TWO YEARS LATER.
Two years had elapsed, and to superficial observers Meg might have
appeared to have changed only by some inches added to her length of
limb. She still haunted the corner overlooking the stairs on the topmost
lobby, but it was not to watch the come and go of the shabby social
eddies breaking down below. She read much to herself. Her choice of
literature was a queer _melange_ of odds and ends. She was up to all the
fires, the accidents, the pageants of a world into which she had never
set foot. She knew to what corner of a London daily paper and provincial
weekly she was to look to find descriptions of these sensational
incidents, and the style in which they were recorded stirred in her an
admiration worthy of being lavished on Homeric epics. She knew also a
number of ballads by heart that she would recite with an amount of
native dramatic vividness.
If the shifting scenes going on downstairs no longer attracted her as
in the past, she was intent and absorbed in watching one life. The
friendship between her and Mr. Standish had become a tie that drew out
peculiarities of the child's nature. There had been quarrels,
coolnesses, reconciliations, but Meg's usual attitude toward the
journalist was one of mingled proprietorship and watchfulness. It was a
mixture of motherly solicitude and dog-like faithfulness. She
cross-questioned, admonished, and kept vigilant guard over his
interests.
Once, having discovered that Mrs. Browne had cheated him of sixpence in
the weekly bill, she drew the landlady's notice to the overcharge; but
Mrs. Browne refused to acknowledge or set it right, and Meg cried
herself to sleep. Loyalty to the landlady was discarded, and with
brimming eyes and quivering lips she told Mr. Standish next day of that
fraudulent sixpence. To her dismay he laughed, and vowed that Mrs.
Browne's name ought to be handed down to posterity as an honest landlady
if sixpence covered the amount of a week's cheating. Meg would not be
comforted; to her the landlady seemed remorseless.
A mother could not have detected with quicker apprehension a shade of
weariness or pallor on the young man's face. Her invariable question on
such an occasion would be, "What have you had for dinner?" Sometimes he
tried to deceive her. He would roll out a dazzling _menu_--turtle soup,
turbot, plum-pudding.
She would stop him at once with pathetic and angry remonstrance. "It is
not true; you know it is not true. Why do you say it?"
Her earnestness always moved him; he was ashamed of deceiving her.
Their last quarrel had been caused by Mr. Standish's confession that he
had dined off fish.
"Fish!" cried Meg with scorn, tossing her head. "Can you work after a
bit of fish? What fish--turbot, salmon, fried soles?" The ladies who
occupied the drawing-room floor gave occasional dinner-parties, where
such delicacies figured.
As Mr. Standish kept shaking his head, the smile in his eyes growing
more amused and tender, a terrible idea dawned upon Meg. She grew pale.
"Herring!" she faltered.
"Herrings," he repeated in a voice of rich appreciation. "Two herrings,
fat as lord mayors!"
Meg walked about the room, her eyes bright with angry misery, her lips
trembling. "It's downright wicked! You want to kill yourself, that's
what you want to do." She flicked a tear away. "A workman in the street
down there has a better dinner than that."
"Now, Meg, be reasonable," the young man pleaded in a voice of protest.
"Don't you see," he went on, striking his left palm with two fingers of
the right hand, "there is a day called 'pay-day' that rules my bill of
fare, as I explained to you the other day the moon rules the tides. On
pay-day and its immediate followers I live in abundance. Then come days
of lesser luxuries, then abstinence. I have reached this period. Soon
plenty will reign again."
"It is a foolish way of managing money," said Meg, abrupt in her
trouble, and only half-comforted.
"Can you tell me, Meg, how to manage money without reference to
pay-day?" he asked.
"Will you do as I tell you?" she said, stopping short in her restless
peregrinations.
He nodded.
"Take your money, all your money, and divide it into little parcels, as
many parcels as there are days it must last, and every day spend just
what is inside one of the little parcels, and not a bit more," said Meg
with elucidating gestures.
Mr. Standish vowed she spoke like a chancellor of the exchequer; that
the more he heard her the more he was determined on coming into the
colossal fortune he was to enjoy some day, to appoint her his almoner,
housekeeper, the dispenser of his bounties, the orderer of his dinners.
This project to be his housekeeper was one dear to Meg's heart, the
pacifier of her wrath. By what means Mr. Standish was to come into
possession of this fabulous wealth remained vague. Sometimes he would
announce his intention of getting it by marrying an heiress, a project
always chillingly received by Meg. Sometimes she would suggest
spitefully that the heiress would not marry him; but Mr. Standish
overrode all objections, and would depict days of indolent delight for
himself and his bride, while Meg managed the household. When the
daydream reached this point it generally abruptly terminated by Meg
plunging out of the room, and banging the door after her with an
emphatic "Shan't!"
On the evening of the fish dinner Mr. Standish left the heiress out of
the question, and Meg was softened.
The next day the young man supped at home. His tray, as usual on these
occasions, was brought in by Meg. A burly German sausage and a pot of
Scotch marmalade graced the board. Meg's answers were evasive concerning
the source from which these dainties came. It struck Mr. Standish that
Meg had bought them with the store of half-pence he had taught her to
put away in a moneybox he had himself presented to her, with a view to
inculcating economical instincts. Her fierce refusal to answer convinced
him that he had guessed right.
The refusal to touch these dainties died on his lips. He could not hurt
the child. He ate the supper she had provided with loud laudations of
its excellence. Before it was finished an arrangement had been entered
into between them. On pay-day Meg would henceforth receive a sum to be
kept for him against the days of privation. The contract had been
fulfilled. Meg had proved a stern treasurer, resisting the young man's
entreaties to dole out portions of the money before the appointed time.
If the child had gained much by intercourse with an educated mind, if
her English had grown by it more refined and correct, her mind stored
with more definite and varied knowledge; if, above all, there had come
to her by this affection a precocious womanliness, taming and sweetening
her lonely life, Mr. Standish had gained as much by the tie between
them. A sort of wonder, half-amused, half-tender, sometimes awoke in his
heart at the thought of the child's devotion. His occupation led him to
see rough sides of life, and as he became familiar with degradation, the
goodness, the innocence of the child was ever before him. He felt it was
touching to be loved by a child of ten. Her advanced wisdom struck him.
If it stirred his sense of humor and inclined him to laugh, still it
made him thoughtful.
During those two years he had enlarged his connections. He was earning
more money. Individuals, somewhat of unkempt appearance, whom Meg
disapproved of thoroughly, often made their way up the stairs to the
young man's rooms. The peals of laughter, the loud talk emerging from
the sanctum, confirmed Meg in judging these visitors foolish company for
her hero. The child grew hot with angry apprehension when the bell rang
shortly after their coming, and Jessie would answer it with tumblers of
whisky and lemons. On letting out these friends Meg thought that Mr.
Standish usually looked excited, his eyes brighter, his manner more
expansive. The child grew restless, alert, suspicious. She did not
disguise her feelings to Mr. Standish. Why did these rough men come
drinking his whisky? She would break into fierce denunciations against
drink.
"Madam"--Mrs. Browne--"always said she was poor. Why was she poor?
Because she was always a-sipping and drinking. He'd keep being poor
too."
Often Meg's tones, staccato with prophetic denunciation, would falter at
the picture she evoked.
Mr. Standish listened sometimes with an amused and indulgent good humor
that exasperated Meg; sometimes an uneasy qualm was perceptible in his
voice as he admitted that Meg was wise; sometimes he assumed a superior
tone of disapproval that silenced her for the time, but left her more
than ever under the shadow of a vague and sorrowful apprehension.
One Sunday afternoon Mr. Standish emerged from his room ready to sally
forth. Meg appeared out of her shadowy corner.
"Going out?" she asked shortly.
He nodded, smiling down with benign amusement. He seemed enveloped in a
holiday brightness.
"Going with those horrid men?" she resumed, throwing her words out with
sorrowful brevity.
He nodded, and drew out his watch. He was apparently in a mood to be
entertained.
"Come, Meg, there are five minutes for a sermon. I will listen to it
respectfully, as if it were the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching."
But Meg was too much absorbed to mind a joke. She followed him into his
sitting-room, and began restlessly walking about.
Mr. Standish sat down, and as he stroked his hat with his sleeve he
watched the little figure's perambulations. Meg wore her Sunday gown, a
rusty black velveteen, foldless and clinging, buttoned from throat to
hem. She had outgrown its scanty proportions. Her feet, incased in black
felt slippers, looked large under the trim ankles.
"Well, Meg, I am waiting," said Mr. Standish.
"Don't go," said the child, stopping short and facing him abruptly. The
quaint austerity of the skimpy garment brought out the lines of the
childish figure as she stood erect and animated before him.
"Why not, Meg?"
"Because they're bad; because I hate them; because they'll bring you to
misery," said the child, with an upward flash of one little brown
well-formed hand, and with a piteous emphasis on the last word.
"Nonsense, Meg!" said Mr. Standish, impatient because more impressed
than he cared to be. "You keep comparing my friends with Mrs. Browne--I
don't mean any disrespect--an uneducated tippling old woman. My friends,
my dear Meg, are gentlemen, educated men, who, I admit, are fond of a
joke, fond of a glass or two glasses of grog, but who respect
themselves."
"Education has nothing to do with it," snapped Meg, with concise energy.
"There was a man downstairs, he was educated. I think he was the devil.
He'd leave his wife and little child for days, and come back drunk." Meg
gave a fierce little shudder. "There'd be scenes. One day he went and
never came back--never, and the wife and baby boy went off one snowy day
to the workhouse."
"Poor child, you should not see those things!" said Mr. Standish with a
troubled look.
"Why not? You would not let these men up there take your money if you
saw them."
There was a grotesque sweetness in Meg's appearance as she stood there
in her skimpy dress, her short dusky hair falling in masses about her
neck and over her forehead. There came to the young journalist a
remembrance of those wingless angels that the pre-Raphaelite masters
painted, gracious, grave, workaday beings, with unearthly wise faces.
But it was not as a picture that he contemplated Meg; the thought of the
goodness, the purity, the holiness of the child, who knew so much and
understood so little of life, overcame him. Her innocence almost
frightened him. He felt the sacredness of a vow taken to her; it would
be more binding than one taken before a court of justice.
"What is it that you want me to promise, Meg?" he asked.
"Not to let them take your money from you, not to let them give you
drink," she replied with her accustomed unhesitancy, but her voice
faltering with harbored longing.
"Not drink at all?" he asked.
"I wish not at all; I wish not at all," she replied with unconscious
repetition.
"Look here, Meg; I'll promise you this--I'll not waste my money, and
I'll not tipple like Mrs. Browne downstairs. Will that satisfy you?"
"You promise!" said Meg vehemently, with another upward flash of the
well-formed little brown hand, and holding him with her eyes.
"I promise," said Mr. Standish gravely, disguising an inclination to
laugh.
The young man was busy in the intervals of journalistic work composing a
political squib. He had not so much time to devote to Meg as in the
less-employed days, but he allowed her to sit near him when he wrote,
reading the story-books and ballads he gave her. In his leisure, as he
smoked his pipe, he watched with half-closed eyes the quaint little
figure, and drew the child out to talk. He explained the difficult
passages in the books she read, and gave her lessons in recitation.
Better than anything to Meg, he sometimes imparted to her the last _bon
mot_ he had put into the mouth of "Sultan Will" to his suffering
subjects--a confidence that invariably produced abnormal gravity in
Meg.
The child had no reason to think the young man was not fulfilling the
promise he had given. His alert carriage and concentrated expression
contradicted any suspicion of faltering. Yet she was restless; his
friends came often to see him.
"Why did they come, disturbing him at his work?" she asked spitefully.
Mr. Standish called her a hard little taskmaster, and received his
friends cordially. A formless fear was at the child's heart. She haunted
the threshold of his door when they were in his room; she lay awake of
nights when she knew that he had gone out with them. She magnified to
herself the number of times that he had gone out earlier and come home
later than he used. If she dropped asleep her slumbers were broken until
she heard the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
One evening Mr. Standish went off in company with two journalistic
comrades to a public dinner, given to members of the press by the
directors of a new railway company. Meg would not retract the
unfavorable verdict she pronounced upon his appearance in the new dress
suit he had ordered specially for the occasion. She was not to be
mollified by the promise of an orange from the directors' table. "She
did not want an orange; she did not see what a dinner had to do with a
railway," she averred.
That night she could not sleep. The formless fear at her heart lay heavy
upon it; it seemed to her that the fulfillment of that nameless dread
was approaching. As the hour came and passed Mr. Standish had fixed for
his return, visions began to group about her bed and pass before her
wide-open eyes. All the sorrowful stories of accidents Mr. Standish had
related to her enacted themselves before her, in which he appeared the
central figure. The night plodded slowly on; the clock in the hall
struck the hours at intervals. When the clock struck three Meg got up
and paced about the room, a wan little ghost.
When another hour struck the four peals sounded like a hammer-stroke on
a coffin. Meg began to dress. She did not know why she did so, or what
she would do after, but a vague sense of being needed impelled her. She
fumbled her way to the staircase and sat on the topmost step.
She waited in the darkness and silence. A faint whiteness began to steal
through the sides of the blinds drawn over the window on the lobby. The
banisters, the flight of stairs, showed shadowily, gradually growing
more distinct.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet. There was the scrape of a key in the
latch. A step sounded in the hall, made its way up the stairs. It was
Mr. Standish. When he reached the topmost flight of steps he perceived
the little gray figure standing waiting in the gray dawn, erect,
immobile. He steadied himself against the banisters and began to laugh.
He looked pale, his eyes dark; his hat was thrown back, his hair
disordered.
"Why, Meg, you little detective, are you there? Such a jolly night!
splendid dinner! No humbug this time, Meg--real turtle, tuns of
champagne!" He came up a few steps. "Tuns of champagne, Meg! Speeches,
Meg! Such nonsense! Everybody complimented everybody else. I did not
forget you, Meg. Look here, I stole an orange and sweetmeats!" He began
fumbling in his pockets.
"You've broken your promise," said the child in a low and trembling
voice.
"Not a bit of it, Meg. Now you think I am tipsy," he replied, speaking
huskily. "Not a bit of it. You'll see if I can't walk straight as a lamp
post to that door."
As he went up he staggered--she had not seen him stumble before--caught
himself by the balustrade, then plunged forward with uneven steps.
Instinctively Meg put out her hand, but he did not see it. Catching at
the wall he fell into a fit of laughing; then making his way to his room
he let the door slam behind him.
Meg was petrified. All that she had dreaded seemed to have happened. She
sat down, her throat burning, her body cold, as if a shroud enfolded
her. She remained huddled and moveless until signs of life began to be
heard in the house. Then she got up and crept into her attic.