The Cruise of the Make-Believes

CHAPTER III

THE PRINCE JUMPS OVER THE WALL

JUST how long Bessie might have sat there in the dusk of the garden it is impossible to say; an interruption was to be provided. Almost the last of her sobs had died away, and she was beginning to realize that this kind of thing would not do at all, if her small world was to be kept going, when the door leading into the little alley was opened cautiously, and a young man came in. A very presentable young man, with an honest face inclined to laughter, over which a look of relief was stealing as he saw the girl sitting there. He closed the gate quietly, and took a few steps towards her; paused and coughed. Instantly she sprang to her feet, and faced him.

"Good evening!" he said. "Did I startle you?"

"Very much; I did not know there was anyone there. How long have you been here?" she asked suspiciously.

"I came in this very moment," he assured her. "You see, I'm obliged to come in that way, because there might be somebody – somebody looking out for me at the front. Very handy house in that respect." He grinned cheerfully, and she laughed for very sympathy.

"Haven't you any good news, Mr. Dorricott?" she asked, forgetting her own troubles for a moment.

He shook his head. "I went down to the theatre, just to let them know I was about, you know, and almost with the hope that someone might fall ill – or be run over – "

"Don't!" she whispered with a shiver.

"I'm sorry, Miss Meggison – but a fellow gets absolutely murderous at times, when he thinks of the people who stand in his way. Here am I, without a shilling to bless myself with – "

"Everyone that I have ever known, and everyone that I ever shall know, has been and will be in that state," exclaimed Bessie with conviction. "I don't believe in all the stories about people having more money than they know what to do with; I simply can't believe them. All the world is poor and struggling – and everybody fights for money that they never by any chance get. I know it!" she said with deep dejection.

"Well, it isn't quite like that," he replied. "There are fellows in the profession, for instance, who are known to touch three figures a week, and who simply live in motor-cars; it's a known fact. Other poor devils like myself walk on with the crowd, or get an understudy – or something of that kind."

"It must be nice to be an actor," said Bessie, looking at him with awe.

"It is – when you are an actor," he replied solemnly. He moved away a step or two restlessly, and then came back to her. "I say, Miss Meggison – there's something I'd like to say to you."

"Not about the bill!" she pleaded.

"About the bill – yes; and about something else," he replied earnestly. "The bill worries me horribly – and it worries me more in your case than it would in the case of anyone else. I haven't any money, and I've got a large appetite – which I endeavour to suppress as much as is consistent with keeping a figure fit to be seen behind the footlights. Many and many a tasty dish, Miss Meggison, which you may think I scorn, I pass by because I simply feel that I have no right to touch it; it would not be fair. I never come into your little dining-room without seeing the figures of my bill in huge white characters on the wall; I'm ashamed of myself."

"I wish you wouldn't speak of it," she urged.

"But I must speak of it; it haunts me," he exclaimed. "I know that in time it will be all right; I know that in time I shall be able to pay you in full – and pay other people as well. More than that, the time will come when you will be proud of me – really proud of me."

"We're all proud of you now; I laugh still when I think of that time when you gave me tickets for the pantomime, and I saw you as the front part of the donkey."

"Don't!" he said in a low tone. "I know I was funny. Everyone said so – but I could get no real expression into it; you can't when the only way in which you can move your jaws is by a string. But I shall do finer things than that. In the years to come I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Arcadia Street was the scene of a rather imposing little ceremony – on my account."

"Ceremony?" She looked at him in a bewildered fashion.

"Yes. They may in all probability affix a tablet to the house, recording the fact that Harry Dorricott once lived here; it's frequently done – there's a society for it. They will probably refer to me then as 'poor 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 got quickly to her feet, and moved away from him.

"I'm dreadfully sorry," he began, smiling at her.

But she waved him back hurriedly. "Mr. Byfield!" she said in a whisper, with a glance at the house. "Oh, please – you must go back! – you must really go back!"

"If anyone comes, I can jump over in a moment," he said. "There's nothing to be afraid of – and this is ever so much better than talking over the wall, you know. By the way," he added ruefully, "I'm afraid I've broken your – your ottoman."

"It doesn't matter," she said in a dull voice – "and it isn't an ottoman. It's an old box."

"I don't believe it," he exclaimed. "It's an ottoman – and a very nice one at that."

"You're laughing at me," she said, with the shyness of a child. "You know it's all only pretending; you know what a shabby place this is – really and truly. You've been good and kind about it; you've never laughed at me, like other people."

"God forbid, child!"

"That's it!" she exclaimed quickly. "Child! That's what you think me; that's what you believe me to be. If a child brought you a broken doll, you'd be sorry, and make much of it, although in your heart you'd laugh, because it was such a little thing to make a fuss about. And you've been sorry for me – and have pretended with me that this place was what it has never been. And in your heart you have never ceased to laugh at me."

"In my heart I have never laughed at you at all," he said solemnly.

They had unconsciously drawn nearer to each other in the solitude of the garden under the moon; their hands were touching. For now it seemed that she wanted desperately to touch hands with some friendly being – someone, for choice, who came out of the big world mysteriously, as this man had done. She was so much of a child that she needed comforting; so much of a woman that she needed loving.

"I was wrong to say that you had laughed at me," she said penitently – "you have been the only one that has understood. I wonder if you remember when you first looked over the wall?"

"Shall I ever forget it!" he exclaimed, in all honesty. "You see, I had never imagined any place like this" – he glanced round about him, and whimsically shook his head as he spoke – "and of course I was surprised. And then I saw you – and I understood at once that you were so different from anyone I had seen in Arcadia Street, or indeed anywhere. And so we – we talked."

"I shall never forget it," she said. "I had always tried to make-believe a little, because when one does that one gets away from all the tiresome things – all the things that must happen, and yet that ought not to happen at all. You see, so many people seem always to have held out hands to me for money; and I've had so little money to give them."

"And so – just to enable you to forget them a little – you started this great game of make-believe; this pretending that you were something better (although that could never be, you know) – something bigger and greater than you really were. The fine lady walked in her garden every night, and saw the flowers grow, and heard the summer wind rustling the trees and dreamed – what great dreams they were!"

She nodded, with shining eyes. "And then you one day looked over the wall – and you seemed to understand in a moment. Any one else but you, coming out of the big world, would simply have laughed, and would have seen that this was an old carpet, too shabby even for the house – and this a table we couldn't use for anything else – and that a box that no one wanted. And yet in a moment – do you remember? – you knew perfectly what each thing was. It was wonderful!"

"I remember." He nodded gravely. "I knew that was the ottoman – and behind it the tapestry; I understood also how nice it was to have coffee in the garden every evening. Arcadia Street doesn't run to coffee – except in the morning."

"I had read somewhere – it was in a paper that came to the house – that ladies and gentlemen take their coffee generally on the terrace. Well, of course, we couldn't manage a terrace, and I couldn't quite understand whether it was anything like the terrace you get to round the corner, with the houses in a sort of half-circle, and the little bit of green in front; only somehow I knew it couldn't be quite like that; all I understood was that it was out of doors. So then I understood the best thing I could do was to make the most of the garden; and it really isn't half bad – is it?"

"It's a pity it isn't better appreciated," he said.

"Father said he didn't understand what I was driving at; and then he always seemed to find the hole in the carpet and to trip over it. And Amelia doesn't really make very good coffee; it's the sort you dare not stir too much."

"Poor little Miss Make-Believe!" he said, a little sorrowfully. "I wonder what you would do if the time came when some of your dreams came true, when you didn't have to make-believe any more; when you walked out of this place, and left behind all the shabby pretences of it. I wonder what you would say then?"

"That's never likely to happen," she said, with a shake of the head. "Father doesn't seem to belong to the rich side of the family. His sister, who was here to-night – Aunt Julia, you know – has lots of money; she owns houses, you know, and lives in Clapham."

"Wonderful Aunt Julia!" he said.

"Father has said over and over again that if he had what he deserves he would be a rich man. I don't quite know what he means; he's never very explicit about it. But sometimes at night, when he comes home from – from his club, he cries a little, poor dear, and tells me what he would give me if only he had what he ought to have. And I know he would, too; he is really very generous by nature."

Gilbert Byfield knew enough of the girl's story by that time not to need to ask questions. Ever since that first meeting with her, when he had carefully gained her confidence over the wall, he had been able, by the simple process of piecing together her innocent answers to his questions, to understand what she did, and what sort of struggle she was constantly engaged in. He summed up the shiftless father and the shiftless son easily enough; understood, from the type of lodgers that came to the house, how difficult it must be for this girl to make both ends meet. Most he admired her unflinching courage, and above all that curious fanciful child-like nature that nothing had been able to crush or stamp out of her. With the most innocent feeling in the world, he had fostered that, and encouraged it.

It had been hard at times to remember that she was not a child, and that he had no right to treat her as such; it had, above all things, been difficult for him to tell himself, over and over again, that the life he lived in Arcadia Street was a sham, and that he was not the poor man he seemed to be to her. She had been frankness itself with him, and he should have been with her in return. Only of course he knew that, once she understood that he was playing a part, her confidence in him, as someone as poor as herself and as struggling, would be gone. For a period not yet defined in any way he intended to keep that fiction alive, and remain near her. And in that again there was no real motive, save one of pity for the girl.

He asked a question now that had been on his lips many and many a time, and yet that he had not uttered before. They were standing together near the table, and she had one hand resting upon it; he noticed how short the sleeve was, and guessed that she must long since have outgrown this dress, and many others she possessed. He remembered suddenly that her dresses had always seemed short. "How old are you, little Make-Believe?" he asked.

"More than eighteen," she said; and laughed and blushed.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the house, and a man stood there. Gilbert Byfield stood quite still, watching; for his presence there would need explanation. The girl had drawn away from him, and was peering at the man in the doorway; she spoke his name hesitatingly at last – almost apologetically.

"Mr. Quarle?" she asked. "Do you want me?"

The man who stepped out from the doorway was a thickly-set man of between fifty and sixty years of age, with thin grey hair and with a somewhat sour-looking face. His shoulders were very broad, and he had the appearance almost of a man whose head has been set too far forward; the sharp clean-shaven face was thrust well out, as though the man spent his time in peering into everything about him. He carried his hands locked behind him; his voice was rather harsh. Certainly there was nothing amiable-looking about him.