Chapter Thirteen.Letters.Christmas approached. Cynthia drove from one big shop to another, accompanied by mother or governess, and selected costly remembrances for her friends, Betty Trevor among the rest, for Mrs Alliot had at last been induced to call on the doctor’s wife, and so formally sanction the girls’ friendship. Nan Vanburgh crossed out every day as it passed on the calendar, and danced for joy at the thought of going “home” for the festival.“It’s rather rough on me. I flattered myself that I was sufficient for your happiness,” her husband told her, “and—”“So you are, you darling!” Nan assured him gushingly. “I don’t want anyone else in the world but just you, and father, and mother, and Jim, and the girls, and Kitty, and Ned, and your old uncle, and Maud’s baby—and—”“And Cynthia Alliot, and this newly-discovered family at Number 14, and twenty governesses rolled into one as exemplified by Miss Beveridge, and a few score of friends scattered up and down the country! What it is to have married a little soul with a big heart!” cried Gervase, shrugging his shoulders with an air of martyrdom, though, as a matter of fact, he was well satisfied with his place in his wife’s affection, and loved her all the more for remaining faithful to old claims.As for Betty Trevor, she shivered up in her attic bedroom, putting in last stitches to the presents which had been manufactured at the cost of much trouble and self-denial. The table-centre for mother had cost only one and threepence, but looked every bit as nice as those displayed in the shop-windows for six and nine. The shield of white wadded satin seemed an ideal protector for a dress shirt, and if father did not use it as such when he went out in the evening, it would be his fault, not hers! The blotters for Miles and Jack, the work and shoe bags for the girls, to say nothing of endless odds and ends for cousins and aunts, made quite a brave show when she laid them all out on the bed preparatory to wrapping them up in paper. Jill was invited to the private view, her own present being discreetly hidden away for the occasion, and expressed an admiration tempered by pity.“Such a fag!” she declared. “Look at me, I’ve done the whole thing in one afternoon! Sallied out with my savings in my purse—two shillings pocket-money, one and three for waking Miles in the morning, sixpence from mother—reward of merit for not biting my nails for a week—ninepence from Norah for my pink silk tie (it cost half-a-crown, and I hated the old thing), four and sixpence altogether—and I got fifteen really handsome presents.”“Jill, you haven’t! It isn’t possible!”“It is then; it only needs management. I’ve kept all the chocolate boxes we have had given to us by grateful patients during the year—six of them—and they look ripping filled with sweets at sixpence a pound. I collected mother’s old scent-bottles too, with cut-glass stoppers, and bought a shilling’s worth of eau-de-Cologne to fill them. Such a joke! It didn’t quite go round, so I put some water in the last, and it’s turned quite milky. I’ll have to give that to Pam. She’ll think it something new and superior. I’ve got sticking—plaster for the boys—they are sure to cut their fingers some day—and a beautiful needle-book for mother—ninepence halfpenny—and it looks worth it, every penny. Oh, I say, while I remember, I don’t mind lending you my snow-shoes, but you might take the trouble to put them back when you’ve done with them! I wanted them badly this morning.”“I haven’t got your old snow-shoes. I don’t know what has come to this house. Everyone is accusing me of stealing! Mother was on the rampage about her gloves this morning, and father’s old smoking-jacket is missing. Mother says it’s a good thing, for it was disgracefully shabby, but he loved it because it was so comfy, and we had such a fuss searching all over the house. Christmas seems to put everything out of gear.”“Oh, well, it’s worth it! Think of the presents!” cried Jill gleefully. She skipped downstairs, and, sitting down before the writing-table in the drawing-room, pulled out a number of sheets of her mother’s writing-paper, on which she proceeded to indite a number of epistles, in which words and spaces were curiously mingled.“Dear Aunt Margaret,—Thank you so much for the beautiful ... It is just what I wanted. It was so nice of you to send it to me. I think it is ... I hope you are quite well, and not having asthma any more,—Your loving niece,—“Margaret.”“Darling Cousin Flo,—I am so awfully obliged to you for the lovely ... It is just what I wanted. I am so pleased to have it. It will just do for ... I think Christmas is ripping, don’t you? Please write soon to Jill.”“Dear Mrs Gregory,—It is most kind of you to remember me with such a nice present. The ...is just what I wanted. I am much obliged to you for remembering me. Has not Christmas Day been ... this year?—I am your loving little friend, Margaret Meredith Trevor.”“My own dear, darling Norah,—What an angel you are to send me that perfectly ripping ... It is just exactly what I wanted, and I am so proud to have it. Come round to-morrow and see my things. I’ve got ... altogether. Isn’t that a lot? Don’t you call this weather ...?—Your own Jill.”She was scribbling away—the table littered with the finished productions—when a hand fell on her shoulder and a stentorian voice cried—“Eh, what? Too busy to hear me come in, were you? What’s the meaning of this sudden industry?” and, starting up, she beheld the red, parrot-like visage of General Digby bending over her. This was not by any means the first visit which the General had paid in return for the “kind enquiries.” He was a lonely old man, and to spend a few minutes in the cheery atmosphere of a family made a pleasant break in his daily constitutional. Mrs Trevor was always pleased to welcome him, but as she was aware that it was not herself but the children who were the attraction, she did not hurry downstairs on occasions like the present.“Writing Christmas letters, eh?” boomed the General loudly. “Sending off your presents, I suppose. Eh, what?Thankingpeople for presents, do you say? That’s a bit previous, isn’t it? What’s the hurry?”“Oh, there’s always so much going on after Christmas, when the boys are at home, and it’s such a bore sticking in the house writing letters. I use up the odd times before, in getting them as ready as I can, and then it only takes a minute to fill in the spaces.”She held out a specimen letter as she spoke, and, looking at it, General Digby went off into such a convulsion of laughter, coughing, and panting for breath, that he presented a truly alarming spectacle. The protuberant eyes protruded farther and farther, the tuft of grey hair seemed to rear itself more stiffly erect, his cheeks changed from red to purple. It was not a time for ceremony, and Jill promptly pounded him on the back until he recovered himself sufficiently to shake her off, declaring forcibly that the cure was worse than the disease. Then he subsided into a chair, and wiped his eyes elaborately with a bandana handkerchief.“Where’s my letter?” he inquired. “I suppose there’s one addressed to me among all that number. Was I as fortunate as the rest in sending just what was wanted? You are a young woman of a great many wants, it seems to me. Tell you what now: I’ll strike a bargain! Fill up the blanks, and I’ll see if I can come up to expectation! Eh, what?”“Oh no!” cried Jill, blushing with an embarrassment which yet had in it a fearful joy, for who would have thought that such a new friend would enrol himself in the blessed ranks of present-givers? “There is no letter for you. I truly never thought you would give us anything,” she explained hesitatingly. “I couldn’t possibly choose myself. It’s awfully good of you to think of it, but, really, anything—It’s like this, you see; I want everything I can get!”“Oh, you do, do you?” cried the General, beginning to shake again in the old, alarming, jelly-like fashion. “Nothing like honesty in this world, my dear. Well, well, we must see what we can do! I’ll bend my great mind to the question, and you shall know the result on Christmas Day.”Jill smiled uncertainly. Already she was beginning to repent her modesty. Suppose she had taken her courage into her hands, and had said boldly, “A gold watch,” could it possibly have been true that the ambition of a lifetime would have been gratified, as by the stroke of a magician’s wand? Really and truly the General had tumbled (literally tumbled) into their lives in the most unexpected fashion, and to begin talking of presents upon an acquaintance of a month’s standing proved him to be something far superior to ordinary mortals. Jill made up her mind to change the nickname of Victim for that of Magician from this time forward.Presently Betty appeared, a pensive, melancholy Betty, chilly about the fingers, and nippy about the nose, much oppressed by the feeling that she worked while others played, and had no thanks for her pains, and was altogether too good for a world in which her excellencies were unappreciated. As usual, her hair was dressed in accordance with her mood, a brush dipped in water having been employed to flatten out the curls which had been painfully achieved a few hours before.The General looked at the dismal little figure with a twinkling eye. Already he had been introduced to three separate Betty Trevors, and it would be interesting to ascertain which of the various representations approached nearest to the reality. Judging from Miss Betty’s conversation this afternoon, Christmas would appear to be herbête noirethroughout the year, and she could see no bright spot in the horizon. The presents which she had prepared were all failures; unlike Jill, she wanted nothing in return; it was dull having “no one but ourselves” in the house on the great day, while, on the other hand, it would be horrid to have strangers. Mrs Vanburgh had gone off home to enjoy herself, and had left the “Govies” in the charge of herself and Cynthia Alliot to “cheer up and entertain,” and how could they do it, pray, a couple of girls like themselves? She scowled quite fiercely at the General as she put the question, but he only chuckled in reply, having already been treated to the history of Nan’s first ‘At Home’ from the lips of an historian more sceptical than sympathetic.“Aha! Those governesses! How many may they be? Do you still entertain the few to conversation, and yourselves to the good things provided for the many?” he cried teasingly, whereupon Betty assumed what she conceived to be an air of haughty reproach, and replied coldly—“We had four at our last reception. They all want to come again, and were most agreeable. Two of them have gone home for the holidays, but the others have no homes to go to. They are the ones we have to entertain, and it’s silly, because they are so tired of girls that we are the last people they wish to see. Mrs Vanburgh is different—she’s married, and is more interesting. Mother says she’s sorry, but there are a dozen poor ladies who have a greater claim on us—father’s patients, and so on—and what can I do by myself?” She sighed, and raised her eyes in a meek, resigned fashion to the cornet of the ceiling. “It’s not for want of will, or want of thought I lay awake for quite half an hour worrying about it one night!”“Send them a Christmas card, and be done with it,” cried Jill callously. “You can get beauties for a halfpenny at the little sweet shop round the corner. I’ll sell you one I bought yesterday. Convolvulus, and ‘May all your hours be filled with joy.’ Just the thing you want!”Betty’s lip curled in disdain.“So appropriate, isn’t it? So likely to be true!”“All the more reason to wish for it,” maintained Jill pertly. “What’s the good of wishing if you don’t wish something nice? You don’t want to take for granted that she is going on mumping and grumping all next year. Something nice might happen to her, as well as to anyone else.”“Quite right, quite right! Always expect the best, and prepare for the worst,” cried the General heartily. “Now, I’ve a suggestion to make! There’s a big concert advertised to take place in the Albert Hall on the afternoon of Boxing Day. Some friends of mine who are wandering abroad have a box there which is at my disposal when I choose to use it. I’m not going with you, mind—none of your governesses for me!—but I’ll give you the tickets, and you can make up a happy party, and get rid of some of your responsibilities, at least. How does that idea strike you, Miss Betty—eh, what?”“Oh, I—I love it! Youaresweet!” gushed Betty fervently. A box! The Albert Hall! Herself the head of the party, the gracious dispenser of favours—it was almost too ecstatic to be believed! “The two governesses, Cynthia and myself, Miles, because he loves music, and we want someone to bring us home, and father, if he has time, for Miles won’t come if he is the only male. That would be a delightful party!” she decided. There were points, after all, about being left “in charge?”
Christmas approached. Cynthia drove from one big shop to another, accompanied by mother or governess, and selected costly remembrances for her friends, Betty Trevor among the rest, for Mrs Alliot had at last been induced to call on the doctor’s wife, and so formally sanction the girls’ friendship. Nan Vanburgh crossed out every day as it passed on the calendar, and danced for joy at the thought of going “home” for the festival.
“It’s rather rough on me. I flattered myself that I was sufficient for your happiness,” her husband told her, “and—”
“So you are, you darling!” Nan assured him gushingly. “I don’t want anyone else in the world but just you, and father, and mother, and Jim, and the girls, and Kitty, and Ned, and your old uncle, and Maud’s baby—and—”
“And Cynthia Alliot, and this newly-discovered family at Number 14, and twenty governesses rolled into one as exemplified by Miss Beveridge, and a few score of friends scattered up and down the country! What it is to have married a little soul with a big heart!” cried Gervase, shrugging his shoulders with an air of martyrdom, though, as a matter of fact, he was well satisfied with his place in his wife’s affection, and loved her all the more for remaining faithful to old claims.
As for Betty Trevor, she shivered up in her attic bedroom, putting in last stitches to the presents which had been manufactured at the cost of much trouble and self-denial. The table-centre for mother had cost only one and threepence, but looked every bit as nice as those displayed in the shop-windows for six and nine. The shield of white wadded satin seemed an ideal protector for a dress shirt, and if father did not use it as such when he went out in the evening, it would be his fault, not hers! The blotters for Miles and Jack, the work and shoe bags for the girls, to say nothing of endless odds and ends for cousins and aunts, made quite a brave show when she laid them all out on the bed preparatory to wrapping them up in paper. Jill was invited to the private view, her own present being discreetly hidden away for the occasion, and expressed an admiration tempered by pity.
“Such a fag!” she declared. “Look at me, I’ve done the whole thing in one afternoon! Sallied out with my savings in my purse—two shillings pocket-money, one and three for waking Miles in the morning, sixpence from mother—reward of merit for not biting my nails for a week—ninepence from Norah for my pink silk tie (it cost half-a-crown, and I hated the old thing), four and sixpence altogether—and I got fifteen really handsome presents.”
“Jill, you haven’t! It isn’t possible!”
“It is then; it only needs management. I’ve kept all the chocolate boxes we have had given to us by grateful patients during the year—six of them—and they look ripping filled with sweets at sixpence a pound. I collected mother’s old scent-bottles too, with cut-glass stoppers, and bought a shilling’s worth of eau-de-Cologne to fill them. Such a joke! It didn’t quite go round, so I put some water in the last, and it’s turned quite milky. I’ll have to give that to Pam. She’ll think it something new and superior. I’ve got sticking—plaster for the boys—they are sure to cut their fingers some day—and a beautiful needle-book for mother—ninepence halfpenny—and it looks worth it, every penny. Oh, I say, while I remember, I don’t mind lending you my snow-shoes, but you might take the trouble to put them back when you’ve done with them! I wanted them badly this morning.”
“I haven’t got your old snow-shoes. I don’t know what has come to this house. Everyone is accusing me of stealing! Mother was on the rampage about her gloves this morning, and father’s old smoking-jacket is missing. Mother says it’s a good thing, for it was disgracefully shabby, but he loved it because it was so comfy, and we had such a fuss searching all over the house. Christmas seems to put everything out of gear.”
“Oh, well, it’s worth it! Think of the presents!” cried Jill gleefully. She skipped downstairs, and, sitting down before the writing-table in the drawing-room, pulled out a number of sheets of her mother’s writing-paper, on which she proceeded to indite a number of epistles, in which words and spaces were curiously mingled.
“Dear Aunt Margaret,—Thank you so much for the beautiful ... It is just what I wanted. It was so nice of you to send it to me. I think it is ... I hope you are quite well, and not having asthma any more,—Your loving niece,—“Margaret.”“Darling Cousin Flo,—I am so awfully obliged to you for the lovely ... It is just what I wanted. I am so pleased to have it. It will just do for ... I think Christmas is ripping, don’t you? Please write soon to Jill.”“Dear Mrs Gregory,—It is most kind of you to remember me with such a nice present. The ...is just what I wanted. I am much obliged to you for remembering me. Has not Christmas Day been ... this year?—I am your loving little friend, Margaret Meredith Trevor.”“My own dear, darling Norah,—What an angel you are to send me that perfectly ripping ... It is just exactly what I wanted, and I am so proud to have it. Come round to-morrow and see my things. I’ve got ... altogether. Isn’t that a lot? Don’t you call this weather ...?—Your own Jill.”
“Dear Aunt Margaret,—Thank you so much for the beautiful ... It is just what I wanted. It was so nice of you to send it to me. I think it is ... I hope you are quite well, and not having asthma any more,—Your loving niece,—
“Margaret.”
“Darling Cousin Flo,—I am so awfully obliged to you for the lovely ... It is just what I wanted. I am so pleased to have it. It will just do for ... I think Christmas is ripping, don’t you? Please write soon to Jill.”
“Dear Mrs Gregory,—It is most kind of you to remember me with such a nice present. The ...is just what I wanted. I am much obliged to you for remembering me. Has not Christmas Day been ... this year?—I am your loving little friend, Margaret Meredith Trevor.”
“My own dear, darling Norah,—What an angel you are to send me that perfectly ripping ... It is just exactly what I wanted, and I am so proud to have it. Come round to-morrow and see my things. I’ve got ... altogether. Isn’t that a lot? Don’t you call this weather ...?—Your own Jill.”
She was scribbling away—the table littered with the finished productions—when a hand fell on her shoulder and a stentorian voice cried—
“Eh, what? Too busy to hear me come in, were you? What’s the meaning of this sudden industry?” and, starting up, she beheld the red, parrot-like visage of General Digby bending over her. This was not by any means the first visit which the General had paid in return for the “kind enquiries.” He was a lonely old man, and to spend a few minutes in the cheery atmosphere of a family made a pleasant break in his daily constitutional. Mrs Trevor was always pleased to welcome him, but as she was aware that it was not herself but the children who were the attraction, she did not hurry downstairs on occasions like the present.
“Writing Christmas letters, eh?” boomed the General loudly. “Sending off your presents, I suppose. Eh, what?Thankingpeople for presents, do you say? That’s a bit previous, isn’t it? What’s the hurry?”
“Oh, there’s always so much going on after Christmas, when the boys are at home, and it’s such a bore sticking in the house writing letters. I use up the odd times before, in getting them as ready as I can, and then it only takes a minute to fill in the spaces.”
She held out a specimen letter as she spoke, and, looking at it, General Digby went off into such a convulsion of laughter, coughing, and panting for breath, that he presented a truly alarming spectacle. The protuberant eyes protruded farther and farther, the tuft of grey hair seemed to rear itself more stiffly erect, his cheeks changed from red to purple. It was not a time for ceremony, and Jill promptly pounded him on the back until he recovered himself sufficiently to shake her off, declaring forcibly that the cure was worse than the disease. Then he subsided into a chair, and wiped his eyes elaborately with a bandana handkerchief.
“Where’s my letter?” he inquired. “I suppose there’s one addressed to me among all that number. Was I as fortunate as the rest in sending just what was wanted? You are a young woman of a great many wants, it seems to me. Tell you what now: I’ll strike a bargain! Fill up the blanks, and I’ll see if I can come up to expectation! Eh, what?”
“Oh no!” cried Jill, blushing with an embarrassment which yet had in it a fearful joy, for who would have thought that such a new friend would enrol himself in the blessed ranks of present-givers? “There is no letter for you. I truly never thought you would give us anything,” she explained hesitatingly. “I couldn’t possibly choose myself. It’s awfully good of you to think of it, but, really, anything—It’s like this, you see; I want everything I can get!”
“Oh, you do, do you?” cried the General, beginning to shake again in the old, alarming, jelly-like fashion. “Nothing like honesty in this world, my dear. Well, well, we must see what we can do! I’ll bend my great mind to the question, and you shall know the result on Christmas Day.”
Jill smiled uncertainly. Already she was beginning to repent her modesty. Suppose she had taken her courage into her hands, and had said boldly, “A gold watch,” could it possibly have been true that the ambition of a lifetime would have been gratified, as by the stroke of a magician’s wand? Really and truly the General had tumbled (literally tumbled) into their lives in the most unexpected fashion, and to begin talking of presents upon an acquaintance of a month’s standing proved him to be something far superior to ordinary mortals. Jill made up her mind to change the nickname of Victim for that of Magician from this time forward.
Presently Betty appeared, a pensive, melancholy Betty, chilly about the fingers, and nippy about the nose, much oppressed by the feeling that she worked while others played, and had no thanks for her pains, and was altogether too good for a world in which her excellencies were unappreciated. As usual, her hair was dressed in accordance with her mood, a brush dipped in water having been employed to flatten out the curls which had been painfully achieved a few hours before.
The General looked at the dismal little figure with a twinkling eye. Already he had been introduced to three separate Betty Trevors, and it would be interesting to ascertain which of the various representations approached nearest to the reality. Judging from Miss Betty’s conversation this afternoon, Christmas would appear to be herbête noirethroughout the year, and she could see no bright spot in the horizon. The presents which she had prepared were all failures; unlike Jill, she wanted nothing in return; it was dull having “no one but ourselves” in the house on the great day, while, on the other hand, it would be horrid to have strangers. Mrs Vanburgh had gone off home to enjoy herself, and had left the “Govies” in the charge of herself and Cynthia Alliot to “cheer up and entertain,” and how could they do it, pray, a couple of girls like themselves? She scowled quite fiercely at the General as she put the question, but he only chuckled in reply, having already been treated to the history of Nan’s first ‘At Home’ from the lips of an historian more sceptical than sympathetic.
“Aha! Those governesses! How many may they be? Do you still entertain the few to conversation, and yourselves to the good things provided for the many?” he cried teasingly, whereupon Betty assumed what she conceived to be an air of haughty reproach, and replied coldly—
“We had four at our last reception. They all want to come again, and were most agreeable. Two of them have gone home for the holidays, but the others have no homes to go to. They are the ones we have to entertain, and it’s silly, because they are so tired of girls that we are the last people they wish to see. Mrs Vanburgh is different—she’s married, and is more interesting. Mother says she’s sorry, but there are a dozen poor ladies who have a greater claim on us—father’s patients, and so on—and what can I do by myself?” She sighed, and raised her eyes in a meek, resigned fashion to the cornet of the ceiling. “It’s not for want of will, or want of thought I lay awake for quite half an hour worrying about it one night!”
“Send them a Christmas card, and be done with it,” cried Jill callously. “You can get beauties for a halfpenny at the little sweet shop round the corner. I’ll sell you one I bought yesterday. Convolvulus, and ‘May all your hours be filled with joy.’ Just the thing you want!”
Betty’s lip curled in disdain.
“So appropriate, isn’t it? So likely to be true!”
“All the more reason to wish for it,” maintained Jill pertly. “What’s the good of wishing if you don’t wish something nice? You don’t want to take for granted that she is going on mumping and grumping all next year. Something nice might happen to her, as well as to anyone else.”
“Quite right, quite right! Always expect the best, and prepare for the worst,” cried the General heartily. “Now, I’ve a suggestion to make! There’s a big concert advertised to take place in the Albert Hall on the afternoon of Boxing Day. Some friends of mine who are wandering abroad have a box there which is at my disposal when I choose to use it. I’m not going with you, mind—none of your governesses for me!—but I’ll give you the tickets, and you can make up a happy party, and get rid of some of your responsibilities, at least. How does that idea strike you, Miss Betty—eh, what?”
“Oh, I—I love it! Youaresweet!” gushed Betty fervently. A box! The Albert Hall! Herself the head of the party, the gracious dispenser of favours—it was almost too ecstatic to be believed! “The two governesses, Cynthia and myself, Miles, because he loves music, and we want someone to bring us home, and father, if he has time, for Miles won’t come if he is the only male. That would be a delightful party!” she decided. There were points, after all, about being left “in charge?”
Chapter Fourteen.Christmas Presents.The Trevors’ programme on Christmas Day differed from those of their friends, and possessed in their opinion many striking advantages. No presents were given in the morning; it was enough excitement to know that it was Christmas Day, and to linger over a late and luxurious breakfast before going to church. There was something particularly inspiring about the moment when the great congregation rose in the ivy-decked church and burst into song—“Hark, the herald angels sing,Glory to the new-born King!”Even Jill had a fleeting realisation that the true meaning of Christmas was something quite apart from presents, and turkey, and plum-puddings, while Betty’s thoughts flew back to the day of her confirmation, and she vowed herself anew to the service of the King. Jack sang the well-known words with a new attention—“Christ the everlasting Lord;” this was the same Christ who was General Digby’s “Captain.” “I am here to obey my Captain’s orders,”—the words rang in his ears, and he saw once more the wonderful softening of the fierce old face. Miles did not sing at all; his voice was still hoarse and broken, and his set expression gave little clue to his feelings, but Pam’s treble was clear and sweet, and her little face shone with innocent fervour.After church came a walk through the—well! It should have been “the crisp cold air,” but unfortunately the weather showed no sense of propriety, and in reality it was as dank and cheerless a day as even London itself can produce in mid-winter. As the advance guard in the shape of Miles and Betty neared their own doorway, a dainty figure ran down the steps, and there was Cynthia Alliot, blooming like a delicate pink rose in the midst of the fog.“You!” cried Betty in surprise, and then awkwardly attempted the difficult task of introduction. “Er—this is my brother Miles! Miles—this is—”“The Pampered Pet!” interrupted Cynthia, laughing. Miles knit his brows in the fashion he had when ill at ease, and mumbled an unintelligible greeting, but Cynthia was not in the least embarrassed. She smiled at him as frankly as if he had been another Betty, yet with a little air of gracious dignity which is rarely found in girls of her age. She was quite simple and unaffected, but one could never imagine her taking part in the free-and-easy, slangy, unchivalrous intercourse which so often prevails nowadays between girls and boys. She held herself like a Queen, and silent Miles looked at her, and in the depths of his honest heart vowed himself to her service.“What did you call for?” Betty queried. “Did you want to see me? Was it about to-morrow? We are going to call for you at half-past two. We can walk, I suppose, unless it is wet?”“Oh yes, it will be far nicer. I do hope it will be fine. This is not at all a cheerful Christmas, is it? Good-bye! I do hope you’ll have a lovely time!” returned Cynthia, waving her hand and crossing the road towards her own doorway. It was too late to remind her that she had not answered the last question, and the first sight of the hall table banished every other thought, for on it lay the pile of Christmas cards whose advent had been so eagerly expected. Betty seized the bundle and began doling them out, while her brothers and sisters clustered round, and clamoured for their share.“Miss Trevor—Miss Trevor—Miss Trevor—(Betty, it’s not fair, you are taking them all!) Miss Jill Trevor, Miss JM Trevor, Mrs Trevor, James Trevor, Esquire, MD—(Looks like a bill! How mean to send a bill on Christmas day!) Miss Trevor, Miss Pamela Trevor,” so it went on, the major share falling to the three girls, the boys coming in only for an occasional missive from an aunt or some such kindly relation, who suddenly awoke to the fact of their existence at Christmas time. When the cards were dealt out there still remained a little pile of envelopes which had apparently been delivered by hand, as no stamps appeared beside the addresses. Betty pounced on them, and gave a shout of delight.“There’s money inside! There is, I can feel it. Mine’s quite small—like a—a—” She dropped the remaining envelopes to open her own in a flutter of excitement. Inside there was a folded piece of paper enclosing a second envelope—one of those tiny, dainty affairs in which some old-fashioned tradesmen still deliver change to their customers. In her haste Betty ripped it open, and held up to view a brand new sovereign.“It is! It is! How s–imply lovely! I was so hard up—and now! What perfect angel can have sent it?”She picked up the piece of paper which she had dropped in her haste, and read aloud, “With the best wishes of Terence Digby,” the while her brothers and sisters made short work of their own envelopes. Jack and Jill had each a new ten-shilling piece, and Pam a magnificent silver crown, the size of which delighted her even more than the value.“He said he would send me something, but I never thought it would be money. It’s what I like better than anything else, to be rich in the Christmas holidays!” Jill cried rapturously, and Mrs Trevor smiled and said—“So he seemed to think. He asked my permission before sending his presents in this form, and said he would like to give you money, because when he was a boy an old lady used to send new coins to himself and his brothers every Christmas in these same little envelopes, and he had never forgotten the pleasure they gave him. Yes! You will feel rich, but don’t be in too great a hurry to spend your fortunes, for the General may wish to speak to you on that point.”Jill shrugged her shoulders disgustedly.“Bother! I hope he won’t want us to spend it sensibly! That would take away all the fun. I want to keep it in my purse, and fritter it away just as I like. What’s the good of giving presents, and not letting you use them as you like?”“Well, well, what’s the use of grumbling before you know if there is anything to grumble about?” returned Mrs Trevor, laughing. She moved away, carrying her bundle of letters, and the children followed her example, and spent a happy half-hour examining, displaying, and comparing cards and calendars.Then came lunch, a glorified lunch with “party” sweets, and dessert, finishing up with a big dish of chestnuts to roast over the fire. The doctor was at home for the afternoon, having made the round of his serious patients in the morning (abominably selfish of anyone to be ill on Christmas Day!), and that fact alone gave a festivity to the afternoon tea, while ever in the background lurked the delightful anticipation of presents—presents to come!Other people had done with all their excitement before now, and had even grown accustomed to their new possessions, but Betty and Jill donned last year’s party dresses for dinner in a flutter of anticipation, and then hurried downstairs, each with an armful of parcels to add to the store which had been accumulating in the library all day long.The sofa was full of them—neat brown—paper parcels, bulky parcels, shapeless parcels, tissue-paper parcels, large and small, dainty and the reverse, boxes, envelopes, and a mysterious pyramid covered with a sheet, over which Pam mounted jealous guard. Betty had just time to arrange the parcels on two large trays, and see the larger articles conveyed into the dining-room and hidden behind a screen, before the gong rang, and dinner began.There was the orthodox turkey and roast beef, plum-pudding and mince-pies, but when dessert was over there came a moment of thrilling excitement, as the servants placed one heaped trayful of presents on the table before Dr Trevor, and another at the bottom before his wife. The long-looked-for moment had come at last!Well, it was a pleasant sight to see the twinkle in the doctor’s tired eyes as he looked round the table at his five children, and exchanged a smile of comradeship with his pretty wife. His long delicate hand, the true doctor’s hand, lifted the topmost parcel from the tray, and held it aloft while he read aloud the laborious inscription—“‘To Miles, hopping he will like it, from Pam.’ Here you are, Miles!” and down the table it went, from one eager pair of hands to another, while Pam blushed a vivid red, and wriggled bashfully on her chair.There were a great many wrappings, and the dimensions of the parcel diminished so rapidly as to excuse serious fears that it contained nothing more substantial than a joke, but such an idea was an insult to Pam’s generosity. She had bestowed much thought on the choice of this special present, and could not in the least understand the roar of laughter which rose from every side as the last paper fell away to disclose a magnificent sixpenny tooth-brush in all its creamy splendour.Miles’ face was a study as he gazed upon it, and turned it speculatively to and fro.“Anything personal meant, Pam?” he inquired, and, “Yes, please, Miles!” replied innocent Pam, and blushed again to the verge of tears at the second shout of merriment.“It’s a very useful present, dear,” Mrs Trevor said consolingly, and hastened to give the conversation a turn by doling out another parcel from her own tray.“‘Betty, with love from Jill.’”It was a very small parcel, and Betty looked at it with suspicion, remembering the sticking-plaster and watered eau de Cologne, but things turned out better than she expected, the enclosure being quite a pretty hat-pin, of a colour to match her best hat.“Just what I wanted!” was both the true and the gracious manner of acknowledging this trophy, as also the book from Jack, and the gloves from Miles, which presently fell to her share. Then it was the doctor’s turn, his wife having retired behind the screen to bring forth an enormous parcel, which could only be laid on a chair by his side, since it was far too big to place on the table itself.“For me? Why, what can this be? It feels like a blanket!” he cried in astonishment, and his face was a picture of mingled surprise, pleasure, and consternation, as a handsome fur-lined carriage rug was presently revealed to view. “Oh, this is too much! This won’t do! Edith, what reckless extravagance!”“Not extravagance at all,” his wife answered sturdily. “You must be kept warm, driving about from morning till night. It is nothing less than a necessity which you ought to have had years ago. Besides, it’s not my gift alone—it’s a joint affair. The children all contributed—it’s from all six of us, with our best love to you, dearest.”“I gave threepence,” announced Pam proudly, thereby bringing a smile to her father’s face, though his voice had a suspicious quiver in it as he said—“Thank you, my six darlings!” and smoothed the rug with a loving touch. Its presence would keep not only his body but his heart warm on many a wintry day to come.After this, the parcel-opening went on fast and furious. Pam received a young lady doll, and had barely recovered from the rapture of her arrival when, presto! There appeared a miniature travelling-box, covered with leather, provided with straps, and a white PT painted at the sides, just like a real true grown-up box! And inside—a veritable trousseau! The work of loving mother hands on many a winter evening—a blue serge coat and skirt, a party frock of pale pink silk, a long white cloak; a straw hat for ordinary wear, and—could you believe it?—a toque, boa, and muff of real fur, just like that old muff of mother’s that she wore before the new one arrived. Beneath these treasures a supply of under garments, including a dear little flannel dressing-jacket, and bedroom slippers to match. Never, no, never since the creation of the world did a little girl of eight years receive a more all-satisfying and delightful offering! In her parents’ eyes at least, Pam’s little face, aglow with innocent rapture, was the most beautiful sight of that happy Christmas Day.Jack had a book from his father, a knitted tie from Betty, skates from his mother—oh, for a good hard frost!—some cast-off tools from Miles, and a packet of black sticking-plaster from Jill. He grinned broadly over this last offering, and while the parcel-opening went on on both sides fumbled mysteriously beneath the tablecloth. Five minutes later, as he joined the others in a burst of laughter, his mother started violently, and cried, “Jack! Whathashappened!” in a tone of dismay which brought every eye upon him. Freckled nose, twinkling eyes, outstanding ears—no change to be seen in these well-known features, but the teeth—the teeth! Between lips extended in broadest of smiles appeared horrible, isolated tusks standing out conspicuously from the black gaps on either side. What in the name of all that was mysterious and perplexing had happened to those rows of sound regular ivories which had been his chief beauty five minutes before? And what an alteration in his whole appearance! Extraordinary to think of the change which was effected by the loss of half a dozen little teeth!After the first start of surprise, understanding dawned quickly enough. Jill’s present had been short-lived, but it had served its purpose, both in her eyes and Jack’s, in causing the sensation of the evening, and the mother’s pitiful, “Take them off, Jack dear, do! You looksodreadful!” could not persuade Jack to peel off the disfiguring black squares. It was too dear a triumph to a schoolboy’s heart to create shudders of disgust every time he opened his mouth!The pile of presents on the trays waxed rapidly less and less, the last parcel of all being of exceptional daintiness,—tissue-paper, tied round with a narrow blue ribbon. It was addressed to Betty, and to her rapturous surprise contained a line of congratulation from Cynthia Alliot, and the exact duplicate of an artistic silver and enamel buckle which she had admired on her friend’s belt a few days before. She was so entirely occupied crooning over this treasure, that she did not notice that Pam had suddenly slipped from her chair and pushed the screen aside, leaving the tall draped mystery fully exposed to view.“It’s my present,” she explained proudly. “For mother. Just what she wanted! Cook hid it for me, and covered it with these clothes.” She stood on tiptoe as she spoke, taking out the pins which held the coverings together. They fell to the ground, and revealed a handsome branching palm, standing four or five feet from the ground. Mrs Trevor uttered an exclamation of incredulous surprise, and indeed every face round the table expressed the same sentiment, for the plant was obviously expensive, and how in the world could Pam have purchased it out of an income of a penny a week?“My darling! For me? That is indeed a magnificent present. Where did it come from, dear? Has someone joined with you to give a present to mother?”Before now it had happened that a friend of the family had consulted the children as to their mother’s wishes in the matter of Christmas presents, and it seemed the most likely solution of the mystery that this had occurred once again, Pam contributing in the same proportion as she had done to her father’s rug. But no! Pam proudly denied the insinuation, and repeated—“It’s my very own present I bought it myself.”“But, my sweetheart—” began Mrs Trevor anxiously, and then checked herself at the thought of another possible explanation. “Did someone give you some money, dear, that I knew nothing about?”“Oh no! I haven’t had any money, only General Digby’s to-day.”“Then how— I am very pleased and delighted to have the palm, but I can’t enjoy it properly until I know a little more about how it came into your possession. It is such a very big present for a little girl. How did you get all the money, dear?”Pam smiled with an air of innocent pride.“It wasn’t—all—money!” she said, smiling.“Not all money? What do you mean? If it was not all money, what was the rest?”“Clothes!”“Clothes!” cried Mrs Trevor vaguely.“Clothes!” echoed her husband.“Clothes!” shrieked Betty in a shrill treble.“Cl–othes!” repeated the boys curiously. Only Jill’s face lit up with comprehension, mingled with a spice of resentment.“I know—I know!Oldclothes, she means! She has been selling old clothes—our old clothes, if you please—to ‘All a-growing all a-blowing’ in exchange for the palm! He likes them better than money. I heard him say so one day when Pam was seeing me off at the door. That’s where dad’s old coat has gone to, that’s where your blouse is, Betty, not to mention some of the boys’ ties, and gloves, and my umbrella. Oh, you wretched child! The hours I’ve spent searching for it! That’s where everything has gone that we have been searching for for the last month. She has been gathering them together for the palm!”Mrs Trevor’s face was a study of complex emotion as she looked at her baby, but Pam’s triumphant satisfaction did not waver for a moment. She nodded her head, and cried cheerfully—“Oh, lots more things than that! He wanted so much, because palms is most expensive of all before Christmas, and I bought it when you were all out, and cook hid it, and we sprayed its leaves to make them bright. In her last place Miss Bella did them every week with milk-and-water to make them shine!”She had not the least idea that there was anything to be ashamed of in her action; on the contrary, she was full of pride in her own cleverness. But it was impossible to allow such an occasion to pass, even on Christmas evening, when discipline is necessarily relaxed. Mrs Trevor’s face was an eloquent mingling of tenderness and distress as she said—“But did it never strike you, Pam dear, that these things were not your own to sell? That you had no right to sell them?”“They were no use. You said to father, ‘That coat is too disgraceful to be worn,’ and Betty said the blouse mortified her pride, and Jill made fun of her umbrella because it was three and eleven-pence, and the wires bulged out. She said, ‘I can’t think why it is that I always lose silk ones, and I can’t get rid of this wretched thing, do what I will!’ I thought,”—Pam’s voice sounded a tremulous note of disappointment—“I thought you would all be pleased with me for clearing them away.”“It would have been different, dear, if you had asked our permission, though we all have to put up with shabby things sometimes. As it was, it was both wrong and dishonest to take things which belonged to other people, and sell them without permission.”“But I sold my own too! My blue coat and hat, because you said yourself they didn’t suit me, and you couldn’t bear to see them on. I heard you speaking to Betty, and saying those very words. I thought you’d be pleased if you never did see them again!”Mrs Trevor gasped in consternation.“Oh, Pam, Pam, what am I to say to you? This is worse than I imagined! Your blue coat—and it was quite good still! I can’t possibly accept a present obtained in such a way!”She cast an appealing glance at her husband, who had been sitting covering his mouth with his hand, and trying in vain to subdue the twinkle in his eyes as he listened to Pam’s extraordinary confession. Now he looked at the child’s frightened, shrinking face, and said kindly—“I think Pam and I will have a quiet talk together while you adjourn to the drawing-room. She did not mean to do wrong, and I am sure she will never offend again in the same way when she understands things in their right light.”So Mrs Trevor and the elder children went to the drawing-room, and, ten minutes later, a subdued little Pam crept up to her mother’s side, holding out a bright crown-piece on her palm.“Father says General Digby would like me best to pay my debts. Will you please give some to the others to pay for the things I took?”“Thank you, Pam. I shall be very pleased to do so,” said Mrs Trevor quietly. Her heart ached at being obliged to take the child’s fortune from her, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and would not allow herself to hesitate. “And now, darling, I shall be delighted to have the palm. It is indeed the very thing I wanted.”Pam tried to smile, but her lips quivered. A whole crown-piece, and a new one into the bargain! A Vanderbilt deprived of his millions could not have felt his poverty more bitterly than she did at that moment!
The Trevors’ programme on Christmas Day differed from those of their friends, and possessed in their opinion many striking advantages. No presents were given in the morning; it was enough excitement to know that it was Christmas Day, and to linger over a late and luxurious breakfast before going to church. There was something particularly inspiring about the moment when the great congregation rose in the ivy-decked church and burst into song—
“Hark, the herald angels sing,Glory to the new-born King!”
“Hark, the herald angels sing,Glory to the new-born King!”
Even Jill had a fleeting realisation that the true meaning of Christmas was something quite apart from presents, and turkey, and plum-puddings, while Betty’s thoughts flew back to the day of her confirmation, and she vowed herself anew to the service of the King. Jack sang the well-known words with a new attention—“Christ the everlasting Lord;” this was the same Christ who was General Digby’s “Captain.” “I am here to obey my Captain’s orders,”—the words rang in his ears, and he saw once more the wonderful softening of the fierce old face. Miles did not sing at all; his voice was still hoarse and broken, and his set expression gave little clue to his feelings, but Pam’s treble was clear and sweet, and her little face shone with innocent fervour.
After church came a walk through the—well! It should have been “the crisp cold air,” but unfortunately the weather showed no sense of propriety, and in reality it was as dank and cheerless a day as even London itself can produce in mid-winter. As the advance guard in the shape of Miles and Betty neared their own doorway, a dainty figure ran down the steps, and there was Cynthia Alliot, blooming like a delicate pink rose in the midst of the fog.
“You!” cried Betty in surprise, and then awkwardly attempted the difficult task of introduction. “Er—this is my brother Miles! Miles—this is—”
“The Pampered Pet!” interrupted Cynthia, laughing. Miles knit his brows in the fashion he had when ill at ease, and mumbled an unintelligible greeting, but Cynthia was not in the least embarrassed. She smiled at him as frankly as if he had been another Betty, yet with a little air of gracious dignity which is rarely found in girls of her age. She was quite simple and unaffected, but one could never imagine her taking part in the free-and-easy, slangy, unchivalrous intercourse which so often prevails nowadays between girls and boys. She held herself like a Queen, and silent Miles looked at her, and in the depths of his honest heart vowed himself to her service.
“What did you call for?” Betty queried. “Did you want to see me? Was it about to-morrow? We are going to call for you at half-past two. We can walk, I suppose, unless it is wet?”
“Oh yes, it will be far nicer. I do hope it will be fine. This is not at all a cheerful Christmas, is it? Good-bye! I do hope you’ll have a lovely time!” returned Cynthia, waving her hand and crossing the road towards her own doorway. It was too late to remind her that she had not answered the last question, and the first sight of the hall table banished every other thought, for on it lay the pile of Christmas cards whose advent had been so eagerly expected. Betty seized the bundle and began doling them out, while her brothers and sisters clustered round, and clamoured for their share.
“Miss Trevor—Miss Trevor—Miss Trevor—(Betty, it’s not fair, you are taking them all!) Miss Jill Trevor, Miss JM Trevor, Mrs Trevor, James Trevor, Esquire, MD—(Looks like a bill! How mean to send a bill on Christmas day!) Miss Trevor, Miss Pamela Trevor,” so it went on, the major share falling to the three girls, the boys coming in only for an occasional missive from an aunt or some such kindly relation, who suddenly awoke to the fact of their existence at Christmas time. When the cards were dealt out there still remained a little pile of envelopes which had apparently been delivered by hand, as no stamps appeared beside the addresses. Betty pounced on them, and gave a shout of delight.
“There’s money inside! There is, I can feel it. Mine’s quite small—like a—a—” She dropped the remaining envelopes to open her own in a flutter of excitement. Inside there was a folded piece of paper enclosing a second envelope—one of those tiny, dainty affairs in which some old-fashioned tradesmen still deliver change to their customers. In her haste Betty ripped it open, and held up to view a brand new sovereign.
“It is! It is! How s–imply lovely! I was so hard up—and now! What perfect angel can have sent it?”
She picked up the piece of paper which she had dropped in her haste, and read aloud, “With the best wishes of Terence Digby,” the while her brothers and sisters made short work of their own envelopes. Jack and Jill had each a new ten-shilling piece, and Pam a magnificent silver crown, the size of which delighted her even more than the value.
“He said he would send me something, but I never thought it would be money. It’s what I like better than anything else, to be rich in the Christmas holidays!” Jill cried rapturously, and Mrs Trevor smiled and said—
“So he seemed to think. He asked my permission before sending his presents in this form, and said he would like to give you money, because when he was a boy an old lady used to send new coins to himself and his brothers every Christmas in these same little envelopes, and he had never forgotten the pleasure they gave him. Yes! You will feel rich, but don’t be in too great a hurry to spend your fortunes, for the General may wish to speak to you on that point.”
Jill shrugged her shoulders disgustedly.
“Bother! I hope he won’t want us to spend it sensibly! That would take away all the fun. I want to keep it in my purse, and fritter it away just as I like. What’s the good of giving presents, and not letting you use them as you like?”
“Well, well, what’s the use of grumbling before you know if there is anything to grumble about?” returned Mrs Trevor, laughing. She moved away, carrying her bundle of letters, and the children followed her example, and spent a happy half-hour examining, displaying, and comparing cards and calendars.
Then came lunch, a glorified lunch with “party” sweets, and dessert, finishing up with a big dish of chestnuts to roast over the fire. The doctor was at home for the afternoon, having made the round of his serious patients in the morning (abominably selfish of anyone to be ill on Christmas Day!), and that fact alone gave a festivity to the afternoon tea, while ever in the background lurked the delightful anticipation of presents—presents to come!
Other people had done with all their excitement before now, and had even grown accustomed to their new possessions, but Betty and Jill donned last year’s party dresses for dinner in a flutter of anticipation, and then hurried downstairs, each with an armful of parcels to add to the store which had been accumulating in the library all day long.
The sofa was full of them—neat brown—paper parcels, bulky parcels, shapeless parcels, tissue-paper parcels, large and small, dainty and the reverse, boxes, envelopes, and a mysterious pyramid covered with a sheet, over which Pam mounted jealous guard. Betty had just time to arrange the parcels on two large trays, and see the larger articles conveyed into the dining-room and hidden behind a screen, before the gong rang, and dinner began.
There was the orthodox turkey and roast beef, plum-pudding and mince-pies, but when dessert was over there came a moment of thrilling excitement, as the servants placed one heaped trayful of presents on the table before Dr Trevor, and another at the bottom before his wife. The long-looked-for moment had come at last!
Well, it was a pleasant sight to see the twinkle in the doctor’s tired eyes as he looked round the table at his five children, and exchanged a smile of comradeship with his pretty wife. His long delicate hand, the true doctor’s hand, lifted the topmost parcel from the tray, and held it aloft while he read aloud the laborious inscription—“‘To Miles, hopping he will like it, from Pam.’ Here you are, Miles!” and down the table it went, from one eager pair of hands to another, while Pam blushed a vivid red, and wriggled bashfully on her chair.
There were a great many wrappings, and the dimensions of the parcel diminished so rapidly as to excuse serious fears that it contained nothing more substantial than a joke, but such an idea was an insult to Pam’s generosity. She had bestowed much thought on the choice of this special present, and could not in the least understand the roar of laughter which rose from every side as the last paper fell away to disclose a magnificent sixpenny tooth-brush in all its creamy splendour.
Miles’ face was a study as he gazed upon it, and turned it speculatively to and fro.
“Anything personal meant, Pam?” he inquired, and, “Yes, please, Miles!” replied innocent Pam, and blushed again to the verge of tears at the second shout of merriment.
“It’s a very useful present, dear,” Mrs Trevor said consolingly, and hastened to give the conversation a turn by doling out another parcel from her own tray.
“‘Betty, with love from Jill.’”
It was a very small parcel, and Betty looked at it with suspicion, remembering the sticking-plaster and watered eau de Cologne, but things turned out better than she expected, the enclosure being quite a pretty hat-pin, of a colour to match her best hat.
“Just what I wanted!” was both the true and the gracious manner of acknowledging this trophy, as also the book from Jack, and the gloves from Miles, which presently fell to her share. Then it was the doctor’s turn, his wife having retired behind the screen to bring forth an enormous parcel, which could only be laid on a chair by his side, since it was far too big to place on the table itself.
“For me? Why, what can this be? It feels like a blanket!” he cried in astonishment, and his face was a picture of mingled surprise, pleasure, and consternation, as a handsome fur-lined carriage rug was presently revealed to view. “Oh, this is too much! This won’t do! Edith, what reckless extravagance!”
“Not extravagance at all,” his wife answered sturdily. “You must be kept warm, driving about from morning till night. It is nothing less than a necessity which you ought to have had years ago. Besides, it’s not my gift alone—it’s a joint affair. The children all contributed—it’s from all six of us, with our best love to you, dearest.”
“I gave threepence,” announced Pam proudly, thereby bringing a smile to her father’s face, though his voice had a suspicious quiver in it as he said—
“Thank you, my six darlings!” and smoothed the rug with a loving touch. Its presence would keep not only his body but his heart warm on many a wintry day to come.
After this, the parcel-opening went on fast and furious. Pam received a young lady doll, and had barely recovered from the rapture of her arrival when, presto! There appeared a miniature travelling-box, covered with leather, provided with straps, and a white PT painted at the sides, just like a real true grown-up box! And inside—a veritable trousseau! The work of loving mother hands on many a winter evening—a blue serge coat and skirt, a party frock of pale pink silk, a long white cloak; a straw hat for ordinary wear, and—could you believe it?—a toque, boa, and muff of real fur, just like that old muff of mother’s that she wore before the new one arrived. Beneath these treasures a supply of under garments, including a dear little flannel dressing-jacket, and bedroom slippers to match. Never, no, never since the creation of the world did a little girl of eight years receive a more all-satisfying and delightful offering! In her parents’ eyes at least, Pam’s little face, aglow with innocent rapture, was the most beautiful sight of that happy Christmas Day.
Jack had a book from his father, a knitted tie from Betty, skates from his mother—oh, for a good hard frost!—some cast-off tools from Miles, and a packet of black sticking-plaster from Jill. He grinned broadly over this last offering, and while the parcel-opening went on on both sides fumbled mysteriously beneath the tablecloth. Five minutes later, as he joined the others in a burst of laughter, his mother started violently, and cried, “Jack! Whathashappened!” in a tone of dismay which brought every eye upon him. Freckled nose, twinkling eyes, outstanding ears—no change to be seen in these well-known features, but the teeth—the teeth! Between lips extended in broadest of smiles appeared horrible, isolated tusks standing out conspicuously from the black gaps on either side. What in the name of all that was mysterious and perplexing had happened to those rows of sound regular ivories which had been his chief beauty five minutes before? And what an alteration in his whole appearance! Extraordinary to think of the change which was effected by the loss of half a dozen little teeth!
After the first start of surprise, understanding dawned quickly enough. Jill’s present had been short-lived, but it had served its purpose, both in her eyes and Jack’s, in causing the sensation of the evening, and the mother’s pitiful, “Take them off, Jack dear, do! You looksodreadful!” could not persuade Jack to peel off the disfiguring black squares. It was too dear a triumph to a schoolboy’s heart to create shudders of disgust every time he opened his mouth!
The pile of presents on the trays waxed rapidly less and less, the last parcel of all being of exceptional daintiness,—tissue-paper, tied round with a narrow blue ribbon. It was addressed to Betty, and to her rapturous surprise contained a line of congratulation from Cynthia Alliot, and the exact duplicate of an artistic silver and enamel buckle which she had admired on her friend’s belt a few days before. She was so entirely occupied crooning over this treasure, that she did not notice that Pam had suddenly slipped from her chair and pushed the screen aside, leaving the tall draped mystery fully exposed to view.
“It’s my present,” she explained proudly. “For mother. Just what she wanted! Cook hid it for me, and covered it with these clothes.” She stood on tiptoe as she spoke, taking out the pins which held the coverings together. They fell to the ground, and revealed a handsome branching palm, standing four or five feet from the ground. Mrs Trevor uttered an exclamation of incredulous surprise, and indeed every face round the table expressed the same sentiment, for the plant was obviously expensive, and how in the world could Pam have purchased it out of an income of a penny a week?
“My darling! For me? That is indeed a magnificent present. Where did it come from, dear? Has someone joined with you to give a present to mother?”
Before now it had happened that a friend of the family had consulted the children as to their mother’s wishes in the matter of Christmas presents, and it seemed the most likely solution of the mystery that this had occurred once again, Pam contributing in the same proportion as she had done to her father’s rug. But no! Pam proudly denied the insinuation, and repeated—
“It’s my very own present I bought it myself.”
“But, my sweetheart—” began Mrs Trevor anxiously, and then checked herself at the thought of another possible explanation. “Did someone give you some money, dear, that I knew nothing about?”
“Oh no! I haven’t had any money, only General Digby’s to-day.”
“Then how— I am very pleased and delighted to have the palm, but I can’t enjoy it properly until I know a little more about how it came into your possession. It is such a very big present for a little girl. How did you get all the money, dear?”
Pam smiled with an air of innocent pride.
“It wasn’t—all—money!” she said, smiling.
“Not all money? What do you mean? If it was not all money, what was the rest?”
“Clothes!”
“Clothes!” cried Mrs Trevor vaguely.
“Clothes!” echoed her husband.
“Clothes!” shrieked Betty in a shrill treble.
“Cl–othes!” repeated the boys curiously. Only Jill’s face lit up with comprehension, mingled with a spice of resentment.
“I know—I know!Oldclothes, she means! She has been selling old clothes—our old clothes, if you please—to ‘All a-growing all a-blowing’ in exchange for the palm! He likes them better than money. I heard him say so one day when Pam was seeing me off at the door. That’s where dad’s old coat has gone to, that’s where your blouse is, Betty, not to mention some of the boys’ ties, and gloves, and my umbrella. Oh, you wretched child! The hours I’ve spent searching for it! That’s where everything has gone that we have been searching for for the last month. She has been gathering them together for the palm!”
Mrs Trevor’s face was a study of complex emotion as she looked at her baby, but Pam’s triumphant satisfaction did not waver for a moment. She nodded her head, and cried cheerfully—
“Oh, lots more things than that! He wanted so much, because palms is most expensive of all before Christmas, and I bought it when you were all out, and cook hid it, and we sprayed its leaves to make them bright. In her last place Miss Bella did them every week with milk-and-water to make them shine!”
She had not the least idea that there was anything to be ashamed of in her action; on the contrary, she was full of pride in her own cleverness. But it was impossible to allow such an occasion to pass, even on Christmas evening, when discipline is necessarily relaxed. Mrs Trevor’s face was an eloquent mingling of tenderness and distress as she said—
“But did it never strike you, Pam dear, that these things were not your own to sell? That you had no right to sell them?”
“They were no use. You said to father, ‘That coat is too disgraceful to be worn,’ and Betty said the blouse mortified her pride, and Jill made fun of her umbrella because it was three and eleven-pence, and the wires bulged out. She said, ‘I can’t think why it is that I always lose silk ones, and I can’t get rid of this wretched thing, do what I will!’ I thought,”—Pam’s voice sounded a tremulous note of disappointment—“I thought you would all be pleased with me for clearing them away.”
“It would have been different, dear, if you had asked our permission, though we all have to put up with shabby things sometimes. As it was, it was both wrong and dishonest to take things which belonged to other people, and sell them without permission.”
“But I sold my own too! My blue coat and hat, because you said yourself they didn’t suit me, and you couldn’t bear to see them on. I heard you speaking to Betty, and saying those very words. I thought you’d be pleased if you never did see them again!”
Mrs Trevor gasped in consternation.
“Oh, Pam, Pam, what am I to say to you? This is worse than I imagined! Your blue coat—and it was quite good still! I can’t possibly accept a present obtained in such a way!”
She cast an appealing glance at her husband, who had been sitting covering his mouth with his hand, and trying in vain to subdue the twinkle in his eyes as he listened to Pam’s extraordinary confession. Now he looked at the child’s frightened, shrinking face, and said kindly—
“I think Pam and I will have a quiet talk together while you adjourn to the drawing-room. She did not mean to do wrong, and I am sure she will never offend again in the same way when she understands things in their right light.”
So Mrs Trevor and the elder children went to the drawing-room, and, ten minutes later, a subdued little Pam crept up to her mother’s side, holding out a bright crown-piece on her palm.
“Father says General Digby would like me best to pay my debts. Will you please give some to the others to pay for the things I took?”
“Thank you, Pam. I shall be very pleased to do so,” said Mrs Trevor quietly. Her heart ached at being obliged to take the child’s fortune from her, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and would not allow herself to hesitate. “And now, darling, I shall be delighted to have the palm. It is indeed the very thing I wanted.”
Pam tried to smile, but her lips quivered. A whole crown-piece, and a new one into the bargain! A Vanderbilt deprived of his millions could not have felt his poverty more bitterly than she did at that moment!
Chapter Fifteen.The Concert.Next afternoon Betty left Jill engaged in filling up the blanks in her Christmas letters, and Pam lovingly dressing up Pamela junior in her various costumes, and, accompanied by her father and Miles, called for Cynthia and set out to walk across the Park to the Albert Hall, where Miss Beveridge and a friend had arranged to meet them in the box.Cynthia looked delightfully graceful and pretty in a blue costume and hat, which had already caused Betty many pangs of envy, and perhaps it was a remembrance of his own youth which made Dr Trevor pass his hand through Betty’s arm and lead her ahead, so that his son should have the pleasure of a talk with this very charming little lady. Miles was the best of good fellows, all solid goodness and worth, but he was still in the boorish stage, and it would do him good to be drawn out of himself, and forced to play the gallant.Miles himself was by no means sure that he approved of the arrangement. He would have preferred to walk behind Cynthia, and admire her pretty hair, her tiny feet, and the general air of daintiness which was to him the greatest charm of all, but he had not the slightest idea what to say, and thought of the long walk before him with something approaching consternation. Fortunately for him Cynthia was not in the least shy, and had so seldom an opportunity of talking to anyone of her own age, that she could have chattered away the whole afternoon without the slightest difficulty.“It isn’t oftenyouhave a holiday, is it?” she said, smiling at him in her bright, friendly manner. “Once when I was up very early I saw you going out before six o’clock, and now if I’m awake I hear the door slam—you do slam it very loudly, you know!—and know it is you going out to your work. It makes me feel so lazy, because I am supposed to do half an hour’s practising before nine o’clock breakfast, and I do feel it such a penance.”Miles laughed shortly.“Did you ever see me coming back?” he inquired, and when Cynthia nodded, with a twinkle in her eye—“Betty was afraid you would believe I was arealworkman,” he told her. “She thought you would put us down as quite impossible people, having a workman living in the house!”“Betty is a goose,” said Betty’s new friend cheerily, “but she is a nice goose. I like her. I guessed you were learning to be an engineer, because I have a cousin who did the same. I like a man to do manly work. I suppose you are dreadfully interested in all those noisy engines and things. Tell me about them.”It was rather a large order, and Miles would have answered shortly enough if an ordinary acquaintance had put such a question, but there was a magnetism about Cynthia which broke down reserve, and to his own astonishment he found himself answering quite easily and naturally.“I am not studying for railway engineering—I am going in for mines. It’s a different course altogether, and in some ways much more difficult. There seems nothing that a mining engineer ought not to know—assaying, and surveying, and everything to do with minerals, and, of course, a thorough understanding of pumps, and all the machinery employed. Then he ought to know something about doctoring, and even cooking, if he wants to be an all-round success, for ten to one he will be sent to some out-of-the-way wilderness where there is no one else to look after the comfort of his men—”“Is that what you intend to do? Go and bury yourself at the end of the world?”“I expect so—any time after the next six months. I shall have finished my course by that time, and be on the look-out for the first opening that comes!”“What will Betty do without you?”Betty’s brother shrugged his shoulders with the unconcern with which, it is to be feared, most lads regard their sisters’ feelings.“Oh, she’ll get used to it! It’s no use sticking at home if one wants to get on in the world. I should never be content to jog along in a secondary position all my life, as some fellows do. I don’t care how hard I work, but I mean to get to the very top of the tree!”“Wish I’d been born a boy! It must be delicious to rough it in the wilds,” sighed Cynthia, stepping daintily over a puddle, and looking down with concern to see if perchance there was a splash on her boots. “Boys have much the best of it; they have a chance of doing something great in the world, while girls have to stay at home and—darn their socks! All the great things are done by men—in war, in science, in discovery, even in art and literature, though a few women may equal them there. All the great things are made by men, too, the wonderful cathedrals and buildings, and the great bridges and battleships—all the big things. There’s so little left for us.”Miles looked at her beneath drawn brows, his rugged face softening with the smile that Betty loved to see.“And who makes the men?” he asked simply, and Cynthia peered at him in startled, eager fashion, and cried—“You mean—wedo? Women, mothers and sisters and wives? Isthatwhat you mean? Oh, Idothink you say nice things!” (Shy, silent old Miles being accused of saying “nice things” to a member of the opposite sex! Wonders will never cease!) “I shall remember that, next time I see a lucky boy pass by rattling the railings, and looking as if the world belonged to him, while I must stand behind the curtains, because it’s not ‘lady-like’ to stare out of the windows! I do ramp and rage sometimes!”Miles’ laugh rang out so merrily that Betty turned to stare in amazement. The idea of Cynthia doing anything so violent as “ramp and rage” seemed impossible to realise, as one looked at her dainty figure and sweet pink-and-white face. All the same it was a pleasure to find that she did not belong to the wax-doll type of girl, but had a will and a temper of her own.“Yes, you may laugh,” she cried, laughing herself, “but it’s quite true. Or perhaps it would be more ‘lady-like’ to say that I feel like ‘a caged bird,’ as people do in books. In future I shall console myself with the thought that I may be the lever which supplies the force. Is that simile right, or ridiculously wrong? It’s rash of me to use engineering terms before you. I mean that I’ll try to be a good influence to some man, and so inspire work, if I can’t do it myself. The worst is, I know so few men! Father is abroad, all our relations are far away, and until I come out I seem to meet nothing but girls, old and young. Of course, if I got to know you better, I might influenceyou!”She turned her laughing face upon him, the face of a frank, innocent child, for, though she was nearly seventeen years old, Cynthia was absolutely innocent of the flirtatious instinct which is strong in some little girls in the coral and pinafore stage. She offered her friendship to Betty’s brother as composedly as she had done to Betty herself; it was Miles who blushed, and stared at the pavement, and his voice sounded hoarse and difficult as he mumbled his reply—“I wish you—I’m sure I should—awfully good thing for me if you did!”“Very well; but you will have to do great things, remember! I shan’t be satisfied with anything less. It will be good for me too, for I shall have to be very stern with myself, if I am to influence someone else. What are your chief faults? I ought to know, oughtn’t I, so as to be able to set to work the right way?”She was so deliciously naïve and outspoken, that once again Miles’ rare laugh rang out, and once again Betty marvelled, and felt a thrill of envy.By the time that the Albert Hall was reached, the two young people had progressed so far towards intimacy that Miles had forgotten his shyness, and confided to his new mentor some of the trials and grievances which beset him in his work, the which he had never before confided in a human being. The attraction of one sex to another is a natural and beautiful thing. God designed it as one of the great forces in His universe, and an almost omnipotent power it is, either for good or evil. Do the girls who jest and frivol with the young men with whom they are brought in contact, realise their responsibility in all they say and do? Do they ever reflect that the beauty and charm which they possess are weapons with which God has endowed them,—weapons which may have more power in the battle of life than a two-edged sword? Laugh and be merry—enjoy the sunshine of your youth; it is a sin to see a young thing sad; but never, never, as you value your womanhood, speak a slighting or irreverent word against God’s great laws of righteousness, nor allow such a word to pass unreproved in your presence. Remember in the midst of your merry-making to preserve your dignity as women, knowing that by so doing you will not lose, but trebly strengthen your hold on any man worthy of the name. Say to yourself, dear girls—“With God’s help I will be a good angel to this man, who has to meet trials and temptations from which I am exempt. So far as in me lies I will make him respect all women, and help, not hinder him in his work.” It isn’t necessary to be prim and proper—don’t think that! The Misses Prunes and Prisms, who are always preaching, weary rather than help, but when the bright, sweet-natured girl, who loves a joke, and can be the whole-hearted companion of a summer day, speaks a word of reproof, or draws back from a proposed enterprise, her action carries with it a treble weight of influence.When the whole party were seated in the box—Miss Beveridge and Betty in the front row, Cynthia and governess number two in the second, and the two “men” at the back—Miles had little attention to spare for the music, so absorbed was he in gazing at Cynthia’s delicately-cut profile, and in weaving about her the halo of a young man’s first romance. There was no romance in the two girls; they were absorbed in admiration of the wonderful building itself, in enjoyment of the music, and in anxiety to do their duty to dear Mrs Vanburgh’s “Govies,” as they irreverently termed Miss Beveridge and her companion. Even when on pleasure bent, the former could not be called “responsive.” When asked, “Do you like music?” she replied curtly, “No! I teach it!” which reduced the questioner to stupid silence, though her thoughts were active enough.“Oh, indeed! That’s one for me, as I am a pupil still! It’s the stupidity of pupils which has made her dislike music, but then—why does she come to a concert? Why couldn’t she have had the decency to refuse, and let someone else have the ticket? Oh, I do dislike you—you cold,—cutting, disagreeable, ungrateful, snappy old thing!”Betty sat back in her chair and let her eyes rest on Miss Beveridge’s profile, as that lady in her turn stared fixedly at the orchestra. She was wearing quite “a decent little toque,” and had taken pains with the arrangement of her hair. Betty was at the stage when she imagined that it was impossible that life could retain any interest after the age of thirty, but it dawned upon her now that, at some far-off, prehistoric period, Miss Beveridge had been handsome—even very handsome, which made her present condition all the more pitiable. Suppose, just suppose for a moment, that one became old and lonely, and poor and plain and snappy, oneself! It was too horrible a prospect to be believed; much more satisfactory to take refuge in the usual rose-coloured dreams!The Royal Box was close at hand—empty, unfortunately, of interesting occupants. How would it feel to be a princess, and loll back in one’s chair, conscious of being the cynosure of every eye? Betty lolled, and tried to project herself into the position, pleasingly conscious of a new blouse, quite immaculate suede gloves, and Cynthia’s buckle showing its dull blues and reds at the front of her belt. She turned her head slowly from side to side, and cultivated a charming smile.—“Princess Elizabeth appeared in the Royal Box, looking as fascinating as ever in a costume of her favourite grey.—”The musical programme was interesting and varied, but during the second half of the concert the cheerfulness of the scene was sadly marred by the ever-increasing fog which crept in from without, filling the vast interior with a gloom against which the many lights seemed powerless to contend. Dr Trevor began to feel a little nervous about the safety of his party, and suggested making a move before the end of the concert, but Miss Beveridge insisted that she and her friend needed no escort home.“It would have to be a very bad fog to frighten us. We are accustomed to going about town in all weathers,” she declared, and this was so obviously the case that it seemed affectation to protest. The doctor therefore explained that as he was in charge of Cynthia he wished to allay her mother’s natural anxiety as soon as possible, and the young people bade farewell to their guests of the afternoon and hurried downstairs.Early though it was, hundreds of people seemed to have been inspired by the same fears, for the stairway was thronged and the passages downstairs were becoming momentarily blocked. Dr Trevor tucked Cynthia’s hand through his arm.“Look after your sister, Miles,” he cried, turning a quick glance over his shoulder. “I’m afraid it’s very thick. Keep close behind me if you can. In any case make the best of your way home.”A moment later they passed through the doorway into a world of black gloom, in which phantom shapes at one moment pressed against one, and at the next vanished utterly from sight.Betty gave a little cry of dismay, for, London-bred as she was, never before had she been out of doors in such an impenetrable fog. She put out her hand towards the spot where Miles had stood a moment before, but her fingers gripped nothing more substantial than air. She gave a quick leap forward, and clutching at a shadowy coat-sleeve shook it violently, calling out in accents half-frightened, half-angry—“Miles, how horrid of you! You must not stalk on ahead like that! I shall be lost, and then what will become of me? For pity’s sake keep hold of my arm!”She had walked a few paces forward as she spoke, but now she stopped short, in response to a determined movement of the arm to which she clung. Betty glanced upwards in surprise; she could not see the face so near to her arm, but the blood chilled in her veins as a strange voice answered slowly—“But—I’m sorry, but I do not happen to be Miles!”
Next afternoon Betty left Jill engaged in filling up the blanks in her Christmas letters, and Pam lovingly dressing up Pamela junior in her various costumes, and, accompanied by her father and Miles, called for Cynthia and set out to walk across the Park to the Albert Hall, where Miss Beveridge and a friend had arranged to meet them in the box.
Cynthia looked delightfully graceful and pretty in a blue costume and hat, which had already caused Betty many pangs of envy, and perhaps it was a remembrance of his own youth which made Dr Trevor pass his hand through Betty’s arm and lead her ahead, so that his son should have the pleasure of a talk with this very charming little lady. Miles was the best of good fellows, all solid goodness and worth, but he was still in the boorish stage, and it would do him good to be drawn out of himself, and forced to play the gallant.
Miles himself was by no means sure that he approved of the arrangement. He would have preferred to walk behind Cynthia, and admire her pretty hair, her tiny feet, and the general air of daintiness which was to him the greatest charm of all, but he had not the slightest idea what to say, and thought of the long walk before him with something approaching consternation. Fortunately for him Cynthia was not in the least shy, and had so seldom an opportunity of talking to anyone of her own age, that she could have chattered away the whole afternoon without the slightest difficulty.
“It isn’t oftenyouhave a holiday, is it?” she said, smiling at him in her bright, friendly manner. “Once when I was up very early I saw you going out before six o’clock, and now if I’m awake I hear the door slam—you do slam it very loudly, you know!—and know it is you going out to your work. It makes me feel so lazy, because I am supposed to do half an hour’s practising before nine o’clock breakfast, and I do feel it such a penance.”
Miles laughed shortly.
“Did you ever see me coming back?” he inquired, and when Cynthia nodded, with a twinkle in her eye—“Betty was afraid you would believe I was arealworkman,” he told her. “She thought you would put us down as quite impossible people, having a workman living in the house!”
“Betty is a goose,” said Betty’s new friend cheerily, “but she is a nice goose. I like her. I guessed you were learning to be an engineer, because I have a cousin who did the same. I like a man to do manly work. I suppose you are dreadfully interested in all those noisy engines and things. Tell me about them.”
It was rather a large order, and Miles would have answered shortly enough if an ordinary acquaintance had put such a question, but there was a magnetism about Cynthia which broke down reserve, and to his own astonishment he found himself answering quite easily and naturally.
“I am not studying for railway engineering—I am going in for mines. It’s a different course altogether, and in some ways much more difficult. There seems nothing that a mining engineer ought not to know—assaying, and surveying, and everything to do with minerals, and, of course, a thorough understanding of pumps, and all the machinery employed. Then he ought to know something about doctoring, and even cooking, if he wants to be an all-round success, for ten to one he will be sent to some out-of-the-way wilderness where there is no one else to look after the comfort of his men—”
“Is that what you intend to do? Go and bury yourself at the end of the world?”
“I expect so—any time after the next six months. I shall have finished my course by that time, and be on the look-out for the first opening that comes!”
“What will Betty do without you?”
Betty’s brother shrugged his shoulders with the unconcern with which, it is to be feared, most lads regard their sisters’ feelings.
“Oh, she’ll get used to it! It’s no use sticking at home if one wants to get on in the world. I should never be content to jog along in a secondary position all my life, as some fellows do. I don’t care how hard I work, but I mean to get to the very top of the tree!”
“Wish I’d been born a boy! It must be delicious to rough it in the wilds,” sighed Cynthia, stepping daintily over a puddle, and looking down with concern to see if perchance there was a splash on her boots. “Boys have much the best of it; they have a chance of doing something great in the world, while girls have to stay at home and—darn their socks! All the great things are done by men—in war, in science, in discovery, even in art and literature, though a few women may equal them there. All the great things are made by men, too, the wonderful cathedrals and buildings, and the great bridges and battleships—all the big things. There’s so little left for us.”
Miles looked at her beneath drawn brows, his rugged face softening with the smile that Betty loved to see.
“And who makes the men?” he asked simply, and Cynthia peered at him in startled, eager fashion, and cried—
“You mean—wedo? Women, mothers and sisters and wives? Isthatwhat you mean? Oh, Idothink you say nice things!” (Shy, silent old Miles being accused of saying “nice things” to a member of the opposite sex! Wonders will never cease!) “I shall remember that, next time I see a lucky boy pass by rattling the railings, and looking as if the world belonged to him, while I must stand behind the curtains, because it’s not ‘lady-like’ to stare out of the windows! I do ramp and rage sometimes!”
Miles’ laugh rang out so merrily that Betty turned to stare in amazement. The idea of Cynthia doing anything so violent as “ramp and rage” seemed impossible to realise, as one looked at her dainty figure and sweet pink-and-white face. All the same it was a pleasure to find that she did not belong to the wax-doll type of girl, but had a will and a temper of her own.
“Yes, you may laugh,” she cried, laughing herself, “but it’s quite true. Or perhaps it would be more ‘lady-like’ to say that I feel like ‘a caged bird,’ as people do in books. In future I shall console myself with the thought that I may be the lever which supplies the force. Is that simile right, or ridiculously wrong? It’s rash of me to use engineering terms before you. I mean that I’ll try to be a good influence to some man, and so inspire work, if I can’t do it myself. The worst is, I know so few men! Father is abroad, all our relations are far away, and until I come out I seem to meet nothing but girls, old and young. Of course, if I got to know you better, I might influenceyou!”
She turned her laughing face upon him, the face of a frank, innocent child, for, though she was nearly seventeen years old, Cynthia was absolutely innocent of the flirtatious instinct which is strong in some little girls in the coral and pinafore stage. She offered her friendship to Betty’s brother as composedly as she had done to Betty herself; it was Miles who blushed, and stared at the pavement, and his voice sounded hoarse and difficult as he mumbled his reply—
“I wish you—I’m sure I should—awfully good thing for me if you did!”
“Very well; but you will have to do great things, remember! I shan’t be satisfied with anything less. It will be good for me too, for I shall have to be very stern with myself, if I am to influence someone else. What are your chief faults? I ought to know, oughtn’t I, so as to be able to set to work the right way?”
She was so deliciously naïve and outspoken, that once again Miles’ rare laugh rang out, and once again Betty marvelled, and felt a thrill of envy.
By the time that the Albert Hall was reached, the two young people had progressed so far towards intimacy that Miles had forgotten his shyness, and confided to his new mentor some of the trials and grievances which beset him in his work, the which he had never before confided in a human being. The attraction of one sex to another is a natural and beautiful thing. God designed it as one of the great forces in His universe, and an almost omnipotent power it is, either for good or evil. Do the girls who jest and frivol with the young men with whom they are brought in contact, realise their responsibility in all they say and do? Do they ever reflect that the beauty and charm which they possess are weapons with which God has endowed them,—weapons which may have more power in the battle of life than a two-edged sword? Laugh and be merry—enjoy the sunshine of your youth; it is a sin to see a young thing sad; but never, never, as you value your womanhood, speak a slighting or irreverent word against God’s great laws of righteousness, nor allow such a word to pass unreproved in your presence. Remember in the midst of your merry-making to preserve your dignity as women, knowing that by so doing you will not lose, but trebly strengthen your hold on any man worthy of the name. Say to yourself, dear girls—“With God’s help I will be a good angel to this man, who has to meet trials and temptations from which I am exempt. So far as in me lies I will make him respect all women, and help, not hinder him in his work.” It isn’t necessary to be prim and proper—don’t think that! The Misses Prunes and Prisms, who are always preaching, weary rather than help, but when the bright, sweet-natured girl, who loves a joke, and can be the whole-hearted companion of a summer day, speaks a word of reproof, or draws back from a proposed enterprise, her action carries with it a treble weight of influence.
When the whole party were seated in the box—Miss Beveridge and Betty in the front row, Cynthia and governess number two in the second, and the two “men” at the back—Miles had little attention to spare for the music, so absorbed was he in gazing at Cynthia’s delicately-cut profile, and in weaving about her the halo of a young man’s first romance. There was no romance in the two girls; they were absorbed in admiration of the wonderful building itself, in enjoyment of the music, and in anxiety to do their duty to dear Mrs Vanburgh’s “Govies,” as they irreverently termed Miss Beveridge and her companion. Even when on pleasure bent, the former could not be called “responsive.” When asked, “Do you like music?” she replied curtly, “No! I teach it!” which reduced the questioner to stupid silence, though her thoughts were active enough.
“Oh, indeed! That’s one for me, as I am a pupil still! It’s the stupidity of pupils which has made her dislike music, but then—why does she come to a concert? Why couldn’t she have had the decency to refuse, and let someone else have the ticket? Oh, I do dislike you—you cold,—cutting, disagreeable, ungrateful, snappy old thing!”
Betty sat back in her chair and let her eyes rest on Miss Beveridge’s profile, as that lady in her turn stared fixedly at the orchestra. She was wearing quite “a decent little toque,” and had taken pains with the arrangement of her hair. Betty was at the stage when she imagined that it was impossible that life could retain any interest after the age of thirty, but it dawned upon her now that, at some far-off, prehistoric period, Miss Beveridge had been handsome—even very handsome, which made her present condition all the more pitiable. Suppose, just suppose for a moment, that one became old and lonely, and poor and plain and snappy, oneself! It was too horrible a prospect to be believed; much more satisfactory to take refuge in the usual rose-coloured dreams!
The Royal Box was close at hand—empty, unfortunately, of interesting occupants. How would it feel to be a princess, and loll back in one’s chair, conscious of being the cynosure of every eye? Betty lolled, and tried to project herself into the position, pleasingly conscious of a new blouse, quite immaculate suede gloves, and Cynthia’s buckle showing its dull blues and reds at the front of her belt. She turned her head slowly from side to side, and cultivated a charming smile.—“Princess Elizabeth appeared in the Royal Box, looking as fascinating as ever in a costume of her favourite grey.—”
The musical programme was interesting and varied, but during the second half of the concert the cheerfulness of the scene was sadly marred by the ever-increasing fog which crept in from without, filling the vast interior with a gloom against which the many lights seemed powerless to contend. Dr Trevor began to feel a little nervous about the safety of his party, and suggested making a move before the end of the concert, but Miss Beveridge insisted that she and her friend needed no escort home.
“It would have to be a very bad fog to frighten us. We are accustomed to going about town in all weathers,” she declared, and this was so obviously the case that it seemed affectation to protest. The doctor therefore explained that as he was in charge of Cynthia he wished to allay her mother’s natural anxiety as soon as possible, and the young people bade farewell to their guests of the afternoon and hurried downstairs.
Early though it was, hundreds of people seemed to have been inspired by the same fears, for the stairway was thronged and the passages downstairs were becoming momentarily blocked. Dr Trevor tucked Cynthia’s hand through his arm.
“Look after your sister, Miles,” he cried, turning a quick glance over his shoulder. “I’m afraid it’s very thick. Keep close behind me if you can. In any case make the best of your way home.”
A moment later they passed through the doorway into a world of black gloom, in which phantom shapes at one moment pressed against one, and at the next vanished utterly from sight.
Betty gave a little cry of dismay, for, London-bred as she was, never before had she been out of doors in such an impenetrable fog. She put out her hand towards the spot where Miles had stood a moment before, but her fingers gripped nothing more substantial than air. She gave a quick leap forward, and clutching at a shadowy coat-sleeve shook it violently, calling out in accents half-frightened, half-angry—
“Miles, how horrid of you! You must not stalk on ahead like that! I shall be lost, and then what will become of me? For pity’s sake keep hold of my arm!”
She had walked a few paces forward as she spoke, but now she stopped short, in response to a determined movement of the arm to which she clung. Betty glanced upwards in surprise; she could not see the face so near to her arm, but the blood chilled in her veins as a strange voice answered slowly—
“But—I’m sorry, but I do not happen to be Miles!”
Chapter Sixteen.Lost in the Fog.The feeling of despair, of helplessness, of desolation, which overcame Betty at that moment, remained with her as a poignant memory to the end of her life. She was lost, as hopelessly lost as if she had been in the midst of a solitary waste, though close at hand, perhaps only a few yards away, were her own father and brother, the latter no doubt desperately searching for her. Dr Trevor would make the best of his way home with Cynthia, knowing his son to be as good a guide as himself. Poor old Miles! He would have a bad time of it when he arrived home alone;—yet he had not been to blame, for she herself had refused to take his arm before leaving the Hall. “It looked so silly!” She had intended to take it the moment they were in the street, but even that one moment had been too long. As she heard the stranger’s voice she turned in a panic of fear, and tried to drag her hand from his arm, but he held her tightly, saying, with an odd mixture of weariness and impatience—“Don’t be foolish! You can do no good by running away. You can never find your friends again in this blackness. Tell me where you want to go, and I’ll try to help you.”Betty trembled helplessly.“But I must—I must try! It’s a long way off—across the Park. Father is here, and my brother, and some friends. I’ll go back to the Hall—they may go there to look for me.”“Look round!” said the strange voice, and Betty turned her head and stared in amazement, for the great building had vanished as completely as had Miles himself, and nothing was to be seen but a wall of darkness. On every side she heard the movement of invisible forms, but their very unreality added to the sense of desolation which possessed her. It was terrible even to think of venturing alone through the ghost-like ranks.Instinctively she clung more closely to her companion’s arm, and, as if recognising her feelings, his voice took a gentler, more reassuring tone.“Don’t be afraid. I had a sister of my own once. You can trust me to see you safely home. I am afraid it is no earthly use trying to find your friends among all the thousands who are leaving the Hall. Better tell me where you live, so that we can get there as soon as the rest of your party, and save them needless alarm. Across the Park, you said? The gates will be closed, of course, and in any case that would be the last route to take. Tell me your exact address.”“Brompton Square—we turn off at Stanhope Terrace, just past the Lancaster Gate Station. It is one of those squares lying between the Park and Edgware Road.”“I know, I know. Its a long walk, but perhaps it will get lighter as we go on. These dense fogs are often very local. Keep tight hold of my arm, please. If we are once separated, it might not be easy to meet again.”“No, indeed! I could not have believed it was so easy to get lost. My brother was beside me one instant, the next—it was your coat-sleeve! I hope I did not shake it too violently! I was so nervous and frightened I did not think what I was doing.”She laughed as she spoke, her youthful spirits beginning to assert themselves again, as her confidence was assured. The face of her companion was unknown, but the tone of that quite, “Don’t be afraid, I had a sister of my own,” had put an end to her fears. Here was an adventure indeed—a full-fledged adventure! In anticipation she felt the joys of relating her experiences to a breathless audience in the schoolroom, and thrilled with importance. The stranger did not echo her laugh, however, but merely murmured a few words of conventional disclaimer and relapsed into silence. Betty could hear him sigh now and then as they made their way onward—slowly feeling the way from point to point through the eerie, all-enveloping gloom. Sometimes a brief question to a link-boy would assure them that they were still on the right road; sometimes they wandered off the pavement and were suddenly aware of the champing of horses dangerously near at hand; sometimes for a minute or two they stood still, waiting to find a clue to their position; but through all the strange man preserved an unbroken silence, until Betty’s nerve gave way again, and she cried in plaintive, child-like fashion—“Oh, please would you mind talking a little bit! I’m frightened. It’s like a dreadful nightmare, feeling one’s way through this darkness—and when you are so silent, I feel as if you were a ghost like all the rest, instead of a real live man.”“I wish I were!” returned the stranger bitterly. Then recovering himself with an effort, “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I am afraid I have been very remiss. To tell the truth, I was lost in my own thoughts when you came to me a few minutes ago, and I am afraid I had gone back to them, and forgotten that I had a companion!”Forgotten! Forgotten her very existence! A young man rescues a beauteous maid—really and truly she had looked unusually well in all her smart Christmas farings—from a position of deadly peril, and straightway forgets her very existence! This part of the story, at least, must be omitted from the home recital. Betty pursed her lips in offended dignity, but in the end curiosity got the better of her annoyance, and she said tentatively—“They must have been very nice thoughts!”“Nice!”The foolish girl’s word was repeated in a tone of bitterest satire.“Interesting, then?”“In so far as the last of anything is interesting, be the beginning what it may!”“The last!” It was Betty’s turn to play the part of echo, as she stared in amazement at the shadowy form by her side. “How could they be your last thoughts? You seem quite well and strong. It isn’t possible to go on living and not to think.”“No, it is not, and therefore when thoughts become unbearable—”He stopped short, and Betty felt a thrill of foreboding. The strange silence, followed by the hopeless bitterness in the stranger’s voice, seemed to bespeak some trouble of overwhelming magnitude, and, viewed in that light, his last words admitted of only one conclusion. Life had become unbearable, and therefore he had decided to end it. Hitherto Betty had carelessly classed all suicides as mad; but this man was not mad; he was, on the contrary, remarkably sane and quiet in manner! He was only so hopelessly, helplessly miserable that it did not seem possible to endure another day’s existence. Betty thrilled with a strange new feeling of awe and responsibility. The hidden strength of her nature, which had come to her as the result of being brought up to womanhood in a household dedicated to God and His Christ, broke through the veneer of youthful folly, and came triumphantly to the surface.Her nervous fear dropped from her like a mantle, and she was possessed by a burning longing to comfort and save. In the midst of the fog and darkness God had sent to her a great opportunity. She rose to it with a dignity which seemed to set the restless, self-centred Betty of an hour ago years behind. Her fingers tightened on the stranger’s arm; she spoke in firm, quiet tones.“I can guess what you mean! Forgive me for teasing you with my silly questions when you are in such trouble. Do you think you could tell me what it is? It seems a strange thing to ask, but I am no real person to-night. I am just a shadow that has come out of the fog. I have not even a face or a name. You might speak to me as safely as to the air itself, and it might be a relief to put it into words. It is so sometimes when one is in trouble.”There was a moment’s silence, then—“Thank you,” he said in a softened voice. “It’s kind of you to think of it. You might have condemned me at once, as not fit to speak to a girl like you. You are only a girl, aren’t you? Your voice sounds very young.”“Yes, only eighteen—nearly eighteen. But my father is a doctor, so I am always being brought near to sad things, and sometimes I feel quite old. I think I could understand if you told me your trouble.”“Suppose it was not so much sorrow as sin? What then? What can you at eighteen—‘nearly eighteen’—know of that? You could not understand if I did speak.”“Oh yes, I could. I sin myself—often!” cried Betty, with a swift remembrance of all those little things done or left undone which made the failure of her home life. “A girl living at home, with a father and a mother to look after her, has no temptation to any big thing, but it’s just as bad, if she is idle and selfish and ungrateful, and I am all three together many times over. I’d be too proud to say that to you if I saw your face and knew your name; but, as I said before, we are only shadows in a dream to-night. It doesn’t matter what we say. Tell me your trouble, and let me try to understand. It isn’t because I am curious—it isn’t really! Do you believe that?”“Yes,” he said instantly, “I do! Poor child, you want to help; but I am past that. I have ruined my own life and the life of the man who has been my best friend. I have had my chance—a better chance than is given to most men—and I have made an utter failure of it. If I—went on, it would mean starting again from the very beginning, with the stigma of failure to hinder me at every turn—a hopeless fight.”“But,”—Betty’s voice faltered nervously—“isn’t it cowardly to run away just when the fight is hardest? A soldier would be called a traitor if he did that. And what would come afterwards? Do you believe that you have a right to take your own life?”“You mean from a religious point of view. I’m afraid that’s out of my line. I have lost what little faith I had in these last few years. You believe in it all, of course—it’s natural for a girl—but to me the idea of a personal God is as unreal as a fairy tale. It does not touch my position.”“But just suppose for a moment that itweretrue. Suppose He does exist, and has been longing to help you all this time—what then?” cried Betty earnestly, and her companion gave a short, derisive laugh.“It would have been easy enough for Him to have prevented all this trouble! I can see no help in the story of the last few years. Everything has gone against me. In the beginning I borrowed some money—of course, it’s a case of money—to help a friend who was in a tight fix. That was innocent enough. But when the time came round I could not repay the debt, and in my position it was fatally easy to help myself to what I needed. I called it just another loan. I was sure of repaying it before anything was discovered, but again it was impossible, for there were calls upon me which I had not expected. If I had been short in my accounts I should have lost my situation, and it was a handsome one for a man of my age. You won’t understand the details, but I began to speculate, to put off the evil hour, always hoping for acoupwhich would put everything right; but it never came. I was not helped, you see! Things went from bad to worse, until I could go on no longer. Then in despair I confessed the whole story to my friend—he is a near relation also, but that is by the way. He would not allow the family name to be disgraced; he paid up all that was due, and saved me the shame of prosecution, but even he could do no more. I am sent about my business—a felon in deed, though not in name. Incidentally, too, he is ruined. He must give up his house, remove his children to cheap schools, live in poverty instead of ease. Naturally enough he will have no more to do with me. There is not a soul on earth who would regret me if I passed out of being to-night.”There was a long silence while the strangely-matched couple wended their way slowly along the bisecting roads which lead from Kensington High Street to Bayswater Road. The fog had slightly lessened by this time, but it was still too dense to show anything but a dim outline of passers-by, and the face of the stranger was but a blur against the darkness to Betty’s searching eyes. Her heart was beating rapidly; she was praying with a whole-hearted earnestness unknown to her usual morning and evening supplications—praying to be guided to say the right thing to save this man’s soul from despair. At last—“You say you were not helped,” she began timidly; “but if your speculations had succeeded as you hoped, it might not have been really good for you. It would have been easier, of course, but if all had gone smoothly you might have been tempted to do the same thing another time. Perhaps God knew that, and that there was no way of bringing you back to Himself except through trouble.”The stranger laughed again—his hard, mirthless little laugh.“I am afraid I can hardly believe in that theory. I can see no reason for believing that my doings are the slightest interest to Him, or that He cares in the least what becomes of me.”“Can’t you!” cried Betty eagerly. “Oh, I can! Just think more carefully, and you will remember many, many things which you have not stopped to notice at the time. To-night, for instance! Do you think it chance that I missed my brother, and came to you out of all the hundreds of people who were around?Idon’t! I believe God sent me to you because you would not speak to anyone you knew; because you needed help so badly—and I need it, too—and we could help each other.”The shadowy head bent nearer to hers, and the arm pressed against her hand.“Thank you,” said the voice in a softened key; “that is a kind thought! It is quite true that I could not have spoken as I have done under ordinary circumstances. When I met you I was going straight for the nearest water. There are many places where an accident might easily occur on a night like this. I do not wish to make any scandal, only to disappear.”Betty drew in her breath sharply. The sound of that one word “water” gave a definite touch to the situation, and thereby trebly increased its tragedy, but the gentleness of the voice gave her increased hope, and she cried eagerly—“Disappear, yes! I can understand it would be difficult to stay among the old surroundings, but why not disappearto come backanother day, when you can redeem the past? Suppose you went away to a strange place, and worked hard, oh, very hard, and denied yourself every possible thing, so as to save up money. Suppose you succeeded—when people are terribly in earnest about a thing, they generallydosucceed—and in some years’ time could pay off what you owe! That would be braver than killing yourself, wouldn’t it? That would be worth living for. Or if it took too long to pay it back in your friend’s lifetime, he has children, and you could help them as their father has helped you. That would be paying back the debt in the way he would like best. Think of it! They would imagine you dead, or perhaps worse than dead, but they wouldn’t be angry with you any more; people don’t go on being angry for years and years, especially if they are good and kind, as your friends must be. But some day it might happen that they were in trouble, or getting old and tired, and feeling it was hard to go on working, and a letter would come in— from you—and inside that letter there would be a cheque, and they would be so happy, and so thankful, and sohelped! And they would send for you to come back, and the old trouble would be wiped away, and they would honour you for your brave fight. Oh, you will—youwill! You must do it! Promise, promise that you will!”Her voice broke into a sob, and something like a faint echo of the sound came to her ears through the darkness. It seemed the most promising answer she could have had, in its contrast from the biting self-possession of a few minutes before. Her heart beat high with hope.“Is there any place to which you could go? Have you enough money left to take you there?” she questioned, as if the matter were already settled, and, consciously or unconsciously, the stranger replied in the same vein.“I have an old friend in America; he would help me to a start. I have a good many possessions left; they would bring in enough to pay the passage if—”“No, there is no ‘if’! Don’t let yourself say it! Sell the things to-morrow, and begin again in a new world, in a new way. Believe that Goddoescare, and that it is a chance that He has given you, and every night and every morning, oh, and so often through the day, I shall remember you, and pray that you may be helped! Sometimes when you feel lonely you may be glad to know that one person in the Old Country knows all about you, and is waiting to see the reward of your work. You must let me know when the success comes. I shall always be waiting; and remember, this talk is going to do me good too! I havemadetroubles for myself because I did not know how well off I was, but now that I have come so close to the real thing I shall be ashamed to grizzle over trifles. Itissettled, isn’t it? You are going on fighting?”There was a long silence. She could feel rather than see the struggle in the man’s face, but the pressure tightened on her hand, foretelling that the decision would be what she wished.“Yes,” he said slowly at last. “I promise! An hour ago it seemed as if there was not a soul in the world who cared whether I lived or died, but as you say you came to me—in the darkness! You think you were sent. My old mother would have thought the same. I don’t know, I can’t tell, but it may be so, and that gives me courage to try again.”He paused for a moment or two, then suddenly—“What is your name?” he asked.“Betty!”“Betty!” His voice lingered over the pretty, girlish name. “Thank you, Betty!”“And yours?”“Ralph.”“Thank you, Ralph! You have given me something real to think of in life—something to look forward to.”“Ah!” He drew a long, stabbing breath. “But at the best it will be a long waiting. You will be far from eighteen—‘nearly eighteen’—before I can hope for success. The years will seem very long.”“But they will pass!” cried Betty. “I can wait!”She was in a state of exaltation when no trial of patience seemed too great to face, and difficulties presented themselves only as glorious opportunities; but the man, who had experienced the heat and burden of the day, sighed, and was silent.By this time they had made their way past the great houses standing back from the road, and were close on the Lancaster Gate Station of the Central London Railway. A faint light streamed into the gloom from the glass fanlight, and for the first time Betty began to feel that she trod on familiar ground.“Ah, here we are; if we go round this corner I shall be home in five minutes. Perhaps we shall arrive before the others, after all. You have brought me so quickly that there is no time for them to have been anxious, unless Miles went in alone.”The stranger did not answer. They turned round the corner of Stanhope Terrace and walked along for twenty or thirty yards, then suddenly he stood still, and dropped her arm.“I may never meet you again,” he said slowly; “in all probability we never shall meet, but before we part, let me see your face, Betty!”There was a sound of a match being struck against the side of a box, then a tiny flame flickered up in the darkness. Betty gazed upwards into a face still young, but haggard and drawn with suffering, a long thin face with deep-set eyes and a well-cut chin.“Now, now, now,” she was saying breathlessly to herself. “I must notice! I must remember! I shall have to remember for so many years—”The flame quivered and faded away.“Thank you,” said the stranger quietly. “I shall remember!” Evidently his thoughts and hers had followed the same course.They walked along slowly side by side, but no longer arm in arm, for that momentary exchange of glances had brought a touch of personal embarrassment into the situation which had been unfelt before. Betty was anxiously pondering what to say in farewell, feeling at the same time that further words would be more likely to mar than to aid the impression already made, when suddenly a form loomed through the darkness, and a well-known “Coo-ee” sounded in her ears.“Miles—oh, Miles! I’m here! Oh, Miles, I am so glad! I was so frightened, but this gentleman has been so kind. He has brought me all the way home.”Miles grunted discourteously; he disapproved of stray acquaintances for his sister, and now that anxiety for her safety was assuaged, began to feel aggrieved at having been frightened for nothing.“What on earth did you mean by rushing off by yourself? Might have been lost all night. I’ve been hanging about for an age, not daring to go into the house and scare the mater. Never go out with you again in a fog!”Betty laughed merrily.“I can return that compliment. It seems to me that you ran away from me.” She turned to hold out her hand to the stranger. “Now that my brother is here I need not trouble you any more. Good-bye! Thank you very much!”“Thank you!” he said earnestly. “Good-bye until—a brighter day.”“What does that bounder mean by talking of another day? Cheek!” grunted Miles, leading the way onward, but Betty only pressed his arm and replied irrelevantly—“Don’t say anything about our having missed each other when we first go in, Miles. I’ll tell mother quietly. I’d rather, if you don’t mind.”Miles did not mind a bit—in fact, he was thankful to be spared questioning and reproach, so he made his way upstairs to his room, while Betty entered the study, where Dr and Mrs Trevor were seated.“Here we are, safe and sound! It has been adventurous, but all’s well that ends well. Have you been anxious, mother dear? I do hope not.”She bent to kiss her mother with an unwonted tenderness, which brought a flush of pleasure into the thin cheek.“How sweet that child looks to-night! Did you notice?” she said to her husband when they were once more alone. “And she was so gentle and considerate. It’s such a pleasure to see her like that, for she is sometimes so difficult.”Dr Trevor smiled.“She is mellowing, dear, she is mellowing! I told you it would come. The child is turning into a woman—and a bonnie woman she will be too. Dear little Betty!”And in the shelter of her attic bedroom the child woman was holding a lighted candle before the looking-glass, and staring half abashed into an oval face with dilated eyes, and dark hair twisted by the damp into a cloud of tiny ringlets.“Did he—did he think me—nice?” she was asking of herself.
The feeling of despair, of helplessness, of desolation, which overcame Betty at that moment, remained with her as a poignant memory to the end of her life. She was lost, as hopelessly lost as if she had been in the midst of a solitary waste, though close at hand, perhaps only a few yards away, were her own father and brother, the latter no doubt desperately searching for her. Dr Trevor would make the best of his way home with Cynthia, knowing his son to be as good a guide as himself. Poor old Miles! He would have a bad time of it when he arrived home alone;—yet he had not been to blame, for she herself had refused to take his arm before leaving the Hall. “It looked so silly!” She had intended to take it the moment they were in the street, but even that one moment had been too long. As she heard the stranger’s voice she turned in a panic of fear, and tried to drag her hand from his arm, but he held her tightly, saying, with an odd mixture of weariness and impatience—
“Don’t be foolish! You can do no good by running away. You can never find your friends again in this blackness. Tell me where you want to go, and I’ll try to help you.”
Betty trembled helplessly.
“But I must—I must try! It’s a long way off—across the Park. Father is here, and my brother, and some friends. I’ll go back to the Hall—they may go there to look for me.”
“Look round!” said the strange voice, and Betty turned her head and stared in amazement, for the great building had vanished as completely as had Miles himself, and nothing was to be seen but a wall of darkness. On every side she heard the movement of invisible forms, but their very unreality added to the sense of desolation which possessed her. It was terrible even to think of venturing alone through the ghost-like ranks.
Instinctively she clung more closely to her companion’s arm, and, as if recognising her feelings, his voice took a gentler, more reassuring tone.
“Don’t be afraid. I had a sister of my own once. You can trust me to see you safely home. I am afraid it is no earthly use trying to find your friends among all the thousands who are leaving the Hall. Better tell me where you live, so that we can get there as soon as the rest of your party, and save them needless alarm. Across the Park, you said? The gates will be closed, of course, and in any case that would be the last route to take. Tell me your exact address.”
“Brompton Square—we turn off at Stanhope Terrace, just past the Lancaster Gate Station. It is one of those squares lying between the Park and Edgware Road.”
“I know, I know. Its a long walk, but perhaps it will get lighter as we go on. These dense fogs are often very local. Keep tight hold of my arm, please. If we are once separated, it might not be easy to meet again.”
“No, indeed! I could not have believed it was so easy to get lost. My brother was beside me one instant, the next—it was your coat-sleeve! I hope I did not shake it too violently! I was so nervous and frightened I did not think what I was doing.”
She laughed as she spoke, her youthful spirits beginning to assert themselves again, as her confidence was assured. The face of her companion was unknown, but the tone of that quite, “Don’t be afraid, I had a sister of my own,” had put an end to her fears. Here was an adventure indeed—a full-fledged adventure! In anticipation she felt the joys of relating her experiences to a breathless audience in the schoolroom, and thrilled with importance. The stranger did not echo her laugh, however, but merely murmured a few words of conventional disclaimer and relapsed into silence. Betty could hear him sigh now and then as they made their way onward—slowly feeling the way from point to point through the eerie, all-enveloping gloom. Sometimes a brief question to a link-boy would assure them that they were still on the right road; sometimes they wandered off the pavement and were suddenly aware of the champing of horses dangerously near at hand; sometimes for a minute or two they stood still, waiting to find a clue to their position; but through all the strange man preserved an unbroken silence, until Betty’s nerve gave way again, and she cried in plaintive, child-like fashion—
“Oh, please would you mind talking a little bit! I’m frightened. It’s like a dreadful nightmare, feeling one’s way through this darkness—and when you are so silent, I feel as if you were a ghost like all the rest, instead of a real live man.”
“I wish I were!” returned the stranger bitterly. Then recovering himself with an effort, “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I am afraid I have been very remiss. To tell the truth, I was lost in my own thoughts when you came to me a few minutes ago, and I am afraid I had gone back to them, and forgotten that I had a companion!”
Forgotten! Forgotten her very existence! A young man rescues a beauteous maid—really and truly she had looked unusually well in all her smart Christmas farings—from a position of deadly peril, and straightway forgets her very existence! This part of the story, at least, must be omitted from the home recital. Betty pursed her lips in offended dignity, but in the end curiosity got the better of her annoyance, and she said tentatively—
“They must have been very nice thoughts!”
“Nice!”
The foolish girl’s word was repeated in a tone of bitterest satire.
“Interesting, then?”
“In so far as the last of anything is interesting, be the beginning what it may!”
“The last!” It was Betty’s turn to play the part of echo, as she stared in amazement at the shadowy form by her side. “How could they be your last thoughts? You seem quite well and strong. It isn’t possible to go on living and not to think.”
“No, it is not, and therefore when thoughts become unbearable—”
He stopped short, and Betty felt a thrill of foreboding. The strange silence, followed by the hopeless bitterness in the stranger’s voice, seemed to bespeak some trouble of overwhelming magnitude, and, viewed in that light, his last words admitted of only one conclusion. Life had become unbearable, and therefore he had decided to end it. Hitherto Betty had carelessly classed all suicides as mad; but this man was not mad; he was, on the contrary, remarkably sane and quiet in manner! He was only so hopelessly, helplessly miserable that it did not seem possible to endure another day’s existence. Betty thrilled with a strange new feeling of awe and responsibility. The hidden strength of her nature, which had come to her as the result of being brought up to womanhood in a household dedicated to God and His Christ, broke through the veneer of youthful folly, and came triumphantly to the surface.
Her nervous fear dropped from her like a mantle, and she was possessed by a burning longing to comfort and save. In the midst of the fog and darkness God had sent to her a great opportunity. She rose to it with a dignity which seemed to set the restless, self-centred Betty of an hour ago years behind. Her fingers tightened on the stranger’s arm; she spoke in firm, quiet tones.
“I can guess what you mean! Forgive me for teasing you with my silly questions when you are in such trouble. Do you think you could tell me what it is? It seems a strange thing to ask, but I am no real person to-night. I am just a shadow that has come out of the fog. I have not even a face or a name. You might speak to me as safely as to the air itself, and it might be a relief to put it into words. It is so sometimes when one is in trouble.”
There was a moment’s silence, then—
“Thank you,” he said in a softened voice. “It’s kind of you to think of it. You might have condemned me at once, as not fit to speak to a girl like you. You are only a girl, aren’t you? Your voice sounds very young.”
“Yes, only eighteen—nearly eighteen. But my father is a doctor, so I am always being brought near to sad things, and sometimes I feel quite old. I think I could understand if you told me your trouble.”
“Suppose it was not so much sorrow as sin? What then? What can you at eighteen—‘nearly eighteen’—know of that? You could not understand if I did speak.”
“Oh yes, I could. I sin myself—often!” cried Betty, with a swift remembrance of all those little things done or left undone which made the failure of her home life. “A girl living at home, with a father and a mother to look after her, has no temptation to any big thing, but it’s just as bad, if she is idle and selfish and ungrateful, and I am all three together many times over. I’d be too proud to say that to you if I saw your face and knew your name; but, as I said before, we are only shadows in a dream to-night. It doesn’t matter what we say. Tell me your trouble, and let me try to understand. It isn’t because I am curious—it isn’t really! Do you believe that?”
“Yes,” he said instantly, “I do! Poor child, you want to help; but I am past that. I have ruined my own life and the life of the man who has been my best friend. I have had my chance—a better chance than is given to most men—and I have made an utter failure of it. If I—went on, it would mean starting again from the very beginning, with the stigma of failure to hinder me at every turn—a hopeless fight.”
“But,”—Betty’s voice faltered nervously—“isn’t it cowardly to run away just when the fight is hardest? A soldier would be called a traitor if he did that. And what would come afterwards? Do you believe that you have a right to take your own life?”
“You mean from a religious point of view. I’m afraid that’s out of my line. I have lost what little faith I had in these last few years. You believe in it all, of course—it’s natural for a girl—but to me the idea of a personal God is as unreal as a fairy tale. It does not touch my position.”
“But just suppose for a moment that itweretrue. Suppose He does exist, and has been longing to help you all this time—what then?” cried Betty earnestly, and her companion gave a short, derisive laugh.
“It would have been easy enough for Him to have prevented all this trouble! I can see no help in the story of the last few years. Everything has gone against me. In the beginning I borrowed some money—of course, it’s a case of money—to help a friend who was in a tight fix. That was innocent enough. But when the time came round I could not repay the debt, and in my position it was fatally easy to help myself to what I needed. I called it just another loan. I was sure of repaying it before anything was discovered, but again it was impossible, for there were calls upon me which I had not expected. If I had been short in my accounts I should have lost my situation, and it was a handsome one for a man of my age. You won’t understand the details, but I began to speculate, to put off the evil hour, always hoping for acoupwhich would put everything right; but it never came. I was not helped, you see! Things went from bad to worse, until I could go on no longer. Then in despair I confessed the whole story to my friend—he is a near relation also, but that is by the way. He would not allow the family name to be disgraced; he paid up all that was due, and saved me the shame of prosecution, but even he could do no more. I am sent about my business—a felon in deed, though not in name. Incidentally, too, he is ruined. He must give up his house, remove his children to cheap schools, live in poverty instead of ease. Naturally enough he will have no more to do with me. There is not a soul on earth who would regret me if I passed out of being to-night.”
There was a long silence while the strangely-matched couple wended their way slowly along the bisecting roads which lead from Kensington High Street to Bayswater Road. The fog had slightly lessened by this time, but it was still too dense to show anything but a dim outline of passers-by, and the face of the stranger was but a blur against the darkness to Betty’s searching eyes. Her heart was beating rapidly; she was praying with a whole-hearted earnestness unknown to her usual morning and evening supplications—praying to be guided to say the right thing to save this man’s soul from despair. At last—
“You say you were not helped,” she began timidly; “but if your speculations had succeeded as you hoped, it might not have been really good for you. It would have been easier, of course, but if all had gone smoothly you might have been tempted to do the same thing another time. Perhaps God knew that, and that there was no way of bringing you back to Himself except through trouble.”
The stranger laughed again—his hard, mirthless little laugh.
“I am afraid I can hardly believe in that theory. I can see no reason for believing that my doings are the slightest interest to Him, or that He cares in the least what becomes of me.”
“Can’t you!” cried Betty eagerly. “Oh, I can! Just think more carefully, and you will remember many, many things which you have not stopped to notice at the time. To-night, for instance! Do you think it chance that I missed my brother, and came to you out of all the hundreds of people who were around?Idon’t! I believe God sent me to you because you would not speak to anyone you knew; because you needed help so badly—and I need it, too—and we could help each other.”
The shadowy head bent nearer to hers, and the arm pressed against her hand.
“Thank you,” said the voice in a softened key; “that is a kind thought! It is quite true that I could not have spoken as I have done under ordinary circumstances. When I met you I was going straight for the nearest water. There are many places where an accident might easily occur on a night like this. I do not wish to make any scandal, only to disappear.”
Betty drew in her breath sharply. The sound of that one word “water” gave a definite touch to the situation, and thereby trebly increased its tragedy, but the gentleness of the voice gave her increased hope, and she cried eagerly—
“Disappear, yes! I can understand it would be difficult to stay among the old surroundings, but why not disappearto come backanother day, when you can redeem the past? Suppose you went away to a strange place, and worked hard, oh, very hard, and denied yourself every possible thing, so as to save up money. Suppose you succeeded—when people are terribly in earnest about a thing, they generallydosucceed—and in some years’ time could pay off what you owe! That would be braver than killing yourself, wouldn’t it? That would be worth living for. Or if it took too long to pay it back in your friend’s lifetime, he has children, and you could help them as their father has helped you. That would be paying back the debt in the way he would like best. Think of it! They would imagine you dead, or perhaps worse than dead, but they wouldn’t be angry with you any more; people don’t go on being angry for years and years, especially if they are good and kind, as your friends must be. But some day it might happen that they were in trouble, or getting old and tired, and feeling it was hard to go on working, and a letter would come in— from you—and inside that letter there would be a cheque, and they would be so happy, and so thankful, and sohelped! And they would send for you to come back, and the old trouble would be wiped away, and they would honour you for your brave fight. Oh, you will—youwill! You must do it! Promise, promise that you will!”
Her voice broke into a sob, and something like a faint echo of the sound came to her ears through the darkness. It seemed the most promising answer she could have had, in its contrast from the biting self-possession of a few minutes before. Her heart beat high with hope.
“Is there any place to which you could go? Have you enough money left to take you there?” she questioned, as if the matter were already settled, and, consciously or unconsciously, the stranger replied in the same vein.
“I have an old friend in America; he would help me to a start. I have a good many possessions left; they would bring in enough to pay the passage if—”
“No, there is no ‘if’! Don’t let yourself say it! Sell the things to-morrow, and begin again in a new world, in a new way. Believe that Goddoescare, and that it is a chance that He has given you, and every night and every morning, oh, and so often through the day, I shall remember you, and pray that you may be helped! Sometimes when you feel lonely you may be glad to know that one person in the Old Country knows all about you, and is waiting to see the reward of your work. You must let me know when the success comes. I shall always be waiting; and remember, this talk is going to do me good too! I havemadetroubles for myself because I did not know how well off I was, but now that I have come so close to the real thing I shall be ashamed to grizzle over trifles. Itissettled, isn’t it? You are going on fighting?”
There was a long silence. She could feel rather than see the struggle in the man’s face, but the pressure tightened on her hand, foretelling that the decision would be what she wished.
“Yes,” he said slowly at last. “I promise! An hour ago it seemed as if there was not a soul in the world who cared whether I lived or died, but as you say you came to me—in the darkness! You think you were sent. My old mother would have thought the same. I don’t know, I can’t tell, but it may be so, and that gives me courage to try again.”
He paused for a moment or two, then suddenly—
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Betty!”
“Betty!” His voice lingered over the pretty, girlish name. “Thank you, Betty!”
“And yours?”
“Ralph.”
“Thank you, Ralph! You have given me something real to think of in life—something to look forward to.”
“Ah!” He drew a long, stabbing breath. “But at the best it will be a long waiting. You will be far from eighteen—‘nearly eighteen’—before I can hope for success. The years will seem very long.”
“But they will pass!” cried Betty. “I can wait!”
She was in a state of exaltation when no trial of patience seemed too great to face, and difficulties presented themselves only as glorious opportunities; but the man, who had experienced the heat and burden of the day, sighed, and was silent.
By this time they had made their way past the great houses standing back from the road, and were close on the Lancaster Gate Station of the Central London Railway. A faint light streamed into the gloom from the glass fanlight, and for the first time Betty began to feel that she trod on familiar ground.
“Ah, here we are; if we go round this corner I shall be home in five minutes. Perhaps we shall arrive before the others, after all. You have brought me so quickly that there is no time for them to have been anxious, unless Miles went in alone.”
The stranger did not answer. They turned round the corner of Stanhope Terrace and walked along for twenty or thirty yards, then suddenly he stood still, and dropped her arm.
“I may never meet you again,” he said slowly; “in all probability we never shall meet, but before we part, let me see your face, Betty!”
There was a sound of a match being struck against the side of a box, then a tiny flame flickered up in the darkness. Betty gazed upwards into a face still young, but haggard and drawn with suffering, a long thin face with deep-set eyes and a well-cut chin.
“Now, now, now,” she was saying breathlessly to herself. “I must notice! I must remember! I shall have to remember for so many years—”
The flame quivered and faded away.
“Thank you,” said the stranger quietly. “I shall remember!” Evidently his thoughts and hers had followed the same course.
They walked along slowly side by side, but no longer arm in arm, for that momentary exchange of glances had brought a touch of personal embarrassment into the situation which had been unfelt before. Betty was anxiously pondering what to say in farewell, feeling at the same time that further words would be more likely to mar than to aid the impression already made, when suddenly a form loomed through the darkness, and a well-known “Coo-ee” sounded in her ears.
“Miles—oh, Miles! I’m here! Oh, Miles, I am so glad! I was so frightened, but this gentleman has been so kind. He has brought me all the way home.”
Miles grunted discourteously; he disapproved of stray acquaintances for his sister, and now that anxiety for her safety was assuaged, began to feel aggrieved at having been frightened for nothing.
“What on earth did you mean by rushing off by yourself? Might have been lost all night. I’ve been hanging about for an age, not daring to go into the house and scare the mater. Never go out with you again in a fog!”
Betty laughed merrily.
“I can return that compliment. It seems to me that you ran away from me.” She turned to hold out her hand to the stranger. “Now that my brother is here I need not trouble you any more. Good-bye! Thank you very much!”
“Thank you!” he said earnestly. “Good-bye until—a brighter day.”
“What does that bounder mean by talking of another day? Cheek!” grunted Miles, leading the way onward, but Betty only pressed his arm and replied irrelevantly—
“Don’t say anything about our having missed each other when we first go in, Miles. I’ll tell mother quietly. I’d rather, if you don’t mind.”
Miles did not mind a bit—in fact, he was thankful to be spared questioning and reproach, so he made his way upstairs to his room, while Betty entered the study, where Dr and Mrs Trevor were seated.
“Here we are, safe and sound! It has been adventurous, but all’s well that ends well. Have you been anxious, mother dear? I do hope not.”
She bent to kiss her mother with an unwonted tenderness, which brought a flush of pleasure into the thin cheek.
“How sweet that child looks to-night! Did you notice?” she said to her husband when they were once more alone. “And she was so gentle and considerate. It’s such a pleasure to see her like that, for she is sometimes so difficult.”
Dr Trevor smiled.
“She is mellowing, dear, she is mellowing! I told you it would come. The child is turning into a woman—and a bonnie woman she will be too. Dear little Betty!”
And in the shelter of her attic bedroom the child woman was holding a lighted candle before the looking-glass, and staring half abashed into an oval face with dilated eyes, and dark hair twisted by the damp into a cloud of tiny ringlets.
“Did he—did he think me—nice?” she was asking of herself.