CHAPTER XCIV
Wherein it is suspected that the Garden of Eden was Well Lost
Noll,restless, his brain teeming with the things that had befallen him this day, fretted with the baffling dilemma of finding Betty, and alone with his conflicting moods, paced his little room until long after the darkness came into it, when he roused, famished but unhungry, flung out of the hotel, and turned aimlessly northwards, pacing beside the sounding traffic into the darkness of the night, that hung upon the more quiet ways where law students have their dingy habitations.
He wandered towards the old quarters where he had strolled the pavements gaily, a handsome youth, with a handsome girl by his side—every flagstone was familiar to him—every dingiest street-corner held a wan smile beneath its soot.
As he turned into the quaint old street where Betty had lodged, he was startled to see her figure flitting in front of him.
He thought for a moment that he must be suffering from faintness—it came to him that he had not broken his fast since morning. But the sound of her well-known step, the light poise of her lithe figure, left no doubt; and he cautiously followed her, hanging back, afraid to startle her.
She turned of a sudden, with that forthright aimful intent that directed all her acts; ran up some steps; set a key in the lock of the door-latch; and, the door yawning open, she stepped into the blackness and passed out of the night.
The thud of the slammed door came muffled on the night; and Noll, striding out, crossed the street and arrived opposite the house where he had spent many a happy tryst. It was the last place in the world whither he would have expected Betty to go into hiding—and he realized, with a whimsical smile, Betty’s keen sense of humour and her shrewd capacity, in boldly deciding to hide herself away in her old haunts.
The house was wholly in darkness. Not a soul was astir.
Noll brooded upon it....
At last came a light into a window.
Betty had mounted to her room.
It was the topmost attic of the house—where servants sleep.
Suddenly the singing at his heart ceased, Noll bent brooding wits on the question as to what grinding toil kept Betty’s dainty fingers at work at midnight to the winning of bread.
He crossed the road, walked up the steps, and rang the bell; and, as he did so, a light came into the fan-shaped window over the door where he stood.
There was a drawing of bolts, a key grated in the lock, and the door swung open.
Before him, lit by the candle that she held high above her head, stood a pretty little woman, much overdressed above the extreme height of the fashion with the curious picturesque exaggeration that is the pretty habit of London theatrical folk—yet, for all her charming attire, a daughter of the people. She was in her hat still, as though not long come in.
“Victoria May Alice!” he exclaimed.
She nodded pertly:
“God forgive me, that’s me,” she said.
She shaded the light from her eyes with one hand, and stared at the youth:
“Well, translate me to uttermost leading parts at the West End Theatres if it ain’t Mister Noll!... You ain’t forgotten Victoria May Alice, anyhow—there’s no error inthatcontract.”
Noll stepped into the house, shut the door behind him with his heel, and took her hand:
“Victoria May Alice, I could almost kiss you,” said he, wringing her fingers. “I’m so glad to know you are staying here—with her.”
She laughed:
“Stayin’, Mr. Noll?... I own the whole bloomin’ palace,” said she. “When I’m not at the theatre I am runningthisshow. I go behind the scenes for sordid tragedy; and I listen to lodgers’ complaints for roaring comedy—see? And when you’ve done that often enough, one week with another, you’ve eaten a pretty thick slice of life, I can warn you.... But, you know, you ain’t listenin’ to a word I’m sayin’.”
He laughed embarrassedly:
“Betty is upstairs,” he said.
She nodded:
“H’m, h’m—yes,” she said. “You know such a lot you’d almost think you were her husband, Mr. Noll.”
He let the thrust pass him.
“Victoria,” said he—“why does she work so late?”
“Work?”
“Yes—there’s a light in her room.”
Victoria May Alice looked at him whimsically:
“Lord,” said she, “you men are mostly only fit for comic opera.... Well, if you want to know within an acre or two of the truth, call again when the cats are coming home.”
“What? Till daylight?” he gasped.
“So help me Henery Irving,” she nodded. “You’d see that light burning still when the cockydoos are crowing in the lemon of the morning.”
“Good God!” said Noll hoarsely.
“That’s right. Put it on to God,” she said. “It’s so like a man.”
She looked at him, and added drily:
“But, of course, Mr. Noll, you don’t know.... How should you? You’re her husband.... I think you’d better go up and pull her nut-brown hair about the waste of candles, myself, eh!What’s the good of being married to a woman if you can’t order her about?”
Noll nodded, smiling sadly:
“Yes, I must see her—at once.”
“Come along then,” said she, leading the way upstairs. She put her fingers on her lips as sign for silence, and after that she spoke never a word until she reached the topmost landing, knocked at the attic door, flung it open; and, as Noll stepped into the room, shut it again softly, and crept gently down the stairs....
Before the snowy bed stood Betty in her white night-gown and in her arms she held a little child, crooning to it a low-voiced lullaby.
She looked up as the door opened:
“Noll!”
Noll strode over to her, dumb with an overwhelming passion for her, his heart leaping with a great surprise, walked as in a dream, knelt down at her feet, put his arms about her limbs and buried his face in the thin fabric of her nightdress.
“Betty,” he said hoarsely—“why did you not tell me this?”
She laughed sadly:
“I tried to tell you—so many times, Noll—but—you would not listen——”
“Ah me,” said he, holding her close (how he loved the musical voice!)—“I have been such a fool—such—a fool! But I have found you, dear heart, at last—and in finding you I have found all.” And he added: “I have suffered, Betty.”
She laid her slender fingers upon his head.
He was shaken with a sob.
She stroked his hair:
“I have so longed for you, Noll—it has been very lonely. The little one——”
Noll was sobbing like a child.
She bent down with the babe, lifted Noll’s face in her hand and kissed him:
“Hush, Noll, dear heart,” she said—“you mustn’t do that. This is no time for tears. We have come into our kingdom.” She laughed with tears in the laugh. “And it is so near the stars.”
“I am glad to be home,” he said. And he added with a sad laugh: “It does not make me giddy being near the stars, sweetheart—I have lived up there before—with you.”
She stroked his hair:
“Come,” she said—“she is fast asleep.”
She led him to a small bed. She bent over it to turn down the blankets and sheets and tucked the little one away, her red-brown hair falling about the sleeping child.
He knelt down by the little white cot, a strange singing at his heart, his limbs all a-tremble, and, putting out his hand, touchedthe tiny hand of the sleeping child, who opened small warm fingers and clasped his thumb.
His eyes watched the little one hungrily.
Betty sat down sideways on the cot and gazed at them.
“I wonder what you think of her, Noll,” she said.
“She is very beautiful,” he said.
Betty laughed gently:
“You wouldn’t think it, Noll; but she has her faults,” she said. “It’s no use disguising these things, you are bound to discover them—she is self-willed, tyrannical, unscrupulous—ah, how she tramples one’s heart under her woolly little shoes!—she is greedy, frets under opposition, is ridiculously conceited about her mother, I am afraid will be as arrogant about her father as he is about himself, and altogether displays a lack of modesty and of ladylike reserve that causes me the gravest anxiety about her moral attributes.... You would never be able to disown her, Noll—she has all your vices.”
Noll smiled as the tears trickled down his face:
“I am afraid, Betty,” said he—“that a mother’s disparagements are but veiled praise.”
He held her hand in his.
They sat so for a long while.
As he gazed down upon the little one, it came to him that his mother had so looked down upon him, with a mighty hunger at her heart—that his every pain had been a pain to her—his every smile a smile in her heart. And what had he given in return? He felt now the desolation it must have wrought in the silent mother’s heart when he eagerly left the house and sallied forth to his cubhood, unrealizing that his empty place echoed with the sound of a dead child’s laughter and the merriment of the days of his innocence.
Would this little one so discard him—and Betty?
Thus, in this cradle was the beginning of that open confidence between him and his mother that lit their love from that time. The grandchild leads the wandering feet home again.
The tears welled into Noll’s eyes, and his lip trembled.
Betty stroked his hand:
“Hush, Noll—I have wanted you. That is enough, isn’t it?” He bowed his head.
“Noll,” said Betty—“thou wilt be kind to her.... If she lose me she has only you.” And she added after awhile: “The child whose spirit is broken cannot be of the Masterfolk.”
Noll lifted her fingers to his lips.
Betty bent forward and kissed him; she laughed happily:
“Noll,” said she—“Eve did well when she flung away Paradise to know the love of a little child.”
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.