i do not know how long my martyrdom in the town house had endured before i resolved to make an end of it myself. nor do i yet quite understand how the scene that led to an excess of misery so terminated began.
i had been more contented that day than usual. the nurse had let me sit by the nursery fire while she bathed and dressed the latest addition to our family circle, a baby boy with a pink wrinkled face. compared with that gurgling morsel of humanity, i felt very wise and old indeed. after that the nursemaid came and took me on her knee, and while perched there she sang me a song. i slept in the next room, and was not often allowed into the nursery, or i am sure the nurse and nursemaid would have made life easier for me.
then i wandered into the play-room, and here great doings were afoot. they were getting up a transformation scene. on the top of each[pg 80] ladder a little girl sat, representing a fairy, and in the middle of the room a small child lay with a white cloth about her. when somebody clapped hands she sprang up, caught her skirts in either hand, and began to dance as she had seen the fairies in the pantomime.
they were all in high spirits that day, and let me look on without snubbing or laughing at me. like all creatures unaccustomed to much mercy, this small favour filled me with joy, and i expanded upon a whiff of social equality.
children resemble dogs in their dislike of intruders, and to these young people i daresay i, with my sulky miserable face, pale and woe-be-gone from association with sorrow and from unassuaged longing for other days, was an unattractive enough intruder. one there was who always resented my appearance in their midst more than the rest, my mother's favourite, the five-year-old queen of the establishment. my mother used to call her queen, and tell her that she was at liberty to do what she liked to me, as i was only a slave.
what a surprising amount of good must lie at the bottom of a nature so trained, that it ever developed into good-natured and generous womanhood! but to expect that the child in[pg 81] those days should have been other than a little vixen to me, would be to expect the impossible.
the play was interrupted for dinner, and after dinner the troop marched up again to the play-room to resume their game. i stayed down-stairs, and stole into the storeroom to talk to mrs. clement. near tea-hour she sent me on some message, and that, of course, was a proud moment for me. children love to be sent on messages between their elders. they instantly become as inflated as a general's aide-de-camp, and hardly need a horse in imagination to place them in their own esteem above the level of other children.
how it all came about i know not. the queen and the slave encountered somewhere on the way. we met like two young puppies and snarled. the queen had a despotic notion of her own rights. she might snarl at me, but i had not the right to reply. if she struck me it was part of my punishment for being in her way, and my duty was to bear it.
i don't suppose she reasoned this way any more than the young puppy does when it flies at the throat of a mongrel it dislikes. anyhow, she struck me. i was a proud, fierce [pg 82]little devil, and being two years her senior, i laid her low, with an ugly red stain on her white cheek.
as i do not remember how it began, so i do not recall how it ended. there is a dark blank of several hours—centuries it seemed to me—and i was in my cot sobbing myself to sleep, and telling myself that i could not bear it, and to-morrow would run away to my dear everyday parents.
next morning i sullenly submitted to be dressed and taken down to breakfast. but the red-and-white bowl i ate my bread and milk out of no longer delighted my eye, and no amount of sugar could take the taste of bitterness out of that bread-and-milk. my stepfather came into the room, and looked at me in reproachful silence. usually he kissed me and flung me up to the ceiling. but now that the poor miserable little worm had turned and struck the idol of the house, his own child, he had no kind word for me. he only knew of the affair what he had been told, and how many thoughtless big people can understand what goes on in the hearts of sore and lonely babies?
he may have noted the sadness of my face, but what did he know of the inward bruise, the[pg 83] hunger for love and sympathy, the malady of life that had begun to gnaw at my soul at an age when other little girls are out racing among the flowers in a universe bounded and heated and beautified by the love of mother and father?
mrs. clement must have been very busy, for she did not come to comfort me. perhaps she, too, thought i was a fiend. but i was too proud to seek to explain matters to any one. if they wanted to believe i was bad, they might think i was as bad as ever they liked.
in my open-worked pinafore and little house slippers, bare-headed and bare-armed, i stole anxiously down-stairs. the baker was carrying in the bread, and the hall-door was open. this was my chance, and i seized it. ah, there were the wide long streets, and however cruel the big people might be who went up and down them, at least they could not hurt me, for i did not belong to any of them.
like a frightened hare i scurried along the pavement until i came to a big crossing. i paused here in new peril. to go over alone meant to risk contact with the wheels and horses continually rolling and stamping by. i had not the courage to do this, and i stood[pg 84] gazing disconsolately across at the happy people walking so unconcernedly on the other side. while i stood there a policeman marched up in a leisurely fashion. he looked as if he might help a little girl, and i knew when robbers attacked you the proper person to assist you was a policeman.
"please, mr. policeman, will you take me across the street?" i asked, going boldly up to him.
the amiable giant put out his hand, grasped my eager fingers, and i pattered along at his side as he gravely led me over the crossing. without a word, i raced ahead; the quicker i ran, the quicker i believed i would reach mamma cochrane's house, and my dear friends, nurse, and louie, and mary jane.
in what direction i ran i know not to-day; i seemed to have been running down interminable streets for hours and hours, till at last my feet in their thin slippers began to ache. gradually my legs stiffened, and it was less and less easy to continue running. nobody stopped me, but i have an idea many stared at me. i hardly knew which i most feared, to be overtaken and carried back to my mother, or to be let die of hunger in those big unfriendly streets. either[pg 85] prospect seemed so terrible to me in a moment of lucid vision, that i at once dropped upon a doorstep and began to cry.
"what's the matter, little lady?" a tall policeman asked, with a smile of insidious kindliness.
"i want to find my everyday mamma so badly," i sobbed. "but it's so far away,—i'm very tired, and nobody is sorry for me, though i'm so unhappy."
i gazed anxiously up into the face of the big policeman, and wondered if such a very big person could possibly understand and pity the sorrows of such a very small person as myself.
"what's your name?" asked the big policeman.
"angela."
"and where do you live, missy?"
"oh, a drefful long way off—in a big house down there," pointing vaguely in front of me, "in a horrid big house, without any fields or flowers at all."
"won't you come along with me, missy?" coaxed the policeman, and if he had asked me to go to prison with that look and smile, i would cheerfully have gone, i think.
he lifted me into his arms and carried me, i know now, to the nearest police-station. here[pg 86] i was installed upon an inspector's knee, and an army of giants stood round me and made much of me. how the gentlemen of the force may appeal to others, i know not, but i must ever regard them as my kindest friends. they petted me prodigiously, and vied with each other in providing me with luxuries. one held a piece of bread-and-jam for me, another a slice of bread-and-honey, and various hands held out sweetmeats and cakes and apples. the thing was to satisfy everybody and devour each delicacy successively.
the amiable giants smiled upon me, and appeared to listen to my confidential chatter with admiration and delight. out of the gloom of the domestic circle i could be expansive to rashness. between bites, i told them the tale of my private grievances, and they shook sympathetic heads over my account of stevie's disappearance in a queer box, and dropped their jaws when i, charmed with the sensation i had made, assured them that i too was so miserable and lonely that i would like to be put in a box and sent to heaven. i would much rather go back to mamma cochrane's than anything; but if i could not find her i would like to die like stevie, unless the policemen would[pg 87] take care of me and let me stay with them always.
the inspector was ready to adopt me on the spot; meanwhile, as i was tired and the excitement had worn off, he encouraged me to fall asleep on his knee, which i was nothing loath to do.
the rest is a vague memory. somebody shook me, and i opened my eyes and saw my stepfather smiling at me. i thought i was at home, and rubbed my eyes, and then sat up. but i was still in the inspector's arms—i recognised his black cap and grey beard. my circle of friendly giants had vanished; but on a table beside me were heaped unfinished slices of bread and jam and honey, gingerbread nuts, shrewsbury biscuits, bulls' eyes, brandy balls, sugar-stick, and apples. a couple of policemen stood at the door and grinned in eloquent assurance of continued friendship, and the inspector had not released his comforting clasp of my wearied body.
"papa, i'm so happy here. don't let us go back any more to sunday mamma. let us stay here always with the nice policemen."
my stepfather laughed his joyous cordial laugh, and caught me in his arms. he shook[pg 88] hands with the inspector and the policemen, and carried me into a cab. i was still too sleepy and tired to whimper, and we had hardly set off before i was fast asleep on my stepfather's knee.
