Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover art]
THE GIRL WHO HAD NOTHING
By
MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON
AUTHOR OF "THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR," ETC.
_ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN CAMERON_
LONDON
WARD LOCK & CO LIMITED
1905
----
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I--The Old Lady in the Victoria
CHAPTER II--The Old Lady's Nephew
CHAPTER III--A Deal in Clerios
CHAPTER IV--The Steam Yacht _Titania_
CHAPTER V--The Landlady at Woburn Place
CHAPTER VI--The Tenants of Roseneath Park
CHAPTER VII--The Woman Who Knew
CHAPTER VIII--Lord Northmuir's Young Relative
CHAPTER IX--A Journalistic Mission
CHAPTER X--The Coup of "The Planet"
CHAPTER XI--Kismet and a V.C.
CHAPTER XII--A New Love and an Old Enemy
----
CHAPTER I--The Old Lady in the Victoria
Joan Carthew had reason to believe that it was her birthday, and she had
signalised the occasion by running away from home. But her birthday,
and her home, and her running away, were all so different from things
with the same name in the lives of other children, that the celebration
was not in reality as festive as it might seem if put into print.
In the first place, she based her theory as to the date solely upon a
dim recollection that once, eons of years ago, when she had been a
petted little creature with belongings of her own (she was now twelve),
there had been presents and sweets on the 13th of May. She thought she
could recall looking eagerly forward to that anniversary; and she argued
shrewdly that, as her assortment of agreeable memories was small, in all
likelihood she had not made a mistake.
In the second place, Joan's home was a Brighton lodging-house, where she
was a guest of the landlady, and not a "paying" guest, as she was
frequently reminded. In that vague time, eons ago, she had been left at
the house by her mother (who was, it seemed, an actress), with a sum of
money large enough to pay for her keep until that lady's return from
touring, at the end of the theatrical season. The end of the season and
the end of the money had come about the same time, but not the expected
mother. The beautiful Mrs. Carthew, whose professional name was Marie
Lanchester, had never reappeared, never written. Mrs. Boyle had made
inquiries, advertised, and spent many shillings on theatrical papers,
but had been able to learn nothing. Mr. Carthew was a vague shadow in a
mysterious background, less substantial even than a "walking gentleman,"
and Mrs. Boyle, feeling herself a much injured woman, had in her first
passion of resentment boxed Joan's ears and threatened to send the
"brat" to the poorhouse. But the child was in her seventh year and
beginning to be useful. She liked running up and downstairs to answer
the lodgers' bells, which saved steps for the two overworked servants;
and, of course, when she became a financial burden instead of the means
of lightening burdens, it was discovered that she could do many other
things with equal ease and propriety. She could clean boots and knives,
wash dishes, help make beds, and carry trays; she could also be slapped
for misdeeds of her own and those of others, an act which afforded
invariable relief to the landlady's feelings. As years went on, further
spheres of usefulness opened, especially after the Boyle baby came; one
servant could be kept instead of two; and taking everything into
consideration, Joan's hostess decided to continue her charity.
Therefore, the child could have answered the conundrum, "When is a home
not a home?" out of the stores of her intimate experience.
In the third place, she had only run away as far as one of the shelters
on the Marine Parade; she had brought the landlady's baby with her, and,
lurking grimly in the recesses of her mind, she had the virtuous
intention of going home again when Minnie should be hungry enough to
cry, at tea-time.
Joan was telling the two-year-old Minnie a fairy story, made up out of
her own head, all about a gorgeous princess, and founded on the
adventures she herself would best like to have, when, just as the
narrative was working towards an exciting climax, a girl of Joan's own
age came in sight, walking with her governess.
The story broke off short between Joan's little white teeth, which
suddenly shut together with a click. This did not signify much, as far
as the Boyle baby was concerned, for Joan unconsciously wove fairy tales
more for her own pleasure than that of her companion, and as a matter of
fact the warmth of the afternoon sunshine had acted as "juice of poppy
and mandragora" upon Minnie's brain. Her small, primrose-yellow head
was nodding, and she was unaware that the story had ended abruptly just
as the princess was beguiling the dragon, and that a girl almost as fine
as the princess herself was approaching.
The new-comer was about twelve or thirteen, and she was more exquisitely
dressed than any child Joan remembered to have met. Perhaps, if the
apparition had been a good deal younger or older, the lodging-house
drudge would not have observed so keenly, or realised with a quick stab
of passionate pain the illimitable gulf dividing lives. But here was a
girl of her own age, her own height, her own needs and capacities, and
yet--the difference!
It struck her like a thrust of some thin, delicate surgical instrument
which could inflict anguish, yet leave no trace. Joan's whole life was
spent in dreaming; without the dreams, existence at 12, Seafoam Terrace
would not have been tolerable to a young creature with the nerves of a
racehorse and the imagination of a Scheherazade. She lived practically
a double life within herself, but never until this moment had she been
consciously jealous of the happier fate of a fellow-creature.
In looking from the shelter where she sat in shadow, at the other girl
who walked in sunshine, she knew the crunching pain of the monster's
fangs.
The other girl had long, fair hair; she wore white muslin, foaming with
lace frills, white silk stockings, and shoes of white suede. Her face
was shaded by a great, rose-crowned, leghorn hat, which flopped into
soft curves and made a picture of small features which without it might
have seemed insignificant. The magnetism that was in Joan Carthew's
eyes forced the girl to turn and throw a glance as she passed at the
shabby child in faded brown serge (a frock altered from a discarded one
of Mrs. Boyle's) who sat huddled in the shelter, with a tawdrily dressed
baby asleep by her side. The glance had all the primitive, merciless
disdain of a sleek, fortunate young animal for a miserable, hunted one,
and Joan felt the meaning of it in her soul.
"Why should she have everything and I nothing?" was the old-new question
which shaped itself wordlessly in the child's brain. "She looks at me as
if I were a rat. I'm not a rat! I'm as good as she is, if I had her
clothes. I'm cleverer, and prettier, too, I know I am--heaps and heaps.
Oh! I want to be like her, only better--I must be--I shall!"
She quivered with the fierceness of her revolt against fate, yet in it
was no vulgar jealousy. The other girl's pale blue eyes, in one
contemptuous glance, had found every patch on her frock and shoes, had
criticised her old hat, and sneered at her little, rough, work-worn
hands, scorning her for them as if she were a creature of an inferior
race; but Joan had no personal hatred for the happier child, no wish for
revenge, no desire to take from the other what she had. The feeling
which shook her with sudden, stormy passion was merely the sharp
realisation of injustice, the conviction that by nature she herself was
worthy of the good things she had missed, the savage resolve to have
what she ought to have, at any cost.
It was not tea-time yet, and Minnie was happily asleep; Joan was certain
to be scolded just as sharply on her return as if she had stopped away
for hours longer, therefore she might as well have drained her birthday
cup of stolen pleasure to the dregs; but the good taste of the draught
was gone. She yearned only to go home, to get the scolding over, and to
have a few minutes to herself in the tiny back room which she shared
with the baby. There seemed to be much to think of, much to decide.
The child waked Minnie, who was cross at being roused, and refused to
walk. The quickest way of triumphing over the difficulty was to carry
her, and this method Joan promptly adopted. But the baby was heavy and
fractious. She wriggled in her young nurse's grasp, and just as Joan
had staggered round the corner of Seafoam Terrace, with her
disproportionate burden, she tripped and fell, under the windows of No.
12.
Minnie roared, and there was an echoing shriek from the house. Mrs.
Boyle, who had been looking up and down the street in angry quest of her
missing drudge, saw the catastrophe and rushed to the rescue of her
offspring. She snatched the baby, who was more frightened than hurt,
and holding her by one arm, proceeded to administer chastisement to
Joan.
Instinctively she knew that the girl was sensitive and proud, though she
had no kindred feelings in her own soul, and she delighted in
humiliating her drudge before the whole street. As she screamed
reproaches and harsh names, raining a shower of blows on Joan's ears and
head and burning cheeks, a face appeared in at least one window of each
house along the Terrace. Though a cataract of sparks cascaded before
the child's eyes, somehow she saw the faces and imagined a dozen for
every one.
The shame seemed to her beyond bearing. She forgot even her love for the
baby, which (with the dreams) was the bright thread in the dull fabric
of her existence. After this martyrdom, she neither could nor would
live on in Seafoam Terrace, which with all its eyes had seen her beaten
like a dog.
"Into the house with you, you lazy, good-for-nothing brat!" panted Mrs.
Boyle, when her hand was tired of smiting; and with a push, she would
have urged the girl towards the open front door, but Joan turned
suddenly and faced her.
"No!" she cried, "I won't be your servant any more! I've done with you.
I will never go into your hateful house again, until I come back as a
grand lady you will have to bow down to and worship."
These were grandiloquent words, and Mrs. Boyle would either have laughed
with a coarse sneer, or struck Joan again for her impudence, had not the
look in the child's great eyes actually cowed her for the moment. In
that moment the thin girl of twelve, whom she had beaten, seemed to grow
very tall and wonderfully beautiful; and in the next, she had gone like
a whirlwind which comes and passes before it has been realised.
Joan was desperate. Her newly formed ambition and her stinging shame
mounted like frothing wine to her hot brain. She was in a mood to kill
herself--or make her fortune.
For a time she flew on blindly, neither knowing nor caring which way she
went. By and by, as breath and strength failed, she ran more slowly,
then settled into a quick, unsteady walk. She was on the front, running
in the direction of Hove, and in the distance a handsome victoria with
two horses was coming. The sun shone on the silver harness and the
horses' satin backs. There was a coachman and a groom in livery, and in
the carriage sat an old lady dressed in grey silk, of the same soft tint
as her hair.
Joan had seen this old lady in her victoria several times before, and
had pretended to herself, in one of her glittering dreams, that the lady
took a fancy to her and proposed adoption.
Now, in a flash of thought, which came quick as the glint of light on a
bird's wing, the child told herself that this thing must happen. She
had no home, no people, nothing; she would stake her life on the one
throw which might win all or lose all.
Without stopping to be afraid, or to argue whether she were brave or
foolhardy, she ran forward and threw herself in front of the horses.
The coachman pulled them up so sharply that the splendid pair plunged,
almost falling back on to the victoria, but he was not quick enough to
save the child one blow on the shoulder from an iron-shod hoof.
In an instant the groom was in the road and had snatched her up, with a
few gruff words which Joan dimly heard and understood, although she had
just enough consciousness left to feign unconsciousness.
"How dreadful! how dreadful!" the old lady was exclaiming. "You must
put the poor little thing in the carriage, and I'll drive to the nearest
doctor's."
"Better let me take her in a cab to a hospital, my lady," advised the
groom. "It wasn't our fault. She ran under the horses' feet. Tomkins
and me can both swear to that."
The arbitress of Joan's fate appeared to hesitate, and the child thought
best to revive enough to open her eyes (which she knew to be large and
soft as a fawn's) for one imploring glance. In the fall which had
caused her to drop the Boyle baby, she had grazed her forehead against a
lamp-post, and on the small, white face there remained a stain of blood
which was effective at this juncture. She started, put out her hand,
and groped for the old lady's dress, at which she caught as a drowning
man is said to catch at a straw.
"On second thoughts, I will take her home, if she can tell me where she
lives. She seems to be reviving," said the lady. "Where do you live, my
poor little girl?"
"I--don't live anywhere," gasped Joan, white-lipped. "I haven't any
mother or any home, or anything. I wanted to die."
"Oh, you poor little pitiful thing! What a sad story!" crooned the old
lady. "You shall go to _my_ home, and stop till you get well, and I
will buy you a doll and lots of nice toys."
The rapidly recovering Joan determined that, once in the old lady's
house, she would stop long after she had got well, and that she would,
sooner or later, have many things better than toys. But she smiled
gratefully, faintly, looking like a broken flower. The groom was
directed to place her on the seat, in a reclining posture, and she was
given the old lady's silk-covered air-cushion to rest her head upon.
She really ached in every bone, but she was exaggerating her sufferings,
saying to herself: "It's come! I've walked right into the fairy story,
and nothing shall make me walk out again. I've got nobody to look after
me, so I'll have to look after myself and be my own mamma. I can't help
it, whether it's right or wrong. I don't know much about right and
wrong, anyhow, so I shan't bother. I've got to grow up a grand, rich
lady; my chance has come, and I'd be silly not to take it."
Having thus disposed of her conscience--such as her wretched life had
made it--Joan proceeded to faint again, as picturesquely as possible.
Her pretty little head, rippling over with thick, gold-brown hair, fell
on the grey silk shoulder and gave the kindly, rather foolish old heart
underneath a warm, protecting thrill. The child's features were lovely,
and her lashes very long and dark. If she had been ugly, or even plain,
in spite of her appealing ways, Lady Thorndyke (the widow of a rich City
knight) would probably have agreed to the groom's suggestion; but Joan
did not overestimate her own charms and their power. A quarter of a
century ago Lady Thorndyke had lost a little girl about the age of this
pathetic waif, and she had had no other child. There was a nephew on
the Stock Exchange, but Lady Thorndyke was interested in him merely
because she thought it her duty, though he had been brought up to take
it for granted that he would be her heir. In truth, the lonely woman
had half unconsciously sighed all her life for romance and for love.
She had never had much of either, and now, in this tragic child who
clung to her and would not be denied, there was promise of both.
So Joan was borne in supreme spiritual triumph and slight bodily pain to
the big, old-fashioned Brighton house where her new protectress spent
the greater part of the year. She was put into a bed which smelled of
lavender and felt like a soft, warm cloud; she went through the ordeal
of being examined by a doctor, knowing that her whole future might
depend upon his verdict. She lay sick and quivering with a thumping
heart, lest he should say: "This child is perfectly well, except for a
bruise and a scratch or two. There is nothing to prevent her being sent
home." But in her anxiety Joan had worked herself into a fever. The
doctor was a fat, comfortable man, with children of his own, and the
escaped drudge could have worshipped him when he announced that she was
in a highly nervous state, and would be better for a few days' rest,
good nursing, and nourishing food.
She had arnica and plasters externally, and internally beef-tea. Then
she told her story. Had it been necessary, Joan would have plunged into
a sea of fiction, but she had enough dramatic sense to perceive that
nothing could be more effective than the truth, dashed in with plenty of
colour.
Joan's memory was as vivid as her imagination. She was fired to
eloquence by her own wrongs; and her word-sketch of the poor baby
deserted by a beautiful, mysterious actress, her picturesque conjectures
as to that actress's noble husband, the harrowing portrait of her
angelic young self as a lodging-house drudge, the final climax, painting
the savage punishment in the street, and her resolve to seek refuge in
death (the one fabrication in the tale), affected the secretly
sentimental heart of the City knight's widow like music.
"I would rather have been trampled to death under your horses' feet than
go back!" sobbed the child.
"Don't be frightened and excite yourself, my poor, pretty little dear,"
Lady Thorndyke soothed her. "No harm shall come to you, I promise
that."
Joan's instinctive tact had been sharpened to diplomacy by the constant
need of self-defence. She said no more; she only looked; and her eyes
were like those of a wounded deer which begs its life of the hunter.
Lady Thorndyke began to turn over various schemes for Joan's advantage;
but that same evening, which was Saturday, her nephew, George Gallon,
arrived from town to spend Sunday with his aunt. She told him somewhat
timidly about the lovely child she was sheltering, and the hard-mouthed,
square-chinned young man threw cold water on her projects. He said that
the girl was no doubt a designing little minx, who richly deserved what
she had got from the charitable if quick-tempered woman who gave her a
home. He advised his aunt to be rid of the young viper as soon as
possible, and meanwhile to leave the care of her entirely to servants.
His strong nature impressed itself upon Lady Thorndyke's weak one, as
red-hot iron cauterises tender flesh. She believed all he said while he
was with her, and conceived a distrust of Joan; but Gallon had an
important deal on in the City for Monday, and was obliged to leave
early, having extracted a half-promise from his aunt that the intruder
should go forth that day, or at latest the next.
He had not seen Joan Carthew, and therefore had not reckoned on her
strength and fascination as forces powerful enough to fence with his
influence.
Joan felt the difference in her patroness's manner, as a swallow feels
the coming of a storm. She knew that there had been a visitor, and she
guessed what had happened. She grew cold with the chill of presentiment,
but gathered herself together for a fight to the death.
"You look much better this morning, my dear," began Lady Thorndyke
nervously. "You will perhaps be well enough to get up and be dressed by
and by, to drive out with me, and choose yourself a doll, or anything
you would like. You will be glad to hear that--that my nephew and I
called on Mrs. Boyle yesterday, and--she is sorry if she was harsh. In
future, you will not be living on her charity. I shall give her a small
yearly sum for your board and clothing. You will be sent to school, as
you ought to have been long ago, and really I don't see how she managed
to avoid this duty. But in any case you will be happy."
Joan turned over on her face, and the bed shuddered with her tearing
sobs. She was not really crying. The crisis was too tense for tears.
"Don't, dear, don't," pleaded Lady Thorndyke, feeling horribly guilty.
"I will see you sometimes, and----"
"See me sometimes!" echoed the child. "You are the only person who has
ever been kind to me. I can't live without you now. I won't try. Oh,
it was cruel to bring me here and show me what happiness could be, just
to drive me away again into the dark!"
"But----" the distressed old lady had begun to stammer, when the child
slipped out of bed and fell at her protectress's feet.
"Keep me with you!" she implored. "I'll be your servant. I'll live in
the kitchen. I'll eat what your dog eats. Only let me stay."
She wound her slim, childish arms round Lady Thorndyke's waist, her eyes
streamed with tears at last; her beautiful hair curled piteously over
the grey-silk lap. She was at that moment a great actress, for though
she was honestly grateful, she neither wished nor intended to live in
the kitchen and eat what the dog ate. She would be a child of the house
or she would be nothing. Her beauty, her despair, and her humility were
irresistible. Lady Thorndyke forgot George Gallon and clasped the child
in her arms, crying in sympathy. "If you care so much, dear, how can I
let you go?" she whimpered.
"I care enough to die for you, or to die if I lose you!" Joan vowed.
"You shall not die, and you shall not lose me!" exclaimed the old lady,
remembering her nephew now and defying him. "You shall stay and be my
little girl."
Joan did stay. Before the week ended, and another visit from George
Gallon was due, she had so entwined herself round Lady Thorndyke's heart
that the rather cowardly old woman had courage to face her nephew with
the news that she meant to keep the waif whom "Providence had sent her."