[image]"You tum back, Ada 'Liz'bet'?" she murmured.Halt!"Halt! Who goes there?" cried a man's voice through the thick gloom of the dark night.There was no answer save silence; and, after listening for a moment, Private Flinders turned, and began to tramp once more along the ten paces which extended from his sentry-box. "I could have sworn I heard a footstep," he said to himself. "It's curious how one's ears deceive one on a night like this."Ten paces one way, ten paces the other; turn, and back again, and begin your ten paces over again. Yes, it is monotonous, there is no doubt of that; but it is the bounden duty of a sentry, unless he happens to prefer standing still in his box, getting stiff and chill, and perhaps running the risk of being caught asleep at his post--no light offence in a barrack, I can tell you. Ten paces one way, ten paces the other--a rustling, a mere movement, such as would scarcely have attracted the attention of most people, but which caught Private Flinders' sharp ears, and brought him up to a standstill again in an attitude of strict watchfulness."Halt! Who goes there?" he cried again, and listened once more. Again silence met him, and again he stood, alert and suspicious, waiting for the reply, "Friend.""By Gum, this is queer," he thought, as he stood listening. "I'll search to the bottom of it though. I daresay it's only some of the chaps getting at me; but I'll be even with 'em, if it is."He groped about in rather an aimless sort of way, for the night was black as pitch; and his eyes, though they had grown used to the inky want of light, could distinguish nothing of his surroundings."Now, where are you, you beggar?" he remarked, beginning to lose his habitual serenity, and laying about him with his carbine. After a stroke or two the weapon touched something, though not heavily, and a howl followed--a howl which was unmistakably that of a small child. It conveyed both fear and bodily pain. Private Flinders followed up the howl by feeling cautiously in the part whence the sounds had come. His hand closed upon something soft and shrinking, and the howls were redoubled."Hollo! what the deuce are you?" he exclaimed, drawing the shrieking captive nearer to him. "Why, I'm blessed if it ain't a kid--and a girl, too. Well, I'm blowed! And where did you happen to come from?"The howl by this time had developed into a faint sniffing, for Private Flinders' voice was neither harsh nor forbidding. But the creature did not venture on speech."Where did you come from, and what are you doing here?" he asked. "Do you belong to the barricks, and has your mammy been wollopping of you? Or did you stray in from outside?""Lost my mammy," the small creature burst out, finding that she was expected to say something."What's your mammy's name?" Flinders asked."Mammy, of course," was the reply."And what's your name?""Susy.""Susy. Aye, but Susy what?""Susy," repeated the little person, beginning to whimper again."Where do you live?""At home," said Susy, in an insulted tone, as if all these questions were quite superfluous."Well! blest ifIknow what to do with you," said Flinders, pushing his busby on one side, and scratching his head vigorously. "I don't believe you belong to the barricks--your speech haven't got the twang of it. And if you've strayed in from outside, Gord knows what 'll become of you. Certain it is that you won't be let to stop here.""Susy so cold," whimpered the mite pitifully."I should think you was cold," returned Private Flinders sympathetically. "I'm none too warm myself; and the fog seems to fair eat into one's bones. Well, little 'un, I can't carry you back to where you came from, that's very certain. I can't even take you round to the guard-room. Now, what the deuce am I to do with you? And I shan't be relieved for over a hour."Private Flinders being one of the most good-natured men in creation, it ended by his gathering the child in his arms, and carrying her up and down on his beat until the relief came."Why, what's the meaning of this?" demanded the corporal of the guard, when he perceived the unusual encumbrance to the private's movements."Ah! Corporal, that's more than I can tell you," responded the other promptly. "This here kid toddled along over a hour ago; and as she don't seem to know what her name is, or where she come from, I just walked about with her, that she mightn't be froze to death. I suppose we'd best carry her to the guard-room fire, and keep her warm till morning.""And then?" asked the corporal, with a twinkle in his eye, which the dark night effectually hid."Gord knows," was the private's quick reply.Eventually, the mite who rejoiced in the name of Susy, and did not know whence she had come or whither she was going, was carried off to the guard-room and made as comfortable as circumstances would permit--that being the only course, indeed, at that hour of the night, or, to be quite correct, of the morning--which could with reason be followed.She slept, as healthy children do, like a top or dog, and when she awoke in the morning she expressed no fear or very much surprise, and, having enquired in a casual kind of way for her mammy, she partook of a very good breakfast of bread and milk, followed by a drink of coffee and a taste or two of such other provisions as were going round. Later on Private Flinders was sent for to the orderly-room, and told to give the commanding officer such information as he was in possession of concerning the stray mite, who was still in the warm guard-room.Now it happened that the commanding officer of the 9th Hussars was a gentleman to whom routine was a religion and discipline a salvation, and he expressed himself sharply enough as to the only course which could possibly be pursued under the present circumstances."We had better send down to the workhouse people to come and remove the child at once. Otherwise, we may have endless trouble with the mother; and, moreover, if it once got about that these barracks were open to that kind of thing, the regiment would soon be turned into a regular foundling hospital. Let the workhouse people be sent for at once. What did you say, Mr. Jervis? That the child might be quartered for a few hours among the married people. Yes, I daresay, but if the mother is on the look-out, which is very doubtful, she is more likely to go to the police-station than she is to come here. As to any stigma, the mother should have borne that in mind when she lost the child. On second thoughts, I think it is to the police-station that we should send; yes, that will be quite the best thing to do."A few hours later the child Susy was transferred from the guard-room to the police-station, and there she made herself equally at home, only asking occasionally, in a perfunctory kind of way, for "Mammy," and being quite easily satisfied when she was told that she would be coming along by-and-by.During the few hours that she was at the police-station she became quite a favourite, and made friends with all the stalwart constables, just as she had done with one and all of the strapping Hussars at the cavalry barracks. She was not shy, for she answered the magistrate in quite a friendly way, though she gave no information as to her belongings, simply because she had no information to give. And the end was that she was condemned to the workhouse, and was carried off to that undesirable haven as soon as the interview with the magistrate was over."A blooming shame, I call it, poor little kid," said Private Flinders that evening to a group of his friends, in the comfortable safety of the troop-room. "She was a jolly little lass; and if I'd been a married man, I'd have kept her myself, dashed if I wouldn't!""Perhaps your missis might 'ave 'ad a word or two to say to that, Flinders," cried a natty fellow, just up to the standard in height, and no more."Oh, I'd have made it all right with her," returned Flinders, with that easy assurance of everything good that want of experience gives. "But to send it to the workhouse--it's a blooming shame! They treat kids anyhow in them places. Now then, Thomson, what are you a-grinning at? Perhaps you know as much about workhouses as I can tell you.""Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't," replied Thomson, with provoking good temper. "I wasn't a-laughing at the workhouse; cussing them is more like what one feels. But to think of you, old chap, tramping up and down with the blessed kid asleep--well, it beats everything I ever heard tell of, blame me if it don't."Private Flinders, however, was not to be laughed out of his interest in the little child Susy; and regularly every week he walked down to the workhouse, and asked to see her taking always a few sweeties, bought out of his scanty pay, the cost of which meant his going without some small luxury for himself. And Susy, who was miserably unhappy in that abode of sorrow which we provide in this country for the destitute, grew to look eagerly for his visits, and sobbed out all her little troubles and trials to his sympathetic ears."Susy don't like her," she confided to him one day when the matron had left them alone together. "She slaps me. Susy don't love her.""But Susy will learn to be a good girl, and not get slapped," the soldier said, with something suspiciously like a lump in his throat. "See, I've brought you some lollipops--you'll like them, won't you?"He happened to run up against the matron as he walked away toward the door. "She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked, with a vague kind of notion that even workhouse matrons have hearts sometimes. And so some of them have, though not many. This particular one was among the many.[image]"She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked."A very self-willed child," she remarked sharply, "considering that she's so young. We have a great deal of trouble with her. She does not seem to know the meaning of the word obedience.""She is but a baby," ventured the soldier apologetically."Baby, or no baby, she'll have to learn it here," snapped the matron viciously; and then Flinders went on his way, feeling sadder than ever, and yet more and more regretful that he was not married, or had at least a mother in a position to adopt a little child.The next time he went they had cut the child's lovely long, curling locks, indeed, she had been shorn like a sheep in spring-time. Flinders' soft heart gave a great throb, and he cuddled the mite to his broad breast, as if by so doing he could undo the indignity that had been put upon her."Susy," he said, when he had handed over his sweets and she was busily munching them up, "I want you to try and remember something."Susy looked at him doubtfully, but nodded her cropped head with an air of wise acquiescence. Flinders went on talking quietly."You remember before you came here--you had a home and a mammy, don't you?""Yes," said Susy promptly."What sort of a house was it?""Where my mammy was?" she asked."Yes.""Big," replied Susy briefly, selecting another sweetie with care."And what was it called?""The house," said the child, in a matter-of-fact tone.Flinders gave a sigh. "Yes, I dare say it was. Don't you remember, though, what your mammy was called?""Why mammy, of course," said Susy, as if the question was too utterly foolish for serious consideration."Yes, but other people didn't call her mammy--it was only you did that," said Flinders desperately. "What did other people call her? Can't you remember that?"It happened that Susy not only remembered, but immediately gave utterance to her recollections in such a way as fairly made the soldier jump. "They called my mammy 'my lady,'" she said simply.Private Flinders gave the child a great hug, and put her down off his knee. "Gord bless you, little 'un," he ejaculated. "And see if I don't ferret that mammy of yours out before I'm many days older--see if I don't."He met the matron as he went towards the entrance. "Missis," he said, stopping, "I've got a clue to that little 'un's belongings. I'm off to the police station now about it. I'd advise you to treat her as tender as you can. It'll come home to you, mark my words.""Dear me," snapped the matron; "is she going to turn out a princess in disguise, then?""It'll perhaps turn out a pity you was in such a hurry to crop her hair," said Private Flinders, with dignity.In the face of that sudden recollection of the child's, he felt that he could afford to be, to a certain extent, stand-offish to the cold-eyed, unloving woman before him."Oh, rules are rules," said the matron, with an air of fine disdain; "and, in an institution like ours, all must be served alike. It would be a pretty thing if we had to spend half of every day curling the children's hair. Good-day to you."He felt that he had got the worst of it, and that it was more than possible that little Susy would pay the penalty of his indiscretion. Fool that he had been not to hold his tongue until he had something more tangible to say. Well, it was done now, and could not be undone, and it behoved him to lose no time, but to find out the truth as soon as possible.The inspector whom he found in charge of the police-station listened to his tale with a strictly professional demeanour."Yes, I remember the little girl coming in and being taken to the workhouse. I remember the case right enough. You'd better leave it to us, and we will find out whether such a child is missing anywhere in the country."I need hardly say that in Private Flinders' mind there lurked that deep-rooted distrust of a policeman that lives somewhere or other in the heart of every soldier. It came uppermost in his mind at that moment."You'll do your best?" he said, a little wistfully. "You'll not let time go by, and--and----?""We shall be in communication with every police-station in the kingdom in a few hours," returned the inspector, who knew pretty well what was passing in the soldier's mind. "But, all the same, you mustn't be over-much disappointed if there proves to be nothing in it. You see, if such a child was being inquired for, we should have heard of it before this. However, we'll do our best; you may be very sure of that."With that Private Flinders was obliged to rest content. He made inquiries from day to day, and eventually this advertisement appeared in the leading daily papers:--TO PARENTS AND GUARDIANS.--A little girl, apparently about three years old, is in charge of the police at Bridbrook. She says her name is Susy, and appears to be the child of well-to-do parents. Very fair hair, blue eyes, features small and pretty. Clothes very good, but much soiled.--Address, POLICE STATION, BRIDBROOK.A few hours after the appearance of the advertisement, a telegram arrived at the police-station:--"Keep child. Will come as soon as possible.--JACKSON."* * * * *Less than three hours afterwards, an excited woman rushed into the station, having precipitated herself out of a cab, and almost flung herself upon the astonished inspector."I've come for the child--the little girl," she gasped, as if she had run at racing speed direct from the place indicated by the telegram."Oh, she belongs to you, does she?" remarked the inspector coolly. "Well, you've no call to be in such a 'urry; you've been very comfortable about her for the last six weeks.""Comfortable!" echoed the excited one; "why, I've been very near out of my mind. I thought she was drowned, and I was so frightened, I daren't say a word to any one about it. And my lady away----""Then you're not the mother?" said the inspector sharply."The mother!--my goodness, no! I'm the head nurse. My young lady's mother is the Countess of Morecambe.""Then what doesshesay to all this, pray?" he asked."My lady went abroad two months ago to one of those foreign cure places, and she doesn't know but what Lady Susy is safe with me at this minute," the woman replied.The inspector gave a prolonged whistle."Well, you're a pretty sort of nurse to leave in charge of a child," he remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you get the sack for this. Do you know the child's at the workhouse, and that they've cropped her head as bare as mine?"At this the woman simply sat down and sobbed aloud."Aye, you may well cry," said the inspector grimly. "I should if I was in your shoes."She finally told how the child had been missed; how she had refrained from giving notice to the police through fear of publicity, and believing she could find her by diligent search in the locality; how "my lady" was a widow, with only this one little child; how she had been advised to go for this cure; how she had consented to the nurse taking Lady Susy to the seaside meantime, well knowing that she would be safe and happy with her."Yes, you may laugh at that," she wound up; "but my dear lamb has often called me 'mammy' as anything else, and my lady has often said she was quite jealous of me.""All the same, I shouldn't wonder if you get the sack," repeated the inspector, who was not troubled with much sentiment.I scarcely know how to tell the rest--how Jackson went off to the workhouse, and enlightened the matron and others as to the child's station in life; how she seized her little ladyship, and almost smothered her with kisses; how she bewailed her shorn locks, and wondered and conjectured as to how she could possibly have got to a place so far from her home as Bridbrook.But, a few weeks later, a lovely woman in mourning came to the cavalry barracks, and inquired for Private Flinders. She wept during the interview, this lovely lady; and when she had gone away, Private Flinders opened the packet she had put into his hands, to find a cheque for a hundred pounds, and a handsome gold watch and chain. And at the end of the chain was a plain gold locket, on one side of which was engraved Private Flinders' initials, whilst on the other was written the single word, "Halt!"The Little Lady with the VoiceA FAIRY TALEMarjory Drummond was sitting on the bank of the river, and, if the whole truth must be owned, she was crying. She was not crying loudly or passionately, but as she rested her cheek on her hand, the sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes, and brimmed over one by one, falling each with a separate splash upon the blue cotton gown which she wore.[image]The sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes.The sun was shining high in the blue heavens, the river danced and sang merrily as it went rippling by, and all the hedgerows were alive with flowers, and the air was full of the scent of the new-cut hay. Yet Marjory was very miserable, and for her the skies looked dark and dull, the river only gave her even sadder thoughts than she already had, and the new-cut hay seemed quite scentless and dead. And all because a man had failed her--a man had proved to be clay instead of gold. And so she sat there in the gay summer sunshine and wished that she had never been born, or that she were dead, or some such folly, and the butterflies fluttered about, and the bees hummed, and all nature, excepting herself, seemed to be radiant and joyous. An old water-vole came out of his hiding-place by the river and watched her with a wise air, and a dragon-fly whizzed past and hovered over the surface of the sunlit water, but Marjory's eyes were blind to each and all of these things, and still the tears welled up and overflowed their bounds, and she wept on."What is the matter?" said a voice just at her ear.Marjory gave a jump, and dashed her tears away; it was one thing to indulge herself in her grief, but it was quite another to let any one else, and that a stranger, see her. "What is wrong with you, Marjory?" said the voice once more."Nothing!" answered Marjory shortly."I may, perhaps, be able to help you," the gentle little voice persisted."Nobody can help me," said Marjory, with a great sigh, "nobody can help me--nobody.""Don't be so sure of that," said the voice. "Why do you keep this curl of hair? Why do you turn so persistently away from me? Why don't you look at me?"Marjory turned her head, but she could see no one near. "Who are you? Why do you hide?" she asked in turn."You look too high," said the voice. "Look lower; yes--ah, how d'you do?"Marjory almost jumped into the river in her fright, for there, standing under the shade of a big dandelion, was the smallest being she had ever seen in her life. Yet, as she sat staring at her, this tiny woman seemed to increase in size, and to assume a shape which was somehow familiar to her. "You know me now?" asked the little woman, smiling at her again."N--o," replied Marjory, stammering a little."Oh, yes, you do. You remember the old woman whose part you took a few weeks ago--down by the old church, when some boys were teasing her? Well, that was me--me--and now I'm going to do something for you. I am going to make you happy.""Are you a witch?" asked Marjory, in a very awed voice."Hu--sh--sh! We never use such an uncomplimentary word inourworld. But you poor mortals are often very rude, even without knowing it. I am not what is called a witch, young lady. I am a familiar."Marjory's eyes opened wider than ever; she bent forward and asked an earnest question: "Are you my familiar?" she said."Perhaps, perhaps," answered the little woman, nodding her head wisely. "That all depends on yourself. If you are good, yes; if you are bad, no--most emphatically, no. I am much too important a person to be familiar to worthless people.""I'm sure you are very kind," said Marjory meekly. "But what will you do to make me happy? You cannot give me back my Jack, because he has married some one else--the wretch!" she added under her breath, but the ejaculation was for the woman whom Jack had married, not for Jack himself."You will learn to live without your Jack, as you call him," said the little woman with the soft voice, sagely, "and to feel thankful that he chose elsewhere. You once did me a service, and that is a thing that a familiar never, never forgets. I have been watching you ever since that time, and now I will reward you. Marjory Drummond, from this time henceforth everything shall prosper with you; everything you touch shall turn to gold, everything you wish shall come to pass; what you strive after you shall have; your greatest desires shall be realised; and you shall have power to draw tears from all eyes whenever you choose. This last I give you in compensation for the tears that you have shed this day. Farewell!""Stay!" cried Marjory. "Won't you even tell me your name? May I not thank you?""No. The thanks are mine," said the little lady. "When we meet again I will tell you my name--not before."In a moment she was gone, and so quickly and mysteriously did she go that Marjory did not see her disappear. She rubbed her eyes and looked round. "I must have been asleep!" she exclaimed. "I must have dreamt it."* * * * *Several years had gone by. With Marjory Drummond everything had prospered, and she was on the high road to success, and fame, and fortune. Whenever her name was spoken, people nodded their heads wisely, and said: "A wonderful girl, nothing she cannot do"; and they mostly said it as if each one of them had had a hand in making her the clever girl that she was.As an artist she was extremely gifted, being well hung in the Academy of the year; as an actress, though only playing with that form of art, she was hard to beat; and she had written stories and tales which were so infinitely above the average that editors were one and all delighted at any time to have the chance of a story signed with the initials "M.D.," initials which the world thought and declared were those of one of the most fashionable doctors of the day.And at last the world of letters woke up and rubbed its eyes very much as Marjory had rubbed her eyes that day on the river's bank, and the world said, "We have a great and gifted man among us." "'M.D.' isthewriter of the time." And slowly, little by little, the secret crept out, and Marjory was fêted and flattered, and made the star of the season. Her name was in every one's mouth, and her work was sought after eagerly and read by all. And among those who worshipped at her shrine was the "Jack" who had flouted her in the old days, yet not quite the same, but a "Jack" very much altered and world-worn, so that Marjory could no longer regret or wish that the lines of her life had fallen otherwise than they had done.And often and often, as the years rolled by, and she was still the darling star of the people who love to live in the realms of fiction, did Marjory ponder over that vivid dream by the riverside, and try to satisfy herself that it really was no more than a dream, and that the old lady with the sweet clear voice had had no being except in her excited brain. "I wish," she said aloud one day, when she was sitting by the fire after finishing the most important work that had ever yet come from her pen, "I wish that she would come back and satisfy me about it. It seemed so real, so vivid, so distinct, and yet it is so impossible----""Not impossible at all," said a familiar voice at her elbow.Marjory looked round with a start. "Oh! is it you?" she cried. "Then it was all true! I have never been able to make up my mind whether it was true or only a dream. Now I know that it was quite real, and everything that you promised me has come about. I am the happiest woman in all the world to-day, and, dear friend, if ever I did a service to you, you have amply repaid me.""We never stint thanks in our world," said the little old lady, smiling. "Then there is nothing more that you want?""Yes, kind friend, just one thing," said Marjory. "You promised me that when we met again you would tell me your name."The little woman melted away instantly, but somewhere out of the shadows came a small sweet sighing voice, which said softly, "My name is--Genius!"Jewels to Wear"Torches are made to burn;jewels to wear."--ShakespeareCHAPTER I"I can't think, Nancy, why you cannot get something useful to occupy yourself with. It seems to me that I have slaved and sacrificed myself all my life, in every possible direction, simply that you may waste your whole time spoiling good paper, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, from morning till night, with your fingers inky, and your thoughts in the clouds, and your attention on nothing that I want you to attend to. I don't call it a good reward to make to me. You will never do any good with that ridiculous scribbling--never! When I think of what youmightsave me, of how youmightspare me in my anxious and busy life, it makes me positively ill to think I am your mother. Here have I been thinking of you, Nancy, and working for you, and struggling, and fighting, and slaving for you for twenty years, and now that the time has come when you might do something for me, you have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"[image]"You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"The girl thus addressed turned and looked at her mother."Mother, dear," she said depreciatingly, "I am sorry that I am not more useful. I can't help it. I do think of you, I try to do everything I can to relieve you, and help you; but these stories will come into my head. They won't be put out of it. What am I to do?""What are you to do?" echoed the mother. "Why, look at that basket of stockings to darn!""I am quite willing to darn them," said Nancy meekly."Yes, you are quite willing, I daresay. You are quite willingwhenI tell you. But you don't seem to see what a burden it is to me to have to tell you everything as if you were a baby. There are the stockings, and there are you; at your age, you don't surely need me to tell you that the stockings need mending!""I will do them at once," said Nancy. "I will do them this minute.""Yes, with your thoughts in the clouds, and your mind fixed on scribbling. What, may I ask you, Nancy, do you think you will ever do with it?""I don't know," said Nancy desperately. "Perhaps I may make some money some day.""Never, never! Waste it, you mean. Waste it over pens, ink, paper and tablecloths. There is the tablecloth in your bedroom spotted with ink from end to end. It is heart-breaking.""Well, Mother, what do you wish me to do?" the girl asked in desperation."Your plain and simple duty. I would like you to give up all idea of wasting your time in that way from now on," said the mother deliberately."Won't you even let me write a little to amuse myself in my spare time?" asked the girl piteously."Your spare time!" echoed the mother impatiently. "What spare time have poor people such as we are? What spare time have I? Here are we with this great boarding-house on our hands, twenty-three boarders to be made comfortable, kept in good temper, fed, housed, boarded--everything to be done for them, and I have to do it. Why, in the time that you waste over those stories, you might make yourself a brilliant pianist, and play in the evening to them. Then you would be of some use.""I don't think," said Nancy, "that anything will ever make me a brilliant pianist, Mother. There's no music in me--not of that kind, and I don't think that the boarders would like me half as well if I went and strummed on the drawing-room piano every evening for an hour or two, I really don't, Mother.""No, you know better than I do, of course. That is the way with the young people of the present day. You are all alike. Ah, it was different when I was a girl. I would no more have dreamed of defying my mother as you defy me----""Mother, I don't defy you," Nancy broke in indignantly. "I never defied you in my life. I never thought of such a thing.""Don't you write stories in defiance of my wishes?" Mrs. Macdonald asked, dropping the tragedy air, and putting the question in a plain, every-day, businesslike tone.At this, Nancy Macdonald flushed a deep full red, a blush of shame it was, or what felt like shame, and as it slowly faded away until her face was a dull greyish white, all hope for that gift which was as the very mainspring of her life, seemed to shrink and die within her."Mother," she said at last, in a firm tone, "I will do what you wish. I will give up writing, I promise you, from this time forward, and I will not write at all while I have any duty left in the day. You will not mind my doing a little when I have seen the after dinner coffee served, will you?""That means, I suppose," said Mrs. Macdonald rather tartly, "that you will sit up half the night ruining your health, spoiling your eyesight, wasting my gas, and making it perfectly impossible that you should get up in good time in the morning.""Mother," said the girl, in a most piteous tone, "when I am once late in the morning, I will promise you to give it up altogether, and for ever; more than that I cannot say. As you said just now, it is a hard life here, and we have not very much leisure time; but, I implore you, do not take my one delight and pleasure from me altogether!""If you put it in that way," said Mrs. Macdonald rather grudgingly, "of course, we can but try the experiment; but what good, I ask you, Nancy, do you think will ever come of it!""I don't know," said Nancy; "I can't say. Other people have made fortunes; other people have done well by writing; why should not I?""As ifyouwould ever make a fortune!" said Mrs. Macdonald, with the contemptuousness of a woman to whom the struggle of life had been hard and to whom pounds, shillings and pence in the very hand were the only proofs of reason for what she called "wasting time" over story-writing."Well, if not a fortune, at least a comfortable income," said Nancy eagerly; "and if I did, Mother, I should give it all to you!""Thank you for nothing, my dear," was the ungracious reply.To this Nancy made no answer. She carried the big basket of stockings to the window, and sat down in the cold winter light to do such repairs as were necessary. Poor child! It was a hard fate for her. She was the eldest of a family of five, all dependent on the exertions of her widowed mother in keeping afloat the big boarding-house by which they lived. For a boarding-house, be it ever so liberally managed, be the receipts ever so generous, is but a sordid abode, especially to those who have the trouble and care of managing it; and to an eldest daughter, and one who stands between the anxious mother and the younger children, who mostly resemble young rooks with mouths chronically open, such a life appears perhaps more sordid than it does to any one else.To Nancy Macdonald, with her mind full of visionary beauty, and living daily in a world of her own--not a world of boarding-houses--the life they lived seemed even more sordid, more trivial, more petty, than it was in reality. Her wants were not many; she was never inclined to rail at fate because she had not been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, not at all. But if only she could have a quiet home, with an assured income, just sufficient to cover their modest wants, to provide good wholesome food, to buy boots and shoes for the little ones, to pay the wages of a good servant, to take those lines of anxious care from her mother's forehead, so that she could employ her leisure in cultivating her Art--she always called it her Art, poor child!--she would have been perfectly happy, or shethoughtshe would have been perfectly happy, which, in the main, amounted to the same thing. As she sat in the cold light of that winter's afternoon, darning, as if for dear life, the great pile of stockings which were her portion, she soon drifted away from the tall Bloomsbury dwelling into a bright, brilliant land of romance, where there were no troubles, no cares, where nothing was sordid, and everything was bright and rosy, and even troubles and worries might have been adequately described as "double water gilt."Young writers do indulge in these blessed dreams of fancy, and Nancy, remember, was only twenty. Her heroines were always lovely, always extravagantly rich or picturesquely poor; her heroes were all lithe and long, and most of them had tawny moustaches, and violet eyes like a girl's. They were all guardsmen or noblemen. They knew not the want of money; if they werecalledpoor, they went everywhere in hansoms, and had valets and gambling debts. It was an ideal world, and Nancy Macdonald was very happy in it.From that time forward a new life began for the girl. The household certainly went more smoothly, because of that promise to her mother; and Mrs. Macdonald's sharp tongue whetted itself on other grievances more frequently than on that old one about Nancy's scribbling propensities. It was irritating to Nancy, of course, to hear her mother continually nagging about something or other; but then, as she reminded herself very often during the day, her mother had great anxieties and grievous worries. She was a sort of double-distilled Martha, "careful and troubled," not about many things, but about everything--everything that did happen, or might happen, even what could happen under given circumstances which might and probably never would occur. Still, it was not so trying to bear when the shafts of sarcasm and complaining were aimed at others instead of herself, and to do Nancy strict justice, she did try honestly to do the work which lay to her hand.In the midst of the multitudinous cares of the large household it must be owned that the girl's writing suffered. It is all very well for a girl in fiction to do scullery work all day long, and write the brilliant novel of a season in odd moments, in a cold and cheerless bedroom, but in real life it is very different. Nancy Macdonald gave her attention to stockings and table-linen, and shopping and ordering and dusting; to keeping boarders in good temper, and making herself generally useful; to superintending the education and manners of the little ones, to smoothing down the rough edges of her mother's chronic asperity--in short, to being a real help; but her much loved work practically went to the wall. She dreamed a good deal while she was doing other things, but mere dreaming is not of much help towards making name or fortune; work is the only road which leads to either. Still, you cannot do your duty without improving your character, and Nancy Macdonald's character was strengthening and softening every day. She worked a little at night, but often she was far too tired and weary to attempt it. Very often when she did so, she found that the words would not run, the incidents would not connect themselves, and frequently that her eyes would not keep open; and then I am obliged to say that it was not an uncommon thing for Nancy Macdonald to get into bed and cry herself to sleep.Still, her character was strengthening. With every day that went by she learnt more of the power of endurance; she became more patient, more fixed in her ideas; the goal of her desires was set more immediately in front of her. It was less visionary, but it was infinitely more substantial. In a desultory kind of a way she still worked, still wrote of lords and ladies whom she did not know in the flesh, still drew pictures of guardsmen with longer legs and tawnier moustaches even than before. She spent the whole of her pocket-money (which, by the bye, consisted of certain perquisites in the house, the medicine bottles and the dripping forming her chief sources of income) on manuscript paper, and was sometimes hard pushed to pay the postage on the mysterious packages which she smuggled into the post-office, and to provide the stamps for paying the return fare of these children of her fancy. Poor things, they always required it. No enterprising editors wanted the long-legged guardsmen, their blue eyes and tawny moustaches notwithstanding. Nobody had a welcome for the lovely ladies, who were all dressed by Worth, though they never seemed to have heard of such a person as Felix. The disappointments of their continued return were very bitter to her; yet, at heart, Nancy Macdonald was a true artist, and had all the true artist's pluck and perseverance, so that she never thought of giving up her work. It was only that she had not yet found hermétier.
[image]"You tum back, Ada 'Liz'bet'?" she murmured.
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"You tum back, Ada 'Liz'bet'?" she murmured.
Halt!
"Halt! Who goes there?" cried a man's voice through the thick gloom of the dark night.
There was no answer save silence; and, after listening for a moment, Private Flinders turned, and began to tramp once more along the ten paces which extended from his sentry-box. "I could have sworn I heard a footstep," he said to himself. "It's curious how one's ears deceive one on a night like this."
Ten paces one way, ten paces the other; turn, and back again, and begin your ten paces over again. Yes, it is monotonous, there is no doubt of that; but it is the bounden duty of a sentry, unless he happens to prefer standing still in his box, getting stiff and chill, and perhaps running the risk of being caught asleep at his post--no light offence in a barrack, I can tell you. Ten paces one way, ten paces the other--a rustling, a mere movement, such as would scarcely have attracted the attention of most people, but which caught Private Flinders' sharp ears, and brought him up to a standstill again in an attitude of strict watchfulness.
"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried again, and listened once more. Again silence met him, and again he stood, alert and suspicious, waiting for the reply, "Friend."
"By Gum, this is queer," he thought, as he stood listening. "I'll search to the bottom of it though. I daresay it's only some of the chaps getting at me; but I'll be even with 'em, if it is."
He groped about in rather an aimless sort of way, for the night was black as pitch; and his eyes, though they had grown used to the inky want of light, could distinguish nothing of his surroundings.
"Now, where are you, you beggar?" he remarked, beginning to lose his habitual serenity, and laying about him with his carbine. After a stroke or two the weapon touched something, though not heavily, and a howl followed--a howl which was unmistakably that of a small child. It conveyed both fear and bodily pain. Private Flinders followed up the howl by feeling cautiously in the part whence the sounds had come. His hand closed upon something soft and shrinking, and the howls were redoubled.
"Hollo! what the deuce are you?" he exclaimed, drawing the shrieking captive nearer to him. "Why, I'm blessed if it ain't a kid--and a girl, too. Well, I'm blowed! And where did you happen to come from?"
The howl by this time had developed into a faint sniffing, for Private Flinders' voice was neither harsh nor forbidding. But the creature did not venture on speech.
"Where did you come from, and what are you doing here?" he asked. "Do you belong to the barricks, and has your mammy been wollopping of you? Or did you stray in from outside?"
"Lost my mammy," the small creature burst out, finding that she was expected to say something.
"What's your mammy's name?" Flinders asked.
"Mammy, of course," was the reply.
"And what's your name?"
"Susy."
"Susy. Aye, but Susy what?"
"Susy," repeated the little person, beginning to whimper again.
"Where do you live?"
"At home," said Susy, in an insulted tone, as if all these questions were quite superfluous.
"Well! blest ifIknow what to do with you," said Flinders, pushing his busby on one side, and scratching his head vigorously. "I don't believe you belong to the barricks--your speech haven't got the twang of it. And if you've strayed in from outside, Gord knows what 'll become of you. Certain it is that you won't be let to stop here."
"Susy so cold," whimpered the mite pitifully.
"I should think you was cold," returned Private Flinders sympathetically. "I'm none too warm myself; and the fog seems to fair eat into one's bones. Well, little 'un, I can't carry you back to where you came from, that's very certain. I can't even take you round to the guard-room. Now, what the deuce am I to do with you? And I shan't be relieved for over a hour."
Private Flinders being one of the most good-natured men in creation, it ended by his gathering the child in his arms, and carrying her up and down on his beat until the relief came.
"Why, what's the meaning of this?" demanded the corporal of the guard, when he perceived the unusual encumbrance to the private's movements.
"Ah! Corporal, that's more than I can tell you," responded the other promptly. "This here kid toddled along over a hour ago; and as she don't seem to know what her name is, or where she come from, I just walked about with her, that she mightn't be froze to death. I suppose we'd best carry her to the guard-room fire, and keep her warm till morning."
"And then?" asked the corporal, with a twinkle in his eye, which the dark night effectually hid.
"Gord knows," was the private's quick reply.
Eventually, the mite who rejoiced in the name of Susy, and did not know whence she had come or whither she was going, was carried off to the guard-room and made as comfortable as circumstances would permit--that being the only course, indeed, at that hour of the night, or, to be quite correct, of the morning--which could with reason be followed.
She slept, as healthy children do, like a top or dog, and when she awoke in the morning she expressed no fear or very much surprise, and, having enquired in a casual kind of way for her mammy, she partook of a very good breakfast of bread and milk, followed by a drink of coffee and a taste or two of such other provisions as were going round. Later on Private Flinders was sent for to the orderly-room, and told to give the commanding officer such information as he was in possession of concerning the stray mite, who was still in the warm guard-room.
Now it happened that the commanding officer of the 9th Hussars was a gentleman to whom routine was a religion and discipline a salvation, and he expressed himself sharply enough as to the only course which could possibly be pursued under the present circumstances.
"We had better send down to the workhouse people to come and remove the child at once. Otherwise, we may have endless trouble with the mother; and, moreover, if it once got about that these barracks were open to that kind of thing, the regiment would soon be turned into a regular foundling hospital. Let the workhouse people be sent for at once. What did you say, Mr. Jervis? That the child might be quartered for a few hours among the married people. Yes, I daresay, but if the mother is on the look-out, which is very doubtful, she is more likely to go to the police-station than she is to come here. As to any stigma, the mother should have borne that in mind when she lost the child. On second thoughts, I think it is to the police-station that we should send; yes, that will be quite the best thing to do."
A few hours later the child Susy was transferred from the guard-room to the police-station, and there she made herself equally at home, only asking occasionally, in a perfunctory kind of way, for "Mammy," and being quite easily satisfied when she was told that she would be coming along by-and-by.
During the few hours that she was at the police-station she became quite a favourite, and made friends with all the stalwart constables, just as she had done with one and all of the strapping Hussars at the cavalry barracks. She was not shy, for she answered the magistrate in quite a friendly way, though she gave no information as to her belongings, simply because she had no information to give. And the end was that she was condemned to the workhouse, and was carried off to that undesirable haven as soon as the interview with the magistrate was over.
"A blooming shame, I call it, poor little kid," said Private Flinders that evening to a group of his friends, in the comfortable safety of the troop-room. "She was a jolly little lass; and if I'd been a married man, I'd have kept her myself, dashed if I wouldn't!"
"Perhaps your missis might 'ave 'ad a word or two to say to that, Flinders," cried a natty fellow, just up to the standard in height, and no more.
"Oh, I'd have made it all right with her," returned Flinders, with that easy assurance of everything good that want of experience gives. "But to send it to the workhouse--it's a blooming shame! They treat kids anyhow in them places. Now then, Thomson, what are you a-grinning at? Perhaps you know as much about workhouses as I can tell you."
"Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't," replied Thomson, with provoking good temper. "I wasn't a-laughing at the workhouse; cussing them is more like what one feels. But to think of you, old chap, tramping up and down with the blessed kid asleep--well, it beats everything I ever heard tell of, blame me if it don't."
Private Flinders, however, was not to be laughed out of his interest in the little child Susy; and regularly every week he walked down to the workhouse, and asked to see her taking always a few sweeties, bought out of his scanty pay, the cost of which meant his going without some small luxury for himself. And Susy, who was miserably unhappy in that abode of sorrow which we provide in this country for the destitute, grew to look eagerly for his visits, and sobbed out all her little troubles and trials to his sympathetic ears.
"Susy don't like her," she confided to him one day when the matron had left them alone together. "She slaps me. Susy don't love her."
"But Susy will learn to be a good girl, and not get slapped," the soldier said, with something suspiciously like a lump in his throat. "See, I've brought you some lollipops--you'll like them, won't you?"
He happened to run up against the matron as he walked away toward the door. "She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked, with a vague kind of notion that even workhouse matrons have hearts sometimes. And so some of them have, though not many. This particular one was among the many.
[image]"She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked.
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"She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked.
"A very self-willed child," she remarked sharply, "considering that she's so young. We have a great deal of trouble with her. She does not seem to know the meaning of the word obedience."
"She is but a baby," ventured the soldier apologetically.
"Baby, or no baby, she'll have to learn it here," snapped the matron viciously; and then Flinders went on his way, feeling sadder than ever, and yet more and more regretful that he was not married, or had at least a mother in a position to adopt a little child.
The next time he went they had cut the child's lovely long, curling locks, indeed, she had been shorn like a sheep in spring-time. Flinders' soft heart gave a great throb, and he cuddled the mite to his broad breast, as if by so doing he could undo the indignity that had been put upon her.
"Susy," he said, when he had handed over his sweets and she was busily munching them up, "I want you to try and remember something."
Susy looked at him doubtfully, but nodded her cropped head with an air of wise acquiescence. Flinders went on talking quietly.
"You remember before you came here--you had a home and a mammy, don't you?"
"Yes," said Susy promptly.
"What sort of a house was it?"
"Where my mammy was?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Big," replied Susy briefly, selecting another sweetie with care.
"And what was it called?"
"The house," said the child, in a matter-of-fact tone.
Flinders gave a sigh. "Yes, I dare say it was. Don't you remember, though, what your mammy was called?"
"Why mammy, of course," said Susy, as if the question was too utterly foolish for serious consideration.
"Yes, but other people didn't call her mammy--it was only you did that," said Flinders desperately. "What did other people call her? Can't you remember that?"
It happened that Susy not only remembered, but immediately gave utterance to her recollections in such a way as fairly made the soldier jump. "They called my mammy 'my lady,'" she said simply.
Private Flinders gave the child a great hug, and put her down off his knee. "Gord bless you, little 'un," he ejaculated. "And see if I don't ferret that mammy of yours out before I'm many days older--see if I don't."
He met the matron as he went towards the entrance. "Missis," he said, stopping, "I've got a clue to that little 'un's belongings. I'm off to the police station now about it. I'd advise you to treat her as tender as you can. It'll come home to you, mark my words."
"Dear me," snapped the matron; "is she going to turn out a princess in disguise, then?"
"It'll perhaps turn out a pity you was in such a hurry to crop her hair," said Private Flinders, with dignity.
In the face of that sudden recollection of the child's, he felt that he could afford to be, to a certain extent, stand-offish to the cold-eyed, unloving woman before him.
"Oh, rules are rules," said the matron, with an air of fine disdain; "and, in an institution like ours, all must be served alike. It would be a pretty thing if we had to spend half of every day curling the children's hair. Good-day to you."
He felt that he had got the worst of it, and that it was more than possible that little Susy would pay the penalty of his indiscretion. Fool that he had been not to hold his tongue until he had something more tangible to say. Well, it was done now, and could not be undone, and it behoved him to lose no time, but to find out the truth as soon as possible.
The inspector whom he found in charge of the police-station listened to his tale with a strictly professional demeanour.
"Yes, I remember the little girl coming in and being taken to the workhouse. I remember the case right enough. You'd better leave it to us, and we will find out whether such a child is missing anywhere in the country."
I need hardly say that in Private Flinders' mind there lurked that deep-rooted distrust of a policeman that lives somewhere or other in the heart of every soldier. It came uppermost in his mind at that moment.
"You'll do your best?" he said, a little wistfully. "You'll not let time go by, and--and----?"
"We shall be in communication with every police-station in the kingdom in a few hours," returned the inspector, who knew pretty well what was passing in the soldier's mind. "But, all the same, you mustn't be over-much disappointed if there proves to be nothing in it. You see, if such a child was being inquired for, we should have heard of it before this. However, we'll do our best; you may be very sure of that."
With that Private Flinders was obliged to rest content. He made inquiries from day to day, and eventually this advertisement appeared in the leading daily papers:--
TO PARENTS AND GUARDIANS.--A little girl, apparently about three years old, is in charge of the police at Bridbrook. She says her name is Susy, and appears to be the child of well-to-do parents. Very fair hair, blue eyes, features small and pretty. Clothes very good, but much soiled.--Address, POLICE STATION, BRIDBROOK.
A few hours after the appearance of the advertisement, a telegram arrived at the police-station:--
"Keep child. Will come as soon as possible.--JACKSON."
* * * * *
Less than three hours afterwards, an excited woman rushed into the station, having precipitated herself out of a cab, and almost flung herself upon the astonished inspector.
"I've come for the child--the little girl," she gasped, as if she had run at racing speed direct from the place indicated by the telegram.
"Oh, she belongs to you, does she?" remarked the inspector coolly. "Well, you've no call to be in such a 'urry; you've been very comfortable about her for the last six weeks."
"Comfortable!" echoed the excited one; "why, I've been very near out of my mind. I thought she was drowned, and I was so frightened, I daren't say a word to any one about it. And my lady away----"
"Then you're not the mother?" said the inspector sharply.
"The mother!--my goodness, no! I'm the head nurse. My young lady's mother is the Countess of Morecambe."
"Then what doesshesay to all this, pray?" he asked.
"My lady went abroad two months ago to one of those foreign cure places, and she doesn't know but what Lady Susy is safe with me at this minute," the woman replied.
The inspector gave a prolonged whistle.
"Well, you're a pretty sort of nurse to leave in charge of a child," he remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you get the sack for this. Do you know the child's at the workhouse, and that they've cropped her head as bare as mine?"
At this the woman simply sat down and sobbed aloud.
"Aye, you may well cry," said the inspector grimly. "I should if I was in your shoes."
She finally told how the child had been missed; how she had refrained from giving notice to the police through fear of publicity, and believing she could find her by diligent search in the locality; how "my lady" was a widow, with only this one little child; how she had been advised to go for this cure; how she had consented to the nurse taking Lady Susy to the seaside meantime, well knowing that she would be safe and happy with her.
"Yes, you may laugh at that," she wound up; "but my dear lamb has often called me 'mammy' as anything else, and my lady has often said she was quite jealous of me."
"All the same, I shouldn't wonder if you get the sack," repeated the inspector, who was not troubled with much sentiment.
I scarcely know how to tell the rest--how Jackson went off to the workhouse, and enlightened the matron and others as to the child's station in life; how she seized her little ladyship, and almost smothered her with kisses; how she bewailed her shorn locks, and wondered and conjectured as to how she could possibly have got to a place so far from her home as Bridbrook.
But, a few weeks later, a lovely woman in mourning came to the cavalry barracks, and inquired for Private Flinders. She wept during the interview, this lovely lady; and when she had gone away, Private Flinders opened the packet she had put into his hands, to find a cheque for a hundred pounds, and a handsome gold watch and chain. And at the end of the chain was a plain gold locket, on one side of which was engraved Private Flinders' initials, whilst on the other was written the single word, "Halt!"
The Little Lady with the Voice
A FAIRY TALE
Marjory Drummond was sitting on the bank of the river, and, if the whole truth must be owned, she was crying. She was not crying loudly or passionately, but as she rested her cheek on her hand, the sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes, and brimmed over one by one, falling each with a separate splash upon the blue cotton gown which she wore.
[image]The sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes.
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The sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes.
The sun was shining high in the blue heavens, the river danced and sang merrily as it went rippling by, and all the hedgerows were alive with flowers, and the air was full of the scent of the new-cut hay. Yet Marjory was very miserable, and for her the skies looked dark and dull, the river only gave her even sadder thoughts than she already had, and the new-cut hay seemed quite scentless and dead. And all because a man had failed her--a man had proved to be clay instead of gold. And so she sat there in the gay summer sunshine and wished that she had never been born, or that she were dead, or some such folly, and the butterflies fluttered about, and the bees hummed, and all nature, excepting herself, seemed to be radiant and joyous. An old water-vole came out of his hiding-place by the river and watched her with a wise air, and a dragon-fly whizzed past and hovered over the surface of the sunlit water, but Marjory's eyes were blind to each and all of these things, and still the tears welled up and overflowed their bounds, and she wept on.
"What is the matter?" said a voice just at her ear.
Marjory gave a jump, and dashed her tears away; it was one thing to indulge herself in her grief, but it was quite another to let any one else, and that a stranger, see her. "What is wrong with you, Marjory?" said the voice once more.
"Nothing!" answered Marjory shortly.
"I may, perhaps, be able to help you," the gentle little voice persisted.
"Nobody can help me," said Marjory, with a great sigh, "nobody can help me--nobody."
"Don't be so sure of that," said the voice. "Why do you keep this curl of hair? Why do you turn so persistently away from me? Why don't you look at me?"
Marjory turned her head, but she could see no one near. "Who are you? Why do you hide?" she asked in turn.
"You look too high," said the voice. "Look lower; yes--ah, how d'you do?"
Marjory almost jumped into the river in her fright, for there, standing under the shade of a big dandelion, was the smallest being she had ever seen in her life. Yet, as she sat staring at her, this tiny woman seemed to increase in size, and to assume a shape which was somehow familiar to her. "You know me now?" asked the little woman, smiling at her again.
"N--o," replied Marjory, stammering a little.
"Oh, yes, you do. You remember the old woman whose part you took a few weeks ago--down by the old church, when some boys were teasing her? Well, that was me--me--and now I'm going to do something for you. I am going to make you happy."
"Are you a witch?" asked Marjory, in a very awed voice.
"Hu--sh--sh! We never use such an uncomplimentary word inourworld. But you poor mortals are often very rude, even without knowing it. I am not what is called a witch, young lady. I am a familiar."
Marjory's eyes opened wider than ever; she bent forward and asked an earnest question: "Are you my familiar?" she said.
"Perhaps, perhaps," answered the little woman, nodding her head wisely. "That all depends on yourself. If you are good, yes; if you are bad, no--most emphatically, no. I am much too important a person to be familiar to worthless people."
"I'm sure you are very kind," said Marjory meekly. "But what will you do to make me happy? You cannot give me back my Jack, because he has married some one else--the wretch!" she added under her breath, but the ejaculation was for the woman whom Jack had married, not for Jack himself.
"You will learn to live without your Jack, as you call him," said the little woman with the soft voice, sagely, "and to feel thankful that he chose elsewhere. You once did me a service, and that is a thing that a familiar never, never forgets. I have been watching you ever since that time, and now I will reward you. Marjory Drummond, from this time henceforth everything shall prosper with you; everything you touch shall turn to gold, everything you wish shall come to pass; what you strive after you shall have; your greatest desires shall be realised; and you shall have power to draw tears from all eyes whenever you choose. This last I give you in compensation for the tears that you have shed this day. Farewell!"
"Stay!" cried Marjory. "Won't you even tell me your name? May I not thank you?"
"No. The thanks are mine," said the little lady. "When we meet again I will tell you my name--not before."
In a moment she was gone, and so quickly and mysteriously did she go that Marjory did not see her disappear. She rubbed her eyes and looked round. "I must have been asleep!" she exclaimed. "I must have dreamt it."
* * * * *
Several years had gone by. With Marjory Drummond everything had prospered, and she was on the high road to success, and fame, and fortune. Whenever her name was spoken, people nodded their heads wisely, and said: "A wonderful girl, nothing she cannot do"; and they mostly said it as if each one of them had had a hand in making her the clever girl that she was.
As an artist she was extremely gifted, being well hung in the Academy of the year; as an actress, though only playing with that form of art, she was hard to beat; and she had written stories and tales which were so infinitely above the average that editors were one and all delighted at any time to have the chance of a story signed with the initials "M.D.," initials which the world thought and declared were those of one of the most fashionable doctors of the day.
And at last the world of letters woke up and rubbed its eyes very much as Marjory had rubbed her eyes that day on the river's bank, and the world said, "We have a great and gifted man among us." "'M.D.' isthewriter of the time." And slowly, little by little, the secret crept out, and Marjory was fêted and flattered, and made the star of the season. Her name was in every one's mouth, and her work was sought after eagerly and read by all. And among those who worshipped at her shrine was the "Jack" who had flouted her in the old days, yet not quite the same, but a "Jack" very much altered and world-worn, so that Marjory could no longer regret or wish that the lines of her life had fallen otherwise than they had done.
And often and often, as the years rolled by, and she was still the darling star of the people who love to live in the realms of fiction, did Marjory ponder over that vivid dream by the riverside, and try to satisfy herself that it really was no more than a dream, and that the old lady with the sweet clear voice had had no being except in her excited brain. "I wish," she said aloud one day, when she was sitting by the fire after finishing the most important work that had ever yet come from her pen, "I wish that she would come back and satisfy me about it. It seemed so real, so vivid, so distinct, and yet it is so impossible----"
"Not impossible at all," said a familiar voice at her elbow.
Marjory looked round with a start. "Oh! is it you?" she cried. "Then it was all true! I have never been able to make up my mind whether it was true or only a dream. Now I know that it was quite real, and everything that you promised me has come about. I am the happiest woman in all the world to-day, and, dear friend, if ever I did a service to you, you have amply repaid me."
"We never stint thanks in our world," said the little old lady, smiling. "Then there is nothing more that you want?"
"Yes, kind friend, just one thing," said Marjory. "You promised me that when we met again you would tell me your name."
The little woman melted away instantly, but somewhere out of the shadows came a small sweet sighing voice, which said softly, "My name is--Genius!"
Jewels to Wear
"Torches are made to burn;jewels to wear."--Shakespeare
"Torches are made to burn;jewels to wear."--Shakespeare
"Torches are made to burn;jewels to wear."--Shakespeare
"Torches are made to burn;
jewels to wear."--Shakespeare
CHAPTER I
"I can't think, Nancy, why you cannot get something useful to occupy yourself with. It seems to me that I have slaved and sacrificed myself all my life, in every possible direction, simply that you may waste your whole time spoiling good paper, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, from morning till night, with your fingers inky, and your thoughts in the clouds, and your attention on nothing that I want you to attend to. I don't call it a good reward to make to me. You will never do any good with that ridiculous scribbling--never! When I think of what youmightsave me, of how youmightspare me in my anxious and busy life, it makes me positively ill to think I am your mother. Here have I been thinking of you, Nancy, and working for you, and struggling, and fighting, and slaving for you for twenty years, and now that the time has come when you might do something for me, you have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"
[image]"You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"
[image]
[image]
"You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"
The girl thus addressed turned and looked at her mother.
"Mother, dear," she said depreciatingly, "I am sorry that I am not more useful. I can't help it. I do think of you, I try to do everything I can to relieve you, and help you; but these stories will come into my head. They won't be put out of it. What am I to do?"
"What are you to do?" echoed the mother. "Why, look at that basket of stockings to darn!"
"I am quite willing to darn them," said Nancy meekly.
"Yes, you are quite willing, I daresay. You are quite willingwhenI tell you. But you don't seem to see what a burden it is to me to have to tell you everything as if you were a baby. There are the stockings, and there are you; at your age, you don't surely need me to tell you that the stockings need mending!"
"I will do them at once," said Nancy. "I will do them this minute."
"Yes, with your thoughts in the clouds, and your mind fixed on scribbling. What, may I ask you, Nancy, do you think you will ever do with it?"
"I don't know," said Nancy desperately. "Perhaps I may make some money some day."
"Never, never! Waste it, you mean. Waste it over pens, ink, paper and tablecloths. There is the tablecloth in your bedroom spotted with ink from end to end. It is heart-breaking."
"Well, Mother, what do you wish me to do?" the girl asked in desperation.
"Your plain and simple duty. I would like you to give up all idea of wasting your time in that way from now on," said the mother deliberately.
"Won't you even let me write a little to amuse myself in my spare time?" asked the girl piteously.
"Your spare time!" echoed the mother impatiently. "What spare time have poor people such as we are? What spare time have I? Here are we with this great boarding-house on our hands, twenty-three boarders to be made comfortable, kept in good temper, fed, housed, boarded--everything to be done for them, and I have to do it. Why, in the time that you waste over those stories, you might make yourself a brilliant pianist, and play in the evening to them. Then you would be of some use."
"I don't think," said Nancy, "that anything will ever make me a brilliant pianist, Mother. There's no music in me--not of that kind, and I don't think that the boarders would like me half as well if I went and strummed on the drawing-room piano every evening for an hour or two, I really don't, Mother."
"No, you know better than I do, of course. That is the way with the young people of the present day. You are all alike. Ah, it was different when I was a girl. I would no more have dreamed of defying my mother as you defy me----"
"Mother, I don't defy you," Nancy broke in indignantly. "I never defied you in my life. I never thought of such a thing."
"Don't you write stories in defiance of my wishes?" Mrs. Macdonald asked, dropping the tragedy air, and putting the question in a plain, every-day, businesslike tone.
At this, Nancy Macdonald flushed a deep full red, a blush of shame it was, or what felt like shame, and as it slowly faded away until her face was a dull greyish white, all hope for that gift which was as the very mainspring of her life, seemed to shrink and die within her.
"Mother," she said at last, in a firm tone, "I will do what you wish. I will give up writing, I promise you, from this time forward, and I will not write at all while I have any duty left in the day. You will not mind my doing a little when I have seen the after dinner coffee served, will you?"
"That means, I suppose," said Mrs. Macdonald rather tartly, "that you will sit up half the night ruining your health, spoiling your eyesight, wasting my gas, and making it perfectly impossible that you should get up in good time in the morning."
"Mother," said the girl, in a most piteous tone, "when I am once late in the morning, I will promise you to give it up altogether, and for ever; more than that I cannot say. As you said just now, it is a hard life here, and we have not very much leisure time; but, I implore you, do not take my one delight and pleasure from me altogether!"
"If you put it in that way," said Mrs. Macdonald rather grudgingly, "of course, we can but try the experiment; but what good, I ask you, Nancy, do you think will ever come of it!"
"I don't know," said Nancy; "I can't say. Other people have made fortunes; other people have done well by writing; why should not I?"
"As ifyouwould ever make a fortune!" said Mrs. Macdonald, with the contemptuousness of a woman to whom the struggle of life had been hard and to whom pounds, shillings and pence in the very hand were the only proofs of reason for what she called "wasting time" over story-writing.
"Well, if not a fortune, at least a comfortable income," said Nancy eagerly; "and if I did, Mother, I should give it all to you!"
"Thank you for nothing, my dear," was the ungracious reply.
To this Nancy made no answer. She carried the big basket of stockings to the window, and sat down in the cold winter light to do such repairs as were necessary. Poor child! It was a hard fate for her. She was the eldest of a family of five, all dependent on the exertions of her widowed mother in keeping afloat the big boarding-house by which they lived. For a boarding-house, be it ever so liberally managed, be the receipts ever so generous, is but a sordid abode, especially to those who have the trouble and care of managing it; and to an eldest daughter, and one who stands between the anxious mother and the younger children, who mostly resemble young rooks with mouths chronically open, such a life appears perhaps more sordid than it does to any one else.
To Nancy Macdonald, with her mind full of visionary beauty, and living daily in a world of her own--not a world of boarding-houses--the life they lived seemed even more sordid, more trivial, more petty, than it was in reality. Her wants were not many; she was never inclined to rail at fate because she had not been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, not at all. But if only she could have a quiet home, with an assured income, just sufficient to cover their modest wants, to provide good wholesome food, to buy boots and shoes for the little ones, to pay the wages of a good servant, to take those lines of anxious care from her mother's forehead, so that she could employ her leisure in cultivating her Art--she always called it her Art, poor child!--she would have been perfectly happy, or shethoughtshe would have been perfectly happy, which, in the main, amounted to the same thing. As she sat in the cold light of that winter's afternoon, darning, as if for dear life, the great pile of stockings which were her portion, she soon drifted away from the tall Bloomsbury dwelling into a bright, brilliant land of romance, where there were no troubles, no cares, where nothing was sordid, and everything was bright and rosy, and even troubles and worries might have been adequately described as "double water gilt."
Young writers do indulge in these blessed dreams of fancy, and Nancy, remember, was only twenty. Her heroines were always lovely, always extravagantly rich or picturesquely poor; her heroes were all lithe and long, and most of them had tawny moustaches, and violet eyes like a girl's. They were all guardsmen or noblemen. They knew not the want of money; if they werecalledpoor, they went everywhere in hansoms, and had valets and gambling debts. It was an ideal world, and Nancy Macdonald was very happy in it.
From that time forward a new life began for the girl. The household certainly went more smoothly, because of that promise to her mother; and Mrs. Macdonald's sharp tongue whetted itself on other grievances more frequently than on that old one about Nancy's scribbling propensities. It was irritating to Nancy, of course, to hear her mother continually nagging about something or other; but then, as she reminded herself very often during the day, her mother had great anxieties and grievous worries. She was a sort of double-distilled Martha, "careful and troubled," not about many things, but about everything--everything that did happen, or might happen, even what could happen under given circumstances which might and probably never would occur. Still, it was not so trying to bear when the shafts of sarcasm and complaining were aimed at others instead of herself, and to do Nancy strict justice, she did try honestly to do the work which lay to her hand.
In the midst of the multitudinous cares of the large household it must be owned that the girl's writing suffered. It is all very well for a girl in fiction to do scullery work all day long, and write the brilliant novel of a season in odd moments, in a cold and cheerless bedroom, but in real life it is very different. Nancy Macdonald gave her attention to stockings and table-linen, and shopping and ordering and dusting; to keeping boarders in good temper, and making herself generally useful; to superintending the education and manners of the little ones, to smoothing down the rough edges of her mother's chronic asperity--in short, to being a real help; but her much loved work practically went to the wall. She dreamed a good deal while she was doing other things, but mere dreaming is not of much help towards making name or fortune; work is the only road which leads to either. Still, you cannot do your duty without improving your character, and Nancy Macdonald's character was strengthening and softening every day. She worked a little at night, but often she was far too tired and weary to attempt it. Very often when she did so, she found that the words would not run, the incidents would not connect themselves, and frequently that her eyes would not keep open; and then I am obliged to say that it was not an uncommon thing for Nancy Macdonald to get into bed and cry herself to sleep.
Still, her character was strengthening. With every day that went by she learnt more of the power of endurance; she became more patient, more fixed in her ideas; the goal of her desires was set more immediately in front of her. It was less visionary, but it was infinitely more substantial. In a desultory kind of a way she still worked, still wrote of lords and ladies whom she did not know in the flesh, still drew pictures of guardsmen with longer legs and tawnier moustaches even than before. She spent the whole of her pocket-money (which, by the bye, consisted of certain perquisites in the house, the medicine bottles and the dripping forming her chief sources of income) on manuscript paper, and was sometimes hard pushed to pay the postage on the mysterious packages which she smuggled into the post-office, and to provide the stamps for paying the return fare of these children of her fancy. Poor things, they always required it. No enterprising editors wanted the long-legged guardsmen, their blue eyes and tawny moustaches notwithstanding. Nobody had a welcome for the lovely ladies, who were all dressed by Worth, though they never seemed to have heard of such a person as Felix. The disappointments of their continued return were very bitter to her; yet, at heart, Nancy Macdonald was a true artist, and had all the true artist's pluck and perseverance, so that she never thought of giving up her work. It was only that she had not yet found hermétier.