But this lasted only a short time, for as Patty once more began to ascend the stairs, the violinist dashed off into a French mazurka, with such spirit and brilliancy, that the notes seemed to be trilling out in joyous laughter, setting Patty’s head nodding to the gay refrain.
The next minute she had opened a door and stood in the presence of the player, who put down her instrument upon the table, and moved slowly across the room to catch the young girl’s extended hands, and apologise for not coming down again.
Canau’s room was bare and cheerless; a table, a few chairs, a couple of roughly-made music-stands, and a pile of torn, stained, yellow-leaved, printed, and manuscript music, were the principal objects that met the gaze; but Patty—whose presence lent a brightness to the blank place—seemed to have no eye for aught but the swarthy, deformed girl, whom she kissed affectionately.
Perhaps no greater contrast could have been seen than the sweet happy face of Patty, with her bright brown hair and peachy complexion—peachy with its soft down, and contrasts of creamy white and delicate pink; and that of Janet—she was known by no other name—the dark, deformed girl, who had been brought up by Monsieur Canau, the little French musician, now taking his morning promenade and indulging in his only extravagance—his second cigarette—a pinch of the commonest tobacco, rolled in one of the gummed squares of tissue-paper prepared for him by the girl who shared his poverty and had been taught his art.
The vital spark of life was bright and vivid, shooting keenly now from two dark eyes; but as for the fleshly case that held this vital spark, the wonder was that it should possess any shape at all, so fearful a moulding must it have received in its early plastic days, and not that the poor girl’s head should be close down between her shoulders, and that in form she should be diminutive and shrunken.
“I was tired of waiting, and had been listening ever so long,” said Patty, drawing a little white finger across the violin-strings. “I wish I were clever, too, and could play.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the other, harshly. “I’m ashamed of it sometimes. It isn’t a woman’s instrument; but it pleases him for me to play, and I get to like it now; one seems almost able to make it speak and tell one’s feelings—sending them floating away into the air,” she continued, dreamily gazing before her. “It makes one think and think, and seem to be living another kind of life; and I am far away from here, Patty, sometimes when I am playing—perhaps along with you and the little innocent children, and your father and mother—perhaps far away in the country, amongst the flowers, where there’s no noise in the streets, no shouting, shrieks, oaths, nor misery, nor dirt. There!” she said, suddenly, as if she had been brought back to the present, “I know what you are thinking.”
“Indeed!” laughed Patty.
“Yes; you think I’m odd and strange in my way. Ah! I wish I were like you.”
“And sometimes,” rejoined Patty softly, turning very serious, and stooping to pass one arm round the deformed girl, and bending so that her cheek touched the other’s dark sallow face—“sometimes, Jenny, I wish that I were like you—oh! yes—so much—so much; for I’m not happy, Jenny—not happy!”
She repeated these words in a quiet thoughtful way, sinking at last upon her knees by the other’s side, when, laying her hand, long and bony of finger, upon the bonny little head, Janet pressed it closely to her misshapen breast, from which burst sigh after sigh, till, waking as it were from her dreamy thoughts, Patty forced a smile, and springing up, kissed Janet again and again.
“There! what nonsense!” she cried, lightly. “I’m crying too, and pray what about? Let’s see how these goldfish are. Why, quite lively,” she exclaimed, drawing her friend to the window, where, half-screened by a faded curtain, the gorgeous little pets sailed round and round in their crystal prison.
“Do you ever think it childish of me, liking to keep them?” said Janet, after a pause, during which, as they clung together, the two girls had been watching the fish, one of which rose to the surface, and, with its little gasping lips touched lightly the pinky finger-tip Patty placed beneath the water.
“Sometimes,” continued Janet, “it is so dull, so lonesome, in spite of the busy noises coming from the street. Wragg is kind, and so is poor old Mrs. Winks; but—but,” hesitated the girl, “there are times when I don’t wish to be with them. He is often away for hours together, and one cannot always be at music; and then it is that I like to go down-stairs, and be with the little prisoned birds and things. And somehow they seem to know me, and flutter and leap to welcome me when I come. But you don’t think it childish?”
“Childish? No!” was the reply, as Patty again dipped a finger to have it saluted by the fish. “I love to come and feed the birds myself; but I would take them, if I could, all far away into the bright happy country, and then open the cage-doors and set them free one by one—one by one. How they would leap, and dart, and flutter as they felt the soft air waiting for them! I think it would be real happiness to see the little things leave off beating their breasts as they tried to get out; and then to listen to them singing from some tree!”
“Or else see some cruel hawk come and seize one,” said Janet, bitterly.
“Heigho! perhaps yes,” sighed Patty; “there’s always something to make life unhappy.”
“I like the goldfish,” said Janet, without seeming to heed the sigh. “They always put me in mind of lying there—just there!” and she pointed to a corner by the window, “when I was little and could not walk, but only lay there all day with my back aching, as I stretched out my hands to touch one of the little bright things as they sailed so easily round and round. I must have been very very little when he bought the first to please me. But Patty, Patty!” she exclaimed, as she peered in the other’s eyes, “what made you sigh, and say that there was always something to make you unhappy?”
Patty was silent, and gazed thoughtfully at the fish, as another, seeking the food so often given, rose and touched her finger.
“What did you mean?” said Janet again, bending forward to gaze in the soft grey eyes. “It was not because I spoke of the hawk?”
Patty shook her head.
“Well, perhaps not altogether—I mean, I don’t know,” she said, in a slow hesitating way. “But really I must go home now; I promised not to be very long.”
Janet watched her eagerly, then, as if to change the subject, kissed her affectionately, and thanked her for what she had done below, ending, at Patty’s wish, by putting on her bonnet and accompanying her friend back to Duplex Street, D. Wragg being charged with a message for Monsieur Canau, who, according to custom on such occasions, came for his adopted daughter in the evening.
Volume One—Chapter Fifteen.
Husband and Wife.
Nimrod may have been a mighty hunter in his day, but he was never anything to compare with Jared Pellet, who for twenty long years—that is to say, years of the ordinary length—had engaged in the chase of one savage, long-fanged, dire, snarling brute of a wolf, a hungry grinning wretch, grey and grim, and ever licking his thin gums. Old and lank he was, but a very giant in endurance; and very often circumstances were reversed, the hunter becoming the hunted, when it
