Christina Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  "MUMMY'S BABA--DAT'S ALL."

  In the great Free Library of a crowded London district, the gas burntdimly; the yellow fog of a November morning crept even into the bigroom, and the few readers shivered a little in its cold clamminess. Atthis early hour, for the building had only just opened its doors on aMonday morning, merely a scattered number of men and women were to beseen in the place, and those who were there clustered round theadvertisement columns of the newspapers. Both men and women alike werea sorry-looking crew, and the sad words "out of work," were stampedupon 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 thatstrained expression, that rises from much looking for that which nevercomes. Old and young men were there, searching the long columns of thepapers for work that might suit their pressing needs; old and youngwomen were there, too--women whose faces gave eloquent testimony totheir hard fight with fortune--whose eyes glanced hungrily along theprinted lines, whose hands tremblingly wrote down this or that address,which might by some merciful chance give them, if not exactly what theywanted, at any rate that which would ensure their earning a pittance,however scanty. Almost every member of the forlorn group eyed everyother member suspiciously, with furtive glances, that seemed to say:"If you are lucky enough to get a job out of those columns, then Ishall fail to get one. We are cutting each other's throats here. Yoursuccess is my failure." And as each one finished jotting down theaddresses that were likely to be of use, he or she moved silently awayfrom the library, speaking no word to the rest--like cowering animalswho, having received a bone, or the promise of a bone, slink away fromtheir 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 thosewho, for want of a better title, may be described as belonging to themiddle classes. They were neither the very poor--in the recognisedacceptation of the words, though heaven knows they were poorenough--neither could they be classed amongst artisans, or mechanics.Their appearance would lead an onlooker to suppose that the men wereaccustomed to office work of some description, and that the women weregovernesses, companions, or perhaps lady housekeepers--all respectable,all possessing certain ideals of life and propriety, all struggling tomaintain the degree of gentility, which would keep them above thehigh-water mark of degradation. A girl who stood a little apart fromthe rest, looked round the dimly-lit room with pitiful eyes, and ashudder ran through her slight frame, as she watched the faces andforms of these women who were no longer young, but who were yet stillengaged in this hand-to-hand fight with destitution. The girl wasyoung; it was impossible to suppose that more than twenty years hadgone over her head, though the deep shadows under her eyes, and thelines of anxiety, about her mouth, might have made a casual observerregard her as an older woman. Like the rest of her sex who scanned theadvertisement columns, she was dressed in clothes which had plainlyseen better days--much better days. But, whereas some of the otherwomen had already begun to drift into untidiness, and into the slovenlyways which mark the first step along a downward road, this girl wasexquisitely neat from head to foot. Her hat, in spite of its age, waswell brushed; her threadbare coat and skirt were tidy, and showed notraces of dirt or grease; her gloves, though they were white at thetips, had no holes; and there was no sign of neglect or disorder in thearrangement of the dark hair, that showed in soft, dusky curls belowher hat.

  "Poor things! Oh! poor things!" was her thought, as she looked at thesad string of humanity filing its slow way to the door. "Some of themhave 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 Ishall be like that, old, and tired, and worn out; and then--work willbe more difficult to get than it is now--and I can't get it--evennow--when I am young."

  The thoughts that had begun in sheer pity for those other battlers withthe waves of this troublesome world, ended in a shuddering realisationof her own position; and not only of her position for the moment, butof the future that stretched inimitably before her across the years.She, Christina Moore, was only twenty, and in all human probabilityanother sixty years of life might be hers, for she dimly rememberedhearing her mother say that both she and her husband belonged tolong-lived families. That they two had been cut off in the prime oflife by a virulent epidemic of typhoid fever that swept the villagelike a plague, did not alter the fact that they came of races famousfor octogenarians; and Christina, the last of two long lines ofancestors, shivered anew at the thought of the weary, weary years ofstruggle that might still lie before her. It was seldom that she wasassailed by such depressing reflections; her youth had a way, as youthhas, of asserting itself, and rebounding from its own despair; andthere was an abundance of pluck behind those queer, green eyes of hers,and no lack of resolution in her small square chin. But the fogoutside, the chilly atmosphere of the big library, whose fires werebarely alight, and the sight of the same unemployed men and women whofor weeks past had, as it were, dogged her footsteps, all combined thismorning, to send Christina's spirits down to zero. Matters had notbeen improved by the calculations over which she had busied herselfbefore leaving her lodgings an hour earlier. Whilst eating her drybread, and drinking tea without milk, because both milk and butter wereluxuries she no longer dared to give herself, she had written out herpitiful accounts upon a half-sheet of paper; and the result of thereckoning had given her a terrible feeling of desperation. For twoyears since her parents' death, she had occupied the post of nurserygoverness in the family of a Mrs. Donaldson, to whom her mother hadonce shown some trifling kindness. But three months earlier thesepeople had left England for Canada, and no longer required herservices--and Christina, untrained to any profession, with a few poundsin hand, and with nothing but a strong personality, and an innate lovefor little children, to offer as her stock in trade, found herselfamongst 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 anonly child. Her mother had cut herself off from her own people bymarrying against their consent, and Christina was even unaware of whothey were, or to what part of the country they belonged. Long ago, shehad grasped the fact that she was alone in the world, and when theDonaldsons went away, she had no intimate friends in the oldcountry--two years of life with them in a London suburb havingeffectually cut her off from the very few acquaintances she had leftbehind, in the Devonshire village, where her parents died.

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

  Save for one or two men still busily engaged in extracting addressesfrom the papers, she was alone in the library, before she herself beganher daily search along those monotonous columns, whose lines seemed toher tired eyes to run into one another, and become lost in an infinitehaze. So many people appeared to require nursery governesses,companions, and mothers' helps; and yet, as bitter experience taughther, there were many more applicants for the posts than there wereposts to fill; and it was with a half-hearted sense of intensediscouragement that she noted down some of the addresses. She evenwrote down some that she had hitherto despised--those who offered onlya home and no salary in return for services; for, as she reflecteddespondently, "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 foreither."

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

  "MATRIMONIAL NEWS."

  "How funny," she mused, whilst she read that
a gentleman of meanswished 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 agentleman with a moderate income, with a view to marriage.

  "How funny--how very funny!" she mused again; then paused suddenly, herglance riveted to a sentence that caught and held her attention, almostagainst her will.

  "Quiet and cultivated gentleman of means," so the paragraph ran, "isanxious to meet a young lady of good birth, who needs a home. Nofortune is necessary, but marriage may be agreed upon if both partiesare mutually satisfied. Reply by letter to R.M., Box 40,004, _SundayRecorder_ 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 intoher hands, reading and re-reading the paragraph, until every word of itwas 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 outit might be! Only--it seems--so--so mercenary--and not what I alwaysthought of when I was silly--and dreamt--things," her musings ran on."Once--I dreamt about a fairy prince--who would--just come--and--makeme 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 hadarranged to meet through a newspaper."

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

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

  She noted the address of this advertisement amongst the others in herlittle pocket-book, and then made her way out of the library andtrudged homewards through the yellow murk, buttoning her veryinadequate coat tightly about her and shiveringly speculating whether,if she really answered R.M.'s advertisement, there might be a chance ofobtaining clothing more fitted to resist the penetrating chill of aNovember fog. Her own small room looked dingier than usual when sheentered it, and it was so full of fog and damp, that she rolled ablanket round her before lighting a candle and seating herself at thetiny table, to answer some of the advertisements she had copied. Theroom was bare of all but the most necessary furniture. A camp bedsteadstood against the wall, whose paper was of that indeterminate drabnessaffected by lodging-house keepers; a deal table occupied the centre ofthe room, with the common cane-chair on which Christina sat; and apainted chest of drawers nearly blocked up the one tiny window. Therewas no wash-hand stand; a cracked white basin and a still more crackedjug stood upon the top of the drawers, a looking-glass of ancient andbattered appearance hung over the mantelpiece, and an open cupboard inthe wall served Christina as sideboard and larder combined. Beside thebed was a narrow strip of much-faded carpet, but of comfort andhomeliness the room showed no trace whatever, save in the tiny touchesof home the girl had herself striven to impart to it, by hanging on thewalls one or two sketches of the Devonshire village she loved, and byputting on the mantelpiece a few treasured photographs. But her bestendeavours had failed to make the room other than a most dreary anddispiriting abode, and the view from the window, of the backs of otherhouses looming darkly through the fog, was not calculated to lift thecloud of despair that for the moment had settled heavily upon her. Shefelt listlessly disinclined to state her qualifications as nurserygoverness, or mother's help, to the various ladies who hankered aftersuch commodities. Involuntarily, but continually, her thoughtsreturned to that paragraph from the _Sunday Recorder_, which was notonly engraved upon her mind, but which she had actually copied alsointo her book.

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

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

  Her glance left the gloomy world without, and went ruefully round thescarcely less gloomy prospect within. "And if I suitedR.M.--perhaps--perhaps, he would be good to me. Should I suit him, Iwonder? I'm not pretty, and certainly not amusing, and I'm dreadfullyshabby, and nearly as poor as it is possible to be. There is not onesingle thing to recommend me." She pushed back her chair; and, risingfrom the table, moved slowly to the mantel-piece, over which hung thetarnished glass whose powers of reflecting objects satisfactorily hadlong since departed. Into this unpromising mirror, poor littleChristina, holding the candle far above her head, peered long andearnestly, her small white face looking all the whiter, because of thebackground of yellow fog; her eyes seeming more green than was theirwont, because of the dark shadows that underlay them.

  She had thrown off her hat, and the soft masses of her hair lay incurly confusion about her head. It was a shapely little head, andparticularly well put on, but these were points of which Christina tookno special account, being intent on finding beauties in her face, andfailing to notice that there was anything admirable in the turn of herneck, in the poise of her firm chin, and in the straightforward glanceof her eyes.

  "If R.M. met me casually in the street, he wouldn't look at metwice--no man would," she exclaimed with a sigh, as she turned awayfrom the glass, "I am horribly ordinary. The only thing is--if I couldscrew up my courage to answer him--and then to meet him--he might liketo find a girl who didn't want anything but a quiet home; who would besatisfied to go without gaiety or amusement." She sighed again, and awistful 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 forR.M., if that is all he wants. And--after all," she went on, stillspeaking aloud, "there isn't any harm in answering his letter. It mayall come to nothing; and yet--it might be worth while--and--it almostseems 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 theseconflicting meditations, was the most difficult she had ever written inher young life; and before it was finished, and finally consigned toits envelope, she had torn up many sheets of paper, and allowed fullytwo hours of the morning to pass by. Twelve o'clock was chiming fromall the clocks in the neighbourhood, when, with her answers to some ofthe other advertisements in her hand, she once more pinned on her hat,and ran downstairs to the post. The fog had thickened considerablyduring the morning, and Christina found the street lamps alight--tinypoints of brightness set high above the prevailing gloom, and producingvery little effect upon the darkness. Indeed, there was somethingalmost bewildering about those far-off lights; they seemed to heighten,rather than diminish, the all-pervading blackness, which deepened everymoment.

  The girl walked slowly, feeling her way along the area railings, andguiding herself as far as possible by the rumble of traffic along theroadway, though the confusion of sounds made even this guidance a veryuncertain one. Drivers shouted, horses slipped and stumbled; and theshrill voices of boys carrying flaring torches, added to thepandemonium. Earlier in the morning the fog had merely been of thefamiliar yellow variety known to every Londoner. It was now a blackand total darkness that seemed to engulf the world. To cross the roadto 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, andother vehicles, that jostled and struggled with one another inapparently inextricable confusion.

  On the far side of the street she plunged into a comparatively quietsquare, where the f
og had lifted somewhat, and was no longer of suchCimmerian blackness, but merely a drifting and bewildering white mist.

  The pillar-box at the corner loomed faintly through it, and Christinahad just dropped her packet of letters into it, when there struck uponher ears the soft cry of a little child. There was such a note offear, of lonely misery, in that soft cry, that Christina, a child-loverto the core of her being, paused, and listened intently. Everythingabout her was very still; the square was a quiet one, though separatedonly by a short street from a main thoroughfare; and, excepting for thedistant noise of traffic and shouting, nothing was to be heard, untilagain the little whimpering cry became audible on Christina's right.

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

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

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

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

  "Where is Baba's home?" she questioned softly, lifting the child rightinto her arms, and kissing the flower-like face, on which the tearsstill lay like dewdrops in the heart of a rose. "Tell me where youlive, 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, dreffulfightened. The door was open--and Baba did just run out to see thepretty 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 tofind out where your home is, little girl. Tell me what your nameis--besides Baba."

  "Baba--Mummy's Baba--dat's all," the baby answered, with a conclusiveshutting of her pretty mouth. "Baba's forgot her other name--she'sonly just Mummy's Baba."

  "But Baba--what?" Christina said patiently, walking slowly along thesquare, the child in her arms. "Try to remember your other name, mysweet; 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, andevidently paraphrasing some former servant's excuses. "Baba likesyou--pretty lady--come home with Baba!"

  "I wish I could," Christina said gravely, feeling rather helpless, asshe looked from the child in her arms to the stately houses in thesquare, and back again. "I wonder where you live, you queer mite; andhow I am going to find out who are your belongings. They are probablymoving 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 andmotherly 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 justtake 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," Christinaanswered with a short laugh but her arm tightened round the soft littlebody, her lips pressed themselves against the tangled curls, and allthe time she pursued her slow way along the square, hoping that sosmall a person could not have travelled very far, and that presentlysomeone in pursuit of her would put in an appearance. They had gonethe length of the square, and down the line of houses along one of itssides, when all at once the baby uttered a shout of triumph.

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

  "That's my dear James," the child cried; and, with the easy ficklenessof her years, she unclasped her arms from Christina's neck, and heldthem 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 toChristina.

  "She've just been missed," he said breathlessly; "must have run outwhen the door was open; and we was all in a taking. Where did you findher, 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, prettylady," and waving her hand to Christina, the small girl was carriedaway in the arms of the breathless James, who was still too distractedto reflect that his mistress might wish to thank the young lady who hadbrought back the child.

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