The Cruise of the Make-Believes

The shabby little room seemed intolerable, with the old man gurgling and choking, and muttering in his sleep in his chair; once again the girl slipped out into her garden. And now, as if to welcome her, the kindly moon had come over the housetops, and was shedding a radiance even there. She sat down at the table, and leant her elbows upon it; she did not understand what this new and desperate longing was that had come upon her. She had been content for so many years; had been glad to accept things as they were, and to make the best of them. But now to-night there was a new and passionate longing for a world and a life that could never be hers at all. As she sat there, staring at the shabby wall before her, the walls seemed to vanish; and there grew up in their place a dim vision of a wide countryside, lying silent and peaceful under the moon; of a life that was gentle and secure and easy. And beyond that wide countryside, with a path of light made across it by the moon, lay the shining sea. The vision was gone, just as rapidly as it had come; the grey wall was there; out in the street coarse hoarse voices sounded, and a shout of discordant laughter. She let her hands fall on the table, and bowed her head upon her arms. What had she to do with dreams?

It was at that precise moment that Mr. Gilbert Byfield determined to walk out of the house next door into that plot of ground attached to it which matched that in which Bessie Meggison was seated. That particular plot of ground did not boast any of the adornments of the Meggison garden; it was simply a stretch of bare earth, with scrubby grass growing here and there in patches. Gilbert thought nothing of that, because the place did not interest him, save for the fact that it adjoined the garden next door; and he had already learned that in that garden only was the Princess of Arcadia Street to be approached, if one did it delicately. Accordingly he stole up to the dividing wall now, and peered over it; and so, of course, saw that hopeless figure in the moonlight, leaning over the old table.

As he had never seen her save with that demure brightness upon her that seemed to belong to her, he was naturally shocked at this sudden abandonment; besides, she looked pathetic indeed in her utter loneliness in that place. He called softly to her over the wall.

"Hullo! I say – what's the matter?"

He called so softly that she did not hear him, nor did she change her position. After a moment of hesitation, he glanced first at the back of the house he had left, and then at the back of the other one; swung himself up to the top of the wall; and jumped over. He alighted, as luck would have it, on that defective board in the old box set under the wall; swore softly to himself, and stepped down to the ground. The noise he made had startled the girl; she got quickly to her feet, and moved away from him.

"I'm dreadfully sorry," he began, smiling at her.

But she waved him back hurriedly. "Mr. Byfield!" she said in a whisper, with a glance at the house. "Oh, please – you must go back! – you must really go back!"

"If anyone comes, I can jump over in a moment," he said. "There's nothing to be afraid of – and this is ever so much better than talking over the wall, you know. By the way," he added ruefully, "I'm afraid I've broken your – your ottoman."

"It doesn't matter," she said in a dull voice – "and it isn't an ottoman. It's an old box."

"I don't believe it," he exclaimed. "It's an ottoman – and a very nice one at that."

"You're laughing at me," she said, with the shyness of a child. "You know it's all only pretending; you know what a shabby place this is – really and truly. You've been good and kind about it; you've never laughed at me, like other people."

"God forbid, child!"

"That's it!" she exclaimed quickly. "Child! That's what you think me; that's what you believe me to be. If a child brought you a broken doll, you'd be sorry, and make much of it, although in your heart you'd laugh, because it was such a little thing to make a fuss about. And you've been sorry for me – and have pretended with me that this place was what it has never been. And in your heart you have never ceased to laugh at me."

"In my heart I have never laughed at you at all," he said solemnly.

They had unconsciously drawn nearer to each other in the solitude of the garden under the moon; their hands were touching. For now it seemed that she wanted desperately to touch hands with some friendly being – someone, for choice, who came out of the big world mysteriously, as this man had done. She was so much of a child that she needed comforting; so much of a woman that she needed loving.

"I was wrong to say that you had laughed at me," she said penitently – "you have been the only one that has understood. I wonder if you remember when you first looked over the wall?"

"Shall I ever forget it!" he exclaimed, in all honesty. "You see, I had never imagined any place like this" – he glanced round about him, and whimsically shook his head as he spoke – "and of course I was surprised. And then I saw you – and I understood at once that you were so different from anyone I had seen in Arcadia Street, or indeed anywhere. And so we – we talked."

"I shall never forget it," she said. "I had always tried to make-believe a little, because when one does that one gets away from all the tiresome things – all the things that must happen, and yet that ought not to happen at all. You see, so many people seem always to have held out hands to me for money; and I've had so little money to give them."

"And so – just to enable you to forget them a little – you started this great game of make-believe; this pretending that you were something better (although that could never be, you know) – something bigger and greater than you really were. The fine lady walked in her garden every night, and saw the flowers grow, and heard the summer wind rustling the trees and dreamed – what great dreams they were!"

She nodded, with shining eyes. "And then you one day looked over the wall – and you seemed to understand in a moment. Any one else but you, coming out of the big world, would simply have laughed, and would have seen that this was an old carpet, too shabby even for the house – and this a table we couldn't use for anything else – and that a box that no one wanted. And yet in a moment – do you remember? – you knew perfectly what each thing was. It was wonderful!"

"I remember." He nodded gravely. "I knew that was the ottoman – and behind it the tapestry; I understood also how nice it was to have coffee in the garden every evening. Arcadia Street doesn't run to coffee – except in the morning."

"I had read somewhere – it was in a paper that came to the house – that ladies and gentlemen take their coffee generally on the terrace. Well, of course, we couldn't manage a terrace, and I couldn't quite understand whether it was anything like the terrace you get to round the corner, with the houses in a sort of half-circle, and the little bit of green in front; only somehow I knew it couldn't be quite like that; all I understood was that it was out of doors. So then I understood the best thing I could do was to make the most of the garden; and it really isn't half bad – is it?"

"It's a pity it isn't better appreciated," he said.

"Father said he didn't understand what I was driving at; and then he always seemed to find the hole in the carpet and to trip over it. And Amelia doesn't really make very good coffee; it's the sort you dare not stir too much."

"Poor little Miss Make-Believe!" he said, a little sorrowfully. "I wonder what you would do if the time came when some of your dreams came true, when you didn't have to make-believe any more; when you walked out of this place, and left behind all the shabby pretences of it. I wonder what you would say then?"

"That's never likely to happen," she said, with a shake of the head. "Father doesn't seem to belong to the rich side of the family. His sister, who was here to-night – Aunt Julia, you know – has lots of money; she owns houses, you know, and lives in Clapham."

"Wonderful Aunt Julia!" he said.

"Father has said over and over again that if he had what he deserves he would be a rich man. I don't quite know what he means; he's never very explicit about it. But sometimes at night, when he comes home from – from his club, he cries a little, poor dear, and tells me what he would give me if only he had what he ought to have. And I know he would, too; he is really very generous by nature."

Gilbert Byfield knew enough of the girl's story by that time not to need to ask questions. Ever since that first meeting with her, when he had carefully gained her confidence over the wall, he had been able, by the simple process of piecing together her innocent answers to his questions, to understand what she did, and what sort of struggle she was constantly engaged in. He summed up the shiftless father and the shiftless son easily enough; understood, from the type of lodgers that came to the house, how difficult it must be for this girl to make both ends meet. Most he admired her unflinching courage, and above all that curious fanciful child-like nature that nothing had been able to crush or stamp out of her. With the most innocent feeling in the world, he had fostered that, and encouraged it.

It had been hard at times to remember that she was not a child, and that he had no right to treat her as such; it had, above all things, been difficult for him to tell himself, over and over again, that the life he lived in Arcadia Street was a sham, and that he was not the poor man he seemed to be to her. She had been frankness itself with him, and he should have been with her in return. Only of course he knew that, once she understood that he was playing a part, her confidence in him, as someone as poor as herself and as struggling, would be gone. For a period not yet defined in any way he intended to keep that fiction alive, and remain near her. And in that again there was no real motive, save one of pity for the girl.

He asked a question now that had been on his lips many and many a time, and yet that he had not uttered before. They were standing together near the table, and she had one hand resting upon it; he noticed how short the sleeve was, and guessed that she must long since have outgrown this dress, and many others she possessed. He remembered suddenly that her dresses had always seemed short. "How old are you, little Make-Believe?" he asked.

"More than eighteen," she said; and laughed and blushed.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the house, and a man stood there. Gilbert Byfield stood quite still, watching; for his presence there would need explanation. The girl had drawn away from him, and was peering at the man in the doorway; she spoke his name hesitatingly at last – almost apologetically.

"Mr. Quarle?" she asked. "Do you want me?"

The man who stepped out from the doorway was a thickly-set man of between fifty and sixty years of age, with thin grey hair and with a somewhat sour-looking face. His shoulders were very broad, and he had the appearance almost of a man whose head has been set too far forward; the sharp clean-shaven face was thrust well out, as though the man spent his time in peering into everything about him. He carried his hands locked behind him; his voice was rather harsh. Certainly there was nothing amiable-looking about him.

"I don't want you – but your father's asking for you," said the man.

"I'll go in at once," said Bessie. "Oh – Mr. Quarle," she added nervously, slipping her hand through the arm of the man, and drawing him forward a little – "this is Mr. Byfield – a friend of mine."

"Pleased to know you, sir," said Quarle, with a face that belied his words. "New lodger?"

"I live – next door," said Gilbert, a little lamely. For the girl had run into the house, and the situation was an absurd one. The only fashion in which he could leave this man, whose appearance he did not like, was by an undignified exit over the wall; and he had no wish for that. He could have gone out into the little alley behind, but he knew that the door at the end of his own particular garden was always kept bolted. So he stood somewhat awkwardly looking at the newcomer, and wondering whether he had better say something about the moon, or the warmth of the night. The man relieved him of the difficulty by speaking first.

"My name is Simon Quarle," he said, coming a step or two nearer to the younger man, and lowering his voice. "You're not likely to have heard of me; very few people have, because I keep myself to myself. It's a habit of mine."

"And a very excellent habit too, I should imagine," said Gilbert with meaning.

"I could wish it was a more general habit," retorted Quarle, with a quick glance at the house. "Now, sir – I'm old enough to be your father – old enough, under happier circumstances, to be the father of that girl who has just left us. And the Lord knows she needs a father badly."

"I believe she has one already," said Gilbert coldly.

"She supports a drunken reprobate who has that title," retorted the man, with a snarl. "Perhaps, if he were worthy of the name, he might have something to say to a man who sneaks over a back wall at night to talk to his daughter."

Gilbert made a quick movement towards the man; Quarle did not flinch, nor did he take his eyes from the face of the younger man. Again the absurdity of his position was borne in upon Byfield; more than that, he seemed to see in this strange creature someone who had a greater right to say that he was the friend of Bessie – a friend of an older standing.

"You simply don't understand," said Gilbert. "From a younger man I shouldn't stand it – but – "

"Never mind my years," said the other. "I'll do you the justice to believe that yours has simply been the thoughtlessness of youth – the carelessness of a man to whom women are all alike – "

"I see that you don't understand," broke in Gilbert hotly. "I have been genuinely sorry to see this child slaving for those who should really be supporting her; I have seen in her something purer and sweeter than in any woman I have met yet."

"You're right there," said Simon Quarle, with a nod. "But you'd best leave her alone to her garden, as she calls it, and to her dreams, and to the hard workaday world she knows. You belong to another world; go back to it."

"How do you know I belong to another world?" demanded Gilbert.