REVOLT.
I do not know how long my martyrdom in the town house had endured before
I resolved to make an end of it myself. Nor do I yet quite understand
how the scene that led to an excess of misery so terminated began.
I had been more contented that day than usual. The nurse had let me sit
by the nursery fire while she bathed and dressed the latest addition to
our family circle, a baby boy with a pink wrinkled face. Compared with
that gurgling morsel of humanity, I felt very wise and old indeed. After
that the nursemaid came and took me on her knee, and while perched there
she sang me a song. I slept in the next room, and was not often allowed
into the nursery, or I am sure the nurse and nursemaid would have made
life easier for me.
Then I wandered into the play-room, and here great doings were afoot.
They were getting up a transformation scene. On the top of each ladder
a little girl sat, representing a fairy, and in the middle of the room a
small child lay with a white cloth about her. When somebody clapped
hands she sprang up, caught her skirts in either hand, and began to
dance as she had seen the fairies in the pantomime.
They were all in high spirits that day, and let me look on without
snubbing or laughing at me. Like all creatures unaccustomed to much
mercy, this small favour filled me with joy, and I expanded upon a whiff
of social equality.
Children resemble dogs in their dislike of intruders, and to these young
people I daresay I, with my sulky miserable face, pale and woe-be-gone
from association with sorrow and from unassuaged longing for other days,
was an unattractive enough intruder. One there was who always resented
my appearance in their midst more than the rest, my mother's favourite,
the five-year-old queen of the establishment. My mother used to call her
queen, and tell her that she was at liberty to do what she liked to me,
as I was only a slave.
What a surprising amount of good must lie at the bottom of a nature so
trained, that it ever developed into good-natured and generous
womanhood! But to expect that the child in those days should have been
other than a little vixen to me, would be to expect the impossible.
The play was interrupted for dinner, and after dinner the troop marched
up again to the play-room to resume their game. I stayed down-stairs,
and stole into the storeroom to talk to Mrs. Clement. Near tea-hour she
sent me on some message, and that, of course, was a proud moment for me.
Children love to be sent on messages between their elders. They
instantly become as inflated as a general's aide-de-camp, and hardly
need a horse in imagination to place them in their own esteem above the
level of other children.
How it all came about I know not. The queen and the slave encountered
somewhere on the way. We met like two young puppies and snarled. The
queen had a despotic notion of her own rights. She might snarl at me,
but I had not the right to reply. If she struck me it was part of my
punishment for being in her way, and my duty was to bear it.
I don't suppose she reasoned this way any more than the young puppy does
when it flies at the throat of a mongrel it dislikes. Anyhow, she struck
me. I was a proud, fierce little devil, and being two years her senior,
I laid her low, with an ugly red stain on her white cheek.
As I do not remember how it began, so I do not recall how it ended.
There is a dark blank of several hours--centuries it seemed to me--and I
was in my cot sobbing myself to sleep, and telling myself that I could
not bear it, and to-morrow would run away to my dear everyday parents.
Next morning I sullenly submitted to be dressed and taken down to
breakfast. But the red-and-white bowl I ate my bread and milk out of no
longer delighted my eye, and no amount of sugar could take the taste of
bitterness out of that bread-and-milk. My stepfather came into the room,
and looked at me in reproachful silence. Usually he kissed me and flung
me up to the ceiling. But now that the poor miserable little worm had
turned and struck the idol of the house, his own child, he had no kind
word for me. He only knew of the affair what he had been told, and how
many thoughtless big people can understand what goes on in the hearts of
sore and lonely babies?
He may have noted the sadness of my face, but what did he know of the
inward bruise, the hunger for love and sympathy, the malady of life
that had begun to gnaw at my soul at an age when other little girls are
out racing among the flowers in a universe bounded and heated and
beautified by the love of mother and father?
Mrs. Clement must have been very busy, for she did not come to comfort
me. Perhaps she, too, thought I was a fiend. But I was too proud to seek
to explain matters to any one. If they wanted to believe I was bad, they
might think I was as bad as ever they liked.
In my open-worked pinafore and little house slippers, bare-headed and
bare-armed, I stole anxiously down-stairs. The baker was carrying in the
bread, and the hall-door was open. This was my chance, and I seized it.
Ah, there were the wide long streets, and however cruel the big people
might be who went up and down them, at least they could not hurt me, for
I did not belong to any of them.
Like a frightened hare I scurried along the pavement until I came to a
big crossing. I paused here in new peril. To go over alone meant to risk
contact with the wheels and horses continually rolling and stamping by.
I had not the courage to do this, and I stood gazing disconsolately
across at the happy people walking so unconcernedly on the other side.
While I stood there a policeman marched up in a leisurely fashion. He
looked as if he might help a little girl, and I knew when robbers
attacked you the proper person to assist you was a policeman.
"Please, Mr. Policeman, will you take me across the street?" I asked,
going boldly up to him.
The amiable giant put out his hand, grasped my eager fingers, and I
pattered along at his side as he gravely led me over the crossing.
Without a word, I raced ahead; the quicker I ran, the quicker I believed
I would reach Mamma Cochrane's house, and my dear friends, nurse, and
Louie, and Mary Jane.
In what direction I ran I know not to-day; I seemed to have been running
down interminable streets for hours and hours, till at last my feet in
their thin slippers began to ache. Gradually my legs stiffened, and it
was less and less easy to continue running. Nobody stopped me, but I
have an idea many stared at me. I hardly knew which I most feared, to be
overtaken and carried back to my mother, or to be let die of hunger in
those big unfriendly streets. Either prospect seemed so terrible to me
in a moment of lucid vision, that I at once dropped upon a doorstep and
began to cry.
"What's the matter, little lady?" a tall policeman asked, with a smile
of insidious kindliness.
"I want to find my everyday mamma so badly," I sobbed. "But it's so far
away,--I'm very tired, and nobody is sorry for me, though I'm so
unhappy."
I gazed anxiously up into the face of the big policeman, and wondered if
such a very big person could possibly understand and pity the sorrows of
such a very small person as myself.
"What's your name?" asked the big policeman.
"Angela."
"And where do you live, missy?"
"Oh, a drefful long way off--in a big house down there," pointing
vaguely in front of me, "in a horrid big house, without any fields or
flowers at all."
"Won't you come along with me, missy?" coaxed the policeman, and if he
had asked me to go to prison with that look and smile, I would
cheerfully have gone, I think.
He lifted me into his arms and carried me, I know now, to the nearest
police-station. Here I was installed upon an inspector's knee, and an
army of giants stood round me and made much of me. How the gentlemen of
the force may appeal to others, I know not, but I must ever regard them
as my kindest friends. They petted me prodigiously, and vied with each
other in providing me with luxuries. One held a piece of bread-and-jam
for me, another a slice of bread-and-honey, and various hands held out
sweetmeats and cakes and apples. The thing was to satisfy everybody and
devour each delicacy successively.
The amiable giants smiled upon me, and appeared to listen to my
confidential chatter with admiration and delight. Out of the gloom of
the domestic circle I could be expansive to rashness. Between bites, I
told them the tale of my private grievances, and they shook sympathetic
heads over my account of Stevie's disappearance in a queer box, and
dropped their jaws when I, charmed with the sensation I had made,
assured them that I too was so miserable and lonely that I would like to
be put in a box and sent to heaven. I would much rather go back to Mamma
Cochrane's than anything; but if I could not find her I would like to
die like Stevie, unless the policemen would take care of me and let me
stay with them always.
The inspector was ready to adopt me on the spot; meanwhile, as I was
tired and the excitement had worn off, he encouraged me to fall asleep
on his knee, which I was nothing loath to do.
The rest is a vague memory. Somebody shook me, and I opened my eyes and
saw my stepfather smiling at me. I thought I was at home, and rubbed my
eyes, and then sat up. But I was still in the inspector's arms--I
recognised his black cap and grey beard. My circle of friendly giants
had vanished; but on a table beside me were heaped unfinished slices of
bread and jam and honey, gingerbread nuts, shrewsbury biscuits, bulls'
eyes, brandy balls, sugar-stick, and apples. A couple of policemen stood
at the door and grinned in eloquent assurance of continued friendship,
and the inspector had not released his comforting clasp of my wearied
body.
"Papa, I'm so happy here. Don't let us go back any more to Sunday mamma.
Let us stay here always with the nice policemen."
My stepfather laughed his joyous cordial laugh, and caught me in his
arms. He shook hands with the inspector and the policemen, and carried
me into a cab. I was still too sleepy and tired to whimper, and we had
hardly set off before I was fast asleep on my stepfather's knee.