But before she could find an epithet forcible enough for the occasion, Mary interrupted her in the same cool, unimpa.s.sioned voice as before: for she did not fear, and had learned to despise, her low-minded step-mother.

"Yes, grateful! and for what, if you please? I have worked hard here all my life. You daren't make the hired slavey work as you make me; and my father uses me as a clerk: and where will he get a clerk to copy so much a day as I do? Slavey and clerk in one I am, Mrs. Grimm, and for just enough food to keep body and soul together, and your worn-out clothes--you have got a cheap bargain in me I think," and the girl, losing some of her sang-froid in the memory of her wrongs, carried out the tray and banged the door behind her.

It was seldom that Mary bandied words with her stepmother in this way; possibly the glorious weather without had stirred her up to this ebullition, for the South West wind can excite us to honest indignation as well as to jollity.

Mrs. Grimm was what she would herself have described as bursting with rage. When the girl returned in a minute or so, cool and pale as ever, she smiled slightly when she perceived her stepmother's now purple visage. It is pleasant to behold one's enemy apoplectic with vain fury.

Then Mrs. Grimm broke out into the following fine oratorical display, panting at short intervals for breath, "You wretch: to talk to _me_ like that:--I'll let your father know of this when he comes back--we'll see if a little less food will cool down your hot blood, my girl.... Go out in the streets--go out, and see if with all your working and clerking anyone will take you in, though you are such a good bargain;--go out, and see if you won't starve; go. Why, with that ugly putty face of yours you could not even--"

She was about to be still coa.r.s.er in her remarks, as was not unusual with her, but Mary, flushing slightly, interrupted her mid-way.

"I know all that, Mrs. Grimm; I know how hard it would be to find work if I went from here. You don't think if it were otherwise that I'd stay another half-minute, do you?"

"Go out this minute and clean up all those breakfast things," shouted Mrs. Grimm, rising from her chair, beside herself with rage.

But Mary stood looking at her with folded arms aware that nothing could be more irritating to this violent woman than her cool behaviour.

Whether she would have refused to obey, how much further her mutinous spirit would have carried her is uncertain; for at that moment there came a postman's knock at the door, and the servant brought in a letter and handed it to Mrs. Grimm.

"That's the letter your father wants," she said, throwing it to Mary.

"Be off with it; be off with it, you little devil, and no dawdling, mind, no staring about. Don't imagine that anyone will admire that silly face of yours."

Mary did not feel this Parthian shaft as she hurried off, only too glad to escape into the open air, to be free for an hour.

She walked fast down the streets, and then turned to the right towards the Brixton railway station. Her step was elastic, for she was young, and though her youth was ever being crushed down, it but lay latent, ready to spring up when opportunity offered. The sunshine and wind of this June day brought it out. She was happy for the time; there was a sparkle of delight in her eye--delight for this short liberty which was in so strong contrast to her usual drudgery.

In five minutes she was outside the station; then suddenly the joy faded from her face, and she stopped short, as she looked with dismay through the archway into the dark pa.s.sage by which the railway is approached, appearing so cold and dismal after the outer warmth and light.

She realized that her walk was over now--she must get into the train.

In a few rapid minutes she would be at Ludgate Hill--then in her father's office, to sit perhaps through all the afternoon in the hateful little inner room that she knew so well, and into which clients were never shown, to copy papers till her head ached. Ah, the misery of it!

She hesitated before taking her ticket. Oh, for a half-hour's more freedom! She trembled with the strength of her desire. She yearned, as no one can who has not lived her life, for a respite, for but a little more time, to let her youth be filled with the glory of that summer day.

Her head seemed to turn with the temptations and ideas that crowded one on the other upon her. "Why should she go by train at all? Why not walk all the way to Ludgate Hill? What was to prevent her? Fear of her father--No!" and at the thought her head became defiantly erect, and her expression more obstinate. "Fear, she didn't fear."

Then in a moment her mind was made up; the impulse conquered; she turned her back suddenly on the station and walked off, a gleam of guilty joy in her eyes.

Having gone so far in revolt, she, as is natural, went yet a step further, and loitered quite slowly through the streets, looking into shop windows and amusing herself by studying the people who pa.s.sed her, all which was very different from her usual behaviour when out of doors.

She felt like a real girl now, and the childish joy and excitement that flushed her cheek and shone in her eyes gave a rare beauty to her face, such as it had perhaps never worn before, so that pa.s.sers looked with admiration and wonder at the fairy-like girl who, so shabbily and quaintly dressed, yet so graceful and so pretty, tripped lightly by them, the very model for a Cinderella.

She reached Blackfriars Bridge, and in the middle of it she stopped for a few minutes, leaning over the parapet, gazing up the grand sunny river, while the fresh breeze fanned her cheek and ruffled her soft hair. She was prolonging the short sweet spell of liberty: and when she turned at last from that glorious view, it was with very slow steps that she walked towards her father's office.

When she came to Fleet Street, and was at the point where the narrow street in which the office was situated branches from the great thoroughfare, she stood still again, while she put her hand in her pocket to bring out the letter.... It was not there! Her heart beat violently. She felt for it again--she brought out all the pocket's contents: an old thimble and a few other trifles--but no letter.

As is the unreasoning custom of those who have lost anything, she searched over and over again in the same places, hoping against hope.

At last she could deceive herself in this way no longer; she was convinced she had not got it--it was lost, and what was she to do now?

A confused crowd of ideas rushed into the child's mind: what to do--to go to the office and tell her father what had happened? or to walk back the way she had come and see if she could find the letter on the road anywhere? or to run away for good and trust to chance?

Her head swam and her heart beat when this last plan suggested itself to her, this grand and vague temptation--to run away--to have liberty, entire liberty--never to go back to that cruel house in Brixton. Oh, the delight, the mystery of it!

She was a brave girl, and to be cast adrift on the world did not terrify her much. This pluck was not due to childish ignorance; for she knew well how hopeless were the prospects of one in her situation, how cruel were the streets of the great city.

Her brain was in a whirl. Anyhow she would put off the evil moment, she said to herself; she would not decide at once, she would think the matter over. So she walked away towards the bridge again.

Then in her uncertainty she came back once more, and hardly knowing what she did went up Fleet Street, up the Strand, and reached Trafalgar Square.

In her perplexity she stood for a few seconds gazing at the fountains glittering in the sun. Then all of a sudden, in that great open place, the pa.s.sion of freedom so filled her soul, that it drove before it all other considerations. Her wavering mind yielded at once, having no more power to hesitate or reason. She stamped her foot on the stone pavement, and cried aloud, "I shall not go back--never--never again--it is all over now."

Thus she decided to try the world, to throw herself on chance, they could not be crueller than home. If all failed was there not the river?

She had read in the papers of poor women leaping in it when all hope was over--"No, she would not go home."

Now that her mind was quite made up, so strange and delightful a sense of freedom, of adventure, filled that young soul that she could have shouted for joy. She felt no care for the morrow, not she--this new liberty quenched for the moment all other ideas and fears.

"And where to go to now?" she thought. "Where seek employment?"

She had the sixpence her father had given her for her fare, a small capital to start life upon. Should she buy a broom and sweep a crossing, or go out into the country and pluck flowers to sell in the town, as she knew some poor girls did?

She was well aware that she was far from being so ugly as her stepmother had made out. She knew that many a gentleman would stop to buy a flower from a pretty girl like herself, who would pa.s.s a plain woman unnoticed.

Oh, yes, she knew that.

But she was so glad, so drunk with freedom, that she could not think steadily of these matters just yet. No, she must run wild for an hour or so, until this fever of delight had moderated. She must go to some great open lonely place, where she could laugh and dance to herself for awhile.

This poor little Mary who had never been a child before! all the pent-up childishness of the long sad years burst out in this her wild, mad, first day of freedom.

She thought she would go out of the crowded streets to be by herself in Hyde Park for an hour or so. She had been there once before on a winter's morning, and she had noticed what a vast lonely region it was.

So she went up Piccadilly, pa.s.sed into the Park, and found herself at the corner of Rotten Row.

Imagine her bewilderment at what she saw. It was no longer the dreary desert of the winter's morning, but a great garden filled with such a crowd in carriage, on horseback, and on foot, as only Hyde Park at one period of the day and in the height of the London season can show.

She felt a new sensation of shame and terror creep over her in the midst of all these grand people who were so different from herself. They were looking at her, questioning her right to be there, she thought, and her confusion increased.

She glanced around with nervous bewilderment, and her face and neck flushed crimson. Some were looking at her, it is true; her rare grace and beauty contrasting with her old-fashioned shabby dress naturally attracted attention. Dowagers deliberately raised their pince-nez and stared at her, and young men of fashion gazed with open admiration.

"Oh, this won't do at all!" she said to herself, and she hurried off through the throng till she reached the comparatively deserted open green s.p.a.ce in the centre of the Park.

And now she could give play to her feelings. When no one was by, she went wild for a while and clapped her hands with joy, and all because she was alone in the world with a fortune of just six pennies.

At last she sobered down, and sitting on a bench began to ponder quietly but no less happily.

Now it happened that a Satyr of the Parks had seen her from afar off.

So presently there came by an elderly gentleman who was dressed in the height of fashion, belaced, bedyed as to whiskers, and with an affectation of youthful suppleness that must have made his old limbs ache again.

He pa.s.sed her once, glanced at her, then after a few paces returned again and sat down beside her.