Chapter II: Part 2

Edward explained the case to the doctor, while the latter packed his bag with various instruments, and so much excited was he that he could hardly refrain from plucking at the doctor's sleeve when they were hurrying back through the fog to the lodgings in Pomona Terrace. Dr. Harrison was a young man, scarcely more than thirty, whose manner carried such assurance that Edward was able to feel that his choice had been the right one. When they reached the house the doctor was at once taken upstairs, while Edward, on the suggestion of Mrs. Gallagher, accommodated himself in the kitchen. Here he found old James Taylor on one side of the range talking of agriculture to Mr. Gallagher, a workman in the employ of one of the great railway companies, who was displaying his agreement or disagreement with, his interest in or boredom at the farmer's observations only by the way he sucked at his clay pipe. For an Irishman he was strangely taciturn. From time to time slatternly young women passed through; but whether they were the daughters or servants of the Gallaghers or lodgers in the house, there was no telling. Though Edward took a chair next old Taylor, his thoughts were upstairs, and the old man's lecture on clovers meant as little to him as the chirping of the crickets in the walls of the house. His anxiety over Elizabeth was so sharp that the incongruity of his surroundings never struck him. His whole being was too much involved with his wife's for what is called reality to affect him more nearly than might the incidents of a dream. That he should share a bedroom with old Taylor, that he should find himself deferring to a Gallagher, that he should be expected to take his place at an ill-laid table and eat the malodorous mess there set down by a slut with grimy hands made no impression upon Edward. Had his mother floated into this squalid kitchen and pointed a delicate finger in scorn at his surroundings, he would not have listened one whit less intensely for the slightest sound from above. Whatever disgusted him in Pomona Terrace took its place in the general purgatory of deprivation of the sight of Elizabeth, and the farthest that his mind wandered from that room upstairs was to that broken slat in the Venetian blinds through which he had seen that drunken doctor's face. Thank God he had! Thank God!

A long time passed. Mr. Gallagher had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly. Old Taylor was asleep too, his jaw dropped upon his chest, his whole aspect senility incarnate. The restless slatterns no longer moved in and out with unwashed dishes and bawdy gigglings.

Now the crickets were silent in the glooms; Gallagher had ceased to snore; there was no sound except an occasional cough from the subsiding fire. So silent was it that Edward could hear his watch ticking with what seemed a terrible rapidity in the pocket of his waistcoat. At last the doctor put his head round the door and beckoned. Edward was beside him in a moment, gasping forth his alarms.

"She's not dead? Why didn't you call me sooner?"

The doctor gripped Edward's forearm and bade him pull himself together. That grip in conjunction with the cold air of the passage kept Edward from breaking down. He compelled himself to follow what the doctor with a good deal of technical detail was telling him about Elizabeth's condition. "And so it may be impossible to save the lives of both," the doctor was murmuring. "However, as I was saying, there is no need to decide yet, and I am expecting a new instrument to-morrow, which may do away with the necessity of such a painful decision. I have sent word to have any parcel which arrives for me brought here immediately."

"Decision?" Edward repeated. "What decision do you mean?"

"Whether we save the life of the mother or the child."

"Are you drunk or mad?" Edward shouted. "Why, rather than she should suffer an instant's pain I would have the child cut to pieces. Decision! I believe you're as drunk as that other fellow next door."

The young doctor gazed at Edward in astonishment, for he had heard nothing of the reason for choosing him in preference to his neighbor.

"I was bound to give you the opportunity of deciding," he explained. "Naturally I did not for a moment expect you to give any other answer but the one you have given. I'm sorry to have upset you like this. If I may offer you some sound advice, I should recommend your staying quietly in the kitchen. It would be better, of course, if you could manage to lie down and sleep for a while; but I can understand that you are too anxious for that. You must not work yourself up into a state of mind. There is no immediate cause for anxiety. No, certainly no immediate cause."

Edward allowed the doctor to steer him back into the kitchen where their entrance roused old James Taylor and Mr. Gallagher, both of whom with loud yawns declared their intention of going to bed. Soon Edward was left alone, for Dr. Harrison went back to his patient, and he settled himself down to solitary meditation by what was left of the dead fire in the still fairly warm grate.

It was easy, thought Edward, very easy for that young doctor to talk about childbirth as if it were nothing more than buying a doll in a shop. Doctors soon began to lose their sense of the soul in their familiarity with the body. What did a man like that know about the great mystery of human love? Edward's mind went back to his talk with the Vicar of Barton Flowers on the vigil of his wedding; and now thinking over his brief married life with Elizabeth he apprehended all the truth of what the parson had said. He remembered how much the conversation had elated him at the time and how he had felt an impulse to submit himself to the promptings of what the Vicar had called the Grace of the Holy Spirit. That impulse like so many of them, alas, had gone the way of the rest, had been allowed to expire when the enthusiasm of thought demanded the breath of action to endure. Edward vowed that this time if Elizabeth's life should be granted to him he really would ... what? "I really will grapple with life," he promised to that nebulous emanation of celestial magic which the ordinary man calls God. "Before the sun rises to-morrow morning I may be a father. I shall owe a duty to a human soul which I have brought into the world." Edward discovered with shame that this child, which might even at this moment be uttering its first cry to the darkness of the unimaginable universe around it, had not until this moment presented itself to him as a fact. He regretted now the way he had answered the doctor's question a short while ago. He had been sneering to himself at the doctor's point of view about childbirth; but he should rather have sneered at himself for what he was, a weak and self-indulgent and careless egoist that without foresight and without responsibility might become the parent of a human being from whom in days to come he should expect gratitude, affection, and obedience.

Edward made new vows to that dim God beyond the stars that if he were granted not only the life of his Elizabeth, but also the life of their child, he would devote his future to a worthy fatherhood, that even if himself should fail in his contest with life he would ... what? Edward's mind wandered already to the agony of his adored wife, and he could not bear to contemplate any future at all until he knew that she was safe.

Safe! The word wrote itself in the cracks of the dingy ceiling, in the pattern of the grimy wall-paper, in the ashes of the dead fire, in the scrolls of iron-work upon the range, in the patchwork hearthrug, in the knots and lines of the kitchen table. Safe! The word acquired such a force and power of its own that Edward almost worshiped it by repeating aloud the mere sound of it in apostrophe after apostrophe of awful contemplation. Safe! He clutched at the S as he would have clutched at a rope to drag himself up from the abyss below. He climbed up the A, up the F, up the E to stand on the high ground above with Elizabeth clasped in his arms ... with her ... with his darling ... safe....

Edward fell asleep. At four o'clock Mrs. Gallagher came down to tell him that things were going on as well as could be expected upstairs, recommending him to be off and lie down on his bed like a Christian. The only place where Edward wanted to lie down was on the landing outside the door of Elizabeth's room; but there was still enough left of the younger son of Sir Richard Flower to keep him from making such a proposal to the landlady.

It was like Edward to insist on staying in the kitchen. There was about it the kind of ineffective Quixotry to which he had been addicted all his life. At seven Dr. Harrison came in and made him comparatively happy by asking him to go round to his house, wait for the postal delivery, and bring back any package that might by good luck be left. The doctor wanted to add that Edward would do well to ask his servant to give him some breakfast, there being little likelihood of his eating any breakfast in Pomona Terrace. On second thoughts, he did not think the suggestion worth making. He felt too much fatigued by his own all-night vigil to argue with an unbalanced fool like this husband. Such was the young doctor's mood on this drear January morning. Edward hurried through the wet twilight, pale, unshaven, his hair and whiskers unkempt, his collar dirty, his clothes frowsy from the kitchen where he had spent the night. At such an hour Manning Crescent looked more dilapidated than on the night before, and the broken slat in the Venetian blinds of the drunken doctor next door gave the last touch of raffish squalor to the row of houses.

No sooner was Edward seated in the doctor's neat consulting-room than he fell into a despair, because he had not seen Elizabeth before he came out. Suppose she were dead when he arrived back? He could hardly stay in the room; the smell of disinfectants here was stifling him with an aroma of death. It was only by clutching the arms of the chair covered with red rep and dinning into his brain the need to wait for that blessed instrument which was so anxiously awaited by the doctor that he was able not to desert his post. He rang for the maid to ask when the parcel delivery might be expected, and upon her telling him "ten o'clock at the earliest" he groaned aloud.

It was actually eleven o'clock when Edward, after spending hours of uncertainty, ran back to Pomona Terrace with a parcel for Dr. Harrison.

"It has arrived at the very moment I required it," said the doctor, hurrying upstairs without waiting to give Edward a word of hope about his wife's condition beyond his satisfied comment on the arrival of the new instrument.

On the husband left standing in the dim passage of the Gallaghers' lodging-house dawned the apprehension of God's mercy to him in directing his footsteps yesterday evening to where lived probably the only doctor in the neighborhood who would have a chance of saving that beloved woman's life. He fell upon his knees where he stood and prayed that God's mercy should be extended to the fulfillment of all he hoped. Then he went back to the kitchen. At last Mrs. Gallagher entered all smiles.

"You may come up now," she told him. "All's well, praise be to the Holy Mother of God, and you've a girleen."

"A what?" shouted old James Taylor from his chair by the fire.

"'Tis you that's a great-grandfather, Mr. Taylor," she told the old man.

"A' look now," chuckled old James. "They ought to put I in a show. 'Tis a state of life you can see in rams and bulls when you've a mind, but darn'ee, a real great-grandfather is summat to stare at even in London."

Edward was kneeling beside Elizabeth before the old man had finished his sentence. The doctor left them together.

"You haven't asked to look at baby," Elizabeth murmured reproachfully. She lifted the bedclothes for a moment, while Edward looked.

"Yours," he murmured.

"Ours," she corrected. "Ours, my dearest."

"But it was you that suffered everything!"

"But you were anxious about me, weren't you, my darling?" she tenderly asked.

"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" he cried.

She knew how much he too had suffered, and because he did not speak of his emotions she was moved with an immense desire not to let her baby make her careless of her husband. She put out her hand to stroke his head.

"I thought about you all the time," she whispered. "When the pain was worst I kept saying, 'Edward! Edward!' Nothing else. Only that, my darling."

He drew her hands to his lips.

"And what shall she be christened?" the mother asked. "I'd like her to be called Mary," she went on breathlessly. "You wouldn't think that a common name, would you? 'Mary Flower,' I think that's a pretty name."

The doctor came in at this moment to suggest that Edward had stayed long enough for the present. The father leant over to kiss the eyes of that pale mother.

"Well, have 'ee seen her?" demanded the great-grandfather when Edward came downstairs. "I suppose it is a girl all right?"

"Mary," said Edward.

"Oh, Mary, is it to be? Well, that's a good down-right honest style of name for a girl. Yes, 'tis a name I like very well. And don't you be discouraged, Mr. Edward, if she don't look beautiful all at once. A calf's different. A new-born calf is a pretty sight for any man. So's a chicken fresh from the egg. But a baby is so ugly as a young rook. Oh dear, oh dear, there's few more ugly sights for man to look upon than a new-born baby. Yet I suppose this time come three months we shall all be looking at kangaroos and wobblies, and they're worse by what one reads of 'em."

Old James had got hold of one or two volumes of Antipodean travel, from dipping into which behind a pair of large horn spectacles he had formed a picture of Australia as zoölogically rich as a medieval illuminator's conception of Eden.

Now that Elizabeth's child was safely born, it was imperative to leave England before the money gave out, and berths were secured in the _Wizard Queen_, a 1,000-ton steamer lying in the East India Docks, which was due to sail on February 18th for the port of Sydney. They went on board the preceding afternoon; but remembering their last experience in the _Mariana_ and with a desire to avert ill-luck they kept themselves out of sight of the other emigrants who, like those on the Mersey, were drowning the sorrow of departure in music and song. As a matter of fact, old James could not resist going up on deck to have a bit of fun, as he called it; but Edward and Elizabeth remained close in their cabin, and did not even emerge for supper.

After supper the strains of music that floated down below became more melancholy, so that Elizabeth shivered. Edward, always solicitous, begged her to tell him what was the matter. Did she feel nervous after that alarming night on the Mersey? Did she regret that she had married him? Was not the baby Mary sleeping soundly in her canvas cot, and was she not so wonderful a being that sighs should be forgotten in the contemplation of the future they two would sacrifice all to achieve for her?

"I was thinking of you, Edward," she said. "I was wondering if I had done wrong in marrying you, so that you have had to leave your family and your country for my sake."

"It is not your fault," Edward exclaimed, "that we are all going to Australia. If my father had not shown himself so bitter against me, if my mother had not lost all affection for me, we should still be in Long Orchard Farm. I beg you, my dearest, not to distress yourself with regrets. Besides, look at her." He pointed to the sleeping infant. "What do we matter now? We have given _her_ to the world. There never was such a baby girl. Just think, my Elizabeth, what you endured, what even I endured? And now look at her. Remember how fortune was on her side. I was never a religious man, but since that night in January I have been made conscious of a divine power that directs the universe. In the miracle of that small but perfect being born to you and me I have understood the great miracle of creation."

Elizabeth regarded her husband with admiration and awe.

"You have such noble thoughts," she flattered him. "But I cannot think like you. I can only remember the meadows where I played as a child and the clematis over the door and the cocks crowing on fine mornings in the summer-time. And now I'm leaving all that. And grandfather is leaving it. And you, my Edward, are being taken far over the sea to another country, and all because I selfishly loved you and selfishly let you love me."

The notes of a melody more sad than any which had yet been played drifted below from the deck. Elizabeth's tears fell fast like raindrops upon the petals of a rose. Nor could Edward's most tender words console her grief, nor could they mitigate her apprehensiveness nor lighten the gloom in which for her the future was enveloped. It was not until her grandfather came tapping at their cabin door, in which a moment later he stood framed with his ruddy and jocund countenance, that she smiled.

"I've enjoyed myself rarely," he announced. "There's been singing up there as would put the heart in any man. There was never better fiddling in Barton Flowers, not when I was a nipper. I'm bothered if I han't enjoyed myself. Sleep like a top, the saying is. Bothered if I shan't sleep like a humming-top to-night."

He wished them well and stumped off to his berth.

"You see how happy the old man is!" Edward exclaimed.

And Elizabeth, now that the music had ceased to play upon her emotion, forgot her fears. In the morning when they went on deck London was sailing past them on either side of the ship, and a sharp wind from the northwest made the voyagers long for warm and sunny lands.

Among the emigrants was a middle-aged couple called Fawcus, both of whom showed themselves most friendly to the Flowers, and both of whom much admired the good behavior of the baby girl. Mr. Fawcus was a large, smooth-faced man of fifty, definitely parsonic in the general impression he gave with his suit of black broadcloth, a primness of manner that was noticeable in so large a man, and an inclination to discourse in rotund sentences. His wife was in every way a contrast to her husband, being small, restless, and quick-eyed, a woman obviously belonging to an inferior class, but who in spite of her Cockney accent and vulgarity was obviously the leader and looked after her husband as sharply as a capable and well-trained nurse.

"I hope Mr. Micawber will still be alive when we reach Australia," said Edward. "Nobody else could keep pace with our friend."

"You haven't spoken of Mr. Micawber before, dear," said Elizabeth reproachfully. "I didn't know you had any friends in Australia."

"Mr. Micawber is a character in one of Mr. Charles Dickens' novels," he explained.

"Mr. Dickens who wrote the _Christmas Carol_?" Elizabeth asked.

"The same."

"He must be a very nice gentleman," was her murmured comment.

Edward laughed.

Mr. Fawcus according to himself had been reduced to emigration by the devotion of his energy, his talents, and his money to the great cause of popular education.

"My survey of history," he told Edward, "taught me that all the greatest human beings have been teachers. I determined, however humbly, to follow in their footsteps."

According to Mrs. Fawcus her husband's mistake had been first in wasting money on derelict schools, and secondly in destroying whatever chance such schools had of recovery by preaching in the open air of the locality on Sundays.

"People couldn't a-bear to send their children to Mr. Fawcus's school when they saw him preaching in the market-place like any heathen missionary. It gave them the idea he was funny, and so the scholars'ud leave until there wasn't one left, and then Mr. Fawcus had to move to another town and start over again with another school. Besides, I was always a hindrance to him."

"You were never a hindrance, my love."

"Oh, yes, I was, Mr. Fawcus, and well you know it. The truth is parents don't want a homely woman like me for a teacher. They look for something quite different in a school-mistress, something tall and starchy."

"And what are you going to do in Australia?" Edward asked.

"In Australia, my dear sir," Mr. Fawcus boomed, "in Australia I am going to educate the aborigines, who I understand from the reports of travelers are considered the most degraded race of human beings on this earth. Should that prove truer than the majority of travelers' tales there must be room for education. After my experience with the children of...."

"Hush!" his wife interjected. "Hush, Mr. Fawcus!"

"After my experience with the last school I founded in England the aborigines of Australia will be easy to manage. Their women, I believe, are known as ginns. A most unbecoming designation. I shall try to persuade them to abolish that name. The sea is rising, I observe with regret. We are liable to pass a rough night, I fear. And I am usually right. In fact, my intimates often nickname me Mr. Forecast. My own name, by the way, is remarkable, don't you think? I have been tempted to speculate upon its origin, and I have sometimes fancied that it might be found among the _senatus populusque Romanus_. I was informed the other day, however, by a gentleman of curious etymological knowledge that it is probably a local variant of Fawkes. You of course remember Guy of that ilk? Yes, the sky is looking very dirty indeed."

A steely dusk of northwest weather lay chill upon the _Wizard Queen_ when she was tossing in the Downs, and by night the wind was blowing with hurricane fury from the Kentish coast. The music and motion of the storm kept all on board awake, and when about three o'clock there was a crash followed by a dreadful sound of grinding timbers, the faces of the terrified passengers immediately appeared from every cabin.

Edward bade his wife wrap up the baby while he found out what had happened, and with only an overcoat over his nightshirt he forced his way on deck. From the darkness on the port side a shape seemed to carve itself to the fleeting likeness of another vessel, but it vanished so quickly that Edward fancied the vision to be a chimera of the night.

"All hands to lower the boats," a voice cried from forward in the murk of the night. Figures in dripping oilskins, like monsters risen from the sea, pushed Edward aside to get at their business; but he managed to make his way back aft to where from the orange mist above the saloon-companion a stream of disheveled passengers belched forth like smoke waving in the blast. As he fought his way down to find Elizabeth and the old man, he heard another shout for'ard.

"The port lifeboat was smashed in the collision."

The saloon was empty when Edward reached it, and he was on the point of turning back to begin a distracted search on deck when Elizabeth came out of her cabin carrying the baby, her hair all about her shoulders, her aspect serene. She looked fragile, ethereal indeed, but amid all that confusion of human terror into which she must shortly be plunged she moved forward with the resolution of an angel. Behind her came the old man wrapped in a plaid shawl above his nightshirt, his face ruddy as ever, but his old legs appearing thin as twigs beneath, so that it seemed as if he must be blown away into the night when he should face the storm.

The crew was lowering the jolly-boat full of passengers when they reached the deck. Notwithstanding the peril, for the ship would not float another ten minutes it was being shouted, two of the sailors were arguing angrily about the rig of the craft that struck the _Wizard Queen_. One declared with an oath that it was a schooner; the other affirmed with equal vigor that it had been a barquantine. A ship's officer hurrying by fell to cursing them for rascals that they should stand there arguing when the starboard lifeboat must be launched.

"Women and children first," the captain thundered.

A fiercer squall drummed overhead, and the emigrants that still remained in the ship huddled together in fear of that dreadful brew of waters upon which they were soon to float away. Somebody urged Elizabeth toward the lifeboat; but she drew back.

"Let somebody go instead of me. I'll wait for my husband," she said.

But it happened that she was the last woman left and that there was still room for Edward and old James, so that presently all three climbed into the lifeboat.

"Lower away!"

The lifeboat rocked for a moment in the davits; and then just as she reached the sea, being full in the weather, she was driven with great force against the ship's side and stove in. She seemed to be brimming over, but nevertheless the crew managed to shove her off, although by this time she was so deep in the water that the wretched passengers sitting on the thwarts were submerged from the waist downwards. It was only the cork in her compartments that kept her barely afloat. There were many faces still looking down from the steamer, and all on board probably went down with her, or if the cutter was launched she must have been swamped immediately, for a minute or two later the _Wizard Queen_ rose forward in the air and sank stern first. Now one by one, as the icy waves broke over them, the women and men in the lifeboat dropped from exhaustion into the sea. Old James Taylor was among the first to go, falling backward without a cry, without a word of reproach, as silently as one of his own red apples might fall at home in the first October gale.

"Did the Captain say where we was?" asked the man at the tiller.

"Abreast of Beachy Head," one shouted in reply, and as he spoke a wave swept him and a woman and a child into the darkness.

"O God! he's dead. He's lying dead in my arms!" cried a miserable father who was holding in his arms a little boy of five or six.

"Drop the body overboard," the man at the tiller shouted. "Every pound tells. Lighten the boat," he roared angrily. "Lighten the boat!"

The wretched father, clasping his dead child more closely, turned away in indignation at the brutal order; but as he turned a wave swept him and the body overboard, and the boat was lightened a little more.

All this time Elizabeth said nothing; but she clung to her place with one hand and with the other held the baby to her breast beneath her cloak. All this time Edward said nothing; but he had somehow managed to wedge his legs round a support, so that whenever Elizabeth trembled in her seat he could put out two arms to save her from peril. Two women died of exhaustion from the wash of the sea and the freezing wind, and their bodies were at once flung overboard. On the other side of Elizabeth, Mrs. Fawcus, who alone of the women appeared to be completely dressed, was trying to get off her cloak to throw it round the mother, and simultaneously making an effort to listen to the plans of Mr. Fawcus for the future, should the lifeboat ever reach a harbor.

"I have given up my plan of educating the aborigines of Australia," he bellowed above the gale, making a megaphone with his hands.

"Yes, dear, I'm sure I agree with you. Drat this hook! It's so bent I can't get it out of the eye. And don't put up your hands and shout at me, Mr. Fawcus. You'll be swept over if you do."

"What has occurred once," Mr. Fawcus bellowed, "may easily occur again. I shall inquire for a suitable post in London. I always did execrate the sea, as you know, my dear."

Mrs. Fawcus nodded.

"And I was right," he shouted. "I usually am." But his wife could not applaud his wisdom, for at that moment Elizabeth, reeling, cried:

"Take my baby. Edward! My darling, my darling, I ought not to have married you. It's all my fault."

As Mrs. Fawcus took the baby, Elizabeth fell, and Edward, throwing himself backward in a last effort to save his wife, fell with her into the sea.

At dawn a small steamer sighted the wreck of the lifeboat and launched a boat to rescue the four who had survived that night. One was the man at the tiller; the other three were Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus with Mary Flower.

_Chapter Two_

THE GIRL

_Chapter Two: The Girl_

Mary Flower passed the first ten years of her life in the basement of a publisher's office in Paternoster Row, where every floor as high as the roof was loaded with the stock of years, so that the earliest defined fear of her childhood was lest the old house should collapse one night and bury herself and her uncle and aunt beneath a mountain of books. This was the result of reading the story of an earthquake in Jamaica; and the habit thus engendered of brooding upon seismic catastrophes led Mary soon afterward to prefigure the vaster ruin of St. Paul's Cathedral, the bulk of which obscured so much of the sky from her childish vision.

"You've no right to fill her head with such notions, Uncle William," said Mrs. Fawcus sharply. "Why, there was no more than a tiny little crack in the ceiling over her bed, and I'm sure the child regular worried the life out of me about that blessed crack."

"That's where you're wrong, Aunt Lucy," replied Mr. Fawcus. "When a child's interest is aroused in any natural phenomenon it is the duty of the parent or of the guardian who stands _in loco parentis_ to cultivate that interest by every means in his power. It is one of the rudimentary principles of education. Fate directed her to the narrative of an earthquake in the West Indies, rousing in her breast an ambition to know more about terrestrial convulsions, to learn about such facts as their comparative frequency and their geographical distribution. What has our little Mary learned? She has learned that nothing more than slight shocks may be expected in the heart of London and that ..."

"Oh, how you do carry on, Uncle William! The poor child's learned nothing of the kind. She goes to bed shaking in her shoes every night."

However, Mary soon forgot all about earthquakes, because a dancing bear broke loose in St. Paul's Churchyard and created such a panic that for several weeks she saw bears at the back of every cupboard, and Mrs. Fawcus had to hide her favorite copy of _Red Riding Hood_ on account of the tremors set up by the vivid illustrations. It must not be supposed that she was a very nervous child or that her existence was unusually spoilt by the incidental alarms of childhood. On the contrary, the world beheld in the basement of that tall Georgian warehouse was a placid and cozy world, her place in which she owed to the couple whom she knew as Uncle William and Aunt Lucy.

When Mr. Fawcus walked down the gangway of the steamer that rescued him from the wreck of that lifeboat and felt the terra-firma, as he called it, of Dover Quay beneath his feet, he knelt down just outside the Lord Warden Hotel and vowed that he would never attempt to leave his native land again.

"I've been teaching all my life," he told Mrs. Fawcus. "But I can still learn a lesson myself."

The problem of the future was a difficult one, and it was not simplified by the responsibility of the baby.

"Though, mark you," said Mr. Fawcus gravely, "I consider that the education of one English girl is of more importance than the education of a thousand Australian aborigines. Unfortunately I have come to the end of my capital, and in order to educate her it will be necessary for me to find some kind of moderately remunerative employment."

"I'm glad to hear you speak so sensible, Mr. Fawcus," said his wife.

"Bly, my dear, bly. Sensi-bly. Don't let a shipwreck destroy in one moment what I have spent years in teaching you: the distinction between an adjective and an adverb."

During their short intercourse with the Flowers Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, or to be accurate Mrs. Fawcus, had elicited an account of the circumstances which had led up to their emigrating; when it began to look as if Mr. Fawcus was never going to find a suitable job, his wife argued that they ought to communicate with the baby's grandfather.

"If we were going to say anything at all," Mr. Fawcus objected, "we ought to have written the moment we found ourselves safe on shore. Having left it so long, we may appear to the eyes of Sir Richard Flower like kidnappers. She is such a good baby that I hate to give her up, and besides I did want to try my hand at an education completely independent of those obstinate and conservative creatures which we know generically as 'parents.'"

Nevertheless, Mr. Fawcus, in dread of the uncertain future, was at last driven by his wife's entreaties into communication with the grandfather of the baby whose guardianship he had assumed in the presence of death.

101 Floral Street, Near Covent Garden, _March 3rd, 1860_.

_Honored Sir_,

_You have no doubt read with a father's grief, in which I beg leave
most respectfully to share, the melancholy news of the loss of the
emigrant ship, Wizard Queen, by collision off Beachy Head at 3 a.m.
on the morning of the 18th ult., and by this time you have no doubt
abandoned all hope of hearing that your son, Mr. Edward Flower, was
saved. I do not write to raise false hopes in your breast. Alas!
I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in the lifeboat
to which we both clung (rather than in which we both sat) swept
overboard in a vain attempt to save his wife from a similar fate. It
may, however, be some mitigation of your sorrow to learn that he
left behind him in the care of myself and wife a baby girl, who is
at present sharing our humble room at the above address. We should
deeply feel parting with the engaging infant; but we respectfully
recognize the superior claims of her grandparents. I have the honor
to await your instructions with regard to her disposal. Will you send
a suitable nurse to convey the infant to your Seat? Or shall my good
wife take upon herself the responsibility of personally delivering
the infant at Barton Hall?_

_I must apologize for the delay in notifying you of your
granddaughter's fortunate survival; but I have recently been much
occupied in trying to recover for myself the small niche in England
which I so rashly abandoned in my ambition to put the glories of
education within reach of the aborigines of Australia. In expectation
of shortly hearing from you, I have the honor, Sir, to subscribe
myself_

_Your most obedient humble servant, William Axworthy Fawcus._

_P. S.--I should add that I was formerly a schoolmaster, having been
the proud possessor of several private schools in turn. Now for
various reasons I find myself unable to devote myself any longer to
the education of the young idea, and I have this morning entered
into a contract with Messrs. Holland and Brown, the publishers of
Paternoster Row, to invigilate their stock._

_W.A. F._

To this the baronet replied as follows:

Barton Hall, Barton Flowers, Hants, _March 8, '60_.

_Sir_,

_I have no interest in my son's daughter. At the same time, I am not
anxious to be under an obligation to strangers for her maintenance.
If you insist on giving up your care of the baby, I must find some
other worthy couple to look after her. If, on the other hand, you are
willing to accept that responsibility and will let me hear that you
are prepared to do so, I will instruct my lawyers, Messrs. Hepper and
Philcox, to remit you the sum of £100 a year in quarterly instalments
payable in advance until she reaches the age of ten years, when I
shall communicate fresh proposals._

_Yours truly, Richard Flower._

Thus it befell that Mary continued to live with Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, calling them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy, and indirectly being the cause of Mrs. Fawcus's getting nearer to an intimate mode of addressing her husband than she had ever reached before. The contract into which Mr. Fawcus had entered with Messrs. Holland and Brown might have been less grandly described as an engagement to be caretaker of their premises, for which he was paid the sum of eighteen shillings a week and allotted the basement of kitchen, scullery, two rooms, a cellar, and a backyard.

"The task is in some respects a menial task," he told his wife. "But it is redeemed by the fact that I am a warden of books. Had I been invited to guard bales of dry goods, I should have declined the offer. I am ready in the cause of literature and learning to sacrifice what remains to me of scholastic dignity by exposing myself in the _toga virilis_ of service, in other words, a green baize apron, punctually at 6.30 a.m. to the public eye, and if the public eye chooses to regard my daily renovation of the brass, my _quotidian lustration_ of the steps, as menial, I merely say with what's his _nomen_ '_per aspera ad astra_.'"

"Well, all I beg is, Mr. Fawcus"--he had not become Uncle William yet--"all I beg is," said his wife, "you won't go preaching about St. Paul's Churchyard of a Sunday morning."

"In, my love, not about. On, my dear, not of. Your allusion was to the locality and date, not the subject of my discourse."

"Don't be so pernickety, Mr. Fawcus. You know quite well what I meant to say."

"The Queen's English, my dear, should share with the Queen's Person the privilege of inviolability. But set your mind at rest. Preserve the _mens sana in corpore sano_. Now that we have been intrusted with the nonage of that cherub," he pointed to Mary asleep in her cot, "I do not intend to jeopardize the material comforts of this basement. _Tu Marcellus eris!_ In other words, I intend to devote all my persuasive energy to Mary."

Mr. Fawcus kept his word. To be sure, he might say to his wife:

"Holland and Brown are going too far. They are impinging upon my pride. I felt very much inclined last night to utter a stern _noli me tangere_. But I thought of Mary, and I refrained. Yes, I thought of our Mary and I agreed to give the disposal of the day's waste-paper, the _disjecta membra_ of their correspondence, my personal supervision."

Mr. Fawcus might complain of the advantage his employers took of his reduced circumstances; but he never did fail to remember what was owed to Mary. She was indeed the pivot of that basement in Paternoster Row, a little household goddess to whom the two old people accorded divine honors and through whom, brought close together by their common worship, they grew closer and closer to each other as the years went by. She was not a spoilt child, or at least she was not spoilt by anything except such humble treats and toys as her guardians could afford. Mrs. Fawcus was not a woman to give way out of laziness or weakness or fond affection to the exactions of childhood. She treated Mary in the same fashion as she had always treated her husband, that is to say, she loved and admired her as a superior being to herself, but she never allowed her to suppose that her behavior could not be criticized and corrected.

Mary herself at ten years old was a beautiful child, so beautiful that the degraded clothes of the period were incapable of concealing her beauty. From her mother she had inherited that auburn hair with all its texture of silk and all its abundance, but instead of brown eyes hers were deep blue, pellucid and round as speedwells. Sir Richard had such eyes once; and the painter who came to Barton Hall in the summer of 1810, without being afraid of the comparison, had painted him with a posy of cornflowers, his eyes following the flight of blue butterflies. Old James Taylor had such eyes to the end; but he was never painted in tight pantaloons and a frilled collar. If a little girl has auburn hair, and big deep blue eyes, and a complexion like a malmaison, she has no need to bother about her features. Actually Mary showed promise of fine features emerging one day from her dimples, and her hands were as fine and delicate as her grandmother's.

From being without the companionship of other children, Mary had acquired what were called old-fashioned ways, which meant that she would always join in the conversation of her uncle and aunt, pay much attention to the deportment of her dolls, and spend a great deal of time reading fairy tales by the kitchen fire. The basement of a city warehouse may seem a dreary place for a little girl to spend most of her time; but Mary found it as full of romance as one of her own picture books, and apart from such fleeting alarms as the threat of earthquakes or the dread of sudden and violent robbery, echoes of which occasionally reached her when Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus discussed events that near bedtime little girls ought not to overhear, Mary found her home safe and cosy. The small yard at the back was not so much overshadowed by the tall houses round as to keep the sun from shining down upon it in summer; here Mary had several green boxes in which she grew pansies and creeping jenny, mignonette and red and white double daisies. Here too in a wicker cage outside the kitchen door lived Mary's thrush, who sang his country song while Mary sat gazing up at the golden cross on the dome of St. Paul's and wondering if the thrush would like to be sitting there and if it would be kinder to set him free. It was a very small yard; yet it seemed illimitable to Mary, and every brick in the wall was to her as large and interesting as a field.

But if the yard seemed vast, how much vaster appeared the upper portions of the house! Sometimes when work was over Mr. Fawcus would let Mary accompany him on his tour of inspection round the deserted premises. She was allowed to climb up ladders and read the names of books stacked away on the highest shelves, dusty books with titles that sounded most uninteresting, although the recitation of them evidently gave great pleasure to Uncle William. And then one day in an attic she discovered hundreds of picture books, nearly all fairy stories. When she announced her discovery, Uncle William shook his head and muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!"

"But, Uncle William, they're not old. They're quite new. Really they are--quite bright and not a bit torn. I found _The Three Bears_ and a story about a mother pig who frightened away a wolf when he came to gobble up her little pigs. And how do you think she did it? You'll never guess, Uncle William. Why, she rolled down the hill in a churn. What is a churn, Uncle William?"

This was exactly the kind of question dear to the heart of Mr. Fawcus, and before Mary went to bed that night she had been given an exhaustive discourse on dairy-farming, so that if she had listened as attentively as her aunt kept bidding her listen, she would have learned the difference between curds and whey, and all about rennet, and all about Stilton cheeses and Devonshire cream, and why butter won't come sometimes ... but alas! Mary did not listen, because her mind was far away upstairs in that attic.

It happened that the very next day she was sent on a message to one of the offices and that the gentleman to whom she gave the message, a dried-up gentleman with bright shining spectacles, asked her if she would like a penny to buy some lollipops.

"No, thank you, sir," said Mary, curtseying. "I'd like to go upstairs and look at those picture books at the top of the house."

Whereupon the dried-up gentleman mysteriously muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!" just like Uncle William yesterday.

"Why, you may go there whenever you like, my little maid," he told her.

"Fancy that!" exclaimed Mrs. Fawcus when she was informed of this by Mary. "Well, did you ever? I'm sure I never did. I never did know such an old-fashioned child in my life, Uncle William. Never! Fancy her asking such a thing of Mr. Bristowe."

"It's old stock," said Mr. Fawcus.

And Mary when she had been given leave by her uncle and aunt to avail herself of Mr. Bristowe's kind offer whispered "old stock" when she opened the door of that dusty attic, for she felt that it was an enchanted phrase like Open Sesame. The attic window looked down into the backyard of the basement, and Mary could not resist opening the window, for although she felt sure that she ought not to lean out of a window, inasmuch as she lived in a basement she had never actually been forbidden to lean out of windows. Yes, there were her flowers, such tiny specks of color, down below, and there was the dustbin looking more than ever like a knight in armor, and there was her thrush's cage. Hark! he was singing. She could hear his song above the thunder of the London streets. The attic window had a window-seat where Mary spent long lovely mornings in April reading those dusty picture books one after another, face to face with the clouds while the golden cross upon the dome of St. Paul's glittered in the sun. On the sill were the remains of a battered window-box still half full of earth. In this Mary sowed nasturtium seeds which grew miraculously, so that soon when Mary was in the yard she could look up and see the orange and yellow flowers waving in the wind against the dingy bricks of the warehouse.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," she called. "Let down your golden hair."

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed.

"I'm being the witch," Mary told her.

"Which what?"

"The witch. The witch who climbed up to the tower by Rapunzel's golden hair."

"Did anybody ever hear anything like it?"

And when Mrs. Fawcus came out into the yard at Mary's invitation and looking up saw the nasturtiums, she was more exclamatory than ever.

"Well, it give me quite a turn," she vowed to Uncle William. "The like of that child was never known."

Nearly all the clerks in the office came up to look at Mary's nasturtiums; and Mr. Bristowe was so much delighted that he gave her a small red watering-can.

"It's a wonder the sparrows don't peck them to pieces," said Mr. Fawcus, when Mary's triumph was being discussed in the basement.

"If they did, they'd burn their tongues," said Mary.

"Well, now, did you ever hear a more old-fashioned remark?"

"_Passer deliciæ meæ puellæ_," boomed Mr. Fawcus.

Until Mary discovered that new world in the roof, her chief pleasure apart from the backyard had been a cellar in front of the basement which was lighted from a square of opaque glass set in the pavement of the street. She was willing to spend hours here, sitting on an old footstool, surrounded by her dolls and pretending to be a sea-nymph. A wet day, and it was chiefly on wet days that Mary frequented this cellar, heightened the illusion of being under the sea, because the skylight, if such an aperture may be called a skylight, when blurred with rain was more than usually aqueous, and the shadows of people passing overhead were more than usually like fish. Mrs. Fawcus, when she first heard of Mary's pastime, was moved to utter dark interpretations of it.

"Depend upon it, Uncle William, that child's life is going to be mixed up with deep water. Mark my words, she'll cross the sea many a time before she goes down to the grave."

"Do not vaticinate, my dear," her husband commanded. "Absit omen!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, but when any one thinks of that night ten years ago and when any one sees that dear innocent sitting out there and staring up at the fishes, as she calls them, well, any one may be forgiven for doing what any one's told by their husband they mustn't do."

"Ten years ago," Mr. Fawcus repeated. "So it is. I wish you'd keep your thoughts to yourself sometimes, Aunt Lucy. Ten years ago!"

She shuddered, for he was thinking of those fresh proposals to be made in ten years.

"Here's the money from the lawyers," said Mrs. Fawcus one morning in March, handing her husband the familiar envelope which had arrived regularly every quarter-day.

Mr. Fawcus, on whose countenance a decade of looking after the stock of Messrs. Holland and Brown had not left a mark, became suddenly old and flabby when he read through that letter. In that moment even his Latinity deserted him. The dreadful fact could not be evaded like so many other facts in his life by ponderous rhetoric and polysyllabic euphemisms.

"We've got to give her up," he groaned.

His wife snatched the letter from him.

"Where's Mary?" she asked, quickly looking round before she said anything Mary ought not to hear.

"She's gone up to her attic to sow the seeds I bought her yesterday. She wanted to try sweet sultans this year. She's up in the attic sowing sweet sultans."

Mr. Fawcus buried his face in his hands and bent low in unutterable despair, while his wife read the lawyer's letter.

151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C., _March 24, 1870_.

_Dear Sir_,

_We are instructed by our Client, Lady Flower of Barton Hall, Barton
Flowers, to say that she has decided to receive into her house her
granddaughter, Miss Mary Flower. We beg to enclose in addition to the
usual quarterly allowance of £25 a check for £50, in order that Miss
Mary Flower may be suitably equipped for the journey to Paris, where
Lady Flower is now living and where she wishes her granddaughter to
join her. If you will give us a call at your earliest convenience,
we shall be happy to provide you with any advice you may require in
respect of the journey. Lady Flower desires us to thank you for the
care you have taken of Miss Mary Flower and begs that if you have not
already explained to her the peculiar circumstances in which you took
charge of her you will do so now._

_In case you may not be acquainted with the facts, we may add that
a year after Mr. Edward Flower lost his life in the wreck of the
Wizard Queen, his elder brother, Mr. John Flower, was killed in the
hunting-field. By the death of Sir Richard Flower, which occurred
last November, Lady Flower inherited the whole of his property and
she is no doubt anxious to provide suitably for the youngest and
only surviving member of the family._

_Yours faithfully, Hepper and Philcox._

Mrs. Fawcus went across to where her husband was still sitting with bowed head.

"William!" she murmured. It was the first time in thirty-five years of married life that she had dared to call him simply that.