked
out his bun and glass of milk. The waitress, who had nine warts on
her fingers, flung down the skimpy bills with equal disdain for both
these customers. Outside, the roar of the Strand on the iron-bound air.
Inside, the rattle of plates and the harsh giggles of the waitresses.
Outside, the grey frozen sky. Inside, leathery poached eggs and
somebody arguing in a corner of the shop that he had ordered coffee.

“That is coffee,” said the waitress, tossing her head.

“Is it? Well, I must have meant tea.”

After lunch a walk along the Embankment to get warm. Gulls screaming
and quarrelling for the crusts that were being flung to them. Wretched
men and women freezing on the benches. Plane-trees hung with their
little black balls that stirred not in this immotionable and icy air.
Back to Maiden Lane, and up the tumbledown wooden stairs once more.
Another endless wait in the cold anteroom.

“Ah, good afternoon, Miss O’Finn. I’m sorry, but Mr. Howard Smythe has
filled up the vacancies in his cast. But if you look in again next
week, perhaps I shall have something that will suit you.”

“Anything will suit me,” Nancy sighed.

“Ah, but you won’t suit everything,” the agent laughed. “You’re so
tall, you know. The real tragedy queen, eh? And managers do not want
tragedy queens these days.”

“Och, damn it, don’t try to be funny,” Nancy burst out. “You know I’m
not a tragedy queen.”

“Sorry, I was only making a little joke.”

“Well, after a month of agents in this weather one loses one’s sense of
humour,” Nancy replied.

At home Nancy found Letizia in a tremendous state of excitement after
her visit to the circus which had concluded with an introduction to Mr.
Kino’s elephants.

“And I touched Jumbo’s trunk, muvver, and it was all hot. And he wagged
his tail. And Mrs. Jumbo opened her mouf as wide as that.”

Here Letizia endeavoured to give an elephantine yawn to illustrate her
story.

“Yes, she took to my elephants,” said Mr. Kino. “In fact, I was nearly
offering her an engagement to appear with them.”

Nancy laughed.

“No, I’m serious, Miss O’Finn. What do you say to three pounds a week?
And, of course, the missus and I would look after the kid as if she was
our own.”

“Och, no, it’s very sweet of you both, but I couldn’t give her up like
that.”

“Arthur’s joking about the performing part,” Mrs. Kino put in. “He
knows very well I wouldn’t let her do any performing. But we would like
to have her with us when we leave on Sunday week.”

“You’re leaving on Sunday week?” Nancy asked in alarm.

“Yes, we’re going out on a long tour.”

Nancy was terribly worried by the prospect of her fellow lodgers’
departure. It would mean asking Miss Fewkes to look after Letizia while
she was out. In her bedroom she counted over the money she had left.
Only seven pounds, and out of that there would be this week’s bill to
pay. Things _were_ getting desperate.

Until now Nancy had avoided meeting her father in London, because
she felt that she could not bear the scene he would be sure to play
over her widowhood. Her life with Bram was too real and wonderful for
histrionics. But matters were now so serious that she could not afford
to let her own intimate feelings stand in the way of getting work. Her
father might be able to help her to an engagement. He might even be
able to lend her a little money in case of absolute necessity.

So Nancy sent a note to the Piccadilly Theatre, where he was playing,
and three days later she received an answer from an address in Earl’s
Court to say that owing to severe illness he had had to resign his part
at the Piccadilly a week or two before. Would Nancy visit him, as he
was still too unwell to go out?

“Mr. O’Finn?” repeated the slatternly girl who opened the door. “Can
you see Mr. O’Finn? Who is it, please?”

“It’s his daughter, Miss O’Finn.”

The slatternly girl opened her eyes as wide as their sticky lids would
let her.

“He’s not expecting anybody this afternoon,” she muttered.

“He may not be expecting anybody this afternoon,” said Nancy sharply,
“but his daughter is not exactly anybody. He has been ill and I want to
see him.”

The slatternly girl evidently felt incapable of dealing with this
crisis, for she retreated to the head of the basement stairs, and
called down:

“Mrs. Tebbitt, here’s somebody wants to see Mr. O’Finn. Will you come
up and talk to her, please?”

A sacklike woman with a flaccid red face and sparse hair excavated
herself slowly from the basement.

“I understand my father has been very ill,” Nancy began.

“Ill?” gurgled Mrs. Tebbitt breathlessly. “It’s an illness a lot of
people would like to die of. He’s been on the drink for the last month.
That’s what he’s been. He’s drunk now, and in another hour or so he’ll
be blind drunk, because he’s just sent out for another bottle of
brandy. If you say you’re his daughter and insist on seeing him, well,
I suppose you’ll have to, but his room’s in a disgusting state and
which is not my fault, for the last time the girl went up to give it a
rout out he threw the dustpan out of the window and it hit a organist
who was walking past—I know it was a organist, because he give me his
card and said he’d lodge a complaint with the police, but we haven’t
heard nothing more since, but I’ve forbid the girl to touch his room
again till he’s sober, and which he won’t be to-day, that’s certain.”

Nancy’s heart was hardened against her father. In her present straits
she could not feel that there was any kind of an excuse for behaviour
like his.

“Thank you,” she said coldly to the landlady. “Perhaps when he can
understand what you’re telling him you’ll be kind enough to say that
Miss O’Finn called to see him, but would not come up.”

She turned away from the house in a cold rage.

In her bitterness she was tempted for a moment to accept the Kinos’
offer to adopt Letizia and take her away with them on their tour. The
worthlessness of her own father was extended in her thoughts to include
all parents including herself. It would be better to abandon Letizia
lest one day she might fail her as to-day her father had failed herself.

Then she saw Bram’s whimsical face looking at her from the silver frame
on her dressing-table, and she felt ashamed. She wondered again about
that last unspoken wish of his. She had put out of her mind the idea
of appealing to his brother to help in the guardianship of Letizia.
But perhaps Bram had been really anxious that Letizia should heal the
breach between them. Perhaps that had been his unspoken wish. He might
have felt that she would be unwilling to ask a favour from his brother,
and even with his dying breath have abstained from saying anything that
she could construe into the solemnity of a last request, in case she
should not like the idea of begging a favour from his relations. That
would be Bram’s way. Just a diffident hint, but nothing that could
involve her too deeply.

That Monday evening Nancy paid Miss Fewkes her bill and stared at the
few pounds that remained. Of course, she could carry on for a little
while by pawning, but had she any right to imperil by such methods
Letizia’s well-being? Besides, now that the Kinos were going away,
there was the problem of looking after Letizia during the day. At a
pinch she could ask Mrs. Pottage to look after her for a week or two;
but did not everything point to Brigham at this moment? Could she
still have any pride after that account she had heard to-day of her
father’s degradation? No, her duty was clear. She would make one more
round of the agents, and then if she was still without an engagement on
Thursday, she would take Letizia to her husband’s relations.




                             CHAPTER XIII

                             LEBANON HOUSE


Of all the great stations in the world Euston alone preserves in its
Tartarian architecture the spirit in which the first railway travellers
must have set out. So long as Euston endures, whatever improvements
humanity may achieve in rapidity of travel and transport, we shall
understand the apprehension and awe with which the original adventure
must have filled the imagination of mankind. Mrs. Browning took to her
bed in order to recover from the effects of a first view of Paddington
Station; but Paddington is merely an overgrown conservatory set beside
Euston, impressive in its way but entirely lacking in that capacity for
permanently and intensely expressing the soul of an epoch, which makes
Euston worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as St. Peter’s,
or the Pyramids of Gizeh, or even the sublime Parthenon itself. Not
only does Euston express the plunge of humanity into a Plutonian era,
a plunge more lamentable and swift than Persephone’s from Enna in the
dark chariot of Hades; but it peculiarly expresses within the lapse of
a whole period the descent of the individual Londoner to the industrial
Hell.

On an iron-bound day in early March the grimy portico of Euston might
oppress the lightest heart with foreboding as, passing through to the
eternal twilight of those cavernous and funereal entries, the fearful
traveller embarks for the unimaginable North. The high platforms give
the trains a weasel shape. The departure bell strikes upon the ear like
a cracked Dies Iræ. The porters, in spite of their English kindliness,
manage somehow to assume the guise of infernal guardians, so that we
tip them as we might propitiate old Charon with an obol or to Cerberus
fling the drugged sop. St. Pancras and its High Anglican embellishments
impress the observer as simply a Ruskinian attempt to make the best of
both worlds. King’s Cross is a mere result of that ugliness and utility
of which Euston is the enshrinement. Paddington is an annexe of the
Crystal palace. Victoria and Charing Cross are already infected with
the fussiness and insignificance of Boulogne. Waterloo is a restless
improvisation, Liverpool Street a hideous ant-heap. To get a picture
of the spirits of damned Londoners passing for ever from their beloved
city, one should wait on a frozen foggy midnight outside the portals of
Euston.

Nancy may not have read Virgil, but her heart was heavy enough with
foreboding when with Letizia, a tiny Red Riding Hood, she entered
the train for Brigham on that iron-bound morning early in March. She
wished now that she had waited for an answer to the letter announcing
her visit. Visions of a severe man-servant shutting the door in her
face haunted her. She tried to recall what Bram had told her about the
details of his family life, but looking back now she could not recall
that he had told her anything except his hatred of it all. And anyway,
what could he have known of the present state of his family, apart
from the sardonic commentary upon it in his grandmother’s infrequent
letters? It was twelve years since he had escaped from Lebanon
House. His brother had been a boy of fourteen; his father was still
alive then; his grandfather too; and that strange old grandmother,
the prospect of meeting whom had kept Nancy from wavering in her
resolution, was not bedridden in those days.

“Muvver,” said Letizia, who had been looking out of the window at the
Buckinghamshire fields, “I can count to fifteen. I counted fifteen
moo-cows, and then I counted fifteen moo-cows again.”

“You are getting on, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Letizia echoed, whereupon she burst into a chant
of triumph, which caused an old gentleman in the opposite corner of the
compartment to look up in some alarm over the top of his newspaper.

“Hush, darling, don’t sing like that. You’ll disturb the ladies and
gentlemen who want to read.”

“Why do they want to read?”

“To pass the time away.”

“I would like to read, muvver.”

Nancy produced her book.

“A cat sat on a mat. A fat rat sat on a mat,” she proclaimed aloud.

“No, darling, if you’re going to read you must read to yourself. The
gentleman opposite isn’t reading his paper aloud.”

“Why isn’t he?”

“Because it might worry other people and wouldn’t be good manners.”

“Is that gentleman good manners?”

“Of course, he has. Hush, darling, don’t go on asking silly questions.”

“When I make a rude noise with my mouf I put my hand up and say
‘Pardon.’”

“Of course.”

“Well, that gentleman maided lots and lots of very rude noises, and he
didn’t put his hand up to his mouf and say ‘pardon.’ Why didn’t he,
muvver?”

“Darling, please don’t go on making remarks about people. It’s not
kind.”

Letizia was dejected by this insinuation, and sat silent for a space.
Then she cheered up:

“Muvver, if that gentleman makes a rude noise again, would it be kind
for me to put up my hand to my mouf and say ‘pardon’?”

Nancy thought that her daughter’s present humour of critical
observations augured ill for her success at Lebanon House, and she
began to wish that she had left her behind in London.

“Listen, darling. I don’t want you to be a horrid little girl and go on
chattering when mother asks you to keep quiet. If you behave like this,
your Uncle Caleb won’t like you.”

“If he doesn’t like me, I won’t like him,” said Letizia confidently.

Nancy shook a reproachful head.

“Well, I shan’t talk to you any more. In fact, I’ve a very good mind to
leave you behind in the train when we get to Brigham.”

“Where would I go?” Letizia asked, perfectly undismayed by this threat.

“I’m sure I don’t know where you would go.”

“I would ask a porter,” Letizia suggested. “I would say, ‘Please, Mr.
Porter, where shall I go to?’ and then he’d tell me, and I’d say, ‘Oh,
that’s where I shall go, is it?’”

Suddenly a cloud passed across the mother’s mind. It might be that
to-morrow she would be travelling back through these same fields
without her little girl. Ah, nothing that Letizia said could justify
her in making mock threats of abandoning her in the train when in her
heart was the intention of abandoning her in the house of that unknown
brother-in-law. In swift contrition she picked Letizia up and kissed
her.

“My sweetheart,” she whispered.

Rugby was left behind, Lichfield in its frosty vale, the smoky skies of
Crewe and Stafford. The country outraged by man’s lust for gold writhed
in monstrous contortions. About the refuse heaps of factories bands of
children roamed as pariahs might, and along the squalid streets women
in shawls wandered like drab and melancholy ghosts.

“Brigham, Brigham,” cried the porters.

On the cold and dreary platform Letizia in her scarlet hood made the
people turn round to stare at her as if she were a tropical bloom or
some strange bird from the sweet South.

“Lebanon House?” the driver of the fly repeated in surprise. “Mr.
Fuller’s, do you mean, ma’am?”

And every time he whipped up the smoking horse his perplexity seemed to
be writing on the grey air a note of interrogation.

Letizia drew a face on the mildewed window strap and another larger
face on the window itself.

“Aren’t you making your gloves rather messy, darling?” her mother
enquired anxiously.

“I was droring,” her daughter explained. “This teeny little face is
Tizia.” She pointed to the inscribed strap. “And this anormous big face
is you.” She indicated the window.

The horse must have been startled by the sound of Letizia’s laughter
which followed this statement, for it broke into a bony canter at the
unwonted sound. A corpse chuckling inside a coffin would not have
sounded so strange as the ripple of a child’s laughter in this fly
musty with the odour of old nose-bags and dank harness.

Looking out at the landscape, Nancy perceived a wilderness covered with
sheds, some painted grey, some scarlet. A hoarding was inscribed in
huge letters FULLER’S FIREWORKS. That must be the factory. Presently
the fly began to climb a gradual slope between fields dotted with
swings, giant-strides, and various gymnastic frames. Another hoarding
proclaimed THE FULLER RECREATION PARK. Nancy did not think much of it.
She did not know that Joshua Fuller might perhaps have swung himself
into Parliament from one of those swings, had he only lived a little
longer.

At the top of the slope the fly passed through a varnished gate,
swept round a crackling semicircle of gravel between two clumps of
frost-bitten shrubs, and pulled up before the heavy door of Lebanon
House. Nancy looked in dismay at the grim stucco walls stained with
their aqueous arabesques and green pagodas of damp. That the bright
little form beside her could be left within those walls was beyond
reason. Better far to flee this spot, and, whatever happened in
London, rejoice that her baby was still with her. Yet perhaps Bram
had really fretted over his separation from his family, perhaps in
dying he had wished that Letizia might take his place in this house.
Before she could be tempted to tell the driver to turn round, Nancy
jumped out of the fly and rang the front-door bell. It was answered,
not by that severe man-servant of her anxious prefigurations, but by
an elderly parlourmaid, who must have been warned of her arrival, for
she immediately invited her to step in. Nancy hesitated a moment, for
now that she was here it seemed too much like taking everything for
granted to send the fly away and ask the maid to accept the custody
of her dressing-case. She had not liked to presume an inhospitable
reception by arriving without any luggage at all, and yet, now that she
saw her dressing-case standing on the hall chair, she wished she had
not brought it. However, it would really be too absurdly self-conscious
to keep the fly waiting while she was being approved. So, she paid the
fare and tried not to resemble an invader, a thief, or a beggar.

“What is this house, muvver?” Letizia asked as they were following the
elderly maid along the gloomy hall. “Is it a house where bad people go?”

“No, it’s where your Uncle Caleb lives, and your two aunts——” Nancy
broke off in a panic, for she simply could not remember either of their
names. Were they Rachel and Sarah? This was serious.

“How is Mrs. Fuller?” she asked, in the hope that the elderly maid
would feel inclined to be chatty about the health of the whole family
and so mention the names of the two aunts in passing.

“Mrs. Fuller is the same as usual,” said the maid.

“And Miss Fuller?” Nancy ventured.

“Miss Achsah and Miss Thyrza are both quite well.”

_What_ was the name of the first one? The stupid woman had said it so
quickly. However, she had got the name of one. Thyrza—Thyrza. She must
not forget it again.

The elderly maid left Nancy and Letizia in a sombre square room
overcrowded with ponderous furniture and papered with dull red flock.
On the overmantel was a black marble clock with an inscription
setting forth that it was presented to Caleb Fuller, Esquire, by his
devoted employees on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. But
did she not remember that Caleb had sacked all his employees on that
auspicious occasion? Perhaps he had not liked the gift, she thought
with a smile. Above the clock hung a large steel engraving of what
Nancy at first imagined was intended to represent the Day of Judgment;
but on examining the title she found that it was a picture of the
firework-display by Messrs. Fuller and Son in Hyde Park on the occasion
of the National Thanksgiving for the recovery of H. R. H. the Prince of
Wales.

“Why does this room smell like blot-paper, muvver?” Letizia inquired.

“Now, darling, I beg of you not to ask any more questions at all. Will
you be kind to mother and do that?”

Letizia wriggled one fat leg against the other for a moment.

“Yes,” she whispered at last resignedly.

“There’s a pet,” said Nancy, lifting her on a mahogany chair, the seat
of which was covered with horsehair.

“Ouch!” Letizia exclaimed, rubbing her leg. “It’s all fistles, and
where my drawses have gone away and left a piece of my leg the fistles
have bitten it. Your drawses don’t go away and leave a piece of your
leg. So the fistles don’t bite you.”

At this moment the heavy door opened quietly to admit Caleb Fuller, a
plump-faced young man with brown curly hair and a smile of such cordial
and beaming welcome that Nancy’s heart sank, for of course he would be
delighted to accept the responsibility of Letizia’s upbringing.

“How do you do? How kind of you to come and see us,” said Caleb. “So
very kind. I can’t say how much we appreciate it. You’ll stay and have
tea with us, won’t you?”

“Thank you very much,” said Nancy, wondering how on earth she was going
to suggest what she had come all the way from London to suggest.

“You’ll excuse our lack of ceremony? We’re such simple people. I
suppose you drove up from the station? And this is poor Bram’s little
girl, I suppose?”

Caleb’s beaming expression had changed in a flash to one of extreme
wide-eyed mournfulness.

“Will you give your Uncle Caleb a kiss, my dear?” he asked in smugly
sentimental accents.

“No, fank you,” Letizia replied, evidently supposing that she was
behaving extra well in refusing so politely.

Nancy could not bring herself to reprove her daughter’s disinclination.
She felt that, if she had been a little girl of Letizia’s age, she
should not have cared to kiss this very old young man.

Caleb turned on his smile to dispose of the rebuff.

“Let me see, how old is she?”

“Five next July.”

“Can she talk much?”

“I’m afraid she can talk a great deal too much,” Nancy laughed. “Being
with grown-up people all the time has made her a very precocious little
girl, I’m afraid.”

She was wondering how she could manage to keep the conversation
trained on Letizia until she could muster up the courage to ask her
brother-in-law the favour she desired.

“I think it’s such a pity to let children grow up too soon,” Caleb
sighed in a remote and dreamy tone that trembled like the vox humana
stop with the tears of things. “I like all little things so much; but
I think people and animals deteriorate when they grow big. I had a
dear little cream-coloured kitten, and now that lovely little kitten
has grown into an enormous hulking cat and spends all its time in the
kitchen, eating. I noticed when I was going through the household
books that we were getting extra fish, so I went into the matter most
carefully, and do you know....” The horror of the story he was telling
overcame Caleb for a moment, and he had to gulp down his emotion before
he could proceed. “Do you know I found that they were actually buying
special fish for this great cat?” His voice had sunk to an awe-struck
whisper. “It came as a terrible shock to me that such a pretty little
tiny kitten which only seemed to lap up a small saucer of milk every
now and then should actually have become an item in the household
expenditure nowadays.... Of course,” he added hastily, “I told the cook
she had no business to give it anything except scraps that couldn’t be
used for anything else. But still....” Caleb allowed his narrative to
evaporate in a profound sigh.

“Bram spoke of you just before he died,” Nancy began abruptly.

“How very kind of him,” Caleb observed, reassuming quickly that
expression of devout and wide-eyed sentimentality, though in the tone
of his voice there was an implication of the immense gulf between
Bram’s death and his own life.

“He seemed to regret the breach between himself and his family,” she
continued.

“It was always a great grief to us,” Caleb observed. He was still
apparently as gently sympathetic; yet somehow Nancy had a feeling that
behind the wide-eyed solemnity there was a twinkle of cunning in the
grey shallow eyes, a lambent twinkle that was playing round the rocky
question of what she was leading up to, and of how he should deal with
any awkward request she might end by making.

“He was anxious that I should bring Letizia to see you all,” Nancy
pressed.

There was a reproach in her brother-in-law’s gaze that made her
feel as if she were being utterly remorseless in her persistency.
Nevertheless, Caleb turned on quite easily that cordial welcoming smile.

“I’m so glad,” he murmured from the other side of the universe. “I
don’t think tea will be long now.”

“Oh, please don’t bother about tea,” she begged.

Caleb beamed more intensely.

“Oh, please,” he protested on his side. “My aunts and I would be very
much upset indeed if you didn’t have tea. And to-day’s Thursday!”

Nancy looked puzzled.

“I see I shall have to let you into a little family secret. We always
have a new cake on Thursday,” he proclaimed, smiling now with a
beautifully innocent archness. Turning to Letizia he added playfully,
“I expect you like cakes, don’t you?”

“I like the cakes what Mrs. Porridge makes for me,” Letizia replied.

“Oatmeal cakes?” Caleb asked in bewilderment.

“Letizia,” her mother interrupted quickly, “please don’t answer your
uncle in that horrid rude way. Mrs. Pottage was our landlady at
Greenwich,” she explained.

Caleb looked coldly grave. He disapproved of landladies with their
exorbitant bills.

“You must find it very unpleasant always being robbed by landladies,”
he said.

“Bram and I were very lucky usually. We met far more pleasant
landladies than unpleasant ones.”

Nancy paused. She was wondering if she should be able to explain her
mission more easily if the subject of it were not present.

“I wonder if Letizia’s aunts would like to see her?”

“Oh, I’m sure they would,” Caleb answered. “We’ll all go into the
drawing-room. I’m sure you must be wanting your tea.”

“If we could leave Letizia with her aunts, I would like very much to
talk to you for a minute or two alone.”

Caleb squirmed.

“Don’t be anxious,” Nancy laughed. “I’m not going to ask you to lend me
any money.”

“Oh, of course not,” he said with a shudder. “I never thought you were
going to do that. I knew Bram would have explained to you that I really
couldn’t afford it. We have had the most dreadful expenses lately in
connection with the factory. I have had to lock up several thousand
pounds.”

He made this announcement with as much judicial severity as if he had
actually condemned the greater part of his fortune to penal servitude
for life.

“Yes, it must be horrible to have a lot of money that can’t behave
itself,” Nancy agreed.

Her brother-in-law regarded her disapprovingly. He resented few things
more than jokes, for he objected to wasting those ready smiles of his
almost as much as he hated wasting his ready money.

“Well, shall we go into the drawing-room?” he asked, trying to make his
guest feel that merely to lead her from one room to another in Lebanon
House was giving her much more than he would give many people for
nothing.

“Are those aunts?” Letizia exclaimed in disgusted astonishment when she
was presented to the two drab middle-aged women with muddy faces and
lace caps who, each wearing a grey woollen shawl, sat on either side of
a black fire from which one exiguous wisp of smoke went curling up the
chimney.

“Yes, those are your aunts, darling,” said Nancy, hoping that Letizia’s
generic question had not been understood quite in the way that it was
intended. “Run and give them a kiss.”

There must have been a note of appeal in her mother’s voice, for
Letizia obeyed with surprising docility, even if she did give an
impression by the slowness of her advance that she was going to stroke
two unpleasant-looking animals at the invitation of a keeper. Then it
was Nancy’s turn to embrace the aunts, much to the amazement of her
daughter, who exclaimed:

“You kissed them too! Was you told to kiss them?”

“May I leave Letizia with you while I finish my talk with Caleb?” Nancy
asked her aunts.

Caleb looked positively sullen over his sister-in-law’s pertinacity,
and he was leading the way back to what was apparently known as the
library, when the elderly maid appeared with the tea. He beamed again.

“You _must_ have tea first. I’m sure you _must_ be wanting your tea. I
was telling—er—Nancy about our Thursday cake, Aunt Achsah.”

Caleb’s face was richly dimpled by the smile for which the family joke
was responsible, and at which Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza tittered
indulgently. Nancy was saying over in her head the name of the elder
aunt so that she should be able to remember it in future. Then she
gazed round in depression of spirit at the curtains and upholstery
and wall-paper, all in sombre shades of brown, and at the bunches of
pampas-grass, dyed yellow, blue, and red, which in hideous convoluted
vases on bamboo stands blotched the corners of the room with plumes of
crude colour. Could she leave Letizia in this house? Would Bram really
wish it?

Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza had by now wound themselves up to express
the sorrow that they felt convention owed to Nancy.

“He was a wild boy and a great anxiety to us,” Aunt Thyrza sighed. “But
we were very fond of him.”

“It nearly killed his poor father when he took to the stage,” Aunt
Achsah moaned. “He had such a beautifully religious bringing-up that it
seemed particularly dreadful in his case. Of course, we do not believe
that there may not be some good men and women on the stage, but all the
same it was terrible—really terrible for us when Bram became an actor.”

“But didn’t you have a sister who went on the stage?” Nancy asked.

The two drab women stared at her in consternation. How did this
creature know the story of the lost Caterina? Why, their mother must
have told Bram. The shameful secret was a secret no more.

Caleb knitted his brows, and his granite-grey eyes gleamed. So, this
was the woman’s game. Blackmail! This was why she wanted to talk to
him alone. He would soon show her that he was not the kind of man to
be frightened by blackmail. As a matter of fact, Caleb himself, who
had only heard when he came of age about the shameful past of his Aunt
Caterina, had been much less impressed by the awfulness of the family
secret than his aunts had expected.

“Yes, we did have a sister who went on the stage,” Aunt Thyrza
tremulously admitted. “But that was many, many years ago, and she has
long been dead.”

Nancy was merciful to the aunts and forbore from pressing the point
about the existence of good people on the stage. She was not merciful,
however, to Caleb when tea came to an end and he showed no sign of
adjourning with her to the library.

“Are you sure you won’t have another piece of cake? Do have another
piece of cake,” he begged, turning on the smile almost to its full
extent. That he could not quite manage the full extent was due to the
irritation this obtrusive young woman’s pertinacity was causing him.

“No, indeed, I really couldn’t,” said Nancy, donning a bright little
smile herself as a cyclist hopes his oil-lamp will avail to protect him
against the dazzling onrushing motor-car. “Letizia, darling,” she added
firmly. “I’m going to leave you here with Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza
for a little while. You will be good, won’t you?”

“But I’d like to stroke the puss-cat.”

“The cat?” Aunt Achsah exclaimed. “What cat?”

“The puss-cat what that man was talking about to muvver,” Letizia
explained.

“The cat isn’t allowed in the drawing-room,” Aunt Thyrza said primly.

“Why isn’t he? Does he make messes?”

The two aunts shuddered. It was only too sadly evident that the stage
had already corrupted even this four-year-old child.

“Cats live in kitchens,” Aunt Achsah laid down dogmatically.

“Well, can I go to the kitchen, muvver?” Letizia asked. “Because I
would like to see the puss-cat. I fink puss-cats are much, _much_ nicer
than aunts.”

“No, darling, I want you to stay here,” and with this Nancy hurried out
of the room, followed reluctantly by her brother-in-law.

When they were back in the library, which, now that she had a clue to
its status, Nancy perceived did contain half-a-dozen bound volumes
of the _Illustrated London News_, three or four books of religious
reading, and a decrepit Bradshaw, she came straight to the point.

“Caleb, times are rather bad for theatrical business, and....”

“Business is bad everywhere,” Caleb interrupted. “Of course, you know
that I am engaged in manufacturing fireworks? My brother no doubt has
told you that. Trade has never been so bad as it is this year, and only
recently an Order in Council has made it illegal to use chlorate of
potash with sulphur compounds. That is a very serious matter indeed for
firework manufacture. Indeed, if it had not been for our discovery that
aluminium can be successfully used for brightening our colour effects,
I don’t know what _would_ have happened to the business. Luckily I
was one of the first, if not _the_ first manufacturer to realise the
advantages of aluminium, and so I had already ceased to use chlorate
of potash with sulphur for quite a long time, in fact, ever since as a
boy of twenty I found myself practically in sole charge of our factory.
My brother’s desertion of his father twelve years ago ruined all my
chances. I was getting on so splendidly at school. I was winning prizes
for Latin and Scripture and all kinds of subjects, and my masters were
so enthusiastic about my education. But when I was only fifteen, my
father said to me: ‘Caleb, you can either go on with your school work
or you can give up school and enter the business at once on a small
salary.’ It was a hard choice, but I didn’t hesitate. I gave up all my
schoolwork, because after my brother’s desertion I felt it was my duty
to enter the business. And I did. You don’t know how hard I’ve worked
while my brother was amusing himself on the stage. But I don’t bear
his memory any grudge. Please don’t think that I’m criticising him,
because of course I wouldn’t like to say anything about one who is no
longer with us. I only want you to understand that my position is by
no means easy. In fact, it’s terribly difficult. So, though I would be
happy to lend you lots of money, if I had any to spare, I’m sure you’ll
understand that, with all the expenses I’ve been put to over this Order
in Council and changing my factory and one thing and another, it simply
isn’t possible.”

“I’m not asking you to lend me any money,” Nancy said, as soon as her
brother-in-law paused for a moment to take breath. “But Bram when he
was dying....”

“Oh, please don’t think that I don’t sympathise with you over my
brother’s death. It was a shock to us all. I read about it in the
local paper. I’d had a little trouble with the proprietor over our
advertisements, so he printed all about Bram being a clown in great
headlines. But in spite of the shocking way he died like that on the
stage, I showed everybody in Brigham how much upset we all were by
asking for the Recreation Ground to be closed for two whole days. So
please don’t think we weren’t very much shocked and upset.”

“Bram, when he was dying in my arms,” she went on, “told me if I was
ever in difficulties to go to you, because he was sure that you would
want to help me.”

“Yes, that’s just the kind of thing my brother would say,” said Caleb
indignantly. “He never cared a straw about the business. He hated the
factory. He always had an idea that money was only made to be spent.”

“I don’t think that Bram expected me to borrow any money from you,”
said Nancy. “But he thought that you might care to assume the
responsibility of bringing up Letizia. He thought that she might be a
link between him and his family.”

“Bring up Letizia?” Caleb gasped. “Do you mean, pay for her clothes and
her keep and her education?”

“I suppose that is what Bram fancied you might care to do. I would not
have come here to-day, if I had not believed that I owed it to his
child to give her opportunities that her mother cannot give her. Please
don’t think that I want to lose Letizia. It has cost me a great deal
...” her voice wavered.

“But you could have told me what you wanted in the letter, and that
would have saved you your railway fare,” said Caleb reproachfully.

“I didn’t mean the money it cost. I meant the struggle with my own
feelings.”

“I think it would be wrong of me to try and persuade you to give up
your child,” said Caleb solemnly. “I wouldn’t do it, even if I could.
But I can’t. You must remember that I still have my old grandmother to
keep. Of course, she’s bedridden now, and she can’t waste money as she
used to waste it, for she was shockingly extravagant whenever she had
an opportunity. But even as it is she costs a great deal. I have to pay
a nurse-companion; and the doctor _will_ come once a week. You know how
ready doctors always are to take advantage of anybody in a house being
ill. They just profit by it,” he said bitterly. “That’s what they do,
they just profit by illness. And besides my grandmother, I have to pay
annuities to my two aunts. I’m not complaining. I’m only too glad to do
it. But I’m just telling you what a load of domestic responsibilities
I have on my shoulders already, so that you can appreciate how utterly
impossible it would be for me to do anything for my brother’s little
girl. Well, you heard what I told you about that cat, and if I can’t
afford the extra amount on the household books for a cat, how can I
possibly afford what a child would cost? I’m only so distressed you
should have gone to the expense of coming all this way to find out
something that I could have told you so well in a letter. I can’t
imagine why you didn’t write to me about this child. You do see my
point of view, don’t you? And I’m sure that you would rather not have
your little girl brought up here. The air of Brigham is very smoky. I’m
sure it wouldn’t be good for children.”

“Well, that’s that,” said Nancy. “I’ve done what Bram asked me to do,
but I’m just dazed. I just simply can’t understand how you and Bram
came out of the same womb.”

Caleb winced.

“Of course, I know that you do talk very freely on the stage,” he said
deprecatingly. “But I wish you wouldn’t use such words in this house.
We’re simply provincial people, and we think that kind of expression
rather unpleasant. I daresay we may appear old-fashioned, but we’d
rather be old-fashioned than hear a lady use words like that. I’m
afraid, by what you just said, that you haven’t really understood my
point of view at all. So, I’m going to take you into my confidence,
because I do want you to understand it and not bear me any ill-will.
My motives are so often misjudged by people,” he sighed. “I suppose
it’s because I’m so frank and don’t pretend I can do things when I
can’t. So I’m going to give you a little confidence, Nancy.” Here Caleb
beamed generously. “It’s still a secret, but I’m hoping to get married
in June, and of course that means a great deal of extra expense,
especially as the lady I am going to marry has no money of her own.”

“I hope you’ll be happy,” Nancy said.

“Thank you,” said Caleb in a tone that seemed to express his personal
gratitude for anything, even anything so intangible as good wishes,
that might contribute a little, a very little toward the relief of the
tremendous weight of responsibility that he was trying so humbly and so
patiently to support. “Thank you very much.”

Nancy was wishing now with all her heart that she had not been so
foolish as to bring that dressing-case with her. She only longed now
to be out of this house without a moment’s delay. She wished too that
she had not dismissed the fly, for it would be impossible to carry the
dressing-case and Letizia all the way to the railway station. Here she
would have to remain until another fly could be fetched.

“There’s a good train at half-past seven,” said Caleb, who was
observing Nancy’s contemplation of her dressing-case on the hall-chair.
“If you like, I’ll telephone to the hotel for a fly to be sent up.
But I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me from waiting any
longer. I have rather a lot of work to do this evening. I’m trying
to save expense wherever I possibly can,” he added with a martyr’s
ecstatic gaze toward a lovelier world beyond this vale of tears.

“Oh, please don’t trouble to wait an instant. I’ll go back to the
drawing-room.”

“Yes, there’s a fire in there,” Caleb observed, it seemed a little
resentfully.

At this moment a neat young woman with bright intelligent eyes came
down the stairs.

“Excuse me, Mr. Fuller, but Mrs. Fuller would like Mrs. Bram Fuller and
her little girl to go up and see her.”

Caleb’s face darkened.

“But surely it’s too late for Mrs. Fuller to see visitors? Besides,
Mrs. Bram Fuller wants to catch the seven-thirty train.”

“It’s only half-past five now,” said Nancy eagerly. “And I should not
care to leave Brigham without seeing Letizia’s great-grandmother.”

In her disgust at Caleb she had forgotten that there was still a member
of this family who might compensate for the others.

“Mrs. Fuller will be very annoyed, Mr. Fuller, if she doesn’t see Mrs.
Bram Fuller and her little girl,” the young woman insisted.

“Very well, nurse, if you think it’s wise,” Caleb said. “But I hope
this won’t mean an extra visit from the doctor this week.”

The bright-eyed young woman was regarding Caleb as a thrush regards a
worm before gobbling it up.

“It would be extremely unwise to disappoint Mrs. Fuller. She has been
counting on this visit ever since she heard yesterday that Mrs. Bram
Fuller was coming to Brigham.”

“My poor old grandmother works herself up into a great state over every
domestic trifle,” Caleb said angrily. “It’s a great pity an old lady
like her can’t give up fussing over what happens in the house.”

Nancy went into the drawing-room to rescue Letizia from her aunts.

“Good-bye—er—Nancy,” said Aunt Achsah. “I hope you won’t think that
I am intruding on your private affairs if I say to you how grieved
both your Aunt Thyrza and myself are to find that our poor little
grand-niece apparently knows nothing whatever about our Heavenly
Father. We do hope that you will try to teach her something about
Him. Of course, we know that Roman Catholics do not regard God with
the same reverence and awe as we do, but still a forward little girl
like Letizia should not be allowed to remain in a state of complete
ignorance about Him. It’s very shocking.”

“Oh, I do so agree with my sister,” Aunt Thyrza sighed earnestly.

“Good-bye, Aunt Achsah. Good-bye, Aunt Thyrza,” said Nancy. “Come
along, Letizia.”

And the way her little daughter danced out of the room beside her
mother exactly expressed what she wanted to do herself.




                              CHAPTER XIV

                           LETIZIA THE FIRST


“Mrs. Fuller has been so excited ever since the letter came to say
that you would pay a visit to Lebanon House,” the nurse stopped to
tell Nancy at the head of the stairs, before showing the way along the
landing to the old lady’s room.

“Are we going to see more aunts, muvver?” Letizia anxiously inquired.

“No, darling, you’re going to see dear father’s grannie whom he loved
very much; and he would like you to love her very much too.”

“Well, I will love her,” Letizia promised.

“You must remember that _your_ name is Letizia and that _her_ name is
Letizia. You were christened Letizia because father loved his grannie.
And remember she is very old and that’s why you’ll find her in bed.”

“Will she be like Red Riding Hood’s grannie?” Letizia asked.

“Perhaps she will be a little.”

“But a naughty wolf won’t come and eat her?” Letizia pressed on a note
of faint apprehension.

“Oh, no,” her mother assured her. “There are no wolves in this house.”

Was it a trick of the gathering dusk, or did the bright-eyed young
woman raise her eyebrows and smile to herself at this confident reply?

Nancy had never been so much surprised in her life as she was by
the aspect of old Mrs. Fuller’s room. The old lady, wrapped in a
bed-jacket of orange and yellow brocade and supported by quantities
of bright vermilion cushions, was sitting up in a gilded four-post
bed, the curtains and valance of damasked maroon silk and the canopy
sustained by four rouged Venetian _amorini_ with golden wings. Over
the mantelpiece was a copy of Giorgione’s “Pastorale.” Mirrors in
frames of blown glass decorated with wreaths of pink glass rosebuds and
blue glass forget-me-nots hung here and there on the white walls, the
lighted candles in which gave the windowpanes such a bloom in the March
dusk as is breathed upon ripe damsons. Bookcases on either side of the
fireplace were filled with the sulphur backs of numerous French novels.
On a mahogany table at the foot of the bed stood a green cornucopia of
brilliantly tinted wax fruits that was being regarded with slant-eyed
indifference by two antelopes of gilded wood, seated on either side.

Of course, Nancy had known that old Mrs. Fuller was different from the
rest of the family; but this flaunting rococo bedroom made a sharper
impression of that immense difference than could all the letters to her
grandson. It was strange, too, that Bram should never have commented
on this amazing room, set as it was in the heart of the house against
which his boyhood had so bitterly revolted. In her astonishment at her
surroundings she did not for the moment take in the aspect of the old
lady herself; and then suddenly she saw the dark eyes of Bram staring
at her from the middle of those vermilion cushions, the bright eyes of
Bram flashing from a death’s head wrapped in parchment. She put her
hand to her heart, and stopped short on her way across the room to
salute the old lady.

“What’s the matter?” snapped a high incisive voice.

“Oh, you’re so like Bram,” cried Nancy, tears gushing like an
uncontrollable spring from her inmost being, like blood from a wound,
and yet without any awareness of grief, so that her voice was calm, her
kiss of salutation not tremulous.

“Might I lift my little girl on Mrs. Fuller’s bed, nurse?” she asked.

“Don’t call her nurse,” the old lady rapped out. “This ain’t a hospital.
It’s only that sanctimonious ghoul Caleb who calls her nurse. She’s
my companion, Miss Emily Young. And why should the wretched child be
lifted up to see an old bogey like myself?”

“I think she’d like to kiss you, if she may,” said Nancy.

“Yes, I _would_ like to kiss you,” said Letizia.

The old woman’s eyes melted to an enchanting tenderness, and, oh, how
often Nancy had seen Bram’s eyes melt so for her.

“Lift her up, Emily, lift her up,” said Mrs. Fuller.

Miss Young put Letizia beside her and the old woman encircled the child
with her left arm. The other hung motionless beside her.

“I’m not going to maul you about. I expect your aunts have slobbered
over you enough downstairs. Just give me one kiss, if you want to. But
if you don’t want to, now that you’re so close to my skinny old face,
why, say so, and I shan’t mind.”

But Letizia put both arms round her great-grandmother’s neck and kissed
her fervidly.

“And now sit down and tell me how you like Lebanon House,” she
commanded.

“Is this Lebbon House?”

The old woman nodded.

“I like it here, but I don’t like it where those aunts are. Have you
seen those aunts, grannie?”

“I made them.”

“Why did you make them, grannie? I don’t fink they was very nicely
made, do you? I don’t fink their dresses was sewed on very nicely, do
you?”

“You’re an observant young woman, that’s what you are.”

“What is azervant?”

“Why, you have eyes in your head and see with them.”

“I see those gold stags,” said Letizia, pointing to the antelopes.

“Ah-ha, you see them, do you?”

“Did Santy Claus give them to you? He gived me a lamb and a monkey and
lots and lots of fings, so I aspeck he did.”

“I expect he did too. But they’re antelopes, not stags.”

“Auntylopes?” Letizia repeated dubiously. “Will Santy Claus put gold
aunts in your stocking at Christmas?”

“_Mon dieu_, I hope not,” the old lady exclaimed. “So you like
antelopes better than aunts?”

“Yes, I do. And I like puss-cats better. And I like all fings better
than I like aunts.”

“Well, then I’ll tell you something. When Santa Claus brought me those
antelopes, he said I was to give them to you.”

Letizia clapped her hands.

“Fancy! I fought he did, grannie.”

“So, if you’ll take them into the next room with Miss Young, she’ll
wrap them up for you while I’m talking to your mother.”

“How kind of you to give them to her,” said Nancy, from whose eyes the
silent tears had at last ceased to flow.

“Letizia darling, say ‘thank you’ to your kind grannie.”

“_Senza complimenti, senza complimenti_,” the old woman muttered, “The
pleasure in her eyes was all the thanks I wanted.”

“I aspeck they won’t feel very hungry wivout the apples and the pears,”
Letizia suggested anxiously.

“Of course they won’t, darling,” her mother interrupted quickly.

“You’d better wrap up some of the fruit as well, Emily,” said the old
lady with a chuckle.

“No, please ...” Nancy began.

“Hoity-toity, I suppose I can do what I like with my own fruit?” said
the old lady sharply. “Draw the curtains before you go, Emily.”

When Letizia had retired with Miss Young, and the gilded antelopes and
a generous handful of the wax fruit, the old lady bade Nancy draw up
one of the great Venetian chairs. When her grandson’s wife was seated
beside the bed, she asked her why she had come to Brigham.

Nancy gave her an account of her struggles for an engagement and told
her about Bram’s death and that unuttered wish.

“He may have worried about your future,” said the old lady. “But it was
never his wish that Letizia should be brought up here. Never! I know
what that wish was.”

“You do?”

“He was wishing that he had become a Catholic. He used to write to me
about it, and I’m afraid I was discouraging. It didn’t seem to me that
there was any point in interrupting his career as a clown by turning
religious somersaults as well. I’m sorry that it worried his peace
at the last, but by now he is either at rest in an eternal dreamless
enviable sleep or he has discovered that there really is a God and that
He is neither a homicidal lunatic, nor a justice of the peace, nor even
a disagreeable and moody old gentleman. I used to long to believe in
Hell for the pleasure of one day seeing my late husband on the next
gridiron to my own; but now I merely hope that, if there is another
world, it will be large enough for me to avoid meeting him, and that,
if he has wings, an all-merciful God will clip them and put him to play
his harp where I shan’t ever hear the tune. But mostly I pray that I
shall sleep, sleep, sleep for evermore. And so young Caleb objected to
bring up my namesake? By the way, I’m glad you’ve not shrouded her in
black.”

“I knew Bram wouldn’t like it,” Nancy explained.

“I loved that boy,” said the old lady gently. “You made him happy. And
I can do nothing more useful than present his daughter with a pair of
gilded antelopes.” Her sharp voice died away to a sigh of profound and
tragic regret.

Nancy sat silent waiting for the old lady to continue.

“Of course, I could have written and warned you not to ask young Caleb
for anything,” she suddenly began again in her high incisive voice.
“But I wanted to see you. I wanted to see Letizia the second. I _must_
die soon. So I didn’t attempt to stop your coming. And, as a matter of
fact, you’ve arrived before I could have written to you. No, don’t hand
your child over to young Caleb, girl. Just on sixty-six years ago my
mother handed me over to old Caleb. I suppose she thought that she was
doing the best thing for me. Or it may have been a kind of jealousy of
my young life, who knows? Anyway she has been dead too long to bother
about the reason for what she did. And at least I owe her French and
Italian, so that with books I have been able to lead a life of my own.
Letizia would hear no French or Italian in this house except from
me. And even if I could count on a few more years of existence, what
could I teach that child? Nothing, but my own cynicism, and that would
be worse than nothing. No, you mustn’t hand her over to young Caleb.
That would be in a way as wrong as what my mother did. Your duty is to
educate her. Yes, you must educate her, girl, you must be sure that
she is taught well. She seems to have personality. Educate her. She
must not be stifled by young Caleb and those two poor crones I brought
into this world. It would be a tragedy. I had another daughter, and I
was not strong enough in those days to secure her happiness. Perhaps
I was still hoping for my own. Perhaps in trying to shake myself free
from my husband I did not fight hard enough for her. She ran away. She
went utterly to the bad. She died of drink in a Paris asylum. Caterina
Fuller! You may read of her in raffish memoirs of the Second Empire as
one of the famous cocottes of the period. If my mother had not married
me to Caleb, I daresay I should have gone to the bad myself. Or what
the world calls bad. But how much worse my own respectable degradation!
It was only after Caterina’s death that I ceased to lament my prison.
It was as if the sentient, active part of me died with her. Thence
onward I lived within myself. I amused myself by collecting bit by
bit over many years the gewgaws by which you see me surrounded. They
represent years of sharp practice in housekeeping. The only thing for
which I may thank God sincerely is that I wasn’t married to young
Caleb. I should never have succeeded in cheating him out of a penny
on the household bills. I should never have managed to buy a solitary
novel, had he been my accountant. I should have remained for ever what
I was when I married, raw, noisy, impudent, scatterbrained, until
I died as a bird dies, beating its wings against the cage. Educate
Letizia, educate her. I wish I had a little money. I have no means of
getting any now. I had some, but I spent it on myself, every penny of
it. Don’t despair because you’ve not had an engagement since Christmas.
It’s only early March. _Mon dieu_, I haven’t even a ring that you could
pawn. But I don’t worry about you. I’m convinced you will be all right.
Easy to say, yes. But I say it with belief, and that isn’t so easy. I
shall live on for a few weeks yet, and I know that I shall have good
news from you before I die.”

All the while the old lady had been talking, her face had been losing
its expression of cynicism, and by the time she had finished it was
glowing with the enthusiasm of a girl. It was as if she had beheld
reincarnate in little Letizia her own youth and as if now with the
wisdom of eighty-three years she were redirecting her own future from
the beginning. Presently, after a short silence, she told Nancy to
search in the bottom drawer of a painted cabinet for a parcel wrapped
up in brown paper, and bring it to her. With this she fumbled for a
while with her left hand and at last held up a tunic made apparently of
thick sackcloth and some fragments of stuff that looked like a handful
of cobwebs.

“The silk has faded and perished,” she murmured. “This was once a pair
of blue silk tights. I wore them when I made my descent down that long
rope from the firework platform. It was a very successful descent,
but my life has perished like this costume—all that part of it which
was not fireproof like this asbestos tunic: Take this miserable heap
of material and never let your daughter make such a descent, however
brightly you might plan the fireworks should burn, however loudly you
might hope that the mob would applaud the daring of her performance,
however rich and splendid you might think the costume chosen for her.
Yes, this wretched bundle of what seemed once such finery represents
my life. Wrap it up again and take it out of my sight for ever, but do
you, girl, gaze at it sometimes and remember what the old woman who
once wore it told you a few weeks before she died.”

There was a tap at the door, and the elderly parlourmaid came in to say
that the fly for which Mr. Fuller had telephoned was waiting at the
door.

“Do you mean to say that Mr. Fuller hasn’t ordered the brougham to take
Mrs. Fuller to the station?” the old lady demanded angrily.

“I think that the horse was tired, ma’am,” said the elderly maid,
retreating as quickly as she could.

“I wish I had my legs. I wish I had both arms,” the old lady exclaimed,
snatching at the small handbell that stood on the table at the left of
the bed, and ringing it impatiently.

Miss Young brought Letizia back.

“Emily, will you drive down with my visitors to the station? I shan’t
need anything for the next hour.”

It was useless for Nancy to protest that she did not want to give all
this trouble. The old lady insisted. And really Nancy was very grateful
for Miss Young’s company, because it would have been dreary on this
cold March night to fade out of Brigham with such a humiliating lack of
importance.

“Good-bye, little Letizia,” said her great-grandmother.

“Good-bye, grannie. I’ve told my auntylopes about my lamb and about my
dog and about all my fings, and they wagged their tails and would like
to meet them very much they saided.”

On the way to the station Miss Young talked about nothing else except
Mrs. Fuller’s wonderful charm and personality.

“Really, I can hardly express what she’s done for me. I first came to
her when she was no longer able to read to herself. I happened to know
a little French, and since I’ve been with her I’ve learnt Italian. She
has been so kind and patient, teaching me. I used to come in every
afternoon at first, but for the last two years I’ve stayed with her all
the time. I’m afraid Mr. Fuller resents my presence. He always tries
to make out that I’m her nurse, which annoys the old lady dreadfully.
She’s been so kind to my little brother too. He comes in two or three
times a week, and sometimes he brings a friend. She declares she likes
the company of schoolboys better than any. She has talked to me a lot
about your husband, Mrs. Fuller. I thought that she would die herself
when she heard he had been killed like that. And the terrible thing was
that she heard the news from Mr. Fuller, whom, you know, she doesn’t
really like at all. He very seldom comes up to her room, but I happened
to be out getting her something she wanted in Brigham, and I came in
just as he had told her and she was sitting up in bed, shaking her left
fist at him, and cursing him for being alive himself to tell her the
news. She was calling him a miser and a hypocrite and a liar, and I
really don’t know what she didn’t call him. She is a most extraordinary
woman. There doesn’t seem to be anything she does not know. And yet she
has often told me that she taught herself everything. It’s wonderful,
isn’t it? And her room! Of course, it’s very unusual, but, do you know,
I like it tremendously now. It seems to me to be a live room. Every
other room I go into now seems to me quite dead.”

And that was what Nancy was thinking when the dismal train steamed out
of Brigham to take Letizia and herself back to London, that melancholy
March night.




                              CHAPTER XV

                              THE TUNNEL


The only other occupant of the railway-carriage was a nun who sat in
the farther corner reading her breviary or some pious book. Letizia
soon fell fast asleep, her head pillowed on her mother’s lap, while
Nancy, watching the flaring chimneys in the darkness without, was
thinking of that old lady who had flared like them in the murk of
Lebanon House. After two hours of monotonous progress Letizia woke up.

“Muvver,” she said, “I fink I’ve got a funny feeling in my tummy.”

“I expect you’re hungry, pet. You didn’t eat a very good tea.”

“It was such a crumby cake; and when I blowed some of the crumbs out of
my mouf, one of those aunts made a noise like you make to a gee-gee,
and I said, ‘Yes, but I’m _not_ a gee-gee,’ and then the plate what I
was eating went out of the room on a tray.”

“Well, I’ve got a sponge cake for you here.”

Letizia worked her way laboriously through half the cake, and then gave
it up with a sigh.

“Oh, dear, everyfing seems to be all crumbs to-day.”

“Try some of the lemonade. Be careful, darling, not to choke, because
it’s very bubbly.”

Letizia made a wry face over the lemonade.

“It tastes like pins, muvver.”

The nun who overheard this criticism put down her book and said, with a
pleasant smile, that she had a flask of milk which would be much better
for a little girl than lemonade. She had, too, a small collapsible
tumbler, from which it would be easier to drink than from a bottle.

“Is that a glass, muvver?” Letizia exclaimed. “I was finking it was a
neckalace.”

“Thank Sister very nicely.”

“Is that a sister?” Letizia asked incredulously.

The various relationships to which she had been introduced this day
were too much for Letizia, and this new one seemed to her even more
extraordinary than the collapsible metal tumbler. Nancy explained to
the nun that they had been making a family visit to hitherto unknown
relations in Brigham, to which the nun responded by saying that she,
too, had been making a kind of family visit inasmuch as she had been
staying in Lancashire at the mother house of the Sisters of the Holy
Infancy.

“Right out on the moors. Such a lovely position, though of course it’s
just a little bleak at this time of year.”

She had laid aside her pious book and was evidently glad to talk for a
while to combat the depression that nocturnal journeys inevitably cast
upon travellers in those days before corridors were at all usual in
trains. In those days a railway compartment seemed such an inadequate
shelter from the night that roared past in torrents of darkness on
either side of it. The footwarmers, glad though one was of them, only
made the chilly frost that suffused the upper portion of the carriage
more blighting to the spirit. The dim gaslit stations through which the
train passed, the clangour of the tunnels, the vertical handle of the
door which at any moment, it seemed, might become horizontal and let it
swing open for the night to rush through and sweep one away into the
black annihilation from which the train was panting to escape, the saga
of prohibitions inscribed above the windows and beneath the rack which
gradually assumed a portentous and quasi-Mosaic significance—all these
menacing, ineluctable impressions were abolished by the introduction of
the corridor with its assurance of life’s continuity.

Nancy told the nun that she was a Catholic, and they talked for a time
on conventional lines about the difficulty of keeping up with one’s
religious duties on tour.

“But I do hope that you will go on trying, my dear,” said the nun.

The young actress felt a little hypocritical in allowing her companion
to presume that until this date she had never relinquished the
struggle. Yet she was not anxious to extend the conversation into any
intimacy of discussion, nor did she want the nun to feel bound by her
profession to remonstrate with her for past neglect. So instead of
saying anything either about the past or the future, she smiled an
assent.

“You mustn’t let me be too inquisitive a travelling companion,” said
the nun, “but I notice that you’re in deep mourning. Have you lost some
one who was very dear to you?”

“My husband.”

The nun leaned over and with an exquisite tenderness laid her white and
delicate hand on Nancy’s knee.

“And you have only this little bright thing left?” she murmured.

Letizia had been regarding the nun’s action with wide-eyed solemnity.
Presently she stood up on the seat and putting her arms round her
mother’s neck, whispered in her ear:

“I fink the lady tied up with a handkie is nice.”

“You have conquered Letizia’s heart,” said Nancy, smiling through the
tears in her eyes.

“I’m very proud to hear it. I should guess that she wasn’t always an
easy conquest.”

“Indeed, no!”

“Letizia?” the nun repeated. “What a nice name to own! Gladness!”

“You know Italian? My husband’s grandmother was Italian. I often wish
that I could speak Italian and teach my small daughter.”

“What is Italian, muvver?” Letizia asked.

“Italian, Letizia,” said the nun, “is the way all the people talk in
the dearest and most beautiful country in the world. Such blue seas,
my dear, such skies of velvet, such oranges and lemons growing on the
trees, such flowers everywhere, such radiant dancing airs, such warmth
and sweetness and light. I lived in Italy long ago, when I was young.”

Nancy looked up in amazement as the nun stopped speaking, for her voice
sounded fresh and crystalline as a girl’s, her cheeks were flushed
with youth, her eyes were deep and warm and lucent as if the Southern
moon swam face to face with her in the cold March night roaring past
the smoky windows of the carriage. Yet when Nancy looked again she saw
the fine lines in the porcelain-frail face, and the puckered eyelids,
and middle-age in those grave blue eyes. In Italy, then, was written
the history of her youth, and in Italy the history of her love, for
only remembered love could thus have transformed her for a fleeting
instant to what she once was. At that moment the train entered a
tunnel and went clanging on through such a din of titanic anvils that
it was impossible to talk, for which Nancy was grateful because she
did not want Letizia to shatter the nun’s rapture by asking questions
that would show she had not understood a great deal about Italy or
Italian. Presently the noise of the anvils ceased, and the train began
to slow down until at last it came to a stop in a profound silence
which pulsed upon the inner ear as insistently as a second or two back
had clanged those anvils. The talk of people in the next compartment
began to trickle through the partition, and one knew that such talk was
trickling all the length of the train, and that, though one could not
hear the words through all the length of the train, people were saying
to one another that the signals must be against them. One felt, too,
a genuine gratitude to those active and vigilant signals which were
warning the train not to rush on through that din of anvils to its doom.

And then abruptly the lights went out in every single compartment. The
blackness was absolute. People put up windows and looked out into the
viewless tunnel, until the vapours drove them back within. Now down the
line were heard hoarse shouts and echoes, and the bobbing light of the
guard’s lamp illuminated the sweating roof of the tunnel as he passed
along to interview the engine driver. In a few minutes he came back,
calling out, “Don’t be frightened, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no
danger.” Heads peered out once more into the mephitic blackness, and
the word went along that there had been a breakdown on the line ahead
and that their lighting had by an unfortunate coincidence broken down
as well. Everybody hoped that the signals behind were as vigilant as
those in front and that the red lamps were burning bright to show that
there was danger on the line.

“I aspeck the poor train wanted a rest, muvver,” said Letizia. “I
aspeck it was sleepy because it was out so late.”

“I know somebody else who’s sleepy.”

“P’r’aps a little bit,” Letizia admitted.

“Dear me, she _must_ be tired,” her mother said across the darkness to
the nun. “Well, then, put your head on my lap, old lady, and go right
off to sleep as soon as ever you can.”

For some time the two grown-ups in the compartment sat in silence while
the little girl went to sleep. It was the nun who spoke first.

“I wonder whether it will disturb her if we talk quietly? But this
utter blackness and silence is really rather dispiriting.”

“Oh, no, Sister, we shan’t disturb her. She’s sound asleep by now.”

“Does she always travel with you when you’re on tour?” the nun asked.

“Until now she has. You see, my husband only died at Christmas and we
were always together with her. I am a little worried about the future,
because I can’t afford to travel with a nurse and landladies vary and
of course she has to be left in charge of somebody.”

“Yes, I can understand that it must be a great anxiety to you.”

Nancy thought how beautiful the nun’s voice sounded in this darkness.
While the train was moving, she had not realised its quality, but in
the stillness now it stole upon her ears as magically as running water
or as wind in pine-tree tops or as any tranquil and pervasive sound
of nature. In her mind’s eye she was picturing the nun’s face as it
had appeared when she was speaking of Italy, and she was filled with a
desire to confide in her.

“That is really the reason I’ve been to Brigham,” Nancy said. “I
thought that I ought to give my husband’s relations the opportunity of
looking after Letizia. Not because I want to shirk the responsibility,”
she added quickly. “Indeed I would hate to lose her, but I did feel
that she ought to have the chance of being brought up quietly. My own
mother died when I was very young, and my father who is on the stage
allowed me to act a great deal as a child, so that really I didn’t go
to school till I was over twelve, and it wasn’t a very good school,
because I was living in Dublin with an aunt who hadn’t much money.
Indeed I never really learnt anything, and when I was sixteen I went
back to the stage for good. I’m only twenty-four now. I look much
older, I think.”

“I shouldn’t have said that you were more than that,” the nun replied.
“But how terribly sad for you, my dear, to have lost your husband so
young. Many years ago before I became a nun I was engaged to be married
to a young Italian, and he died. That was in Italy, and that is why I
still always think of Italy as the loveliest country and of Italian
as the most beautiful language. But you were telling me about your
relations in Brigham.”

Nancy gave an account of her visit, and particularly of the interview
with Letizia’s great-grandmother.

“I think the old lady was quite right. I cannot imagine that bright
little sleeping creature was intended to be brought up in such
surroundings. Besides, I don’t think it is right to expose a Catholic
child to Protestant influences. Far better that you should keep her
with you.”

“Yes, but suppose I cannot get an engagement? As a matter of fact, I
have only a pound or two left, and the prospect is terrifying me. I
feel that I ought to have gone on acting at Greenwich. But to act on
the very stage on which my husband had died in my arms! I couldn’t. I
simply couldn’t have done it.”

“My dear, nobody would ever dream of thinking that you could. It’s
cruel enough that you should have to act on any stage at such a time.
However, I feel sure that you will soon get an engagement. Almighty
God tries us in so many ways—ways that we often cannot understand,
so that sometimes we are tempted to question His love. Be sure that
He has some mysterious purpose in thus trying you even more hardly.
Nobody is worth anything who cannot rise above suffering to greatness
of heart and mind and soul. Do not think to yourself that a foolish old
nun is just trying to soothe you with the commonplaces of religious
consolation. To be sure, they are commonplaces that she is uttering,
but subtleties avail nothing until the truth of the great commonplaces
has been revealed to the human soul. Our holy religion is built up on
the great commonplaces. That is why it is so infinitely superior to
the subtleties of proud and eccentric individuals as encouraged by
Protestantism. What a long time we are waiting in this darkness! Yet we
know that however long we have to wait we shall sometime or other get
out of this tunnel.”

“Yes, but if we wait much longer,” said Nancy, “I will have another
problem to face when we get to London, for I will never dare arrive
back at my present landlady’s too late.”

“I can solve that problem for you, at any rate,” said the nun. “I shall
be met at Euston by a vehicle, and I know that our guest-room is free
to-night. So don’t let your night’s lodging worry you.”

After this they sat silent in the darkness for a long time. The
presence of the nun filled Nancy with a sense of warm security and
peace of mind. Gradually it seemed to her that this wait in the
tunnel was a perfect expression of the dark pause in her life, which,
beginning with the death of Bram, had ended in her visit to Brigham. A
conviction was born in her brain, a conviction which with every minute
of this immersion in absolute blackness became stronger, that somehow
the presence of the nun was a comforting fact, the importance of which
was not to be measured by her importance within the little space of
the railway-carriage, but that the existence of this nun was going to
influence the whole of her life, which must soon begin again when the
train emerged from the tunnel. The curtain would rise once more upon
the pantomime, and, whatever the vicissitudes that she as the heroine
of it might have to endure, there would always be a Fairy Queen waiting
in the wings to enter and shake her silver wand against the powers of
Evil. It was very childish and sentimental to be sitting here in the
dark dreaming like this, Nancy kept telling herself; but then once
more the mystery of the tunnel would enfold her as one is enfolded
by those strange half-sleepy clarities of the imagination that flash
through the midway of the night when one lies in bed and hopes that
the sense of illumination that is granted between a sleep and a sleep
will return with daylight to illuminate the active life of the morning.
Her thoughts about the nun reassumed their first portentousness; the
comparison of her own life to a pantomime appeared once more with the
superlative reality of a symbol that might enshrine the whole meaning
of life. Then suddenly the lights went up, and after a few more minutes
the train was on its way again.

Nancy was glad indeed on arriving at Euston toward two o’clock of a
frore and foggy night to drive away with Sister Catherine in the queer
conventual vehicle like a covered-in wagonette with four small grilled
windows. To have argued with Miss Fewkes about her right to enter the
tall thin house in Blackboy Passage at whatever hour she chose would
have been the climax to the Brigham experience.

The Sisters of the Holy Infancy were a small community which was
founded by one of several co-heiresses to a thirteenth-century barony
by writ, dormant for many centuries. Instead of spending her money on
establishing her right to an ancient title Miss Tiphaine de Cauntelo
Edwardson preferred to endow this small community and be known as
Mother Mary Ethelreda. The headquarters of the community were at
Beaumanoir where Sister Catherine, the right-hand of the now aged
foundress, had been visiting her. This was a Lancashire property which
had formerly been held by Miss Edwardson’s ancestors and repurchased by
her when she decided to enter the religious life. In London the house
of the community was situated in St. John’s Wood where the Sisters
were occupied in the management of an extremely good school. There
was a third house in Eastbourne which was used chiefly as a home for
impoverished maiden ladies.

Sister Catherine was head-mistress of St. Joseph’s School, and it was
there that she took Nancy and Letizia from Euston. The porteress was
overjoyed to see her, having been working herself up for the last two
hours into a panic over the thought of a railway accident. The white
guest-room was very welcome to Nancy after the fatigue of this long
day, so long a day that she could not believe that it had only been
fifteen hours ago that she set out from Euston to Brigham. She seemed
to have lived many lives in the course of it—Bram’s life as a boy
with his brother, old Mrs. Fuller’s eighty years of existence, Sister
Catherine’s bright youth in Italy, and most wearingly of all, Letizia’s
future even to ultimate old age and death. And when she did fall
asleep she was travelling, travelling all the time through endless
unremembered dreams.

In the morning Letizia greatly diverted some of the nuns by her
observations on the image of the Holy Child over the altar, which was a
copy of the famous image of Prague.

“Muvver, who is that little black boy with a crown on His head?”

“That is the baby Jesus, darling.”

“Why is He dressed like that? Is He going out to have tea with one of
His little friends?”

Nancy really did not know how to explain why He was dressed like that,
but hazarded that it was because He was the King of Heaven.

“What has He got in His hand, muvver? What toy has He got?”

“That’s a sceptre, and a thing that kings hold in their hands.”

“Are you quite sure that He is the baby Jesus, muvver?” Letizia pressed.

“Quite sure, darling.”

“Well, I don’t fink he is. I fink he’s just a little friend of the baby
Jesus, who He likes very much and lets him come into His house and
play with His toys, but I don’t fink that little black boy is the baby
Jesus. No, no, no, no, no!” she decided, with vigorous and repeated
shakes of the head.

Nancy was sorry when they had to leave St. Joseph’s School and return
to Blackboy Passage.

“I fink here’s where the little friend lives,” Letizia announced.

“Oh, darling, you really mustn’t be so terribly ingenious. You quite
frighten me. And what am I going to do about you next week when the
dear Kinos will be gone?”




                              CHAPTER XVI

                           BLACKBOY PASSAGE


As Nancy had anticipated, Miss Fewkes was more than doubtful about her
ability to keep an eye on Letizia while her mother was haunting the
offices of theatrical agents.

“I’m not really at all used to children,” she sniffed angrily.
“Supposing if she was to take it into her silly little head to go and
jump out of the window? There’s no knowing what some children won’t do
next. Then of course you’d blame _me_. I’ve always been very nervous
of children. I could have been married half-a-dozen times if I hadn’t
have dreaded the idea of having children of my own, knowing how nervous
they’d be sure to make me.”

“I wondered if perhaps Louisa might be glad to keep an eye on her, that
is, of course, if you’d let me give her a little present. It probably
won’t be for more than a week.” It certainly wouldn’t, Nancy thought,
at the rate her money was going, for she could not imagine herself
owing a halfpenny to Miss Fewkes. And even that little present to
Louisa, the maid-of-all-work, would necessitate a first visit to the
nearest pawnbroker.

“Louisa has quite enough to do to keep her busy without looking after
the children of my lodgers,” the landlady snapped.

Poor Louisa certainly had, Nancy admitted to herself guiltily, at the
mental vision of the overworked maid toiling up and downstairs all day
at Miss Fewkes’s behest.

“I don’t see why you don’t take her out with you,” said the landlady
acidly.

“Oh, Miss Fewkes, surely you know something of theatrical agents!”
Nancy exclaimed. “How could I possibly drag Letizia round with me? No,
I’ll just leave her in my room. She’ll be perfectly good, I’m sure.
And while we are on the subject of room, Miss Fewkes, will you let me
know how much you will charge me for the bedroom only, as I shan’t be
wanting the sitting-room after this week.”

“Oh, but I don’t particularly care to let the bedroom by itself,” Miss
Fewkes objected. “I haven’t another bedroom vacant, and what use would
the sitting-room be to anybody by itself? Perhaps you’d prefer to give
up both rooms?”

Nancy hesitated. Then she plunged.

“Certainly, Miss Fewkes. I really wanted to give them up some time ago.
They’re very expensive and very uncomfortable, and not overclean.”

“Well, I shan’t argue about it, Miss O’Finn,” said Miss Fewkes
haughtily. “Because I wouldn’t soil my lips by saying what I think
of a person who behaves like you do. But I do know a little about
the prerfession, having been in it myself, and if you _are_ what you
pretend to be, which I don’t think, all I can say is the prerfession
has changed for the worse since my day.”

With this she snapped out of the room, as a little wooden cuckoo snaps
back into his clock.

Nancy sat down and wrote to Mrs. Pottage.

                                                 5 Blackboy Passage,
                                                       Soho.
                                                         Friday.

  Dear Mrs. Pottage,

  I’m rather worried what to do with Letizia while I am looking for
  work. I wonder if you’d look after her for a week or two? I have
  a very unpleasant landlady here who hates children, and so I must
  get a new room until I find an engagement. Don’t ask me to come to
  Greenwich too, because, dearest Mrs. Pottage, I simply couldn’t. But
  Letizia’s different, and if you wouldn’t mind having her with you
  for a little while it would be such a weight off my mind. You must
  please charge me whatever you think is fair. I haven’t the least
  idea, so I must leave that to you. I leave here on Monday, and if you
  will let me know by then what time will suit you I will bring Letizia
  to Greenwich station, if you’d be kind enough to meet us. I haven’t
  told Letizia herself that she may be going to stay with you, because
  I don’t want to disappoint her if you can’t manage it, and of course
  I will perfectly understand if you can’t.

                           Yours affectionately,
                                             Nancy O’Finn.

Nancy felt more cheerful when she had posted this letter.

Early on Sunday morning the Kinos left Blackboy Passage.

“You won’t change your mind at the last minute and let us take the
kid?” Mr. Kino asked.

Nancy shook her head.

“It would be a weight off your shoulders, wouldn’t it?” he pleaded.

“Yes, but it would be a terrible weight on my mind,” said Nancy. “Dear
Mr. Kino, I couldn’t let her be adopted, I couldn’t really.”

Yet when the Kinos had gone, and Nancy was sitting by the window,
listening to the church bells and to the occasional footsteps of people
clinking along the frozen Sabbath streets and to the emptiness of Soho
without the distant roar of traffic, she began to wonder if she ought
not to have accepted the Kinos’ offer. She tried to make up her mind to
put on her things and take Letizia to the late Mass in the Soho Square
church; but the dejection reacted on her energy, and she felt incapable
of getting up from her seat, of doing anything except stare out of the
window at the grey March sky or look with a listless resentment at
Miss Fewkes’s pictures of girls in sunbonnets cuddling donkeys over
gates or of girls in furs feeding robins in the snow. She even lacked
the energy, when the morning had passed and it was nearly two o’clock,
to ring and ask when Miss Fewkes proposed to serve dinner. And when
dinner did arrive, with everything cooked so badly as to make it nearly
inedible, she did not feel that she could be bothered to protest.

“Muvver,” said Letizia, “why has my gravy got spots of soap in it?”

“Because it’s getting cold, my dear. So eat it up quickly before it
gets any colder.”

“But, muvver, when I put it into my mouf, it all sticks to the top of
it and won’t come off.”

“Don’t go on grumbling, there’s a good little girl. If you don’t like
it, don’t eat it.”

“Well, I won’t,” said Letizia decidedly.

A rice-pudding, which tasted like a dry sponge wrapped up in old
leaves, caused Letizia many sighs before she could swallow even a
mouthful, and some bananas which looked as if the greengrocer had tried
to reshape them after they had been driven over by the traffic of
Covent Garden all day, did nothing to help matters. As for the coffee,
it might have been smeared on a boy’s fingers to stop him from biting
his nails, but it was never meant to be drunk.

One of the reasons for Miss Fewkes’s perpetual bad temper was an
inclination on the part of visitors to the lower basement of the house
to ring Miss Fewkes’s bell and so fetch her downstairs unnecessarily to
open the front door. This being the second Sunday of the month, Louisa
had been allowed to go out, and Miss Fewkes was in her tiny little
bedroom in the roof of the house when her bell rang twice. The idea of
going all the way downstairs only to find that a visitor had arrived
for the people in the basement did not appeal to the little woman. So
she opened the bedroom window and, peering out over the sill, perceived
upon the steps below an exceedingly bright cerise bonnet belonging to
what was apparently a respectable middle-aged woman.

“Who are you ringing for?” Miss Fewkes called down in her rasping voice.

The cerise bonnet bobbed about for a while until at last it discovered
from what window it was being addressed, when it looked up and shouted
back:

“What’s it got to do with you who I’m ringing for? If you’re the
servant here, just you come down and open the door the same as what I
would if anybody rung my front bell.”

“Do you want Mr. and Mrs. Blanchit?” Miss Fewkes called down. “Because
if you do, it’s the broken bell by the area gate and kindly ring that.”

“Do I want who?” the cerise bonnet shouted back.

“Mr. and Mrs. Blanchit!”

“No, I don’t, you saucy old outandabout! What next are you going to
ask? You just come down and open the door the same as I should myself.”

Miss Fewkes slammed her window down and left the cerise bonnet on the
steps. After ringing about a dozen times, it went down the steps again
and standing in the middle of the pavement shouted “Hi!” several times
in rapid succession. A small boy blowing a mouth-organ stared at the
cerise bonnet for a moment, stopped his tune, and asked it if it had
lost anything.

“What ’ud I be staring up at the top story of a house for, you saucy
little image, if I’d have lost anything—unless I’d dropped my umbrella
out of a balloon, and which I haven’t?... Hi!”

On hearing the cerise bonnet begin to shout again, the small boy put
the mouth-organ in his pocket and looking up in the air shouted “Hi!”
too. Two little girls dragging behind them a child of doubtful sex
smeared with barley sugar stopped to gaze, and then three more small
boys arrived on the scene and proceeded to augment the duet of “Hi!”

A policeman, who had been lured from Dean Street into Blackboy Passage
by the noise, inquired of the cerise bonnet what its need was.

“Can’t you get into your house, mum?”

“No, I can’t. I want to visit a lady friend of mine who lives at 5
Blackboy Passage, and when I rung the bell a female like a potted
shrimp poked her head out of a top-floor window and asked me if I
wanted Mr. and Mrs. Blanchit.”

“Mr. Blanchit lives at number five,” one of the small boys volunteered.
“Down in the basement, he lives.”

“Well, what’s that got to do with you, you pushing little eel? I don’t
want the man. I want to see my lady friend.”

“Perhaps you’ve got the wrong number,” the policeman suggested.

“Wrong number be ... well, I won’t say what I was thinking, because it
doesn’t always do.”

It was at this moment that Letizia, who had been trying vainly for an
hour after dinner to make her mother play with the gilded antelopes,
decided to look out of the window.

“Muvver! Muvver!” she shouted, clapping joyful hands. “I can see Mrs.
Porridge in the street, and she’s talking to a policeman.”

Nancy jumped up, and ran to the window.

“Why, so it is! Dear, dear Mrs. Pottage! I’ll go down and open the
door.”

“There you are!” Mrs. Pottage exclaimed triumphantly to the policeman
after she had embraced Nancy. “Didn’t I tell you my lady friend lived
here?”

The policeman strode off with a good-natured smile: the small boy took
the mouth-organ out of his pocket and, after watching the policeman
safely through the archway of the Tavern, resumed his interrupted tune.
The two little girls, without looking to see if the sugar-smeared
neutral was ready to be dragged on again, moved forward on their way.
The three other small boys discovered a new method of wearing out boots
and set off to practise it. Mrs. Pottage and Nancy retired into Number
Five. Blackboy Passage was once more abandoned to its Sabbath emptiness
and silence.

“Well, you do live in a Punch and Judy show and no mistake,” Mrs.
Pottage declared, as she followed Nancy up the stairs, the jet bugles
of her best bonnet tinkling and lisping as she moved.

“My landlady doesn’t like being called down to open the door; and the
girl’s out,” Nancy explained.

“Landlady you call her? Skylady I should call her. That is if I called
her a lady at all, and which I most certainly never shouldn’t not if I
lived to be as old as Methussalem.”

Letizia was waiting at the head of the stairs to welcome Mrs. Pottage,
into whose outspread arms she flung herself in a rapture of welcome.

“Mrs. Porridge! Mrs. Porridge!”

“My heart’s jool!”

“Oh, Mrs. Porridge, where have you been? I didn’t know where you could
be, and I went to a circus and touched an ephelant on his trunk and
it was all hot and I saw a little friend who the baby Jesus liked and
I saw my big grannie and the wolf didn’t eat her at all and I saw two
aunts and they smelt all funny like the inside of a dirty-cloves basket
and we had rice-pudding for dinner and it sticked my teef togevver, and
I’ve got two golden auntylopes and they eat apples made of soap.”

“My good gracious, if you haven’t been going it,” Mrs. Pottage
declared, with a critical glance round the sitting-room of the
lodgings. “Poky! Very poky! And not at all clean. Why, that grate don’t
look as if it had been swept since the fire of London, and, oh, dear,
oh, dear, just look at the dust on those pictures! If a water pipe
burst in this house you’d have weeds growing on the frames. Well, I
suppose I haven’t got to tell you who I’ve come to fetch?”

Nancy smiled.

“I knew you wouldn’t fail me.”

“Yes, but wait a minute. I didn’t at all like the tone of that letter
you wrote me.”

Nancy looked worried.

“Not at all I didn’t like it. Yes, I see myself sending in a bill for
that blessed infant’s keep. Why, you might as well ask me to charge
you for the sun shining in at your windows.”

Nancy saw that she had genuinely hurt the good soul by mentioning money
in connection with Letizia’s visit.

“Dear Mrs. Pottage, you could hardly expect me to plant her down on you
without at least offering to pay, but I won’t offend you by arguing
further. You know exactly how I feel about your kindness, my dear soul.”

“Kindness be ... oh, dear, now that’s twice in the last half hour I’ve
nearly said that word. It comes of keeping company with Mr. Currie.
Let me see, you won’t have heard of him, because he’s only been
courting me since I gave the go-by to Watcher and Hopkins. He’s a very
hasty-tempered man, and his language is a bit of a coloured supplement.
Mrs. Bugbird passed the remark to me I’d really have to mind my p’s and
q’s, and I said it wasn’t my p’s and q’s I had to look out for, it was
my b’s and d’s. Of course, Mrs. Bugbird herself didn’t mind. Oh, no,
she’s a very broad-minded woman. In fact her father, so she’s often
told me, used to preach regularly at street corners against any kind
of religion at all. But I shan’t keep this Currie hanging around much
longer. No, he gets me into bad habits, and the next time he proposes
marriage will be the last. Besides, even if I liked _him_, I don’t
like his business which is fried fish. Fancy me in a fried-fish shop
for the rest of my life! Why, I’d sooner marry an engine driver and
live in a railway station. Well, an engine driver did propose to me
once. But I saw he had the habit of driving too much, and that would
never have suited me. Why, even of a Sunday afternoon he wasn’t happy
if he couldn’t walk me round Greenwich Park at sixty miles an hour. I
remember once just for a joke I started whistling the same as an engine
might, and everybody stopped and begun staring, and which made him a
bit annoyed. In fact he thought I was touched in my head, and that
Sunday was his last. Well, he’s the only one of all my many who didn’t
wait for me to say ‘no’ definite, but went and hooked it himself. And
going back to the subject of my language this last month, it wouldn’t
do at all if Letichia’s coming home with me, so I think I’ll drop him a
p.c. and not wait for the third time of asking.”

“Am I coming home with you, Mrs. Porridge?” Letizia asked, clapping her
hands.

“You’re coming home with me this blessed afternoon just as soon as
your dear ma’s packed up your tiddlies. Your friend Mrs. Bugbird will
be popping in, and we’ll have a sprat tea together. And dear Aggie
Wilkinson’s dancing about on her pore crutches, because you’re coming
home to your Mrs. Porridge.” She took Nancy aside, and continued in a
lower voice. “I read between the lines of your letter, dearie, and I
knew you didn’t want to come near Greenwich. So I just skipped into
my Sunday best and come along to fetch her. She can stay as long as
you like. I’d say she could stay for ever. Only she wants a better
bringing-up than what a woman like me could give her.”

“Oh, but I’m sure to get an engagement very soon, Mrs. Pottage, and
then of course she’ll go on tour again with me. I wouldn’t have
bothered you now, if I hadn’t thought you’d be glad to have her for a
while, and if I hadn’t wanted to leave these rooms as soon as possible.”

“And I don’t blame you. I’d sooner live in a dustbin. But where are you
going when you leave here?”

“Oh, I shall find somewhere to-morrow. I’m so glad you did come to-day
for Letizia. It will make it ever so much easier for me. The only thing
I’m worrying about is the luggage.”

“Well, why don’t you let me take what luggage you don’t want down to
Greenwich, and then when I bring you Letichia, I can bring you your
luggage at the same time. There’s no sense in travelling a lot of
luggage round with you like a peacock’s tail. We can just pop what you
don’t want into a four-wheeler and take it to London Bridge.”

Nancy hesitated. She was wondering if she had enough money left to pay
the cab now, and Miss Fewkes’s bill to-morrow morning. However, if she
hadn’t, she could visit the pawnbroker early and pledge some odds and
ends, so she decided to accept Mrs. Pottage’s offer.

“Now who’s going to fetch the four-wheeler?” Mrs. Pottage wanted to
know when the packing was finished. “Shall I give a holler to Her
Landladyship upstairs?”

“Ask Miss Fewkes to fetch a cab?” Nancy exclaimed. “Why, she’d....”
Words failed her to express what Miss Fewkes would do.

“But what is this Miss Fewkes?” demanded Mrs. Pottage indignantly.
“Three ha’porth of nothing from what I could make out of her. Still,
rather than create a row on a Sunday afternoon I’ll go and fetch the
four-wheeler myself. I’ll stand in Shaftesbury Avenue till one comes
along. There’s one thing, the police won’t be so likely to take me for
a kerbstone fairy as what they would Lady Fewkes. Oh, dear, oh, dear!
Well, I’m bothered if some people nowadays don’t give theirselves as
much airs as if they was Margate, Ramsgate, and Brighton all rolled
into one.”

In about ten minutes Mrs. Pottage returned, followed by a burly old
cab-driver in a dark blue beaver coat with treble capes and a shiny
bowler hat.

“I’ve brought a most obliging driver along with me,” she proclaimed.
“The first cab I got, the fellow wouldn’t leave his horse at the corner
to come and help down with the luggage. Afraid of his horse, he said.
‘I suppose you’re afraid it’ll fall down and never stand up again if
you left go of the reins?’ I said. ‘Never heard of a horse running
away, I suppose,’ he answers back very sarcastic. ‘What?’ said I,
‘that pore skelington run away? Why, it couldn’t walk away. It might
fade away, yes. And if it didn’t run away of itself, I’m sure nobody
wouldn’t ever run away _with_ it. Not even a cats meat man, and they’ll
run away with anything as looks a little bit like flesh and blood.
But that horse of yours don’t. That horse of yours looks more like a
clothes-horse than a real animal. Only I’d be very afraid to hang a
towel on its back for fear it might break in half under the weight.’
And with that I walked on and found this driver who’s been most
obliging, I’m sure.”

The cabman touched his hat in acknowledgment of the flattery, and asked
which piece they wanted down first.

But now a greater obstacle to the departure of the luggage than an
unwilling cab-driver presented itself, for Miss Fewkes appeared,
her tow-coloured hair elaborately done as it always was on a Sunday
afternoon to resemble a brand-new yacht’s fender from which state it
gradually wore away during the stress of the week.

“And what is the meaning of this?” she demanded, folding her arms.

Nancy explained why her luggage was going away this afternoon.

“Then perhaps you’ll pay my weekly bill, Miss O’Finn, before you remove
your boxes?” said Miss Fewkes.

“My bill will be paid to-morrow morning before I leave.”

“Yes, but I’m not in the habit of permitting my lodgers to remove their
luggage until their bills are paid,” Miss Fewkes insisted.

Mrs. Pottage gasped.

“Well, of all the impudence I ever did hear! Well, I passed the remark
to the policeman that you looked like a potted shrimp, but shrimp sauce
is more what you ought to be called.”

“It’s easy to see what _you_ are,” Miss Fewkes spat out venomously.
“The sort of woman _you_ are is plain to any one who’s sharp and has
eyes.”

At this point, the burly cab-driver, who was evidently afraid of being
involved in this feminine dispute, retired downstairs until the matter
was settled.

“It is easy to see what I am,” Mrs. Pottage agreed. “Because I’m a
decent-made woman. But it’s far from easy to see what you are, let me
tell you, very far from easy, because you aren’t as big as a second
helping of underdone mutton at an eating-house. You _may_ have eyes.
So’s a needle. You _may_ be sharp. So’s a needle. And I wouldn’t care
to look for you in a haystack any more than what I would a needle, and
that’s the solid truth I’m telling you. You asked for it, ma’am, and
now you’ve had it, and if you’ll kindly stand on one side you won’t get
carried out with the luggage like a speck of dust off of your own dusty
banisters.”

“This luggage don’t leave my house before my account’s been settled,”
Miss Fewkes shrilled. “Not if I have to fetch in a policeman to you.”

“Fetch a policeman?” Mrs. Pottage jeered. “Well, for a woman who looks
like last night’s buttonhole or a sucked sweet as a kid’s spat out on
the pavement, you’ve got a tidy nerve.”

Nancy thought that it was time to interfere, because she did not want
Letizia to be frightened by the quarrel.

“I’m quite willing to pay your bill, Miss Fewkes, if you suspect that
I’m trying to give you the slip,” she said.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Pottage interposed. “It’s beyond reason giving in to
such as she. Let her call this policeman we’ve heard so much about, and
it’s my opinion he’ll laugh in her face, that is if he could tell it
_was_ her face, which I don’t think.”

“You vulgar, impertinent woman,” Miss Fewkes ejaculated.

“Yes, thank goodness I _am_ a woman,” Mrs. Pottage retorted. “And thank
goodness you can reckonise me as such, which is more than what I could
reckonise you, not if I was looking at you with two telescopes at once.
Why, if I was you I’d be afraid to go out alone in case I got took by a
showman for a performing flea. It’s a nine days’ wonder you never got
pecked up by a sparrow; but there, I suppose even a sparrow knows what
isn’t good for him.”

To what heights of invective Mrs. Pottage might have risen was never
to be known, because Nancy insisted on paying Miss Fewkes her bill,
which enabled her to retreat to her own room and cease to oppose the
departure of the luggage.

“But there, perhaps it’s as well,” conceded Mrs. Pottage. “Or I _might_
have been tempted to say something a bit rude.”

With the aid of the good-natured cabman the luggage was put on the
four-wheeler; and an hour later Nancy waved farewell to Letizia and her
hostess at London Bridge Station.




                             CHAPTER XVII

                             THE TWO ROADS


On Monday morning with a lighter heart than she had known for many
weeks Nancy left Miss Fewkes. She had ten shillings and a few odd
coppers when she stepped out of the tall thin house in Blackboy
Passage, carrying her dressing-case in her hand; but she had not to
worry about Letizia at present, and the removal of this anxiety had
revived her confidence in being soon able to get a “shop.” Meanwhile,
she had to find a cheap room somewhere. This proved to be much less
easy than she had expected. At first all the owners of the houses
announcing apartments seemed to regard her with equal suspicion.

“I don’t keep the kind of room you want,” said one.

“I wouldn’t mind taking you in myself,” said another. “But my husband
don’t like having women in the house.”

“If you’re looking for gay rooms,” said a third with brutal directness,
“you’d better try the other side of Oxford Street. You won’t find
anything to suit you round here. We have to be too careful of the
police.”

When at last Nancy did reach a quarter where landladies appeared less
dismayed by the prospect of letting to a single woman, she found that
the most exorbitant prices were asked in every house.

“Two pounds a week for a bedroom only,” said one. “Or if you have a
latchkey, three pounds.”

“But why should I pay a pound a week for a latchkey?” Nancy asked in
astonishment.

“Well, if you have your own latchkey, I shouldn’t make any extra charge
for the gentlemen you brought home. Otherwise I’d have to charge you
five shillings a head.”

Nancy laughed.

“But I don’t want to bring gentlemen home with me. I’m on the stage,”
she explained.

The stolid countenance of the woman with whom she was negotiating did
not change its expression.

“If you don’t want to bring men back, you don’t want a room in my
house.”

With this she slammed the door in Nancy’s face, obviously annoyed at
the waste of her time.

Another landlady was quite distressed by the suggestion that Nancy
should have a bedroom for ten shillings a week.

“A nice-looking girl like you doesn’t want to come down to that,” she
exclaimed. “You trust your luck a bit, my dear. Why don’t you take my
two nice rooms on the ground floor and cheer up? They’ve always been
lucky rooms to girls like you. The last one who had them got off with a
wine-merchant somewhere up North, and he’s fitted her out with a lovely
little flat of her own. He only comes up to London for a day or two
every month, so she has a nice easy time of it. I’m sure I don’t know
whether it’s me or my rooms, but certainly I’ve seen a lot of luck come
the way of girls like you.”

At last after a peregrination of various apparently economical quarters
Nancy found a tiny garret at the top of a tumbledown house in Unicorn
Street, which joined Red Lion Square to Theobalds Road. This was the
third time in succession that she had taken lodgings in a thoroughfare
for foot passengers only, and superstition began to suggest a hidden
significance in this collocation. The third time? It might be from here
that she would discover the main thoroughfare of her future life.

Unicorn Street was dark and narrow, and the upper portions of several
of the houses overhung the pavement so far as almost to meet. These
relics of London before the Great Fire had by this date already been
condemned, although they were not actually pulled down for another ten
years. The majority of the shops belonged to second-hand booksellers,
whose wares seemed as tattered and decrepit as the mouldering old
houses above. Their trade was mostly done from shelves outside the
shops containing books labelled at various prices from one penny
to a shilling. There were of course other books inside, but these
were usually stacked anyhow in tottering heaps and simply served to
replenish the shelves and boxes on the contents of which, when the
weather allowed it, seedy men of various ages browsed slowly, humping
their backs from time to time like caterpillars when they thought they
had caught sight of a rarity. Mr. Askin, the owner of the shop high
above which Nancy found her cheap room, resembled the English idea of
an elderly German professor before the war destroyed that pleasantly
sentimental conception. His lanky white hair hung over his collar like
greasy icicles; he wore blue glasses, carpet slippers, and a frock
coat; he even smoked a long china pipe. The prospect of seeing his shop
pulled down to make way for blocks of eligible offices did not disturb
him, because he had made up his mind that within two years he was going
to be drowned. As he apparently never moved a yard away from his shop,
Nancy was puzzled by this confident belief, and ventured to ask him on
what it was based.

“Have you studied the effects of the moon?” he inquired contemptuously.

Nancy admitted that she never had.

Whereupon he put his forefinger against his nose and said very solemnly:

“Then don’t meddle in what you don’t understand. If I say I’m going to
be drowned before two years are out, then it means I’ve studied the
question and come to my own conclusions and resigned myself to what
must be. And that’s that, isn’t it? So try and not talk so silly, young
lady.”

Mr. Askin had bought enough books, according to his calculations, to
outlast him and leave a trifle over for his widow. These had at one
time filled every room in the house; but as soon as they were sold the
empty rooms were furnished with a few odds and ends and let. The top
stories were now completely void of books, which was how Nancy managed
to rent one of the garrets in the roof for the sum of seven shillings
a week. The other garret was inhabited by Maudie Pridgeon, the Askins’
maid-of-all-work, who could not do enough for Nancy once she heard she
was a real actress.

“Oh, Miss O’Finn,” she begged. “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to
hear me recite _The Lighthouse-Keeper’s Daughter_ some afternoon, and
tell me if I’ve got a chance to get on the stage myself. It’s the dream
of my life. I may not be a Sarah Burnhard or an Elling Terry, but it’s
in me, Miss O’Finn. I feel shore it’s in me. Sometimes I feel I could
burst with what’s in me. I was afraid it might be wind for a time after
I’d been reading about some medicine or other. But it ain’t, Miss
O’Finn, it’s acting. It is reelly. So some time, when we have a moment
to ourselves, I do wish you’d hear me recite and give me a bit of good
advice. And of course I can rely on you not to say a word to Mrs. Askin
about my ambishing or she might pass some nasty remark about it. She
never moves out of the back room behind the shop herself, and she’d
never believe as I might be a star hiding my light under a bushel.”

The reason why Mrs. Askin never moved out of that back room was her
profound conviction that all men were thieves, and collectors of
old books the greatest. So, day in day out, she sat in a flocculent
armchair which at night was turned into her bedstead, watching with a
suspicious eye the behaviour of prospective customers. She was a dark
unwieldy woman with a hairy chin, a profusion of tufted moles, and
what was almost a heavy moustache. It was agreed when Nancy took the
garret that she was not to expect any cooking to be done for her; and
when she saw the Askins’ meals being prepared in that back room and Mr.
and Mrs. Askin and Maudie each eating a disgusting plateful balanced
on different heaps of incredibly dusty books, she did not regret the
arrangement. She managed to make her own garret fairly clean; and
though it was perishingly cold up there under the ancient roof, though
the bed was hard and the rats scampered round inside the raw-boned
plaster walls, she had the satisfaction of feeling perfectly sure that
nowhere in London could she be lodged more cheaply. The solitude of
the long, long evenings when she used to go to bed at eight o’clock in
order to keep warm was immense; and yet she liked it, for she seemed,
high up in this garret, to be as near to Bram as she could reach on
earth. There was no blind to the decayed window of the dormer and,
blowing out her candle, Nancy used to lie for hours staring out at the
tawny London sky, while beneath her pillow Bram’s watch was always
ticking, his watch that she had never allowed to run down. And once in
sleep he held her in his arms, and once she woke with his kisses warm
upon her lips; but mostly when she dreamed of that beloved lost one it
was of running with him along endless platforms to catch fantastic and
unattainable trains, and of acting with him in nightmare plays without
having studied the part in which she was being suddenly called upon to
appear. Meanwhile, it seemed that the tangible and visible world was
fast dissolving into an unstable dream when Nancy, after three weeks of
pawnshops and agents’ offices and of apparently being as far away as
ever from any engagement, was persuaded by Maudie to hear her recite
_The Lighthouse-Keeper’s Daughter_ and was asked at the end of it to
advise her about a dramatic future.

“I think you said it very well, Maudie,” Nancy assured the little maid,
whose cheeks were flushed and whose eyes were flashing with excitement.
“But I must really advise you to give up all idea of the stage as a
profession. Look at me. I am an experienced actress and yet I can’t get
an engagement. I’ve been trying ever since January, and now it’s nearly
April. All the managers say I’m too tall; and you know, Maudie dear,
you’re just as much the other way, aren’t you? You and I want special
parts written for us, that’s the trouble.”

The little maid’s eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Miss O’Finn,” she sobbed, “you’ve been and gone and shattered my
life’s ambishings with them words. You see, when I’m reciting I feel as
if my head was going through the ceiling, but of course what you feels
and what you is ain’t the same, is they? Still, it’s always the darkest
hour before the dawn, they say, and I’ve still got my young man. When
I see him on Sunday night I’ll tell him as I’ve given up my life’s
ambishings, and he can start saving up for merridge as soon as he
likes. It’s broke _my_ heart, but he’ll be happy. He was always afraid
he’d lose me, Miss O’Finn. He never could believe I’d remain a simple
milkman’s wife when I become famous, and on’y last week he let a lovely
double-bed go by because he didn’t want to have it on his hands and me
out of his reach.”

A few days after Nancy had destroyed Maudie’s dramatic ambitions she
received a letter from Mrs. Pottage.

                                                  3 Starboard Alley,
                                                     Greenwich.
                                                     April 1st
                                                       !

  My dear Mrs. Fuller,

  Its’ a nice day to choose to write a letter to any one but there you
  won’t get it till April 2nd so you won’t think any one’s sending you
  a live mouse or any silly joke like that. Well, here we are as well
  as we can be thank God—Letitsha is in the pink there’s no doubt about
  it and so am I but this is not what I am writing about. Last week we
  had the _Lights of Home_ company at the Royal and Mr. Plimmer who was
  acting in it was lodging with me and this week they finished and he’s
  staying on with me because he says he’s never been so comfortable
  in his life but he’s took a great fancy to Letitchia and that’s a
  fact—He raves about her and I won’t say I’m surprised because she’s
  been on the Top of her Form and making us all laugh fit to Bust. Mrs.
  B. says she’s laughed a lot in her life and which is a fact but she
  don’t think she ever laughed so much as what she has this week. She
  split her stays one afternoon—They went off like a Cannon—Talk about
  a royal Salute—And Mr. Plimmer says she’s a born actress and ought
  to be on the boards without delay—well, he’s taking out a company
  himself in a drama he’s written something after the stile of _East
  Lynne_ well about the same as far as I can see only a bit more East
  in it from what I can make out and he wants Letissia for the child
  and you for the Mother. He’ll write plenty of stuff for her because
  he says She’ll Knock Them. Well, I’m bound to say I think she will
  and Mrs. B’s convinsed of it: So I gave him your address and he’s
  going to pop up to London to-morrow if you’ll make arrangements to
  be in I’ve given him your address. What a voice that Kid has he said
  to me Mrs. Pottage. Good God it would reach to the back row of the
  gallery in any theatre. Well I hope this’ll be the end of all your
  troubles and which I think it will dearie—

  Letitsia sends her love and so do I and I hope this is an end of all
  your worries even if it is April Fools Day. Mrs. B. sends all the
  best and so do I.

                              Your loving old
                                         Johanna Pottage.

Here was a most unmistakable turning out of this long lane, Nancy
thought, a turning at so sharp an angle that the prospect of taking
it alarmed her imagination, so far did it seem likely to lead Letizia
and herself away from the direction in which Bram and she had been
travelling together. Nancy’s mind went back to her own appearance at
the age of six in _Green Bushes_. Her mother was no longer alive to
witness that first performance of a squeaky-voiced little boy in the
old-fashioned melodrama, of which she could remember nothing except
the hazy picture of the heroine dressed in a Fenimore Cooper get-up
as she came running down the bank, gun in hand. Her father had made
arrangements for her to live with the baggage man and his wife during
that tour. She had liked Mr. Ballard, a big fat man with a very much
waxed moustache, but little Mrs. Ballard with her cold hooked nose,
pink and half-transparent at the tip, had been antipathetic. She could
see her now sighing and sewing all day. If Letizia did go on the stage
as a child, she should not act away from her mother at any rate. It
would always have to be a joint engagement.

Maudie interrupted Nancy’s pictures of the past by coming up to say
that a gentleman was down in the shop and wanted to see her.

“I didn’t know if you’d have liked me to have brought him up here, Miss
O’Finn? I hope I done right in asking him to wait a minute in the shop?”

“Good gracious, yes, Maudie! He couldn’t come up here. I’ll be down
very soon.”

Nancy looked at the card: _Rodney Plimmer. “Custody of the Child”
Company._ Evidently that was the play he was presently going to take
out on tour. Nancy put on her hat and coat, for if she was going to
talk business with Mr. Plimmer they would certainly have to talk
elsewhere than in Unicorn Street.

The actor was turning over the pages of one of Mrs. Askin’s tattered
folios when she came down into the shop.

“Now don’t tell me you’ve got another appointment, Miss O’Finn,” he
said. “I’ve been hoping you would come out to lunch with me.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t any appointment, and I’ll be delighted to lunch with
you.”

“Capital! Then, if you’re ready, shall we wend our way toward some
little place where we can talk far from the madding crowd?”

There was nothing remarkable about Mr. Plimmer’s appearance. The
clean-shaven face, the full mobile lips, the tendency toward sleekness,
the suggestion that his clothes were being worn with a little too
much of an air, the moist impressionable eyes, all these traits were
sufficiently familiar to Nancy among the men of her profession.

“Now, have you any prejudices on the subject of restaurants?” Mr.
Plimmer inquired with rich voice and elaborate manner.

“None whatever.”

“You don’t pine for music and such like gaieties?”

She shook her head.

“Then, let me see.” He paused with such dramatic abruptness in the
middle of the pavement that an errand-boy who was just behind bumped
into his broad back. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, my lad?”
he asked with exaggerated dignity.

“Why don’t you look where you’re stopping?” the errand-boy retorted and
hurried on, whistling indignantly.

“Self-possession is nine points of the law,” said Mr. Plimmer. “By the
way, that’s not bad, eh, Miss O’Finn? I think I’ll note that down as
rather a good line.” He took out a small pocket-book, and entered the
remark. “A word in the hand is worth two in the head,” he observed with
a smile; and as he did not bother to enter this line under the other
Nancy supposed that he used it frequently.

“Then, let me see,” said Mr. Plimmer, returning to the original
attitude which had provoked this diversion. “I have it! Kettner’s.
You’ve no prejudice against Kettner’s?”

“None whatever. I’ve never been there,” Nancy replied.

“Never been to Kettner’s? Oh, then of course we must go to Kettner’s.
No music at Kettner’s. And if there’s one thing I hate it’s chops and
sonata sauce.”

Mr. Plimmer blinked his moist eyes as if he were dazzled by the
brilliancy of his own wit.

“And now what about a hansom?”

The drive from the corner of Theobalds Road to Kettner’s was a strain
on Nancy, because Mr. Plimmer was evidently extremely nervous in
hansoms and talked all the time of the close shaves he had had when
driving in them. If ever their driver showed the least audacity in
passing another vehicle, Mr. Plimmer would draw in his breath with
a hiss, or put his hand out over the apron as if he would seize the
too urgent horse by the tail and stop his going too fast. However,
Kettner’s was reached in safety, and Mr. Plimmer was no sooner on the
pavement than he recovered all his suave composure so that he entered
the restaurant with the air of knowing exactly where to go and what to
order, whenever he should choose to eat in London.

“They know me here,” he whispered to Nancy. “Ah, good morning, Gaston.”

The waiter who had just placed the menu before him looked slightly
astonished at being thus addressed; but he was too urbane to put his
client out of countenance by pointing out, as Nancy felt sure he could
have pointed out, that his name was not Gaston.

“Now, let me see, what is it I always have here?” said Mr. Plimmer.

“Will you take ze table-d’hôte lunch, sare?” the waiter suggested.

“Oh, you recommend that, do you? Let me see....” The waiter began to
translate rapidly the meaning of the various items, so rapidly that Mr.
Plimmer did not even have time to say “cheese” instead of “fromage.”

“Gaston always makes himself responsible for my lunch here,” he
explained to his guest. “He knows my tastes, and you can be sure he’s
going to give us something special.”

The waiter, having taken the order for the table-d’hôte, returned with
the wine list.

“Ah-ha, now this will take a bit of thought,” said Mr. Plimmer. “Let me
see now. Let—me—see. White or red wine, Miss O’Finn?”

Nancy chose white.

“What woman ever chose red?” he laughed romantically. “Now let—me—see.
What’s the number of that Chambertin I usually drink here, Gaston?”

“Number 34 is a very nice wine, sare.”

“That’s it! That’s it! A bottle of 34. Extraordinary, isn’t it, the
way these fellows remember every customer’s likes and dislikes?” he
observed to Nancy when the waiter had retired to fetch the wine. “It
must be quite a year since I was in Kettner’s, and yet he remembered
which was my particular tipple. But of course I always tip him well.
Oh, yes, old Gaston has good reason to remember my tipple.”

Mr. Plimmer winked solemnly to indicate that the pun was intentional.

After a little more talk about the advantages of establishing a
personal relationship with waiters if you wished to fare well at
restaurants, Mr. Plimmer came to business.

“I think our excellent old landlady Mrs. Pottage has already written
to you something of what I wanted to talk about. The fact is, Miss
O’Finn, I have been completely subjugated by your little girl. And what
an actress! I don’t know if you’ve met Mrs. Pottage’s friend with the
queer name?”

“Mrs. Bugbird?”

“Just so. Well, your daughter’s imitation of Mrs. Bugbird is simply
marvellous. She has genius, that child. And genius is not a word that
one uses lightly in our profession. No, Miss O’Finn, it is a word
that one uses with caution, with extreme caution. But I don’t mind
telling you that during the last week I have been staggered by her
possibilities.”

“I’m afraid she comes of precocious parents,” said Nancy. “My husband
went on the stage when he was only sixteen, and I made my first
appearance ten years earlier. In my case, I’m afraid that such early
promise was fatal.”

“I’m sure you do yourself an injustice,” said Mr. Plimmer. “You are
feeling discouraged at the moment. It is not to be wondered at. But I
venture to think that the proposal I am going to make to you will open
a brighter vista. How do you find the wine?”

“Delicious,” said Nancy, who might as well have been drinking water, so
little was she aware of her glass.

“It is good, isn’t it? I’m bound to say Gaston never lets me down. I
don’t know if Mrs. Pottage told you that the occasion of my finding
myself under her hospitable roof was my engagement with the _Lights
of Home_ company. A queer old-fashioned melodrama, one at which we
are tempted to laugh nowadays. But I accepted the engagement with a
purpose. One is never too old to learn, in our profession. I wanted
to get the feeling of the audience for melodrama. Of course, in my
early days I played a good deal in melodrama, but during the last ten
years I have been mostly on tour with London successes. Last year, I
had an idea for an original play, and while I was resting I embodied
my wandering fancies in tangible shape. I have written, Miss O’Finn,
what I do not hesitate to call the finest domestic drama of our time,
_The Custody of the Child_. A striking title, eh? The subject is, as
you may guess, divorce, but treated, I need hardly say, in a thoroughly
pleasant manner. I abominate these modern plays—Ibsen and all that kind
of thing. Thank goodness, the great majority of our countrymen are
with me there. We don’t want that kind of raking in muckheaps. No, the
moment that the British drama forgets that it is founded upon British
family life, the British drama is dead. I hope you agree with me?”

Nancy supposed that he was more likely to stop talking if she agreed
with him than if she argued with him. So she nodded her head in
emphatic approval.

“I knew the mother of that child must be an intelligent woman.”

“Surely you haven’t been discussing the present state of the drama with
Letizia?” said Nancy.

Mr. Plimmer laughed solemnly.

“Not exactly. But, by Jove! that child would be quite capable of
discussing it. She’d talk a great deal more sense about it than most
of these confounded dramatic critics. Don’t speak to me about dramatic
critics, Miss O’Finn. They disgust me. I can’t bring myself to speak
about them. I regard dramatic critics and wife-beaters as the most
contemptible beings on earth. By what right does a man who knows no
more about acting than a graven image set himself up to criticise
people who do? There he sits in the front row of the stalls with last
night’s shirt and a perpetual sneer—but don’t ask me to go on talking
about such rascals. My gorge rises against them. I despise them. I
regard them with contempt and aversion. I wish you hadn’t brought up
this topic, Miss O’Finn. I can’t even enjoy Gaston’s excellent lunch
when I think about dramatic critics. It’s their ignorance that is so
appalling, their ignorance, their lack of taste, their dishonesty,
their ... but, no, I cannot speak about them! Do let me pour you out
another glass of wine.”

“You were telling me about your play, Mr. Plimmer.”

The actor-author mopped his brow, and after reviving himself with a few
mouthfuls of food was able to continue.

“This play of mine, Miss O’Finn, might seem to bear a superficial
resemblance in the main theme to _East Lynne_. But it is only very
superficial. Until the excellent Mrs. Pottage to whom I read it said
that the great scene in the third act reminded her of a similar scene
in the dear old-fashioned drama at which we have all wept in our day, I
confess that even this superficial likeness had not struck me. However,
Mrs. Pottage was right. There undoubtedly is a faint resemblance. But
what of that? Did not somebody or other, some great writer whose name
escapes me for the moment, say that there were only six original plots
in the world? After all, it’s the treatment that counts. But let us
be practical. I did not invite you out to lunch to hear me discuss
abstract theories of art. At the end of this month _The Custody of the
Child_ will be presented for the first time on any stage at the Prince
of Wales’ Theatre, Leeds. Will you and your daughter accept what I am
tempted to call the two leading parts? I have engaged an excellent
young actor for the husband—Clarence Bullingdon. Do you know him? No?
He’s very sound. My own part is a comparatively small one. Well, I
didn’t want to give the critics a chance of saying that I had written a
play to show off my own acting.”

“But would I suit the part?” Nancy asked.

“Exactly what I require. You might have served as the model for my
inspiration.”

Nancy wavered. The last thing she had intended was to allow Letizia to
act. Yet, would it hurt her so much to be acting with her mother?

“What salary are you suggesting, Mr. Plimmer?”

“I had allotted five pounds a week to your part, Miss O’Finn, but if
your little girl will appear with you, I am prepared to double that.”

Ten pounds a week! It was as much as she and Bram had ever earned
together, and a good deal more than they had earned sometimes. It would
be madness to refuse. Besides, work was necessary if she was not to
break down under this anxiety. Yet Letizia was very young to be acting.

“What time would my little girl be finished?” she asked.

“Ah, you’re thinking of her bedtime. Well, of course, she would be
late. In fact, her scene in the last act is the crux of the whole play.
But surely she could lie down every afternoon? We shall only have one
matinée in the week.”

“You are tempting me, Mr. Plimmer. And yet I don’t really think I ought
to let my little girl act. Couldn’t you engage me at five pounds a week
without Letizia?”

The actor shook his head.

“Candidly, that would be a bit awkward, Miss O’Finn. The fact is that I
have already half promised your part elsewhere, and if it were not for
your little girl I should not care to break my word.”

“But I wouldn’t like to keep another girl out of the part,” said Nancy
quickly.

“That is being quixotic—unnecessarily quixotic; and quixotic,
dear lady, rhymes with idiotic. No, the other lady would perfectly
understand my point of view in doing anything within reason to
obtain the services of a good child actress in a play where so much,
everything, in fact—depends on that child actress. I understand from
Mrs. Pottage that you have been out of an engagement for some time,
Miss O’Finn, and you will pardon me if I say that I judged from your
lodgings that you are perhaps not in too healthy a financial condition.
I am willing if you accept the engagement for your daughter and
yourself to pay you half-salary until we open at Leeds. Come, I think I
have shown how really anxious I am to have your little daughter.”

“I’ll let you know to-night,” Nancy began.

“No, no, don’t wait till to-night. Say ‘yes’ now. Come, give me your
purse and I’ll put your first week’s salary inside and post you the
contract to-night.”

There was sixpence-halfpenny in that purse, and to-morrow, Nancy
thought, her last brooch would have to go to the pawnshop. After that
there would only be a few dresses, and then Bram’s watch must go and
perhaps even her wedding-ring. It would be madness to refuse. She
pushed her purse toward Mr. Plimmer.

“All right. Consider us engaged,” she sighed.

The actor was frankly delighted. He ordered a fresh bottle of
Chambertin and talked for another half-hour enthusiastically about
his play and the success that Letizia was going to make. But Nancy
could not be merry. She was wondering what Bram would have said about
Letizia’s acting. The people in the restaurant faded out of sight;
the noise of knives and forks died away; the conversation sank to
less than a whisper, to less than the lisp of wind in grass. There
stood Bram in the entrance, his eyebrows arched in a question, his
eyes half-laughing, half-critical, his lips pursed. It seemed to Nancy
that she rose from her seat and cried out to him; but in that instant
the people in the restaurant reappeared and the noise of talk and
plates was louder than ever. There was no Bram in the entrance of the
restaurant, no Bram anywhere in the world.

Mr. Plimmer offered to drive Nancy to Unicorn Street; but she refused
and bade him good-bye outside Kettner’s. She wanted to be alone, and
finding herself in Soho she thought that she would look in at her late
lodgings and inquire if there were any unforwarded letters waiting
for her, not that she expected any, but it might be that somebody had
written to her at that address. It would be cheerful to find a letter
from the Kinos. The Kinos? Ah, but it was not the same thing. It was
quite another matter for Letizia to act in the same play as her mother.

Miss Fewkes was ungracious when she opened the door to her late lodger.
She had not let any of her rooms since the Kinos and Nancy went away.

“There was a letter and a parcel came for you some days ago, but I
don’t know if I can find them. If you’d have left your address I could
have forwarded it on. But I’m too busy to keep an eye on stray letters
kicking about and getting in the way when I’m dusting.”

However, in the end she found what turned out to be a postcard from
Mrs. Kino sending messages from herself and her husband. The parcel
was a set of Japanese boxes, one inside the other down to the last one
which was hardly bigger than a pin’s head. These were for Letizia to
play with.

There was nothing about Miss Fewkes that invited one to stay and gossip
with her. So Nancy went away with her post, and as she did not want to
visit Blackboy Passage again she left her address behind her in case
any more letters did happen to come.

That night Nancy lay awake for a long time, puzzling over the wisdom
and morality of the step she had taken. Was it due to selfishness? Was
it due to her own desire to be at work again? At work! At work again!
No longer to lie here night after night, staring out of the curtainless
window at the tawny London sky, her heart sick for his arms about her.
The evenings might not be so long when she was working again. There
would be indeed the poignancy of once more treading boards that he and
she had trod together; there would be the agony of seeing again the
familiar platforms along which he had run with cups of tea for her;
there would be continuous reminders of what she had lost. Reminders?
What reminders were needed to make more empty this empty world? At work
again! At work! Every week a new town. Always something to distract
her from this eternal ache, some poor little futile change, but still
change—change and work. Was it very selfish of her to sacrifice Letizia
to her own need? Very wrong and very selfish? Yet even from a practical
point of view, surely it was right to take this money when she had the
chance? She could not leave Letizia with Mrs. Pottage indefinitely. To
refuse an offer like this while she accepted the old landlady’s charity
would put her in such a humiliating position. Bram surely would not
blame her. He would remember what had happened when she went to his
brother, and she would know that she had tried to put her own feelings
on one side. It made such a difference to open her purse and hear
the crackle of that five-pound note when she put in her hand to find
a penny for the bus-conductor. It was as comforting and warm as the
crackling of a fire in wintertime.

“Oh, my darling,” she cried toward the stars that were visible again at
last after that unending black frost, “my precious one, I don’t think
I have any more courage left. I can’t live alone any longer and wonder
what I shall have to pawn of ours next.”

In the morning Maudie came in with two letters. The first envelope she
opened held the contract from Mr. Rodney Plimmer with a note asking
her to sign it and return to him at Greenwich. The handwriting on the
outside of the second, which had been forwarded from Blackboy Passage,
was unfamiliar, and the postmark showed that it was a week old. Miss
Fewkes must have thought yesterday that she had lost it, and had
therefore said nothing about it. It was lucky that she had called at
her old lodgings. Or was it so lucky? The unfamiliar writing filled
Nancy with foreboding, and her heart beat very fast as she tore open
the envelope.

                                            St. Joseph’s School,
                                        Sisters of the Holy Infancy,
                                             5 Arden Grove,
                                                 N. W.

                                               Annunciation B. V. M.

  Dear Mrs. Fuller,

  After our talk in the train two weeks ago I wrote to the Reverend
  Mother about you and your little girl. Unfortunately she has been
  laid up with a bad chill, so that only to-day I have had her answer.
  She gladly authorises me to offer you the protection of the Holy
  Child for little Letizia. This would mean that the Community will be
  utterly responsible for her education until she reaches the age of
  eighteen. I do not know of course if you will be willing to let her
  come to us so young. I did not speak to you on the subject, because I
  did not want to make any kind of half-promise without the authority
  of the Reverend Mother. We should perfectly understand your not
  wanting to lose her yet a while, and we shall be willing to accept
  the care of her at any time during the next three years. But if I may
  advise you, I think you would do right to send her to us now. You
  will not consider me too narrow-minded if I say that life on tour
  with all sorts of changing influences, some good and some perhaps
  bad, is not the best early influence for a little girl, especially
  an intelligent and forward little girl like yours. However, this
  you must decide for yourself. Of course, she will have a very good
  education, and by being relieved of all financial responsibility you
  will be able to save money for her when she leaves us.

  Will you let me know what you decide? We are ready to take her
  immediately. I have thought a great deal about you this fortnight,
  dear child, and I humbly pray to Almighty God that He will give you
  His grace to choose what is best for yourself and for your little
  girl.

                                Yours affectionately in J. C.
                                              Sister Catherine.

Here was another wide turning out of that long lane, every bit as
wide and important as the first, but leading in exactly the opposite
direction.

Nancy looked at the contract from Mr. Plimmer and at the letter from
Sister Catherine. Why was she hesitating which road to take? Was it
the dread of parting with Letizia? A little. Was it the thought of
the disappointment of Mr. Plimmer, who with all his absurdity had
appreciated Letizia and thus endeared himself to her mother? A little.
Was it the fancy that Mrs. Pottage might be hurt by the rejection of
an offer that she would have supposed so welcome? A little. Or was it
cowardice about her own immediate future? That most of all. It was
the dread of tempting fortune by a refusal of this engagement. It
was the dread of sending back that comfortably crackling five-pound
note and having to pawn her last brooch before she could even pay for
the registered letter in which it ought to be sent. It was dread of
the tawny London sky louring at her through that curtainless window,
of tumbledown wooden stairs in Maiden Lane and weary stone steps in
Garrick Street, of seeing her wedding-ring appraised by a pawnbroker’s
thick and grimy fingers, of loneliness, eternal, aching loneliness.
There recurred the picture of that old lady framed by vermilion
cushions, and the sound of her high thin voice repeating, “Educate
your child. Educate her.” There came back the old lady’s confident
interpretation of her grandson’s unuttered wish. Whatever the cost,
Bram would surely choose the convent. Nancy was once more in that
silent tunnel, listening to Sister Catherine’s voice plangent with the
echoes of her passionate fled youth. She remembered how deeply fraught
with significance that conversation had seemed. And the impulse that
had drawn her footsteps to Blackboy Passage to inquire for letters she
did not expect? Who should dare to say it was not Bram himself who had
guided her thither? So that between Letizia and the future offered her
stood nothing except her mother’s cowardice.

Nancy took her brooch to the pawnbroker’s and raised upon it the sum of
fifteen shillings and sixpence. Of this she spent a shilling in sending
this telegram.

  Sister Catherine
      5 Arden Grove.
          N. W.

  Your letter just received gratefully accept your kind offer will call
  and see you this afternoon

                                           Nancy Fuller.

Then she bought a registered envelope and slipped the five-pound note
inside it with a letter of apology to Mr. Plimmer.

Fourteen shillings and threepence in the world, but Letizia was safe.
She found a Catholic church and spent the odd coppers lighting three
penny candles to Our Lady of Victories.




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                               TRIENNIAL


As if fortune had had no other object in view but the trial of Nancy’s
character by adversity, she had no sooner handed over Letizia to the
care of the Sisters than she secured an engagement with a bloodthirsty
melodrama called _The Lights of Paris_, in which she toured what were
called the “number two” towns for many, many weeks. Her part was very
different from the one Mr. Plimmer had offered her. Instead of the
unhappy young mother reconciled in the last act to a forgiving husband
she was to be a dark-eyed adventuress, all ostrich plumes and swishing
silk petticoats, whose diabolical support of the villain earned groans
and hisses from every audience and whose death at last in the very
sewer where she had plotted to drown the heroine was greeted with
acclamation. However, what did the part matter? She was earning four
pounds a week, out of which she was managing to save half. And what
did these dreary manufacturing towns matter? There was less temptation
to spend money in them. Or the dull company of second-rate actors and
actresses? There was small encouragement to waste her money in buying
clothes to impress them. Blackburn, Bury, Bolton, St. Helens, Oldham,
Rochdale, Preston, Wigan, Warrington, Widnes, Halifax, Huddersfield,
Hartlepool, Gateshead, Sunderland, South Shields. Rain and smoke and
blight and the stench of chemicals. The clatter of clogs every morning
and every afternoon when the women were going to and from their work in
the factories. Soot and puddles. Murky canals slimed always with a foul
iridescence. Sodden shawls and wet slates. Infinite ugliness, dawns
and days and dusks cinereous, eternal in festivity, and ceaseless
monotone. No vivid colour anywhere except occasionally in the gutters
a piece of orange-peel and on the sweating walls the posters of the
tawdry melodrama in which she was playing. It was good to think of
Letizia far from these drizzling and fumid airs.

In November the _Lights of Paris_ company visited Brigham where
for several years now a theatre had stood actually on the site of
the original tabernacle of the Peculiar Children of God. On making
inquiries about the present state of Lebanon House, Nancy heard that
old Mrs. Fuller had died about five months earlier. When Letizia went
to school at the convent, Nancy had written and told the old lady; but
she had never received an answer to her letter. She did not feel at all
inclined to visit Caleb or the aunts, and although she found out where
Emily Young was living she did not succeed in meeting her, Miss Young
being away that week. Nancy was wondering if her news about Letizia had
pleased the old lady, when the following week at Birkenhead she had a
letter from Miss Young.

                                                22 Rosebank Terrace,
                                                     Brigham.
                                                November 20th, ’95.

  Dear Mrs. Fuller,

  I was so disappointed to miss you during your stay in this dreary
  place, but I was away on a visit to some cousins in Macclesfield.
  I wrote to you when Mrs. Fuller died, but I was afraid as I never
  heard from you that the letter failed to reach you. I sent it to
  the address from which you wrote last April about your little girl.
  Mrs. Fuller had just had a second stroke, and I’m not sure that she
  understood what I was reading to her. Still, I fancied that I noticed
  an expression in her eyes that looked as if she had understood and
  was glad. She was really unconscious though until she died in May
  just before Mr. Caleb Fuller was married. I miss her dreadfully, and
  Brigham seems duller every day. You are lucky to be on the stage and
  able to travel about from one place to another. Life here is simply
  beastly. I’m trying to get a place as secretary to somebody and
  have been working hard at typewriting and shorthand. I hope I shall
  succeed. I hate Brigham more every moment of the day. I do hope that
  we shall meet somewhere again. Wishing you all good luck.

    With kind regards. I am,
                             Yours sincerely,
                                     Emily Young.

Nancy smiled when she read of the envy her career inspired, smiled when
she thought of Blackburn, Bury, Bolton, St. Helens, Oldham, Rochdale,
Preston, Wigan, Warrington, Widnes, Halifax, Huddersfield, Hartlepool,
Gateshead, Sunderland, and South Shields.

The following Sunday the _Lights of Paris_ company found themselves
in Warrington, and after Benediction at a little tin mission-church
Nancy saw the priest and arranged for Masses to be said for Letizia’s
great-grandmother. It was not so much the spiritual satisfaction she
derived from the fulfilment of this pious duty as the feeling that
somehow or other Masses said in this tin church for the repose of that
strange old woman’s soul would express her personality in the immense
void of eternity as effectively as on earth she had expressed herself
with those vermilion cushions and Venetian mirrors. She had defied in
her own creative world the overwhelming nonentity of Lebanon House,
just as on the walls of her room Giorgione’s “Pastorale” had defied the
meanness of contemporary existence, prevailing with colour against time
itself. Now let beauty and compassion rise from the smoke of Warrington
to sustain her soul.

There was no opportunity that December to go South and spend Christmas
with Letizia; but Nancy was gratefully surprised by an invitation from
Mother Mary Ethelreda to visit the convent at Beaumanoir on the moors
of northern Lancashire, whence she could easily return in time for the
matinée at Burnley on Boxing Day. The drive through the cold upland
air, the quiet and seemliness of the conventual life, the dignity of
the aged Mother Superior, the whiteness and candlelight within, the
snow and starshine without, all united to compose Nancy’s mind so that
when she returned to the theatre she moved in a dream, like one who has
voyaged from afar and whose body has arrived while the spirit still
lingers on the way. Looking out of her window that night, she fancied
that the stars high above the smoke of Burnley were jingling like
silver bells, so much nearer seemed they since her visit to the Convent
of the Holy Infancy at Beaumanoir on the wintry moors. And she knelt
down to thank Almighty God that Letizia’s youth was clear and bright,
remote and crystalline as one of those stars ringing down notes of
harmonious light upon the discordant gloom in which her mother wandered.

It was June before Nancy saw Letizia. They spent a month together in
the cottage where she was born among the Kentish cherry orchards. The
pinks smelt just as sweet along the garden paths as then. There were
not fewer roses nor less honeysuckle in the high hedges of the lanes.
The haycocks threw shadows quite as far across the shaven leas, across
the green-glowing gold-bloomed leas. And when Letizia was tucked
away in her old cot and Nancy sat by the lattice, poring upon the
perfumes of the evening, there were just as many ghost moths dancing
upon the dusky air of the garden, fluttering with the old fantasmal
passion above the spiced and sombrous flowers. But in no lane and in
no lea, behind no hedge, across no brook, at the end of no garden path
was Bram, who in this same month six years ago was everywhere. Yet,
in spite of the poignancy of remembered joys that she could never
know again, Nancy was very happy during her holiday. Letizia was as
diverting as ever, with her long tales of school, as definite in her
likes and dislikes and as quick to express them.

At the end of the month the long-promised stay with Mrs. Pottage at
Margate was accomplished, and Nancy noted with a little pang for the
way Letizia was getting older that she no longer called her old friend
Mrs. Porridge, just as now she always said “mother” instead of “muvver.”

“Well, they haven’t starved her at this convent,” the old landlady
declared after she had embraced Letizia and presented her cousin, Mrs.
Williams, the pleasant and hospitable woman in whose house they were to
stay. “I was very doubtful about the idea when you settled to put her
in this convent, because I’ve always had a horror of nuns, and which is
why I’ve never been to see her. I know I read a story once about a pore
girl they bricked up, and it gave me the horrors to that extent it was
weeks before I could go down into the cellar and fetch up a scuttle of
coal. But the child’s looking a regular nosegay. What do they give you
to eat, duckie?”

“Oh, we have breakfast and dinner and tea and supper, and a glass of
milk at eleven,” Letizia said.

“You do?” Mrs. Pottage exclaimed. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, they regular
gormingdise you! I’ve got it all wrong about nuns. I suppose it’s the
name that sounds so empty. But certainly I fancied if you had two
slices of dry bread and a glass of water you thought you’d done well
for one day.”

“Mrs. Pottage, when shall we go paddling?” Letizia asked persuasively.

“Paddling?” said Mrs. Pottage. “You surely don’t expect me to go
paddling?”

“Well, of course you must paddle,” Letizia exclaimed. “Don’t you know
we’re at the seaside?”

“But if I take off my shoes and stockings and pull up my skirts they’ll
think the British Museum’s broken loose,” said Mrs. Pottage. “You
haven’t seen my legs, duckie. Talk about marble columns. Well, my
legs would make a marble column look like a knitting-needle. Besides,
supposing I got my toe bit off by a kipper?”

The next morning, armed with several baskets of strawberries and a
large green-lined gingham umbrella, Mrs. Pottage set out with Nancy
and Letizia to savour the delights of Margate beach.

“Fine weather for a sail, mum,” said one of the longshoremen.

“Yes, but you’d be the one that was sold,” Mrs. Pottage retorted.

“Nice day for a row, mum,” suggested another longshoreman. “A shilling
the first hour, and sixpence every hour afterwards.”

“Who do you think I am?” Mrs. Pottage demanded. “Grace Darling? No,
thanks, young man, I’d sooner spend the money on winkles.”

It was such a jolly week at Margate. Although Mrs. Pottage was never
lured into a boat, she was persuaded by Letizia into paddling; and
when she found herself with the water round her knees she was so much
amused by the ridiculous sight she must be making of herself that she
became as helpless with laughter as her friend Mrs. Bugbird did and
sat down with such a tremendous splash that every child on the beach
came running in her direction at the rumour that an elderly woman had
been seized by a ferocious shark. Letizia was so much amused by the
spectacle of Mrs. Pottage sitting down in the sea and remaining there
helpless with laughter that she sat down herself, whereupon several
other little girls and boys followed her example, to the consternation
of their nurses who had to fling down their novelettes and hurry to
the rescue. Yes, it was a jolly week at Margate, a week of sitting on
the sun-baked sands and eating strawberries, of paddling and visiting
the camera obscura, of listening to Negroes and Pierrots, of digging
castles and buying shrimps for tea, of exploring the mysterious marine
underworld of the pier, of wild rides on donkeys and sedate drives in
goat-carriages, of sweets and paper-bags and asphalt promenades. But
it came to an end very quickly. Mrs. Pottage went back to Greenwich.
Letizia went back to the convent. Nancy went on tour again to play the
adventuress in another melodrama.

And for another two years she played adventuresses, rustling her silk
petticoats, hissing defiance through her clenched teeth, and smoking
with amazing effrontery the cigarettes that in those days indicated
on the stage a woman dead to shame. Nor did she catch more than an
occasional glimpse of Letizia during that time, because she managed to
fill up the summers of both 1897 and 1898 by acting in stock seasons
at northern theatres, where for one week during the illness of the
leading lady she had an opportunity of showing what she could do with
parts like Rosalind, Viola, and Lady Teazle. But the next week she was
playing the colourless Celia, the tiresome Olivia, and the prototype
of the modern adventuress, Lady Sneerwell. Yet even these parts only
lasted for the two reputed fine months of the year. By the middle of
July she was once more immersed in monotonous villainy, measuring
her success not by the applause but by the groans and hisses of the
unsophisticated audiences for whose entertainment she kept the hero and
the heroine apart until the very end of the fifth act. Her salary was
still four pounds a week; but every week she was still able to save
half. There was over £200 for Letizia in the bank when in the autumn of
1898 Nancy secured an engagement in the provincial tour of a popular
musical comedy to sing a contralto part with a good song in each of the
two acts and, what interested her much more, a salary of five pounds a
week. It was while she was with this company that she met John Kenrick.




                              CHAPTER XIX

                           NANCY’S CONTRALTO


The acquaintance began in Bristol by Nancy’s finding a letter waiting
for her at the stage-door on the second evening.

                                                Royal Severn Hotel,
                                                     Bristol,
                                               Oct. 11. Tuesday aft.

  Dear Miss O’Finn,

  Business having brought me to Bristol, I found myself at the
  Princess’s Theatre last night, and I want to tell you how very much
  I enjoyed your performance of the Baroness—a difficult and ungrateful
  part in an absurd production. But apart from your acting I was
  tremendously struck by your voice. If it were well trained, I don’t
  hesitate to say that you might go very far indeed in grand opera.
  Good contraltos are so rare, and good contraltos who can act are
  simply not to be found except in the unusual atmospheric conditions
  set up by a blue moon. To show my genuine enthusiasm, although my
  business in Bristol is at an end, I am staying on another night in
  order to give myself the pleasure of hearing you sing a second time.
  And will you set the seal upon the pleasure by joining me at supper
  in my hotel after the performance? I will call for your answer before
  going in front. Don’t concern yourself about “clothes.” Such a supper
  as I can offer you will not be worthy of a grand toilette.

                                  Yours very truly,
                                           John Kenrick.

Nancy was not used to getting letters of appreciation from the front
of the house. Adventuresses of the type that she had been playing did
not attract the susceptible pen. She really hardly knew how to reply.
At the same time it was pleasant to be told nice things about one’s
voice and one’s acting. She reread the letter. Rather an affected way
of writing, she decided, when she came to the remark about the blue
moon. Still, the affectation of the host was not sufficient reason to
decline supper with him. Grand opera? The man was mad. Grand opera? Did
he know anything about grand opera? It might be interesting to go out
to supper. After all, if he turned out to be an idle bore she was not
bound to see any more of him. Business might detain him in Bristol;
but she never would, if he were tiresome. Nancy borrowed a piece of
notepaper from the stage-door keeper and wrote a brief acceptance of
the stranger’s invitation.

“I’ve got off with an impresario,” she told the lady who shared her
dressing-room.

“With a what, dear?”

“Or a Lothario. I’m not quite sure yet,” Nancy laughed.

“Have I put too much black on my left eyelid?” the other asked
intensely. “It looks a bit smudgy, doesn’t it?”

“You’re not much interested in my young man,” said Nancy in mock
reproach.

“I’m sorry, dear. I was so fussed by this gard-awful liquid-black I
bought last week at Cardiff.”

“Perhaps it was coal,” Nancy suggested.

“Oh, you don’t think it is really!” exclaimed her companion. “Oh,
whatever shall I do? My god, if I wasn’t a perfect lady I could say
something.” Whereupon Miss Pamela Fitzroy proceeded to express her
opinion of Cardiff chemists and of the liquid-black they supplied to
poor actresses, in very strong language indeed. “What were you saying,
dear?” she stopped suddenly to ask Nancy. “Weren’t you saying something
about getting off with a foreigner? You watch him, that’s my advice. I
had a Spanish boy following me round last tour when I was with the _Fun
of the Fair_ crowd, and what I went through, my dear! He’d only got to
look at me, and I’d feel like ringing the nearest fire-alarm. And then
he got jealous and took to walking up and down outside the stage-door
and glaring at all the men of the company. Of course it used to amuse
them, and they’d whistle _Toreador_ or whatever the song is. In the
end, however, he ran out of money and got pinched for passing a dud
cheque at Bradford.”

“But my young man isn’t a foreigner,” said Nancy.

“Damn and blast this liquid-black,” swore Miss Pamela Fitzroy.

With the consciousness that somebody in front was interested in her
Nancy sang her two songs better that night than she had ever sung them.
She was feeling so much excited over the prospect of going out to
supper while she was dressing after the performance that, though she
knew she was being ridiculous, she simply could not resist saying to
Miss Fitzroy:

“I felt in voice to-night. I really enjoyed singing.”

“That’s right,” her companion replied indifferently. “A short life and
a merry one. Do you know, dear, I think I’ve put on weight. My corsets!
I believe I’ll have to give up drinking Guinness. They say it’s
fattening. What a shame! Still, I don’t want to get too fat. Men don’t
really like massive women nowadays. I wonder why. My dear old mother
says they got had so often when women used to wear crinolines that
they took to thin women in self-defence. You ought to meet my dear old
mother. She’s such a naughty old thing. You know, a real good sport.
Weren’t you saying you were going out to supper with a fellow in front,
dear? Have a good time, and say ‘champagne’ in a firm voice. Don’t let
him think he can get away with Sauterne, or you’ll find yourself going
home on the last tram instead of in a cab. You want to watch these
fellows in the provinces. They think an actress will give them a season
ticket for paradise on a bottle of lemonade and two ham sandwiches.”

Nancy’s admirer was waiting for her outside the stage-door. He was a
tall dark clean-shaven man with a heavy chin and large deep-set eyes.
The impression of his size was accentuated by the long double-breasted
overcoat he was wearing. His voice was deep and sympathetic in spite of
his rather sombre appearance.

“So kind of you to accept my casual invitation,” he murmured. “Come
along, I’ve a decrepit vehicle waiting for us outside the front of the
theatre.”

The dining-room of the Royal Severn Hotel did not succeed any better
than most provincial hotels in suggesting an atmosphere of nocturnal
gaiety. The two waiters looked as if they had been dragged out of bed
by the hair of their heads in order to attend to the wants of the
unreasonable beings who required to be fed at this unnatural hour. Most
of the tables suggested that they would welcome more cheerfully the
eggs and bacon of the morning breakfast than the lobster mayonnaise of
supper. The very flowers in attendance appeared heavy with sleep and
resentful at not being allowed a night’s repose with the other table
decorations that were piled upon one of the sideboards like wreaths
upon a coffin. Half the room was in twilight, so that the portion of it
that was lighted was so uncomfortably bright as to seem garish. At one
end two members of the chorus were trying to make a pair of youthful
hosts feel at their ease by laughter that sounded as thin as broken
glass.

“I’m sorry to inflict this atmosphere of gloom upon you,” said Mr.
Kenrick. “Let’s try to dissipate it in a bottle of champagne. I did
my best to order a special supper, but my efforts were regarded with
suspicion by the management. Your fellow performers over there seem
to be enjoying themselves. Touring with them must be rather like
travelling with an aviary of large and noisy birds.”

“Oh, but they’re such dears,” Nancy exclaimed, in arms against any
criticism of her fellow players.

Mr. Kenrick put up a monocle and looked across at the group for a
moment. Then he let it fall without comment.

“You sang better than ever to-night,” he said gravely.

Nancy felt that she simpered.

“I’m in earnest, you know. What are you going to do about it?”

“My voice?”

He nodded.

“What can I do?”

“You could have it trained.”

“But, my dear man, do you realize that I’m twenty-eight? Rather late in
the day to be cultivating operatic ambitions.”

“Not at all when the voice is as good as yours, and if you go to the
right man.”

“And where is he to be found?”

“Naples.”

Nancy laughed.

“It’s like a fairy-story where the poor heroine is set an impossible
task by the wicked stepmother. How do you think I could afford to go to
Naples?”

“That’s just what I wanted to discuss with you,” said Kenrick.

“But wait a moment,” Nancy interrupted. “I have a little girl.”

“What has that got to do with training your voice?”

“Why, this. Every penny that I can save I am saving for her. She is in
a convent now, and when she leaves school in another twelve years I
want her to have a voice and be able to afford to pay for its training.
I want her to have everything that I lacked. I would be wrong to spend
the money I have saved in building castles in Spain for myself.”

“But, my dear woman, if in another twelve years you are an operatic
star of some magnitude you’ll be able to do much more for your daughter
than you could with what you’ll save as a provincial actress between
now and then. But forgive me; you speak of a little girl. You have a
husband then?”

“My husband is dead. He died nearly four years ago.”

Kenrick nodded slowly.

“And—forgive my bluntness—you have no other entanglements?”

She flushed.

“My marriage was never an entanglement ... and if you mean ‘am I in
love with anybody now?’ why, no, I could never love anybody again.”

“That’s a sad remark for twenty-eight. A woman’s _grande passion_
usually happens when she is thirty-three.”

“Mine won’t,” said Nancy obstinately.

“I shouldn’t dare the God of Love,” Kenrick warned her. “Remember, he’s
a mischievous boy and nothing gives him greater delight than to behave
as such. Never dare a boy to climb an apple-tree or Cupid to shoot his
arrows in vain. You offered him a fine target by that remark of yours.
But don’t let’s begin an argument about love. It’s your voice I want to
talk about. Surely you must realise that you possess a contralto of the
finest quality?”

“I thought it was a fairly good natural voice,” Nancy admitted. “But I
certainly never supposed it was of the finest quality.”

“Not only have you a marvellous voice, but you can act. Very few
contraltos can act. On the operatic stage they usually sound like
governesses who have drunk a little too much at a fancy-dress ball.”

“Rather voluptuous governesses usually,” Nancy laughed.

“Yes, but with the healthy voluptuousness of women who have been eating
plenty of the best butter and drinking quarts of the richest cream. You
would be different.”

“I hate to be rude,” Nancy said. “But do you know, it always seems to
me such a waste of time to talk about impossibilities. Perhaps I’ve no
imagination. I’ll talk as long and as earnestly as you like about the
best way of travelling from one town to another, or of any of life’s
small problems, but to discuss which seaside resort in the moon would
be the jolliest place to spend one’s holidays surely isn’t worth while.”

“But why is your appearance in opera so remote from any prospect of
being realised?”

“I’ve told you, my dear man,” said Nancy impatiently. “I have planned
my life so that my small daughter may have what I could not have.
To indulge my own ambitions at her expense would be wrong. I can’t
pretend that I’m denying myself much, because, to be honest, until I
had your letter I had never contemplated myself as an operatic star. I
knew I had an unusually good contralto voice. I knew that I could act
as well as most women and a good deal better than some. Your letter
was a pleasure, because it is always a pleasure to feel that one has
interested somebody. I am grateful to you for inviting me out to supper
and saying nice things about my possibilities. But now let’s talk of
something else, for you’ll never infect me with any ambition to do
anything that could risk my ability to do what I can for my daughter,
just by acting quietly in the provinces as I am acting at present.”

“Listen to me, Miss O’Finn,” said Kenrick earnestly. “I am a business
man. That is my inheritance from a hard-working father. But I have one
passion, and that is not business. My passion is the opera; my dream is
to make enough money to be able to help the opera in England. But I am
rich enough to do something for the individual artist, and I beg you
to let me help you. Let me guarantee you what you would usually earn
on the provincial stage. Let me pay for your lessons. The _maestro_ I
want to teach you is an old friend of mine. If at the end of six months
he tells me that you are not the finest contralto of the time, why,
then you can go back to your life on tour. At the worst you will have
spent six months in Italy to gratify the whim of an eccentric business
man whose dreams are all of art. At the best you will be able to do
what you like for your daughter in another ten years, and long, long
before that. We’ll not talk about it any more to-night. Go home and
sleep over my proposal. Think over it for a week. I must be back in
town to-morrow. If at the end of a week you feel that you can risk six
months in Italy to have the world at your feet, send me a line, and
I will pay into your account the necessary funds. You can leave this
absurd company when you like.”

“Och, I would have to give a fortnight’s notice,” said Nancy quickly.

Kenrick smiled.

“Very well, give your fortnight’s notice. To-day is the eleventh. If
you settle by next Saturday that will be the fifteenth. On the first of
November you can quit the fogs and be on your way to Naples. It will
probably be fine weather. It usually is about then in the south of
Italy.”

“You seem to have made up your mind that I’m going to accept your
generosity,” Nancy said.

“There is no generosity in gratifying one’s own desires,” Kenrick
observed. “But if you have any feelings of pride on the subject, why,
you can pay me back when your position is secure.”

“But why, really, are you doing this?” Nancy asked, looking deep into
the eyes of her host.

“Really and truly because I believe you have a great voice and may
become a great singer, and because if you did I should get as much
satisfaction from your success as if I had a voice and were a great
singer myself,” he replied.

The thin laughter of the chorus-girls at the other end of the room
commented upon this grave assertion. The waiter put up a grubby hand to
hide a yawn.

When Nancy woke next morning she felt like the heroine of an Arabian
Nights tale who has been carried half across Asia by a friendly djinn.
But when she called at the theatre for her letters, the following note
was a proof that she had not been dreaming:

                                                 Royal Severn Hotel,
                                                      Bristol.
                                                    October 12.

  Dear Miss O’Finn,

  Do think very hard over our talk last night. You can’t lose anything
  by my offer; you may gain a very great deal. In fact, I am positive
  that you will. Let me know your decision at my London address, 42
  Adelphi Terrace, and I will get into communication with Maestro
  Gambone, and fix up your lessons. I suggest you live at an Italian
  pensione in Naples. The more Italian you can learn to speak, the
  better you will sing it. I’ll find out a good place.

           Good luck to you.
                      Yours sincerely,
                                   John Kenrick.

It was a fine October day of rich white clouds and rain-washed blue
deeps between. A faint haze bronzed the lower air and lent the roofs
and chimneys of the city a mirrored peace, a mirrored loveliness. Nancy
wandered down by the docks and in contemplation of the glinting masts
tried to find an answer to the riddle of her future. Suppose her voice
turned out to be less good than he had supposed? Well, that would be
his bad judgment. But had she the right to accept money from a stranger
in the event of failure? It would be his own fault if she proved a
failure. It was a serious matter to leave a company in which she had
expected to be playing until next summer. What would Sister Catherine
say? Nancy remembered what Sister Catherine had said about Italy that
night they met in the train. Sister Catherine would never be the one to
blame her. She took Letizia’s letter out of her bag and read it through
again.

                                                St. Joseph’s School,
                                                  5 Arden Grove,
                                                      N. W.
                                                     Sunday.

  My dear Mother,

  I hope you are very well. I am learning Italian with Sister
  Catherine. It is very nice. I know twenty-two words now and the
  present indicitive of “I am.” I like it very much. We have a new girl
  called Dorothy Andrews. She is very nice. She is eight and a half
  years old, but she is not so big as me. I must stop now because the
  bell is ringing for Vespurs and Benedicsion.

                                     Your loving
                                                     Letizia.

She was safe for so many years, Nancy thought. Would it be so very
wrong to embark upon this adventure?

That night, when she was singing the first of her two songs, she tried
to imagine that the piece was _Aïda_ and that she was Amneris.

“If I get a genuine encore,” she promised herself, “I’ll write to him
and accept.”

And she did get a most unmistakable encore.

“Your songs went very well to-night, dear,” said Miss Fitzroy
grudgingly. “Had you got any friends in front?”

The next day Nancy wrote to John Kenrick and told him that she was
going to accept his kind offer, and that on Sunday, October 23rd, she
should be in London.

He telegraphed back: _Bravo will meet train if you let me know time._

But she did not let him know the time of her arrival at Paddington, for
she thought that there was really no reason why he should want to meet
her train. Somehow it made his interest in her seem too personal, and
Nancy was determined that the whole affair should be carried through on
the lines of the strictest business. Besides, she would be staying at
the convent, and it would be so exciting to learn her first words of
Italian from Letizia.




                              CHAPTER XX

                               SOUTHWARD


St. Joseph’s School was a pleasant early Victorian house with white
jalousies encircled by a deep verandah of florid ironwork. The garden,
even for the spacious northwest of London, was exceptionally large,
and like all London gardens seemed larger than it really was by the
contrast between its arbours and the houses entirely surrounding them.
There was a mystery about its seclusion that no country garden can
possess, and one could imagine no fitter tenants of its leafy recesses
than these placid nuns and the young girls entrusted to their tutelage.
It seemed that in all those fortunate windows of the houses which
overlooked through the branches of the great lime-trees this serene
enclosure there must be sitting poets in contemplation of the pastoral
of youth being played below. The flash of a white dress, the echo of
a laugh, the flight of a tennis-ball, the glint of tumbling curls,
all these must have held the onlookers entranced as by the murmur and
motion and form and iridescence of a fountain; and this happy valley
among the arid cliffs of London bricks must have appeared to them less
credible than the green mirages in desert lands that tease the dusty
eyelids of travellers.

“I’m glad you have a friend of your own age,” Nancy said to Letizia,
when the morning after her arrival they were walking together along the
convent avenue strewn with October’s fallen leaves.

“Well, she’s not a very great friend,” Letizia demurred.

“But I thought you wrote and told me that she was so very nice?”

“Well, she is very nice. Only I don’t like her very much.”

“But if she’s so very nice, why don’t you like her?”

“Well, I don’t like her, because she _is_ so nice. Whenever I say,
‘Let’s do something,’ she says, ‘Oh, yes, do let’s,’ and then I don’t
want to do it so much.”

“Darling, isn’t that being rather perverse?”

“What’s ‘perverse,’ mother? Do tell me, because I’m collecting
difficult words. I’ve got thirty-eight words now, and when I’ve got
fifty I’m going to ask Hilda Moore what they all mean, and she’s twelve
and it’ll be a disgusting humiliation for her when she doesn’t know.
And that’ll be simply glorious, because she thinks she’s going to be a
yellow-ribbon presently.”

“But don’t you want to be a yellow-ribbon?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s really worth while. Evelyn Joy who’s much
the nicest girl in the school has never been a ribbon. She said she
couldn’t be bothered. She’s frightfully nice, and I love her one of the
best six people in the world. She can’t be bothered about anything,
and most of the girls are always in a fuss about something. Dorothy
Andrews only wants to do what I want, because she thinks she ought to.
Fancy, she told me she simply longed to be a saint. And she said if
she died young she’d pray for me more than anybody, and I said, ‘Pooh,
St. Maurice is _always_ praying for me and he wears armour and is very
good-looking, so there’s no need for you to die young.’ And then she
cried and said when she was dead I’d be sorry I’d been so cruel.”

Nancy thought that Letizia was not less precocious than she had always
been, and she wondered if she ought to say anything to Sister Catherine
about it. She decided that Sister Catherine was probably well aware of
it and, not being anxious to give her the idea that she was criticising
the wonderful education that the nuns were giving her little daughter,
she resolved to say nothing.

She did, however, discuss with Sister Catherine her own project to go
to Italy and have her voice trained; and she was much relieved when it
was approved.

“It would be wrong not to avail yourself of such an opportunity,” the
nun exclaimed. “Even if it involved breaking into your own savings, I
should still urge you to go; but there seems no likelihood of that, and
there is no reason why you shouldn’t accept this Mr. Kenrick’s offer.
I’d no idea that you had a wonderful voice, and how delightful to be
going to Italy. Do sing for us one evening at Vespers before you go.
Sister Monica would be so pleased, and we shall all enjoy it so much.
We shall feel so grand.”

“But I’m just as much astonished to hear that I’ve got this wonderful
voice as you are,” Nancy said. “Nobody ever told me I had, until this
fairy prince arrived in Bristol.”

“Ah, but I think people are always so afraid to think anybody has a
good voice until somebody else has established the fact for them,”
Sister Catherine laughed. “It was just a piece of good luck that you
should be heard by somebody who understood what good singing is....
I’m glad you think dear little Letizia is looking so well. She is a
great treasure, and we are all very proud of her. She has so much
personality, and I’m doing my best to let her keep it without spoiling
her.”

“I’m sure you are,” Nancy said. “And och, I wish I could ever tell you
how grateful I am to you.”

“There is no need of words, dear child,” said the nun, smiling.
“You prove it to us all the time. I heard from the Reverend Mother
yesterday, and she inquired most affectionately after you.”

That afternoon Nancy went to Mr. Kenrick’s flat in Adelphi Terrace. He
was so kind that she reproached herself for having refused so brusquely
to let him meet her at Paddington.

“Well, it’s all arranged with Maestro Gambone. He’s really the kindest
old man, though he may seem a little fierce before you know him. Should
he, on hearing your voice, decide it’s not worth training, you’ll have
to forgive me for rousing your ambitions and let me see you through any
difficulties you may have about getting another engagement in England.
I have taken a room for you with some people called Arcucci who have a
_pensione_ in the Via Virgilio which is close to Santa Lucia. Arcucci
himself was a singer; but he lost his voice through illness, poor chap.
He never earned more than a local reputation at the San Carlo Opera
House; but he is full of stories about famous singers, and you’ll get
the right atmosphere from him. His wife is a capable and homely woman
who will make you as comfortable as Neapolitans know how, which, to
tell the truth, is not saying much.”

While her patron was speaking, Nancy was gazing out of his study
window at the Thames and letting her imagination drift down on the
fast-flowing ebb with the barges that all seemed like herself bound for
some adventure far from this great city of London. Away on the horizon
beyond Lambeth the domes of the Crystal Palace sparkled in the clearer
sunshine. Even so, on an horizon much farther south than Sydenham
flashed the elusive diamonds of success and fame.

“Tuesday is no day to set out on a journey,” said Kenrick. “So, I’ve
taken your ticket for Wednesday. You’ll leave Paris that night from the
Gare de Lyon in the Rome express, and you’ll be at Naples on Friday
afternoon.”

He went to a drawer in his desk and took out the tickets.

“Good luck,” he said, holding Nancy’s hand.

She was again the prey of an embarrassment against which she tried hard
to struggle, because it seemed to smirch the spirit in which she wanted
to set out. This constraint prevented her from thanking him except in
clumsy conventional phrases.

“Now, will you dine with me to-night?”

She wanted to refuse even this, but she lacked the courage; in the end
she passed a pleasant enough evening, listening to her host expatiate
upon the career for which he assured her again and again she was
certainly destined. He wanted her to lunch and dine with him on the
next day too; but she pleaded the urgency of shopping and packing and
her desire to see something of her daughter.

“Very well then,” he said, as he put her into a hansom outside Verrey’s
where they had dined. “I’ll be at Victoria on Wednesday morning.”

Nancy was glad to be jingling back to St. Joseph’s, alone with her
dreams in the sharp apple-sweet air of the October night.

The next day Mrs. Pottage arrived to say good-bye and help Nancy with
her shopping. By now she had long been an institution at St. Joseph’s,
where her conversation afforded the most intense delight to the nuns.

“Well, when you wrote you was off to Italy I was in two minds if I
wouldn’t suggest coming with you. I don’t know what it is, whether I’m
getting old or ugly or both, but I’ve not had a single proposal for
eighteen months. I suppose it means I’ve got to be thinking of settling
down and giving some of the younger ones a chance. Well, take care
of yourself in Italy, and don’t eat too much ice-cream. Funny thing,
I-talians should eat so much ice-cream and yet be so hot. There was an
opera company came to Greenwich once, and the tenor who was an I-talian
stayed with me. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘what he’ll want is plenty
of macaroni and ice-cream.’ He looked a bit surprised, I’m bound to
say, when I give it him for breakfast on the Sunday morning, but I
thought he was only surprised at any one knowing his tastes so well.
But, will you believe me, when I give it him for dinner again, he used
language that was far from I-talian, very far. In fact, I never heard
any one swear so fluent in English before or since. It quite dazed me
for the moment. But we got on all right as soon as I found he liked
good old roast beef. He gave me two passes for the Friday night, and
Mrs. Bugbird and me thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The opera was called
_Carmen_ and Mrs. B. thought it was going to be all about them, and
when she found it was actually the name of a woman she laughed herself
silly. Every time this Carmen came on she’d whisper to me, ‘a good pull
up,’ and then she’d start off shaking like a jelly. But there, she’s
very quick to see the radiculous side of anything, Mrs. Bugbird is.
Well, good-bye, dear, and take good care of yourself. You know your old
Mrs. Pottage wishes you all the best you can wish for yourself.”

Sister Catherine had repeated her request that Nancy should sing to
them, especially as it was the feast of All Saints. So after practising
with Sister Monica, who had charge of the music, she sang Mozart’s
motet _Ave Verum Corpus_ at Benediction amid the glowing candles and
white chrysanthemums of the little chapel.

“Mother, you don’t often sing in church, do you?” Letizia asked.

“Didn’t I sing well?” said her mother with a smile.

“Yes, I expect you sang very well, but I thought it was a little loud,
didn’t you? Sometimes it sounded like a man singing. I think you ought
to be careful and not sing quite so loud, mother.”

Luckily the nuns themselves enjoyed Nancy’s rich contralto a great deal
more than did their pupils. The warmth of femininity spoke to their
hearts of something that they had lost, or rather of something that
most of them had never won. It was easy to understand and sympathise
with the readiness of the nuns to turn away for a few minutes from the
austere ecstasies of Gothic art to worship some dolorous “Mother” of
Guido Reni. A flush had tinged their cheeks so virginally tralucent, as
if a goblet of water had been faintly suffused by a few drops of red
wine.

Kenrick was at Victoria to see Nancy off next morning. Just as the
train started, she leaned out of the window of her compartment and
exclaimed breathlessly:

“Please don’t think me ungrateful. I do appreciate tremendously what
you are doing for me. Really, I do.”

His long, sombre face lit up with a smile, and he waved his hand as
Nancy withdrew from London into the train again.

France dreamed in a serenity of ethereal blue. In the little
wedding-cake cemeteries black figures were laying wreaths of
immortelles upon the graves. Nancy remembered with a pang that it was
All Souls’ Day and reproached her cowardice for not having laid flowers
on Bram’s grave at Greenwich before she left England. The bunch of
carnations with which Kenrick had presented her became hateful to hold,
and she longed to throw it out of the window. She would have done so,
if two English old maids had not been regarding her curiously from the
other side of the compartment, the one above her Baedeker, the other
above the _Church Times_. Why should elderly English women travelling
abroad look like butterfly-collectors?

“_Parlez vous anglaise?_” said one of them to the ticket-collector,
nodding her head and beaming as if she were trying to propitiate an
orang-utan.

“Yes, I spik English, madame,” he said coldly after punching the
tickets.

The other elderly lady congratulated her companion upon the triumphant
conversation.

“He undoubtedly understood perfectly what you were saying, Ethel.”

“Oh, yes, I think we shall get along capitally after a time. I was
always considered very good at French in my schooldays, and it’s just
beginning to come back to me.”

Her ambition had been kindled by her success with the first
ticket-inspector. With the next one who invaded the compartment she
took a line of bold and direct inquiry.

“_Paris, quand?_”

The inspector stared back, indignation displayed upon his countenance.

“_Comment?_”

“_Non, quand_,” said the elderly lady.

The inspector shrugged his shoulders and slammed the carriage-door as
he retired.

“That man seemed rather stupid, I thought, Ethel.”

“Most stupid,” the ambitious Ethel emphatically agreed.

Nancy felt thankful that Letizia would be taught French properly.
Sister Catherine had already suggested to her that when she was twelve
she should be sent for three years to a convent in Belgium with which
the Sisters of the Holy Infancy had an arrangement of exchanging
pupils. Nancy had been a little alarmed at first by the prospect of
sending Letizia abroad all that time; but after these two absurd
Englishwomen she felt no trouble was too great and no place too far and
no separation too long that would insure Letizia against talking French
like them in public.

But presently Nancy was too much occupied with her own
problems—transferring herself and her luggage from one station in
Paris to another, finding out how the _wagon-lit_ toilet arrangements
worked, how to reply to the Italian examination of baggage in the Mt.
Cenis tunnel, and how to achieve the change at Rome into the Naples
train—either to criticise anybody else or even to dream and speculate
about her own operatic future.

Then Vesuvius loomed above the russet orchards and dishevelled vines on
the left of the railway. Nancy suddenly remembered that when she and
Bram were first married he had one day said how much he should like to
visit Naples with her. He had told her that he had seen a picture of it
when he was a boy and of what a thrill it had given him. Now here it
actually was, and he was not by her side to behold it. Here Naples had
been all these years, and he had never seen it.

Time heals many wounds; but in some he makes a deeper gash every year
with his inexorable scythe.




                              CHAPTER XXI

                             CLASSIC GRIEF


Nancy was lost at first in the _pensione_ to which Kenrick had
entrusted her. The bareness of it seemed to reflect the bareness of
her own mind amid the unmeaning sounds of a strange tongue. During
the first week she felt that she should never, stayed she in Naples
for years, acquire a single word of Italian, and the week after she
was convinced that she should never be able to say anything more than
the Italian for “yes,” “no,” “please,” “thanks,” “good night,” “good
morning,” and “bread.” For a fortnight she was so completely stunned
by the swarming rackety city that she spent all her spare time in the
aquarium, contemplating the sea-anemones. The stories of great singers
with which Signor Arcucci was to have entertained her leisure seemed
indefinitely postponed at her present rate of progress with Italian.
She should have to become proficient indeed to follow the rapid
hoarseness of that faded voice. Meanwhile, she must wrestle with an
unreasonable upside down language in which _aqua calda_ meant hot water
and not, as one might suppose, cold. Nancy cursed her lack of education
a hundred times a day, and an equal number of times she thanked Heaven
that Letizia already knew twenty-two Italian words and could say the
present indicative of the verb “to be.” Signora Arcucci was a plump
waxen-faced Neapolitan housewife who followed the English tradition
of supposing that a foreigner would understand her more easily if she
shouted everything she had to say about four times as loud as she spoke
ordinarily. She used to heap up Nancy’s plate with spaghetti; and,
as Nancy could not politely excuse herself from eating any more, she
simply had to work her way through the slithery pyramid until she felt
as if she must burst.

Nor did Maestro Gambone do anything to make up for the state of
discouragement into which her unfamiliar surroundings and her inability
to talk had plunged her. Nancy found his little apartment at the top
of a tall tumbledown yellow house that was clinging to the side of
the almost sheer Vomero. He was a tiny man with snow-white hair and
imperial and jet-black eyebrows and moustache. With his glittering
eyes he reminded her of a much polished five of dominos, and when he
wanted anything in a hurry (and he always did want things in a hurry)
he seemed to slide about the room with the rattle of a shuffled domino.
Although his apartment stood so high, it was in a perpetual green
twilight on account of the creepers growing in rusty petrol tins that
covered all the windows.

“You speaka _italiano_, madama?” he asked abruptly when Nancy presented
herself.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“_Allora come canta?_ How you singa, madama?”

“I only sing in English at present.”

“What musica you havva?”

Nancy produced the stock-in-trade of ballads, which the maestro
fingered like noxious reptiles.

“_E questo?_ Anna Lowrie _o qualche nome indiavolato. Probiamolo.
Avanti!_”

The little man sat down at the piano and was off with the accompaniment
on an instrument of the most outrageously tinny timbre before Nancy
had finished deciding that he was not so much like a domino as a
five-finger exercise.

“_Eh, avanti!_” he turned round and shouted angrily. “What for you
waita, madama? _Di nuovo!_”

In the green twilight of this little room hanging over the precipitous
cliff above the distant jangling of Naples Nancy could not feel that
Maxwellton Braes had ever existed. She made a desperate effort to
achieve an effect with the last lines.

    “And for bonnie Annie Laurie
    I would lay me down and dee.”

There was a silence.

Then the _maestro_ grunted, twirled his moustache, rose from the piano,
and sat down at his desk.

“Here I writa when you come,” he said. “_A rivederla e buon giorno._”

He thrust the paper into Nancy’s hand and with the same gesture almost
pushed her out of his apartment. The next thing of which she was
conscious was walking slowly down the Vomero in the honey-coloured
November sunshine and staring at the hours and days written down upon
the half-sheet of notepaper she held in her hand.

So the lessons began, and for a month she wondered why she or anybody
else should ever have suffered from a momentary delusion that she could
sing. She knew enough Italian by that time to understand well enough
that Maestro Gambone had nothing but faults to find with her voice.

“Have I made any progress?” she found the courage to stammer out one
morning.

“_Progresso? Ma che progresso? Non sa encora camminare._”

Certainly if she did not yet know how to walk she could not progress.
But when should she know how to walk? In her halting Italian Nancy
tried to extract from the _maestro_ an answer to this.

“_Quanda camminerà? Chi sa? Forse domani, forse giovedì, ma forse mai._”

Perhaps to-morrow, perhaps on Thursday, but perhaps never!

Nancy sighed.

When she got back to the _pensione_ she sat down and wrote to her
patron.

                                                   Pensione Arcucci,
                                                   Via Virgilio 49.
                                                       Napoli.
                                                       Dec. 8.

  Dear Mr. Kenrick,

  I really don’t think it’s worth your while to go on paying for these
  singing lessons. Maestro Gambone told me to-day that I might never
  know how to sing. I’m sure he’s disgusted at my slowness. I’ve been
  having lessons for a month now, and he has had ample time to judge
  whether I’m worth his trouble. He evidently thinks I’m not. It’s a
  great disappointment, and I feel a terrible fraud. But I’m not going
  to reproach myself too bitterly, because, after all, I would never
  have thought of becoming a singer if you hadn’t put it into my head.
  So, next week I shall return to England. I’m afraid your kindness has
  been....

Nancy put down her pen. Her struggles with Italian seemed to have
deprived her of the use of her own tongue. She could not express her
appreciation of what he had done for her except in a bread-and-butter
way that would be worse than writing nothing. For all the sunlight
flickering on the pink and yellow houses opposite she felt overwhelmed
by a wintry loneliness and frost. And then she heard coming up from the
street below the sound of bagpipes. She went to the window and looked
out. Two men in heavy blue cloaks and steeple-crowned felt hats, two
shaggy men cross-gartered, were playing before the little shrine of
the Blessed Virgin at the corner of the Via Virgilio an ancient tune,
a tune as ancient as the hills whence every year they came down for
the feast of the Immaculate Conception to play their seasonable carols
and grave melodies until Christmas-tide. Nancy had been told about
them, and here they were, these—she could not remember their name,
but it began with “z”—these _zamp_ something or other. And while she
stood listening by the window she heard far and wide the pipes of
other pious mountaineers piping their holy ancient tunes. Their bourdon
sounded above the noise of the traffic, above the harsh cries of the
street-vendors, above the chattering of people and the clattering of
carts and the cracking of whips, above the tinkling of mandolins in the
barber-shops, sounded remote and near and far and wide as the bourdon
of bees in summer.

The playing of these pipers calmed the fever of Nancy’s dissatisfaction
and seemed to give her an assurance that her failure was not yet the
sad fact she was imagining. She decided to postpone for a little
while her ultimatum to Kenrick and, tearing up the unfinished letter,
threw the pieces on the open brazier, over which for so many hours of
the wintry days Signor Arcucci used to huddle, slowly stirring the
charcoal embers with an iron fork and musing upon the days when he
sang this or that famous part. He was out of the room for a moment,
but presently he and his Signora, as he called her, came in much
excited to say that the _zampognieri_ were going to play for them.
The pipers in the gimcrack room looked like two great boulders from
their own mountains, and the droning throbbed almost unbearably in the
constricted space. When everybody in turn had given them a lira or two,
they acknowledged the offerings by presenting Nancy as the guest and
stranger with a large wooden spoon. She was taken aback for the moment
by what would have been in England the implication of such a gift.
Even when she had realised that it was intended as a compliment the
omen remained. She could not help wondering if this wooden spoon might
not prove to be the only gift she should ever take home from Italy.
Nevertheless, the _zampognieri_ with their grave carols healed her fear
of discouragement, and during the next fortnight Maestro Gambone on
more than one occasion actually praised her singing and found that at
last she was beginning to place her voice somewhat more approximately
where it ought to be placed. It was as if the fierce little black
and white man had been softened by the spirit of Christmas, of which
those blue-cloaked pipers were at once the heralds and the ambassadors
with their bourdon rising and falling upon the mandarin-scented air.
Absence from home at this season did not fill Nancy with sentimental
regrets. Since Bram died Christmas had not been a happy time for her,
so intimately was its festivity associated with that dreadful night
at Greenwich four years ago. She welcomed and enjoyed the different
atmosphere of _Natale_, and after so many grimy northern winters these
days of turquoise, these dusks of pearl and rose, these swift and
scintillating nights.

On the anniversary of Bram’s death she drove out to Posilipo and sat
on a rock by the shore, gazing out across the milky cerulean waters of
the bay. For all the beauty of this classic view she was only aware of
it as one is aware of a landscape by Poussin or Claude, about whose
vales and groves and gleaming temples no living creature will ever
wander. The dove-coloured water that lapped the rock on which she sat,
the colonnade of dark-domed pines along the brow of the cliff, Ischia
and Capri like distant castles of chalcedony, Vesuvius in a swoon of
limpid golden air—all without Bram was but a vanity of form and colour.
The thought of how easily he might have been preserved from death
afflicted her with a madness of rage. Indifference to the beauty of her
surroundings was succeeded by a wild hatred of that beauty, so well
composed, so clear, so bland, and so serene. But for the folly of one
incompetent and unimaginative fellow man he might have been sitting
beside her on this rock, sitting here in this murmurous placidity of
earth and sea and sky, gazing out across this crystalline expanse, his
hand in hers, their hearts beating together where now only his watch
ticked dryly. Nancy longed to weep; but she could not weep in this
brightness. Yet she must either weep or fling herself from this rock
and sink down into the water at her feet, into that tender water with
the hue and the voice and the softness of a dove. She let a loose stone
drop from her hand and watched it sink to the enamelled floor of the
bay. How shallow it was! She should never drown here. She must seek
another rock round which the water swirled deep and indigo-dark, water
in which a stone would flicker for a few moments in pale blue fire and
be lost to sight long before it reached the bottom. Nancy left the rock
where she had been sitting and tried to climb upward along the cliff’s
edge in search of deep water at its base. And while she climbed her
clothes became scented by the thickets of rosemary. There appeared to
her distraught mind the image of Bram as Laertes and of the actress
who had played Ophelia saying to him, “_There’s rosemary, that’s for
remembrance._” She herself had been understudying the Queen and had
been standing in the wings to watch how the mad-scene was taken. She
could see the expression of mingled horror and pity on Bram’s face,
as he took the sprig of rosemary from his sister’s hand. _Pray, love,
remember._

“Bram,” she cried aloud in an agony of repentance. “I didn’t mean it.
I’m not really mad. I won’t drown myself. I won’t really.”

Then she flung herself face downward among the bushes of rosemary and
wept. For an hour she lay hidden from the sun in that bitter-sweet
grey-green gloom of the cliff’s undergrowth until at last her tears
ceased to flow and she could stand up bravely to face again the
future. More lovely now was the long sweep of the Parthenopean shore,
more lucid the wash of golden air, richer and more profound the warm
wintry Southern peace; and she standing there among the rosemary was
transmuted by the timelessness of her grief into a timeless figure that
might haunt for ever that calm and classic scene.

The last sunset stain had faded from the cloudy cap of Vesuvius,
and the street-lamps were already twinkling when Nancy got back to
Naples. She went into a church, and there in a dark corner prayed to
be forgiven for that brief madness when she had wished to take her
life. She sat for a long while, thinking of happy times with Bram,
soothed by the continuous coming and going of poor people to visit the
Crib, all lit up at the other end of the church. She knelt once more
to beg that all that was lost of Bram’s life might be found again in
his daughter’s; and her ultimate prayer was as always for strength to
devote herself entirely to Letizia’s happiness.

Thus passed the fourth anniversary of the Clown’s death.




                             CHAPTER XXII

                               SORRENTO


Two days after her visit to Posilipo Nancy came back from her
singing-lesson to discover John Kenrick at the _pensione_.

“I found that I could get away from England for a few days,” he
announced. “And I thought I’d come and ascertain for myself how you
really were getting on.”

“Very badly,” Nancy told him.

“So your last letter implied. But Gambone always errs on the side of
discouragement. I’m going to have a chat with him on the way back to
Bertolini’s. Will you dine with me there to-night? Or, no, wait a
minute. I’ll come down and fetch you, and we’ll eat at a more native
restaurant and go to the opera, or are you tired of the opera?”

Nancy had to confess that she had not yet been to San Carlo.

Kenrick was astonished.

“I couldn’t very well go alone, and I haven’t had anybody I could ask
to go with me,” she explained.

“You’ve been feeling lonely,” he said quickly. “And you’re looking a
bit overstrained. Has Gambone been working you too hard?”

“I doubt if he thinks I’m worth working very hard,” said Nancy.

“Nonsense! I’m going to find out exactly what he does think about your
voice and your prospects. I wager you’ll be pleasantly surprised to
hear what a great opinion he has of you.”

Kenrick left her soon after this, and then Nancy realised how terribly
lonely she had been ever since she came to Naples. A few weeks ago
she would have been vexed by the arrival of her patron. It would have
embarrassed her. It might even have made her suspect him of ulterior
motives. But his arrival now was a genuine pleasure, and if only he
came away from Maestro Gambone with good news of her progress, she
should be happier than she had been for months. Even an unfavourable
report would be something definite, and in that case she could return
to England immediately. Loneliness in beautiful surroundings was much
harder to bear than fellowship in ugliness. To go back to playing
adventuresses in the black country would have its compensations.

When Kenrick returned to take her out to dinner, there was a smile on
his sombre face. He put up his monocle and looked at Nancy quizzically.

“You’re a nice one!”

“What’s the matter? What have I done?”

“I thought you told me you weren’t getting on?”

“I didn’t think I was.”

“Well, Gambone says you’re a splendid pupil, that you work very hard,
that you have a glorious natural voice, and that if he can keep you
another six months he’ll guarantee you an engagement at San Carlo next
autumn. What more do you want?”

Nancy caught her breath.

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not indeed. I was never more serious.”

“But why didn’t he say something to me?”

“Gambone is a Neapolitan. Gambone is a realist. About women he has no
illusions. He thinks that the more he beats them the better they’ll be.
He only told me all this after exacting a promise not to repeat it to
you for fear you would be spoilt and give up working as well as you’re
working at present. I reproached him with not having looked after you
socially, and he nearly jumped through the ceiling of his apartment.”

“‘She is here to work,’ he shouted. ‘She is not here to amuse herself.’
‘But you might at least have managed to find her an escort for the
opera.’ And I told him that you had not yet visited San Carlo. ‘_Meno
male!_’ he squealed. I presume your Italian has at least got as far
as knowing that _meno male_ means the less harm done. ‘_Meno male_
that she has not filled her head with other people’s singing. She has
enough to do with her practising, enough to do to learn how to speak
and pronounce the only civilised tongue that exists for a singer.’ I
told him that you had been lonely, and what do you think he replied?
‘If she’s lonely, let her cultivate carnations. _Garofani!_’ he yelled
at the top of his voice. ‘Believe me, my good sir, carnations are a
thousand times more worth while than men and ten thousand times more
worth while than women.’ ‘Even good contraltos?’ I laughed. ‘_Sicuro!_
Or sopranos, either,’ the old villain chuckled.”

“Well, in some moods I would agree with him,” Nancy said.

“Anyway, whatever the old cynic may say, he has a profound belief in
your future. When he was ushering me out of his apartment ...”

“Oh, he ushered you out?” Nancy laughed. “He always pushes me out.”

“He would! But listen, he took my arm and said, with a twinkle in his
bright black eyes, ‘So you heard her sing and knew she had a voice?’ I
bowed. ‘_Siete un conoscente, caro. Felicitazioni._’”

The opera played at San Carlo that night was _La Traviata_. Nancy, not
oppressed by the sound and sight of a contralto singing and acting far
better than she could ever hope to sing and act, thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Violetta was a delicate and lovely creature so that, even if her
_coloratura_ did lack something of the finest quality and ease, her
death was almost intolerably moving. Alfredo was played by an elderly
tenor into whose voice the _vibrato_ of age had already insinuated
itself. He was, however, such a master of all the graces that neither
his appearance nor the fading of his voice seemed to matter a great
deal. In compensation for an elderly tenor, the heavy father was
played by a very young barytone with a voice of glorious roundness and
sonority. Kenrick was much excited by this performance and prophesied
for this new singer a success all over Europe as round and sonorous as
his voice. He declared that he had never heard Germont’s great aria “Di
Provenza” given so well.

After the performance they went to supper at one of the popular
restaurants near the opera house, where Kenrick discoursed upon the
æsthetic value of _La Traviata_.

“It’s the fashion to decry it as a piece of tawdry and melodramatic
sensationalism, but to my mind it fulfills perfectly Aristotle’s
catharsis.”

“That sounds reassuring,” Nancy laughed. “But I’m afraid I don’t in the
least understand what it means.”

“Aristotle found an æsthetic value in the purging of the emotions.
Well, at the end of _Traviata_ we are left with the feeling that music
could not express more completely the particular set of emotions that
are stirred by the story of Alfredo, Violetta, and Germont. No critic
has ever done justice to the younger Dumas’s _Dame aux Camélias_
either as a novel or as a play. Yet both they and the opera founded
upon them have a perennial vitality so marked as almost to tempt me to
claim for them an eternal vitality. The actuality of _Traviata_ is so
tremendous that on the first night of its production in Venice it was
a failure because the soprano playing Violetta was so fat as to revolt
the audience’s sense of fact. This seems to me highly significant.
You cannot imagine an operatic version of, let us say, _Wuthering
Heights_ being hissed off the stage because the Heathcliff revolted
any audience’s sense of fact. Now _Wuthering Heights_ much more nearly
approximates to melodrama than _La Dame aux Camélias_. The pretentious
spiritualism with which a sordid tale of cruelty, revenge, and lust
is decked out cannot hide from the sane observer the foolish parody
of human nature presented therein. It has been acclaimed as a work of
tragic grandeur and sublime imagination as if forsooth grandeur of
imagination were to be measured by the remoteness of protagonists or
plot from recognisable life. Let us grant that _Traviata_ exhibits a
low form of life——”

“Or a form of low life,” Nancy interposed.

“No, no, don’t make a joke of it! I feel seriously and strongly on
this subject,” Kenrick averred. “But a live jelly-fish is a great deal
more marvellous and much more beautiful than a stuffed lion. Nothing
really matters in a work of art if it lacks vitality. I would not
say that _Wuthering Heights_ lacked all vitality, but its vitality
is slight, indeed it is almost imperceptible except to the precious
and microscopic taste of the literary connoisseur. The vitality of
_La Dame aux Camélias_ is startling, so startling indeed as to repel
the fastidious and academic mind just as a don would be embarrassed
were his attentions solicited by a gay lady outside the St. James’s
Restaurant. The trouble is that the standards of criticism are nearly
always set up by the middle-aged. _La Dame aux Camélias_ is a book for
youth. We have most of us lived not wisely and not well in our youth,
and middle-age is not the time to judge that early behaviour. Let it
be remembered that the follies of our youth are usually repeated when
we are old—not always actually, but certainly in imagination. An old
man should be the best judge of _La Dame aux Camélias_. Well, if that
is a vital book, and just because of its amazing vitality, a great
book, _Traviata_ is a great opera, because, unlike that much inferior
opera _Aïda_, it is impossible to imagine any other music for it. All
that could be expressed by that foolish dead love, all the sentimental
dreams of it, all the cruelty of it, and the sweetness and the remorse,
all is there. We may tire of its barrel-organ tunes, but we tire in
middle-age of all youth’s facile emotions. We can scarcely imagine
ourselves, let us say, waiting two hours in the rain for any woman.
We should be bored by having to find the chocolates that Cleopatra
preferred, and we would not escort even Helen of Troy to the nearest
railway station. But fatigue is not necessarily wisdom, and so much
that we reject in middle-age is due to loss of resiliency. We cannot
react as we once could to the demands of the obvious excitement. We
are, in a word, blasé.”

Nancy felt that she was rushing in like a fool, but she could not sit
here and watch Kenrick blow away all argument in the wreaths of his
cigarette smoke. She had to point out one flaw in his remarks.

“But when I said that I would never love again and implied that I knew
what I was talking about, because I was twenty-eight, you warned me
that a woman’s most susceptible age was thirty-three.”

“Thirty-three is hardly middle-age,” said Kenrick. “I was thinking of
the chilly forties. Besides, you can’t compare women with men in this
matter. The old saw about a woman being as old as she looks and a man
as old as he feels is always used by women as an illustration of the
advantage of being a man. As a matter of fact, the advantage lies all
the other way. It is so much easier to look young than to feel young. A
woman is never too old to be loved. You can hardly maintain that a man
is never to old to love. I doubt if a man over thirty ever knows what
love means.”

“Och, I never heard such a preposterous statement,” Nancy declared.
“Why, think of the men who cherish hopeless passions all their lives.”

“For my part I can never understand a man’s cherishing a hopeless
passion,” he declared. “I should feel so utterly humiliated by a
woman’s refusal of her love that my own passion would be killed by it
instantly. And the humiliation would be deepened by my knowledge of
woman’s facility for falling in love, which is, of course, much greater
than a man’s, as much greater as her fastidiousness and sensitiveness
are less. To be refused by a woman, when one sees on what monstrous
objects she is prepared to lavish her affection, seems to me terrible.
Equally I do not understand why a woman, who after her childhood so
rarely cherishes a hopeless passion that will never be returned, is
always prepared to cherish the much more hopeless passion of continuing
to love a man after he has ceased to love her. I suppose it’s because
women are such sensualists. They always regard love as a gratification
of self too long postponed, and they continue to want it as children
want broken toys and men fail to give up smoking. The famous women who
have held men have held them by their infinite variety. Yet the one
quality in a lover that a woman finds it hardest to forgive is his
variety.”

“Och, I don’t agree at all,” Nancy declared breathlessly. “In fact I
don’t agree with anything you’ve said about love or men or women. I
think it’s a great pity that you have let yourself grow middle-aged.
You wouldn’t be able to have all these ideas if you were still capable
of feeling genuine emotion. I’m not clever enough to argue with
you properly. No woman ever can argue, because either she feels so
strongly about a subject that all her reasons fly to the wind, or, if
she doesn’t feel strongly, she doesn’t think it worth while to argue
and, in fact, finds it a boring waste of time. But I feel that you are
utterly wrong. I know you are. You’re just wrong. And that’s all there
is to be said. My husband had more variety than any man I ever knew,
and I loved his variety as much as I loved every other single one of
his qualities.”

There were tears in her big deep-blue eyes, the tears that always came
to them when she spoke of Bram, and flashing tears of exasperation
as well, at being unable to defeat her companion’s cynicism, for all
his observations seemed to her to be the fruit of a detestable and
worldly-wise cynicism, the observations of a man who has never known
what it was to suffer or to lose anything in the battle of life.

“Forgive me if I spoke thoughtlessly,” said Kenrick. “I get carried
away by my tongue whenever I go to an opera. Operas stimulate me. They
are the _reductio ad absurdum_ of art. I seem always to get down to
the bedrock of the æsthetic impulse at the opera. We are deluded by
a tragedy of Æschylus into supposing that art is something greater
than it is, something more than a sublimation of childhood’s games,
something comparable in its importance to science. In opera we see
what a joke art really is. We know that in the scroll of eternity the
bottle-washer of a great chemist is a more conspicuous minuscule than
the greatest artist who ever shall be.”

“I think I’m too tired to listen to you any longer,” Nancy said. “I
really don’t understand anything you’re talking about now, and even if
I did I feel sure I wouldn’t agree with you.”

Kenrick laughed.

“I plead guilty to being a chatterbox to-night. But it was partly your
fault. You shouldn’t have sat there looking as if you were listening
with such intelligence. But let’s leave generalisations and come to
particulars. Gambone says a little holiday will do you good.”

“I don’t believe you,” Nancy laughed. “Maestro Gambone never indulged
in theories about his pupils’ well-being. I simply don’t believe you.”

“Yes, really he did. I asked him if he did not think that you would be
all the better for a short rest, and he agreed with me. Now, why don’t
you come to Sorrento with me and see in this New Year that is going to
be your _annus mirabilis_?”

Nancy looked at him quickly.

“You’re thinking of the proprieties? There are no proprieties at
Sorrento. You want a change of air. I promise not to talk about art.
We’ll just take some good walks. Now don’t be missish. Treat me as a
friend.”

Yet Nancy still hesitated to accept this invitation. She had no reason
that she could express to herself, still less put into words. It was
merely an irrational presentiment that she should regret going to
Sorrento.

“Why don’t you answer?” he pressed.

“I was only wondering if it was wise to interrupt my lessons,” she told
him lamely.

“But you wouldn’t lose more than a couple. We shan’t be away more than
five days. I’ve got to be back in London by the fifth of January.”

“All right. I’d really love to come if Gambone won’t think I’m being
lazy.”

Kenrick drove her back to the Via Virgilio, and next morning they took
the boat for Sorrento.

They stayed in an old sun-crumbled _albergo_ built on one of the
promontories, the sheer cliff of which had been reinforced by immense
brick arches raised one above another against its face, so that the
soft tufaceous rock, which rather resembled rotten cheese, should not
collapse and plunge _albergo_, tangled garden, and pine-dark promontory
into the inky blue water two hundred feet below. Sorrento looks north,
and the proprietor of the _albergo_, a toad-faced little man with sandy
hair and a food-stained frock coat much too large for him, suggested
that his new guests would be more comfortable at this season in rooms
with an aspect away from the sea. The south aspect of the _albergo_
formed three sides of an oblong, and the doors of all the rooms opened
on a balcony paved with blue and green porcelain tiles and covered with
the naked grey stems of wistaria, the convolutions of which resembled
the throes of huge pythons. The view looked away over orange groves to
the Sorrentine hills, and particularly to one conical bosky peak on
which the wooden cross of a Camaldolese congregation was silhouetted
against the sky. In the garden below the balcony tazetta narcissus and
China roses were in bloom. There were not many other guests in the
_albergo_, and these were mostly elderly English and American women,
all suffering from the delusion that Italy was the cheapest country on
earth and from a delusion of the natives that all English and Americans
were extremely wealthy.

Kenrick apologised for bringing Nancy to the _Albergo del Sole_ rather
than taking her to one of the two fashionable hotels.

“But we can always go and feed at the Tramontano or the Victoria,” he
pointed out. “And there’s a charm about this tumbledown old place. I
was here once ten years ago and always promised myself a return visit.
Of course, Winter is not the time to be in Sorrento. It’s not till the
oranges come into their glory, about Easter, that one understands the
raptures of the great men who have visited this place. The fascination
of Sorrento is a stock subject with all the letter-writers of our
century.”

“Och, but I would much rather be staying here,” Nancy assured him. “I
think this place is so attractive.”

“It would be more attractive in Spring when the creamy Banksia roses
are in blossom and hung with necklaces of wistaria. It is a little
melancholy now. Yet the sun strikes warm at midday. I’ve told them to
make up a roaring fire of chestnut logs in your room.”

“They’ve certainly done so, and it’s as cosy as it can be.”

“I only hope the weather stays fine for our holiday,” said Kenrick,
putting up his monocle and staring an appeal to the tender azure of the
December sky.

And the weather did stay fine, so that they were able to drive or walk
all day and escape from the narrow walled alleys of Sorrento, alleys
designed for summer heats, when their ferns and mosses would refresh
the sun-tired eye, but in Winter damp and depressing, soggy with dead
leaves.

On the last day of the old year they climbed up through the olives
until they reached an open grassy space starred thick with the tigered
buff and mauve blooms of a myriad crocuses, the saffron stamens of
which burned like little tongues of fire in the sunlight.

“Forgive the melancholy platitude,” said Kenrick, “but I am oppressed
by the thought of our transience here, and not only our transience, but
the transience of all the tourists who sojourn for a while on this
magic coast. The song of a poet here is already less than the warble of
a passing bird; the moonlight is more powerful than all the vows of all
who have ever loved in Sorrento; no music can endure beside the murmur
of the Tyrrhenian. ‘Here could I live,’ one protests, and in a day or
two the railway-guide is pulled out, and one is discussing with the
hotel porter how to fit in Pompeii on the way back to Naples. Ugh! What
is it that forbids man to be happy?”

“Well, obviously most of the people who visit Sorrento couldn’t afford
to stay here indefinitely,” said Nancy, who always felt extremely
matter-of-fact when her companion began to talk in this strain.

“Yes, but there must be many people like myself who could.”

“Some do.”

“Ah, but not in the right way. They dig out a house-agent and inspect
eligible villas and behave exactly as if they were moving from
Bayswater to Hampstead, which in fact they are. I don’t want to adjust
these surroundings to myself. I want to become an integral part of
them. I should like to stay on in the _Albergo del Sole_ without
writing letters or getting letters. I should like to be sitting here
when these crocuses have faded, and the grass is wine-stained by
anemones or silvery with asphodels. I should like to watch the cistus
petals fluttering to the hot earth, and to lie for hours listening to
the cicali, lie and dream all through the Summer as still and hot as
a terra-cotta shard, lie and dream until the black sirocco whips the
orchards and spits into my face the first drops of autumn rain. But if
I had to make arrangements for my business and explain that my nerves
required a long rest, all the savour would be taken out of my whim. Oh,
_dio_, I am as full to-day of yearnings for the _au delà_ as a French
symbolist, or a callow German who sees the end of his _Wanderjahre_
looming.”

All the way back to the town Kenrick walked along beside Nancy in a
moody silence. She felt that perhaps she had been too discouraging, and
just before they emerged from the last of the olives she put a hand on
his arm and said:

“Will it do anything to console you if I tell you how perfectly I have
enjoyed these days here? I’m not an eloquent person, Mr. Kenrick.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake call me John. Haven’t you noticed I’ve been
calling you Nancy all this time?”

“I’ll try to call you John,” she promised. “But it’s terribly hard for
me to call people by their Christian names. I’m not an eloquent person
... John. In fact, I’m sort of tongue-tied. But surely you must realise
what you’ve done for me.”

He stopped abruptly and looked into her eyes.

“Have I really done much?”

“Why, you know you have. You know you have. I was a touring actress
without an idea of ever being anything else, and you’ve given me the
chance to be something much more than that.”

“That’s all I’ve managed to do?” Kenrick asked.

“Isn’t it enough?”

He seemed to be striving either to say something or not to say
something, Nancy did not know which. Then he shivered.

“Come along, it’s beginning to turn chilly as the sun gets behind the
hills. Let’s go and have a fashionable tea at the Victoria, and book a
table for to-night.”

After dinner they sat in the lounge and watched the sophisticated
_tarantella_ that was splashed on the tourists three times a week as
from a paint-pot of gaudy local colour. Followed luscious songs and
mandolinades, and shortly before midnight the _capo d’anno_ procession
arrived to sing the song of the New Year. It was accompanied by a
band of queer primitive instruments; but the most important feature
of the celebration was a bay-tree, which was banged on the floor to
mark the time of the rhythmical refrain throughout the song’s many
verses. Everybody drank everybody’s else health; the elderly English
and American women twinkled at the inspiration of an extra glass of
vermouth; all was music and jollity.

The moonlight was dazzling when Kenrick and Nancy left the hotel, the
air coldly spiced with the scent of mandarins. He proposed a walk to
shake off the fumes, and, though she was feeling sleepy after a long
day in the open air followed by the long evening’s merrymaking, Nancy
had not the heart to say that she would rather go home to bed. They
wandered through the alleys now in darkness, now in a vaporous sheen
of grey light, now full in the sharp and glittering eye of the moon.
The naked arms of the walnut-trees and figs shimmered ashen-pale.
Here and there a gust of perfume from the orange-groves waylaid them
to hang upon its sweetness like greedy moths. After twenty minutes of
meandering through these austere blazonries of argent and sable they
turned back toward the _albergo_ and followed their shadows away from
the soaring moon, their little shadows that hung round their feet like
black velvet, so rich seemed they and so substantial upon the dusty
silver of the path.

All was still when they reached the _albergo_, and the porcelain tiles
of the balcony were sparkling in the moonshine like aquamarines.

“Good night,” said Nancy, pausing in the doorway of her room. “And once
more a happy New Year!”

Kenrick stood motionless for an instant. Then he stepped forward
quickly into the doorway and caught Nancy to him.

“You can’t say good night like this,” he gasped.

She struggled to free herself from the kiss he had forced upon her. In
her physical revolt against him the lips pressed to hers felt like the
dry hot hide of some animal.

“Let me go! Let me go!” she choked. “Och, why are you doing this and
spoiling everything?”

In escaping from his arms Nancy had gone right into her room. Kenrick
followed her in and, shutting the door behind him, began to plead with
her.

“Let me come and sit in here for a while. I won’t try to kiss you
again. Let’s pull up a couple of chairs to the fire and talk.”

“Och, do go away,” Nancy begged. “There’s nothing to talk about now,
and it’s late, and I feel so unhappy about this.”

All the time she was talking she was searching everywhere for the
matches to light the lamp and illuminate with its common sense this mad
situation created by moonshine and shadows and flickering logs.

“You’ve surely realised that I’ve been madly in love with you ever
since I saw you at Bristol?” he demanded.

Nancy found the matches and lit the lamp. Then she turned to face
Kenrick.

“Of course I didn’t realise it. Do you suppose I would have let you
pay for my singing-lessons and all this, if I’d thought you were in
love with me? I see it now, and I could kill myself for being so dense.
And me supposing it was all on account of my fine voice! Och, it’s too
humiliating. Just an arrangement between you and Gambone, and me to be
so mad as to believe in you.”

“Now don’t be too unjust, Nancy,” he said. “You have a fine voice,
and even if you turn me down as a lover I’m still willing to see you
through with your training.”

“I thought you knew so much about women,” she stabbed. “You don’t
really suppose that I’d accept another penny from you now?”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Well, I won’t ever be your mistress, and since it was the
hope of getting me for your mistress that made you send me out here—you
can’t deny that, now, can you?—well, since it was that and I can’t
oblige, you don’t suppose I’ll accept your charity?”

“But I tell you I do think you have a fine voice, and so does Gambone.
I swear to you he does. This hasn’t been a trick to get you out to
Italy, and nothing else; though it would be absurd to pretend that I’d
have done what I did for you for any woman with a fine voice.”

“Why couldn’t you have told me there was a price attached? It wasn’t
fair of you to let me come out here without knowing that.”

Nancy was on the verge of breaking down; but she knew that if she
cried Kenrick would take the opportunity of such weakness to attempt
a reconciliation, and she was determined to finish with him for ever
to-night.

“I suppose it wasn’t,” he admitted. “But you must remember that I
didn’t know you then as I know you now, and perhaps I assumed that you
were like most women, for I swear most women would have realised that I
was in love.”

“But it’s such a damnable way of being in love!” Nancy exclaimed. “If
you loved me, how could you think that I’d pretend such innocence? To
make myself more interesting? Well, I suppose if you go through life
judging women by your own ideas about them, you _would_ have discovered
by now that all of them were frauds.”

“Listen, Nancy,” Kenrick said. “Is it because you don’t love me that
you refuse me as a lover? Or is it because of the conventions? Would
you marry me, if I could marry you?”

“Do you mean if I weren’t an actress?” she said, blazing.

“No, no,” he replied impatiently. “For God’s sake don’t talk like that.
What on earth difference could that conceivably make? I can’t marry
you, because I’m married already, and because my wife would die rather
than divorce me. But would you marry me?”

“No, never in this world! I won’t be your mistress, because I don’t
love you, and even if I did love you a little, I wouldn’t be your
mistress, because I could never love you as much as I loved my husband
and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt his child and mine.”

“Are you sure you don’t love me? Are you sure the second and more
sentimental reason isn’t the true one?”

“I’m so far from loving you,” she declared, “that I couldn’t even hate
you. Now perhaps you’ll go away and leave me alone? Remember what you
said the other night in Naples about cherishing hopeless passions? Or
was that just all nothing but beautiful talk?”

“Why don’t you love me?” he asked.

“I told you once that I could never love anybody again. You had a
theory about that, I remember. Now do go away, and leave me alone.”

“Forgive me, Nancy.”

“I’ll forgive you if you let me know to a farthing what you’ve paid for
me from the moment I left London.”

“That’s not forgiveness,” he said. “You needn’t be cruel. After all,
it’s not unforgivable to love a woman. I loved you from the beginning.
I haven’t just taken advantage of moonlight to indulge myself. At
least, let me continue paying for your lessons. I’m going back to
England at once; I’ll promise not to worry you any more. Do, Nancy,
please do let me see you through!”

She shook her head.

“I couldn’t.”

“You’re sacrificing yourself for pride.”

“It’s not entirely pride,” she said. “There’s pride in it, but it’s—oh,
I can’t explain things as you can. Please tell me what I’ve cost you. I
have enough, I think, to pay you back.”

“I won’t accept it,” he declared. “And for no reason whatever can you
prove to me that I ought to accept repayment. I persuaded you to leave
your engagement. You believed in my sincerity. And I was sincere.
I think it’s wrong of you to give up your singing. But I know it’s
useless to argue about that with you. What I have paid is quite another
matter, and I simply refuse to accept repayment. If you can’t even
succeed in hating me, you’ve no right to ask me to do something for
which I must hate myself.”

“Yes, but you only used my voice as an excuse for the rest,” Nancy
argued. “Your main thought in getting me out to Italy was to make me
your mistress. Apparently I must have given you the impression that
your trouble was worth while. Yet when you invited me to come with
you to Sorrento on this holiday, why did you ask me to treat you as a
friend? As a matter of fact, the idea that you wanted to make love to
me did pass through my mind, but you drove away the fancy by the way
you spoke, as if you knew that I suspected your reasons and wanted to
reproach me for my nasty mind. Did you or did you not expect that I
would give myself to you here?”

“It was here that I first thought that you were growing fond of me,”
Kenrick said evasively. “I can tell you the exact moment. It was
yesterday afternoon when you put your hand on my arm.”

“I _was_ growing fond of you. But not in that kind of way,” she said.
“Naturally I was growing fond of you. You had, as I thought, done a
great deal for me. I was grateful; and when you seemed depressed I
wanted to comfort you.”

“Nancy, let’s cut out to-night and blame the moon.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t. I know myself too well. Just to give you pleasure because I
owe you a great deal, I would like beyond anything to cut out to-night
and go on with my singing. But the moment I was alone I’d begin to
fret. I haven’t enough confidence in my success as a singer. For one
thing, now that you’ve told me that you were attracted to me personally
at Bristol I feel that you’ve thought my voice better than it is.
Suppose at the end of another five or six months Gambone shouldn’t
consider me worthy of being pushed along? I’d have nothing to fall back
upon. I’d have failed myself and my daughter and you, artistically,
and I’d have failed you in the only way that might compensate you for
that failure.”

“But if the risk is mine and I’m willing to accept it, why must you
worry?”

“It’s no good. I know myself. I know that I couldn’t endure taking your
money under those conditions.”

“But you aren’t seriously proposing to give up your lessons and leave
Naples simply because I’ve told you that I’m in love with you?”

“Yes, yes, I am. I’m going back to-morrow.”

“But how will you explain your sudden return to your friends?”

“I haven’t so very many friends to bother about. But I shall tell those
I have that my voice wasn’t good enough to make it worth while going
on.”

Kenrick flung himself into a chair and poked the logs savagely.

“You make me feel such a clumsy brute,” he groaned. “Can’t I find any
argument that will make you change your mind?”

“None.”

“But at any rate you aren’t serious about paying me back the trifling
sum I’ve spent on you?”

“I am indeed.”

“Nancy, I’ve taken my disappointment fairly well; you can’t deny that.
I beg you to be kind and not insist on this repayment. I promise not to
inflict myself or my hopes upon you. I’ll do anything you tell me, if
only you’ll be generous over this. Your only motive for repaying me can
be pride. Use your imagination and try to realise what it will mean for
me if you insist. I do love you. I might have pretended that the magic
of this night had turned my senses for a moment, but by being sincere
I’ve ruined any hope I had for the future. My dream is shattered. Be
generous.”

He looked so miserable, hunched up over the fire, that Nancy fought
down her pride and agreed to accept as a present what he had already
done. She was inclined to regret her weakness a moment later, when she
saw that her surrender went far to restore Kenrick’s optimism about
their future relations. He began to talk about the beauty of Italy in
the Spring, of the peach blossoms in March and the orange-groves in
April. The mistake was in having sent her out in Winter. In Spring she
must think over everything and come out again. And so on, and so on
until Nancy could have screamed with exasperation at his inability to
comprehend the finality of her decision.

It was nearly two o’clock before Kenrick left Nancy’s room. The stress
of argument had chased away her fatigue; but in Kenrick’s new mood she
did not dare stand on the balcony and pore upon the hills of Sorrento
floating like islands in that sea of moonshine. He was capable of
supposing that she had changed her mind and of expecting the fulfilment
of his passion. The fire had died down to a heap of glowing ashes.
The room was heavy with the smoke of Kenrick’s incessant Macedonian
cigarettes. So this was the end of Italy. Yet she did not feel more
than a twinge or two of sentimental regret for the loveliness of
earth and sea and sky that she was deliberately abandoning. She had
the happiness of knowing that she had been true to herself. A dull, a
bourgeois virtue perhaps for a rogue and a vagabond; but Nancy, knowing
all that she now wanted from life, did not feel sorry for that self to
which she had been true.

Three days later Italy seemed as far away as paradise, when the cliffs
of England loomed through a driving mist of dirty southerly weather.




                             CHAPTER XXIII

                             CŒUR DE LION


It seemed as if fortune was anxious to compensate Nancy for the
sudden shattering of her operatic dreams. The very first agent to
whom she went on her return to London greeted her with something like
acclamation.

“Why, Miss O’Finn, I am glad you’ve looked in this morning. Mr. Percy
Mortimer”—the agent’s harsh voice sank to a reverential murmur—“Mr.
Percy Mortimer has had some difficulty with the lady he engaged to
play rather an important part in his new play at the Athenæum, and his
secretary wrote to me to ask if I would send some ladies to interview
him with a view to his engaging one of them. He requires a tall dark
lady of some presence, and of course with the necessary experience.
This would be a splendid opportunity for you, Miss O’Finn, if you
happened to please Mr. Mortimer.”

“Naturally I should like nothing better than to be at the Athenæum,”
said Nancy in a voice that was nearly as full of awe as the agent’s.

“It isn’t so much the salary,” he pointed out. “In fact, Mr. Mortimer
does not believe in paying very large salaries to the actors and
actresses who are supporting him. He thinks—and he is undoubtedly
right—that to have one’s name on the programmes of the Athenæum is the
equivalent of several pounds at most of the other London theatres.

“Now, don’t talk too much about it before Mr. Mortimer has even seen
me,” Nancy begged.

“He’ll be at the Athenæum this afternoon at half-past three. I’m only
sending along two other ladies. And I think you’re just what he wants.”

Mr. Percy Mortimer was something more than a great figure of the
London stage; he was an institution. Everybody agreed that should Her
Majesty decide to create another theatrical knight Percy Mortimer was
undoubtedly the one she would select for the accolade. The prime cause
of his renown in England was that if there was ever any question of
choice between being an actor or a gentleman he would always put good
breeding before art. This was held to be elevating the drama. If by
chance the public disapproved of any play he produced, Percy Mortimer
always apologised before the curtain on the first night and laid the
blame on the author. Two or three years before this date he was acting
in a play by a famous dramatist who became involved in a sensational
and scandalous lawsuit. Percy Mortimer did not take off the play.
He owed something to art. But he paid his debt to good breeding by
expunging the author’s name from the playbills and the programmes.

Nancy had to pass the vigilance of various chamberlains, constables,
and seneschals before she reached the Presence, a handsome man with a
face as large and smooth as a perfectly cured ham.

“Miss O’Finn?” he inquired graciously, with a glance at her card. “Of
Irish extraction, perhaps?”

She nodded.

“A part is vacant in my new play,” he announced. “The public is anxious
to see me in historical drama, and I have decided to produce Mr. Philip
Stevens’s _Cœur de Lion_. The vacant part is that of a Saracen woman
who has escaped from the harem of Saladin. It is not a long part, but
it is an extremely important part, because the only scene in which this
character appears is played as a duologue with myself.”

Mr. Mortimer paused to give Nancy time to appreciate what this meant.

“Here is the script,” he said. “Perhaps you will read me your lines?”

Nancy took a deep breath and dived.

“Thank you, Miss O’Finn,” said Mr. Mortimer. “One of my secretaries
will communicate my decision to your agent in the course of the next
twenty-four hours.”

He pressed a bell, which was immediately answered by a chamberlain
to whom was entrusted the task of escorting Nancy back into the
commonplace of existence.

And the very next day when Nancy, who was staying at St. Joseph’s, went
to her agent, she was offered the part at a salary of £5 a week.

Not only was _Cœur de Lion_ a success with the critics, who hailed
Mr. Philip Stevens as the morning-star of a new and glorious day for
England’s poetic drama; but it was a success with the public. This, of
course, made the critics revise their opinion and decide that what they
had mistaken for a morning-star was only a fire-balloon; but the damage
was done, and English criticism suffered the humiliation of having
praised as a great play what dared to turn out a popular success. One
or two papers actually singled out Nancy’s performance for special
commendation which, considering that the part did not look difficult
and that she played it easily and naturally, betrayed astonishing
perspicacity for a dramatic critic. She found pleasant rooms in St.
John’s Wood, quite close to the convent. Kenrick made several attempts
to see her, and on one occasion waited for her outside the stage-door.
She begged him not to do this again as it might involve her dismissal
from the Athenæum, because one of Mr. Mortimer’s ways of elevating the
English drama was to make it an offence for any of the ladies of his
company to be waited for outside the stage-door.

For three months everything went well for Nancy except that the expense
of London life was a constant worry for her, although she tried to
console herself with the thought that she had already saved a certain
amount of money, and that after her success in _Cœur de Lion_ she might
expect to get a larger salary in her next London engagement. Otherwise
she was happy.

Then one night early in April she was informed by the stage-door keeper
that a gentleman who would not leave his name had been inquiring for
her private address. Nancy supposed that it was Kenrick again; but
the stage-door keeper remembered him well. This was a much older
gentleman with curly white hair who was quite definitely a member of
the profession.

“Of course, I didn’t give him your address, miss. But if he calls
again, what shall I say?”

It was her father. What should she say? Nancy’s conscience had touched
her from time to time for the way she had let her father drop out of
her life ever since that day he had failed her so badly. She did not
know if he was acting in London or in the provinces, or if he was not
acting anywhere. His name had never been mentioned all these months of
touring. On no railway platform had she caught a glimpse of him as two
“crowds” passed each other during long Sabbath journeys. He might have
been dead. And now here he was in her path. What should she say?

“Ask him to leave his address, will you? And say that I will write to
him.”

If her father dreaded another such a disastrous visit as the one she
paid him four years ago, he need not leave his address. If, however, he
did leave it she would have time to ponder what response to make.

Michael O’Finn did not call again at the stage-door of the Athenæum,
but two or three days after this his daughter received a letter from
him at the theatre.

                                    544 Camberwell Road, S. E.
                                2:30 P.M. Sunday, April 17, 1899.

  My beloved daughter,

  How many times since last we met have I picked up my pen, how many
  times have I laid it down again with a groan of paternal despair!
  That you had reason to complain of me I will not deny. My head
  is bowed before your just and natural ire. But the sight of your
  name—your dear, dear name—although you share the second portion
  of it with that least worthy of God’s creatures, your wretched
  father—the sight of your name, I repeat, in the cast of _Cœur de
  Lion_ watered with hope the withered plant that in happier days and
  in the glory of his blossoming prime gave that tender shoot to the
  world, which is your sweet self.

  I will not attempt to condone my fault. I will not attempt it, I say.
  At the moment when I should have been standing upon the doorstep of
  that humble habitation in which I sojourned for a space to welcome
  you with open arms and tears of joy, I was, owing to a combination
  of unfortunate circumstances, prone upon my bed in the first-floor
  front. I have not to warn you, my child, against the evils of drink,
  because in you glows the pure and temperate soul of your beloved
  mother. At the same time I should lack all the noble instincts of
  paternity if I did not remind you that “virtue cannot so inoculate
  our old stock but we shall relish of it.” That being so, do not allow
  yourself to be tempted by even a solitary glass of champagne. Water,
  pure, wholesome, pellucid water is the natural element of a being
  like yourself. But to come to the point of this letter. Two years
  ago, weary of being “a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and
  frets his hour upon the stage,” I longed to be “heard no more.” I was
  at that time lodging in the house from which I write this despairing
  epistle. In a moment of folly I proposed to link myself in matrimony
  with my landlady’s daughter. The wretched woman accepted my hand. The
  Tragic Muse would be rendered dumb by the task of painting my misery
  ever since that inauspicious day. Ay, even Melpomene herself would
  stammer. One word, one word alone can indicate a dim and shadowy
  outline of my existence, and that one word is Hell.


  You will observe that I have resumed after a blank. That blank I wish
  to draw over my life for the last two years. But I have now reached
  a lower depth, a gloomier abyss, where in addition to all my other
  ills the spectre of famine looms above me. The wolf is scratching at
  the door. In a word, unless somehow or other I can raise the sum—a
  bagatelle for a Crœsus or a Rothschild, for me a burden heavier than
  Atlas bore—the sum of £158. 14s. 3½d. within the next week, I and my
  wife and my mother-in-law will be in the street. I do not for an
  instant imagine that you yourself have such a sum handy. You are like
  your father only a poor stroller. But it has occurred to me that you
  might be acquainted with some fortunate individual who could advance
  you this amount to save your father from destitution in company with
  the two least attractive companions that can be imagined for such an
  existence.

  I beg that you will not attempt to visit me. Since I gave up brandy,
  this house appears to me as what it undoubtedly is—a mercenary hovel.
  Yet I am “fain to hovel me with swine and rogues forlorn in short and
  musty straw.” In a word, I am better off in 544 Camberwell Road than
  “to be exposed against the warring winds, to stand against the deep
  dread-bolted thunder.”

  My beloved Nancy, do your best for me. Overlook my failings and come
  to my aid.

    “Dear daughter, I confess that I am old;
    Age is unnecessary; on my knees I beg
    That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.”

  These words addressed by the hapless Lear to his unnatural daughter
  Regan I take from their context and utter to one who has ever been a
  Cordelia.

    To that most wretched of earth’s creatures
                                       Her
                                             Father.

Nancy was not deluded by the laboured rhetoric of this letter. She
understood that her father’s need was serious. She had the money that
would relieve him. She must send it immediately. To be sure he had
failed her four years ago, but had she not allowed her bitterness to
make her unnatural? Was she not to blame a little for this disastrous
later phase of his career? Oh, yes, more than a little. Moreover, that
money in the bank, since her break with Kenrick, had never lain there
comfortably. It had never seemed to belong to her as genuinely as once
it did. The sum her father required so gravely was more than Kenrick
could have spent on that Italian adventure of hers. She took out her
cheque-book and sat down at the table. Or should she go and see him
in Camberwell? She read her father’s letter again. No, it was clear
he did not want her to be a spectator of his wretchedness. But at
least she could invite him to her rooms—yet could she? That would mean
talking about Letizia, and perhaps he would want to see her. Was it
very heartless of her not to want him to see Letizia? After all, he had
not suggested visiting her. She would send him this money and she could
decide later what she should do.

Nancy received a long and emotional letter of thanks, in which her
father said that he was feeling very low, but that without doubt her
rescue of him from the desperate position in which he had been plunged
would rapidly restore him to health. Meanwhile, he begged her again not
to dream of visiting him in Camberwell. When the warm weather began in
May he would come and see his beloved daughter.

But when the warm weather came in May, Nancy read an obituary in _The
Era_ of that ripe old actor, Michael O’Finn, a fine comedian and a
tragic actor of no mean ability.




                             CHAPTER XXIV

                               DECENNIAL


_Cœur de Lion_ suffered from cardiac depression in the heat of July and
ceased to beat half-way through the month. Although Mr. Percy Mortimer
offered Nancy a part in his autumn production, he did not offer her a
higher salary. Not only had she been unable to save a penny in London;
she had had to draw heavily on what remained of her savings when she
had paid her father’s debts. No doubt, if she stayed on at the Athenæum
she should gradually establish herself as a London actress, but should
she ever save any money? She felt that she lacked the temperament to
become a star. Even if she had had the consuming white-hot ambition,
she did not possess the necessary personality. For one thing she was
too useful an actress. She would always be given parts that were
difficult to fill, obviously. She would never establish herself as the
one actress who could play one particular kind of part. Nevertheless,
to refuse a good part in the forthcoming production at the Athenæum was
not an easy thing to do. Another conspicuous success would mean a rise
of salary for the next production and, were there nothing for her at
the Athenæum, she might surely count on a good engagement at another
theatre. Then there was Letizia in London, and it was so jolly to be
able to see her almost every day. She seemed to grow more amusing and
interesting and adorable all the time. There were many years yet before
she should be wanting that money to launch her on whatever career she
chose. Would she choose the stage? Probably. Plenty of personality
there. With the natural sense of the theatre she must inherit from
both sides she would stand a splendid chance of becoming a really
renowned actress. But what a much greater chance she would stand if
she were not hampered by the urgent need of a livelihood. Not that
Nancy intended her daughter to be aware of her amateur status. If she
chose to be an actress, she should begin under the impression that
there was not a farthing between herself and starvation in the event of
failure. But once she secured a London engagement, why, then the money
to dress herself, the money to be able to turn up her nose at a small
salary, the money to flick her fingers in the face of any manager—— But
Letizia’s début was a long way off yet. She might not choose the stage;
and was it risking so much for her mother to stay on and enjoy the
amenity of acting in London?

Nancy was on the point of settling for the autumn with Mr. Mortimer
when an actor with whom she had played in two provincial companies
before Bram’s death offered her £7 a week to go out on tour with him
in a repertory of Robertson’s plays—£7 a week in the country was the
equivalent of £10 a week in town. Nancy flung away any hope of fame,
flung away the amenity of the London stage, flung away the pleasure
of seeing Letizia every day, and became once more a strolling player,
wandering the next ten years up and down the length of England, in and
out of Wales, over to Ireland, and across the border into Scotland.
She never sang any more except at festive gatherings to celebrate some
Bohemian occasion; but if she sang no more on the stage, neither did
she play another adventuress. Her engagements were nearly always with
number one companies for number one towns. Having once achieved £7 a
week, she never acted again for less, and without stinting herself too
much or denying herself a month’s rest she managed to put by £100 every
year.

Until Letizia was twelve she was allowed to spend the summer holidays
with her mother, who was, of course, always on tour in August, so
that Letizia had plenty of experience of theatrical life in her
impressionable childhood. At the age of eleven she fell very much in
love with a good-looking actor of forty-five, a member of the company
with which her mother was touring. At first Nancy was amused by this
precocious passion and had many jokes about it with Mr. Bernard
Drake, the object of Letizia’s adoration. But when, notwithstanding
the bracing air of Blackpool, Letizia began to grow thin and pale
and hollow-eyed and altogether thoroughly love-sick, Nancy became
anxious about her health and begged Drake not to encourage her little
daughter by any kind of “let’s pretend.” The next week the company was
playing at Douglas, and Letizia was no better in spite of all sorts of
amusements and thrills that included a personal introduction by Mr.
Drake to several freaks then being shown at one of the halls by the sea
for which Douglas was famous in those days.

“What _is_ the matter, Letizia? Aren’t you enjoying your time with me?”

They were sitting among the heather beyond the town, looking at the
calm sea and the curve of the long _marina_.

“Oh, yes, I’m enjoying myself terribly,” said Letizia in woebegone
accents. “Only, in another month I shall have to go back to school.”

“But the holidays aren’t half over yet,” her mother pointed out.

“No, not yet,” Letizia sighed. “But they _will_ be over.”

“Would you like to invite Mrs. Pottage to come and stay with us next
week—no, next week is Llandudno and Rhyl—the week after at Hastings?”

“No, thank you, mother. She’ll only laugh all the time at everything.”

“Letizia, do not be so ridiculous. It’s only during the last fortnight
that you’ve not been laughing at everything all the time yourself.”

“I don’t think I shall ever laugh again,” Letizia groaned.

“Why on earth not?”

“Because I want so dreadfully to be grown up.”

“Well, you can’t go on moping for the next seven years, my dear.”

“Will I be grown up in seven years?” Letizia asked, brightening. “That
isn’t so very long, is it? I’m more than half-way already.... Mother?”
she resumed.

“Yes?”

“When does a bearded lady begin to grow a beard? I couldn’t suddenly
become a bearded lady, could I, when I was grown up?”

“Of course not, you noodle.”

“You’re quite sure?” Letizia pressed.

“Positive.”

“The bearded lady was very nice when I shook hands with her,” said
Letizia pensively. “But I wouldn’t much like to kiss her if I was a
man, would you?”

“Not at all,” Nancy declared with a grimace.

“Mother?”

“What now?”

“Do you think she’d mind if I asked her if she had any bits of beard
when she was eleven?”

“No, darling, I don’t want you to meet those freaks again. I can’t
think why Mr. Drake ever introduced you to them. It was very naughty of
him.”

Letizia turned a pale and reproachful face to her mother.

“I think Mr. Drake is the nicest man who ever lived,” she proclaimed
solemnly. Then in a voice that strove to to be nonchalant, she asked
how old he was.

“About forty-five.”

“Mother?”

“Still another puzzle for poor me?”

“Is fifty-two frightfully old for a man to be?”

“Very old indeed.”

“Too old to marry?”

“Much too old,” said Nancy decidedly.

Letizia uttered a sigh of unutterable despair, and in spite of
everything that her mother could do, in spite of a boisterous visit
from Mrs. Pottage to Hastings, she remained in a state of gloom all
through the summer holidays. Moreover, Sister Catherine wrote to Nancy
half-way through the next term that she was so worried about Letizia’s
health that she thought it would be wise if she went to Belgium early
in the New Year, as London did not seem to be suiting her. Nancy
wondered if she should say anything about her unfortunate passion for
a middle-aged actor, but decided that it might give a wrong impression
to the nuns and kept silence. She was glad she had, when soon after
Letizia’s arrival in Belgium she received a letter full of excitement
and good spirits. The sickness of love was evidently cured. But that it
could endure so long at the age of eleven made Nancy a little anxious
about her daughter’s emotional future.

Four years passed while Letizia was at school in Belgium. There were
changes among the Sisters of the Holy Infancy. Mother Mary Ethelreda
died and was laid to rest in the soil which her ancestors had held
long ago by the sword. Sister Catherine was elected mother-superior.
Sister Rose became head-mistress of St. Joseph’s. There were no changes
in Nancy’s existence apart from the change every week from one town
to another. She never heard of Kenrick nowadays. He had passed out of
her life as if he had never been. Mrs. Pottage was growing old, and
for the first time since Bram’s death Nancy visited Starboard Alley to
celebrate the old lady’s seventieth birthday.

Aggie Wilkinson was there looking now almost as old as Mrs. Pottage and
in some respects a good deal older, though she was still alluded to by
her mistress as if she were in short skirts.

“Pore little thing, it does her good to get about a bit on those
crutches of hers. She likes a jollification as much as I do myself.
She’s been helping me with the birthday cake, and which I don’t mind
telling you is a proper mammoth and no mistake. It ’ud make Mong Blong
look like a fourpenny lemon-ice.”

Mrs. Bugbird was there, and Nancy thought that she too looked a proper
mammoth, so much fatter had she grown with the years.

“It’s to be a nice cosy little party,” Mrs. Pottage announced. “In fact
we’re all here now except one.”

With this she winked at Mrs. Bugbird, who shook with her accustomed
laughter, though she was now so immense that she could scarcely fall
off any chair, and not very easily fall off a sofa.

Nancy gratified her hostess by displaying a great deal of curiosity
about the missing guest.

“He’s my one and only left,” Mrs. Pottage said. “No, I’m joking. He
isn’t what you’d call a suitor at all. In fact, he wouldn’t suit
anybody. He’s just a nice quiet old fellow called Hayhoe who likes to
pop in of a evening and smoke his pipe in my kitchen. He’s been in
Australia all his life, and when he come home again he found all his
friends and relations was dead and buried. So the pore old boy’s a bit
lonely, and he enjoys himself telling the tale to me about Australia,
and which seems to me from what I can make out of it a much larger
place than what you’d think. And on Sunday to pass the time he blows
the organ. He says that’s the only way he can go to church without
missing his pipe, though whether because the organ has pipes and to
spare or because he’s for ever puffing at the bellows I never could
rightly make out. He’s entertained Mrs. B. and I a lot this last
winter, and he’s very handy with a hammer and nails. In fact, we call
him the jumping kangaroo among ourselves. Hush, here he comes.”

Perhaps Mr. Hayhoe was abashed by the presence of a stranger, for he
certainly did not jump about at all that afternoon, but sat small and
silent in a corner of Mrs. Pottage’s room until he was called upon to
help cut the cake, which he did with the air of performing a surgical
operation.

“Well, I shall certainly do my best to live a bit longer,” Mrs. Pottage
declared when she was responding to the good wishes of her guests,
“for the longer I live, the more I enjoy myself. Oh, dear, I do wish
I’d have been a month or two younger though, and then Letitsia could
have been with us this afternoon. She _has_ been away a time. Talk
about Brussels sprouts, she _will_ be a Brussels sprout by now, and no
mistake. You mark my words, Mrs. Bugbird, that child’ll come home a
walking maypole.”

And certainly Letizia did seem the most enormous creature to her mother
when they met again, with her skirts half-way between her knees and her
ankles and her dark-brown wavy hair in a tight pigtail.

“Fancy, having a flapper for a daughter,” Nancy exclaimed.

“I know, isn’t it too perfectly beastly, mother. I hope Sister Rose
will let me fluff my hair out again. After all, I’m only just fifteen,
and I don’t want to be grown up before I need be. But I don’t expect
she will. She was always the strictest of the lot. I can’t _think_ why
they made her head-mistress of St. Joseph’s.”

Sister Rose felt that it was her duty to try and quell some of
Letizia’s exuberance, and throughout the next year Nancy was getting
letters from her daughter about “rows.” With all her strictness Sister
Rose seemed much less capable than Sister Catherine of keeping her
pupils in order; or perhaps it was that Letizia was now one of the big
girls and consequently involved in much more serious escapades than
those of the juniors. Then came the most tremendous row the school had
ever known, according to Letizia.

                                           St. Joseph’s School,
                                        Sisters of the Holy Infancy,
                                              5 Arden Grove,
                                                  N. W.,
                                              May 15, 1906.


  Darling Mother,

  There’s been the most frightful row, and it looks as if one or two
  of us will get the boot. I don’t think I shall because I’m not in
  up to the hilt. But it’s all very thunderous, and Reverend Mother
  has been sent for to deal with matters. What happened was this. You
  know the backs of the houses in Stanwick Terrace look down into our
  garden? Well, one of the girls—I’ll mention no names because a deadly
  system of espionage has been instituted—we’ll call her Cora which
  sounds an evil and profligate name. Cora met a youth, well, as a
  matter of fact, he’s not such a youth, because he’s left Cambridge.
  So he must be about 22. Cora met him during the Easter Hols, and was
  most fearfully smitten. So they arranged to correspond. In fact she
  considers herself engaged to him. Which of course is piffle, because
  she’s only sixteen. She asked me to be one of her confidantes now,
  and later on a bridesmaid, and get hold of her notes. Oh, I forgot
  to say that this youth lives in Stanwick Terrace. So, he used to put
  them under a flower-pot on the garden wall. But the silly idiots
  weren’t content with notes. They found that they could easily signal
  to one another from their rooms, and they arranged a code. Two
  candles in the window meant “My darling, I love you madly”; and all
  that sort of piffle. Cora used to work her messages with the blind,
  and I and Joan Hutchinson, the other girl who shares a room with
  her, got rather fed up with her pulling the blind up and down in a
  passionate ecstasy. So I said, “Why don’t you go out and talk to him
  over the garden wall? We’ll let you down with a sheet, which will be
  rather a rag.” As a matter of fact that’s just what it was; because
  the beastly sheet busted, and there was poor Cora dancing about
  by the light of the moon in a nightgown and a mackintosh. Sister
  Margaret, who has apocalyptic visions every night, thought Cora—oh,
  I’m sick of calling her by a false name, and anyway if some stuffy
  old nun does open this and read it, well, I hope she’ll enjoy it. I
  do hate espionage. Don’t you? We’ve only had it here since Sister
  Rose succeeded to the throne. Well, Sister Margaret was looking out
  of her window just as the sheet busted and dropped Enid Wilson—that’s
  the girl—down into the garden. She at once thought it was a miracle,
  and rushed to Sister Monica who sleeps in the next room and banged on
  her door and said. “Oh, sister! Our Lady has just descended into the
  garden.” Tableau vivant! There’s a picture for you! Of course Joan
  and I were simply in fits. Anyway there’s the most terrific row on
  that the school has ever had. Enid is convinced that she’s going to
  be expelled. Investigations by the authorities have discovered all
  about her darling Gerald. Apparently one of the gardeners found a
  note and gave it to Sister Rose. Joan Hutchinson and I are in pretty
  well to the hilt for letting Enid out of the window, and so at any
  moment you may receive a curt note from Reverend Mother to say that I
  am incorrigible and please accept delivery.

           Heaps of love,
                       Your sinister child
                                                Letizia.

  That’s what Sister Rose thinks I am. She said to me, “I cannot help
  thinking, Letizia, that you have played a very sinister part in this
  sorry affair.”

Nancy immediately wrote a stern letter to Letizia, reproaching her for
not appreciating what the nuns had done for her, and by the same post
she wrote to Mother Catherine, pleading for a lenient view of what she
assured her was really more a thoughtless prank than a serious and
premeditated piece of naughtiness.

Perhaps Mother Catherine decided that Sister Rose’s methods tended to
make her pupils rebel against them by outrageous behaviour. At any
rate, Sister Rose went to take charge of the house at Eastbourne and
rule the indigent maiden ladies provided for therein. Sister Perpetua
came down from Beaumanoir to be head-mistress; and there were no more
letters from Letizia about rows, for Sister Perpetua, like Mother
Catherine, was never strict for the sake of strictness, but wise and
holy and human.

That year Nancy was acting in the North, so she spent Christmas at
Beaumanoir with Mother Catherine. Snow was lying thick on the moors
when she arrived. It reminded her of that Christmas eleven years ago
when Mother Mary Ethelreda was still alive.

Mother Catherine had changed very little with passing time. Her
tranquil azure eyes had lost none of their fiery compassion, none of
their grave and sweet comprehension. By half-past three when Nancy
arrived at the convent a dusk heavy with unladen snow was creeping over
the moor, and the candles were already lighted in the Reverend Mother’s
parlour.

“I have been so distressed over Letizia’s behaviour,” said Nancy. “I
cannot think what happened to her last spring.”

“Don’t upset yourself about her, my dear child,” Mother Catherine
replied, patting Nancy’s hand. “She is quite herself again now, and
in any case it was really nothing more than the normal exuberance of
youth. Frankly, I am pleased to find her relatively much younger now
than she was before she went to Belgium.”

“But I was so shocked at her apparent ingratitude,” Nancy sighed.

Mother Catherine shook her head.

“She is not ungrateful. You must remember that she has been at school
many, many years now. I can easily understand that St. Joseph’s must be
seeming irksome, and that is one of the reasons why I am glad to have
this chance of talking over with you a plan that is in my mind. I must
tell you that dear Mother Mary Ethelreda left the Community very well
endowed, and there is a fund set apart for the benefit of any girls who
show any kind of artistic promise. They are to be helped to achieve
their ambition, no matter what it may be. As you know, Letizia has
definitely made up her mind to go on the stage....”

“She has not said so to me,” Nancy interrupted.

“Well, that of course is just what you would expect. Parents and
teachers must always expect to be suddenly confronted with the
inexplicable reserve of the young. Just as she wrote you a full account
of that foolish business with Enid Wilson and Joan Hutchinson, so
she has given me her confidence about her career. I fancy that the
instinct to entrust a secret to an outsider is a normal one. You would
be expected to regard her theatrical hopes with a professional eye just
as I should be expected to regard her escapades with a professional
eye.”

Nancy nodded her agreement with this.

“Very well,” Mother Catherine went on, “if Letizia is going on the
stage it is important that she should now concentrate on deportment,
elocution, dancing, singing, and all the graces that will adorn her
vocation. Another of our pupils longs to paint, and another who shows
signs of having a really lovely voice wishes to become a singer. I
propose to send these three young cousins of the Muses for a couple of
years to Italy with a _dame de compagnie_. Thus each one will be able
to study what will most help her afterwards.”

“To Italy!” Nancy exclaimed.

“I don’t think Letizia will ever have a voice as good as her mother’s,”
the nun said, with a smile. “And that reminds me, will you sing _Adeste
Fideles_ for us at the midnight Mass?”

“Oh, I never sing nowadays,” Nancy replied, the tears standing bright
in her eyes at the thought of the delight that was in store for that
little daughter—a walking maypole now perhaps, but still so much her
little daughter.

“But you must sing for us,” Mother Catherine insisted. “We want to
hear your voice roll out above our thin notes. It is so dreadful, this
news that the French Government has forbidden midnight Mass in any of
the French cathedrals or churches this year. What woes that wretched
country is calling down upon itself! It will hearten us to hear your
voice singing that wonderful old hymn.”

Nancy felt that it would sound like affectation to refuse after this,
and into her voice at midnight she put all the triumph, all the
gladness, all the gratitude in her mother-heart.

So, for the next two years Letizia was writing home to England the most
absorbing accounts of Rome, where she and her companions spent most of
their time, though on different occasions they visited all the famous
cities of Italy. While up and down the length of England, in and out of
Wales, over to Ireland, and across the border into Scotland wandered
her mother.




                              CHAPTER XXV

                           THE COMMON CHORD


Nancy was considerably startled when Letizia at the age of nineteen
entered the chorus of the Vanity Theatre. She had old-fashioned ideas
about the dignity of her profession, and the chorus of the Vanity did
not appeal to her as a worthy or suitable medium for the début of an
actress who wanted to take her career seriously.

“Oh, but it’s so reassuring, mother,” Letizia exclaimed. “Can’t you
understand how reassuring it is not to be chosen for your talents, but
simply, solely, and entirely for your looks?”

“Yes, but the girls in the Vanity chorus are such a mixed lot. And I
don’t like their outlook on life. It’s nearly always hard, mercenary,
and, well, to speak quite frankly, my dear child, immoral.”

“I’ll be the shining exception,” Letizia vowed.

“Ah, yes, it’s all very well to say that. But you’ll soon be liable
to take your tone from your surroundings, and become like the rest
of them. Dear, it’s no use for me to pretend that your engagement at
the Vanity is anything but a dreadful disappointment to me after your
education, because it is—a dreadful disappointment.”

“Mother, try to believe I know what I’m doing. I’m not proposing to
remain a Vanity girl. But the Vanity chorus is just what I require
after such a careful bringing up. It will cure all the prunes and
prisms of convent life; it will give me poise; and it will teach me the
way of the world, of which at present I’m really hopelessly ignorant.
I’m only just nineteen, and I must look fairly nice already or Mr.
Richards would never have engaged me.”

Nancy contemplated her daughter. She had not turned out so tall as she
gave promise of being when she came back from Belgium. She was a full
inch and a half shorter than her mother, and much, much slimmer. She
had the fine Oriano profile with her mother’s vivid complexion and rich
blue eyes ringed with a darker sapphire, and her mother’s deep-brown
wavy hair. Yes, she certainly did look “fairly nice.” But still, the
Vanity chorus—it was a disappointment. Nancy had made up her mind that
Letizia should begin her stage experience by going out on tour with
some sound Shakespearian or Old Comedy company. She would not earn much
in the way of salary, but that would teach her how to be careful with
money. And then after a couple of years of knocking about the provinces
and playing all sorts of parts she could concentrate upon getting a
London engagement and setting out to be famous. Now without taking
anybody’s advice Letizia had gone off and interviewed John Richards
and been engaged by him for the Vanity chorus. It was obvious that she
could not live on her salary in such surroundings, which meant that her
mother must give her an allowance if she was to be protected against
the difficulty of trying to live up to a standard beyond her means
without being exposed to temptation. And Nancy did grudge her savings
being drawn upon to maintain a position in the Vanity chorus. However,
the harm was done, and she was too wise to offer any more opposition
for fear of making Letizia decide out of contrariness that the Vanity
chorus was the end of an actress’s ambition. So, she offered her an
allowance of £20 a month and put off on tour with a determination
to save an extra pound a week from her own salary of £7. Of course,
she never told Letizia that her allowance was being drawn out of her
mother’s savings, but let her understand that it had been left for that
purpose by her father.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The memory of Lettie Fuller and her short swift career upon the Vanity
stage, bright and light as the dance of a butterfly through the
hours of a Summer morning, should still be so fresh in the minds of
play-goers that there is a kind of embarrassment in writing about it.
Anyway, Lettie Fuller was our Letizia, and in the years 1910 and 1911
she was the spirit of youth and London as no doubt to-day that elusive
and lovable spirit is incarnate in some other young woman. Peace and
beauty and fortune attend her and all those who do adore her!

Letizia had not been six months in the chorus before she attracted
the attention of John Richards by some imitations she gave at a
supper party at which, most unusually for him, he was present. If
John Richards’s eyes seemed exclusively occupied with the personal
appearance of the young women who adorned his theatre, they were not on
that account blind to talent. He asked who the good-looking girl was,
remembered now that he had engaged her himself, was informed that she
came of theatrical stock, and made a note on his cuff that she was to
be given an important understudy. Letizia’s luck held. The lady who
played the part she was understudying was taken ill at Brighton one
Saturday afternoon; and that very night John Richards, who happened
to pay one of his periodical visits to the back of a box in order to
be sure that his company was not letting the show down by slackness,
witnessed Letizia’s performance. He turned to his companion, and asked
what he thought of her.

“I think she’s a marvel.”

“So do I,” said John Richards.

Yet he did not mention a word to Letizia about having seen her. In
fact, neither she nor any of the company knew that the Guv’nor was
in front, for these visits to his theatre were always paid in the
strictest secrecy. However, when in July the musical comedy for the
autumn production was ready for rehearsal, John Richards offered
Letizia a part with three songs that were likely to take London by
storm, if the actress knew how to sing them.

Nancy was acting in Leicester the week that Letizia’s telegram arrived
with its radiant news of the luck her birthday had brought. She went
into the church where twenty-one years ago she and Bram were married,
and there she lighted every candle she could find to Our Lady of
Victories. The pricket blazed with such a prodigality of golden flames
in the jewelled sunlight that the old woman who was cleaning out the
pews came up to find out if this extravagant stranger was a genuine
devotee.

“It’s all right,” Nancy told her. “I was married in this church
twenty-one years ago, and I am thanking Heaven for happiness after much
sorrow.”

The old cleaner smiled so benignly that Nancy gave her half a crown
and begged for her prayers. Then she sought out the priest, and asked
him to say Masses for the soul of Letizia’s great-grandmother and
for herself a Mass of thanksgiving, and still another Mass for the
intention of the Sisters of the Holy Infancy. She gave him, too, alms
for the poor of his parish, and then going home to her lodgings she
knelt beside her bed and wept the tears of unutterable thankfulness,
those warm tears that flow like outpoured wine, so rich are they with
the sunshine of the glad heart.

Letizia’s first night was on the ninth of September. Her mother decided
to give up her autumn engagement, and trust to finding something later
on when the supremely important date was past. She did not want to
worry Letizia during her rehearsals; but her experience might be of
service, and she ought to be near at hand. Nancy stayed at her old
rooms in St. John’s Wood which she had chosen originally to be near
Letizia at school in the days when she herself was a London actress.
Perhaps if she could have mustered up as much excitement about her own
first night in London, she might have been famous now herself instead
of merely being favourably known to a number of provincial audiences.
Yet how much more wonderful to be the mother of a famous daughter in
whose success she could be completely absorbed without feeling the
least guilt of egotism.

The piece that Autumn at the Vanity was only one of a long line
of musical comedies between which it would be idle to attempt to
distinguish; the part that Letizia played was only one of many similar
parts, and the songs she sang had been written over and over again
every year for many years; but Lettie Fuller herself was different. She
was incarnate London, and this was strange, because she had neither a
cockney accent nor, what was indeed unexpected on the musical comedy
stage, a mincing suburban accent. She did not open big innocent eyes at
the stalls and let her underclothes wink for her. She neither pursed
her lips nor simpered, nor waggled her head. But she was beautiful with
a shining naturalness and an infectious vitality; and as Mrs. Pottage
told her mother, she was as fresh as a lilac in Spring.

The old lady—the very old lady, for she was now seventy-five—was
sitting with Nancy in the middle of the stalls. Nancy thought that she
would be less nervous there than in a box, and it would be easier for
Letizia not to be too much aware of her mother’s anguished gaze.

“Well, I’m sorry she’s gone and had herself printed Lettie Fuller,”
said Mrs. Pottage. “Because I’d made up my mind that before I died I
_would_ learn how to spell Letitsia, and I brought my best glasses on
purpose so as I could see the name printed as it should be. And then
she goes and calls herself Lettie, which a baby-in-arms could spell.
And Mrs. Bugbird and pore Aggie Wilkinson was both very anxious to know
just how it was spelt, so they’ll be disappointed. I only hope Mrs. B.
will reckonise her when she comes on, because she won’t know who she is
from Adam and Eve in the programme.”

“Is dear old Mrs. Bugbird here?” Nancy exclaimed.

“Of course she’s here—_and_ pore Aggie Wilkinson, of course. Why, they
wouldn’t have missed it for nothing. It’s only to be hoped that Mrs.
B. don’t fall over in the excitement. She’s in the front row of the
upper circle, and if she did come down she’d about wipe out the front
six rows of the pit. Still, I daresay Aggie will hook one of her pore
crutches in the back of Mrs. B’s bodice which is bound to bust open in
the first five minutes. The last time she and me went to the theatre
she looked more like a tug-of-war than a respectable woman before the
piece was over.”

“The overture’s beginning,” Nancy whispered, for people were beginning
to turn round and stare at the apple-cheeked old lady who was talking
so volubly in the middle of the stalls.

“So any one can see by the airs that conductor fellow’s giving himself.
Why band-conductors should be so cocky I never _could_ fathom. It isn’t
as if they did anything except wave that blessed bit of wood like a
kid with a hoopstick. It’s the same with bus-conductors. They give
theirselves as many airs as if they was driving the blessed bus itself.
That’s it, now start tapping,” she went on in a tone of profound
contempt. “Yes, if he dropped that silly bit of wood and got down
off that high chair and did an honest night’s work banging the drum,
perhaps he might give himself a few airs. Ah, now they’re off, and
depend upon it that conductor-fellow thinks, if he stopped waving, the
band would stop playing, and which of course is radicalous.”

The overture finished. The first bars of the opening chorus were being
played. The curtain rose.

“There she is! There she is!” Mrs. Pottage gasped when from the crowded
stage she disentangled Letizia’s debonair self. “And don’t she look a
picture, the pretty jool!”

When the moment came for Letizia to sing her first song, her mother
shut her eyes against the theatre that was spinning before them like
a gigantic humming-top. It seemed an hour before she heard Letizia’s
voice ringing out clear and sweet and cool across the footlights.
She saw her win the hearts of the audience until they were all turned
into one great heart beating for her. She heard the surge of her first
encore, and then she might have fainted if Mrs. Pottage had not dug her
sharply in the ribs at that moment.

“Did you hear what that old buffer in front of us said?” Mrs. Pottage
whispered hoarsely.

“Something nice about Letizia?” she whispered back.

“He said he was damned if she wasn’t the best girl John Richards had
found for years. And how I didn’t get up and kiss the blessed top of
his bald head I’m bothered if I know.”

The curtain fell on the first act, and the loudest applause was always
for Letizia.

“Oh, she’s knocked ’em,” Mrs. Pottage declared. “She’s absolutely
knocked ’em. But she’s lovely! And, oh, dear, God bless us both, but
how she did remind me of her pore father once or twice.”

The old lady fumbled for Nancy’s hand and squeezed it hard.

“Well, I don’t mind saying she’s made me feel like a girl again,” Mrs.
Pottage went on after a moment or two of silence. “Every sweetheart I
ever had come into my mind while she was singing that song. You know!
It was like riding on the top of a bus in fine weather when they’ve
just watered the streets and the may’s out in flower and you say to
yourself there’s no place like dear old London after all and begin to
nod and dream as you go jogging along, thinking of old faces and old
fancies and the fun you’ve had years ago.”

The curtain rose on the second act, and with every line she said and
with every note she sang Lettie Fuller became nearer and dearer to her
audience that night.

Once, after a sally had been taken up by the house in roars of
laughter, Mrs. Pottage exclaimed to Nancy:

“Hark! did you hear that? That was Mrs. Bugbird’s laugh above the lot.
Oh, I’d reckonise that laugh if I was in my coffin. You mark my words,
she’ll be whooping in a moment. That’s always the way it gets her. But
pore Aggie’ll pat her back if she whoops _too_ hard.”

In spite of the encores—and Letizia always won by far the loudest and
most persistent of them—the curtain fell at last on another thundering
Vanity success.

“Bravo, bravo, my beauty!” Mrs. Pottage stood up to shout when Letizia
took her call. Lots of other people were standing up and shouting, so
her enthusiasm was not so very conspicuous. Nancy felt too weak with
emotion to stand up herself, and sank back in a pale trance of joyful
relief.

“There’s Mrs. B.!” Mrs. Pottage suddenly exclaimed. “And if she claps
much louder, she’ll clap herself out of that new dress of hers for
good and all. And when she gets out in the Strand she’ll be run in to
Bow Street if she isn’t careful. She’s the most excitable woman I ever
_did_ know.”

At last the audience consented to let the performers retire, and a few
minutes later Nancy held Letizia in her arms.

“Darling mother, was I good?”

“Darling child, you were perfect.”

“And where’s Mrs. Pottage?” Letizia asked. “Did she think I was good?”

“The dear old soul’s waiting to be invited into your dressing-room.”

“Mrs. Pottage! Mrs. Pottage!” Letizia cried, hugging the old lady.
“You’re coming back to supper with me, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no, duckie. I’ve got Mrs. Bugbird and pore Aggie Wilkinson waiting
to go back to Greenwich. We’re all going to take a cab to London
Bridge.”

“Oh, but they must both come to supper too. They must really. I’ll get
a car to drive you home. You _must_ all come. I won’t be long dressing.”

And, if it was possible for Nancy to feel any happier that night, it
was when her little daughter showed that success had not made her
heedless of old simple friends.

The very next day Nancy went round to see her agent.

“You don’t mean to tell me you want to get another engagement at once,
Miss O’Finn? Why, I should have thought you would have wanted to stay
and enjoy your daughter’s success. It was wonderful. What notices, eh?
By Jove, it’s refreshing nowadays to hear of anybody clicking like
that.”

“Oh, no, I’ve rested quite long enough,” Nancy said. “I want to be off
on tour again as soon as possible.”

The agent looked at his book.

“Well, I’m awfully sorry, Miss O’Finn, but I don’t believe there’s
anything just at the moment that would suit you.” He paused.
“Unless—but, no, of course, you don’t want to play that line of parts
yet.”

“What line?”

“Why, Charles Hamilton is losing Miss Wolsey who has been playing Mrs.
Malaprop, Mrs. Hardcastle, etc., with him for the last fifteen years.”

“You mean the old women?” Nancy asked.

“Quite—er—quite.”

“I would like to be with Charles Hamilton,” she said pensively. “And at
forty it’s time to strike out in a new line of parts.”

“Well, he’s playing at Croydon this week. If you would consider these
parts, why don’t you go and see him? It’s a pleasant company to be in.
Forty-two weeks, year in year out, and of course he occasionally has a
season in London. Nothing but Shakespeare and Old Comedy.”

Nancy did not hesitate. Now that her daughter was safely launched it
was time for her to be settling down. She went back to her rooms and
wrote a long letter to Mother Catherine about Letizia’s triumph. Then
she wrote to Charles Hamilton for an interview. She went to Croydon,
interviewed him, and a fortnight later she was playing with him at
Sheffield—Mrs. Candour in _The School for Scandal_ on Monday, the
Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ on Tuesday, Mrs. Malaprop in _The Rivals_
on Wednesday, Mistress Quickly in _The Merry Wives_ on Thursday,
nothing on Friday when _Twelfth Night_ was performed, but on Saturday
Mrs. Hardcastle in _She Stoops to Conquer_ at the matinée and at night
once more the Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_.

Nancy no longer worried over her increasing tendency to increasing
portliness, and she never regretted joining Charles Hamilton’s company,
which now that Mrs. Hunter-Hart had retired represented the last
stronghold of the legitimate drama in Great Britain. So long as Charles
Hamilton went out on tour she determined to tour with him. The habit of
saving so much out of her salary every week was not given up because
Letizia was secure; indeed she saved more each week, because now that
she had taken to dowagers she could afford to ignore the changes of
fashion which had made dressing a problem so long as she was competing
for parts with younger women.

And then Letizia Fuller after enchanting London for a year abandoned
the stage for ever in order to marry the young Earl of Darlington.

The following letter to her mother explained her reasons:

                                                125 Gordon Mansions,
                                                   Gordon Square,
                                                       W. C.
                                                     Sept. 15.

  My darling darling Mother,

  In a few days you will read in the papers that I am engaged to be
  married to Lord Darlington. I haven’t said anything to you about this
  before, because I wanted to make up my own mind entirely for myself.
  He proposed to me first about two months ago, and though I loved him
  I wondered if I loved him enough to give up the stage. You don’t
  know how much I was enjoying being loved by the public. That’s what
  I wondered if I could give up, not the ambition to become a great
  actress. But I’ve come to the definite conclusion that I’m not really
  so very ambitious at all. I think that simple happiness is the best,
  and my success at the Vanity was really a simple happiness. It was
  the being surrounded by hundreds of jolly people, every one of whom
  I liked and who liked me. But I don’t think I should ever want to be
  a wonderful Lady Macbeth, and thrill people by the actress part of
  me. I’m not really acting at the Vanity. I’m just being myself and
  enjoying it.

  Of course, people might say that if marriage with an earl is simple
  happiness then simple happiness is merely social ambition. But I
  assure you that unless I loved Darlington I would not dream of
  marrying him. He’s not very rich, and apart from the pleasure of
  being a countess it’s no more than marrying any good-looking, simple,
  country squire. The only problems for me were first to find out if
  I loved him as much as I loved the public and being loved by them,
  and secondly to know if he would agree that all the children should
  be Catholics. Well, I do know that I love him more than I love the
  public and I do know that I want his love more than I want the love
  of the public. And he agreed at once about the children.

  Thanks to you, darling, I’m not likely to seem particularly out of
  place in my new part. Perhaps it’s only now that I realise what
  you’ve done for me all these years. You shall always be proud of me.
  I do realise too what dear Mother Catherine and the nuns have done
  for me. I’m writing to her by this post to try to express a little of
  my gratitude.

  Darling mother, I’m so happy and I love you so dearly.

                            Your own
                                             Letizia.

Three days later, the engagement of the beloved Lettie Fuller gave the
press one of those romantic stories so dear and so rightly dear to
it. Two days after the announcement Nancy received from Caleb Fuller
a letter addressed to her care of Miss Lettie Fuller, at the Vanity
Theatre.

                                                      The Towers,
                                                     Lower Bilkton,
                                                       Cheshire.
                                                     Sept. 18, 1911.

  My dear Nancy,

  I’ve been intending to write to you for a long time now to invite
  you and Lettie to come and stay with us. But this new house which I
  have just built has taken longer to get ready than I expected. It’s
  situated in very pretty country about fifteen miles from Brigham,
  and my architect has made a really beautiful miniature castle which
  everybody admires. I presented dear old Lebanon House to the Borough
  of Brigham to be used as an up-to-date lunatic asylum which was badly
  required in the district.

  Trixie and I do so very much hope that you and Lettie will come
  and stay with us and spend a quiet time before the wedding takes
  place, of which by the way we have read. You haven’t met Trixie yet,
  and it’s always such a disappointment to her. But I’m sure you’ll
  understand what a mess we’ve been in with building. I want you to
  meet Norman too. Do you know, he’s fifteen. Doesn’t time fly? He’s at
  Rossall, and I’ve made up my mind to give him the chance his father
  never had and let him go to the University.

  Are you interested in gardening? Trixie is a great gardener and
  spends all her time with her roses. Now, I think I’ve given you most
  of our news, and we are waiting anxiously to hear you are going to
  give us the pleasure of your visit. Poor Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza
  are both dead. I would have sent you a notice of the funerals if I
  had known your address.

  With every good wish for your happiness and for the happiness of dear
  little Lettie,

         Your affectionate brother-in-law,
                                       Caleb Fuller.

To this Nancy sent back a postcard:

    Hell is paved with good intentions, Caleb!

It is tempting to prolong this with an account of Letizia’s wedding and
to relate what Mrs. Pottage wore at it and what she said when Lord
Darlington kissed her good-bye, before he and Letizia set out on their
honeymoon. It is tempting to dwell on the wit and the beauty of Letizia
Darlington and still more tempting to enlarge upon her happiness. But
she and her husband belong too much to the present to be written about
and this tale of over eighty years is already too long. Yet, one more
letter must be printed.

                                          C/o Charles Hamilton’s
                                       Shakespeare-Sheridan Company.
                                            Princess’s Theatre,
                                                 Bristol.
                                               Dec. 3, 1913.

  Darling Letizia,

  I’m so overjoyed you’re glad to have a second little boy, though I
  hope you’ll have a little girl soon. You are a dear child to want me
  to give up acting and settle down with you at Vipont for the rest of
  my life. But you know, I am still comparatively young, only 44, and
  from every point of view I think it is better that I should go on
  acting. I am very happy with Mr. Hamilton, and the life on tour suits
  me. Moreover, it amuses me to feel that one day I may have quite a
  nice little nest egg for this new little boy who will be a younger
  son, and I know that Vipont requires all the money you’ve got to keep
  it up properly. God bless you, my darling, and let me go on acting
  quietly in this very pleasant old-fashioned company which is more
  like a family party than anything else.

            My dear love to all of you.
                                Your loving
                                              Mother.

And up and down the length of England, in and out of Wales, over
to Ireland, and across the border into Scotland Nancy O’Finn still
wandered.


                                THE END


               —————————————— End of Book ——————————————


                    Transcriber’s Note (continued)

This book contains many intentional misspellings of words and names.
They appear in the dialogue and correspondence of certain characters
and are used by the author as a literary device. These misspellings
have been left as they appear in the original publication.

Similarly, exclamations and dialogue in Italian have also been left
unchanged.

For the rest of the text, archaic spelling and inconsistencies in
capitalisation or hyphenation have been left unchanged except where
noted below. Other minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note.

  Page  19 – “lovebirds” changed to “love-birds” (a cageful of
              love-birds)
  Page  57 – “sunsplashed” changed to “sun-splashed” (on a sun-splashed
              piazza)
  Page 149 – “parlour-maid” changed to “parlourmaid” (an elderly
              parlourmaid)

There are a small number of footnotes in chapters I and III which
provide an English translation of some Italian word or phrases that
appear in the text. Each footnote is placed immediately below the
paragraph in which it is referenced.