RAG DOLLS.
And slight Sir Robert, with his watery smile
And educated whisker.
These were days not to be forgotten by Dolly or by her aunt. Don't we
all know how life runs in certain grooves, following phases of one sort
or another? how dreams of coming trouble haunt us vaguely all through a
night? or, again, is it hope that dawns silently from afar to lighten
our hearts and to make sweet visions for us before we awake to the heat
of the day?
It was all tranquil progress from day to day. Raban came to see them
once or twice while George was away. It seemed all peace and silence
during those years in the old house, where the two women lived so
quietly each their own life, thinking their own thoughts. Rumours came
now and then of Mrs. Palmer's return; but this had been put off so
often, from one reason or another, that Dolly had almost ceased to dwell
upon it. She had settled down to her daily occupations. John Morgan had
set her to work in one of his districts. She used to teach in the
Sunday-school, help her aunt in a hundred ways. This eventful spring she
went into Yorkshire with Marker and a couple of new gowns, on a visit to
her uncle, Sir Thomas Henley, at Smokethwaite. She enjoyed herself
extremely, and liked her uncle and the girls very much. Her aunt was not
very kind; 'at least, not so kind as I'm used to,' said Dolly
afterwards. They had gone for long walks across the moors; they had
ridden for twenty miles one day. She had seen her mother's picture, and
slept in the room that used to be hers when she was a girl, and her
cousin Norah had taken her about; but her Aunt Henley was certainly very
cross and always saying uncomfortable things, and she was very glad to
be home again, and didn't want to go away for years and years. Robert
Henley had been there for a couple of days, and had come up to town with
her. Jonah Henley was a very kind, stupid boy, not at all like Robert.
He was very friendly to Dolly, and used to confide in her. He had made
his mother very angry by insisting upon going into the Guards.
'She asked my advice,' said Dolly. 'She wanted to know if I didn't think
it a foolish, idle sort of life.'
'And what did you say?' said Lady Sarah.
'I said that it might be so for some people who were clever and
thoughtful, but that he seemed to have no interests at all, and never
opened a book.'
'My dear child,' cried Lady Sarah, 'no wonder Lady Henley was annoyed!'
'Oh, dear me! I am so very sorry,' cries Dolly, penitently, as she
walked along. They were going along one of the narrow alleys leading to
the Square.
Day after day Lady Sarah used to leave home and trudge off with her
basket and her well-known shabby cloak--it was warm and green like the
heart that beat under it--from house to house, in and out, round and
about the narrow little Kensington streets. The parents, who had tried
to impose upon her at first, soon found that she had little sympathy for
pathetic attitudes, and that her quick tongue paid them back in their
own coin. They bore no malice. Poor people only really respect those who
know them as they are, and whose sympathy is personal and not ideal.
Lady Sarah's was genuine sympathy; she knew her flock by name, and she
spared no trouble to help those who were trying to help themselves. The
children would come up shyly when they saw the straight, scant figure
coming along, and look into her face. Sometimes the basket would open
and red apples would come out--shining red apples in the dirty little
back streets and by-lanes behind Kensington Square. Once Robert Henley,
walking to Church House, across some back way, came upon his aunt
sitting on an old chair on the step of a rag-shop with a little circle
of children round her, and Dolly standing beside her, straight and
upright. Over her head swung the legless form of a rag doll, twirling in
the wind. On one side of the door was some rhymed doggerel about 'Come,
cookey, come,' and bring 'your bones,' plastered up against the wall.
Lady Sarah, on the step, seemed dispensing bounties from her bag to
half-a-dozen little clamorous, half-fledged creatures.
'My dear Lady Sarah, what does this mean?' said Robert, trying to laugh,
but looking very uncomfortable.
'I was so tired, Robert, I could not get home without resting,' said
Lady Sarah, 'and Mr. Wilkins kindly brought me out a chair. These are
some of my Sunday-school children, and Dolly and I were giving them a
treat.'
'But really this is scarcely the place to----If any one were to
pass--if----Run away, run away, run away,' said Mr. Henley affably to
the children, who were all closing in a ragged phalanx and gazing
admiringly at his trousers. 'I'll get you a cab directly,' said the
young man, looking up and down. 'I came this short cut, but I had no
idea----'
'There are no cabs anywhere down here,' said Dolly, laughing. 'This is
Aunt Sarah's district; that is her soup-kitchen.' And Dolly pointed up a
dismal street with some flapping washing-lines on one side. It looked
all empty and deserted, except that two women were standing in the
doorways of their queer old huddled-up houses. A little further off came
a branch street, a blank wall, and some old Queen Anne railings and
doorways leading into Kensington Square.
'Good-by, little Betty,' said Lady Sarah, getting up from her old straw
chair, and smiling.
She was amused by the young man's unaffected dismay. Philanthropy was
quite in Henley's line, but that was, Robert thought, a very different
thing from familiarity.
'Now then, Betty, where's your curtsey?' says Dolly, 'and Mick, sir!'
Mick grinned, and pulled at one of his horrible little wisps of hair.
The children seemed fascinated by the 'gentleman.' They were used to the
ladies, and, in fact, accustomed to be very rude to Dolly, although she
was so severe.
'If you will give me an arm, Robert,' said Lady Sarah, 'and if you are
not ashamed to be seen with me----'
'My dear Lady Sarah!' said Robert, hastily, offering his arm.
'Now, children, be off,' says Dolly.
'Please, sir, won't you give us 'napeny?' said Mick, hopping along with
his little deft, bare feet.
'Go away,--for shame, Mick!' cried Dolly again, while Henley impatiently
threw some coppers into the road, after which all the children set off
scrambling in an instant.
'Oh, Robert, you shouldn't have done that,' cried Dolly, rushing back to
superintend the fair division of kicks and halfpence.
Robert waited for her for a moment, and looked at her as she stood in
her long grey cloak, with a little struggling heap at her feet of legs
and rags and squeaks and contortions. The old Queen Anne railings of the
corner house, and the dim street winding into rags, made a background to
this picture of modern times: an old slatternly woman in a nightcap came
to her help from one of the neighbouring doorways, and seizing one of
the children out of the heap, gave it a cuff and dragged it away. Dolly
had lifted Mick off the back of a smaller child--the crisis was over.
'Here she comes,' said Lady Sarah, in no way discomposed.
Robert was extremely discomposed. He hated to see Dolly among such
sights and surroundings. He tried to speak calmly as they walked on, but
his voice sounded a little cracked.
'Surely,' he said, 'this is too much for you at times. Do you go very
often?'
'Nearly every day, Robert,' said Dorothea. 'You see what order I have
got the children into.'
She was laughing again, and Henley, as usual, was serious.
'Of course I cannot judge,' said he, 'not knowing what state they were
in originally.' Then he added, gravely turning to Lady Sarah, 'Don't you
somehow think that Dolly is very young to be mixed up with a--rag-shops
and wickedness?'
'Dolly is young,' said her aunt, not over pleased; 'but she is very
prudent, and I am not afraid of her pawning her clothes and taking to
drink.'
'My dear aunt, you don't suppose I ever thought of such a possibility,'
Robert exclaimed. 'Only ladies do not always consider things from our
point of view, and I feel in a certain degree responsible and bound to
you as your nearest male protector (take care--here is a step). I should
not like other people, who might not know Dolly as we do, to imagine
that she was accustomed already to----'
'My dear Robert,' said Lady Sarah, 'Dolly has got an aunt and a brother
to take care of her; do you suppose that we would let her do anything
that we thought might hurt her in other people's opinion? Dolly, here is
Robert horrified at the examples to which you are exposed. He feels he
ought to interfere.'
'You won't understand me,' said Robert, keeping his temper very
good-naturedly. 'Of course I can't help taking an interest in my
relations.'
'Thank you, Robert,' said Dolly, smiling and blushing.
Their eyes met for an instant, and Robert looked better pleased. It was
a bright delightful spring morning. All the windows were shining in the
old square, there was a holiday thrill in the air, a sound of life, dogs
barking, people stirring and coming out of their hiding-places, animals
and birds exulting.
Dolly used to get almost tipsy upon sunshine. The weather is as much
part of some people's lives as the minor events which happen to them.
She walked along by the other two, diverging a little as they travelled
along, the elder woman's bent figure beating time with quick fluttering
footsteps to the young man's even stride. Dolly liked Robert to be nice
to her aunt, and was not a little pleased when he approved of herself.
She was a little afraid of him. She felt that beneath that calm manner
there were many secrets that she had not yet fathomed. She knew how good
he was, how he never got into debt. Ah me! how she wished George would
take pattern by him. Dolly and Rhoda had sometimes talked Robert over.
They gave him credit for great experience, a deep knowledge of the world
(he dined out continually when he was in town), and they also gave him
full credit for his handsome, thoughtful face, his tall commanding
figure. You cannot but respect a man of six foot high.
So they reached the doorway at last. The ivy was all glistening in the
sunshine, and as they rang the bell they heard the sound of Gumbo's bark
in the garden, and then came some music, some brilliant
pianoforte-playing, which sounded clear and ringing as it overflowed the
garden-wall and streamed out into the lane.
'Listen! Who can that be playing?' cries Dolly, brightening up still
brighter, and listening with her face against the ivy.
'George,' says Robert. 'Has George come up again?'
'It's the overture to the _Freischuetz_,' says Dolly, conclusively; 'it
_is_ George.'
And when old Sam shuffled up at last to open the door, he announced,
grinning, that 'Mr. Garge had come, and was playing the peanner in the
drawing-room.'
At the same moment, through the iron gate, they saw a figure advancing
to meet them from the garden, with Gumbo caracolling in advance.
'Why there is Rhoda in the garden,' cries Dolly. 'Robert, you go to her.
I must go to George.'