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[Illustration: "I WISH I WERE DEAD!" CRIED ELSIE.--Page 200.]
MEG'S FRIEND.
A Story for Girls.
by
ALICE CORKRAN,
Author of "Margery Merton's Girlhood," "Down the Snow
Stairs," "Joan's Adventures," etc., etc.
With Five Full-Page Illustrations by Robert Fowler.
New York:
A. L. Burt, Publisher.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Meg 1
CHAPTER II.
Two Years Later 21
CHAPTER III.
Meg to the Rescue 36
CHAPTER IV.
Farewell 54
CHAPTER V.
A Mysterious Visit 62
CHAPTER VI.
Miss Reeve's Establishment for Young Ladies 74
CHAPTER VII.
At School 85
CHAPTER VIII.
The School Annual 100
CHAPTER IX.
Drifting Away 111
CHAPTER X.
Rebellion 121
CHAPTER XI.
Away 131
CHAPTER XII.
An Acquaintance by the Way 142
CHAPTER XIII.
The Old Gentleman Again 153
CHAPTER XIV.
Who Gave that Kiss? 165
CHAPTER XV.
Miss Pinkett's Diamond 172
CHAPTER XVI.
The Party 183
CHAPTER XVII.
Poor Meg 192
CHAPTER XVIII.
Peace 205
CHAPTER XIX.
Who Is He? 217
CHAPTER XX.
Arrival 228
CHAPTER XXI.
Sir Malcolm Loftdale 241
CHAPTER XXII.
The Editor of the _Greywolds Mercury_ 257
CHAPTER XXIII.
Friend or Foe 268
CHAPTER XXIV.
Friend! 277
CHAPTER XXV.
For "Auld Lang Syne." 288
CHAPTER XXVI.
Before the Picture 305
CHAPTER XXVII.
In the Editor's Office 316
MEG'S FRIEND.
CHAPTER I.
MEG.
It was a queer old house in Bloomsbury, that had been fashionable some
two hundred years ago, and had fallen into abject neglect. The hall door
was dim for want of paint, and weatherbeaten to a dirty gray; the lower
windows were tawdry with vulgar blinds and curtains, and enlivened with
green boxes full of a few pining flowers. The drawing-room windows
showed a sort of mildewed finery, and then, in melancholy degrees,
poverty claimed the upper stories. It had all the features and cast of a
London lodging house.
Within, the house carried out the same suggestion of past grandeur and
present decay. The hall was wide, dingy, and unfurnished; the staircase
of oak was impressive, stained, and dusty.
On the topmost step of the top flight might habitually be seen, toward
sunset, a child seated and watching, with head thrust through the
banisters. She would sit still until there came the scrape of a latchkey
turning in the lock, and the sound of footsteps in the hall. Then the
mute little figure would grow full of sudden life; the little feet would
run down faster than eye could mark. Arrived in the hall, the child
would stop with sudden dignity before a man, robust and tall, and
looking up, ever so high, into a bright, young, manly face smiling down
upon her, she would lift her tiny forefinger, and some such colloquy
would ensue:
"You are late; where have you been, Mr. Standish?"
"At work, Meg--at work all the time."
"You have not been to the parlor of the Dragon?"
"No, Meg; not set my foot inside it."
"You have not been with those horrid whisky-smelling men?"
"Not seen one of them, Meg."
"Then you may come up," the child would say, taking his hand and leading
him up.
Mr. William Standish was beginning life as a journalist. He contributed
descriptive articles to a London paper, and was correspondent to a
colonial journal. His straight-featured countenance expressed energy and
decision; his glance betokened a faculty of humorous and rapid
observation; closely cropped blond hair covered his shapely head.
The journalist occupied the rooms on the upper story of Mrs. Browne's
lodging-house. He was the single member of the nomadic population
sheltering under that decaying roof who lived among his household gods.
He had made it a stipulation, on taking the rooms, that he should have
them unfurnished, and he had banished every trace of the landlady's
belongings.
The child was Meg. She went by no other name. When Mrs. Browne answered
her lodgers' queries concerning her, she replied vaguely that the child
had been left in her charge. Meg went to an over-crowded school in the
morning, and did odd jobs of household work in the afternoon. In the
intervals she sat on the topmost stair, watching the social eddies of
the shabby miniature world breaking down below. She was a silent child,
with a mop of dark brown hair and gray eyes, the gaze of which was so
sustained as not to be always pleasant to meet. The gravity of her look
was apt to make those upon whom it was directed feel foolish. She
repelled the patronizing advances of lodgers, and, when compelled to
answer, chilled conversation by the appalling straightforwardness of her
monosyllabic replies.
Two events had influenced her childhood. One day, when she was about
seven years of age, she had suddenly asked the old servant, who from
time immemorial had been the sole assistant of Mrs. Browne in
discharging her duties toward her lodgers:
"Tilly, had you a mammy?"
"Lor' bless the child!" answered Tilly, almost losing hold of the plate
she was washing. "Of course I had."
"Has every child got a mammy?" persisted Meg, with deliberate plainness
of speech.
"Of course they have," answered the old woman, utterly bewildered.
"Is madam my mammy?" asked the child, a slight tremor perceptible in the
slower and deeper intonation of her voice.
"Madam" was the name by which she had been taught to call Mrs. Browne.
"No!" answered Tilly sharply; "and if you ask any more questions ye'll
be put into the dark closet."
The threat, that brought to the child's mind associations of terror,
wrought the desired effect of silence. She stood, with her glance
unflinchingly directed on Tilly's face, and with a question trembling on
her lips, until the old servant turned away and left the kitchen.
Hitherto Meg had never asked a question concerning herself. She had
accepted a childhood without kissings and pettings--a snubbed, ignored
childhood--with a child's sainted powers of patience and resignation.
That night, as the old woman was composing herself to sleep in the attic
that she shared with the child, she was startled by Meg's voice sounding
close to her ear, and, turning, she saw the diminutive figure standing
near her bed in the moonlight.
"Tilly," she said, "I don't mind your locking me up in the dark closet,
if you'll just tell me--is my mammy dead?"
"Yes," said Tilly, taken off her guard.
There was a moment's pause, and an audible sigh.
"I'll never be naughty again, Tilly--never," resumed the child's voice,
"if you'll just tell me--what was she like?"
"You'll not ask another question if I tell ye?" replied Tilly after a
moment of silent self-debate.
"No, Tilly."
"Never another? Do ye hear?"
"Never, Tilly," repeated the child solemnly.
"And you'll never let madam know as I told you?" said Tilly excitedly,
sitting up in her bed.
"Never."
"Then, I don't mind saying, for I thinks as you ought to know, as she
was as pretty as a picture as I ever saw, and the gentlest, sweetest,
ladiest lady," said Tilly, nodding, as a sharp sob sounded in her
throat.
"Lady?" said Meg.
"A lady she was in all her ways, every bit of her; and the man as let
her die here all alone was a brute--that he was!" said Tilly, with
vehemence.
"What man?" asked the child, in a low voice.
"Go to bed," said Tilly severely, through her sobs.
"Was it my pappy?" said the child, who had seen and heard strange things
during her seven-years' life.
"Go to bed," repeated Tilly. "You promised as you'd never ask another
question."
"I will not, Tilly," said Meg, turning away, and returning through the
moonlight to bed.
The child kept her word, and never alluded to the subject again to
Tilly.
A few days later, when she was helping the old servant to tidy the rooms
after the departure of some lodgers from the drawing-room floor, Tilly
was surprised by the eagerness with which she craved permission to keep
a crumpled fashion-plate that she had found among the litter. It
represented a simpering young woman in a white ball dress, decked with
roses. Permission having been granted her to appropriate the work of
art, Meg carried it up to her attic, and hid it away in a box. Had any
one cared to observe the child, it would have been remarked that she,
who kissed nobody, lavished kisses upon this meaningless creation of a
dressmakers' brain; gazed at it, murmured to it, hid it away, and slept
with it under her pillow.
The next great event marking Meg's childhood had been the arrival of Mr.
William Standish to the lodging-house. It had occurred nearly two years
after the talk with Tilly concerning her mother. Meanwhile the old
servant had died.
Meg had watched with interest the arrival of the new lodger's
properties; and she had listened, fascinated, to his lusty voice,
singing to the accompaniment of hammering, and rising above the flurry
of settling down.
On the third evening Mr. Standish, who had observed the little figure
cowering in the dusk, and had once or twice given to it a friendly nod,
invited her to enter. Meg held back a moment, then shyly walked in.
She had a general impression of books and writing materials, pipes, and
prints on all sides, and of an atmosphere impregnated with the perfume
of tobacco.
After another pause of smileless hesitation, she took the footstool her
host drew for her by the fire. At his invitation she told him her name,
and gave a succinct account of her general mode of life. She admitted,
with monosyllabic brevity, that she liked to hear him sing, and that it
would please her if he would sing for her now. She sat entranced and
forgetful of her surroundings as he warbled:
"Nellie was a lady--
Last night she died,"
and followed the negro ballad with a spirited rendering of the "Erl
King."
At his invitation she renewed her visits. She was tremendously impressed
when he told her that he wrote for the papers; and was dumb with
amazement when he showed her, in a newspaper, the printed columns of
which he was the author.
They had been acquainted about a week, when Meg broke the silence set
upon her lips, and spoke to her new friend as she had never spoken to
human being before.
Mr. Standish had recited for her the ballad of the ghostly mother who
nightly comes to visit the children she has left on earth, and till
cock-crow rocks the cradle of her sleeping baby. The young man was
astonished at the expression of the child. Her cheeks were pale; she
breathed hard; her round opened eyes were fixed upon him.
"I wish mother would come just like that to me," she said abruptly.
"Your mother--is she dead?" he asked gently.
She nodded. "She's dead. I never saw her--never. I'd love to see her
just a-coming and standing by my bed. I'd not be a bit frightened."
"But if you have never seen her you would not know she was your mother,"
he replied, impressed by the passionate assertion of her manner.
"Oh, I'd know her! I'd know her!" said the child, with vivid assurance.
"Soon as she'd come in I'd know her. She was a lady."
"A lady!" he repeated. "How do you know? What do you mean?"
"Tilly told me. Tilly's dead," answered Meg with ardor. "She told it to
me once before; and I went to see her at the hospital, and she said it
again. She said, 'Meg, your mother was a lady--the sweetest, prettiest,
ladiest lady'--that's what she said; 'and, Meg, be good for her sake.'"
She paused, her eyes continuing to hold his with excited conviction.
"That's how I know she was a lady," Meg resumed; "and I know what a lady
is. The Misses Grantums down there"--infusing scorn into her voice as
she pointed to the floor to indicate she meant lodgers who lived
below--"they're not ladies though they've fine dresses; but they have
loud voices, and they scold. I go to the corners of the streets. I watch
the carriages. I see the ladies in them; and when I see one gentle and
a-smiling like an angel, I say mother was like one of these. That's how
I'd know what she'd be like. And," she added more slowly, lowering her
voice to a confidential whisper and advancing a step, "I have a picture
of her. Would you like to see it?"
"I would," he answered, thinking that at last he was approaching a clew
to the mystery.
She dashed off, and in a moment returned with something carefully
wrapped up in tissue paper, and gently drew out a limp picture, that she
held out at arm's length before the young man, keeping it out of his
reach.
"There, I'm sure she'd be like that--all smiling, you see. And those
beautiful curls, are they not lovely? and those large eyes and those
roses? I'm sure she'd be just like that."
"But let me hold it--just with my finger tips," he pleaded, as the child
jealously held the print away from him.
She slowly relinquished it to him and stood at his elbow.
"That's a picture taken out of a book--not a portrait," he said.
"I picked it up. Some lodgers had gone away. I found it in a corner.
Isn't it lovely? I'm sure she'd be just like that," reiterated Meg.
Mr. Standish was silent a moment. He was moved, yet he felt impelled to
speak words of wisdom to the child. Mooning about corners of streets
watching ladies drive past, and nursing those queer, foolish, ambitious
ideas about her mother was not likely to lead to any good. He thought
the whole story was probably without a grain of truth, the absurd
fabrication of some old woman's brain, and likely to prove hurtful to
Meg in giving her false notions concerning her duties in life.
He paused, revolving his words, anxious not to hurt, yet deeming it
incumbent upon him to expel this foolish fancy.
"My dear child," he said at last, "why do you imagine your mother was
like that picture, or like one of those ladies in the carriages? For all
you know they may be lazy, vain, and selfish. It is not the pretty dress
that makes the lady, or the face either. Is it not far better and more
reasonable to think of that dear mother, whom you never saw, as one of
God's own ladies? These ladies are found in all sorts of conditions,
sometimes in caps and aprons, sometimes in beautiful bonnets, very often
with brave, rough hands. What is wanted to make a lady is a kind, honest
heart."
"No, that's not being a lady," interrupted the child, with a flash and a
toss of her head. She spoke with decision; but her voice faltered as if
she had received a shock. Taking the picture from the young man's hand,
she began carefully, and with a trembling elaborateness, to replace it
in its coverings. "Jessie's good, and so was Tilly. They work hard, and
scrub, and run about on errands. They're not ladies. A lady's quite
different," continued Meg, suddenly facing him and speaking with
vehemence and clearness. "She's rich, and never scolds or cheats. She
does not work at all--not a bit; people work for her and drive her
about, but she does nothing herself. She has never dirty hands, or her
cap all untidy, or looking all in a fuss. She does nothing but smile and
look beautiful, like an angel," concluded Meg triumphantly, reiterating
her favorite simile.
"Meg," said the young fellow, seeing more clearly the necessity to root
out this absurd ideal from the child's mind, "you are talking very
foolishly. A lady is, indeed, not necessarily an angel. You say a lady
must be rich. Now, if your mother was rich, why are you poor? Would she
not have left you her money in dying, and you would have been rich like
her?"
"I don't know anything about that," said the child, growing a little
pale, and beginning once more to fidget with the fashion-plate.
"It is for your good, Meg, that I speak," resumed the young man. "You
must wish to be like your mother; and you cannot grow up good and
hard-working and honest if you think your mother was rich and left you
poor, with no one to look after you or care for you."
"It was not her fault," said the child faintly.
"It would have been her fault," he answered severely, shaking his head.
"My dear Meg, put away this foolish idea. Call up your mother to your
mind as a good, toiling woman; one of God's ladies, as I called her
before. Try to be like her. Lay aside the thought that she was one of
those carriage ladies."
"I won't!" interrupted the child, standing pale and upright, clutching
the fashion-plate close up against her chest. "It's a lie! She was a
lady!"
A smothered exclamation rose to Mr. Standish's lips. It was the first
offensive word he had heard the child use.
"Meg," he cried, following the fluttering little figure up the stairs.
He saw her enter an attic; he heard the door slam and the bolt drawn.
"Meg," he called again gently.
There came no answer; but Mr. Standish thought he heard the sound of
passionate sobbing. He waited, called a third time, and receiving no
response he shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
The exigencies of the press absorbed Mr. Standish so completely that for
the next few days he had no time to think of Meg. He noticed that the
corner on the top lobby was empty, and a vague feeling of regret crossed
his mind.
On the third day he was disturbed by a great clatter in the kitchen and
the noise of many voices, above which that of Meg rose shrill and angry.
Jessie, the hard-worked slavey of the establishment, admitted when she
came up with the coal-scuttle, in answer to Mr. Standish's inquiries
concerning the cause of the trouble, that it was Meg's fault. She was
not like the same child. She was like beside herself--she was--these
last three days.
Mr. Standish was perplexed, and resolved, after completing the weekly
budget he was writing for the _Melbourne Banner_, to seek out the child,
and get the clew to this sudden demoralization.
He was confirmed in this resolution when, in returning from the post, he
came upon Meg in fierce encounter with some boys. She was fighting
valiantly, but numbers proved too much. Mr. Standish stepped up to the
rescue. He caught one boy by the ear, rolled another in the dust, and
generally dispersed the assailants on all sides. Meg waited, watching,
on the outskirts of the fray; but as soon as Mr. Standish had disposed
of her enemies she turned and fled, disheveled, homeward. The account
her rescuer received left little doubt on his mind that Meg had been the
aggressive party.
Mr. Standish sought Mrs. Browne. The landlady was lachrymose and
muddled. To his inquiries concerning the queer notion Meg had concerning
her mother, she gave a rambling account of a mysterious lady who had
come to the lodgings accompanied by an older lady. Meg had been born
here, and the mother had died in giving her birth. No father had ever
come to visit the mother or child.
Mrs. Browne admitted that some money was sent regular through a
lawyer--just enough to pay for Meg's clothing and schooling; but who the
lawyer was, Mrs. Browne refused to tell.
Mr. Standish left Mrs. Browne drying her eyes, and went up, meditating
how to address Meg. There had come to him an indistinct realization of
what the thought of a lady-mother had been to the child in her sordid
surroundings. After a few moments' deliberation he took out pen, ink,
and paper, and wrote in Roman characters:
"DEAR MEG: I write to ask you to forgive me. You were right, and I
was wrong. Your mother was a lady, just as you thought she was. I
have heard all about her. Won't you forgive me, and come and see
me? I feel lonely without my little friend.
"W. S."
Having folded the letter, he slipped it under the child's door; then he
returned to his room and waited, leaving his own door ajar. After awhile
he began to sing some of Meg's favorite melodies--"Sally in the Alley"
and "Margery Allen." He thought he heard a furtive step. He turned his
head away, so as not to frighten by so much as a glance the shy advance,
and began softly to sing Meg's favorite ballad:
"Nellie was a lady--
Last night she died."
He fancied he distinguished the reluctant drawing near of tardy feet.
When the song was ended he looked round. Meg was on the threshold. A
glance revealed the change those four days had wrought. Her hair was
unkempt, her dress untidy, her cheeks pale; but it was not so much those
signs of neglect, the pallor of her cheeks, the drawn lines about her
mouth that startled him, as a certain expression of childish
recklessness. It was the Meg he had seen wrangling with boys in the
street, flying past him lawless and fierce. In her hand she held his
letter, and she kept her eyes fixed upon him with a bold stare.
"Is it true what you have written here, or is it a pack of stories?" she
asked abruptly.
"It is all true, Meg," said Mr. Standish gently. "She was a lady."
"A real lady, like those that drive about in the carriages?" asked the
child with stern cross-examination.
"She was a real lady, Meg; just as you have always pictured her--with
soft hands that had never done rough work, and a gentle voice. All about
her was beautiful," replied Mr. Standish in slow and convinced tones.
At this assurance Meg gave a little sigh; the tension about her lips
relaxed; the fierce brilliancy of her interrogative glance was subdued.
"How do you know?" she asked more softly.
"Mrs. Browne told me. I will take you to her, and she will tell it to
you."
"I don't want her to tell me, you tell me," said Meg quickly.
Mr. Standish hesitated; under the child's innocent gaze he found it
difficult to speak. He told her in simple words some of the story Mrs.
Browne had related. It was a mercy Meg evinced no curiosity concerning
her father. Mr. Standish dwelt upon the beauty, the youth, the suffering
of the mother; he spoke of the love she had lavished in anticipation
upon the babe she was never to see.
As he spoke, the thought of that early and lonely death thrust itself
before him with a new and piteous force. The thought of the forsaken
child moved him, and his voice faltered.
Meg was by his side in a moment; her hand touched his. "You asked me in
your letter to forgive you," she whispered. "I forgive you."
He took the little hand. "You must forget also, Meg, that I said your
mother had left you poor and uncared for."
"But she did. She left me poor, and with strangers; that's what you
said," replied Meg, with a return of the old fierceness, quoting his
words.
"She died," he answered with emphasis, bending forward. "Listen, Meg,"
he continued, as the child remained apparently unsoftened, "will you
believe me, even if you do not understand me--will you believe me?"
For a moment Meg remained dogged and silent, then, as she met his
troubled glance, the doubt passed from hers, the confiding light came
back.
"I believe you; I believe you very much," she said.
"Then, when you think of her, Meg, think that some one had done her
great injury--had made her suffer, more than you can know. That is why
she came here and died. She left you poor because everything had been
taken from her."
He paused a moment. Meg was pale, and seemed a little dazed; but the
excitement had left her manner.
"Everything," he repeated with emphasis.
The child's bosom heaved.
"Now that she is dead," resumed the young man, "I believe that dear
mother watches over her little daughter."
"You believe it," said Meg slowly.
"I believe it," said Mr. Standish. "But, come; where is that picture?
Let me look at it again."
Meg was off and back again in a moment. The print was torn and
besmeared, as if it had gone through rough usage since he had seen it
last.
"Halloo! it is falling to bits. It was not so crumpled and torn the
other day," he remarked.
"No," Meg confessed; "I hated it the other night, when you said mother
was hard-working, like a charwoman. I wanted to tear it up--I did; but I
could not." She stopped; for the first time there came a choking in her
throat, and a sob, quickly repressed.
Mr. Standish pretended absorption in his occupation, spread out the
tattered print, and announced his intention of bestowing to the painting
a new lease of life by pasting it upon a pasteboard back. He gathered
the necessary implements for the task. Meg, usually so active, watched
in silence; but he knew, by the trembling of the little hand resting on
the table, by the stiff uprightness of the small figure beside him, the
fierce battle the child was waging with herself to suppress all show of
emotion.
He took no apparent heed of her, but proceeded with the task of
renovation. Perhaps he had intended still to lead the child's mind to a
truer conception of a lady than she could get from worship of this
simpering fetish, with a mouth like a cherry, and curled eyelashes; but
as he handled the old fashion-plate, the pathos of its smeared and
battered condition touched him with a sense of sacredness, and he found
himself declaring that her mother might have been like that picture.
There was no doubt about it; it represented a lovely creature, and her
mother was a lovely lady.
When the task was completed he was rewarded by the sight of Meg's
radiant countenance. In perfect peace she carried off the restored
picture.