Herb of Grace. Rosa Nouchette Carey
curiously round the room as he spoke.
He was not surprised when he learnt afterwards that the second Mrs. Martin objected to the basement. It was certainly a gloomy little place, though scrupulously clean and neat. The sunshine of a July day filtered reluctantly through the small, opaque-looking window. Caleb's bench and tools were placed just underneath it, and above his head a linnet hopped and twittered in a green cage. Kit's perambulator occupied one corner, while Kit herself, seated at the table in a high chair, was busily engaged in ironing out some ragged doll-garments with a tiny bent flat-iron. Anna regarded her pitifully—the small shrunken figure and sunken chest, and the thin white face with its halo of red curls. But Kit was almost too absorbed with her endeavour to get the creases out of a doll's petticoat to heed her scrutiny. She only paused to nod at Malcolm in a friendly way.
"I wasn't wet one little bit, though Ma'am scolded dad so," she exclaimed in her high shrill voice. "I was like a queen in a big tent, wasn't I, dad? I was awful comfortable."
"She might have been drowned dead for all the care he took," returned Mrs. Martin with a contemptuous sniff, as she planted her arms akimbo in her favourite attitude. Her elbows were so sharp and bony that Anna thought of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. "If it weren't for me that blessed lamb would be a corpse every day of her life—though I beg and pray him on my bended knees not to run her into danger."
She was only a coarse-tongued virago, but even Anna, who had shrunk from her, felt a little mollified and touched as she saw how tenderly the rough hand rested on the child's curls. But Kit pushed it pettishly away. "Don't, Ma'am, you've been and gone and spoiled Jemima's ball dress, and she is going to wear it to-night," and Kit held up a modicum of blue gauze which certainly did not bear the slightest resemblance to a garment, and regarded it anxiously. Jemima herself, a mere battered hulk of a doll, lay in a grimy chemise staring with lack-lustre eyes at the ceiling.
"I suppose Kit is not able to walk?" asked Anna, looking rather timidly at the formidable Mrs. Martin; but to her surprise the rugged, forbidding features softened and grew womanly in a moment.
"Law bless you, miss, the poor lamb has never stood on her feet in her life, and never will as long as she lives. The doctors at the hospital yonder say that when she gets older and stronger she will be able to use crutches; but she is as weakly as a baby now, for all she has turned eight."
"Kit's a slight stronger than she was last year," interposed Caleb, laying down the boots he was cobbling; but Ma'am was down on him in a moment.
"You may as well shut your mouth, Caleb, if you have got nothing better to say than that, and if you have not eyes to see the dear lamb is dwindling more and more every day in this cellar of a place. 'Plenty of fresh air and light,' says the doctor, 'and as much nourishment as you can get her to swallow,' and all the winter we have to burn gas or sit in darkness through the livelong day, and the fog choking the breath out of one."
"It is our misfortune, sir, as Kezia knows," began Caleb feebly; but his pale blue eyes grew watery as he spoke; "it is not much of an 'ome when one has seen better days, but to my thinking Solomon was in the right when he talked of that dinner of herbs. If Kezia had a contented mind we should maybe all of us get on better."
"A contented fiddlestick!" exclaimed Mrs. Martin, so angrily that Malcolm thought it wise to make a diversion, especially as a warm fishy odour in the adjoining kitchen heralded the near arrival of the noontide repast. When he saw more of the Martins he invariably noticed the smell of fish; it seemed to be their principal diet—fish broiled or fried or boiled, or even at tea-time shrimps or periwinkles. He saw that Anna found the atmosphere oppressive, and determined to beat a hasty retreat.
"Well, we must be going," he observed. "Good-day, Kit. Now I wonder, if I were to give you a doll, what sort you would like?" Then Kit, who had been frowning fiercely over the ball dress, looked up at him with astonished blue eyes.
"A real new dollie for me," she said breathlessly. "Oh my, Ma'am, do you hear that? Oh please may I have a baby that shuts its eyes, and that I can love?"
"Oh yes, I think we can manage that very well, Kit. You may look for your new baby in a few days." And then Anna kissed the sharp little face, and Mrs. Martin smiled at her quite affably.
"She'll talk of nothing else from morning to night. Thank you kindly, sir—and you too, young lady."
"Who is she?" whispered Kit, so loudly that both Malcolm and Anna overheard her. "Who is that nice lady, dad, in the white dress? Is she the gentleman's wife?"
Malcolm laughed in amused fashion as he assisted Anna up the crazy steps, but for once the girl did not respond. "It was so hot in that room," she said rather impatiently, putting up her hands to her burning cheeks. "Oh, Malcolm, what a dreadful woman and what a miserable place!"
"Oh I don't know," he returned. "Mrs. Martin's bark's worse than her bite, and one can see she is fond of the child. We may as well buy that doll, Anna, and then we will have some luncheon. There is a place I know where they do cutlets remarkably well, and their ices are capital," and then they set out in search of a toy-shop.
The shop where Malcolm proposed they should eat their luncheon had an upper window overhanging Piccadilly. Here they secured a small table to themselves.
At first Anna seemed a little thoughtful and abstracted. Kit's innocent suggestion had startled her out of her maidenly unconsciousness. It was such a strange thing to say. It was so terrible that people could think such things, and that Malcolm should only laugh as though he were amused. Somehow that laugh seemed to hurt her more than anything.
Malcolm was quite aware of the girl's discomposure; his gentlemanly instincts were never at fault. He knew that many of his mother's friends often hinted that his position with regard to her adopted daughter must be somewhat difficult. At such times he was given to affirm that no tie of blood could be stronger. "She is my sister in everything but name," he would say.
His influence over her was so great that he charmed her out of her quiet mood, and they were soon laughing and chatting in their old way.
They got into a hansom presently and drove to Cheyne Walk. As they passed Cheyne Row, and looked up at the grim old figure of the Sage of Chelsea, looking so gray and weather-beaten, Malcolm proposed that they should make a pilgrimage to No. 5, but Anna refused.
"We have been there three times," she objected, "and I do so dislike that dismal, dreary old house. I don't wonder that bright, clever Mrs. Carlyle was moped to death there."
"Hush, you little heretic," returned Malcolm good-humouredly. "To me No. 5 Cheyne Row is a shrine of suffering, struggling genius. When I stand in that bare, sound-proof room and think of the work done there by that tormented, dyspeptic man with such infinite labour, with sweat of brow and anguish of heart, I feel as though I must bare my head even to his majestic memory." Malcolm had mounted his favourite hobby-horse, but Anna listened to him rebelliously. They had been over this ground before, and she had always taken Mrs. Carlyle's part. "Think of a handsome, brilliant little creature like Jane Welsh," she would say indignantly, "thrown away on a learned, heavy peasant, as rugged and ungainly as that 'Hill of the Hawk,' that Craigen-puttoch, where he buried her alive. Oh, no wonder she became a neurotic invalid, shut up from week's end to week's end with a dyspeptic, irritable scholar in an old dressing-gown." Indeed, it must be owned, in spite of all Malcolm's eloquence, Anna was singularly perverse on this subject, and absolutely refused to burn incense to his hero.
As Anna must have her way on her birthday, Malcolm said no more, and the next moment they arrived at their destination—a gray, dingy-looking old house, somewhat high and narrow, overlooking the river.
The first floor windows opened on a balcony, which had an awning over it. Two or three deck-chairs had been placed there, and on summer evenings Malcolm loved to sit there, either alone or with a congenial spirit, enjoying the refreshing breezes from the river.
The house belonged to his friend Amias Keston, and some years before he had built himself a studio in the back garden. As his income was remarkably small, and his work at that time far from remunerative, he was obliged to let the upper floor.