"We had bweakfast--nurse said I--(long pause for breath)--was dood girl; Auntie Vi"let came; I dwew with my pencil."
"Say "drew," not "dwew.""
"Drew."
All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the child"s heart.... Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their life--this is only true of _some_ old maids; there are very delightful ones--to devote to fancies and microscopic imitations. It was astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid"s life loomed the figure of Rose, the rag doll.
"If it weren"t for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some sense out of the child."
"I think it"s a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll so much."
"Well, mum, it"d be difficult to take it from her now. She"s that wrapped in it." ... And so she was.... Rose stood to Angelina for so much more than Rose.
"Oh, Wosie, _when_ will he come again.... P"r"aps never. And I"m forgetting. I can"t remember at all about the funny water and the twee with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, _you_ "member--Whisper." And Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.
And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none were more strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon hour in the gardens. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a lady of voracious appet.i.te for life with, at the moment, but slender opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive hand--Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of fancy--the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina"s hand; her eyes (they had a "peering" effect, as though they were always searching for something beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went, Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a little faster than she conveniently could.
Miss Emily disliked the gardens, and would have greatly preferred that nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even the statues of "Sir Benjamin Bundle" and "General Sir Robinson Cleaver"
seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina"s eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing, intimate invitation. "I shall get back--I shall get back.... He"ll come and take me; I"ll remember all the old things," she thought. She and Rose--what a time they might have if only---- She glanced up at her aunt.
"Look at that nice little boy, Angelina," Aunt Emily said. "See how good----" But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily"s black hat at one corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.
Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose b.u.mped against her as she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop....
She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all its scents and sounds, pa.s.sed on above her head. She was conscious that a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more completely than she had ever been before.
"Oh, you naughty little girl--you _naughty_ girl," she heard her aunt say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her face.
She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child"s silence; Aunt Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call "a pretty figure of fun" with her hat askew, her hair blown "anyway," and a small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.
Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front door, over the dark stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet"s voice was heard calling, "Is that you, Emily? Tea"s been waiting some time."
It was nurse"s afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but through the open, window came the evening sounds of the happy Square.
Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. "Now say you"re sorry, you wicked child!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
"Sowwy," came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.
"Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry."
"I"m velly sowwy."
"What made you run away like that?" Angelina said nothing. "Come, now!
Didn"t you know it was very wicked?"
"Yes."
"Well, why did you do it, then?"
"Don"t know."
"Don"t say "don"t know" like that. You must have had some reason. Don"t look at the doll like that. Put the doll down." But this Angelina would not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a large place in her mind for many weeks. It were as though she, Miss Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of the dancing, mocking gardens behind her, flamed into sudden, trembling rage.
She stepped forward, s.n.a.t.c.hed Rose from Angelina"s arms, crossed the room and had pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the G.o.ds for vengeance, then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human being to watch.
V
Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent catastrophe, and, as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now "dreaming" as she so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To any one of a more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of "a sensible, hearty"
nature; moreover, her "afternoon" had left her with happy reminiscences of her own charms and their effect on the opposite s.e.x.
She had, however, her moment.... She had left the room to fetch something. Returning she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight, something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.
Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening.
Nurse, as she had often a.s.sured her friends, "was not cursed with imagination," but now fear held her so that she could not stir nor move save that her hand trembled against the wall paper. The chatter of the fire, the shouts of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of St. Matthew"s for evensong, all these things came into the room.
Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat back in her chair.
"Heavens! Miss "Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!"
Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. "Auntie Emily,"
she said, "put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie"s saved.... He"s just come and told me."
"Lord, Miss "Lina, how you talk!" The room was right again now just as, a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light, and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child"s eyes of some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.
""Tis company she"s wanting, poor lamb," she thought, "all this being alone.... Fair gives one the creeps."
She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in, hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the a.s.sured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.
"There, Angelina," she said. "I oughtn"t to have burnt your doll. I"m sorry. Here"s a beautiful new one."
Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down into the Square.
The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a white speck far below, and struck the pavement.
Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at her aunt.
CHAPTER IV
BIM ROCHESTER
I
This is the story of Bim Rochester"s first Odyssey. It is a story that has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim) Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.
A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the largest house in March Square--the large grey one at the corner by Lent Street--and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs.
Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her boots unb.u.t.toned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on.
Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City and at his club, but was fond of his wife, and admired what he called her "energy." "My wife"s splendid," he would say to his friends, "knows the whole of London, I believe. The _people_ we have in our house!" He would watch, sometimes, the strange, noisy parties, and then would retire to bridge at his club with a little sigh of pride.