Christina Part 6

"And not one answer to all the letters I wrote about situations," she exclaimed wearily, pulling herself up from her chair, and taking the spirit-lamp from its place in the cupboard. "I wonder whether there are lots of other girls as poor as I am, and without any relations or friends. In another week, I shan't have enough money to pay my rent; and Mrs. Jones won't let it run; she's said so over and over again."

Another s.h.i.+ver ran through her, and this time dread apprehension of the future was more responsible for the s.h.i.+ver than even the damp chilliness of her condition. "I don't know what I shall do when the money is all gone. Oh! I don't know what I shall do," and a little sob broke from her, as she took from the cupboard the materials for her tea. It was a meagre enough meal that her cold shaking fingers spread on the old deal table, and she was repeatedly forced to brush away the tears from her face, so fast did they run down it now that exhaustion and misery were at last finding an outlet. Her lunch had consisted of a gla.s.s of milk and a bun, bought at a neighbouring shop; since lunch-time she had walked some miles, had incidentally become wet through during the process, and her walk had been crowned by a cruel disappointment. It was not wonderful that the girl, plucky little soul though she was, should feel now as if the end were reached, and she could hope no more.

To add to her misery, everything seemed to go awry. The matches were only found after a prolonged hunt for them; for many minutes the lamp refused to light; and when, at last, a flame shot up, Christina thought that the water in the kettle boiled more slowly than water had ever boiled before. Dry bread had never tasted more unappetising; and milkless tea (though it was certainly warm, and in that respect carried a certain amount of comfort with it), tasted bitter and nauseating.

The girl longed, with an almost childish longing, for something more to eat and drink. Visions rose before her of the Donaldsons' cosy nursery, of a plate piled high with hot b.u.t.tered toast, of a big home-made seed cake, that could be eaten as quickly as the nursery folks liked, without any dread of future want, and she pushed away her plate, and laid her head down upon the table, sobbing as though her heart would break. Hot b.u.t.tered toast and seed cake are unromantic sounding things enough, no doubt, but when one is very hungry, and very heartsick, and only twenty into the bargain, the thoughts of past plenty make present poverty seem well nigh intolerable.

Good stuff must have gone to the making of little Christina, and whoever those ancestors on her mother's side had been, they had pa.s.sed on to her a goodly heritage of courage and endurance. Her storm of sobs was of very brief duration. Giving herself a little shake both actually and metaphorically, she raised her head from the table, resolutely dried her eyes, choked back her sobs and forced herself to finish eating the dry morsels of bread, and drinking the nauseous draught of tea. Either the food itself, or the effort she had made to eat it, sent a tingling of new strength along her limbs, and she broke into a faint laugh over her own despair.

"You perfect goose," she said firmly, rising to wash up her tea things; "crying won't make anything better. Mr. Donaldson used to say, 'Don't look for your bridges before you come to them,' and so I won't look at the bridge. Mrs. Jones will put up for me about the rent, until I am really going to step right on to it. And before I give up every bit of hope, I ought--perhaps I ought to try and p.a.w.n the pendant, only I can't bear doing it. I can't bear it."

Mrs. Jones was not at all the pleasant and kindly landlady of fiction, who succours and helps her tenants, and plays the part of mother to them. The only part Mrs. Jones understood playing was that of the cruel stepmother of fairy legend, and Christina did not err in thinking that to allow rent to remain unpaid, was no part of her landlady's methods. Mrs. Jones's own life had been a hard one. Grinding work in her early girlhood, a brutal husband, and much grinding poverty during her married life, and in her widowhood an unending struggle to make two ends meet; these made up the sum of the landlady's existence, and she treated the world as she found herself treated by the world. She expected nothing from others, and she gave them nothing. She asked for no help from her fellow beings, and she most a.s.suredly bestowed none.

She was lighting the gas jet in the hall, a hard-featured, tight-lipped woman, when, half an hour later, Christina went out again, a small brown paper parcel in her hand; and Mrs. Jones's thin lips tightened more than ever as her sharp eyes fell upon the parcel.

"Goin' out to pop somethin'," was her grim thought, and the thought was displeasing to her. Not that she particularly pitied her lodger. Pity was a virtue not cultivated by Mrs. Jones. But she instinctively dreaded the moment when her lodgers began to slip out stealthily with parcels under their arms, or in their hands. The significance of those parcels was well known to her, and she was fully aware that lodgers who once began to p.a.w.n their goods pa.s.sed by easy stages to backwardness in paying their rent, and then followed eviction and new tenants. No; Mrs. Jones mistrusted brown paper parcels, just as much as she mistrusted the look, half-shy, half-frightened, which Christina cast at her in pa.s.sing, and the flood of colour that dyed the girl's face, when she met the landlady's glance.

Some of her smarter clothes Christina had long ago sold to an old clothes' shop round the corner, but this was the first time she had visited a real p.a.w.nbroker, and her heart beat like a sledge-hammer, as she stood outside the window of a jeweller's shop, over which the three b.a.l.l.s were displayed. She had shrunk from going into the establishment of Mr. Moss, the recognised p.a.w.nbroker of that squalid neighbourhood, and had gone further afield, thinking that from a jeweller, even though he engaged in p.a.w.nbroking as well, she would meet with more consideration, and perhaps receive a larger sum of money. But, looking through the gla.s.s doors at the two men who lounged behind the counter, her spirits sank to zero, and she allowed ten minutes to slip by before, taking her courage into her hands, she finally entered the shop.

Coming in out of the damp of the November evening, the pleasant warmth was grateful to her, but the brilliant gaslight dazzled her eyes, and sheer nervousness made her stumble hopelessly over the sentence she had been committing to memory, ever since she had left her lodgings.

"I called to ask whether this pendant was of any value," she had intended to say. But instead of that, she found herself stammering breathlessly, "I--I came--would you please tell me--if you can give me something on this," and she thrust her parcel into the hand indolently stretched out for it, by one of the young men behind the counter.

His eyes looked her up and down with an insolent stare that sent the blood flying over her face, and his smile gave her an impotent longing to strike his fat, sleek countenance.

"How much do you want for it, my dear, that's the question?" the man said jauntily, his eyes never leaving the girl's flushed face; "we are always pleased to accommodate a pretty young lady like you, eh, Tom?"

with an odious leer he nudged the elbow of his companion, who emitted a hoa.r.s.e guffaw, and winked facetiously, as Christina turned a distressed glance in his direction. Unfortunately for her, the master of the shop was absent, and she was at the mercy of two of those underbred, mean-spirited curs, who regard any defenceless woman as lawful prey, and take the same delight in baiting her, as their ign.o.ble ancestors took in baiting an equally defenceless dumb animal.

"You tell us what you want, miss," the man called Tom struck in, leaning across the counter, and tapping the girl's hand; "anything you ask in reason we shall be pleased to oblige you with. Now, what's this thing, and this thing, and this very pretty thing?" he ended facetiously, whilst his fellow shopman unfastened Christina's parcel, and opened the cardboard box it contained.

"It is a pendant," Christina faltered, afraid to show the indignation she felt, lest the men should refuse to give her what she needed; "it has been a long time in my family--and--I know it is very valuable."

"Oh! you know it is very valuable, do you?" queried the first man, mocking her trembling accents; "now, it is for us to tell you its value; not for you to tell us, you know. Hum! old-fas.h.i.+oned thing," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, holding up to the light the piece of jewellery he had drawn from its box; "this sort of antique article may have suited our grandmothers, but it doesn't go down nowadays!"

"That is not at all the case," Christina answered boldly; "everybody likes antique things now; and that pendant is worth a great deal, as you know."

Anger was beginning to conquer her nervous tremors, and the odious smile with which her remark was received by both young men, made her draw herself up proudly.

"Hoity, toity!" said the man called Tom; "as we know, indeed. If Mr.

Franks, my excellent friend and colleague," he made an exaggerated bow to his companion, "considers the bauble old-fas.h.i.+oned and worthless, it certainly is worthless and old-fas.h.i.+oned."

"It is certainly nothing of the kind," Christina cried, anger driving away the last semblance of nervousness. "I should be much obliged if you would tell me at once how much you can advance me upon it. If you are unable to give me anything, I can take it elsewhere." As she spoke, she looked straight into the smiling, insolent faces before her, her own grown rigid and proud; and in spite of her shabby clothing and obvious poverty, she suddenly a.s.sumed a look of imperial dignity, which had an instantaneous effect upon her tormentors.

"Come, come, miss; don't talk like that," the man called Franks said sheepishly; "we were just having a bit of fun over it, that's all. And I'm sure we'll give you the best we can for the pendant."

Christina's threat of taking the jewel elsewhere, had brought the shopmen sharply to their senses, for it had needed no more than a cursory glance, to show them both that the jewel the girl had brought them was of no small value, and they were uncomfortably aware that the vials of their master's wrath would be emptied upon their heads, if they allowed such an article to be disposed of in another establishment.

"It is a very pretty piece of work," the first man said, taking the pendant in his hand, and looking over it with a fine a.s.sumption of carelessness; "family initials, I suppose, in this twisted monogram?"

"I suppose so. I cannot give you any history of the pendant; I don't know its history myself. It came to me from my mother." Christina gave this piece of gratuitous information, feeling uneasily that it might be supposed she had stolen the beautiful piece of jewellery; and, with the thought, all the old a.s.sociations that were interwoven with it swept into her mind, and almost choked further utterance.

"A.V.C.," the young man said slowly, deciphering the monogram, which, in exquisitely-chased gold, surmounted the pendant itself. This latter consisted of an emerald, remarkably vivid in colour, and set in the same finely-chased gold as that which formed the monogram. "A.V.C.

would have been some ancestor of yours, no doubt?" he asked jocularly, and with another wink at his companion.

"I don't know," Christina repeated; "as I tell you, I know nothing of the jewel's history. I believe it to be a genuine emerald, and I am sure it is very valuable."

Both men simultaneously shrugged their shoulders and laughed, odious, deprecating laughs.

"My dear young lady," said Franks, who seemed to occupy a position superior to the other, "someone has been, as we say, 'getting at' you, if they told you this was a _genuine_ emerald. Why! if it was an emerald, a _real_ emerald, mind you, it would be worth"--and he raised his eyes to the ceiling, and lifted up his hands, as if to demonstrate the magnitude of a sum he could not mention in spoken language.

"It _is_ a real emerald, and it is worth a great deal," Christina said firmly, "but if you do not care to advance me what it is worth, I will take it away," and she put out her hand for the pendant, from which the gleams of light flashed brilliantly.

"Now look here," said Mr. Franks persuasively, "you believe me, missy; this is no more an emerald than I am, but it is a nice little bit of paste, and the gold is well worked. I'm taking a good bit upon myself in making the suggestion, and goodness knows what the boss will say to me when he comes home. But I'll take it off your hands for five pounds. There!" he ended triumphantly, as though convinced that the generosity must be a delicious surprise for his hearer.

"Five--pounds!"--Christina's voice rang with indignation--"five pounds for what you know as well as I do is worth twenty times that amount."

Franks laughed contemptuously, and began putting the ornament back into its box with elaborate care.

"You have an exaggerated idea of the thing's value," he said. "I couldn't undertake to offer you more than five pounds for it, and if you take my advice," he added darkly, with a swift glance at his colleague, and back at the girl, "you'll accept the offer, and let us have the thing altogether. You see," he coughed significantly, "awkward questions might be asked about a thing like this, with initials. If I did my business properly, I ought to ask you where you got it."

The colour ebbed out of Christina's face; the possibility that had confronted her a few minutes ago, had all at once taken definite form.

This man was hinting--nay, more than hinting--that the pendant had come into her hands by unlawful means, and she had nothing but her word to prove her own statement.

"I have told you--that it belonged to my mother," she said tremblingly; "it is an old family ornament, and--I cannot part with it altogether."

"Look here, miss"--the man's voice became rough and harsh--"it's no use your coming old family ornaments over me. People with old family ornaments don't come to places like this p.a.w.ning them. What price your 'old family,' eh?" He ended his coa.r.s.e speech with a coa.r.s.er laugh, at the sound of which Christina shrank and s.h.i.+vered.

"I will take back my pendant, please," she said, trying to regain her courageous tone. "I do not wish to sell it outright, and if you will not advance me anything on it, there is nothing more to be said."

"Not so fast, not so fast," the man called Tom exclaimed, pus.h.i.+ng back the hand she once more extended towards the box. "What Mr. Franks says is very true--how do we know where you got this pendant? The more you go on making difficulties over letting it go, the more doubtful the whole affair looks. Now if you're really so badly in want of cash," he went on brutally, "you take what we offer--five pounds down. If you don't, we may feel ourselves obliged to send for the police--and----"

Quite unable, in her innocence, to understand that the two cowards were bullying her to the top of their bent;--already worn-out by the events of the day, and by many days of fatigue and under-feeding, a panic terror seized upon her. Before the astonished men were aware of her intention, she had reached over the counter, s.n.a.t.c.hed the box from Franks's hand, and fled out of the shop and down the street, her heart beating to suffocation, her eyes wide with terror.

Never once looking back, she threaded her way along the pavement, oblivious of the expostulations of pa.s.sers-by, against whom she brushed; almost unconscious of their very existence, in her frantic desire speedily to put as great a distance as possible between herself and the objectionable jewellers.

Heedless of the traffic, she dashed headlong over the crossings, and plunging into a network of by-streets, ran on still at full speed, possessed by the horrible fear that those men with the dreadful smiles, might already have put the police upon her track.

"I can't prove the pendant is mine," she panted breathlessly. "I have no proof that I didn't steal it. What can I say if they take me up as a thief?" The bare thought made her redouble her pace, although she was already on the verge of exhaustion, and her breath was coming in great gasps. Beads of perspiration stood on her forehead, and when at last she reached her own room, she was powerless to do more than sink upon a chair, shaking in every limb.

For many minutes she could only lean back, with closed eyes and ashen face, drawing long painful breaths, each one of which was a sob; but as a sense of safety grew upon her, she roused herself to light her lamp, and to draw off her damp clothing, preparatory to going to bed. Even with the slender supply of blankets Mrs. Jones allowed her lodgers, it would be warmer than sitting up without a fire; and she dared not allow herself the luxury of a fire, especially now that her last hope of raising money had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her.

"For I shall never dare take the pendant to show to anybody again," she thought, with a shudder. "The next person I went to might send for the police then and there. And perhaps it was horrible of me to think of p.a.w.ning mother's pendant at all--only--I don't believe she would have minded, if she had known how dreadfully, dreadfully poor her little girl was going to be--and how hard it is for a girl even to get bread enough to keep from starvation. And I know this is worth--oh! a lot of money," she exclaimed pathetically, once more taking the ornament from its box, and holding it before her in the light of the lamp. As the green gleam of the stones flashed out before her eyes, the dreary room in which she sat, her squalid surroundings, even her own misery faded from her mind; she was back in the past--back in her mother's bedroom in the dear Devons.h.i.+re home--her mother's dying voice sounding in her ears. Through the open window had drifted the song of the sea, mingling with the hum of bees amongst the roses that climbed to the very sill, and made the room fragrant with their sweetness. And a bird had sung--ah! how it had sung, on that last night of her mother's life, when Christina felt that her life too was going down into the dark for ever.

"My little girl"--how faint the gentle voice had been!--"I--can't stay--now father has gone; he--and I--could not ever be apart. He is my world---all my world." The dim resentment which Christina, the child, had sometimes experienced, because those two beings she loved best had seemed so remote from her, so perfectly able to live their lives without her, had smitten the girl Christina afresh as she listened to her mother's words. Her father and mother had been so wrapped up in one another, always so wholly sufficient for each other's needs, that their child had played a very secondary part in their lives. And the child had dimly resented it.

Through all the sorrow that filled her heart as she stood beside her mother's deathbed, that smouldering resentment would not be wholly stilled. Her mother could barely spare a thought for the girl she was leaving to face the world alone, because her husband filled her whole soul; she could remember only that he had gone before her into the silent land, and that she must hasten to join him again.

"You are so young," the dying voice had murmured on, whilst the fast dimming eyes looked, not at her little daughter, but at the blue sky outside the window, "somebody will want you some day--as--Ronald--wanted me--as--he wants me still."