THE PITILESS LONDON STREETS
Unbolstered in such ways of hope, their thoughts flew to wild extremes;
Phyl was ill again, and was confined to bed; the harsh biting winters
always caught at her poor little chest, and four or five times from
November to March they were obliged to keep her a week or more safely
amongst the blankets. Dolly was of course always her faithful companion
and slave at such times, and the days never dragged; if those two had
been set down on a desert island for a year, their quaint resources and
strange imaginings would have filled every day to the brim with action
and enjoyment.
And this time they had a limitless subject for discussion.
They had climbed up their own particular beanstalk of imagination, and
peeped into the land of poverty wherein soon their feet were to walk.
Dolly went about as much as she could, unobserved, without her boots.
“They’ll wear out quickly enough twamping about the stweets,” she said.
“I’ll take good care of them now.”
Weenie slipped hers off. “Le’s take our stockings off too, Dolly,” she
said, “then they won’t get worned out.”
“Oh,” said Dolly, “stockings are cheap, I think—besides we could go
without them altogether; the little girls who came selling holly had no
stockings on at all.”
Phyl, tied to bed, could not economize in this way, but when Harriet
ran up with her eleven o’clock lunch-tray she only ate half the bread
to her beef-tea, and did not touch the arrowroot biscuits. “Here,” she
said, gathering them up carefully, “put them in the box quickly, Dolly,
before Harriet comes back, or she’ll make me eat them.”
Dolly got out the old bonnet-box, that until the last few days had held
their patches of materials for dolls’ clothes. It was half full of
broken victuals,—bits of cake, bread, a jar with butter in it, quite
a quantity of sugar that they had saved instead of having it in their
tea; even a couple of mutton-chops.
This was to provide against the coming days when they would be starving
in the streets of London, and was to be brought out as a beautiful
surprise to their mother when she was tired out one day and hopeless of
getting food for dinner.
Phyl and Dolly sketched the future with dark enjoyment on their faces,
and Weenie listened aghast.
Their mother, of course, would strive to earn a livelihood by singing
in the snowy London streets, Weenie in her arms, themselves beside her
trying to sell bunches of violets or watercress, or even shoelaces.
Sometimes the passers-by would put pennies into their mother’s hand,
or buy their own wares, but sometimes no one would take any notice of
them at all, and they would go home at length to a dark, damp cellar,
and divide a crust of bread amongst them, and sleep on the old floor
beneath sacks.
At this point in the pleasing prospect Weenie used to cry dismally, and
their own eyes would fill with tears of self-pity.
They would pursue it a little further, however; their clothes would
grow more and more ragged, and the wind would whistle through them,
and chill them to the bone; they would all be barefoot, their boots
having worn out and their stockings gone long since; and they would
all have such hacking coughs that the passers-by, hurrying away to
their rich, luxurious homes, would occasionally fling them a glance
of pity. And at last a benevolent old gentleman would be passing by,
and touched at their distress would put his hand hastily in his pocket
and bring out a coin which he would slip into their mother’s hand with
the words, “Here’s a shilling for you, my poor woman,” and when he got
some distance away they would discover he had given them a sovereign
in mistake. And the mother would sternly put away the temptation to
buy food and clothes for her starving children with it, and bid Phyl
and Dolly run after him and tell him of the mistake. And they would
catch him at last, and tendering the glittering gold back to him would
tell him of his error. And he would be so overcome with their honesty
that he would take them by the hand and go back to their mother and
ask questions of her,—what was her name?—why was she in such great
distress? And when he heard the name he would lean up against the
lamp-post quite overcome; and when they asked him what was the matter
he would answer that he was their father’s long-lost brother, and had
been searching for them for years, as he was immensely wealthy and did
not know what to do with his money. And thereupon he would adopt them
all, and they would all live happily to the end of their days.
“Then why doesn’t mama tell Dadda’s bruvver now?” demanded the
practical Weenie.
Phyl and Dolly glanced at her impatiently. That the father had no
brother, long-lost or otherwise, was a detail they had not troubled
about.
“Oh, well, it’ll be an uncle or a cousin,” they said, and ran on
painting the brilliant future life they would lead, in colours as
glowing as they had painted the other days dun.
It was on the first day that Phyl was up again that they actually
learned the great news. At tea-time Mrs. Conway ran into the nursery
for a moment. She had been busy with the lawyer most of the afternoon,
and now he and her own brother were staying for the evening that yet
more business might be talked.
“I want you all to be very quiet and good,” she said; “play here all
the time, Phyl mustn’t be in the draughts, and no one is to come
running into the breakfast-room under any pretext.”
“Mayn’t we even come to dessert?” said Dolly. This had always been
their privilege.
“There is no dessert,” said the mother. “There is nothing but a very
small leg of mutton, and an apple-pie, and some custards. Tell Harriet,
Dolly, to look in the store-room, I think there is just one more pot of
red currant-jelly for the meat.”
She went to the door, then came back; her cheeks were flushed, her
crinkly hair pushed back from her forehead as if with much and
difficult thinking.
“Before you go to bed to-night you shall know everything,” she said;
“till then be good little chickies, and don’t let me see a bit of you.”
But there were four hours to bed-time,—how could they make the time
endurable, confined within the limits of these four walls?
Yet on ordinary occasions it was a most resourceful room.
It was fairly large and well lighted, with a window that had what
all nurseries should have,—a deep, broad window-seat. Of necessary
furniture there was nothing beyond a table, four or five chairs, an old
horse-hair sofa, and two large cupboards. And all of it, by the earnest
request of the three remaining inhabitants, was crowded down to one
end, in order to leave the other quite bare for play. Phyl and Dolly
had begged an old clothes-horse, and had coaxed Harriet into nailing
some material over it. The big corner it had screened off from the room
was entirely sacred to them; and Weenie, when they retired within it
and extended no invitation to her, had no other course left but to stay
outside and make a disturbing noise. For she was such a destructive
small morsel that Mr. and Mrs. Conway, in the interests of the two to
whom dolls were living breathing beings and the centres of passionate
affections, had been obliged to join the coalition against her in this
respect, and say she must not touch that corner without permission.
They sought to recompense her for the interdict by giving her boxes
of wooden and tin soldiers, boats and horses, and they begged the two
elder little maids to be unselfish and not abuse the privilege.
Inside the screen the floor-space was covered with an old hearth-rug.
The most imposing article of furniture was the bedstead. Mr. Conway
had had it made by a carpenter three Christmases ago, and Mrs. Conway
had made the clothing. Surely there never was so beautiful a thing.
It was made of cedar, and was large enough to accommodate at a pinch
four dolls, seeing the habit of these diminutives is to lie perfectly
straight and not sprawl about like humans. The head and foot were
slightly carved, it had prettily-turned pillars, and beneath the
mattress were white laths. The bed itself was of feathers, and the
casing of blue Belgian tick exactly like “grown-up” beds. Then there
came an under-blanket with a red button-holed edge, a beautiful sheet,
two sweet tiny pillows in frilled pillow-cases, another sheet, another
blanket (this one prettily stitched), and, crowning glory of all, a
patchwork counterpane made of lovely bits of silk, and lined delicately
with pale pink. There were even nightdress pockets, edged with lace, to
lay upon it in the daytime.
Phyl and Dolly went to their corner to see their large families into
bed as one means of filling the time this evening.
They folded all the tiny garments in stacks, and inducted even the most
battered and headless specimens of dollhood into nightgowns.
“The sheets are very dirty,” Dolly said; “we quite forgot, Phyl, it was
washing day to-day. How’d it be if we do it now? We can dry the things
on the fire-guard.”
But Phyl had covered up the last of her offspring, and was bringing out
a tattered copy of _The Arabian Nights_.
“I think we’d better read,” she said, “then the time will go very
quickly.”
“Well, wait for me a second,” Dolly said, hastily plaiting up the long
golden hair of Constance, the one fashionable doll of the assembly.
Then they lay down together on the hearth-rug, the book between them,
and their chins propped in their hands.
“Oh,” said the little lonely person outside the screen, “I’ve nosing to
do, Dolly, le’s wash the things and hang them upon the line? Le’s come
in, Phyl?”
“Hide the best little cups,” whispered Phyl to Dolly.
“She’ll bweak the mangle,” whispered Dolly to Phyl, “don’t let’s get it
out.”
“No, I won’t,” said the maligned young person, entering.
“Where’s the tubs and the bucket?—le’s play, I’m Jane. An’ I must have
the mangle, Dolly.”
Phyl and Dolly sighed. They had their own particular ways of turning
the garments inside out, and soaking and rinsing them; they knew just
what things were worn then and needed gentle rubbing; it was a real
hardship to remember their mother’s words and let the careless little
one in to help.
“It’s a very small wash this week,” Phyl said; “I don’t think I shall
put even Suey’s pinafores in.”
“When you look at them, the sheets and pillow-cases aren’t so very
dirty,” Dolly said.
[Plate Illustration: “‘I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,’
Phyl said.”]
They gave Weenie two or three print frocks and a heap of under-linen.
“The tub isn’t half full, dive me some more,” said the young
washerwoman, tucking her sleeves up to her shoulders, tying her
handkerchief round her head, and turning up the front of her dress to
look business-like.
“I tell you it’s only a small wash this week,” Phyl said.
“I know,” said Weenie, pouting, “you fink I won’t get your old clothes
clean.”
Without a doubt they did think so.
“Wash those first,” Dolly said; “p’waps we’ll find some more soon.”
Weenie gathered up the things indicated, and one other thing, and
went off to the end of the room to the window-seat that was used as a
laundry.
She dragged both the tubs with her, and insisted upon being given
possession of the mangle. When they demurred she looked at them
reproachfully.
“I fought you promised mummie on Sunday that you would be good to me,”
she said.
So they sighed and gave it up to her—even tried to dole out the
necessary stores with a show of cheerfulness—the pat of soap, the
microscopic blue-bag, the soda, starch, and infinitesimal pegs. Then
they fell down to their book again. The Prince of Persia was making
his first visit to the palace of Schemselnihar, and how those children
revelled in the gorgeous colouring of the scene! The unstinted wealth
of adjectives acted like intoxicants to their senses. They were not
lying down face downwards on a hearth-rug in England; they were far
away in that brilliant East, in a noble saloon the dome of which was
supported by a hundred pillars of marble white as alabaster. The bases
and chapiters of the pillars were adorned with four-footed beasts and
birds of different sorts, gilded. In every space between the columns
was a little alcove adorned in the same manner, and great vessels of
china, crystal, jet, porphyry, agate, and other precious materials
garnished with gold and jewels. The windows looked into the most
delicious garden. Ten black women came towards them, carrying with much
difficulty a throne of massy silver, curiously wrought; then twenty
handsome ladies richly appareled alike, and playing on instruments.
Lastly Schemselnihar herself, easily distinguished from the rest by her
majestic air, as well as by a sort of mantle of a very fine stuff of
gold and sky-blue, fastened to her shoulders over her other apparel,
which was the most magnificent that could be imagined. It was of
purple. . . .
“Ugh!” said the voice of the distant washerwoman, “ah, ugh!” There was
a sound of the spilling of much water, and the falling of something.
Phyl and Dolly scrambled to their feet and rushed out, to find Weenie’s
wash had been much more extensive than bargained for.
They were allowed to use the water from an old “puzzle” jug that stood
on one of the cupboards, but Harriet had been careless enough this
evening, with the demands of “company” on her mind, to leave her bowl
of washing-up water on the table, and Weenie had utilized that instead,
since it was warm.
She had washed all the dolls’ clothes in it, they hung over the
fire-guard, grey and greasy: there were two ancient wool antimacassars
that were kept on the sofa when they were not doing duty as wraps for
dolls or “ladies,”—she had washed them also and turned the water a
queer shade of green. When she found her own pinafore was stained from
the running wool she took it off and washed it too: when she found
her white woollen frock was in the same condition she struggled out
of it and dipped it in the basin and soaped and rinsed it vigorously,
standing all the time on a chair. The clattering sound was caused by
the chair slipping aside, and “down tumbled baby and white frock and
all.”
Phyl and Dolly scolded energetically, as became elder sisters.
Then suddenly Phyl gave a scream of absolute horror and flew to the
fire-guard. Hanging over it to dry, its gay colours running streakily
into each other, its delicate lining turned a nondescript hue, was
their cherished dolls’ counterpane.
“What’s the matter?” said Weenie wonderingly.
But Phyl and Dolly had burst into tears and rushed together for the
first overwhelming minute of bitter sorrow.
Weenie ran to them confidently, perfect joy on her face.
“The mangle isn’t broked,” she said, “it’s nosing but the handle tomed
off. Mover’ll stick it on again; don’t cry, Dolly.”
Then they looked at her innocent face more in anger than in sorrow.
Phyl even pushed her roughly away.
“You’re a bad, wicked, horrid girl,” she said.
Weenie lost her balance and staggered against Dolly.
“You’re a howid, wicked, bad girl,” said Dolly, and pushed her back.
The return push gave her into Phyl’s power again. That young person
caught her by her bare shoulders and gave her a slight shake.
“How dare you touch our things?” she said.
Dolly ran to her and gave her another little shake.
“How dare you touch our things?” she said.
Weenie burst into tears, the heartbroken tears of injured innocence.
She had not dreamed of doing injury to the counterpane; it had seemed a
beautiful thing to her to take it surreptitiously and wash it so well
for them; she had thought they would be delighted when they saw it
fresh and clean, for they had been saying the lining was getting dirty
for a long time.
She flung herself down in a miserable shivering heap on the floor.
But the elder girls left her alone, and took their anger and the
counterpane behind the screen.
She cried for nearly ten minutes before their wrath cooled. Then the
pitifulness of her sobbings suddenly softened their hearts. They ran
out to her.
“Poor old Weenie,” Dolly said; “never mind, Weenie, it doesn’t matter.”
Weenie clung to her convulsively, she had sobbed herself quite ill.
Phyl ran to the press where the clothes were kept and found a frock and
pinafore; she was reproaching herself bitterly for the blue little arms
and chattering teeth.
“Darling little Weenie,” she said, “here, let Phyl put this on—don’t
cry so, baby sweet,—we aren’t angry a bit now, are we, Dolly? It
doesn’t matter a scrap, does it, Dolly?”
“Not a scwap,” said Dolly eagerly.
They pulled her to the fire, and Phyl leaned perilously over the guard
and poked till the flames leaped up warmly; they rubbed her perishing
little hands, they petted and kissed her and called themselves all
sorts of names for being so unkind to her.
“We’ll do anything, Weenie—_anything_,” said Phyl distractedly, when
the convulsive sobbing still continued.
Weenie was sufficiently recovered to press the advantage.
“Give me the l-little m-mangle for my ownty own,” she said.
They promised to her cheerfully.
“An’ le’s make ice-cream an’ have a p-p-party.”
They set to work to obey her.
They spread tea-towels over two chairs and laid out their best
dinner-set that contained a soup-tureen and a sauce-boat in addition to
the usual things. Phyl made soup of three currants and weak tea, Dolly
cut an apple into thin slices, arranged them in slanting piles on a
small plate, and called it bread-and-butter.
Weenie herself stirred flour-and-water and sugar together into a lump
of dough and then stuck four currants into it; that was the pudding.
Phyl mixed sugar-and-water together for sauce.
Then came the _chef-d’œuvre_. They listened at the door to make sure no
footsteps approached; then Dolly stealthily opened the window, leaned
out and got a handful or two of snow from the creeper outside. They put
it on a plate and stirred sugar into it; then they reached down the
precious bottle of cochineal their mother had given them, and coloured
it a pale, lovely pink.
They dressed all the dolls in their very best and brought them to the
feast. Even Weenie’s “Molly Coddles” was hunted up and introduced into
a garment. She was Weenie’s only doll—a gaunt, wooden one with a black
painted head and vividly red cheeks.
In the beginning she had possessed the jointed wooden legs and arms
that are usually found on her species; but Weenie had thought them
troublesome and pulled them off. The stump of a body and the big head
she used variously as a horse, a hammer, a ship, and a missile. Dolly
to-day, however, wrapped the poor wreck in Jennie’s second-best party
cloak, and she was propped up at the table among her betters.
How delicious was that pink ice-cream, eaten off inch-wide plates, with
microscopic tin spoons! What delicate flavour that soup had, especially
when Phyl chopped up very small a leaf of the outside creeper and made
the effect still more realistic? Nothing could have been more enjoyable
than that rather dirty-looking ball of dough, yclept a pudding, with
the sweet sauce, also coloured pink, poured over it.
Weenie was beamingly happy again, and Phyl and Dolly were enjoying
themselves so intensely that all thought of the counterpane faded from
their minds.
“But, oh,” cried Phyl, “I don’t think Suey ought to have another
ice-cream, she’s had five, and it was only yesterday she had
whooping-cough and perelsis.”
“Give it to my old Molly Coddles,” said Weenie, and kissed her poor
puppet in an unusual burst of tenderness,—“poor old Molly, I wisht
you’d let her sleep in the bed with Jennie and Suey,—she hasn’t got
nowhere to sleep.”
The door opened and the mother came in.
Weenie greeted her hilariously.
“Come an’ have some ice-cream, mummie,” she cried, “twickerly,
twickerly, or Molly ’ll eat it all.”
[Illustration: “We are going to Australia.”]
But Phyl and Dolly dropped their dolls and rushed to their mother with
parted lips and eagerly questioning eyes.
Mrs. Conway’s face was a little pale, but her hair was no longer pushed
back, and worry-wrinkles had smoothed themselves from the forehead.
Her eyes looked brave and calm and smiling, there was no fear in them
at all.
“Oh, what is it?” Phyl cried; “it is a big, big thing, I know, I know.”
The mother sat down in a chair while they pressed round her.
“Yes, it is rather a big thing,” she said. “In one month, little girls,
we are going to Australia.”