Chapter II
For about six months after Nancy’s promise to her mother that she would not even try to write during the working hours, life went fairly prosperously with the widowed boarding-house keeper. Then a spell of bad luck set in. Several boarders left and were not replaced. Their best paying permanent boarder—a rich old gentleman, the head of a large business in the city—died suddenly, died without a will, although he had several times spoken of his intention of leaving Mrs. Macdonald a handsome legacy; and his next-of-kin did not seem to think it necessary to do more than pay the actual expenses which their relative had incurred. Twice they had visitors who left without paying their bills; and, as a last crowning act of ill-luck, the youngest child fell sick, and the doctor pronounced the illness to be scarlet fever.
“When troubles come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions”;
and that is as true to-day as when Shakespeare penned the lines more than three hundred years ago.
Mrs. Macdonald was almost beside herself. She ceased to gird at any member of the family or household; she girded at Fate instead, morning, noon, and night. She discussed the situation in a frenzied manner, with tears in her eyes and a large amount of gesticulation, which would have formed an excellent object-lesson to a student for the stage; but, at the same time, it must be owned that raving appeals to the Almighty, passionate assertions that she was the most unlucky woman that the light of day had ever shone upon, bitter forebodings of what her daily life would be like when she was safely landed in the nearest workhouse, did not avail anything. No, the Macdonald family was in for a spell of bad luck, and all the asseverations in the world would not alter it or gainsay it.
At this time Nancy was like a rock in the midst of a stormy sea. She, after much self-communing, threw over her promise to her mother concerning the time of her writing. She felt, as every true artist feels, that it was in her to do great things; and that even a little money earned in such a crisis would be of double value. So every moment that she could steal from the now greatly decreased house duties she spent in her own room, working with feverish haste and anxiety at a new story, a story which was not about lords and ladies, or majestic guardsmen, or lovely heroines in costly Parisian dresses; no, she felt, all in a moment, the utter futility of trying to draw a phase of life with which she herself was not familiar. It seemed to come to her like a flash of light that her children of pen and ink were not real; that she was fighting the air; that she was like an artist drawing without a model. Like a living human voice a warning came into her mind, “Write what you know; write what you see; before all things be an impressionist.” So her new child was slowly coming to life, a child born in poverty and reared in a boarding-house. The form of the child was crude, and was the work of an unpractised hand; but it was strong. It was full of life; it was a thing alive; and as line after line came from under her hand, as the story assumed shape and colour from under her nervous fingers, Nancy Macdonald felt that she was on the right tack at last, that this time she would not fail.
As soon as her story was done, she sent it with breathless hope to a well-known weekly magazine which is almost a household word, and then she sat down to wait. Oh! but it is weary waiting under such circumstances. After three days of sickening suspense, Nancy decided in her own mind that if she had to wait as many weeks she would be raving mad at the end of them. So she locked herself in her room and began another story, the story of a love affair which came about in just such a house as their own.
Meantime, it can scarcely be said that the Macdonald fortunes improved. It is true that the fever-stricken child recovered, and was sent away to a superior convalescent home at the seaside. It is true that one or two fresh boarders came, and that there were hopes that the family would be able to weather the storm, supposing, that is, that they were able to tide over the next few months. Still, in London, it is not easy to tide over a few months when your resources have been drained, and your income has been sorely diminished. There were bills for this and that, claims for that and the other, and these came in with great rapidity and with pressing demands for payment.
Mrs. Macdonald pitied herself more than ever; her tones, as she recalled the virtues of her past life, were more tragic; her debit and credit account with the Almighty she showed to be clearly falsified. Never was so good a woman so abominably used of Providence and humanity alike. She wept copiously over her deservings, and railed furiously against her fate. Poor Mrs. Macdonald! For many a weary year she had toiled to the best of her ability, and she had done her duty by her children according to her lights, which were pitiably dim, “The Lord must indeed love me,” she remarked, with bitterest irony, one day, when a mysterious visitor had put a gruesome paper into her unwilling hands.
“It is but the beginning of the end, Nancy,” she said resignedly, “the beginning of the end. I haven’t a sovereign in the house, and how I am to pay nine pounds seventeen and fourpence is beyond me altogether. It won’t last long; we shall have the roof of the workhouse over our heads soon. We can’t go on like this. Where’s the money to come from?”
And that, of course, Nancy knew no more than her mother.
“Could not we sell something?” she said, looking round their shabby little sitting-room, where all that was worst in the house was gathered together because it was only used by themselves. “Couldn’t we sell something?”
“I might sell my cameo brooch,” said Mrs. Macdonald, with a huge sigh. “It was the last present your poor father ever gave me.”
“And I don’t suppose it would fetch anything like nine pounds seventeen and fourpence,” said Nancy doubtfully.
“Your father paid a great deal for it,” returned Mrs. Macdonald, “but when one has to sell, it’s different to buying. One gives one’s things away.”
As a matter of fact, the late Mr. Macdonald had given fifty shillings for the cameo brooch in question, having bought it in a pawnshop in the Strand; but neither Mrs. Macdonald nor Nancy were aware of that fact.
“Dear Mother,” said Nancy, “I would not worry. You have still a fortnight before you need settle it one way or the other. A great many things may turn up in a fortnight.”
“Not a ten pound note,” said Mrs. Macdonald, with an air of conviction.
“You don’t know, Mother. Look how many things have turned up when we least expected them, and money has come that seemed to have dropped from the clouds. At all events, I would not break down over it until the very last day comes; I would not indeed, Mother.”
“Ah, perhaps you would not,” said the mother, “I should not have done so when I was your age. When you are mine, you will understand me better.”
“Yes, dear, perhaps I shall; but you know, even if the worst happens—oh, but we shall manage somehow, depend upon it, we shall manage somehow.”
But Nancy’s youthful philosophy did not tend to check the flow of Mrs. Macdonald’s troubled spirit. A whole week went by, which she passed chiefly in tears, and in drawing gloomy pictures of the details of the life which would soon, soon be hers. “I shall have to wear a poke bonnet and a shawl,” she remarked, in a doleful tone one day, “and I never could bear a shawl, even when they were in fashion—horrid cold things.” At meals, of course, poor lady, she had to keep a cheerful countenance, so that her guests should not suspect how badly things were going with them; but Nancy noticed that she ate very little, and like most young people, her chief idea for a panacea for all woes took the form of food. In Mrs. Macdonald’s case, it took the form of fresh tea and hot buttered toast; and, really, I would be sorry to say how much tea was used in that household during those few days, by way of bolstering its mistress’s strength and spirits against what might happen in the immediate future.
The fortnight of grace soon passed away, and with every day Mrs. Macdonald’s spirits sank lower and lower. She looked old and aged and worn; and Nancy’s heart ached when she realised that there was no prospect of anything turning up, and apparently no chance of the danger which threatened them being averted. What money had come in had mostly been imperatively required to meet daily expenses. It seemed preposterous that people with a large house as they had should be in such straits for so small a sum; and yet, if they began selling their belongings, which, with the exception of the cameo brooch and Mrs. Macdonald’s keeper ring, almost entirely consisted of furniture, she knew that it would be impossible to replace them, or even to dispose of them without the knowledge of their guests. She hardly liked to suggest it to her mother, and yet she felt that when the last day came, she would have no other course open to her.
It was the evening before the last day of grace, and still the needful sum had not been set aside. Twice during the day Mrs. Macdonald had subsided in tears and wretchedness into the old armchair by their little sitting-room fire, while Nancy had brought her fresh fragrant tea and a little covered plate of hot buttered toast, and had delicately urged her to decide between selling the precious brooch and appealing to one or other of the boarders for an advance payment.
“I will just wait till the morning,” she said to herself, as she came down from the drawing-room after dispensing the after-dinner coffees.
“Nancy! Nancy!” cried her younger sister Edith, at that moment. “Where are you?”
“I am here, dear,” Nancy replied. “What is the matter?”
The child, for Edith was only some thirteen or fourteen years old, came running up the stairs two steps at a time.
“Here’s a letter for you, Nancy,” she said eagerly.
“A letter?” cried Nancy, her mind flying at once to her story.
“Yes, it’s got a Queen’s head on it or something. Here it is.”
The two girls reached the large and dimly-lighted entrance-hall together, one from upstairs and one from down.
“Give it to me,” said Nancy, breathlessly.
She felt that it was a letter about her story. The very fact that it had come without an accompanying roll of manuscript gave her hope. She tore open the envelope with trembling fingers, and by the light of the single flickering gas-lamp, read its contents.
“The Editor of the Family Beacon presents his compliments to Miss Macdonald, and will be pleased to accept her story, ‘Out of Gloom into the Sun,’ for the sum of fifteen guineas, for which a cheque will be sent immediately on receipt of her reply.”
For a few moments the poor painted hall, with its gaunt umbrella stand and cold black and white marble floor, seemed to be rocking up and down, and spinning round and round. The revulsion of feeling was so intense that the girl staggered up against the wall, fighting hard with her palpitating heart.
“Oh, Nancy, what is it?” cried Edith, staring in a fright at her sister’s chalk-white face. “Is it bad news?”
“Oh, no, GOOD news; the best news. Where’s Mother? I——” she could not speak, she simply could not finish the sentence. Her trembling lips refused to perform their office. In her shaking hands she still clutched the precious letter, and gathering her wits together, she turned and literally tore down the stairs to the basement.
“Mother! Mother! Where are you?” she cried.
“What is it?” cried Mrs. Macdonald, who, poor soul, was ready for all and every evil that could fall upon her.
For a moment Nancy tried to control herself sufficiently to speak, but the revulsion of feeling was too great. Twice she opened her mouth, but no words would come. Then she dropped all of a heap at her mother’s feet, and hiding her head upon her knee, she burst into a passion of tears.
In spite of her acidity, and her disputes with Providence and things in general, Mrs. Macdonald still retained some of her mother’s instinct. She drew the girl’s head to her breast, and held her there tightly, with a tragic at-least-we-will-all-die-together air that was utterly pathetic. She had no words of consolation for what she believed was some new and terrible trouble come upon them. Then, as Nancy still sobbed on, she drew the letter from her unresisting fingers, mastered its contents, and sat like a woman turned to stone.
“I am afraid,” she said, after a long silence, “that I have been very cruel to you, Nancy. I have called your scribbling, rubbish; I have scolded you; I have been very hard on you; and instead of my being punished for my blindness, it is your work which has come to save me from the end which I so dreaded. But I shall never forgive myself.”
But Nancy, the storm over, brushed the tears away from her eyes, and sat back, resting her elbow upon her mother’s knee.
“Oh, it is very silly of me to go on like this,” half laughing, and half inclined to weep yet more. “I have been so worried you know, Mother. It’s really stupid of me; but you mustn’t blame yourself now that good luck has come to us, must you? You did what you thought was right, and you had a right to speak; and, after all, I did leave everything to you—everything, and I might have wasted all my time. You were quite right, Mother.”
“What was that line Willie was writing in his copybook last week?” said Mrs. Macdonald, holding the girl’s hand fast, and looking, oh, so unlike her usual self—“Torches were made to burn; jewels to wear.”
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