"MUMMY'S BABA--DAT'S ALL."
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."