_ CHAPTER II. THE POOR CHARLOTTE
While this light and playful scene was being enacted in a wealthy house in Prince's Gate, and Charlotte Harman and her father laughed merrily over the Australian uncle's horror of authors and their works, another Charlotte was going through a very different part, in a different place in the great world's centre.
There could scarcely be a greater contrast than between the small and very shabby house in Kentish Town and the luxurious mansion in Kensington. The parlor of this house, for the drawing-rooms were let to lodgers, was occupied by one woman. She sat by a little shabbily covered table, writing. The whole appearance of the room was shabby: the furniture, the carpet, the dingy window panes, the tiny pretence of a fire in the grate. It was not exactly a dirty room, but it lacked all brightness and freshness. The chimney did not draw well, and now and then a great gust of smoke would come down, causing the busy writer to start and rub her smarting eyes. She was a young woman, as young as Charlotte Harman, with a slight figure and very pale face. There were possibilities of beauty in the face. But the possibilities had come to nothing; the features were too pinched, too underfed, the eyes, in themselves dark and heavily fringed, too often dimmed by tears. It was a very cold day, and sleet was beginning to fall, and the smoking chimney had a vindictive way of smoking more than ever, but the young woman wrote on rapidly, as though for bare life. Each page as she finished it, was flung on one side; some few fell on the floor, but she did not stop even to pick them up.
The short winter daylight had quite faded, and she had stood up to light the gas, when the room door was pushed slightly ajar, and one of those little maids-of-all-work, so commonly seen in London, put in her untidy head.
"Ef you please, 'em, Harold's been and hurt Daisy, and they is quarreling h'ever so, and I think as baby's a deal worse, 'em."
"I will go up to them, Anne, and you may stay down and lay the cloth for tea--I expect your master in early to-night."
She put her writing materials hastily away, and with a light, quick step ran upstairs. She entered a room which in its size and general shabbiness might better have been called an attic, and found herself in the presence of three small children. The two elder ran to meet her with outstretched arms and glad cries. The baby sat up in his cot and gazed hard at his mother with flushed cheeks and round eyes.
She took the baby in her arms and sat down in a low rocking-chair close to the fire. Harold and Daisy went on their little knees in front of her. Now that mother had come their quarrel was quite over, and the poor baby ceased to fret.
Seated thus, with her little children about her there was no doubt at all that Charlotte Home had a pleasant face; the care vanished from her eyes as she looked into the innocent eyes of her babies, and as she nursed the seven-months-old infant she began crooning a sweet old song in a true, delicious voice, to which the other two listened with delight:----
"In the days when we went gipsying,
A long time ago."
"What's gipsying, mother?" asked Harold, aged six.
"Something like picnicking, darling. People who live in the country, or who are rich,"--here Mrs. Home sighed--"often, in the bright summer weather, take their dinner or their tea, and they go out into the woods or the green fields and eat there. I have been to gypsy teas; they are great fun. We lit a fire and boiled the kettle over it, and made the tea; it was just the same tea as we had at home, but somehow it tasted much better out-of-doors."
"Was that some time ago, mother?" asked little Daisy.
"It would seem a long, long time to you, darling; but it was not so many years ago."
"Mother," asked Harold, "why aren't we rich, or why don't we live in the country?"
A dark cloud, caused by some deeper emotion than the mere fact of being poor, passed over the mother's face.
"We cannot live in the country," she said, "because your father has a curacy in this part of London. Your father is a brave man, and he must not desert his post."
"Then why aren't we rich?" persisted the boy.
"Because--because--I cannot answer you that, Harold; and now I must run downstairs again. Father is coming in earlier than usual to-night, and you and Daisy may come down for a little bit after tea--that is, if you promise to be very good children now, and not to quarrel. See, baby has dropped asleep; who will sit by him and keep him from waking until Anne comes back?"
"I, mother," said Harold, and, "I, mother," said Daisy.
"That is best," said the gentle-voiced mother; "you both shall keep him very quiet and safe; Harold shall sit on this side of his little cot and Daisy at the other."
Both children placed themselves, mute as mice, by the baby's side, with the proud look of being trusted on their little faces. The mother kissed them and flew downstairs. There was no time for quiet or leisurely movement in that little house; in the dingy parlor, the gas had now been lighted, and the fire burned better and brighter, and Anne with most praiseworthy efforts, was endeavoring to make some toast, which, alas! she only succeeded in burning. Mrs. Home took the toasting-fork out of her hands.
"There, Anne, that will do nicely: I will finish the toast. Now please run away, and take Miss Mitchell's dinner up to her; she is to have a little pie to-night and some baked potatoes; they are all waiting, and hot in the oven, and then please go back to the children."
Anne, a really good-tempered little maid-of-all-work, vanished, and Mrs. Home made some fresh toast, which she set, brown, hot, and crisp, in the china toast-rack. She then boiled a new-laid egg, and had hardly finished these final preparations before the rattle of the latch-key was heard in the hall-door, and her husband came in. He was a tall man, with a face so colorless that hers looked almost rosy by contrast; his voice, however, had a certain ring about it, which betokened that most rare and happy gift to its possessor, a brave and courageous heart. The way in which he now said, "Ah, Lottie!" and stooped down and kissed her, had a good sound, and the wife's eyes sparkled as she sat down by the tea-tray.
"Must you go out again to-night, Angus?" she said presently.
"Yes, my dear. Poor Mrs. Swift is really dying at last. I promised to look in on her again."
"Ah, poor soul! has it really come? And what will those four children do?"
"We must get them into an Orphanage; Petterick has interest. I shall speak to him. Lottie?"
"Yes, dear."
"Beat up that fresh egg I saw you putting into the cupboard when I came in; beat it up, and add a little milk and a teaspoonful of brandy. I want to take it round with me to little Alice. That child has never left her mother's side for two whole days and nights, and I believe has scarcely tasted a morsel; I fear she will sink when all is over."
Lottie rose at once and prepared the mixture, placing it, when ready, in a little basket, which her husband seldom went out without; but as she put it in his hand she could not refrain from saying----
"I was keeping that egg for your breakfast, Angus; I do grudge it a little bit."
"And to eat it when little Alice wanted it so sorely would choke me, wife," replied the husband; and then buttoning his thin overcoat tightly about him, he went out into the night. _