THE cousins had retired. Cousin Simpshall disliked scenes, because they upset her digestion; and Cousin Jane never, if she could help it, assisted at the orgies of authority which Uncle Harold and Aunt Emily called “a good talking to.”
Daphne faced these two alone.
“Have you put her to bed?” Aunt Emily asked. “Yes,” said Daphne.
“And there she stays,” said the aunt. “It’s a pity she has been so spoiled. But we must try to remedy that.”
“Oh, that’s easily remedied,” smiled Uncle Harold. “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” said Daphne, in spite of herself.
“We shan’t stop at talking, I assure you, my dear Daphne, if we find that the child can’t control herself.” Aunt Emily smiled like a cut lemon. “Why, her language! Anyone would think she was a little fiend.”
“She’s such a baby,” said Daphne.
“That’s just it; she’ll have to learn not to be such a baby. Your Uncle Harold and I have been talking it over, and we’ve decided what to do. Now, it’s no use your making a fuss. We’ve quite made up our minds.”
“It’s not a bit of use making a fuss; we shan’t take any notice,” said Uncle Harold, genially.
Daphne flushed and paled. What had these people decided on?
“Uncle Hamley” she said. She had not meant to bring her reserves into the encounter so soon, but the enemy was pressing her close.
“Oh, we foresaw something like this the second day you were here—the day that child broke the saucer—and your uncle wrote to your Uncle Hamley, and he leaves the matter to us. So you needn’t count on him,” said Aunt Emily, spitefully.
“Well,” said Daphne, her back to the wall, “what is it you’re going to do to Doris?”
“We’re going to send her to school.”
Daphne’s eyes opened; she gasped. So there wasn’t going to be a fight after all. She hid her face in her hands and her shoulders shook with the hysterical laughter of a great relief.
“Come,” said Uncle Harold, “don’t cry.”
“Ah,” said Aunt Emily, complacently, “I thought you’d take it like that.”
Daphne knew so little how to take it, how to avoid letting them see that their victory was hers too, since to let them see this was to endanger it, that with one sob not wholly simulated she turned to fly.
But, “Not so fast,” said Uncle Harold. “Your aunt has written a note to the Reverend Mr. Blissop, asking him to advise a cheap and suitable school at a distance.”
“Why at a distance?” Daphne asked, through her fingers.
“Well, if you must have it,” said Aunt Emily, “we don’t think your influence is good for the child.”
“And why cheap?” the girl asked, dropping her hands abruptly.
“Why, she wasn’t crying after all,” said Uncle Harold, visibly disappointed.
“Because your Uncle Hamley finds that you aren’t such an heiress as you made out, that’s why,” said Aunt Emily, “if you insist on knowing all about everything. Sixty pounds a year is all there’ll be. And for us to keep you at all is only charity. That’s why, miss.” Aunt Emily’s face burned redly.
“Charity,” said Daphne, turning pale. “Oh, do you think I’ll stay another minute in your house after that? We’ll go now—this minute.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” said Mrs. Veale, with the maddening calm of the fully justified. “You’re in our charge, placed there by your guardian. You can’t go.”
“We could call in the police, you know,” said Uncle Harold, with relish.
Daphne spent a full minute in hating her relations. When she spoke it was calmly.
“I’ve tried to be nice to you,” she said, “and I’ll go on trying—but please don’t talk about charity. I’m sorry if I was rude—but nobody could stand that, could they?”
“A great many people have to stand it, and so you’ll find,” said Mrs. Veale. “However, I’m glad you’ve apologised. It was the least you could do. Now put on your things and take this note to Mr. Blissop.”
Daphne hesitated. She wanted to go back to the child. On the other hand, she wanted to go out—to go out alone. This did not happen often. She did not want to lose the chance. Because, when she went out alone there was always time, somehow—even if it had to be stretched elastic with hansoms—to call at her father’s old lodging and to ask whether there were any letters for Miss Carmichael. There had been one, a round robin from the girls, written on the day of her departure, warm with the emotion of parting and regret. But there had been none from Him.
She took the Reverend Mr. Blissop’s letter, caught her hat from its peg in the hall, and went.
“There, look at that now!” said Aunt Emily: “gone out with nothing on—not even her gloves!”
“I should like a teaspoonful of sal volatile in a glass of water,” said Uncle Harold. “These set-outs make my heart go anyhow.”
“Don’t you let yourself be upset,” said Aunt Emily. “We’ll break her spirit for her. Here’s your sal volatile.”
“Perhaps a tiddy drop of brandy would be better?” Uncle Harold fluttered.
“Oh, I should take it now it’s poured out and all,” said his sister.
Cousin Simpshall put her head round the door. “Got it over?” she asked.
“Oh, yes—come in. You’ve only got to be firm with a girl of that character and she gives in at once.”
Mrs. Simpshall came in.
“Did she—did she cry?” asked Cousin Claringbold, following her.
“Pretended to,” said Uncle Harold, sipping his opal drink. “Oh, we shall get her in hand easily enough when the child’s gone away to school—they abet each other. That’s what I say.”
“You’re never going to part them?” It was Cousin Jane who asked, and she spoke almost fiercely.
“Hoity, toity, Jane, remember who you’re speaking to, if you please.”
“I beg your pardon, Harold, I’m sure,” said Cousin Jane, “but”
“But a fiddlestick end,” said Aunt Emily. “You leave me to deal with her. A good talking to now and then, and we shan’t have any more trouble with her. Once the child’s at school”
“She’ll be dull without the child,” Cousin Simpshall settled her feet on the hassock, “but anything for a quiet life. Good gracious me, what’s that?”
“It sounds like somebody clapping outside,” said Cousin Jane.
“Ring the bell, Jane,” said Aunt Emily.
Jane rang; and no one came. It took the furious touch of Aunt Emily’s hand on the bell-handle to produce a sound loud enough to be answered by a fluttered parlourmaid, whose titters strove with her fear of her mistress.
“What’s all that noise, Marchant?”
Marchant tittered again.
“It’s the people in the road, ma’am.”
“What’s the matter with them?”
“They’re watching Miss Doris, ma’am.”
“But Miss Doris is in her room.”
“No, she isn’t, ma’am; she’s out on the leads in her nightgown, with all Miss Daphne’s jewellery on, and she’s dancing fancy steps with the Japanese umbrella out of the fireplace; and she’s locked the door so that we can’t get at her. And all the neighbourhood collecting to look and laugh at her. I told her to go in at once, and she said, ‘Do you know who you’re speaking to?’ and the way she said it was the very moral of you, ma’am, if you’ll excuse me saying so. And Parsons can’t persuade her to go in, and Cook’s so sore with laughing, she’s no good at all. Miss Doris has taken us all off, ma’am—it’s not only you. I never saw such a show in my life.”
“Harold,” said Mrs. Veale, “you must get through the bathroom window onto the leads and bring that child in.”
“That I will not,” said he, quite crossly. “Send for the police or a fire-escape to bring her down. I’m not going to risk my neck on the leads for her or you, or anyone else. So now you know.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Emily; “then I shall do it myself.”
Daphne came slowly up the road. There had been no letter from him. There never would be. And she had left Doris alone while she went to see. Serve her right that there was no letter.
There was a little crowd at the corner by the house. A butcher’s cart, two or three nursemaids with perambulators, a workman or so, a few school girls and a fringe of boys. A stiff policeman was asking them to “Move along, please.”
“Is anything the matter?” asked Daphne. Her heart suddenly leaped and then sank.
“Only a naughty little gell, miss,” said the policeman. “Now then, move along there, it’s all over Got out on the leads, she did, and began play-acting in her night-gownd; They’ve got her in now, miss. Move along there, if you please.”
Daphne tore up the steps and beat with the knocker.
“Doris?” she gasped, pushing past the maid.
“She’s in bed, miss, now,” said Marchant meaningfully.
Aunt Emily suddenly blocked the way.
“Come in here, Daphne,” she said, and caught the girl’s arm in a hard hand that trembled.
Bewildered, Daphne yielded. Next moment she was in the sitting-room, and Aunt Emily had her back against the shut door.
“Oh, what’s the matter?” she cried. “Is Doris all right?”
“Oh, she’s all right,” said Uncle Harold.
“She’s been an extremely naughty little girl,” said the aunt, tremulous with passion; “got out on the leads and collected a crowd with all your gewgaws and a Jap umbrella. Locked her door, so that we couldn’t get at her. I had to climb through the bathroom window to get her in.”
“That was kind of you,” said Daphne. “Thank you, Aunt Emily. Thank you so very much. Of course it was frightfully dangerous. I’ll go and speak to her at once.”
Aunt Emily’s bosom heaved.
“She was making a mock of everyone in the house, with butcher boys looking on.”
“I know,” said Daphne; “you know she is such a clever mimic.”
“She won’t mimic again in a hurry in this house,” said Uncle Harold, with a sinister sweetness. “I don’t think she will—do you think she will, sister?”
“What do you mean?” Daphne suddenly saw that Aunt Emily had not been kind—had perhaps “Let me go to Doris.” She moved to the door. Her aunt’s heavy hand pushed her back.
“Not now,” she said. “Come, Daphne, be reasonable. The child must have a little time for it to sink into her mind, or it won’t do her any good.”
“What won’t do her any good?” The girl’s heart was trembling like shaken water.
“It’s entirely for her own sake.” Mrs. Veale was a little frightened at what looked out at her from Daphne’s eyes.
“What have you done to her?”
“I’ve corrected her,” said the aunt, shortly.
“With a slipper,” said Uncle Harold; “and it ought to have been done the day she broke the saucer. It saves trouble in the end. I’ve said so all along.”
“You’ve whipped her?” Daphne breathed the words very softly.
“For her own good,” the aunt repeated.
“Please,” said Daphne, still very soft and gentle, “may I go to her now?”
“Not just yet.” Aunt Emily was pleased to see Daphne so calm. “Let her think it over, and then you can explain to her that it’s no use her setting up her will against ours. And then when she’s begged my pardon nicely we’ll say no more about it.”
“Please,” said Daphne, very pale but very sweet and gentle, “mayn’t I go to her now? I’ll promise you that she shall beg your pardon—anything you like. Only let me go to her now.”
“No, no, young lady,” Uncle Harold put in his word. “Pity to spoil the good effect of discipline. Wait till after tea.”
“Mayn’t I go now?” Daphne’s voice was sweeter than ever.
“Not yet,” said Aunt Emily; “your uncle’s right and”
“Then” said Daphne; and caught her aunt round the waist, spun her round and seated her suddenly on the knee of Uncle Harold, pushed her back into his chest, turned and swept out of the room swift and fierce as a flame that licks up spirit. They heard her feet on the stairs—heard the bedroom door bang, the key turn.
“Out of my house they go, the pair of them, to-to-morrow morning!” The panting aunt disengaged herself from the stricken uncle.
“That’s so like you, Emily,” said the uncle: “turn away a hundred and twenty pounds a year for the sake of indulging your tantrums.”
“Why—you said yourself”—the retort came instantly. He rejoined. One leaves them to it.
Upstairs the room is dark. They have closed the shutters before they locked the child in.
“It’s me, my Dormouse—it’s your Daffy.” No answer.
The light from the landing shows Doris on the bed, the jewellery scattered about, some still fast to the little white nightgown. Daphne takes the key from outside, bangs the door, locks it.
“It’s me, my heart.”
No one answers.
The girls flings open the shutters. There lies Doris among the bright ornaments. They have tied her with box-cords criss-cross over and under the bed. She is quite still.
“If they have killed her?”
In that moment Daphne is a murderess.
Her hands are quite steady as she undoes the knots. The cords have left no mark on the child’s arms and legs. Therefore she cannot have struggled after they tied her up and left her.
Now Daphne has her in her arms. The child sighs and throws up a loving arm—wakes, sobs and clings.
“Oh, Daffy—you said they shouldn’t, and they did—they did!”
“Never mind, sweet. They never shall again—never, never, never!”
“Oh, Daffy, I screamed for you—I did. Why didn’t you come?”
“I wasn’t in the house, heart’s dearest.”
“I did do everything I could for them not to. I said I was sorry, and I scratched and bit, really I did. And then they tied me up with a box rope—Uncle Harold fetched it; she told him to. And then I felt so funny and it got dark quite suddenly. And then they’d gone, and I knew you’d come back. And so I went to sleep. Oh, you won’t let them do it again!”
“You shall never see them again,” said Daphne. “Go to sleep again now, my pigeon. Daffy’s got you.”
The child, worn out with rage and pain, soon slept. Daphne knelt by her, and prayed for courage. She did not pray for patience. It was not she who had been beaten.
Tea was brought up surreptitiously by Marchant. Daphne opened the door a cautious inch.
“You’re leaving next week, aren’t you,” she whispered.
“Yes, miss.”
“Then come to me when everybody’s in bed and I’ll show you how to earn a sovereign.”
Marchant earned it—easily. There was no hard work to be done. Only to help Daphne to carry down her luggage and Doris’s—to put up the Carter Paterson card, and give the boxes to the carrier when he passed at eight in the morning. This she did.
“How was I to know?” she defended herself to her mistress later. “Of course we knew there’d been a rumpus, and Miss Carmichael asked me to send off the boxes first thing; so of course I did. How did she get them down? I helped her get them down. Leave at once? Only too glad to get out of a house like this where they beats little children till young ladies are driven to run away to protect the little dears. I shouldn’t be surprised if the police wasn’t on to you for this, for of all the hard places—well—I am going, aren’t I? But I’ll take my belongings if you please.” All this crescendo all fortissimo.
Aunt Emily went into the breakfast room and sat down suddenly in an abandon unusual with her. “The girl,” she said, “has run away, and taken the child with her.”
“Well,” said Cousin Simpshall, “I’m not surprised. You’ll set the police after her, I suppose?”
“Too public,” said Uncle Harold; “a private detective, perhaps.”
“I wonder,” said Cousin Jane, “what Uncle Hamley will say.”
When Daphne eloped with the Dormouse everything went as smoothly as though it had been rehearsed a hundred times. Marchant was purchasable, sympathetic even to the point of an early cup of tea, and milk for the child; the carrier was punctual. There was no “going out into the night with the unconscious child clasped to her breast.” The child and she stepped out very softly in stockinged feet, put on their shoes in the garden and walked quietly away from the house before six o’clock. They saw a policeman, but he did not see them. They had only to wait two hours and a half for the boxes which the carrier took to the station. And Doris slept through these, in her sister’s arms on a seat on the fringe of Blackheath. Then they took train. Daphne Knew that her boxes would betray her if she left them at any ordinary station. She took them to the Globe Parcel Office and sent them to Lewisham station to be called for. The aunt would inquire there, first of all, and having inquired once, vainly would never inquire again. So Daphne argued, and rightly. And the joy of successful organising thrilled her through and through.
The Dormouse, refreshed by sleep, was charmed with the elopement. In the Borough Daphne pawned the little diamond heart that Colombe had sent. Pawning was a new sensation. She rather enjoyed it. In books people always blushed and suffered agonies on their first visit to “Uncle’s”—oh, she knew the slang, be sure. But to Daphne it was an adventure—a thrilling incident. She noted everything, from the bundles stowed in pigeon-holes at the back of the shop to the pink face of the young Jew who wrote out her ticket. “Can’t give you more than twenty quid,” he said to the delighted amazement of Daphne, who had not hoped for more than five. “Oh, the naughty Colombe,” she told herself; and felt very grateful for that naughtiness. But for that she might have been pawning her dead mother’s trinkets. She hated the thought of that. But Colombe’s heart—Colombe would enjoy, as much as Daphne did, the spirited adventure in which her diamonds were playing so prominent a part.
“Will Colombe like your selling it?” Doris asked.
“It ain’t sold, miss,” said the Jew; “you can get it back any minute you like.”
And that, of course, was a great comfort.
In Holborn she bought white jackets for herself and the child. The inquiries would be for the clothes they had had—not for new ones. And she had the wit to see that smart, new, showy clothes would be a better disguise than any attempt at frowsy shabbiness. Besides, everyone was wearing white jackets that year; and so far, she and Doris had not had white jackets.
In Oxford Street they had a bun and milk lunch-breakfast, and Daphne there asked the girl who waited on them where Bloomsbury was. Delighted to find that some instinct or chance had led her to the very district of which her aunt least approved, she began to look among its streets and squares for a home for herself and the Dormouse.
“We’ll find a nest very soon, my pigeon,” she said, “and then we’ll go in a boat and see the trees and flowers.” And the child skipped joyously, in her new white jacket and slapped the pavement with her best buckled shoes.
But Bloomsbury nests do not easily please one whose life-nest has been in the clean quiet of an old convent, whose only strange perch has been in the well-ordered cleanly comfort of a middle-class suburban house. Daphne hated all the rooms she saw. They were dark, they were stuffy, they were frowsy and fusty. They smelt as if the windows were never opened, and they looked as though the window curtains were never taken down and me carpets never taken up.
“We shall have to try some more countrified place,” she told herself. “Nicholas Nickleby had a cottage at Bow; and Mr. Wemmick lived at Walworth.”
Destiny spared her the disillusionment. A big house, very newly painted, its door kept open by a brick, wooed her eyes with its fresh clean paint and an air of having just been thoroughly done up. A very large board was on its front. “Rooms to let,” it said. And rooms there were, all the rooms of a very handsome old family mansion, with a stone staircase and carved mantelpieces and elaborately moulded ceilings. But even for the third floor, with its three pleasant rooms, the man in charge asked a rent she couldn’t dream of. And the rooms were not furnished. And the fourth floor was let.
“It’s no use,” said she, sadly. “I can’t possibly pay thirty shillings a week.”
“There’s the attic,” said the man doubtfully; “that’s only thirteen”
He opened a door and led the way up a narrow flight of stairs, opened a trap door and vanished. Daphne following, stepped out into a great bare room, lighted by a row of low windows and by a skylight.
“Artist’s studio,” said the man—“fine light.”
“Yes,” breathed Daphne, “very fine. But the room’s enormous.”
“The more the merrier,” said the man, vaguely.
“But the cisterns!” said Daphne. There were no fewer than three cisterns, and they occupied an eighth part of the big room.
“Keep you cool,” said the man.
“I don’t think—such a lot of furniture,” said the girl.
“Oh, do, Daffy,” said the child; “it’s got four fireplaces.”
It had.
“They was four rooms,” said the man—“servants’ bedrooms, I expect, thrown into one for convenience in letting. No real artis’ ’ud mind th’ cisterns,” he added, meaningfully.
“Do—do the chimneys smoke, any of them?” It was the only sensible, grown-up sort of question she could think of. And she wished to be sensible and grown up.
“Not as I knows on. Don’t suppose there’s much soot in ’em.” He bent and with one eye looked up the nearest chimney. “Clean as a whistle,” he said.
“You really like it?” Daphne asked the child.
“I love it,” Doris answered.
“Then we’ll take it, please,” said Daphne.
A brief business interval followed, and then
“And now we’ll go and buy our furniture—our very own furniture,” said Daphne; and they went.
There are side streets, and back streets, and odd criss-cross streets in Bloomsbury where second-hand furniture may be bought. It takes a long time to buy. A table, two chairs, a kettle—“and oh, Daffy, a looking-glass to do your golden hair in,”—two cups and saucers, a teapot, two jugs—“the ones like Indian corn – yes, they are pretty, Daff—I don’t care what you say—just peeping out of the green leaves lovely”—four towels, two tablecloths, blankets, four sheets, four pillow-cases, a jug and basin, a chest of drawers.
“Oh, dear,” said Daphne, “I had no idea things cost so much!”
The bed she bought in the Tottenham Court Road. “That, at least, must be new,” she said.
The furniture made little impression on the vast emptiness of their new home.
“We’ll get curtains tomorrow,” said Daphne, “and a fender and a poker and coals and a scuttle and pails. And now comes the tug of war.”
The tug of war was the recovery of the boxes.
“What am I to do with you?” Daphne wondered. “If I take you to Lewisham to get the boxes, we may be taken alive. And I can’t leave you here alone.”
“Yes, you can,” said Doris, eagerly. “I’ll play at being a mouse—not a dor one. I’ll be as good as anything. You go, my Daffy-down-dilly, my lovally lily, and get the boxes. Only go now, so as you get back before dark.”
And Daphne went, though with some misgivings. The trains were tiresome, the hour late, and the soft summer twilight was thick in the streets, where already the lamps were lighted, when the cabman, staggering under the biggest of the boxes, went before Daphne up the stairs to the trap door.
“Lorlumme!” said he, “if I ever see such a place.” He slammed the box down on the bare floor and wiped his forehead, breathing hard. Beyond his breathing was a silence that chilled Daphne to the bone.
“Doris,” she called, and pushed up past the cabman into the great, grey, empty room. For it was empty—Doris was not there. The cabman blundered down after other boxes. There was the furniture in the room—the poor little “sticks” that she and the child had bought together. And silence. Nothing else.