THE PRINCE JUMPS OVER THE WALL
JUST how long Bessie might have sat there in the dusk of the garden
it is impossible to say; an interruption was to be provided. Almost
the last of her sobs had died away, and she was beginning to realize
that this kind of thing would not do at all, if her small world was to
be kept going, when the door leading into the little alley was opened
cautiously, and a young man came in. A very presentable young man, with
an honest face inclined to laughter, over which a look of relief was
stealing as he saw the girl sitting there. He closed the gate quietly,
and took a few steps towards her; paused and coughed. Instantly she
sprang to her feet, and faced him.
"Good evening!" he said. "Did I startle you?"
"Very much; I did not know there was anyone there. How long have you
been here?" she asked suspiciously.
"I came in this very moment," he assured her. "You see, I'm obliged to
come in that way, because there might be somebody--somebody looking
out for me at the front. Very handy house in that respect." He grinned
cheerfully, and she laughed for very sympathy.
"Haven't you any good news, Mr. Dorricott?" she asked, forgetting her
own troubles for a moment.
He shook his head. "I went down to the theatre, just to let them know I
was about, you know, and almost with the hope that someone might fall
ill--or be run over----"
"Don't!" she whispered with a shiver.
"I'm sorry, Miss Meggison--but a fellow gets absolutely murderous at
times, when he thinks of the people who stand in his way. Here am I,
without a shilling to bless myself with----"
"Everyone that I have ever known, and everyone that I ever shall know,
has been and will be in that state," exclaimed Bessie with conviction.
"I don't believe in all the stories about people having more money than
they know what to do with; I simply can't believe them. All the world
is poor and struggling--and everybody fights for money that they never
by any chance get. I know it!" she said with deep dejection.
"Well, it isn't quite like that," he replied. "There are fellows in the
profession, for instance, who are known to touch three figures a week,
and who simply live in motor-cars; it's a known fact. Other poor devils
like myself walk on with the crowd, or get an understudy--or something
of that kind."
"It must be nice to be an actor," said Bessie, looking at him with awe.
"It is--when you _are_ an actor," he replied solemnly. He moved away
a step or two restlessly, and then came back to her. "I say, Miss
Meggison--there's something I'd like to say to you."
"Not about the bill!" she pleaded.
"About the bill--yes; and about something else," he replied earnestly.
"The bill worries me horribly--and it worries me more in your case
than it would in the case of anyone else. I haven't any money, and
I've got a large appetite--which I endeavour to suppress as much as is
consistent with keeping a figure fit to be seen behind the footlights.
Many and many a tasty dish, Miss Meggison, which you may think I scorn,
I pass by because I simply feel that I have no right to touch it; it
would not be fair. I never come into your little dining-room without
seeing the figures of my bill in huge white characters on the wall; I'm
ashamed of myself."
"I wish you wouldn't speak of it," she urged.
"But I must speak of it; it haunts me," he exclaimed. "I know that in
time it will be all right; I know that in time I shall be able to pay
you in full--and pay other people as well. More than that, the time
will come when you will be proud of me--really proud of me."
"We're all proud of you now; I laugh still when I think of that time
when you gave me tickets for the pantomime, and I saw you as the front
part of the donkey."
"Don't!" he said in a low tone. "I know I was funny. Everyone said
so--but I could get no real expression into it; you can't when the
only way in which you can move your jaws is by a string. But I shall
do finer things than that. In the years to come I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if Arcadia Street was the scene of a rather imposing little
ceremony--on my account."
"Ceremony?" She looked at him in a bewildered fashion.
"Yes. They may in all probability affix a tablet to the house,
recording the fact that Harry Dorricott once lived here; it's
frequently done--there's a society for it. They will probably refer to
me then as 'poor Harry Dorricott'--and will say how much greater things
I might have done had I lived."
"Mr. Dorricott! You're not ill?"
"Oh dear, no; but I have a sort of feeling that I shall die young--or
at least comparatively young. So very many of our best people have
done that. I beg you won't alarm yourself, Miss Meggison," he added
hastily--"because I'm quite all right at the present moment; never felt
better in my life. The only thing that worries me is about you."
"About me?"
"Yes--because you see I'm actually living on you--and that's a shameful
thing. Perhaps you may wonder that I don't go away, and live on
somebody else--some fat and uninteresting old landlady, for instance,
who wouldn't matter so much."
"I shouldn't like you to do that, because she mightn't be kind to you,"
said Bessie.
"Oh--that isn't the reason," he replied, coming near to her, and
looking into her eyes. "You have been kind to me; there's never
been anyone in all the world that has done so much for me as you
have--helped me, and urged me on, and cheered me up. That's why,
although I owe you this money, I can't go away; I'd rather be a slave
to you than to anyone else. You didn't understand that--did you,
dear?" he whispered, not daring even to take her hands. "From the very
first moment, when I saw you looking out of the window into Arcadia
Street, my heart gave a sort of jump, and I knew exactly what had
happened to me. Bessie--it's because I love you that I can't go away."
"No--it isn't that; it's only because you're sorry for me, just as
quite a lot of other people are sorry for me," she said softly. "You
mustn't think that I don't understand, or that I'm ungrateful; I
shouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't say that it's quite the
nicest thing anyone has ever said to me in all my life. But I don't
love anyone--except my father--and Aubrey; I don't think I've got time
to love anyone. So you mustn't speak about it again, please; you must
forget it. And you can stay as long as you like--and the bill won't
matter."
"But you'll give me some better comfort than that, Bessie," urged the
boy. "I shan't always be poor; I shall make a great name for myself
some day, and then I shall be able to lift you out of all this, and
make you happy."
"I'm not sure that I want to be lifted out of it," she told him,
smiling. "Good night--and forget all about it. You're my friend always,
I know--and I want friends."
There in the dark garden, with perhaps an idea in his mind not wholly
theatrical, he lifted her hand to his lips before he turned away; and
she stood there, looking after him, with that warm touch still upon her
fingers, and with her heart beating a little more rapidly than usual.
After all, it must be nice to be loved, she thought; to be made much
of, and shielded from the cold, and from hunger and poverty; never
to listen to anything but gentle kindly words; never to have to meet
frowning tradesmen, or duns of any sort; never to trudge through the
streets on Saturday nights, with the certain knowledge that your skirts
were bedraggled, and your feet cold and wet, and that the money in the
thin worn purse had come perilously near to nothingness. Oh--that must
be good indeed!
She went back into the house--with a strange feeling that to-night
something had happened that had changed her; she would never be able to
make-believe any more as she had done. The touch of the boy's lips upon
her hand had wakened something in her that had merely lain dormant;
she cried out dumbly for her natural and proper birthright. The world
held something better for her, and it was denied her; she found herself
wondering, without being able to put the question into words, whether
she would ever get that which belonged to her, by right of the fact
that she was a woman, and young.
Mr. Aubrey Meggison came in presently, and insisted on telling her of a
few shots he had taken that night on the billiard-table--illustrating
his words by means of a walking-stick on the shabby cover of the
dining-room table--and how he had completely "wiped the floor" with his
opponent, to the unbounded astonishment of a choice circle which seemed
to consist of a billiard-marker, a bookmaker, and a long-dethroned
music-hall star. The triumphs of the evening, however, had not smoothed
his temper; he complained bitterly about the monotony of bread and
cheese, and pushed his food from him with a few elegant expressions of
disgust.
"Tact and forethought--that's what you're lackin', Bess," he suggested.
"You don't think to yourself what's the best thing to suit your
brother, and your brother's appetite. Not you; the first thing that
comes along'll do for him."
She bore his reproaches meekly, until presently he restlessly wandered
out of the house again. He encountered his father on the doorstep; and
Bessie heard a little wordy warfare between the two--Daniel Meggison
protesting virtuously that his son should be in bed at ten o'clock to
the minute--and that son suggesting airily that he knew what was best
for himself. Then Daniel came into the room, not too steadily, but
perhaps with the greater dignity on that account.
"What I've done this night will not soon be forgotten," he said,
with a roll of the head. "On their knees, they were, in a manner
of speaking--on their knees, my child. Nothing good enough for me;
apologies flying about everywhere. Haughty with them, mind you; no
sudden giving way on my part. At the same time--condescending; that's
the right word--condescending." He sat down, and waved his hand to show
exactly what manner he had adopted for the subjugation of the Arcadia
Arms, and fell asleep.
The shabby little room seemed intolerable, with the old man gurgling
and choking, and muttering in his sleep in his chair; once again the
girl slipped out into her garden. And now, as if to welcome her, the
kindly moon had come over the housetops, and was shedding a radiance
even there. She sat down at the table, and leant her elbows upon it;
she did not understand what this new and desperate longing was that
had come upon her. She had been content for so many years; had been
glad to accept things as they were, and to make the best of them. But
now to-night there was a new and passionate longing for a world and a
life that could never be hers at all. As she sat there, staring at the
shabby wall before her, the walls seemed to vanish; and there grew up
in their place a dim vision of a wide countryside, lying silent and
peaceful under the moon; of a life that was gentle and secure and easy.
And beyond that wide countryside, with a path of light made across it
by the moon, lay the shining sea. The vision was gone, just as rapidly
as it had come; the grey wall was there; out in the street coarse
hoarse voices sounded, and a shout of discordant laughter. She let her
hands fall on the table, and bowed her head upon her arms. What had she
to do with dreams?
It was at that precise moment that Mr. Gilbert Byfield determined to
walk out of the house next door into that plot of ground attached
to it which matched that in which Bessie Meggison was seated. That
particular plot of ground did not boast any of the adornments of the
Meggison garden; it was simply a stretch of bare earth, with scrubby
grass growing here and there in patches. Gilbert thought nothing of
that, because the place did not interest him, save for the fact that it
adjoined the garden next door; and he had already learned that in that
garden only was the Princess of Arcadia Street to be approached, if one
did it delicately. Accordingly he stole up to the dividing wall now,
and peered over it; and so, of course, saw that hopeless figure in the
moonlight, leaning over the old table.
As he had never seen her save with that demure brightness upon her
that seemed to belong to her, he was naturally shocked at this
sudden abandonment; besides, she looked pathetic indeed in her utter
loneliness in that place. He called softly to her over the wall.
"Hullo! I say--what's the matter?"
He called so softly that she did not hear him, nor did she change her
position. After a moment of hesitation, he glanced first at the back
of the house he had left, and then at the back of the other one; swung
himself up to the top of the wall; and jumped over. He alighted, as
luck would have it, on that defective board in the old box set under
the wall; swore softly to himself, and stepped down to the ground. The
noise he made had startled the girl; she got quickly to her feet, and
moved away from him.
"I'm dreadfully sorry," he began, smiling at her.
But she waved him back hurriedly. "Mr. Byfield!" she said in a whisper,
with a glance at the house. "Oh, please--you must go back!--you must
really go back!"
"If anyone comes, I can jump over in a moment," he said. "There's
nothing to be afraid of--and this is ever so much better than talking
over the wall, you know. By the way," he added ruefully, "I'm afraid
I've broken your--your ottoman."
"It doesn't matter," she said in a dull voice--"and it isn't an
ottoman. It's an old box."
"I don't believe it," he exclaimed. "It's an ottoman--and a very nice
one at that."
"You're laughing at me," she said, with the shyness of a child. "You
know it's all only pretending; you know what a shabby place this
is--really and truly. You've been good and kind about it; you've never
laughed at me, like other people."
"God forbid, child!"
"That's it!" she exclaimed quickly. "Child! That's what you think me;
that's what you believe me to be. If a child brought you a broken doll,
you'd be sorry, and make much of it, although in your heart you'd
laugh, because it was such a little thing to make a fuss about. And
you've been sorry for me--and have pretended with me that this place
was what it has never been. And in your heart you have never ceased to
laugh at me."
"In my heart I have never laughed at you at all," he said solemnly.
They had unconsciously drawn nearer to each other in the solitude
of the garden under the moon; their hands were touching. For now it
seemed that she wanted desperately to touch hands with some friendly
being--someone, for choice, who came out of the big world mysteriously,
as this man had done. She was so much of a child that she needed
comforting; so much of a woman that she needed loving.
"I was wrong to say that you had laughed at me," she said
penitently--"you have been the only one that has understood. I wonder
if you remember when you first looked over the wall?"
"Shall I ever forget it!" he exclaimed, in all honesty. "You see, I had
never imagined any place like this"--he glanced round about him, and
whimsically shook his head as he spoke--"and of course I was surprised.
And then I saw you--and I understood at once that you were so different
from anyone I had seen in Arcadia Street, or indeed anywhere. And so
we--we talked."
"I shall never forget it," she said. "I had always tried to
make-believe a little, because when one does that one gets away from
all the tiresome things--all the things that _must_ happen, and yet
that ought not to happen at all. You see, so many people seem always to
have held out hands to me for money; and I've had so little money to
give them."
"And so--just to enable you to forget them a little--you started this
great game of make-believe; this pretending that you were something
better (although that could never be, you know)--something bigger and
greater than you really were. The fine lady walked in her garden every
night, and saw the flowers grow, and heard the summer wind rustling the
trees and dreamed--what great dreams they were!"
She nodded, with shining eyes. "And then you one day looked over the
wall--and you seemed to understand in a moment. Any one else but you,
coming out of the big world, would simply have laughed, and would have
seen that this was an old carpet, too shabby even for the house--and
this a table we couldn't use for anything else--and that a box that no
one wanted. And yet in a moment--do you remember?--you knew perfectly
what each thing was. It was wonderful!"
"I remember." He nodded gravely. "I knew that was the ottoman--and
behind it the tapestry; I understood also how nice it was to have
coffee in the garden every evening. Arcadia Street doesn't run to
coffee--except in the morning."
"I had read somewhere--it was in a paper that came to the house--that
ladies and gentlemen take their coffee generally on the terrace.
Well, of course, we couldn't manage a terrace, and I couldn't quite
understand whether it was anything like the terrace you get to round
the corner, with the houses in a sort of half-circle, and the little
bit of green in front; only somehow I knew it couldn't be quite
like that; all I understood was that it was out of doors. So then
I understood the best thing I could do was to make the most of the
garden; and it really isn't half bad--is it?"
"It's a pity it isn't better appreciated," he said.
"Father said he didn't understand what I was driving at; and then he
always seemed to find the hole in the carpet and to trip over it. And
Amelia doesn't really make very good coffee; it's the sort you dare not
stir too much."
"Poor little Miss Make-Believe!" he said, a little sorrowfully. "I
wonder what you would do if the time came when some of your dreams came
true, when you didn't have to make-believe any more; when you walked
out of this place, and left behind all the shabby pretences of it. I
wonder what you would say then?"
"That's never likely to happen," she said, with a shake of the head.
"Father doesn't seem to belong to the rich side of the family. His
sister, who was here to-night--Aunt Julia, you know--has lots of money;
she owns houses, you know, and lives in Clapham."
"Wonderful Aunt Julia!" he said.
"Father has said over and over again that if he had what he deserves
he would be a rich man. I don't quite know what he means; he's never
very explicit about it. But sometimes at night, when he comes home
from--from his club, he cries a little, poor dear, and tells me what
he would give me if only he had what he ought to have. And I know he
would, too; he is really very generous by nature."
Gilbert Byfield knew enough of the girl's story by that time not to
need to ask questions. Ever since that first meeting with her, when he
had carefully gained her confidence over the wall, he had been able,
by the simple process of piecing together her innocent answers to his
questions, to understand what she did, and what sort of struggle she
was constantly engaged in. He summed up the shiftless father and the
shiftless son easily enough; understood, from the type of lodgers that
came to the house, how difficult it must be for this girl to make both
ends meet. Most he admired her unflinching courage, and above all that
curious fanciful child-like nature that nothing had been able to crush
or stamp out of her. With the most innocent feeling in the world, he
had fostered that, and encouraged it.
It had been hard at times to remember that she was not a child, and
that he had no right to treat her as such; it had, above all things,
been difficult for him to tell himself, over and over again, that the
life he lived in Arcadia Street was a sham, and that he was not the
poor man he seemed to be to her. She had been frankness itself with
him, and he should have been with her in return. Only of course he knew
that, once she understood that he was playing a part, her confidence
in him, as someone as poor as herself and as struggling, would be
gone. For a period not yet defined in any way he intended to keep that
fiction alive, and remain near her. And in that again there was no real
motive, save one of pity for the girl.
He asked a question now that had been on his lips many and many a time,
and yet that he had not uttered before. They were standing together
near the table, and she had one hand resting upon it; he noticed
how short the sleeve was, and guessed that she must long since have
outgrown this dress, and many others she possessed. He remembered
suddenly that her dresses had always seemed short. "How old are you,
little Make-Believe?" he asked.
"More than eighteen," she said; and laughed and blushed.
A shadow darkened the doorway of the house, and a man stood there.
Gilbert Byfield stood quite still, watching; for his presence there
would need explanation. The girl had drawn away from him, and was
peering at the man in the doorway; she spoke his name hesitatingly at
last--almost apologetically.
"Mr. Quarle?" she asked. "Do you want me?"
The man who stepped out from the doorway was a thickly-set man of
between fifty and sixty years of age, with thin grey hair and with a
somewhat sour-looking face. His shoulders were very broad, and he had
the appearance almost of a man whose head has been set too far forward;
the sharp clean-shaven face was thrust well out, as though the man
spent his time in peering into everything about him. He carried his
hands locked behind him; his voice was rather harsh. Certainly there
was nothing amiable-looking about him.
"I don't want you--but your father's asking for you," said the man.
"I'll go in at once," said Bessie. "Oh--Mr. Quarle," she added
nervously, slipping her hand through the arm of the man, and drawing
him forward a little--"this is Mr. Byfield--a friend of mine."
"Pleased to know you, sir," said Quarle, with a face that belied his
words. "New lodger?"
"I live--next door," said Gilbert, a little lamely. For the girl had
run into the house, and the situation was an absurd one. The only
fashion in which he could leave this man, whose appearance he did not
like, was by an undignified exit over the wall; and he had no wish for
that. He could have gone out into the little alley behind, but he knew
that the door at the end of his own particular garden was always kept
bolted. So he stood somewhat awkwardly looking at the newcomer, and
wondering whether he had better say something about the moon, or the
warmth of the night. The man relieved him of the difficulty by speaking
first.
"My name is Simon Quarle," he said, coming a step or two nearer to the
younger man, and lowering his voice. "You're not likely to have heard
of me; very few people have, because I keep myself to myself. It's a
habit of mine."
"And a very excellent habit too, I should imagine," said Gilbert with
meaning.
"I could wish it was a more general habit," retorted Quarle, with
a quick glance at the house. "Now, sir--I'm old enough to be your
father--old enough, under happier circumstances, to be the father of
that girl who has just left us. And the Lord knows she needs a father
badly."
"I believe she has one already," said Gilbert coldly.
"She supports a drunken reprobate who has that title," retorted the
man, with a snarl. "Perhaps, if he were worthy of the name, he might
have something to say to a man who sneaks over a back wall at night to
talk to his daughter."
Gilbert made a quick movement towards the man; Quarle did not flinch,
nor did he take his eyes from the face of the younger man. Again the
absurdity of his position was borne in upon Byfield; more than that, he
seemed to see in this strange creature someone who had a greater right
to say that he was the friend of Bessie--a friend of an older standing.
"You simply don't understand," said Gilbert. "From a younger man I
shouldn't stand it--but----"
"Never mind my years," said the other. "I'll do you the justice to
believe that yours has simply been the thoughtlessness of youth--the
carelessness of a man to whom women are all alike----"
"I see that you don't understand," broke in Gilbert hotly. "I have
been genuinely sorry to see this child slaving for those who should
really be supporting her; I have seen in her something purer and
sweeter than in any woman I have met yet."
"You're right there," said Simon Quarle, with a nod. "But you'd best
leave her alone to her garden, as she calls it, and to her dreams, and
to the hard workaday world she knows. You belong to another world; go
back to it."
"How do you know I belong to another world?" demanded Gilbert.
"Because I haven't lived in this one for nearly sixty years without
watching men, and growing to understand them. You don't belong to
Arcadia Street; you haven't the true stamp of it."
Gilbert took an impatient turn or two about the garden, and then came
back to this strange man, who had not moved. "But if I tell you that
I'm interested in her--that I want to help her----"
"Then I tell you that no help you can give her is of the sort she wants
or deserves," said Quarle steadily. "At the present time, you stand to
her doubtless as someone wonderful, who can talk to her as no man has
talked to her yet--understand her with the understanding of youth. And
presently, when the mood seizes you, you will turn your back on Arcadia
Street, and go off to the world you know and understand. But you will
leave her behind."
Again there was a pause between the two men, and again the younger one
strode about impatiently, and again the elder one stood still, watching
him. At last Gilbert came back to where Simon Quarle was standing.
"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily just now," he said. "I had no
right to do that, because no man would speak as you have done unless he
was her friend."
"Thank you," said the other simply. "Anything else?"
"I want to help her--I want to lift her out of this slum in which she
lives--make some of her dreams come true. I am rich; I can do many
things secretly without her knowledge."
"You are young; would you marry her?"
"My dear sir--she's a child. Besides--I----"
"Besides--you belong to another world," broke in Quarle mockingly.
"Get back over your wall, my friend, and leave her alone. Much better
leave her to her dreams and her fancies, even if they are never to be
realized, than shatter them as you would shatter them. Get back over
your wall."
"You don't understand, and I don't suppose you ever will," exclaimed
Gilbert quickly. "But I shall find a way to help her yet."
"Perhaps--perhaps," said Simon Quarle, nodding his head slowly. "But
for the present get back over your wall!"