"Well, if not a fortune, at least a comfortable income," said Nancy eagerly; "and if I did, Mother, I should give it all to you!"

"Thank you for nothing, my dear," was the ungracious reply.

To this Nancy made no answer. She carried the big basket of stockings to the window, and sat down in the cold winter light to do such repairs as were necessary. Poor child! It was a hard fate for her. She was the eldest of a family of five, all dependent on the exertions of her widowed mother in keeping afloat the big boarding-house by which they lived. For a boarding-house, be it ever so liberally managed, be the receipts ever so generous, is but a sordid abode, especially to those who have the trouble and care of managing it; and to an eldest daughter, and one who stands between the anxious mother and the younger children, who mostly resemble young rooks with mouths chronically open, such a life appears perhaps more sordid than it does to any one else.

To Nancy Macdonald, with her mind full of visionary beauty, and living daily in a world of her own--not a world of boarding-houses--the life they lived seemed even more sordid, more trivial, more petty, than it was in reality. Her wants were not many; she was never inclined to rail at fate because she had not been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, not at all. But if only she could have a quiet home, with an a.s.sured income, just sufficient to cover their modest wants, to provide good wholesome food, to buy boots and shoes for the little ones, to pay the wages of a good servant, to take those lines of anxious care from her mother's forehead, so that she could employ her leisure in cultivating her Art--she always called it her Art, poor child!--she would have been perfectly happy, or she _thought_ she would have been perfectly happy, which, in the main, amounted to the same thing. As she sat in the cold light of that winter's afternoon, darning, as if for dear life, the great pile of stockings which were her portion, she soon drifted away from the tall Bloomsbury dwelling into a bright, brilliant land of romance, where there were no troubles, no cares, where nothing was sordid, and everything was bright and rosy, and even troubles and worries might have been adequately described as "double water gilt."

Young writers do indulge in these blessed dreams of fancy, and Nancy, remember, was only twenty. Her heroines were always lovely, always extravagantly rich or picturesquely poor; her heroes were all lithe and long, and most of them had tawny moustaches, and violet eyes like a girl's. They were all guardsmen or n.o.blemen. They knew not the want of money; if they were _called_ poor, they went everywhere in hansoms, and had valets and gambling debts. It was an ideal world, and Nancy Macdonald was very happy in it.

From that time forward a new life began for the girl. The household certainly went more smoothly, because of that promise to her mother; and Mrs. Macdonald's sharp tongue whetted itself on other grievances more frequently than on that old one about Nancy's scribbling propensities.

It was irritating to Nancy, of course, to hear her mother continually nagging about something or other; but then, as she reminded herself very often during the day, her mother had great anxieties and grievous worries. She was a sort of double-distilled Martha, "careful and troubled," not about many things, but about everything--everything that did happen, or might happen, even what could happen under given circ.u.mstances which might and probably never would occur. Still, it was not so trying to bear when the shafts of sarcasm and complaining were aimed at others instead of herself, and to do Nancy strict justice, she did try honestly to do the work which lay to her hand.

In the midst of the mult.i.tudinous cares of the large household it must be owned that the girl's writing suffered. It is all very well for a girl in fiction to do scullery work all day long, and write the brilliant novel of a season in odd moments, in a cold and cheerless bedroom, but in real life it is very different. Nancy Macdonald gave her attention to stockings and table-linen, and shopping and ordering and dusting; to keeping boarders in good temper, and making herself generally useful; to superintending the education and manners of the little ones, to smoothing down the rough edges of her mother's chronic asperity--in short, to being a real help; but her much loved work practically went to the wall. She dreamed a good deal while she was doing other things, but mere dreaming is not of much help towards making name or fortune; work is the only road which leads to either. Still, you cannot do your duty without improving your character, and Nancy Macdonald's character was strengthening and softening every day. She worked a little at night, but often she was far too tired and weary to attempt it. Very often when she did so, she found that the words would not run, the incidents would not connect themselves, and frequently that her eyes would not keep open; and then I am obliged to say that it was not an uncommon thing for Nancy Macdonald to get into bed and cry herself to sleep.

Still, her character was strengthening. With every day that went by she learnt more of the power of endurance; she became more patient, more fixed in her ideas; the goal of her desires was set more immediately in front of her. It was less visionary, but it was infinitely more substantial. In a desultory kind of a way she still worked, still wrote of lords and ladies whom she did not know in the flesh, still drew pictures of guardsmen with longer legs and tawnier moustaches even than before. She spent the whole of her pocket-money (which, by the bye, consisted of certain perquisites in the house, the medicine bottles and the dripping forming her chief sources of income) on ma.n.u.script paper, and was sometimes hard pushed to pay the postage on the mysterious packages which she smuggled into the post-office, and to provide the stamps for paying the return fare of these children of her fancy. Poor things, they always required it. No enterprising editors wanted the long-legged guardsmen, their blue eyes and tawny moustaches notwithstanding. n.o.body had a welcome for the lovely ladies, who were all dressed by Worth, though they never seemed to have heard of such a person as Felix. The disappointments of their continued return were very bitter to her; yet, at heart, Nancy Macdonald was a true artist, and had all the true artist's pluck and perseverance, so that she never thought of giving up her work. It was only that she had not yet found her _metier_.

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 p.r.o.nounced 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, pa.s.sionate a.s.sertions 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 a.s.severations 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 a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 p.a.w.nshop 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tered 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tered 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 ma.n.u.script 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."