HY, little Allumette! Where have all your roses gone? I thought you had learnt to grow them in Hampstead! What have you done with them now?”
The child’s face had been pinched and wan the moment before, but at the sound of that well-remembered voice the blood came rushing back, and the light sprang into the wistful eyes.
“Oh, sir, you have come back!” she exclaimed, as though the sunshine itself had returned with him.
“Yes, I have come back. Did you think I had gone for good? I shall be going away again by-and-by; but I am here for a few weeks. What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last? Sitting for any more pictures?”
“No, sir, I’ve only been selling matches.”
“Which do you like best?”
Bertram was almost sorry he had put the question, for sudden tears sprang to the child’s eyes, and he saw that she could not reply. Some chord of memory had been struck. Plainly she could not think of those happy days at Hampstead without suffering the pangs of longing and regret.
“There, there,” he said kindly, “perhaps there will be some more sitting for pictures to do by-and-by, but the ladies are in the country still. We are not living at Hampstead just now.”
“No, sir, I know. And are the ladies quite well?”
“Yes, quite. I hear from them often. They are in a very pretty place.”
The child’s face lighted and beamed all over.
“Yes, sir, Miss Madge told me so, and I am going there soon!”
“Are you? That is right! You look as if you would be the better for a holiday.”
“I didn’t ought to want it; I had such a beautiful one up at your house. But the streets do get so hot, and I just think and think and think about what Miss Madge told me of the place I was to go to. Mother says I’m a lucky girl, and I think I am too! I can think about it all day, and then when it’s night I often dream about it too. I wonder if it’ll be like the dreams when it comes? They’re so beautiful, they are!”
“Miss Madge will keep her promise—you needn’t be afraid!” said Bertram, as he put a shilling into the child’s hand and passed on. He was very busy just then, but he found time to feel a real sense of pleasure that his sister should remember their little protégée, and arrange a country outing for her. He had been a little afraid that the experiment of transplanting her for a time had not been entirely successful. And the child’s appearance when first he saw her had been a shock to him, she had looked so frail and white.
“But I will tell Madge to keep her for a really good outing when she does get her,” he said to himself as he went on his way. “The child looks as though she needed it. She is not of the stuff of the average street waif. I will bear the expense of some extra weeks. Perhaps when Madge settles at Brooklands she might find a nook for the little one somewhere.”
Bertram was exceedingly busy just at this juncture, having been away on professional business for some time, and having his own holiday in view not far ahead. Moreover, his daily road did not now lead by Allumette’s corner, and he only saw her by chance once or twice during the week that followed.
Each time he thought she looked more white and wan than the last, and it was with real relief he observed one day that she was missing from her corner at the very hour she was always there to look out for him coming from the Law Courts.
“Ah, then Madge has got her!” he thought with a sense of satisfaction. “She is revelling in the joys of the country. I should like to see her little face light up as she gets out of the smoke of town. I will take care that she does not come back too soon. I will run down to Brooklands one of these days, when I can make time, and see Madge and the Brooks and little Allumette.”
Yet at the very time when Bertram was picturing the child happy in the midst of wild flowers, scented hay, and the glories of summertide in the country, and Madge was busy with her preparations for receiving her later on when the woods should be scarlet and the nuts hanging ripe from the bough, little Allumette was sitting, languid and suffering, pent up in a close and reeking attic with three sick children, all prostrated by a sort of low fever which had broken out in the locality, and which was carrying off little victims by the dozen.
It was not a regularly infectious fever, and it was practically impossible to isolate or remove the sick. Many children recovered after a few days’ prostration, and seemed little the worse, but some died, and others lay helpless and weak for a considerable time, and though the overworked doctor did his best to cope with it, he was able to do but little except offer a few hints as to feeding and treatment, which too often could not be carried out.
The children in Allumette’s home had sickened rather early. One little boy had died, whilst the rest were struggling back to convalescence, their recovery greatly retarded by the heat of the attic, and the bad air they constantly breathed.
Allumette had gone to her match-selling as usual for some considerable time. It was a relief to get out of the unwholesome place, and even the hot streets seemed almost fresh by comparison.
Yet never had the life of the streets seemed so hard or so uncongenial to little Allumette as they did upon her return from the gardener’s cottage at Hampstead.
She shrank from the rough words and rough ways of the boys and girls plying a like calling with herself as she had never shrunk from it before. They jeered at her, too, in her neater clothes, and made game of her when she spoke of what she had been doing in her absence. Her gentleman was not in London, and the days seemed so long and dreary. She could not eat the coarse food with the old relish, and the uncleanly odours of the court and of the attics where she lived, which before she had taken as a matter of course, now turned her sick.
She still snatched a few happy minutes when she could go and pay a visit to the old cobbler and his wife. Here she was doubly happy in being away from all that was foul and disagreeable, and in being able to talk freely to the old people of all the joys of those wonderful weeks in the studio.
She was never tired of telling, and they were never tired of hearing about them; and Allumette had left in their charge the picture-books Miss Madge had given her, and the Bible which had been young Mrs. Clayton’s parting gift. Allumette shared with her old friends all the knowledge she had come by during her stay in that wonderful house, and it comforted her to talk of Jesus and His love, and to try and believe that He saw and cared for her, just as much as He had done when she had been so happy and cared for. Moreover, old Gregg and his wife were always cheering her up by telling her that very soon she would be sent for into the country for a beautiful holiday.
“It’s not till the middle of July as folks begins to think much about holidays for children,” they would say. “August is the real month for it, but it begins before that sometimes. The young lady won’t forget, don’t you be afraid, little one. You’ll get a letter or a message one of these days, and then you’ll have fine times!”
So Allumette lived on in hope, and in spite of increasing languor and weakness kept a brave heart, and never forgot morning and night to say the little prayer taught her by Mrs. Clayton, always adding, “and please let Miss Madge remember about me!”
The sight of her gentleman’s face in the streets again had come like a ray of sunlight, and his kindness had warmed her heart. She thought, perhaps, he would say something to Miss Madge to remind her if she had forgotten. But Allumette did not believe Miss Madge would forget, only she did hope she would remember soon, for every day life seemed harder and work more burdensome, and at last she hardly knew how to drag her weary limbs over the hot pavements to her accustomed corner.
Then came the day when she dropped down in a giddy fit, just as she was going out as usual, and her stepmother said with a sort of kindly impatience—
“There, child, just you stop at home and mind the little ones. You’re not fit for the streets. You’ve got a touch of the fever yourself. I’ve got a day’s charing, and I’ll be glad to leave you at home with the children. Keep them as quiet as you can, and I’ll ask Mrs. Gregg to look in upon you whilst I’m away. I daresay she’ll cheer you up a bit.”
For tears of weakness and depression were running down little Allumette’s face. It had come into her mind that if she really had the fever the summons to the country would arrive too late. They would not let a sick child go lest she should do harm to the others. She had been fighting and fighting against the fear that she too was sickening—fighting against it for a whole long week. Now she could not fight any longer, and whilst Bertram Clayton was picturing her revelling in the delights of rural life she lay upon the wretched bed with the other sick children, parched with thirst, wasted by fever, talking in low, soft tones of happy days which seemed present to her again in a dream, but by no means always conscious of her surroundings, or certain who was with her.
At the beginning of August the tenant of the Hampstead house gave it up, and the Claytons came back to make preparations for Madge’s wedding, which was now little more than a month distant.
Blooming and radiant was Madge after her happy time at her future home, Eva was almost strong again from her visit to foreign baths, and Bertram and Cora looked quite brown after their climbs amid the surrounding hills.
They had so much to say that first evening that it was only just last thing before they parted at night that Bertram suddenly exclaimed—
“Ah, by-the-by! did you get my letter, about little Allumette? I can’t remember when or how I posted it; but I daresay it reached you all right.”
“What letter?” asked Madge, and seemed about to say more, only he spoke again quickly—
“Oh, the one telling you to keep her longer—to let her have August too down there. But I daresay you would not want prompting about that.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Madge. “I never got that letter at all. The only time you mentioned Allumette to me was once when you said you were glad she had got away into the country. I meant to ask you who had taken her. I am going to have her down to my new home (I’ll tell you all about that some other time) as soon as it’s ready, but that won’t be before October. But we’ll make up to her for the waiting when we get her.”
Bertram looked a little puzzled.
“I thought she had gone to you when she disappeared. She told me you had promised, and I said that if you had promised you would not forget, and a day or two afterwards she disappeared from her corner. I made sure you had sent for her, and that is what I meant in my letter.”
Madge’s face was rather hot. This was not the first time in her life that Bertram had had occasion to show her how she had let fall the chance of doing some small kindness through her eagerness to do something bigger by-and-by.
“Did you promise the poor child a country holiday, Madge?” asked Eva half-reproachfully. “I wish I had known. I would have taken care that she was not disappointed.”
“It wasn’t exactly a promise—at least I don’t think so, Cora, was it? I said something, I know, and I meant to be better than my word, only it wasn’t convenient just then, and I thought this would be so much better.”
Madge’s face was glowing, and her heart was beating rather fast. She felt as though whilst planning an act of rather munificent charity (which after all would cost her no self-denial) she had shirked the little present trouble of seeking an asylum for one little waif, half afraid that Arthur would think her absurd over the child, and that the cottagers might not like it. She knew it was little half-formed thoughts like these which had hindered her, and she felt a qualm of shame and self-contempt.
“I did not hear exactly,” answered Cora. “I was drawing at the time, but I certainly thought you had spoken of the summer, and I was surprised when you put it off till October.”
“And you might have written and told her,” said Bertram. “It would have cheered her to know herself remembered, and she would have had a definite hope to look forward to, instead of suffering the pain of feeling herself forgotten.”
“I was so busy, and I didn’t know how to write to a street child, and I had forgotten the address,” said Madge. “Oh, don’t all scold me! I have been very selfish. But I hope somebody else has taken her away, and to-morrow I’ll go and see about it!”
“Do,” said Bertram rather gravely, “for I begin to be afraid that instead of a country holiday it is illness which is keeping the child from her post. She was looking very white and thin when I saw her last. You know what the saying is about hope deferred, and it is especially hard for children.”
“Oh, I will go to-morrow! I will go to-morrow!” cried Madge, springing up. “I will make up to her for everything that has gone before!”
