Miss Antonia Gibbs came from the typewriting office with excellent
testimonials. Though but eighteen years of age, she was vouched for as a
steady, conscientious worker, well-educated and of exceptional
intelligence. Quick, accurate, and possessed of a capital memory, she
would seem to be the ideal typist for an office such as that presided
over by Owen Rose; and after perusing the certificates and other
documents forming what one might call her _dossier_, Owen had really no
choice but to engage the prodigy.
When she received the letter announcing the fact Miss Gibbs danced with
delight.
"Two pounds a week! Think of it!" Thus she besought her cousin Fanny, a
rather full-blown young woman employed in a "drapery-house" at Brixton.
"And easy hours--with an hour off for lunch! Isn't it lovely!"
"You'll have the office 'commish' to pay," her cousin reminded her, "and
I know all about those short hours! Sound well, but they generally want
overtime out of you--without paying for it either!"
"Do they?" Antonia's joy was momentarily checked. Then she recovered her
spirits. "Anyway, even then it's a good post, and I can easily pay the
commission out of two pounds!"
"Yes, of course." Fanny, whose natural optimism was somewhat impaired by
her experience in drapers' shops, cheered up also. "It's a grand
opportunity for you, Toni, and mind you make the most of it."
"Rather," returned Toni gaily. "I'm to start to-morrow, so this is my
last free night. Aren't you glad some people are coming in to tea?"
"Yes." Fanny, recalled to the immediate present, began her preparations
for the tea-party. "Josh'll be pleased to hear of your luck, Toni; he's
real fond of you, you know."
"Is he?" Toni, pulling off her flannel blouse, spoke a trifle absently.
"Yes. If I weren't fond of you myself I declare I'd be jealous! Don't
know how it is, all the boys seem to take to you straight away, Toni,
and you don't care a pin for any of 'em!"
"Perhaps that's why," said Toni cheerfully, voicing a truth without in
the least realizing it. "After all, who is there to care for? Jack
Brown, or young Graves, or that funny little Walter Britton out of Lea
and Harper's?" She plunged her glowing face into a basin of cold water
as she spoke.
"No. I s'pose they're not quite your sort." Fanny stared thoughtfully at
her cousin. "I don't know how it is, Toni--you are my cousin, your
father was Dad's own brother--and yet you're as different from us as--as
chalk from cheese."
She in her turn had uttered a profound truth. Between Toni and the rest
of the commonplace lower-middle-class household was a great gulf fixed,
a gulf which was the more inexplicable because it was clearly visible to
the parties on either side of the chasm.
Red-faced, brawny Fred Gibbs, the butcher, his equally red-faced, though
slightly more refined wife, and their several sons and daughters,
belonging, most of them, to the category of "fine" boys and girls, were
a good-humoured, kindly people enough; yet between them and the pretty,
dark-eyed Antonia there was not the slightest vestige of resemblance,
either in looks, manners, or disposition.
Not that Toni gave herself airs. On the contrary, she was the most
cheerful and light-hearted little soul in the world. She flung herself
bodily into all the family's interests and pursuits, helped her uncle
with his books and her aunt with her housework, was Fanny's sworn
confidante and ally in all matters of the heart. The younger children
adored her for her good looks, her vivacity, her high spirits; and even
the flashes of rage which now and then marred her usually sunny temper
were fascinating in their very fire.
Yet--with it all she was not, never would be, one of them. Fanny was
inclined to put it down to her foreign blood--for Toni's mother had been
Italian. The elder Gibbs fancied the girl's superior education was
responsible--for Toni had been to a real "Seminary for Young Ladies," in
contradistinction to the Council School attended by her cousins; while
as for Toni herself, though she was as fully conscious as the rest that
she was "different, somehow," she could never say, with any certainty,
in what the difference lay.
Perhaps a psychologist would have found Antonia's position an
interesting one. Briefly, her history was this.
The Gibbs were North-Country people, a good old yeoman family who had
been in service with an older and more aristocratic people in the county
of Yorkshire. The family, however, had begun, a few generations back, to
die out. Instead of the usual lusty sons, only daughters had been born
to most of the Gibbs, and they in their turn married and died, in the
nature of things relinquishing their own name, until there were few
left.
So the race dwindled, until old Matthew Gibbs and his two sons Fred and
Roger were the last representatives of the old stock; and to the
father's bitter disappointment neither boy would consent to settle down
on the farm and carry out the tradition of the family. Fred, always a
pushing, commercially-minded lad, found farming too slow and
unprofitable to satisfy him, and he took service in a butcher's shop at
York, as a first step towards his goal, London, in which city he
eventually made his home, married a Cockney girl, and settled down for
the rest of his prosperous life.
The second son, Roger, early showed a desire to travel; and though his
father would have kept him at home, he realized that after all youth
will be served, and let the boy go out into the world as soon as he had
passed his eighteenth birthday.
Being possessed of unlimited confidence, exceptional strength and a
light-hearted determination to make something of life, Roger was
successful from the start. As is often her way with those from whom she
means, later, to exact a heavy toll, Fate smiled upon the good-looking
young man who faced her so gaily. He got one post after another:
secretary, mechanic, groom--for he was equally clever with hands and
head. In this or that capacity he travelled quite extensively for some
years, and finally, having a natural bent for languages, came to Rome in
the position of courier to a rich American family. It happened that the
daughter of the house had an Italian maid, a beautiful, refined girl
from Southern Italy; and the young people quickly fell in love. In spite
of his apparent irresponsibility Roger had saved a little money, and
within six months he had married his Italian girl and carried her off to
live in a village on the side of a mountain not far from Naples, where
for four blissful years they lived in perfect contentment.
Old Matthew Gibbs, having in his later years sustained heavy
agricultural losses, was dead, and there was nothing to call Roger back
to England. He much preferred, indeed, to remain in the South, and as
their wants were simple he and his wife were able to live quite
comfortably on Roger's own little bit of money and the few _lire_ he
made through the kindly offices of the village priest, who liked the gay
young Englishman and put many odd jobs--translation, the acting as
interpreter and guide to tourists, and other things of the sort--in his
way.
When Toni came to complete the trio, their happiness was complete; and
for three years after her birth the little house on the hill-side was
the home of joy and love and all the pleasant domestic virtues and
graces.
When the child was three years old, the elder Antonia, herself only a
girl, died, after twenty-four hours' fever; and in one black hour Roger
paid for all the sunny days with which Fortune had so lavishly endowed
him.
When at length he summoned up resolution to face the future he
determined, with a passionate desire to carry out his young wife's
unspoken entreaty, to devote himself to his child; and with this
intention he stayed on bravely in the little home from which the
sunshine had departed.
For nearly six years they lived together in the tiny village near
Naples; and gradually the pall began to lift from the young man's
spirit, and the sunshine and the flowers, the blue sky and sea, and the
snow-capped mountains made their appeal once again to the warm, ardent
soul which sorrow had darkened.
During these six years father and daughter had lived frugally, almost as
the peasants lived; yet with a daintiness, an order, which were unknown
to the peasants. The little Antonia--Toni, as they called her--grew
straight and strong as she played on the mountain slopes, or ate the
simple meals of grapes and bread and goat's flesh provided for her by
the old housekeeper, Fiammetta, who ruled both the pretty child and the
handsome young father with a rule of iron which yet made life a very
well-ordered and gracious existence.
But when Toni had almost reached her ninth birthday the change came. The
good old priest died; and with the death of his sole friend Roger Gibbs
found life in the village impossible.
Truth to tell, it was a marvel he had borne it so long. Only a numbing
blow such as he had received could have stunned his faculties into
acquiescence with this sleepy, uneventful existence; and now, suddenly,
his soul awoke from its peaceful slumber and demanded life, and yet more
life.
Italy became all at once unendurable. The nomad spirit was aroused, and
nothing would satisfy the man but a fresh start in life's pilgrimage.
His little daughter, too, must be educated; and although he loved the
child with all the concentrated passion of a man who has lost the woman
of whom the child is his only memento, he yet felt that the time had
come when he must shake himself free from the trammels of domesticity
and live once again the life of a man in some free, wild,
adventure-filled land.
A month after Father Pietro's death Roger and his little daughter
Antonia were in England. The father's first object was to seek out his
brother Fred and see if he and his wife would take charge of the child
for a short time; and this he found both Fred and his comely spouse very
willing to do. There were other children in the home who were only too
ready to welcome the pretty little Toni; and after a stay of some weeks
in the noisy Brixton house Roger Gibbs had bidden his little daughter
farewell, and had gone forth once more, this time as assistant purser on
a liner, a post to which one of his former employers had assisted him
opportunely. It was a chance to see more of the world, and the man
embraced it gladly enough, though it would certainly prove irksome in
the end.
After that it was long before Toni saw her father again. At regular
intervals he sent money for her maintenance; and she grew up with her
cousins, attending the big Council School in the next street with them,
and sharing in all the ups and downs of the Gibbs family.
When she was thirteen Roger returned from an expedition to Peru, in the
course of which he had amassed a respectable sum of money, and father
and daughter met again, a meeting fraught, on Roger's side, with
something like disappointment.
Four years of London life had transformed the olive-skinned, dreamy-eyed
child into a pale, long-legged girl who, although she had not lost her
soft Southern voice, used the colloquialisms of street and playground
with unpleasing fluency. True, she wore her shabby clothes with an air
of grace, but contact with other children had developed her into a
sharp, somewhat pert _gamine_, who was reputed quick at her lessons, but
equally, and less meritoriously, quick with her tongue.
Within her father's mind disillusionment reigned supreme. Naturally, it
was not the fault of the child that she had taken on so quickly the
colour of her environment; nor, fortunately, was it too late to overlay
those traits with other and more pleasing characteristics. But thinking
of the soft-eyed, gentle, loving Italian girl he had married, Roger
resolved that her child should have another chance before it was too
late; and with that object in mind he scoured the neighbourhood until he
found what suited him, a quiet, old-fashioned ladies' school, conducted
by two prim but kindly women who appeared to him likely to have the
influence he sought.
The Misses Holland were interested in his story, pleased with the idea
of softening and refining the child, half-Italian, half-Londoner, and
made things easy for the bronzed and handsome father; with the result
that from that time Toni's connection with the Council School ceased,
and she became a boarder, on surprisingly low terms, at the aforesaid
School for Young Ladies; where she remained until she was close on
seventeen.
These years were the turning point of Antonia's life. Here, in company
with twenty other girls, somewhat above her in station, she learnt,
among other things, the virtues of gentleness, quietness in voice and
movement, unselfishness, and many kindred things; and those years of
happy, monotonous toil, broken only by pleasant, friendly treats, or
gentle, old-fashioned punishments, were full of use and value to the
growing girl.
On her seventeenth birthday she was to leave school for good; and it had
been settled that her father was then to return to England and make a
home for her--a hope which the girl had hugged to her heart through all
these quiet years.
But on the very day which should have seen her emancipation something
happened.
The liner on which Roger was hastening back to England, after a year in
the East, went down in a mighty gale off Gibraltar; and Roger Gibbs was
among the drowned.
* * * * *
Of course all hope of that little home was at an end now. No more
remittances could be looked for, the store of money left for her
education was all spent; and though it seemed incredible that Roger
should have made no provision for his daughter's future, such indeed
proved to be the fact.
Doubtless he had intended to settle down, to obtain some post in
England; but as things turned out there was nothing left for Antonia.
Let it be said at once that her relations behaved well. The Misses
Holland, too, would have taken her to help in the school but for the
unexpected advent of a needy niece of their own; but from the first
Antonia set her face against teaching.
She did not like it, would rather go in for business, she said; and the
upshot of it all was that after some time she managed to obtain a post
in a large typewriting office in order to learn the work, after which
she was required to give her services for a period of twelve months for
a nominal salary in return for the teaching and business training
bestowed upon her.
It was not a very good bargain; but she closed with it in lieu of a
better opening; and when, in a few weeks from the date of her aunt's
tea-party, she would be free to earn her living in her own way, she
would be able to defray the expense to which that same aunt had been put
during her time of apprenticeship.
* * * * *
So rapid is thought that between the beginning and ending of the task of
changing her outdoor shoes and stockings for slightly better ones,
Antonia's quick mind had flashed back over those years which had, so she
owned to herself, made all the difference; but not for worlds would she
have let her cousin know that she recognized any such difference.
"Different! Not a bit of it!" She looked up and spoke with more warmth
than usual. "And as for the boys liking me--well, you're engaged, and
I'm not!"
"Well, yes, there is that to be said!" Fanny regarded with affection the
cheap gold ring, set with imitation rubies, which adorned her plump
hand. "But you know, Toni, you could got Mr. Dowson any minute if you
tried!"
"Mr. Dowson!" Toni, occupied in brushing out her black hair, tossed her
head with a little foreign gesture peculiar to her. "Why, Fan, how could
I marry Mr. Dowson! He's very nice, and good-hearted, but his chest is
narrow, and he's going bald!"
"Well, that's not his fault," returned Fanny practically, "and it's not
with age either, because he's quite young. I expect it's with studying
so hard."
"I daresay--but still ... of course he's clever," owned Toni rather
grudgingly, "he must be, to be a dentist, but--no, Fan, I'm not going to
marry Mr. Dowson, so there!"
"Oh, all right." Fanny was a philosopher. "You know your own business
best. Will you do me up, dear, and tell me how you like my frock? I
think myself it's rather striking."
Thus besought, Toni stuck the last pin-casually in her hair and came to
give her assistance in the matter of "doing up."
Miss Frances Gibbs' dress was composed of a bright rose-pink voile,
bought cheaply at a sale, ornamented with a sash of ribbon of an equally
vivid hue of violet; and striking it certainly was, in the sense that
one felt inclined to collapse at sight of it. Miss Gibbs' figure being
of the order which dressmakers call "full," the effect was distinctly
startling; and as Fanny had carefully arranged her abundant hair in as
many rolls as she could possibly manage, it is to be inferred that she
presented a more overpowering effect than ever.
Although, possibly owing to her Italian blood, Toni herself had a
weakness for bright colours, on other people, this daring juxtaposition
of pink and violet was a trifle bizarre even for her taste; and she
looked critically at Fanny as the latter paraded under the gas jet in
order to show off the "creation" to its best advantage.
"Well?" Fanny's tone was anxious; and Antonia flung scruple to the
winds.
"It's lovely, Fan, and you look scrumptious in it!" She hastily produced
from a paper bag a bunch of violets she had intended for her own
adornment. "Here, let me pin these in for you, they will finish you off
beautifully."
"But they're yours, Toni!"
"Oh, never mind me!" Toni laughed recklessly. "I've not got a Josh
waiting for me downstairs--and anyway, I don't much care to wear
flowers, they die so quickly, poor dears."
Her own frock, an oft-washed white muslin, was donned in a second. A
bright green ribbon round her waist, a pair of greenstone earrings put
in beneath the clustering black hair, giving her a quaintly picturesque
look, and Antonia was ready for the evening's jollity.
As the cousins ran downstairs together, an appetising smell of roasting
chickens came to their nostrils, and Toni sniffed appreciatively.
"I wish Uncle Fred had a birthday every week! Isn't it fun having people
in and playing games afterwards!"
"Rather, but I wish we'd been going to the theatre!"
"Well, so do I," conceded Toni, "but anyhow this is better than one of
our usual dull evenings!"
Half an hour later the feast was in full progress. The table in the
little "front room" literally groaned with good things; indeed, so
liberally was it provided that half-way through the meal the butcher
insisted on removing the vase of chrysanthemums which stood proudly in
the middle on a green paper mat, alleging as he did so that "them
flowers took up a sight too much room"--an axiom to which he stuck in
spite of his daughter's remonstrances.
Besides the family there were three guests. Mr. Joshua Lee who was
engaged to Fanny, naturally had the place of honour beside her; and from
that vantage ground he played the part of prospective son-in-law to
perfection, removing the plates, running about in search of a mislaid
salt-cellar, and generally acquitting himself, so Fanny thought proudly,
like a perfect gentleman.
The other two guests were less busy. One of them, Mr. Britton, sat
beside his hostess and carried on an animated conversation with her as
to the nature and effect of the various patent medicines they had
mutually sampled; while the remaining guest, Mr. Dowson, sat next to
Antonia, and endeavoured, without much success, to attract her attention
to himself.
Halfway through one of his most intimate speeches Toni interrupted him
ruthlessly.
"Aunt Jean, where's Lu?"
"Got smacked and sent to bed for stealing jam," her youngest cousin
informed her unctuously. "My! She did howl! I guess Ma thumped her
pretty well!"
"I did whip her rather hard," confessed Mrs. Gibbs half-apologetically.
"I was real vexed with her when I found her with her fingers in the jar!
But there, she's been wanting a smacking long enough, and I expect it'll
do her good," she finished up cheerfully.
"Poor Lu! And she'd been so looking forward to to-night!" Toni's soft
heart was wrung for the culprit. "Did she have any tea, Auntie?"
"Not she. I sent her straight off to bed." Mrs. Gibbs' tone was uneasy
now. "And she didn't eat no dinner to-day, she was that excited!"
"Oh, poor Lu! Can't I take her up something, Aunt Jean?"
Mrs. Gibbs appeared to consider the question, though everyone at the
table knew very well that her mother-heart had relented towards her
darling long ago.
"Well, I don't mind if you do take her just a bite," she said presently;
and amid much laughter and sympathetic joking a tray was fitted out with
various delicacies and entrusted to the willing hands of Antonia.
Up she went, finding Lu's room in darkness, Lu herself lying sullenly
awake, refusing to be comforted.
Her plump little person had strongly resented the force of her mother's
stern hand; but her vanity was more severely hurt by the fact that the
visitors downstairs would know both the cause and the method of her
punishment. Therefore she turned away and pretended to be asleep; but
Toni's gentle hand pulling down the clothes, Toni's soft voice murmuring
of forgiveness and compensation were too much for the child.
She sat up, disclosing the tear-stains on her round cheeks in the light
of the candle Toni carried, and allowed herself to be comforted with
alternate bites of chicken and sips of lemonade.
"That's better!" Toni gave her a plate of trifle, and brushed back the
tangled curls from the hot little forehead. "Now eat that up and then I
must run away. They're waiting for me, you know, so when you've finished
you must give me a kiss and go straight to sleep."
"Yes, Toni." Lu lay obediently down, soothed by the girl's kind tone.
"I'll go to sleep all right if ... if Ma'll come up and say good-night!"
"Of course she will!" Toni smiled at the child's involuntary clinging to
the mother who had punished her. "I'll tell her you're waiting--and now
I must fly! Good-night, Ducky, sleep well!"
She kissed the child, her eyes very soft as she bent over the bed; and
then, picking up the tray, she ran swiftly downstairs again and
re-entered the room where tea was rapidly drawing to an end.
"How kind-hearted you are, Miss Toni," said Mr. Dowson admiringly as she
slipped into her seat beside him. "Lots of people would have said the
kiddy deserved to be whipped and sent to bed."
"I daresay she did, but that didn't make it any better--for her,"
laughed Toni, with a vivid remembrance of her aunt's corrective powers.
"I know what Auntie's whippings are like, you see, and they're no joke!"
"You don't mean to say Mrs. Gibbs ever dared to ... to punish you, Miss
Antonia?" His pale-blue eyes were aghast at the thought of such
sacrilege.
"Oh, rather!" Toni laughed joyously at his face of horror. "She's
whipped me heaps, of times.... I expect I deserved it, too, for I can
assure you I was never a pattern child!"
"I ... I would like to see anyone venture to lay a hand on you," said
Mr. Dowson earnestly--too earnestly for Toni's liking. "Miss Antonia, if
you ... if you would only give me the right ..."
Bang! An hilariously-disposed little Gibbs had exploded a cracker in the
young man's ear; and Mr. Dowson, blushing to the very edge of his
extremely high collar, subsided rather wrathfully.
Much to Antonia's relief the party rose from the table a moment later;
and with a stern determination in her mind not to allow Mr. Dowson
another opportunity to make the avowal which she knew very well trembled
on his lips, Toni bustled gaily about, helping to clear the table and
make things ready for the evening's festivity.
Mr. Dowson's pale eyes followed her about rather wistfully. To him the
white-clad, black-crowned little figure represented a dream--the
fulfilment, rather, of an ideal which he had never dared to hope would
materialize in his own hard-working, rather grey and sordid life.
Although, thanks to a kindly patron, Leonard Dowson had been able to
carry out his desire and qualify as a dentist, he was under no delusion
as to his social position. He came of humble, illiterate folk, and he
knew well enough that in a fashionable, high-class practice he would be
altogether out of place.
He set up his surgery, therefore, in the populous neighbourhood of
Brixton; and now, after five years' strenuous toil, he was beginning to
pay his way, beginning also to dream of a wife to bear him company in
the dingy, narrow house in which he dwelt.
That Antonia Gibbs would ever consent to be his wife he almost feared to
believe. He wooed her persistently, quietly, bringing her books--which
she seldom opened--an occasional bunch of flowers, or, more rarely
still, a box of sweets of some variety which his professional soul
warranted harmless, for Mr. Dowson was conscientiousness itself, and
nothing would have persuaded him to place his lady-love's little white
teeth in jeopardy, even though by such means she might be brought into
contact with him.
For her sake he scraped and saved, denying himself the least luxury, so
that if she came to him he could at least offer her a decent home; and
every act of petty self-sacrifice was sweet to him because it was
endured for her.
Yet Toni never gave him a second thought. To her, in her vivid youth,
Mr. Dowson, with his thirty-five years, his prematurely bald head, his
narrow chest, was a being of another race than her own. She knew--the
minx--that the man was deeply and quietly in love with her, but with the
unconscious cruelty of youth she ignored his suffering, and possibly
despised him ever so little that he continued to sigh for something
which he ought to have known was, for him, unattainable.
Yet to-night, her spirits raised by her unexpected good-fortune, Toni
showed herself more than usually bewitching; and although she managed to
stave off the declaration which still trembled on the young man's lips,
she played games with him in the most friendly fashion, and bade him
good-night at last with so sweet a smile that he almost fell upon his
knees then and there and kissed the slim little feet in their cheap
patent shoes!
He did not do it, fortunately. He retained just sufficient common sense
to know that the proceeding would have annoyed his divinity; and instead
he merely squeezed her hand and murmured a few inarticulate words which
meant a good deal more than they contrived to convey.
Then, arriving at home, he went to bed--and dreamed of Toni.
But Toni's dreams--the rainbow dreams of happy youth--were of a very
different quality.