It Began in Vauxhall Gardens - Plaidy Jean - Страница 9

He filled her glass and told her to drink. She obeyed. He knew that she had been obeying someone all her life—her parents, Mistress Rickards, Jim.

"Tell me the rest quickly," he said. "Don't dwell on it, because it makes you unhappy."

She nodded. "There was a fight. I remember the glass breaking .. . and the screams.. . . One of them had a gun. They was highwaymen and they'd killed men before. One more didn't make no difference to them . . . and that one was my Jim."

A deep silence had settled on them both. He knew that she was going over it all again, and he was angry with himself for being the means of reviving her melancholy memories. But silence would not help her now.

"Surely the law . . ." he began.

"The law?" she said sadly. "That's for you and your sort. They couldn't find those men, and it wasn't worth much trouble . . . not for a poor man."

He felt humiliated; eagerly he sought for some means of comforting her. He could think of nothing he could do; he found himself ineffectually patting the hand which lay on the table.

The rest of her story was pitiably inevitable. What could she do ? The rent had been paid in advance and there was still a little money left. But that had not lasted long. She had spent her last pennies on a trip to Vauxhall. After that? She did not know. She simply did not know. She thought she would go back to the tavern where he had died. Perhaps those men would be there. Perhaps they would kill her as she wished they had on that night.

"I don't know why I came here to-night," she said. "I truly don't know."

He said, to her surprise: "I don't know why I came."

After that he took her to her room and gave her money for food and rent. Perhaps, he told himself again and again, she is a clever beggar. There were many such in London. Some hired babies—the more deformed the better; some even mutilated the children and themselves to make them more almsworthy. Why should not a girl with appealing green eyes concoct a tragic story for a simple man from the country? Who knew—the lout in the gardens might have been an accomplice.

It would have been better to have believed this, to have paid the money that would appease his conscience, and then forget the incident. It could so easily have ended there. The money he had given her would take care of her needs for some weeks. What more could anyone expect of a chance encounter?

But she had continued to haunt his thoughts; there had been many meetings and much heart-searching before the inevitable had happened.

Soon after that first meeting he had been called back to Cornwall where his daughter Caroline was prematurely born. He found Wenna distracted, the household already almost in mourning. Wenna's dark eyes had seemed to flash threats of vengeance on him. But both the child and Maud had lived.

Before very long he returned to London. He could not forget the girl whom he had met in Vauxhall. He told himself that he would try to find some work for her, but in the meantime he would induce her to accept a little money from him.

She was reluctant at first. "How can I take it?" she asked.

His answer was: "Because life is unfair to some and gracious to others. Think of me as an uncle who has come into your life at an important moment."

"You are too young for an uncle!" was her reply. She could be merry and sad, changing quickly from mood to mood. He had glimpsed her capacity for happiness.

In his shrewd and businesslike way he had quickly made arrangements. Millie's landlady was a motherly woman with a fondness for lovers, which she had decided Millie and her benefactor were. She prided herself on her knowledge of the gentry and she recognized in Charles a true gentleman who could be trusted to pay his way. For such she was prepared to make concessions. So concessions were made; and one evening, after a visit to Vauxhall, he stayed with her, for she was as lonely as he was.

How long had it lasted? Was it only three years? Sometimes it seemed longer, sometimes far less. During that time he had

found new feelings, new emotions within himself. How many times had they revisited Roubillac's statues of Handel and Orpheus with his lyre? He found enjoyment in the gardens; happiness was contagious. They took the short stage out to the pretty village of Hampstead and wandered over the heath; she picked heather which she said, as a memory of happy days, she would press in the Bible she had brought with her from Hertfordshire. The pleasure gardens were a source of great delight to them both; there they could spend long days away from the streets. They went to Marylebone, Bagnigge Wells; they walked gaily through the Florida Gardens.

It was a new life for him; during his visits to her he tried to look like a successful tradesman as he enjoyed the tradesman's pleasures. It astonished him that there was so much to enjoy in the humble life; it astonished her that there could be happiness in a life from which Jim was absent. He was happy in what seemed to him a gaudy squalor; she was enchanted by what seemed to her luxury. It was the never-ending surprise of the other which delighted them both.

But it had to end. There was to be a child.

She trusted him completely, for she had laid bare the softness in his nature. To her he was not the same man whom Maud had known. He lived two lives; never before had he understood the true meaning of the double life. The gay young man, the reveller at the pleasure gardens, the tender lover of Millie Sand, Charles Adam— he seemed to have little connection with Sir Charles Trevenning.

Once at Hampstead during the first months of pregnancy she had talked of the child. A little girl, she wanted, a dear little girl. "I'd like her to be a lady," she said.

Then she began to enumerate the things which she would like for the child. "Fd like her to have a gown made ofgros de Naples, and a pelisse of the same stuff and a large pelerine all of silk and a big Leghorn hat trimmed with ribbons and flowers. We had to make a dress of gros de Naples when I was at Mistress Rickards'. It took us the whole of the week with the six of us working. We had to get it done so fast that we hardly had any sleep at all."

"You are thinking of the child grown up," he told her.

"Yes. That's how I think of her ... as a lady."

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Afraid?"

"So many girls would be."

"Oh, that's when they're alone. I've got you."

She was so trusting, so sure of him. Had he wanted to he could easily have deserted her. But he did not want to. Did one desert pleasure ? Did one desert happiness and all the real joys of life ?

He had changed a good deal since he had known her. It was ironical that the change should be for the better. He was gentler

with Maud; he no longer allowed her to irritate him. He was thoughtful, wanting to make up for his previous indifference. How strange that contentment should come through sin; and stranger still that a word like sin could be attached to his love for Millie Sand.

She had died, little Millie Sand, two days after the child was born. How desolate he had been! How sad and lonely! He could not imagine now what he would have done without Fenella, for it was to her he had gone with his tragic tale.

Fenella had taken charge. The landlady was a motherly woman. Let her look after the child until she was two years old; then she could be sent to a convent of which Fenella knew.

It was Fenella who had named the child.

"When Millie talked of her," he said, "she called her Millie. She called her little Millie Sand. . . . That was Millie's own name."