Man and Maid Part 20

The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred to Kitty as she was "putting on her things" to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw the plain "everyday" hat from her, and pulled her best hat from its tissue-paper nest in the black bandbox. She put on her best blouse--the cream-coloured one with the browny lace on it, and her best brown silk skirt. She recklessly added her best brown shoes and gloves, and the lace p.u.s.s.y-boa. (I don't know what the milliner's name for the thing is.

It goes round the neck, and hangs its soft and fluffy ends down nearly to one's knees.) Then she looked at herself in the gla.s.s, gave a few last touches to her hair and veil, and nodded to herself.

"You'll do, my dear," said Kitty.

Aunt Eliza was providentially absent at Bath nursing a sick friend, and the black-bugled duenna, hastily imported from Tunbridge Wells, could not be expected to know which was Kitty's best frock, and which the gloves that ought only to have been worn at church.

When Kitty's music lesson was over, she stood for a moment on the steps of the Guildhall School, looking down towards the river. Then she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"I don't care. I'm going to," she said, and turned resolutely towards Tudor Street. Kitty had been to a high school: therefore she was not obviously shy. She asked her way frankly and easily of carman, or clerk, or errand-boy; and though, at the door of the dingy office in a little court off Fleet Street, her heart beat thickly as she read the blue-enamelled words, _Girls' Very Own Friend_, her manner as she walked into the office betrayed no nervousness, and, indeed, struck the grinning idle office boy as that of "a bloomin' d.u.c.h.ess."

"I want to see----" she began; and then suddenly the awkwardness of her position struck her. She did not know Aunt Kate's surname. Abruptly to ask this grinning lout for "Aunt Kate" seemed absolutely indecorous. "I want to see the editor," she ended.

She waited in the grimy office while the boy disappeared through an inner door, marked in dingy white letters with the magic words, "Editor--Private." A low buzz of voices came to her through the door.

She looked at the pigeon-holes where heaps of back numbers of the _Girls' Very Own_ lay in a dusty retirement. She looked at the insurance company's tasteless almanack that hung all awry on the wall, and still the buzz went on. Then suddenly some one laughed inside, and the laugh did not please Kitty. The next moment the boy returned, grinning more repulsively than ever, and said: "Walk this way."

She walked that way, past the boy; the door fell to behind her, and she found herself in a cloud of tobacco smoke, compressed into a small room--a very dusty, untidy room--in which stood three young men. Their faces were grave and serious, but Kate could not forget that one of them had laughed, and laughed _like that_. Her chin went up about a quarter of an inch further.

"I am sorry to have disturbed you," she said severely. "I wanted to see--to see the lady who signs herself Aunt Kate."

There was a moment of silence which seemed almost breathless. Two of the young men exchanged a glance, but though Kitty perceived it to be significant, she could not interpret its meaning. Then one of the three turned to gaze out of the window at the blackened gla.s.s roof of the printing office below. Kitty felt certain he was concealing a smile; and the second hurriedly arranged a bundle of papers beside him.

The third young man spoke, and Kitty liked the gentle drawl, the peculiar enunciation. The poor girl, in her Streatham seclusion, had never before heard the "Oxford voice."

"I am very sorry," he said, "but 'Aunt Kate' is not here to-day.

Perhaps--is there anything I could do?"

"No, thank you," said Kitty, wis.h.i.+ng herself miles away; the tobacco smoke choked her, the backs of the two other men seemed an outrage. She turned away with a haughty bow, and went down the grimy stairs full of fury. She could have slapped herself. How could she have been such a fool as to come there? There were feet coming down the stair behind her--she quickened her pace. The feet came more quickly. She stopped on the landing and turned with an odd feeling of being at bay. It was the fair-haired young man with the Oxford voice.

"I am so very sorry," he said gently, "but I did not know. I did not expect to see--I mean, I did not know who you were. And we had all been smoking--I am so sorry," he said again, rather lamely.

"It doesn't matter," said Kitty, more shyly than she had ever spoken in her life. She liked his eyes and his voice as much as she loathed the expressive backs of his two companions.

"If you could come again: perhaps Aunt Kate will be here on Thursday. I know she will be sorry to miss you," the young man went on.

"I think I won't call again, thank you," said Kitty. "I--I'll write, thank you; it is all right. I oughtn't to have come. Good-bye."

There was nothing for it but to stand back and let her pa.s.s. The editor went back slowly to his room. His friends had relighted their pipes.

"Appeased the outraged G.o.ddess?" asked one of them.

"Good old Aunt Kate!" said the other.

"Shut up, Sellars!" said the editor, frowning.

"Now, which of your correspondents is it?" pondered Sellars, ruffling the bundle of papers in his hand. "Is it 'Wild Woodbine,' who wants to know what will make her hands white? Chilcott, did you see her hands? Oh no, of course--_bien chaussee, bien gantee_. All brown, too. Is it 'Sylph'?--no; she wants a pattern for a Zouave. What is a Zouave, if you please, Mr Editor?"

"Dry up!" said the editor, but Sellars was busy with the papers.

"Eureka! I know her. She's 'Nut-brown Maid'--here's the letter--wants to know if she may talk to 'a young gentleman she has not been properly introduced to'--spells it 'interoduced,' too----"

The editor s.n.a.t.c.hed the papers out of the other's hands.

"Now clear out," said he; "I'm busy."

"Am I dreaming?" said Sellars pensively; "or is this the editor who invited us to collaborate with him in his 'Answers to Correspondents'?"

"I am the editor who will kick you down the entire five flights if he is driven to it. You won't drive him, will you?"

The two laughed, but they took up their hats and went; Sellars put his head round the door for a last word.

"What price love at first sight?" said he, and the office ruler dented the door as he disappeared round it. The editor, left alone, sat down in his chair and looked helplessly round him.

"Well!" he said musingly, "well, well, well, well!" Then after a long silence he took up his pen and began the "Answers to Correspondents."

"_Dieu-donnee._--Your hair is a very nice colour. I should not advise Aureoline.

"_Shy Fairy._--By all means consult your mother. Heliotrope would suit your complexion, if it is, as you say, of a brilliant fairness.

"_Contadina._--No, I should not advise scarlet velvet with the pale blue. Try myrtle green."

Presently he threw down the pen. "I suppose I shall never see her again," he said, and he actually sighed.

But he did see her again. For on her way home poor Kitty's imagination suddenly spread its wings and alighted accurately on the truth; she formed a sufficiently vivid picture of what had happened in the office after she left. She _knew_ that those other young men--"the pigs," she called them to herself--had speculated as to whether she was "Little One," who wanted to make her hair curl, and to know whether short waists would be worn; or "Moss Rose," who was anxious about her complexion, and the proper way to treat a jibbing sweetheart. So that very night she wrote a note to Aunt Kate, but she did not sign it "Sweet Nancy" in the old manner, and she did not disguise her hand. She signed it George Thompson, in inverted commas, and she said that she would call on Thursday.

And on Thursday she called. And was shown into the editor's room at once.

The editor rose to greet her.

"Aunt Kate is not here," said he hurriedly; "but if you can spare a few moments I should like to talk to you about business; I did not know the other day that you were the author of that charming story 'Evelyn's Error.'"

The room was clear of tobacco smoke--the editor was alone--some red roses lay on the table. Kitty caught herself wondering for whom he had bought them. The chair he offered her was carefully dusted. She took it--and he began to talk about her story; criticising, praising, blaming, and that so skilfully that criticism seemed a subtle flattery, and the very blame conveyed a compliment. Then he asked for more stories. And a new heaven and a new earth seemed to unroll before the girl's eyes. If she could only write--and succeed--and----

"Will you come again?" he said at last. "Aunt Kate----"

"Oh," she said, with eyes s.h.i.+ning softly, "it doesn't matter about Aunt Kate now! I shall be so busy trying to write stories."

"The fact is----" said the editor slowly, racking his brains for a reason that should bring her to the office again--"the fact is--_I_ am Aunt Kate."

Kitty sprang to her feet. Her face flamed scarlet. She stood silent a moment. Then: "_You?_" she cried. "Oh, it's _not_ fair--it's mean--it's shameful! Oh--how could you! And girls write to _you_--and they think it's a woman--and they tell you about their troubles. It's horrible!

It's underhand--it's abominable! I hate you for it. Every one ought to know. I shall write to the papers."

"Please, please," said the editor hurriedly and humbly--"it's not my fault. It _is_ a lady who does it generally, but she had to go away--and I couldn't get any one else to do it. And I didn't see--till after you'd been the other day--that it wasn't fair. And I was going to ask if _you_ would do it--the correspondence, I mean--just for this week. I wish you would!"

"Could I?" she said doubtfully.

"Of course you could! And if you'd bring the copy on Monday--about two columns, you know--we could go through it together and----"

"Well, I'll try," said Kitty abruptly, reaching out for the sheaf of letters which he was gathering together.