Christina Part 7

Christina did not answer, only her eyes followed her mother's glance out to the deep blue sky framed by the nodding roses round the window; and she wondered dully whether anybody would really care for her some day, or whether there was something inherently unlovable in her, seeing that her own father and mother had seemed to find her so little worthy of love.

The bitter thought pa.s.sed. She bent over her mother, and gently stroked back the damp hair from her forehead.

"I shall--be able--to take care of myself," she said bravely, "and----"

"Be good, my little girl," the murmuring voice broke in, "be good--and come to us some day--Ronald and I will be there--together. I want--to tell you--the pendant--the emerald pendant"--a look of excitement flashed into her eyes; she made a great effort to raise herself in the bed, but such effort was far beyond her feeble strength--"I can't tell--you--now," she gasped; "later--after--sleep--the pendant--take--the--emerald; tell Arthur"--and at that word her strength suddenly failed, her eyes closed, she slipped down among her pillows, in an unconsciousness from which she never again awoke.

All through the fragrant summer night following that suns.h.i.+ny afternoon, Christina had watched beside her, hoping against hope that some faint knowledge of outward things would return to her, that the strange unfinished sentence might be ended.

"I want to tell you," her mother had said. What was it she wished to tell her daughter? What was the meaning of those strange words that seemed so incoherent and without sense?

"The pendant--take--the--emerald--tell Arthur----"

But no glimmer of consciousness crossed the still white face; the eyes that had last looked at the sunny sky of June, and the nodding roses, opened no more upon this world's suns.h.i.+ne and flowers, the faltering voice was silenced for ever; and in the grey dawn of morning Christina's mother had pa.s.sed to the land where she and the man she loved would part no more.

The vision faded. Christina was back again in the present--the dull light of the oil lamp s.h.i.+ning on the jewel she held--in the clammy cold of a November evening, that was as far removed from the sunny sweetness of June, as her sordid room was removed from the rose-scented fragrance of her old home.

"I wonder what she wanted to tell me," the girl mused again; as she had mused countless times before; "what could she have meant when she said those words:

"The pendant--take--the--emerald--tell Arthur----"

"I wonder who Arthur could have been."

CHAPTER VI.

"BABA LOVES YOU VERY MUCH."

"Will the lady who on Monday morning brought Baba home out of the fog, kindly call at 100, Eaton Square, any time between eleven and one o'clock?"

The words seemed to start from the printed page before Christina's eyes, and she read them over and over again with growing wonder. It was Friday morning, two days after her two disastrous visits--one to the shut-up house in Bayswater, the other to the insolent jewellers--and with difficulty she had managed to crawl round to the Free Library, feeling that she dared leave no stone unturned in a fresh search for work. The day before she had perforce spent in bed, for her day of fatigue, emotion, and exposure to the weather, had been followed by a night of fever and aching limbs; and on the Thursday morning she could scarcely lift her head from the pillow. But on Friday, realising affrightedly that each day brought her nearer to absolute dest.i.tution, she made a herculean effort, got up and dressed, and, feeling more dead than alive, dragged herself to the library, to study the monotonous advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the newspapers. And having wearily glanced down the familiarly-worded lines, in which nursery governesses and companions were asked for, at wages that would not satisfy the average kitchen-maid, she turned to the front page of the _Morning Post_, and found herself confronted with the advertis.e.m.e.nt that now held her astonished eyes:

"Will the lady who on Monday morning brought Baba home out of the fog, kindly call at 100, Eaton Square, any time between eleven and one o'clock."

Unless there were two Babas in the world, and two ladies who had taken them home out of the fog, she herself was clearly the person indicated by the advertis.e.m.e.nt; and as the square in which the bewitching baby had been taken from her by an excited footman, was certainly Eaton Square, she had little doubt but that the advertiser wished to thank, and perhaps to reward, her. A hot flush came into her white cheeks as the word "reward" entered her mind; all her instincts revolted against the notion of being rewarded for doing what had been a most obvious duty. But with the instinct of revolt came also a little rush of hope.

To the tired girl the advertis.e.m.e.nt seemed like a friendly hand outstretched towards her; and though pride whispered to her to pay no heed to it, and to ignore it altogether, the sense that kindliness towards a total stranger had prompted the advertis.e.m.e.nt, fought hard with pride. After all, if she went to 100, Eaton Square, she need accept nothing at the hands of the inmates: that they should wish to thank her for the safe return of their little one was only natural, and it would be churlish of her to refuse to be thanked.

In her excitement, she omitted to take down any addresses of employers; for the first time since she had begun to haunt the Free Library, she went out of its doors without a list of names to which letters must be written, setting forth her own qualifications for tending children, or amusing the elderly. She had actually forgotten to draw from her pocket the sheet of notepaper she never failed to bring with her on her morning quest, so full was her mind of the coming visit to Eaton Square. Her weary limbs still refused to hurry, and she walked slowly back to her lodgings, "to make herself tidy," as she put it, before venturing into what was to her an actually new world. Her heart was beating very fast as she rang the bell of the great Eaton Square mansion, and, thanks partly to nervousness, partly to fatigue, her legs were trembling so much, that she was obliged to clutch at the wall for support, to prevent herself from falling. A footman flung open the door--a tall, rather supercilious footman, whose face was not the good-natured, foolish face of the James who had lifted the red-cloaked baby from her arms. This man looked the visitor up and down with a comprehensive stare, which held in it both enquiry and contempt, and had the effect of banis.h.i.+ng Christina's small remnant of courage.

"Could I--see--the lady of the house?" she asked.

"What might you want with her?" the servant demanded with a sniff.

"There was an advertis.e.m.e.nt in to-day's _Morning Post_," the girl answered, her voice shaking with nervous weariness; "it said, 'call between eleven and one'--and I came to----"

"Come after the place, have you?"--the footman's tone changed to one of huge condescension. "Oh! well, step in, and I'll see if her ladys.h.i.+p can see you."

"The place!--her ladys.h.i.+p!" Christina looked at the man with bewildered eyes, and said faintly--"I don't know anything about a place. I have not come for that. Only the advertis.e.m.e.nt said, 'call between eleven and one o'clock.'"

"Step inside," came the short order, whilst Henry, the first footman, inwardly remarked that he wished her ladys.h.i.+p wouldn't go putting in advertis.e.m.e.nts, and not mentioning them to the establishment. "Take a seat there, and I'll ascertain whether her ladys.h.i.+p is disengaged."

Had Christina been in her normal health, the man's grandiloquent manner and language would have amused her. With her nerves at high tension, her limbs trembling, and her whole frame exhausted and weary, she felt only a great inclination either to flee out of the front door, or to sit down and cry. The hall, softly-carpeted and warm, fragrant with the flowers ma.s.sed in great pots at the foot of the staircase, and quiet with the stillness of a well-ordered house, oppressed her. The solemn voice of a grandfather clock in the corner, had only the effect of making the prevailing silence more noticeable, and Christina experienced a wild longing to scream, or to burst into uncontrollable laughter, just to break the stillness which weighed upon her like a nightmare.

"Will you come this way, please?"

She started violently as the footman's voice sounded close to her. His footstep on the thick pile of the stair carpet had been quite inaudible, and she was surprised to see him once more beside her. At his bidding she rose mechanically, and followed him up the wide staircase, whose soft carpet was a bewildering novelty to the girl accustomed to the simplest surroundings, across a landing, fragrant, like the hall, with growing roses and exotic plants, into a small boudoir, in which she found herself alone. In all her twenty years of life she had never before been in a room like this room, and, standing in the centre of it, just where her guide had left her, she looked round her timidly, and drew a long breath of admiration and amazement.

The murkiness of the November day that darkened the world outside, did not appear to enter into this lovely apartment, which gave Christina a sense of summer and suns.h.i.+ne.

"It is just like a pink rose," she said to herself, her eyes wandering from the walls, delicately tinted a soft rose colour, to the sofa and chairs upholstered in a deeper shade of the same colour, and the carpet, whose darker tint of rose harmonised with the paler hues.

Every table seemed to the girl to overflow with books and magazines; bowls of flowers, vases of flowers, pots of flowers, stood on every available shelf, and in every possible corner. The windows were draped with rose-coloured silk curtains, that made even the grey sky beyond them look less grey, and the pictures on the walls drew a gasp of delight from Christina's lips. They were mainly landscapes, and in almost every case they represented wide s.p.a.ces, open tracts of country, that gave one a sense of life and freshness. Here was an expanse of sea, blue and smiling as the sky that stooped to meet it; there, long green rollers swept up a sandy beach, whilst clouds lit up by a rift of suns.h.i.+ne, lay on the horizon. On this side was a moorland, purple with heather, bathed in the glory of the setting sun; on that side, a plain, far-reaching as the sea itself, soft and green and misty, bounded by mountains, whose snow-crowned summits stood out in serried stateliness against the faint blue sky. In a looking-gla.s.s hanging on the wall, Christina caught sight of her own reflection, and a shamed consciousness of her white face and shabby clothes, gave her a sense of the incongruousness between her own appearance, and the loveliness around her. But this uneasy sense of discrepancy had barely entered her mind, when the door opened, and there entered a tiny personage, whose daintiness made Christina all at once feel huge, awkward, and ungainly.

"It was sweet of you to come," the little lady exclaimed, holding out to the girl a white hand flas.h.i.+ng with diamonds, "you are the kind lady who brought my Baba home? Henry was very incoherent; he always is, in a grand, long-winded way of his own. But I gathered from his meandering remarks, that you had come in answer to my advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"Yes," Christina answered; "I saw it--the advertis.e.m.e.nt--in the _Morning Post_ to-day. I thought it was so kind of you to advertise, that I came. But, of course, when I brought the darling baby home, I only did what everybody else would have done," she added, rather breathlessly.

"A lady--and very proud," the thought ran through her listener's brain; but aloud the little lady only said:

"I can't put into words how grateful I am to you, all the same. You see, my little girlie is my ewe lamb--my only child--and she is very precious. If anything had happened to her, I--oh! but we mustn't talk about dreadful things that might happen, when I hope they never will.

Baba was a naughty monkey to run out alone. But she is rather a sweet monkey, isn't she?"

"She is one of the dearest babies I ever saw," Christina answered simply, sitting down in the chair her hostess pushed forward for her, and feeling some of her awkwardness slipping from her, in presence of this kindly, dainty little lady. With girlish enthusiasm her eyes drank in the loveliness of the other's fair face, its delicate colouring, its crown of bright hair; the perfection of the tiny form, the gracefulness of the dead black gown, that fell in exactly the right folds, and was hung as no dress of poor little Christina's had ever been persuaded to hang.

"Baba--we call her Baba, because her own name, Veronica, is so big for such a baby--has managed to get rather out of hand since her nurse left. We do try not to spoil her, but we don't always succeed very well. I think you must be very fond of children--aren't you? You made a great impression on Baba."

"I love little children," Christina answered, with the simplicity and sincerity which characterised her; "since I have had to earn my own living, I have been a nursery governess."

"It is very absurd, but I don't even know your name, and I daresay you are equally ignorant of mine?" the little lady in the armchair exclaimed, with a gay laugh. "Rupert did not put any name in the advertis.e.m.e.nt; he said it was wiser not--but I am Lady Cicely Redesdale, and Baba, as I say, is my only child, and--very precious."

Lady Cicely's blue eyes looked thoughtfully at Christina, her last words were spoken absently.

"I did not even know into which house the small girl was carried on Monday," Christina replied, laughing also; "the footman ran along the pavement when he saw us, and until I read your advertis.e.m.e.nt to-day, I had no idea which number in the square was the one he had come from.

My name is Moore--Christina Moore--and I live in Maremont Street."

"In Maremont Street? But--isn't that rather a--wretched neighbourhood for you? Do your people live there?"

"I have no people," the girl answered, an unconscious wistfulness in her eyes that appealed to Lady Cicely's kind heart. "I lost my father and mother three years ago, and since then I have been living with some friends, and taking care of their children. But now they have gone to Canada and I am alone in the world." It was said without any _arriere pensee_; no thought of exploiting her loneliness crossed Christina's mind. The sympathetic glance of the blue eyes watching her, led her on to frankness of speech, and to speak to an educated lady again was a delight, to which for the past few months she had been an entire stranger.

"And you--are obliged to work for yourself?" Lady Cicely put the question with hesitating kindliness.

"Oh, yes"--a faint smile crossed Christina's face--"and just now it is rather hard to get. n.o.body seems to want the sort of work that I can do. You see, I have had very little education--not enough to teach big children--and I have no certificates or diplomas, or anything. I don't think my father ever dreamt that I should have to earn my own living, or he would have had me trained to do it."

"But you have taken care of little children?" again Lady Cicely's eyes searched the girl's face earnestly--"and you are very fond of them?"

"I love them," Christina said, for the third time, "and I am never tired of being with them, and taking care of them. But there are such lots of other girls like me, with very few qualifications, and so, though I answer ever so many advertis.e.m.e.nts, I can't get a place."

"Do you mind waiting here just a moment?" Lady Cicely asked abruptly.

"I--I should like you to see Baba before you go; perhaps we might find--we might think----" and with this vague sentence, the small lady went out of the room, leaving Christina puzzled and wondering.