"I"ve been for a walk, daddy," she said, and then, rather frightened at her boldness, tumbled up on the next step. He went forward to catch her.
"Hold up," he said, held her for a moment, and then hurried, confused and rather agitated, into his dark sanctum. These were, very nearly, the first words that they had ever, in the course of their lives together, interchanged. Munty Ross was uneasy with grown-up persons (unless he was discussing business with them), but that discomfort was nothing to the uneasiness that he felt with children. Little girls (who certainly looked at him as though he were an ogre) frightened him quite horribly; moreover, Mrs. Munty had, for a great number of years, pursued a policy with regard to her husband that was not calculated to make him bright and easy in any society. "Poor old Munty," she would say to her friends, "it"s not all his fault----" It was, as a fact, very largely hers. He had never been an eloquent man, but her playful derision of his uncouthness slew any little seeds of polite conversation that might, under happier conditions, have grown into brilliant blossom. It had been understood from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father"s world. He would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.
"What"s a child want with all this?" he had ventured once to say.
"Hardly your business, my dear," his wife had told him. "The child"s clothes are marvellously cheap considering. I don"t know how Florice does it for the money." He resented nothing--it was not his way--but he did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his daughter was praised, that "the kid will grow up with the most tremendous ideas."
He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father. "She might just want to see me occasionally. But I"d only frighten her, I suppose, if she did."
Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in the worth and goodness of no one at all. He had, for a brief wild moment, been in love with his wife, but she had taken care to kill that, "the earlier the better." "My dear," she would say to a chosen friend, "what Munty"s like when he"s romantic!" She never, after the first month of their married life together, caught a glimpse of that side of him.
Now, however, he did permit his mind to linger over that vision of his little daughter tumbling on the stairs. He wondered what had made her do it. He was astonished at the difference that it made to him.
To Nancy also it had made a great difference. She wished that she had stayed there on the stairs a little longer to hold a more important conversation. She had thought of her father as "all horrid"--now his very contrast to her little world pleased and interested her. It may also be that, although she was young, she had even now a picture in her mind of her father"s loneliness. She may have seen into her mother"s att.i.tude with an acuteness much older than her actual years.
She thought now continually about her father. She made little plans to meet him, but these meetings were not, as a rule, successful, because so often he was down in the city. She would wait at the end of her afternoon walk on the stairs.
"Come along, Miss Nancy, do. What are you hanging about there for?"
"Nothing."
"You"ll be disturbing your mother."
"Just a minute."
She peered anxiously, her little head almost held by the railings of the banisters; she gazed down into black, mysterious depths wherein her father might be hidden. She was driven to all this partly by some real affection that had hitherto found no outlet, partly by a desire for adventure, but partly, also, by some force that was behind her and quite recognised by her. It was as though she said: "If I"m nice to my father and make friends with him, then you must promise that I shan"t be frightened in the middle of the night, that the clock won"t tick too loudly, that the blind won"t flap, that it won"t all be too dark and dreadful." She knew that she had made this compact.
Then she had several little encounters with her father. She met him one day on the doorstep. He had come up whilst she was standing there.
"Had a good walk?" he said nervously. She looked at him and laughed.
Then he went hurriedly indoors.
On the second occasion she had come down to be shown off at a luncheon party. She had been praised and petted, and then, in the hall, had run into her father"s arms. He was in his top-hat, going down to his old city, looking, the nurse thought, "just like a monkey." But Nancy stayed, holding on to the leg of his trousers. Suddenly he bent down and whispered:
"Were they nice to you in there?"
"Yes. Why weren"t you there?"
"I was. I left. Got to go and work."
"What sort of work?"
"Making money for your clothes."
"Take me too."
"Would you like to come?"
"Yes. Take me."
He bent down and kissed her, but, suddenly hearing the voices of the luncheon-party, they separated like conspirators. He crept out of the house.
After that there was no question of their alliance. The sort of affection that most children feel for old, ugly, and battered dolls, Nancy now felt for her father, and the warmth of this affection melted her dried, stubborn little soul, caught her up into visions, wonders, sympathies that had seemed surely denied to her for ever.
"Now sit still, Miss Nancy, while I do up the back."
"Oh, silly old clothes!" said Nancy.
Then one day she declared,
"I want to be dirty like those children in the garden."
"And a nice state your mother would be in!" cried the amazed nurse.
"Father wouldn"t," Nancy thought. "Father wouldn"t mind."
There came at last the wonderful day when her father penetrated into the nursery. He arrived furtively, very much, it appeared, ashamed of himself and exceedingly shy of the nurse. He did not remain very long.
He said very little; a funny picture he had made with his blue face, his black shiny hair, his fat little legs, and his anxious, rather stupid eyes. He sat rather awkwardly in a chair, with Nancy on his knee; he wrung his hair for things to say.
The nurse left them for a moment alone together, and then Nancy whispered:
"Daddy, let"s go into the gardens together, you and me; just us--no silly old nurse--one mornin"." (She found the little "g" still a difficulty.)
"Would you like that?" he whispered back. "I don"t know I"d be much good in a garden."
"Oh, you"ll be all right," she a.s.serted with confidence. "I want to dig."
She"d made up her mind then to that. As Hannibal determined to cross the Alps, as Napoleon set his feet towards Moscow, so did Nancy Ross resolve that she would, in the company of her father, dig in the gardens. She stroked her father"s hand, rubbed her head upon his sleeve; exactly as she would have caressed, had she been another little girl, the damaged features of her old rag doll. She was beginning, however, for the first time in her life, to love some one other than herself.
He came, then, quite often to the nursery. He would slip in, stay a moment or two, and slip out again. He brought her presents and sweets which made her ill. And always in the presence of Mrs. Munty they appeared as strangers.
The day came when Nancy achieved her desire--they had their great adventure.
IV
A fine summer morning came, and with it, in a bowler hat, at the nursery door, the hour being about eleven, Mr. Munty Boss.
"I"ll take Nancy this morning, nurse," he said, with a strange, choking little "cluck" in his throat. Now, the nurse, although, as I"ve said, of a shining and superficial appearance, was no fool. She had watched the development of the intrigue; her att.i.tude to the master of the house was composed of pity, patronage, and a rather motherly interest. She did not see how her mistress could avoid her att.i.tude: it was precisely the att.i.tude that she would herself have adopted in that position, but, nevertheless, she was sorry for the man. "So out of it as he is!" Her maternal feelings were uppermost now. "It"s nice of the child," she thought, "and him so ugly."
"Of course, sir," she said.
"We shall be back in about an hour." He attempted an easy indifference, was conscious that he failed, and blushed.
He was aware that his wife was out.
He carried off his prize.
The gardens were very full on this lovely summer morning, but Nancy, without any embarra.s.sment or confusion, took charge of the proceedings.