THE CALL OF THE WORLD

The capacity of the average human being to drift apart from his fellows, whether by accident or design; to take up new interests to the neglect of old ones; to regard as mere pleasant memories vital matters which but yesterday stirred the very soul of him; all these have done much to people the great world and to spread men over its surface--but have sometimes been disastrous for the individual. Men and women have told themselves, times without number, that in this way will they live without separation; in that fashion will they order their lives; and lo!

in a moment grim Fate steps in; and they are flung apart almost before there is time for remonstrance.

In such cases, happily, the new interests a.s.sert themselves, and the man or the woman--easily adaptable--begins instantly to form new ties, and to think less and less regretfully of the old ones. It is a kindly law of Nature--a merciful law.

This is true, of course, in the vast majority of cases--but not in all.

It was not true in the case of the girl Moira, for instance; because she rebelled fiercely against the sudden s.n.a.t.c.hing of herself away from the old life--the rude dispersal of everything and everyone that had made up that life. Hers was not a nature formed for forgetfulness; more than that, the new life (or may we not rather call it existence?) into which she had gone proved so bare as to force her back, against her will almost, to those old and pleasant recollections for almost her only mental food.

Patience, in the course of careful years, had ama.s.sed savings. She had been in the family of Paul Nannock for so long a time, and her reward as a trusted servant had been so generous, and the necessity for spending anything so meagre, that she had a considerable sum, carefully invested--considerable, that is, for a woman in her position. The interest upon those savings had gone on acc.u.mulating, until at Old Paul's death she was in a position to fold her hands, and to slumber, if she liked, during the remainder of the time left to her. She chose to do that; her real interests in life had closed with the death of the last of the family she had served; quite simply and rather beautifully, there was nothing left for her to do. Nothing, that is, save as regarded the girl Moira; for Moira had elected to stay with her.

In a sense--a selfish, elderly sense--Patience clung to the girl. Her jealously watchful eyes had shown her that the child had been first in all things with Paul; she was, in a sense, a legacy left by him, all unconsciously, to the old woman. Perhaps, too, there was a curious feeling that if Moira went elsewhere she might come to talk about that precious memory of the dead man; and with Patience only must it be shared. She stood a little in awe of the girl; was attracted to her, in a subtle sense; and so made willingly enough an arrangement to keep her with her.

Patience had never really liked the country, save for the sake of her dead master; her heart always was in the turmoil of the streets where she had been born and where she had lived so long; now, free again, she would go back to it. And in that, of course, Moira was heartily with her; for had not Jimmy set out to the Enchanted City, and was she not absolutely to meet him at the very moment of her arrival? She had walked so often through Daisley Cross, and had seen practically every living soul that filled her world. London might be bigger, but anyone could be met there easily enough. In her idea of the place Jimmy stood waiting, with hands outstretched and a smile in his eyes.

The tragedy of the thing only dawned upon her later. So eager had she been to follow where Jimmy had gloriously led, that the matter of farewells was a small one. Mr. and Mrs. Baffall said good-bye solemnly, and urged that she would write; Alice was tearful for five minutes, but called that marvellous equanimity of hers to bear upon the situation, and waved a hand smilingly at the last. And then it was hey for London, and the old life left behind! She went willingly and even eagerly with Patience; and so the world swallowed her, and she was lost.

Patience had, of course, no concern for anyone outside the man who was dead and the girl who lived; no one else mattered. She had nodded sharply with pursed lips when Mrs. Baffall pressed her to write; in her heart she determined that not a line should be sent. She was going away to live her own life; all this was done with. And in that spirit she brought Moira to London--Moira, taller by an inch or two than the bent old woman whose hand she held, and to whom she clung.

Moira was about fourteen years of age, slim, but not very well formed, with all the awkward movements of a shy girl growing up rapidly. When it is remembered that she had never seen any place very much larger than Daisley Cross, save when she had taken little excursions with Old Paul and the others to neighbouring towns, it is not to be wondered at that that first coming to London was a shock greater than can well be described. The coming to the fringe of it--that fringe which was not London at all, and yet had long since left the country behind, and was a dreary expanse of roofs and chimney-pots--cleaner roofs and newer chimney-pots than were to be found further in. After that, the roar and the rush beating up about the carriage of the train like a great angry sea; men and women crowding and hurrying everywhere in the streets down below them, and on the stations through which they flew; and then, lastly, London itself, and the demon of Noise let loose upon them! Where in all that turmoil through which they had almost to fight their way was to be found Jimmy, as she had seen him last going up the quiet hill in the rain, on a morning that seemed to be set years back in the ages?

Patience had taken some tiny furnished rooms in the top part of a house in a small street in Chelsea; one of the narrowest streets imaginable; and there, in a dull, ordinary, complete fashion, she settled down with the girl; folded her hands--and was at rest.

But Moira? This child of the woods and the fields and the birds and the flowers; this little sensitive loving soul that craved the touch of loving hands and the whisper of loving words; what of her? On how many hopeless nights was she to stare out, wet-eyed, over the hideous streets, and wonder if this was the end, and if, like Patience, she was to grow old in these top rooms, and never see the world again, and never hear of anyone. On how many nights as she sat with her knitting or her needlework (for Patience knew her duty, and knew that in these things for the young lay salvation), did she glance past the lamp on the little table, and look at the sleeping woman whose spectacles had been carefully lifted off and laid on the table before she composed herself in her arm-chair. Always the lamp burning there--and the woman sleeping--and the silence of the room--and the memories that would not die, and that the child did her best indeed to keep alive.

Now it was Old Paul, wandering with her through the woods; she had only to move that hand from her knitting for a moment, and close her eyes stealthily, to feel the warm touch of his fingers again. Oh, G.o.d! the warm touch of his fingers!

Now it was Jimmy, shut up, too, in this dreadful world of London somewhere this night, and calling to her above all the roar of the streets, and never making her hear. She closed her eyes again, and lay with Jimmy on the warm earth, with the sun beating down upon them, and only a whisper now and then pa.s.sing between them--the very inmost kernel of their thoughts. Moira had that moment seen a fairy flit across where the sunlight lay in a path from tree to tree; and she whispered it to Jimmy, who nodded in perfect understanding. Oh, G.o.d! the fairies in the sunlight!

Now she rode again in Paul's arms in the old donkey-chaise, with the Ancient One crawling home through the warm scented dusk of a summer night; and Old Paul murmured tales to her that she knew by heart, but yet could never hear too often; and she opened her eyes and blinked away the tears, and saw always the lamp on the little table, and the woman asleep in her chair.

There were, of course, summer mornings even in London--mornings when the fresh young spirit of her, not to be quenched, rose exultant to the sunlight, and craved for air and liberty. But even then the watchful jealousy of Patience had to be reckoned with; she must not go far; she must not stray in this direction nor in that. More often than not Patience insisted on going with her; so that the spectacle was presented of the white-faced girl going through the streets, guiding the slower steps of the old woman. That was how she saw London, and how she knew it for almost four long years.

It seems in a sense incredible; but it is strictly true. Even the people in the same house with her knew nothing of her, and probably cared nothing. She grew up in that bitter narrow environment; came to full womanhood in the heart of the greatest city in the world; and yet knew nothing of the life of the city or of the world at all. She dwelt always in the past, this child of the dark eyes and the unclouded and untouched heart; anything that she saw or heard in the streets through which she pa.s.sed with the old woman for company went by her, and left no trace.

Her necessarily lengthening frocks were lengthened by herself; whatever small vanities sprang up in her, with the growth of her womanhood, were caught deftly enough from the people she saw in the streets, and from shop windows, and were imitated cheaply and dexterously. But the life of loneliness did not change.

Once she escaped--and only once. She must have been nearly seventeen when the chance came, and then it came and was gone before almost she had had time to recover breath. It came in the strangest fashion, and it woke within her something that made her half afraid of herself, even while it filled her with strange delight.

A girl, some years older than herself, climbed the stairs one day, and asked for her--not by name, because few people knew her name at all.

Patience met the intruder, and recognised in her a girl who lived in the rooms below--a sharp, bright, rather common girl--easy and good-natured, and knowing London perfectly; and Patience, seeing in her a new danger, confronted her and demanded her errand.

"Well, I thought she might like to go out with me to-night," said the girl, a little aggressively. "I shan't do her no harm; I know my way about. I've got two tickets----"

"No," said Patience in a low voice, as though she would keep the mere knowledge of the thing from the girl in the room behind her. "We keep ourselves to ourselves, thank you; there's nothing we want."

"I don't know that I was talking to you," retorted the other, rather hotly. "It strikes me as rather hard if a girl can't say what she'd like to do or what she wouldn't. And if the opera isn't respectable, then I'd like to know what is?"

Patience felt a hand on her shoulder, and turning a little guiltily, saw Moira standing beside her. She had caught that last word, and understood, curiously enough, what it meant; for Old Paul had spoken of it more than once. Old Paul had been lifted out of himself, it seemed, on occasions of heavy trouble, by this same wonderful opera; had felt his soul rising on wings of music far away from the earth and its troubles. This was Old Paul's business clearly, and Patience must stand aside. So much the girl demanded.

"I think I will go," said Moira, smiling out at the other girl. "It's very kind of you."

"Not a bit of it," retorted the other, with a laugh. "I only got these by chance; there's not many going, I can tell you. It's _Faust_, and a bit of a big night. There's somebody else"--the girl laughed confusedly, and turned away her head--"somebody else that generally takes me out; but he'd only fall asleep. Can't stand opera at any price. So I thought----"

She put on the neatest that she had, and enjoyed the new luxury of a ride on the top of an omnibus. They came to a great building ablaze with lights; and by that time Moira was trembling to such an extent that the other girl, somewhat amused and amazed, put a friendly arm about the thin form to guide it up the stairs. Moira came to herself among a great press of people, with a great crowded building spreading far down below her, and a blank curtain, and the faint sound of music. Then she forgot everything, and looked and listened--and understood.

For this was very perfectly what Old Paul had told her; almost it was as though she sat with his hand in hers, swaying that hand softly in the darkness to the sound of the music below her; understanding, with the sympathetic pressure of his fingers, all the wondrous story spreading itself before her--the hope, the despair, the pa.s.sion; all that love story that has stirred and moved the world for so long. She sat there, with her hands clasped, and her breath coming and going sharply; she saw nothing of anyone about her--knew nothing of where she was, or what the hour or the day; heard only the music--listened only as this thing was unfolded for her, and poured into her ears alone. For this was Love, as she had not known it nor understood it in her starved life; this was Love, that she knew, with a gasp of affright at the knowledge, it would be possible for her to feel and understand in its fullest intensity.

She sat there still after the curtain had fallen, and when the people were going out; her companion had to shake her somewhat roughly and with some feeling of uneasiness, before she would move at all. And then stumbled out like one blind.

Outside in the street, while the girl who knew her London was hurrying her along to get a 'bus, that London spread itself before Moira as a new and wonderful place. For here were men and women walking who could love as these dream people of the night had loved; here was a world transformed in a moment. She walked with light feet; all the world was alive for her to-night, and pulsing with a new feeling.

When they got out at the corner of the street that led to their own narrow little street, she took advantage of the darkness to catch at the hand of the other girl, and to raise it quickly to her lips. "I shall be grateful to you all my life," she whispered.

"Good Lord!" muttered the other girl, with an uncomfortable little laugh.

She found old Patience partially undressed, and with a shawl wrapped about her, slumbering uneasily before the burnt-out fire. Moira woke her rapturously; began to pour into her unsympathetic ears some halting, stumbling account of the wonders of the night; was met by a querulous pointing to the burnt-out fire, and to the fact that Patience had been kept out of her bed for hours beyond her usual time by these unnatural proceedings. The girl listened humbly, and said nothing more about what had happened; but she did not go again. As a matter of fact she had no further opportunity, probably because she was too surprising a companion to be taken out, even under the most generous impulses; perhaps even because no further tickets came to her friend. In any case it is doubtful if she would have accepted any further offer.

But though she dropped back to that dull routine that had been hers for so long, the memory of that night lived with her--to be stored away in that hidden chamber of memories, and not lightly to be forgotten. That was another matter over which she had merely to close her eyes, what time she sat in the dead silence of the room with the old woman and the lamp for company; and so to reconstruct the thing from beginning to end.

Often and often, when Patience was asleep, the girl sat there, with her eyes closed, and her head raised, and her hands locked together in her lap over her work, quivering from head to foot with the sheer ecstasy of that music and that story that had thrilled her, and would thrill her while ever she remembered.

That incident and its consequences gave her courage--courage to override the tender, jealous watchfulness of Patience. Once or twice before, in some pa.s.sionate desire to get back to the life she had known and understood in her childhood, Moira had set about the task of writing to Alice; once, too, a polite note to Mrs. Baffall. But in each instance the idea of Moira writing at all had been seized upon by the old woman as something strange and out of the way; sharp questions had been answered evasively; and finally, Patience had bitterly exclaimed against the ingrat.i.tude of one who had received such benefits as had fallen to the lot of Moira, and yet wanted someone else to fill her life. So the letters had been torn up, and Moira had gratefully whispered her thanks and her repentance to the churlish woman; and there the matter had ended. But on this occasion she was bolder.

That breaking away from the dominion of the old woman had been a greater departure than either of them suspected; it had roused in Moira that indefinite longing for the things that once had been hers. She wrote to Alice at the house of the Baffalls again; a mad, hungry letter, craving forgiveness for a long silence, and expressing vaguely enough all the longings of a heart that had been held in check sternly enough for a long time. Above all, she asked where Jimmy could be found in London; commented pitifully on the fact that she had not yet found him, although she had been in London so long. And having sent that letter, in defiance of frowns and shrugs and murmured complaints, sat down to await the postman that must inevitably come to her as a messenger straight from out of the old life.

It took more than a fortnight for that messenger to arrive; but he came one morning, and left a letter addressed to "Miss Moira Nannock," and bearing the London postmark. In all that starved time this had been the only letter the girl had had; one or two had come for Patience purely on business, and relating to small matters of dividends. Moira carried it up to her room, and looked at the precious thing with sparkling eyes before she opened it. Opening it, she found it to be commonplace enough, even though it had a certain note of conventional girlish impulse about it.

"DEAREST MOIRA,

"How perfectly sweet of you to have written to me after all this long time! Of course I have not forgotten the old days; how could you suppose such a thing? I have never really got over Old Paul's death yet; it was so inexpressibly sad. For a time, at least, we have left Daisley Cross. I was bored to death there, and dear Aunt Baffall was only too glad to bring me to London. We are staying at a house here for the present, and you must come and see me as soon as you can. I must close now, having a dozen other letters to answer before a tiresome morning drive.

"Yours with love,

"ALICE VICKERY."

There was not much in the letter; but the suggestion that Alice, too, had come to London seemed to be a binding together anew of the original little company. Moreover, there was at the very end of the note a little hurried scrawl, giving the business address to which Jimmy had been sent. Alice had "got it out of Uncle Baffall"--but did not know anything more about Jimmy. At all events, here, with the simple coming of the postman, Moira was in touch already with almost all the people who had come into her life at the very beginning; and life took on a new aspect from that time.

Patience asked about the letter; nodded grimly when she understood that the Baffalls had come to London. "Trust her for that," said the old woman--"she'll make them do what she likes without any trouble at all.

That's where you're different, my dear. Alice will slide through the world with that smile of hers and that little turn at the corners of her mouth; people will simply lie down for her to walk over 'em."

Moira, in that new eagerness to reconstruct her original world, went at once to the address of the Baffalls, as given in the letter. She was a little dismayed, on coming into the neighbourhood, to find what a very grand neighbourhood it was; she walked round the square twice before summoning courage to approach the door of the house. And when that door was opened by a tall footman, who looked straight over the top of her head while blandly asking her business, she nearly turned and ran away again. But was finally ushered into a room that seemed all gold and mirrors, and sat down there to await the appearance of this new Alice.

Mrs. Baffall came instead. Mrs. Baffall, looking a little older and a little greyer and a little more nervous; Mrs. Baffall with an eye upon the door, even while she tearfully hugged Moira. Yet Mrs. Baffall, very prosperous-looking for all that, even though not quite fitting in with the gold and the mirrors.

"Oh, my dear," murmured Mrs. Baffall, turning the pale face to the light of the windows that she might see it better, "where have you been all this time?--and why haven't we seen you? Often and often I've thought about you--(oh, my dear--what a white, thin face it is!)--and wondered what had become of you. And Old Paul (though the Lord forgive me for speaking so disrespectful of the dead) going away like that, without ever making the least provision! And as you know, my dear, Baffall and me couldn't do everything--and you did make up your mind to go your own way--and----"

"I've wanted to write to you often," said Moira, speaking a little unsteadily--"but--but there seemed to be nothing to write about. We've led very quiet lives. And Alice----"

"Well--and very pretty," said Mrs. Baffall hurriedly, with another glance at the door. "Not but what, my dear, it hasn't been in my mind many a time that it might have been better to take someone else at the first--instead of her. For she hustles us, my dear; we don't seem to get that peace in the house that Baffall and me looked forward to. It's pictures here--and a crick in the neck through looking at the top ones--and a concert there--and all sorts of things that we ain't used to. But still--she's young--and I suppose----"