The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. A Novel. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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СКАЧАТЬ hours, that her breath fails, and life is leaving her: and all through this terrible flight the pursuer is at her heels, with flashing eyes and with death in his face. Sally knows that this is expressed in him, and that he is bent on destruction, although her back is towards him. She feels his hot breath on her neck; she hears a hissing sound from remorseless lips; closer and closer he comes, and his arms are about to close around her, when she falls over a precipice, down, down, into the spreading branches of a tree, where she places her baby safely in a cradle of flowers, and watches the form of their enemy flash, like a glance of light, into the abyss, the yawning mouth of which closes upon him with a snap. As the light of the child's golden hair falls on the green branches, they become magically transformed into the likeness of Sally's playmates and acquaintances round and about Rosemary Lane. There is Jane Preedy without any boots, and Ann Taylor without any stockings, and Jimmy Platt with the hair of his head falling over his weak eyes and sticking through the peak of his cap, and Young Stumpy with bits of his shirt thrusting themselves forward from unwarrantable places, and Betsy Newbiggin selling liquorice-water for pins; and there, besides, is the sailor-beggar without legs, who lives next door to the Chesters, comfortably strapped to his little wooden platform on wheels. Then the actors in the Lord Mayor's procession loom out on other branches, conspicuous among them being the drummer-boy, standing on his head on the donkey's back, and valiantly playing the drum in that position. The cradle of flowers fades, and its place is occupied by a square piece of carpet, upon which Sally's baby-treasure is dancing. The child is now dressed in the oddest fashion, her garments being composed of stray bits of silk and ribbon, which hang about her incongruously, but with picturesque effect. As she dances, the drummer-boy, who is now, in addition to his drum, supplied with pandean pipes, beats and pipes to the admiration of the audience. Carried away by the applause, he, in an inadvertent moment, bangs so loudly on his drum that he bangs the entire assemblage into air, and Sally is again alone, sitting in the tree by the side of the empty flower cradle. As she looks disconsolately around for her baby-treasure, comes a vision in the clouds. Thousands of angels, with bright wings and faces of lustrous beauty, are clustered about a cobbler, a friend of Sally's, who occupies a stall in Rosemary Lane, and who for the nonce transferred to a heavenly sphere, now plies his awl on Olympian heights. Very busy is he, with his shirt-sleeves tucked up to his shoulders, mending shoes for the angels, who are flying to him from every bright cloud in the heavens, with old shoes and slippers in their hands. And presently all the lustrous shapes are gazing tenderly on Sally's baby-treasure, upon whose tiny feet the cobbler is fitting a pair of shining slippers. A sudden clap of thunder inspires multitudinous images of beauty, all of which presently merge into the sound of falling water, and the air is filled with a myriad slender lines of flashing light. Fainter and fainter they grow, and Sally awakes from her dream.

      She hears the rain falling softly in the streets, and hears her mother ask her if she is awake. Almost unconscious, she murmurs she knows not what in reply, and pressing the baby closer to her, is in a moment asleep again; but her sleep now is dreamless.

      CHAPTER VII

      The handle of the street door of Mr. Chester's house could be so worked from without by any person initiated into the secret that it yielded easily to practised fingers. This was Mr. Chester's ingenious invention. Early in his married life he had found it not agreeable to his sensitive feelings that, after a night's carouse, the door should be opened for him by his wife. Hence the device.

      At one o'clock on this morning he opened his street door and entered his house. Mrs. Chester was still up, mending Sally's clothes. On a corner of the table at which she was working, his supper of bread-and-cheese was laid. As he entered, his wife glanced at him, and then bent her eyes to her work, without uttering a word. Receiving no favourable response to his weak smile, he fell-to upon his supper.

      By the time Mr. Chester had finished, the silence had become intolerable to him. His wife, having mended Sally's clothes, was now gathering them together. He made another conciliatory step.

      "How is Sally?" he asked.

      Mrs. Chester's lip curled. "Sally's asleep," she answered.

      "Did you get her any-any strengthening things?"

      "No. All the shops were shut-except the public-houses."

      "Ah, yes, I forgot. But you might have asked her if she fancied anything."

      "I said to her last week," replied the mother, with a dark, fierce flash into her husband's face, "when she came out of one of her faints, 'Sally, what would you like?' 'I'd like some gin, mother,' she answered. I was afraid she might give me the same answer again."

      He quailed before the look, and the strong reproach conveyed in the mother's words.

      "Don't let's have any more quarrelling to-night, old woman," he said.

      "I don't want any quarrelling: I'm not a match for you, Dick."

      "That's as it should be, old woman," he said, recovering his spirits. "Man's the master."

      "You're good at words, Dick."

      "That's so," he chuckled vainfully.

      "But better at something else."

      "At what, old woman?"

      With a scornful glance she laid before him the strap with which he was in the habit of striking her.

      "There's no arguing with a woman," he said, with rare discretion. "Come, it's time to get to bed. I suppose the new lodger is in."

      "He came in an hour ago."

      "And the little girl?"

      "She's asleep with Sally."

      Mr. Chester, who had risen, stood silent for a few moments, drumming gently with his fingers on the table.

      "Did you see him when he came home?"

      Mrs. Chester's anger was spent, and her husband's kinder tone now met with a kindred response.

      "No, Dick."

      "Ah, then, there's no use asking. But you might have heard something, Loo."

      "What might I have heard, Dick?" she asked, approaching close to his side. He passed his arms around her.

      "Something that would have reminded you-" He broke off abruptly with, "No matter."

      "But tell me, Dick."

      "When I was at the Royal George I fancied I heard a man playing on a tin whistle."

      Mrs. Chester's lips quivered, and a shudder ran through her frame.

      "The new tenant," pursued Mr. Chester, "hang him! he's got into my head like a black fog! – the new tenant had just gone away, and good riddance to him, when I heard the music, as I thought, and I went to the door to look. I saw nobody, and a man in the Royal George said that our new lodger had something in his pocket that looked like a whistle or a flute. As he came straight home, I thought you might have heard him play it."

      "I was asleep, Dick, when he came home; the slamming of the street door woke me." She paused and played nervously with a button of her husband's coat. "Dick, I dreamt of our Ned to-night."

      "Ay, Loo," he answered softly.

      "What can have become of him? Where is he now, the dear lad?"

      "Best for us not to know, perhaps," replied Mr. Chester gloomily.

      "I've thought of him a good СКАЧАТЬ