“DORIS!” Daphne called softly in the still twilight. “Dormouse!” The corners of the room were full of shadows. “Are you asleep?” She made sure of the corners. There was nothing there. Nothing on the naked bed.
The cabman came heavily up the stairs, dumped down a box, and disappeared again. When he had brought up all the luggage, she asked:
“How much?”
“Ten shillings,” said the man, very promptly, “and all them stairs. I wouldn’t do it again for thribble the money.”
“Here,” she said, and gave him a gold coin.
“What,” she asked suddenly, “would you do if you lost a child?”
“I’ve lost two, if you come to that,” said the cabman, hoarsely.
“And did you get them back?”
The man stared at her in the deepening dusk. “They died, miss,” he said; “scarlet fever, it was.”
“Oh,” said Daphne. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything to make you unhappy. But we’re all alone in London, and I’ve lost my little sister. I left her here when I went for the boxes, and now she’s gone. What can I do?”
“Police,” said the cabman. “I should pop round to the station if I was you. ’Spect she’s run out. Children are that venturesome nowadays.”
“Will you show me the way to the police? I’ll pay you.”
“I don’t want no pay for a hact of common kindness,” said the cabman, and he fingered the gold coin in a momentary hesitation. Then he decided that she could doubtless afford it. If it had been four half-crowns he might have left one—or even two—lying about careless on the floor, but the gold coin Explanations were habitually difficult to him. And the point was a delicate one.
“You come along er me,” he said. “I’ll ride you along to the station in my keb and never charge you a halfpenny.”
“You are good,” Daphne’s voice broke on what was almost a sob. “You see, we’ve only got each other; we haven’t any friends in England. And I haven’t got any money to pay detectives, like people do in books. Let’s go now, will you?”
Fingering the half-sovereign, and greatly affected by Daphne’s distress, the cabman stumped down the stairs. She followed. He was waiting for her on the landing.
“’Ush!” he said, as her noiseless footfall stopped beside him; “there’s a kid a talking in there.” There was a light on the landing. She saw that he pointed to a door. Almost before she saw it she heard, and the door was open, its handle in her hand.
“Oh, here she is!” cried Doris’s little voice, and Doris’s arms and legs were curled round her sister. “Oh, Daffy, I thought you was never coming and”
“It’s all right,” said Daphne to the cabman. “Thank you a thousand times. I hope if ever you’re in trouble someone will be as kind to you as you’ve been to me. Good night.” She got a hand free from Doris and held it out.
The cabman shook it loosely.
“Welcome, I’m sure,” he said. And achieved the difficult feat of getting away with the half sovereign. It was difficult, but he did it.
“He’s been so nice to me,” Doris was saying; “he’s a real dear.”
“He,” a very tall boy, with very nice eyes, was standing in the middle of the empty room, looking at them, cheerfully.
“Thank you,” said Daphne, “but I was dreadfully frightened when I found she wasn’t there.”
“Of course you were,” said the boy, eagerly. “I am so frightfully sorry, but—”
“You see,” said Doris, both arms round her sister’s waist, “the room was big enough for so many other people, and our furniture seemed to be getting littler and littler, and something kept on laughing at me in the dark—he says it was only cisterns, so I went and sat on the stairs where the gas was—and then he came and was nice to me.”
“I brought her in here,” said the boy, “because of the gas being here—there’s none upstairs. I’ve taken these rooms, and I’m waiting for my things to come; so we kept each other company. I don’t know how we missed hearing you come in.”
“It must have been when we were looking out at the tree,” said Doris, turning to where a great ash crushed its leaves against a window.
“Mayn’t I light a candle for you?” said the boy.
“I—oh, I haven’t got any candles—how stupid of me! Come, Dormouse—we’ll go and buy candles.”
“Let me,” said the boy. “And isn’t there anything else you want? Have you got things to eat, and all that?”
“I couldn’t think of troubling you,” said Daphne, stiffly.
“I say, don’t,” he said. “You make me feel such a brute for frightening you about Doris. Do please pretend we’re on a desert island, and let me go down to the ship to bring up provisions.”
Daphne smiled, and the boy realised that he had not, till then, seen her.
“Thank you,” she said. “We want something to eat, and coals and candles and a pail and”
“Look here,” said the boy, “it’s too late for you and Doris to be out alone. Let’s all go together. My name’s Winston, and I really am respectable.”
“He’s a fairy prince, really,” said Doris; “he told me so.”
“I told her fairy tales, just to amuse her,” said Winston, apologetically. “I say, look here. Are you and she living here alone?”
“Yes,” said Doris; “at least we’re going to—just us two—isn’t it lovely?”
“Then we’re neighbours,” said he. “Look here—Miss—er?” He paused on the interrogation.
“Carmichael,” said Daphne.
“Miss Carmichael, the best thing we can do is to go and get something to eat.”
“Oh, do let’s,” said the Dormouse. “I’m all empty inside, like an air balloon.”
“I—I don’t know” Daphne could not but feel that this was perhaps a little too Bohemian, even for her.
“Do let’s go,” said Doris, and added with unerring instinct, “Aunt Emily would so hate us to.”
The other two laughed.
“Come,” said the nice boy. “The man can look out for my things, if they come, which I don’t think they ever wil. We’ll take a hansom, because Doris is tired, and we’ll go to a nice restaurant where they speak French, and you can fancy you’re in Paris.”
“Does somebody else really speak French in England?” said the child, “I thought only Daff and me did.”
“Is it very expensive?” Daphne prudently asked.
“Rather not,” said the nice boy, “or I shouldn’t know the way there. Do come, Miss Carmichael.”
“Do come, Daffy,” said the Dormouse. So they went.
“Isn’t it nice to have the new fairy tale man to take care of us?” said Doris, as she snuggled between the other two in a swift-going hansom. And Daphne had to own that it was. The dinner, though of the simplest that the Petit Riche produces, was a fairy feast to the child, none the less that she fell asleep in the middle of it, and during the later courses lay curled up, half on her chair and half on her sister’s lap, to the deep interest and pity of Madame Legae, most charming and welcoming of all hostesses.
“She is so tired,” said Daphne. “We got up this morning in the middle of the night, and she’s not used to it.”
“You came from the country, I suppose.”
“No,” said Daphne, and stopped dead.
“I did,” said the nice boy, so quickly that the pause was hardly a pause at all. “I’ve been working down in the Marshes the last six months. Do you know Romney Marsh? It’s simply—but if you don’t know it, it’s no good. It’s just flat fields, you know, and a few trees and hedges all blown crooked with the winter winds; and sheep and the sea on one side, and the low hills on the other, and the most gorgeous sunsets and mists and skies. Oh, you ought to see it. And you can walk for miles and miles and never see a soul.”
“But what work can you do there?” Daphne nearly asked, but stopped at the first three words.
“Oh—I try to draw, you know. One gets through a lot of work in a day of twenty-four hours that has nothing in it but work—and walking and sleeping.”
“I wish I had some work,” said Daphne.
“And you haven’t? I was so hoping you were an art student, and yet I knew you couldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t look like one. But almost all the girls who lodge alone about here are going in for something or other—painting or music or enamels or bookbinding or doctoring or something.”
“I wish I was,” said the girl again, “but my education’s been neglected.”
The nice boy laughed and heaped haricot beans on her plate.
“It’s awfully jolly for me,” he said, “having someone to dine with the very first evening after I get back. You’ll let me help you to get straight, won’t you? Things are so beastly when you’re all alone. You don’t know London very well, either, do you?”
“How do you know that?” Daphne was leaning her elbows on the table over the child’s head, and talking in her old school voice, the low compelling voice that the aunts and uncles had never heard. “Is ‘from the country’ stamped on me?”
“There’s something stamped on you,” said he, “that is battered out of London girls.”
“What do you mean?” said she.
“Do you know,” he said, “I am perfectly certain we are going to be friends. Don’t say we aren’t! I always know. Shall we make a compact to say what we like to each other, and not to be offended—and not to pretend to misunderstand—just for the sake of a cheap score off each other?”
“I like that,” Daphne told herself. “I do like that very much.” Aloud she said: “That’s a good compact, whether we’re friends or not.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t.” He filled up her glass from the half-bottle of cheap red wine. “Unless people are going to be friends it’s no use their making compacts or anything. You know I don’t think it’s worth while being just acquainted with people. I never want to talk to people unless I do want to talk to them.”
“No more do I,” said Daphne, thinking of the aunts and the rare visitors of the aunts.
“Well, let me see, where was I?—Water? Oh, let me Yes, I was going to say that a London girl, a nice London girl wouldn’t have been so sensible and manly about coming out to dinner with me.”
“I oughtn’t to have, you mean?”
“That’s just what I so very much don’t mean—that sounds like Henry James, doesn’t it? Don’t you see it’s your being so perfectly straight and splendid about that that makes me sure that we’re going to be friends. I know we are, even if you don’t think so now. Have you got a brother?”
“No,” said Daphne, “there’s only me and the Dormouse.” She bent her head a little over the little dark, heavy head, and suddenly remembered that other time when she had spoken with a stranger across the sleeping child. She flushed a slow scarlet.
“What will you like now? Nothing? Let’s have some coffee to wind up with. Do you mind if I smoke? Well, look here—I’m not going to offer to be your brother—nobody would believe it anyhow. I’m as black as ink, and you’re as fair as Apollo. But what do you think about being cousins? No doubt we are—distant cousins.”
“You take my breath away,” said Daphne, but she laughed.
“Ah, but don’t you see,” he said, “I’m serious. We’re going to be friends—just keep that in your head, won’t you? Well then, it’ll be ever so much simpler if I’m your cousin, and then we can go about together, and people won’t be forever asking where we met each other and who each of us is, and all the rest of it. Do please try to remember that I’m your cousin, your cousin Claud, from Devonshire—Barnstaple, to be exact—your cousin Claud Winston—you’ll remember that, or shall I write it down?”
“I shan’t forget it,” said Daphne, “but I never met anyone like you.”
“Nor I anyone like you. Don’t you see that’s what makes it the event of the season? Mademoiselle, l’addition, s’il vous plait.”
“How much is our share?”
“Two and fourpence,” he answered, with puckered brow; “at least I think it’s two and fourpence, but we’ll settle that when we get home. Let me carry Doris. You might fetch my stick along, will you? Mind the door—this corner’s rather awkward.”
Madame, who always treats all her clients as friends and in return reaps their rapturous regard, helped to enfold Doris in a shawl which she insisted on lending, kissed the child, and bade farewell to the others with that wonderful air of which she is the mistress, an air that makes all who leave her portals feel pleased with themselves and, very much more, with her.
And then the three were in another hansom, and the glitter and dazzle and noise of London streets were rolling away from in front of them like a bewildering, magic tide.
“Don’t you worry about anything,” Claud said soothingly, and broke a longish pause. “We’re going to be such chums as never were; and you’ll tell me all about your relations, and your plans for making your fortune. Oh, don’t deny it. Of course you’ve got some plan of that sort, or you wouldn’t be in Fitzroy Street. We’re all planting ladders against the sky to gather the stars, except the people who’ve gathered all they want and the people who have burned their fingers and don’t want anything any more. And I shall tell you all my great and noble ambitions and all about the girl I’m in love with, and I’ll show you where to go for cold beef, and where not to go for bread, and why you must buy candles at Jones’s, and paraffin at Smith’s; and we shall never cease to bless the day when we met each other. Is it a bargain?”
“I suppose so.” Daphne was relieved by this last speech. As long as this strange, wild, friendly boy was in love with another girl—she did not like the thought that this had answered. It wasn’t to be supposed that everyone one met would fall in love with one at first sight like Besides, this was a London hansom, not a French chestnut tree.
“But,” she went on, “what’s made quickly is broken quickly, isn’t it? If you make friends in such a hurry, does it last?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Why do you suppose people waste all the time they do in preliminaries instead of swearing friendship the minute they set eyes on each other? It’s just because they aren’t sure, for quite a long time, that the other one’s the right sort. When you’re certain of that, why go on being stuffy and formal, and talking of Shakespeare and the polite arts? I’m quite sure of you. And you’re sure of me—aren’t you?”
She turned a little and met his honest eyes.
“It’s very odd,” she said, “but I am.”
“Then that’s all right. Now here’s a pencil.” He shifted the sleeping child a little—got out an envelope and paper. “You write down all you want, and I’ll go out and do your shopping while you get the dear to bed. Go ahead: Bread, candles, paraffin”
“A lamp.”
“Butter. Got any knives?”
“No.”
“Knives, spoons.”
“Eggs?” Daphne suggested, timidly.
“Eggs. Tea. Sugar. Is that all? No—soap, of course, and coals and firewood. I’ll get the lamp and the oil first. Ah, here we are. And then there’s a basin. Have you got a basin?”
He carried Doris up the three steep flights and Daphne held her while he spread mattress and blankets on the spring lounge.
“You won’t mind being in the dark just for a few minutes, will you? I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he remarked, and his boots sounded on the stairs in loud and swift retreat.
It was a very big, dark, empty room, illumined faintly by the lamps from the street below, and by the yellow diffused light of great London. The cisterns made sudden gurglings, the boards creaked. Daphne sat on the lounge with the child’s head in her lap. She was very tired, but her triumph had not yet worn itself thin.
“Oh,” she thought, as she heard the sound of returning footsteps, “if only Aunt Emily could see us now.”
It was good to rest, not even to offer help, while Claud lit two candles and set them upright in little pools of grease on the mantelpiece; then filled the new lamp, trimmed it, and lighted it.
The room leaped suddenly into light and possible comfort.
“Get her to bed,” said the boy, “and I’ll go and get the other things.”
When he came back, Daphne had hung up some big shawls, that had been her mother’s, across the three front windows. For the others the night itself would have to serve as curtains, since curtains were among the things she had not remembered to buy. He set down the packets on the table and stood a moment in silence. Then he said, with a shyness that was not at all in the mental picture she made of him:
“I say. I haven’t rushed you, have I? You do want to be friends, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, and truly.
“Yes—you think so tonight. But you’re tired and everything’s new. If you feel different about it tomorrow, it’ll be all right. I shan’t mind—at least, of course I should mind horribly. But I shall understand. And you needn’t be afraid I shall come bothering you. If you want anything, you’ve only got to come down one flight—any time; if I’m out, you could shove a paper under the door. What I mean to say—if you do care to be friends, it’ll be splendid. And if you don’t—well, we’ve had one jolly evening, haven’t we?”
“Thank you,” said Daphne. “Good night. Oh, I do hope your own things have come. I oughtn’t to have kept you dog-dancing about after my errands.”
“Dog-dancing’s my favourite exercise,” he said. “Good night. Sleep well, cousin. You are my cousin, you know, even if you decide that I’m not to be yours.”
“Good night—cousin,” said Daphne, and closed the trap-door softly. She stood quite still for a long time. Yes, this was all very interesting and like real life, but in the morning she would have to go and see Uncle Hamley. She felt in her bones that no uncle who ever lived would approve of such a cousin.
And it was only when she awoke in the grim dawn and looked out on the blackened Bloomsbury roofs that she remembered, with a shock, quickly spreading into transverse ripples of changing feelings, that she did not know Uncle Hamley’s address. It was Something and Hamley, solicitors, but she did not know even the initial of the Something.
She had what was left of the twenty pounds, her jewellery, her clothes, Doris’s clothes—and nothing else in the world but her brave heart and undisciplined courage. She thought as she dressed, and heart and courage did not fail her.
“Wake up, my bird,” she whispered at last in the ear of the sleeping Dormouse. “We’re all by our dear lone, and we’re going to have a lovely breakfast with buns in it. You get up and see how many of your clothes you can get on while I run for the milk. And be sure you wash properly.”
She met the postman on the steps as she went out, jug in hand; but he had, naturally, no letter for her.
But at that very moment a thick foreign letter was falling with a thud in the large empty letter box at Laburnum Villa. It was not a house where many letters came.
Aunt Emily fingered the letter, looked at the foreign stamp.
“Jane,” she said, “I wish you would go up to my room and bring me the blue envelope that’s lying about somewhere, or else in the wardrobe.”
And when Jane was gone, “I suppose I ought to read it,” she said, screening her curiosity with the imperative; “it may throw some light on the girl’s extraordinary conduct.”
Uncle Harold suggested waiting a few days. “She may send an address, or go to Uncle Hamley.”
“I should open it now,” said Cousin Henrietta. “You’ll do it in the end, Emily. It’s no use making two bites of a cherry.”
The envelope yielded two foreign sheets, closely written.
“Why, it’s another from that man!” said Aunt Emily; “he’s got someone else to address it.”
“What man?” Cousin Simpshall asked keenly.
“Oh, there have been one or two letters—quite an undesirable sort of man, I should say. Not a word about marriage in any of them. Uncle Harold and I thought it best to say nothing about them.”
“You’ve been opening her other letters?” said Cousin Henrietta.
“Of course—it was our duty as her guardians.”
Mrs. Veale opened the letter and read.
“Well!” she said, when she had turned the last page, “she’d better not have been so hasty. I shouldn’t wonder if he was to come to the point in time.”
“Oh, dear,” said Cousin Henrietta, “that’s a pity.”
“Ah,” said Aunt Emily, triumphantly, “she should have thought of that before.”
She folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. “More tea, Henrietta?”
“Look out,” said Uncle Harold. “The urn’s running all over the tray.”
“So it is,” said Aunt Emily, dropping the letter in the little lake. “There, it’s no good now. I may as well burn it.” She threw the letter in the fire.
“Well!” said Cousin Simpshall, “I must say you are thorough, Emily.”
“Who was it from,” Uncle Harold asked; “anybody in particular?”
“English master in a French school,” said Aunt Emily, “signed S. T. Hilary. No definite proposals. Only a lot of twaddle about chestnut trees and princesses. Oh, depend upon it, she’s better without it.”
“Shan’t you ever tell her?” Cousin Henrietta asked curiously.
“That,” said Aunt Emily, “will depend entirely on how she behaves when I find her.”
“I can’t find any blue envelope,” said Cousin Jane, returning.