The Cruise of the Make-Believes. Gallon Tom

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СКАЧАТЬ Harry Dorricott' – and will say how much greater things I might have done had I lived."

      "Mr. Dorricott! You're not ill?"

      "Oh dear, no; but I have a sort of feeling that I shall die young – or at least comparatively young. So very many of our best people have done that. I beg you won't alarm yourself, Miss Meggison," he added hastily – "because I'm quite all right at the present moment; never felt better in my life. The only thing that worries me is about you."

      "About me?"

      "Yes – because you see I'm actually living on you – and that's a shameful thing. Perhaps you may wonder that I don't go away, and live on somebody else – some fat and uninteresting old landlady, for instance, who wouldn't matter so much."

      "I shouldn't like you to do that, because she mightn't be kind to you," said Bessie.

      "Oh – that isn't the reason," he replied, coming near to her, and looking into her eyes. "You have been kind to me; there's never been anyone in all the world that has done so much for me as you have – helped me, and urged me on, and cheered me up. That's why, although I owe you this money, I can't go away; I'd rather be a slave to you than to anyone else. You didn't understand that – did you, dear?" he whispered, not daring even to take her hands. "From the very first moment, when I saw you looking out of the window into Arcadia Street, my heart gave a sort of jump, and I knew exactly what had happened to me. Bessie – it's because I love you that I can't go away."

      "No – it isn't that; it's only because you're sorry for me, just as quite a lot of other people are sorry for me," she said softly. "You mustn't think that I don't understand, or that I'm ungrateful; I shouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't say that it's quite the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me in all my life. But I don't love anyone – except my father – and Aubrey; I don't think I've got time to love anyone. So you mustn't speak about it again, please; you must forget it. And you can stay as long as you like – and the bill won't matter."

      "But you'll give me some better comfort than that, Bessie," urged the boy. "I shan't always be poor; I shall make a great name for myself some day, and then I shall be able to lift you out of all this, and make you happy."

      "I'm not sure that I want to be lifted out of it," she told him, smiling. "Good night – and forget all about it. You're my friend always, I know – and I want friends."

      There in the dark garden, with perhaps an idea in his mind not wholly theatrical, he lifted her hand to his lips before he turned away; and she stood there, looking after him, with that warm touch still upon her fingers, and with her heart beating a little more rapidly than usual.

      After all, it must be nice to be loved, she thought; to be made much of, and shielded from the cold, and from hunger and poverty; never to listen to anything but gentle kindly words; never to have to meet frowning tradesmen, or duns of any sort; never to trudge through the streets on Saturday nights, with the certain knowledge that your skirts were bedraggled, and your feet cold and wet, and that the money in the thin worn purse had come perilously near to nothingness. Oh – that must be good indeed!

      She went back into the house – with a strange feeling that to-night something had happened that had changed her; she would never be able to make-believe any more as she had done. The touch of the boy's lips upon her hand had wakened something in her that had merely lain dormant; she cried out dumbly for her natural and proper birthright. The world held something better for her, and it was denied her; she found herself wondering, without being able to put the question into words, whether she would ever get that which belonged to her, by right of the fact that she was a woman, and young.

      Mr. Aubrey Meggison came in presently, and insisted on telling her of a few shots he had taken that night on the billiard-table – illustrating his words by means of a walking-stick on the shabby cover of the dining-room table – and how he had completely "wiped the floor" with his opponent, to the unbounded astonishment of a choice circle which seemed to consist of a billiard-marker, a bookmaker, and a long-dethroned music-hall star. The triumphs of the evening, however, had not smoothed his temper; he complained bitterly about the monotony of bread and cheese, and pushed his food from him with a few elegant expressions of disgust.

      "Tact and forethought – that's what you're lackin', Bess," he suggested. "You don't think to yourself what's the best thing to suit your brother, and your brother's appetite. Not you; the first thing that comes along'll do for him."

      She bore his reproaches meekly, until presently he restlessly wandered out of the house again. He encountered his father on the doorstep; and Bessie heard a little wordy warfare between the two – Daniel Meggison protesting virtuously that his son should be in bed at ten o'clock to the minute – and that son suggesting airily that he knew what was best for himself. Then Daniel came into the room, not too steadily, but perhaps with the greater dignity on that account.

      "What I've done this night will not soon be forgotten," he said, with a roll of the head. "On their knees, they were, in a manner of speaking – on their knees, my child. Nothing good enough for me; apologies flying about everywhere. Haughty with them, mind you; no sudden giving way on my part. At the same time – condescending; that's the right word – condescending." He sat down, and waved his hand to show exactly what manner he had adopted for the subjugation of the Arcadia Arms, and fell asleep.

      The shabby little room seemed intolerable, with the old man gurgling and choking, and muttering in his sleep in his chair; once again the girl slipped out into her garden. And now, as if to welcome her, the kindly moon had come over the housetops, and was shedding a radiance even there. She sat down at the table, and leant her elbows upon it; she did not understand what this new and desperate longing was that had come upon her. She had been content for so many years; had been glad to accept things as they were, and to make the best of them. But now to-night there was a new and passionate longing for a world and a life that could never be hers at all. As she sat there, staring at the shabby wall before her, the walls seemed to vanish; and there grew up in their place a dim vision of a wide countryside, lying silent and peaceful under the moon; of a life that was gentle and secure and easy. And beyond that wide countryside, with a path of light made across it by the moon, lay the shining sea. The vision was gone, just as rapidly as it had come; the grey wall was there; out in the street coarse hoarse voices sounded, and a shout of discordant laughter. She let her hands fall on the table, and bowed her head upon her arms. What had she to do with dreams?

      It was at that precise moment that Mr. Gilbert Byfield determined to walk out of the house next door into that plot of ground attached to it which matched that in which Bessie Meggison was seated. That particular plot of ground did not boast any of the adornments of the Meggison garden; it was simply a stretch of bare earth, with scrubby grass growing here and there in patches. Gilbert thought nothing of that, because the place did not interest him, save for the fact that it adjoined the garden next door; and he had already learned that in that garden only was the Princess of Arcadia Street to be approached, if one did it delicately. Accordingly he stole up to the dividing wall now, and peered over it; and so, of course, saw that hopeless figure in the moonlight, leaning over the old table.

      As he had never seen her save with that demure brightness upon her that seemed to belong to her, he was naturally shocked at this sudden abandonment; besides, she looked pathetic indeed in her utter loneliness in that place. He called softly to her over the wall.

      "Hullo! I say – what's the matter?"

      He called so softly that she did not hear him, nor did she change her position. After a moment of hesitation, he glanced first at the back of the house he had left, and then at the back of the other one; swung himself up to the top of the wall; and jumped over. He alighted, as luck would have it, on that defective board in the old box set under the wall; swore softly to himself, and stepped down to the ground. The noise he made had startled the girl; she СКАЧАТЬ