Nell rose with a headache.
"I never," said she, "owned such a thing at home!"
She went to the window and looked out. A dingy grey fog hung over everything; the garden walls were wet.
"The fourth day that has been foggy and raw and liquid with mud!"
Sheila Pat trotted back into the room, her small face pinched, her teeth shut tight to prevent their chattering.
"Sheila Pat, you've had a cold bath!"
"I let the hot tap run a minute."
"And the hot water was tepid. Come here."
"I'm busy, Nell."
Nell went across and seized the shivering little body. Even through the bath-robe she could feel how cold it was. She started rubbing her down with a rough towel.
"You're awfully tiresome, Sheila Pat. If you will be such a baby, I shall have to come and get your bath ready myself."
"Y-you all have cold s-sponges!" sulked Sheila Pat, with chattering teeth.
"And so will you when you've grown bigger and stronger. Didn't Dr. McCarthy tell you so?"
"Is it s-strong? Feel my muscles! I j-just love icy-c-cold baths!"
"You look as if you do!"
"I think you're v-very rude, Nell O'Brien!" The Atom, after this dignified retort, relapsed into a cold silence.
"Now go and get Molly up, there's a good Atom," Nell said when Sheila Pat was clothed. "I can hear she's not moving."
The Atom departed.
"She's up now," she announced on her return.
"Well up?"
"I dipped her sponge in the jug, and squeezed it on her feet. She's very cross."
"I daresay she is. You're an ingenious little torturer, Sheila Pat."
Presently a wild-haired Molly burst into the room.
"Oh, Nell, I can't find any hair-ribbons, and my comb has tumbled down—I stuck it in the window to stop it rattling, and it's tumbled out—"
Nell interrupted, "Here's a comb and here's a ribbon."
"And Sheila Pat's made my bed all wet!"
"Hurry up! You've only three minutes, and you were late down yesterday, you know."
"Oh, Nell, do wait for me! I simply can't come into that room with Aunt Kezia's eye on me and grim silence!"
Sheila Pat had shut the door on her.
After breakfast the fog deepened, yellowed; Nell, with her mouth set obstinately, got out her canvas and brushes, and began to paint.
"Nell, you can't see to paint!" exclaimed Molly.
"I know I can't."
"Then what are you painting for?"
Nell squeezed out cobalt blue recklessly.
"My dear child, if we're to live in a place where it's always foggy, I've got to learn to paint in a thick yellow atmosphere, with the gas alight one minute and out the next. D'you think I'm not going to practise for the next hundred years? Sheila Pat, don't go near K.K.! You'll rouse her! Oh, why is she black? Do go on with your copy."
"I don't wish ever to write like my copy," said the Atom, stiffening her straight little back, "so what's the use of doin' it now?"
"Well, you've got to!" said Nell.
Sheila Pat arose.
"Sheila Pat, where are you going?"
"To fetch my snowy-breasted Pearl. I'm afraid he'll be breakin' his heart, all alone so long."
"You're to come straight back, then."
"I don't want to, Nell!"
"Well, you are to."
"I want to take him to visit Herr Smit, Nell."
Nell eyed the little heavy black mass that on ordinary days was Kate Kearney, and savagely harked back with, "I don't think a lodger's landlady's belongings should worry him at all times of the day!"
She blushed and dabbed angrily at her canvas.
Sheila Pat paused, and thought.
Intolerable, biting irritation possessed Nell. The room cramped her unbearably; painting drove her mad; everyone worried her; sick anger at it all goaded her.
"Sheila Pat, go and fetch your Pearl at once, and bring him straight back here!"
Sheila Pat eyed her interestedly.
"Eileen O'Brien, you got out of your bed the wrong side this morning!" she observed, and walked from the room. Molly looked at Nell commiseratingly.
"I know," she said, "we never have these horrid yellow fogs at—"
Nell stopped the word before it left her lips, with a wildly impatient:—
"Oh, be quiet!"
"I only meant—"
"I know you did! Go on with your history."
"But—"
Nell looked at her.
"If you say another word, Molly O'Brien, I shall yell!"
Denis came in.
He looked at her with her hair pushed up and laughed.
"Golliwog, what's happened to your hair?"
She looked away from him, fighting a weak inclination to go to him and cry.
"Nothing," she said.
"Painting in this light! Why, Nell, you must be crazy!"
"I daresay I am. I'm sick of never being able to paint—"
"But a dense fog!"
"It's always dense fog in London."
"Headache?" he queried.
"It's my temper that aches, I think."
She put down her palette, and gave a little laugh.
"Head, too?" he persisted.
"That I should have to own to such a thing! A little."
"It's boiled mutton for lunch; Sarah just told me so. I'll go and tell Aunt Kezia you must have something else. What would you like? Chicken? Sole?"
She laughed helplessly.
"Denis, I see her face! No—really—"
She stopped him. "I couldn't touch either. I'm not hungry. I'll have some pudding."
"It's rice puddin'," put in Sheila Pat, her words annotated by protesting squeaks. The Pearl objected to being taken from his cage.
Nell, feeling momentarily more sane, declared valiantly that rice pudding would do nicely.
Aunt Kezia was sorry that boiled mutton did not meet with her approval, so she said.
The Atom was the first to answer her.
"Approval, is it? And would you be approvalin' it with a headache, Aunt Kezia?"
It was a Saturday. Denis had suggested Madam Tussaud's for the afternoon. Now he declared he didn't think Nell was fit to come with them. She did not feel fit herself, but she wouldn't own it. She was very prickly, and somehow he rubbed her the wrong way,—"Oh, very well, if they'd rather go without her!" Up flared one of those quick Irish outbursts. Nell found herself alone. She sang loudly, listening intently for the shutting of the front door.
"''Twas down at Ballina Fair, Cailins and boys were gaily tripping it there, And I the soul of the spree, When I set eyes on Kitty Magee. Her smile so sweet, her step so neat, Hide and seek her two little feet; Gliding just like a swan at sea, Handsome, winsome Kitty Magee. And now I'm dreaming all day, Sighing from dark to dawn, and wasting away, Like a lone bird on a tree, Pining the long hours through for Kitty Magee, At dance or wake no—"
Bang!
The song died abruptly.
The hopeless muddle on the easel was dabbed at, made more and more oily.
"Eileen!"
Nell went out on to the landing.
"Yes, Aunt Kezia?"
"Please clean your brushes and put away your paints and all that smells so horribly, at once! The house reeks, and I have a friend coming to see me this afternoon!"
Nell said, "Yes, Aunt Kezia," and a gleam lit her eye. She went back to the Stronghold, and washed her brushes with slow care in turpentine. There was an air of waiting about her. She lifted Jim into his cage, and dropped it behind the lounge. Presently an irate voice rang up the stairs:—
"Eileen! Eileen!"
Ah expression of grim satisfaction overspread her features. The voice ascended with its owner.
"How dare you, Eileen? What is this horrible smell?"
"Smell, Aunt Kezia? Do you mean the turps?"
"I suppose so! It is filthy! I told you I expect a visitor. It is positively disgraceful—"
"You told me to wash my brushes, Aunt Kezia."
Nell's tone was as soft as butter.
"Certainly I told you to! You are being unwarrantably impertinent! You—"
"But I am only washing my brushes as you told me, Aunt Kezia!"
"What do you mean?"
"You have to wash them in turpentine, Aunt Kezia."
Miss Kezia had a moment of hesitation; her face reddened.
Nell dipped a brush into the tin washer.
"Then cease washing them at once! Open the window, and keep the door shut."
She closed the door behind her with such a very decisive click that it might almost have been designated a bang. Nell smiled wryly. She cleared up a little, then went to the window and looked out. Kate Kearney came to her, and begged to look, too. Nell sat down, and K.K. jumped into her lap.
"They don't allow dogs at Madame Tussaud's, K.K. Bad taste. But they do allow Nells—even bad-tempered ones; but she wasn't wanted, you see. Oh, K.K., you must get off!"
She rose restlessly. She looked down at a pathetic Kate Kearney, and exclaimed suddenly:—
"We'll go for a walk!"
The pathos of Kate Kearney vanished in a black whirl of ecstatic body and tail.
Nell went to put on her boots.
"We'll go for a long, long walk, and we'll come back on top of an omnibus, K.K. It's such a glorious day for a walk, isn't it? Oh, heavenly! But we'll go."
In the hall they came upon Miss Kezia. Nell's slim body stiffened suddenly; a feeling of desperation seized her.
"You are going to take that dog out on a day like this! I cannot allow it! Think of its feet when it comes in!"
Nell found that she had to moisten her dry lips; she took a moment or two to choke back unexpectedly rude words. She said then in an even tone:—
"I'll carry her upstairs, Aunt Kezia."
"But when it gets there! The carpet! Ruining my carpet!"
"I'll put her on her rug till she's dry."
"Microbes!" Miss Kezia said.
There was a little, pregnant silence. Nell's face had grown suddenly hot; she felt she dared not trust her tongue to speak again; she was shaken with longing to be very rude to Miss Kezia.
Miss Kezia hesitated, then she said:—
"Very well. And make her stay on her rug, and you had better not go far; the fog is deepening again."
Nell went out into the street. At the corner she met Ted.
"You? Where are the others?" he asked innocently, showing faint surprise.
"At Madame Tussaud's. Good-bye," she said.
"Where are you off to, Nell?"
"A walk—-a long walk—" Something prompted her to add, "just me and Kate Kearney."
"You needn't be afraid that I shall offer my escort. Am I allowed to suggest that it's beginning to sleet, and that the fog is getting thicker?"
The deadly politeness of his tone afforded her a small satisfaction.
"You may suggest what you like," she assured him, "only—do you mind suggesting it to the lamp-post? It's cold standing here."
"Oh, certainly. I've never come to embracing a lamp-post yet, but I daresay it's better to talk to than some people are!"
The grand sweep with which he raised his hat, and the dignified sarcasm of his tone, lifted the words above mere childishness.
Nell walked on down Gardiner Street. The fact that she could not help feeling that it would be comfortable to have Ted's sturdy figure beside her irritated her.
She felt a touch on her arm. Through the yellowing fog Ted smiled at her.
"I say, Nell, I can't stand it! You'd be on my conscience. You know you don't know your way about a bit, and if the fog comes down—"
She began to smile warmly.
"Since Denis has deserted you," cheerfully he blundered, "you'll let me order you about, eh?"
The "eh" held a suddenly surprised inflection, brought about by the change in her face.
"You're downright impertinent!" she stormed. "Do go away! How can you thrust yourself where you're not wanted?"
She hurried on, leaving silence behind her.
The lamps were alight; they shone pale and blurred through the fog. The lights from the shops made little pathways of misty light across the pavement. It was very raw, the air was bitter, wet, laden with sleet. She had not brought an umbrella with her; she was so unused to umbrellas. She turned up the collar of her coat, and valiantly suppressed a shiver. Kate Kearney trotted dejectedly at her heels.
"We will go for a long walk, K.K., won't we? And then we will take an omnibus back again. There are always omnibuses in London to take one everywhere.... Some people are so fussy and frumpish, aren't they?"
She was in dull, quiet streets; the effect of the tall houses, wet, ghostlike in the fog, was gloomy, weird. They got on her nerves, set them jarring. A deep depression seized upon her; she ceased trying to fight it. She was too cold, too wretched. She found herself suddenly in a dirty, noisy street, amongst innumerable barrows, innumerable ragged children. Everyone was shouting, it seemed to her; their voices were hideous. Everyone jostled her. She was afraid, horribly afraid. It was all so squalid, so inexpressibly sordid. She shrank back appalled. The noise set her head throbbing and aching. Through the fog she could discern an unending stream of traffic; she could see omnibuses. But to get to one she must slip between two barrows—venture into that muddy road. She hesitated, went on nervously, at a loss. She walked up the Hampstead Road, and came out upon Euston Road, where numberless omnibuses were drawn up. The noise was worse than before. She tried to find out which was her omnibus by listening to the conductors' raucous voices. She was deafened by the din.
"King's Cross! Baker Street! 'Ammersmith! Victoria!"
She approached the nearest conductor, and asked if he went to Henley Road.
"What road, miss?"
"Henley Road."
'"Enley Road? Where is it, miss?"
"It,"—she faltered, at a loss,—"oh," brightening—"it leads out of Gardiner Street!"
"Never 'eard of it, miss."
"It's not very far from Horton Square."
"Oh, we don't go anywhere near there."
He hopped on to his step and rang the bell.
She stood on the curb, looking at the other omnibuses with a weary disinclination to ask again. She held Kate Kearney in her arms, in terror of the traffic. A boy was shouting almost in her ear: "Star! Daring burglary by d'ylight! Star! Murder in the West End! Evening News! Duke of Oldchester run over by a motor! Great Strike in Nottingham! Families starving!..."
She turned from him with a sense of physical repulsion. She went forward and accosted another conductor.
"That dawg with you, miss? Can't take a dawg in a 'bus! Not allowed, miss!"
He shouted as a consolatory afterthought: "'E can run alongside, you know!"
She gave a sudden hysterical little laugh. She glanced at the crowded road, and down at Kate Kearney, cowering in her arms. She moved forward slowly, not knowing which way Henley Road lay. She was tired out; she had never felt so tired and forlorn in all her life. The sea of people, of traffic, the noise, the shouts, bewildered her, dazed her. She moved away hurriedly from the newspaper boys, who seemed, to her shrinking fancy, to be gloating with aggressive noise over endless horrors.
"We—we've got to walk back, K.K. I've only sixpence, so we can't drive at all. Oh, K.K.—I—I'm going to cry—"
"Expect you'll bite my head off, but you've just got to put up with me!"
Out of the yellow fog—out of the chaotic nightmarish hubbub—a broad-shouldered figure, a gruff, sulky voice, suddenly became clear to her.
"Oh!" she gasped.
Ted took hold of her elbow and shouldered his way through the crowd. She submitted weakly, occupied chiefly in swallowing ignominious tears. She found herself being helped into a hansom. She heard him say, "Fuller's—Regent Street." Then he seated himself beside her.
"Is it—a station?" she asked.
"No. You're going to have some tea before you go home."
"Oh!"
There was a silence. She cudgelled dull brains for something to say, then having found it, turned it over and over in her mind, distrusting her voice, till it grew silly and meaningless, and she let it go. The silence got on her nerves; she almost began to laugh helplessly; she burst out in an odd voice:—
"W-what a funny action the horse has!"
"Took the first that came. Couldn't wait to pick and choose."
"Of course not," she hurried to agree with meek haste.
The silence fell again. She cast a swift glance at Ted's profile; it was very grim and very cross. She couldn't let the silence last; it worried her past bearing.
"Kate Kearney is getting perky," she said.
"Yes?" said Ted.
She began wildly:—
"Ted—I—I—" and stopped.
He did not help her, and she said no more.
Presently the cab came to a standstill, and he helped her out. They went in, past the tempting sweets, on to warmth and lightness. The rush for tea was over, and there were not many people left now. They secured a little table and sat down.
"What'll you have?" he said curtly.
"Oh—anything."
He ordered tea and tea-cake. The band struck up with a selection from a popular musical play. She looked round quickly.
"Oh, how lovely!"
She poured out tea; he accepted his cup with a brief "thanks." She bent across the table to him.
"Would you mind listening? I'm sure I'm purring all over."
There was a tentative smile in her eyes.
"Tea-cake?" he said.
She took a piece with a sigh. Suddenly her laugh rang out, deliciously gay and glad. Coaxingly she bent towards him.
"Don't be cross, Ted! I'm so happy!"
He frowned.
"It was ridiculous of you," he began.
"I know it was!" with gay insouciance. "But this isn't the way to punish me, is it?" Her voice sank softly; she was radiant in the joy of the reaction. "You wouldn't be spoiling it all, Teddie?" she coaxed.
Unwillingly, his mouth relaxed into a smile; he caught it back with a quick, bad-tempered indrawing of his lips.
"You'd better know—first—I followed you! Now bite my head off!"
Her eyes opened wide.
"All—the—way?" she said slowly.
He nodded.
"Why, Ted, how awfully sweet of you!" in a soft and very unexpected rush. "Fancy taking all that trouble! Bite your head off? Why, I think it was just lovely of you!"
His glum face cleared.
"And my head's gone! gone! gone!" she laughed.
He glanced at it inquiringly.
"Oh, well, the ache thereof."
Presently she sighed loudly and with suggestive reproach.
"To think that all the time nice, cross, comfy you were there behind me! I wish I'd known!"
He compressed his lips humorously.
"Don't be mean!" she laughed. "More tea?" As she handed him his cup:—
"Ted, you're not to be feeling superior just because I got into a muddle and you pulled me out! If it had been a bog now, it would have been the other way about! But yellow fog, and—" she gave a little shudder—"the newspaper boys! But I ask you, how was a sane person, in other words, an Irish person, to guess that omnibuses would refuse to allow dogs in them? All the same," softly, "I'm feeling just now that man is a noble animal, and woman a mere headless and rudderless cipher. But I warn you it won't last."
"Wish it would," he said, giving K.K. a piece of cake.
"Ah, then, you are feeling superior! Ted, what would you have done if I had had hysterics when I caught sight of you? Oh, I'm so happy!"
"Eat something," he urged.
She looked round the room, then out at the fog, and smiled on him.
He looked at her with sudden seriousness.
"Nell, remember another time if you're in a hole—"
"The hole doesn't exist that'll ever get a chance of seeing me again!" She dismissed it airily.
"Well, anyhow, when that frame of mind's worn off—"
"You mean when I'm in a howling temper again," she interpolated, pursing her mouth.
"Perhaps. Well, remember, take a hansom!"
"But I couldn't. I'd only sixpence with me."
"Doesn't matter. You pay up the other end. You could get it when you arrived."
"Oh, do you? I didn't know. You don't in omnibuses."
"No, you don't in omnibuses."
She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.
"Shall I try to thank you, Ted?"
He flushed in horror.
"Good Lord, no! I say, have another cake."
She laughed softly.
"I don't want any more, thanks. I—"
"Do have some more tea."
She shook her head.
"If you'll let me speak—"
"You might give me some more, will you?"
She poured it out.
"I'm only trying to assure you I won't thank you!" she managed to say. "I won't, really. You've been too nice. I'll do just whatever you wish."
"Um!" he grunted.
She settled her elbows on the table again. She looked out straight before her, and her face grew thoughtful. There was a little silence. Then she looked at him and smiled; it was an odd little smile, half-humorous, half sad.
"I'm getting like that," she said, "all bad-tempered and horrid and cross! I was horrid to you, and to Denis,—to everyone. I—I used not to be grumpy and nasty. I'm just growing that way. In books they don't. When there's trouble and things all go wrong, they get sweeter and sweeter. I don't. I feel sometimes all shuddery with snappishness. I never used to feel like that—" Her voice died away in a plaintive little murmur.
"Books are all rot!" he declared vigorously.
"Oh, Ted, all of them?"
She was laughing again, but the shadow of wistfulness still clouded her eyes.
"All those with goody-goody heroines hanging around like dying ducks in a thunder-storm!" he asserted.
"You don't mind if I'm horrid and grumpy, then?"
"Not a bit," he declared cheerfully.
She rose.
"You know you ought to have said that I never am horrid or grumpy. But no matter!"
"I've got a conscience to think of, you know," he suggested.
Outside, they found that the fog had cleared away, leaving a wet, cold world behind it.
"We'll choose our horse now," he said.
"Oh, how lovely! Here comes a hansom! Poor thing, his knees are rather awful. There's a better one—that big bay, Ted!"
"Got a fare already."
"Oh, I didn't think of that."
"We'll walk along. You wouldn't sooner have a crock from the rank, would you?"
"Don't insult me, Ted! Look—that grey! Oh, he's a beauty!"
"Put on the pace," Ted said to the man, and presently Nell was sighing with joy.
"I'd love to spend a whole day in hansoms! Ted, the moral's all wrong! I'm enjoying myself much too much. And never so much as one 'I-told-you-so' glance from you! It's hopelessly wrong!"
As they turned into Henley Road, she held out her hand.
"Shake," she said, "and—I'm not going to thank you, but—oh, Teddie, you are a brick!"