Читать книгу Christina - L. G. Moberly - Страница 6

In the great Free Library of a crowded London district, the gas burnt dimly; the yellow fog of a November morning crept even into the big room, and the few readers shivered a little in its cold clamminess. At this early hour, for the building had only just opened its doors on a Monday morning, merely a scattered number of men and women were to be seen in the place, and those who were there clustered round the advertisement columns of the newspapers. Both men and women alike were a sorry-looking crew, and the sad words "out of work," were stamped upon them all. Their clothing bore the marks of much wear and tear; their faces were worn, and in the eyes of each of them was that strained expression, that rises from much looking for that which never comes. Old and young men were there, searching the long columns of the papers for work that might suit their pressing needs; old and young women were there, too—women whose faces gave eloquent testimony to their hard fight with fortune—whose eyes glanced hungrily along the printed lines, whose hands tremblingly wrote down this or that address, which might by some merciful chance give them, if not exactly what they wanted, at any rate that which would ensure their earning a pittance, however scanty. Almost every member of the forlorn group eyed every other member suspiciously, with furtive glances, that seemed to say: "If you are lucky enough to get a job out of those columns, then I shall fail to get one. We are cutting each other's throats here. Your success is my failure." And as each one finished jotting down the addresses that were likely to be of use, he or she moved silently away from the library, speaking no word to the rest—like cowering animals who, having received a bone, or the promise of a bone, slink away from their fellows, fearful lest even the small thing they have gained, should be snatched from them.

The greater number amongst the searchers for work, consisted of those who, for want of a better title, may be described as belonging to the middle classes. They were neither the very poor—in the recognised acceptation of the words, though heaven knows they were poor enough—neither could they be classed amongst artisans, or mechanics. Their appearance would lead an onlooker to suppose that the men were accustomed to office work of some description, and that the women were governesses, companions, or perhaps lady housekeepers—all respectable, all possessing certain ideals of life and propriety, all struggling to maintain the degree of gentility, which would keep them above the high-water mark of degradation. A girl who stood a little apart from the rest, looked round the dimly-lit room with pitiful eyes, and a shudder ran through her slight frame, as she watched the faces and forms of these women who were no longer young, but who were yet still engaged in this hand-to-hand fight with destitution. The girl was young; it was impossible to suppose that more than twenty years had gone over her head, though the deep shadows under her eyes, and the lines of anxiety, about her mouth, might have made a casual observer regard her as an older woman. Like the rest of her sex who scanned the advertisement columns, she was dressed in clothes which had plainly seen better days—much better days. But, whereas some of the other women had already begun to drift into untidiness, and into the slovenly ways which mark the first step along a downward road, this girl was exquisitely neat from head to foot. Her hat, in spite of its age, was well brushed; her threadbare coat and skirt were tidy, and showed no traces of dirt or grease; her gloves, though they were white at the tips, had no holes; and there was no sign of neglect or disorder in the arrangement of the dark hair, that showed in soft, dusky curls below her hat.

"Poor things! Oh! poor things!" was her thought, as she looked at the sad string of humanity filing its slow way to the door. "Some of them have been every day for weeks, and they are getting older every day. And the older one gets, the harder it is to find work. Some day I shall be like that, old, and tired, and worn out; and then—work will be more difficult to get than it is now—and I can't get it—even now—when I am young."

The thoughts that had begun in sheer pity for those other battlers with the waves of this troublesome world, ended in a shuddering realisation of her own position; and not only of her position for the moment, but of the future that stretched inimitably before her across the years. She, Christina Moore, was only twenty, and in all human probability another sixty years of life might be hers, for she dimly remembered hearing her mother say that both she and her husband belonged to long-lived families. That they two had been cut off in the prime of life by a virulent epidemic of typhoid fever that swept the village like a plague, did not alter the fact that they came of races famous for octogenarians; and Christina, the last of two long lines of ancestors, shivered anew at the thought of the weary, weary years of struggle that might still lie before her. It was seldom that she was assailed by such depressing reflections; her youth had a way, as youth has, of asserting itself, and rebounding from its own despair; and there was an abundance of pluck behind those queer, green eyes of hers, and no lack of resolution in her small square chin. But the fog outside, the chilly atmosphere of the big library, whose fires were barely alight, and the sight of the same unemployed men and women who for weeks past had, as it were, dogged her footsteps, all combined this morning, to send Christina's spirits down to zero. Matters had not been improved by the calculations over which she had busied herself before leaving her lodgings an hour earlier. Whilst eating her dry bread, and drinking tea without milk, because both milk and butter were luxuries she no longer dared to give herself, she had written out her pitiful accounts upon a half-sheet of paper; and the result of the reckoning had given her a terrible feeling of desperation. For two years since her parents' death, she had occupied the post of nursery governess in the family of a Mrs. Donaldson, to whom her mother had once shown some trifling kindness. But three months earlier these people had left England for Canada, and no longer required her services—and Christina, untrained to any profession, with a few pounds in hand, and with nothing but a strong personality, and an innate love for little children, to offer as her stock in trade, found herself amongst the hundreds of other unemployed—just a waif in a great city!

Relations, as far as she knew, she had none. Her father had been an only child. Her mother had cut herself off from her own people by marrying against their consent, and Christina was even unaware of who they were, or to what part of the country they belonged. Long ago, she had grasped the fact that she was alone in the world, and when the Donaldsons went away, she had no intimate friends in the old country—two years of life with them in a London suburb having effectually cut her off from the very few acquaintances she had left behind, in the Devonshire village, where her parents died.

Alone in the world, with no work, after nearly three months of fruitless search for it, and with her small stock of money growing beautifully less each day, it was no wonder that on this morning in November, Christina Moore's heart sank in despair.

Save for one or two men still busily engaged in extracting addresses from the papers, she was alone in the library, before she herself began her daily search along those monotonous columns, whose lines seemed to her tired eyes to run into one another, and become lost in an infinite haze. So many people appeared to require nursery governesses, companions, and mothers' helps; and yet, as bitter experience taught her, there were many more applicants for the posts than there were posts to fill; and it was with a half-hearted sense of intense discouragement that she noted down some of the addresses. She even wrote down some that she had hitherto despised—those who offered only a home and no salary in return for services; for, as she reflected despondently, "even to have a roof over one's head, and meals to eat, is better than to have no lodging, or food—and no money to pay for either."

Having glanced down the advertisements in the chief dailies, her hand idly turned the pages of one of the Sunday papers close by, and her eyes glanced down them, more with the idea of distracting her thoughts, than with any conception that she might find anything there, that would be of use to her. And her lips parted in a smile, as she read, in large print:

"MATRIMONIAL NEWS."

"How funny," she mused, whilst she read that a gentleman of means wished to find a lady of fortune who would take pity on his loneliness; or that a lady no longer young, but still handsome, wished to meet a gentleman with a moderate income, with a view to marriage.

"How funny—how very funny!" she mused again; then paused suddenly, her glance riveted to a sentence that caught and held her attention, almost against her will.

"Quiet and cultivated gentleman of means," so the paragraph ran, "is anxious to meet a young lady of good birth, who needs a home. No fortune is necessary, but marriage may be agreed upon if both parties are mutually satisfied. Reply by letter to R.M., Box 40,004, Sunday Recorder Office, Fleet Street, E.C."

Over the girl's white face there slowly spread a stain of vivid colour; into her eyes crept an odd light. She drew the paper more closely into her hands, reading and re-reading the paragraph, until every word of it was imprinted upon her mind.

"Young lady—who needs a home—no fortune necessary," she murmured. "Oh! if only it didn't seem so cold-blooded and horrid, what a way out it might be! Only—it seems—so—so mercenary—and not what I always thought of when I was silly—and dreamt—things," her musings ran on. "Once—I dreamt about a fairy prince—who would—just come—and—make me love him—and he and I would—be—all the world—to each other. But—of course—one couldn't be all the world to a person one had arranged to meet through a newspaper."

Another smile broke over her face, and when she smiled, Christina's face was very sweet.

"It may be just some dreadful trap to catch a silly girl," she reflected sagely, "and if—if I did really think of answering it, I should have to be very careful what I said—and where I arranged to meet R.M. Of course I—shan't really answer it at all—only—if I did—and if he were nice—and if—it all came right—there wouldn't be any more of this dreadful struggle!"

She noted the address of this advertisement amongst the others in her little pocket-book, and then made her way out of the library and trudged homewards through the yellow murk, buttoning her very inadequate coat tightly about her and shiveringly speculating whether, if she really answered R.M.'s advertisement, there might be a chance of obtaining clothing more fitted to resist the penetrating chill of a November fog. Her own small room looked dingier than usual when she entered it, and it was so full of fog and damp, that she rolled a blanket round her before lighting a candle and seating herself at the tiny table, to answer some of the advertisements she had copied. The room was bare of all but the most necessary furniture. A camp bedstead stood against the wall, whose paper was of that indeterminate drabness affected by lodging-house keepers; a deal table occupied the centre of the room, with the common cane-chair on which Christina sat; and a painted chest of drawers nearly blocked up the one tiny window. There was no wash-hand stand; a cracked white basin and a still more cracked jug stood upon the top of the drawers, a looking-glass of ancient and battered appearance hung over the mantelpiece, and an open cupboard in the wall served Christina as sideboard and larder combined. Beside the bed was a narrow strip of much-faded carpet, but of comfort and homeliness the room showed no trace whatever, save in the tiny touches of home the girl had herself striven to impart to it, by hanging on the walls one or two sketches of the Devonshire village she loved, and by putting on the mantelpiece a few treasured photographs. But her best endeavours had failed to make the room other than a most dreary and dispiriting abode, and the view from the window, of the backs of other houses looming darkly through the fog, was not calculated to lift the cloud of despair that for the moment had settled heavily upon her. She felt listlessly disinclined to state her qualifications as nursery governess, or mother's help, to the various ladies who hankered after such commodities. Involuntarily, but continually, her thoughts returned to that paragraph from the Sunday Recorder, which was not only engraved upon her mind, but which she had actually copied also into her book.

"Quiet and cultivated gentleman of means is anxious to meet a young lady of good birth, who needs a home. No fortune is necessary." At that point in her reading, Christina paused.

"No fortune is necessary," she said aloud, in an oddly deprecating voice. "R.M., whoever he may be, only asks for a young lady of good birth, who needs a home. Well," she turned her eyes towards the foggy roofs just visible outside her dirty window-panes, "well, as far as I know I am of good birth, even though father only taught music; and some people seem to look down on musicians. And—I certainly need a home."

Her glance left the gloomy world without, and went ruefully round the scarcely less gloomy prospect within. "And if I suited R.M.—perhaps—perhaps, he would be good to me. Should I suit him, I wonder? I'm not pretty, and certainly not amusing, and I'm dreadfully shabby, and nearly as poor as it is possible to be. There is not one single thing to recommend me." She pushed back her chair; and, rising from the table, moved slowly to the mantel-piece, over which hung the tarnished glass whose powers of reflecting objects satisfactorily had long since departed. Into this unpromising mirror, poor little Christina, holding the candle far above her head, peered long and earnestly, her small white face looking all the whiter, because of the background of yellow fog; her eyes seeming more green than was their wont, because of the dark shadows that underlay them.

She had thrown off her hat, and the soft masses of her hair lay in curly confusion about her head. It was a shapely little head, and particularly well put on, but these were points of which Christina took no special account, being intent on finding beauties in her face, and failing to notice that there was anything admirable in the turn of her neck, in the poise of her firm chin, and in the straightforward glance of her eyes.

"If R.M. met me casually in the street, he wouldn't look at me twice—no man would," she exclaimed with a sigh, as she turned away from the glass, "I am horribly ordinary. The only thing is—if I could screw up my courage to answer him—and then to meet him—he might like to find a girl who didn't want anything but a quiet home; who would be satisfied to go without gaiety or amusement." She sighed again, and a wistful look crept into her eyes. "I haven't really ever had any fun, so I shouldn't miss it, and I could just try to make a happy home for R.M., if that is all he wants. And—after all," she went on, still speaking aloud, "there isn't any harm in answering his letter. It may all come to nothing; and yet—it might be worth while—and—it almost seems presidential that I just happened to see that paragraph in the Sunday Recorder."

The letter she sat down to write as the outcome of all these conflicting meditations, was the most difficult she had ever written in her young life; and before it was finished, and finally consigned to its envelope, she had torn up many sheets of paper, and allowed fully two hours of the morning to pass by. Twelve o'clock was chiming from all the clocks in the neighbourhood, when, with her answers to some of the other advertisements in her hand, she once more pinned on her hat, and ran downstairs to the post. The fog had thickened considerably during the morning, and Christina found the street lamps alight—tiny points of brightness set high above the prevailing gloom, and producing very little effect upon the darkness. Indeed, there was something almost bewildering about those far-off lights; they seemed to heighten, rather than diminish, the all-pervading blackness, which deepened every moment.

The girl walked slowly, feeling her way along the area railings, and guiding herself as far as possible by the rumble of traffic along the roadway, though the confusion of sounds made even this guidance a very uncertain one. Drivers shouted, horses slipped and stumbled; and the shrill voices of boys carrying flaring torches, added to the pandemonium. Earlier in the morning the fog had merely been of the familiar yellow variety known to every Londoner. It was now a black and total darkness that seemed to engulf the world. To cross the road to the pillar-box was a matter of no small difficulty, but Christina, with a dogged determination not to be outwitted by the elements, stepped off the kerb and into the seething mass of carts, cabs, and other vehicles, that jostled and struggled with one another in apparently inextricable confusion.

On the far side of the street she plunged into a comparatively quiet square, where the fog had lifted somewhat, and was no longer of such Cimmerian blackness, but merely a drifting and bewildering white mist.

The pillar-box at the corner loomed faintly through it, and Christina had just dropped her packet of letters into it, when there struck upon her ears the soft cry of a little child. There was such a note of fear, of lonely misery, in that soft cry, that Christina, a child-lover to the core of her being, paused, and listened intently. Everything about her was very still; the square was a quiet one, though separated only by a short street from a main thoroughfare; and, excepting for the distant noise of traffic and shouting, nothing was to be heard, until again the little whimpering cry became audible on Christina's right.

"What is it?" the girl said gently. "Don't be frightened, dear. I'll take care of you," and as she spoke, she heard a gasp of relief, and a shaking, childish voice exclaimed:

"Baba's most drefful fightened; please take Baba home."

"But where is Baba?" Christina was beginning cheerily, when, through the fog, she caught sight of a tiny figure coming quickly towards her, and, stooping down, she gathered close into her arms a little child, of perhaps three years old, a little child who clung to her with a desperate, terrified clutch, lifting a tear-stained face to hers.

"Take Baba home," the baby voice wailed again, and as the fog rolled back a little more, Christina saw that the child was no street waif, but obviously the daintily-clad darling of some great house. Her golden head was bare, and the tangle of curls was like a frame about the lovely little face, whose great blue eyes looked appealingly into Christina's own. A red woollen cloak hung over the child's shoulders, but as the cloak fell back, Christina saw that her frock was chiefly fashioned of exquisite filmy lace, and that a string of pearls was fastened round the little white throat.

"Where is Baba's home?" she questioned softly, lifting the child right into her arms, and kissing the flower-like face, on which the tears still lay like dewdrops in the heart of a rose. "Tell me where you live, sweetheart, and I will take you home."

"Baba doesn't know where she lives," the child shook her yellow curls, and her big eyes filled again with tears. "Baba's awful, drefful fightened. The door was open—and Baba did just run out to see the pretty horses—and then—it was all black—and Baba was lost."

"I don't think Baba ought to have come out by herself in a fog," Christina said, a gentle reproof in her tones; "and now we must try to find out where your home is, little girl. Tell me what your name is—besides Baba."

"Baba—Mummy's Baba—dat's all," the baby answered, with a conclusive shutting of her pretty mouth. "Baba's forgot her other name—she's only just Mummy's Baba."

"But Baba—what?" Christina said patiently, walking slowly along the square, the child in her arms. "Try to remember your other name, my sweet; then I can take you safe home to mummy and nurse."

"Baba hasn't got no nurse, nurse's gone away. Mummy minds Baba now, and Baba can't remember her other name. She's got a bone in her head," quoth the baby, smiling deliciously into Christina's troubled face, and evidently paraphrasing some former servant's excuses. "Baba likes you—pretty lady—come home with Baba!"

"I wish I could," Christina said gravely, feeling rather helpless, as she looked from the child in her arms to the stately houses in the square, and back again. "I wonder where you live, you queer mite; and how I am going to find out who are your belongings. They are probably moving heaven and earth at this moment to find you."

The baby laughed. She did not follow more than half Christina's words, but her infantile fancy had been caught by the girl's gentle manner and motherly ways, and she put two dimpled arms round her rescuer's neck, and rubbed her face confidently against Christina's white cheeks.

"Baba's not fightened any more," she murmured contentedly; "you just take Baba home—and we'll find mummy—and then Baba will be all right."

"Yes; it will be all right when we find home and mummy," Christina answered with a short laugh but her arm tightened round the soft little body, her lips pressed themselves against the tangled curls, and all the time she pursued her slow way along the square, hoping that so small a person could not have travelled very far, and that presently someone in pursuit of her would put in an appearance. They had gone the length of the square, and down the line of houses along one of its sides, when all at once the baby uttered a shout of triumph.

"There's James—over there," she exclaimed; "now Baba can see her own house. James—James!" she cried excitedly, and Christina saw that on the side of the square at right angles to them, a footman stood on the doorstep, looking distractedly to right and left of him. At the sound of the uplifted baby voice, he left his post at the door, and ran quickly up to Christina, who had paused to await his arrival.

"That's my dear James," the child cried; and, with the easy fickleness of her years, she unclasped her arms from Christina's neck, and held them out to the footman. "Baba was lost," she said to him confidingly. "This lady finded Baba, and brought her home."

The footman took the baby into his arms, and turned a scared face to Christina.

"She've just been missed," he said breathlessly; "must have run out when the door was open; and we was all in a taking. Where did you find her, miss? I'm sure it's very kind of you to have brought her home."

"She was on the far side of the square, and very frightened in the fog. I am so glad she is safe."

"Baba quite safe now; Baba going home with James; good-bye, pretty lady," and waving her hand to Christina, the small girl was carried away in the arms of the breathless James, who was still too distracted to reflect that his mistress might wish to thank the young lady who had brought back the child.

"What a dear wee thing!" Christina reflected, as she wended her way back to her lodgings. "I wonder who she is. Somebody important, if she lives here. I wish——" then she sighed and fell to wondering whether anything would result from all the answers to the advertisements she had just posted. "I'm glad I didn't post the one I wrote to R.M.," she said to herself; "now I can think over it all day long, and if I haven't changed my mind by then, perhaps I will re-write it and post it by the last post. But—I am not sure whether I shall be brave enough to do it."