"I KNOW THIS IS WORTH A LOT OF MONEY."
"I suppose I was stupid to think it could be anything but a hoax. But
the letter seemed so kind, not as if it were written by a horrid person
who would want to play a practical joke."
Christina, having climbed the stairs to her room with weary, dragging
footsteps, sat down on her one chair, feeling tired, depressed, and
indignant. The dire necessity of saving her every penny, drove her to
walk from Bayswater to her far-off lodgings in the S.W. district, and
as a fine rain had begun to fall long before she was half-way across
the park, she was not only worn out and miserable, but very wet as
well. In their best days her serge coat and skirt had not been thick;
much wear and tear had reduced them to a threadbare condition quite
incapable of resistance to weather. The drizzling rain had penetrated
her inadequate coat and thin blouse; her skirt hung limply about her
legs; she felt, what she actually was, wet to the skin, and too tired
even to exert herself to make some tea over her spirit-lamp.
"I expect it is true what Mrs. Jones says," she reflected; "she says
men are all brutes, and you can't trust one of them. I used to think
she only said it because Mr. Jones drank himself to death, and drank
away her earnings first, and beat her. But, now, I don't know." With
cold fingers she drew the hatpins from her sodden hat, threw off the
wet coat that clung so chillily to her shivering form, and took from
her pocket a letter addressed in a bold, masculine hand.
"C.M., c/o Mrs. Cole, Newsagent,
"10, Cartney Street, S.W."
"It looks like the handwriting of a gentleman," the poor little girl's
reflections ran on; "I shouldn't have thought a man who wrote like that
could be a brute, and his letter isn't a brute's letter either," she
added pathetically, drawing the letter from its envelope and reading
the words, which were already engraved upon her mind.
"DEAR MADAM,
"I think perhaps I may be able to be of some use to you if you could
make it convenient to call at 100, Barford Road, Bayswater, at five
o'clock to-morrow (Wednesday). We might have a little talk. My friend
to whom the house belongs, will be very glad to see you.
"Yours faithfully,
"R. MERNSIDE."
"And then I find the house shut up," Christina said shakily, and aloud,
"and an old charwoman tells me she never heard of Mr. Mernside; and I
suppose it was just all a mean practical joke." Two tears, tears of
sheer fatigue and of bitter disappointment, welled up in the girl's
eyes, and dropped slowly down her cheeks. She was so tired--so tired
and cold and miserable--and she had built more hopes than she quite
knew upon the answer to her timid little letter. The entire absence of
any allusion to matrimonial prospects in Mr. Mernside's note had
quieted her fears, and many hopes had mingled with the nervous doubts
that had filled her soul as she set out that afternoon on her strange
expedition. Some faint idea that this unknown Mr. Mernside might be
instrumental in helping her to find work, sustained her through the
long walk to Barford Road; she had been so sure, so very sure, that the
writer of the terse, kindly letter, was a gentleman, and a good man to
boot, that the sight of the shut-up house came to her with the force of
an actual blow, whilst the caretaker's unfeigned ignorance of anybody
of the name of Mernside, made Christina's theory of a hoax seem more
than probable.
"And not one answer to all the letters I wrote about situations," she
exclaimed wearily, pulling herself up from her chair, and taking the
spirit-lamp from its place in the cupboard. "I wonder whether there
are lots of other girls as poor as I am, and without any relations or
friends. In another week, I shan't have enough money to pay my rent;
and Mrs. Jones won't let it run; she's said so over and over again."
Another shiver ran through her, and this time dread apprehension of the
future was more responsible for the shiver than even the damp
chilliness of her condition. "I don't know what I shall do when the
money is all gone. Oh! I don't know what I shall do," and a little
sob broke from her, as she took from the cupboard the materials for her
tea. It was a meagre enough meal that her cold shaking fingers spread
on the old deal table, and she was repeatedly forced to brush away the
tears from her face, so fast did they run down it now that exhaustion
and misery were at last finding an outlet. Her lunch had consisted of
a glass of milk and a bun, bought at a neighbouring shop; since
lunch-time she had walked some miles, had incidentally become wet
through during the process, and her walk had been crowned by a cruel
disappointment. It was not wonderful that the girl, plucky little soul
though she was, should feel now as if the end were reached, and she
could hope no more.
To add to her misery, everything seemed to go awry. The matches were
only found after a prolonged hunt for them; for many minutes the lamp
refused to light; and when, at last, a flame shot up, Christina thought
that the water in the kettle boiled more slowly than water had ever
boiled before. Dry bread had never tasted more unappetising; and
milkless tea (though it was certainly warm, and in that respect carried
a certain amount of comfort with it), tasted bitter and nauseating.
The girl longed, with an almost childish longing, for something more to
eat and drink. Visions rose before her of the Donaldsons' cosy
nursery, of a plate piled high with hot buttered toast, of a big
home-made seed cake, that could be eaten as quickly as the nursery
folks liked, without any dread of future want, and she pushed away her
plate, and laid her head down upon the table, sobbing as though her
heart would break. Hot buttered toast and seed cake are unromantic
sounding things enough, no doubt, but when one is very hungry, and very
heartsick, and only twenty into the bargain, the thoughts of past
plenty make present poverty seem well nigh intolerable.
Good stuff must have gone to the making of little Christina, and
whoever those ancestors on her mother's side had been, they had passed
on to her a goodly heritage of courage and endurance. Her storm of
sobs was of very brief duration. Giving herself a little shake both
actually and metaphorically, she raised her head from the table,
resolutely dried her eyes, choked back her sobs and forced herself to
finish eating the dry morsels of bread, and drinking the nauseous
draught of tea. Either the food itself, or the effort she had made to
eat it, sent a tingling of new strength along her limbs, and she broke
into a faint laugh over her own despair.
"You perfect goose," she said firmly, rising to wash up her tea things;
"crying won't make anything better. Mr. Donaldson used to say, 'Don't
look for your bridges before you come to them,' and so I won't look at
the bridge. Mrs. Jones will put up for me about the rent, until I am
really going to step right on to it. And before I give up every bit of
hope, I ought--perhaps I ought to try and pawn the pendant, only I
can't bear doing it. I can't bear it."
Mrs. Jones was not at all the pleasant and kindly landlady of fiction,
who succours and helps her tenants, and plays the part of mother to
them. The only part Mrs. Jones understood playing was that of the
cruel stepmother of fairy legend, and Christina did not err in thinking
that to allow rent to remain unpaid, was no part of her landlady's
methods. Mrs. Jones's own life had been a hard one. Grinding work in
her early girlhood, a brutal husband, and much grinding poverty during
her married life, and in her widowhood an unending struggle to make two
ends meet; these made up the sum of the landlady's existence, and she
treated the world as she found herself treated by the world. She
expected nothing from others, and she gave them nothing. She asked for
no help from her fellow beings, and she most assuredly bestowed none.
She was lighting the gas jet in the hall, a hard-featured, tight-lipped
woman, when, half an hour later, Christina went out again, a small
brown paper parcel in her hand; and Mrs. Jones's thin lips tightened
more than ever as her sharp eyes fell upon the parcel.
"Goin' out to pop somethin'," was her grim thought, and the thought was
displeasing to her. Not that she particularly pitied her lodger. Pity
was a virtue not cultivated by Mrs. Jones. But she instinctively
dreaded the moment when her lodgers began to slip out stealthily with
parcels under their arms, or in their hands. The significance of those
parcels was well known to her, and she was fully aware that lodgers who
once began to pawn their goods passed by easy stages to backwardness in
paying their rent, and then followed eviction and new tenants. No;
Mrs. Jones mistrusted brown paper parcels, just as much as she
mistrusted the look, half-shy, half-frightened, which Christina cast at
her in passing, and the flood of colour that dyed the girl's face, when
she met the landlady's glance.
Some of her smarter clothes Christina had long ago sold to an old
clothes' shop round the corner, but this was the first time she had
visited a real pawnbroker, and her heart beat like a sledge-hammer, as
she stood outside the window of a jeweller's shop, over which the three
balls were displayed. She had shrunk from going into the establishment
of Mr. Moss, the recognised pawnbroker of that squalid neighbourhood,
and had gone further afield, thinking that from a jeweller, even though
he engaged in pawnbroking as well, she would meet with more
consideration, and perhaps receive a larger sum of money. But, looking
through the glass doors at the two men who lounged behind the counter,
her spirits sank to zero, and she allowed ten minutes to slip by
before, taking her courage into her hands, she finally entered the shop.
Coming in out of the damp of the November evening, the pleasant warmth
was grateful to her, but the brilliant gaslight dazzled her eyes, and
sheer nervousness made her stumble hopelessly over the sentence she had
been committing to memory, ever since she had left her lodgings.
"I called to ask whether this pendant was of any value," she had
intended to say. But instead of that, she found herself stammering
breathlessly, "I--I came--would you please tell me--if you can give me
something on this," and she thrust her parcel into the hand indolently
stretched out for it, by one of the young men behind the counter.
His eyes looked her up and down with an insolent stare that sent the
blood flying over her face, and his smile gave her an impotent longing
to strike his fat, sleek countenance.
"How much do you want for it, my dear, that's the question?" the man
said jauntily, his eyes never leaving the girl's flushed face; "we are
always pleased to accommodate a pretty young lady like you, eh, Tom?"
with an odious leer he nudged the elbow of his companion, who emitted a
hoarse guffaw, and winked facetiously, as Christina turned a distressed
glance in his direction. Unfortunately for her, the master of the shop
was absent, and she was at the mercy of two of those underbred,
mean-spirited curs, who regard any defenceless woman as lawful prey,
and take the same delight in baiting her, as their ignoble ancestors
took in baiting an equally defenceless dumb animal.
"You tell us what you want, miss," the man called Tom struck in,
leaning across the counter, and tapping the girl's hand; "anything you
ask in reason we shall be pleased to oblige you with. Now, what's this
thing, and this thing, and this very pretty thing?" he ended
facetiously, whilst his fellow shopman unfastened Christina's parcel,
and opened the cardboard box it contained.
"It is a pendant," Christina faltered, afraid to show the indignation
she felt, lest the men should refuse to give her what she needed; "it
has been a long time in my family--and--I know it is very valuable."
"Oh! you know it is very valuable, do you?" queried the first man,
mocking her trembling accents; "now, it is for us to tell you its
value; not for you to tell us, you know. Hum! old-fashioned thing," he
ejaculated, holding up to the light the piece of jewellery he had drawn
from its box; "this sort of antique article may have suited our
grandmothers, but it doesn't go down nowadays!"
"That is not at all the case," Christina answered boldly; "everybody
likes antique things now; and that pendant is worth a great deal, as
you know."
Anger was beginning to conquer her nervous tremors, and the odious
smile with which her remark was received by both young men, made her
draw herself up proudly.
"Hoity, toity!" said the man called Tom; "as we know, indeed. If Mr.
Franks, my excellent friend and colleague," he made an exaggerated bow
to his companion, "considers the bauble old-fashioned and worthless, it
certainly is worthless and old-fashioned."
"It is certainly nothing of the kind," Christina cried, anger driving
away the last semblance of nervousness. "I should be much obliged if
you would tell me at once how much you can advance me upon it. If you
are unable to give me anything, I can take it elsewhere." As she
spoke, she looked straight into the smiling, insolent faces before her,
her own grown rigid and proud; and in spite of her shabby clothing and
obvious poverty, she suddenly assumed a look of imperial dignity, which
had an instantaneous effect upon her tormentors.
"Come, come, miss; don't talk like that," the man called Franks said
sheepishly; "we were just having a bit of fun over it, that's all. And
I'm sure we'll give you the best we can for the pendant."
Christina's threat of taking the jewel elsewhere, had brought the
shopmen sharply to their senses, for it had needed no more than a
cursory glance, to show them both that the jewel the girl had brought
them was of no small value, and they were uncomfortably aware that the
vials of their master's wrath would be emptied upon their heads, if
they allowed such an article to be disposed of in another establishment.
"It is a very pretty piece of work," the first man said, taking the
pendant in his hand, and looking over it with a fine assumption of
carelessness; "family initials, I suppose, in this twisted monogram?"
"I suppose so. I cannot give you any history of the pendant; I don't
know its history myself. It came to me from my mother." Christina
gave this piece of gratuitous information, feeling uneasily that it
might be supposed she had stolen the beautiful piece of jewellery; and,
with the thought, all the old associations that were interwoven with it
swept into her mind, and almost choked further utterance.
"A.V.C.," the young man said slowly, deciphering the monogram, which,
in exquisitely-chased gold, surmounted the pendant itself. This latter
consisted of an emerald, remarkably vivid in colour, and set in the
same finely-chased gold as that which formed the monogram. "A.V.C.
would have been some ancestor of yours, no doubt?" he asked jocularly,
and with another wink at his companion.
"I don't know," Christina repeated; "as I tell you, I know nothing of
the jewel's history. I believe it to be a genuine emerald, and I am
sure it is very valuable."
Both men simultaneously shrugged their shoulders and laughed, odious,
deprecating laughs.
"My dear young lady," said Franks, who seemed to occupy a position
superior to the other, "someone has been, as we say, 'getting at' you,
if they told you this was a _genuine_ emerald. Why! if it was an
emerald, a _real_ emerald, mind you, it would be worth"--and he raised
his eyes to the ceiling, and lifted up his hands, as if to demonstrate
the magnitude of a sum he could not mention in spoken language.
"It _is_ a real emerald, and it is worth a great deal," Christina said
firmly, "but if you do not care to advance me what it is worth, I will
take it away," and she put out her hand for the pendant, from which the
gleams of light flashed brilliantly.
"Now look here," said Mr. Franks persuasively, "you believe me, missy;
this is no more an emerald than I am, but it is a nice little bit of
paste, and the gold is well worked. I'm taking a good bit upon myself
in making the suggestion, and goodness knows what the boss will say to
me when he comes home. But I'll take it off your hands for five
pounds. There!" he ended triumphantly, as though convinced that the
generosity must be a delicious surprise for his hearer.
"Five--pounds!"--Christina's voice rang with indignation--"five pounds
for what you know as well as I do is worth twenty times that amount."
Franks laughed contemptuously, and began putting the ornament back into
its box with elaborate care.
"You have an exaggerated idea of the thing's value," he said. "I
couldn't undertake to offer you more than five pounds for it, and if
you take my advice," he added darkly, with a swift glance at his
colleague, and back at the girl, "you'll accept the offer, and let us
have the thing altogether. You see," he coughed significantly,
"awkward questions might be asked about a thing like this, with
initials. If I did my business properly, I ought to ask you where you
got it."
The colour ebbed out of Christina's face; the possibility that had
confronted her a few minutes ago, had all at once taken definite form.
This man was hinting--nay, more than hinting--that the pendant had come
into her hands by unlawful means, and she had nothing but her word to
prove her own statement.
"I have told you--that it belonged to my mother," she said tremblingly;
"it is an old family ornament, and--I cannot part with it altogether."
"Look here, miss"--the man's voice became rough and harsh--"it's no use
your coming old family ornaments over me. People with old family
ornaments don't come to places like this pawning them. What price your
'old family,' eh?" He ended his coarse speech with a coarser laugh, at
the sound of which Christina shrank and shivered.
"I will take back my pendant, please," she said, trying to regain her
courageous tone. "I do not wish to sell it outright, and if you will
not advance me anything on it, there is nothing more to be said."
"Not so fast, not so fast," the man called Tom exclaimed, pushing back
the hand she once more extended towards the box. "What Mr. Franks says
is very true--how do we know where you got this pendant? The more you
go on making difficulties over letting it go, the more doubtful the
whole affair looks. Now if you're really so badly in want of cash," he
went on brutally, "you take what we offer--five pounds down. If you
don't, we may feel ourselves obliged to send for the police--and----"
Quite unable, in her innocence, to understand that the two cowards were
bullying her to the top of their bent;--already worn-out by the events
of the day, and by many days of fatigue and under-feeding, a panic
terror seized upon her. Before the astonished men were aware of her
intention, she had reached over the counter, snatched the box from
Franks's hand, and fled out of the shop and down the street, her heart
beating to suffocation, her eyes wide with terror.
Never once looking back, she threaded her way along the pavement,
oblivious of the expostulations of passers-by, against whom she
brushed; almost unconscious of their very existence, in her frantic
desire speedily to put as great a distance as possible between herself
and the objectionable jewellers.
Heedless of the traffic, she dashed headlong over the crossings, and
plunging into a network of by-streets, ran on still at full speed,
possessed by the horrible fear that those men with the dreadful smiles,
might already have put the police upon her track.
"I can't prove the pendant is mine," she panted breathlessly. "I have
no proof that I didn't steal it. What can I say if they take me up as
a thief?" The bare thought made her redouble her pace, although she
was already on the verge of exhaustion, and her breath was coming in
great gasps. Beads of perspiration stood on her forehead, and when at
last she reached her own room, she was powerless to do more than sink
upon a chair, shaking in every limb.
For many minutes she could only lean back, with closed eyes and ashen
face, drawing long painful breaths, each one of which was a sob; but as
a sense of safety grew upon her, she roused herself to light her lamp,
and to draw off her damp clothing, preparatory to going to bed. Even
with the slender supply of blankets Mrs. Jones allowed her lodgers, it
would be warmer than sitting up without a fire; and she dared not allow
herself the luxury of a fire, especially now that her last hope of
raising money had been snatched from her.
"For I shall never dare take the pendant to show to anybody again," she
thought, with a shudder. "The next person I went to might send for the
police then and there. And perhaps it was horrible of me to think of
pawning mother's pendant at all--only--I don't believe she would have
minded, if she had known how dreadfully, dreadfully poor her little
girl was going to be--and how hard it is for a girl even to get bread
enough to keep from starvation. And I know this is worth--oh! a lot of
money," she exclaimed pathetically, once more taking the ornament from
its box, and holding it before her in the light of the lamp. As the
green gleam of the stones flashed out before her eyes, the dreary room
in which she sat, her squalid surroundings, even her own misery faded
from her mind; she was back in the past--back in her mother's bedroom
in the dear Devonshire home--her mother's dying voice sounding in her
ears. Through the open window had drifted the song of the sea,
mingling with the hum of bees amongst the roses that climbed to the
very sill, and made the room fragrant with their sweetness. And a bird
had sung--ah! how it had sung, on that last night of her mother's life,
when Christina felt that her life too was going down into the dark for
ever.
"My little girl"--how faint the gentle voice had been!--"I--can't
stay--now father has gone; he--and I--could not ever be apart. He is
my world---all my world." The dim resentment which Christina, the
child, had sometimes experienced, because those two beings she loved
best had seemed so remote from her, so perfectly able to live their
lives without her, had smitten the girl Christina afresh as she
listened to her mother's words. Her father and mother had been so
wrapped up in one another, always so wholly sufficient for each other's
needs, that their child had played a very secondary part in their
lives. And the child had dimly resented it.
Through all the sorrow that filled her heart as she stood beside her
mother's deathbed, that smouldering resentment would not be wholly
stilled. Her mother could barely spare a thought for the girl she was
leaving to face the world alone, because her husband filled her whole
soul; she could remember only that he had gone before her into the
silent land, and that she must hasten to join him again.
"You are so young," the dying voice had murmured on, whilst the fast
dimming eyes looked, not at her little daughter, but at the blue sky
outside the window, "somebody will want you some
day--as--Ronald--wanted me--as--he wants me still."
Christina did not answer, only her eyes followed her mother's glance
out to the deep blue sky framed by the nodding roses round the window;
and she wondered dully whether anybody would really care for her some
day, or whether there was something inherently unlovable in her, seeing
that her own father and mother had seemed to find her so little worthy
of love.
The bitter thought passed. She bent over her mother, and gently
stroked back the damp hair from her forehead.
"I shall--be able--to take care of myself," she said bravely, "and----"
"Be good, my little girl," the murmuring voice broke in, "be good--and
come to us some day--Ronald and I will be there--together. I want--to
tell you--the pendant--the emerald pendant"--a look of excitement
flashed into her eyes; she made a great effort to raise herself in the
bed, but such effort was far beyond her feeble strength--"I can't
tell--you--now," she gasped; "later--after--sleep--the
pendant--take--the--emerald; tell Arthur"--and at that word her
strength suddenly failed, her eyes closed, she slipped down among her
pillows, in an unconsciousness from which she never again awoke.
All through the fragrant summer night following that sunshiny
afternoon, Christina had watched beside her, hoping against hope that
some faint knowledge of outward things would return to her, that the
strange unfinished sentence might be ended.
"I want to tell you," her mother had said. What was it she wished to
tell her daughter? What was the meaning of those strange words that
seemed so incoherent and without sense?
"The pendant--take--the--emerald--tell Arthur----"
But no glimmer of consciousness crossed the still white face; the eyes
that had last looked at the sunny sky of June, and the nodding roses,
opened no more upon this world's sunshine and flowers, the faltering
voice was silenced for ever; and in the grey dawn of morning
Christina's mother had passed to the land where she and the man she
loved would part no more.
The vision faded. Christina was back again in the present--the dull
light of the oil lamp shining on the jewel she held--in the clammy cold
of a November evening, that was as far removed from the sunny sweetness
of June, as her sordid room was removed from the rose-scented fragrance
of her old home.
"I wonder what she wanted to tell me," the girl mused again; as she had
mused countless times before; "what could she have meant when she said
those words:
"The pendant--take--the--emerald--tell Arthur----"
"I wonder who Arthur could have been."