Winifred Bertram and the World She Lived in

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Chapter I

IN one of the pleasantest outskirts of London stood, or stands, a pleasant ram* bling old house, built of red brick, toned by the rains and suns of a hundred and fifty years to a quaint variety bf tints. There were bow-windows in it, and balconies, and verandahs, and projections, and recesses, which threw all kinds of irregular shadows, and made you feel attracted at once to the old house which some of its owners had evidently taken such pleasure in : — which, in its small way, had grown up, like an old Gothic church, out of the tastes and needs of people who delighted in it. Its eccentricities, moreover, were veiled by climbing roses and jasmine and magnolias, interweaving the balconies with intricate tracery, fes- 1* («)

tooning the verandahs, clustering round the windows.

In the drawing-room of this house one warm day in August three people were collected — Mrs. O'Brien, its mistress ; her nephew Maurice Bertram, a young clergyman; and his little sister, Winifred. A soft spell of repose, a kind of dreamy charm hung about that room. No color, no form, no perfume predominated in it. Nothing was old, so as to give the slightest indication of coming to an end; nothing was new, so as to give the slightest clue to its having had a beginning.

That carpet on which the foot sank noiselessly as on the softest mossy turf, those soft draperies and languishing chairs and sofas, those bronze statuettes and quaint vases, what imagination could ever dive so far as to trace them back to factories and warehouses, to the hammering and screwing and planing and stitching of working men and women? No! they must have floated into their places like the furniture of Aladdin's palace, like the stones at the voice of Orpheus, at the call of a genie, to the sound of fairy music.

Did not the breath of enchantment linger around them still ? What else was that elegant aromatic perfume which stole over your senses ? Why else did every sound enter there softened and harmonized, so that the voices from the houses in the valley below — voices of eager women, and crying babies, and shouting school-boys — sounded there soft and dreamy as the hum of the bees about the flowers outside;— just as the sorrows and crimes of the world came to Mrs. O'Brien's heart, artistically made musical and harmonious through the pages of the novel she was reading.

There were three drawing-rooms, one within another, like the recesses in an Indian cabinet, each smaller and choicer than the last.

In the outer of these, Maurice Bertram sat writing by an open window, looking over the sloping lawns and shrubberies of the house, and a rich landscape of meadow and woodland, to a distance of blue hills.

A* pleasant fresh breeze now and then breathed in at this window. It was the only place in the room which led your thoughts from the little enchanted world within to the world outside, and by the rapidity with which Maurice was writing, and the clear steady light in his eyes when, from time to time, he looked up, it was plain that the drowsy spell of the place had not fallen upon him.

In the next room his little sister Winifred lay curled up in the depths of an easy-chair, divided between a story-book and a sleepy kitten.

In the innermost room Mrs. O'Brien was resting on a sofa, languidly turning over the pages of a new noveL

Winifred's interest in her book seemed to have been becoming more and more feeble, until at length she let it fall from her hand on the cushions among which she herself sank back, in an attitude of the profoundest weariness. She was soon, however, as weary of repose as she had been of reading, and her half-closed eyes wandered dreamily from Maurice to her aunt, as if looking for some one or something it would be worth while to disturb, so as to extract a little excitement.

At last she deposited pussy on the cushions, and slipping from the chair wandered across the room to Mrs. O'Brien, and, throwing herself on a rug by the sofa, drew her aunt's arm around her.

After remaining quiet thus a few moments, she suddenly looked up and said :

"Auntie, what did uncle mean by calling Mr. Vernon blas6 yesterday ? I looked in the French dictionary, and it said, * burnt up, consumed,' but that must be a mistake. What did uncle mean ?"

"Little girls should not always want to know what grown-up people mean," said Mrs. O'Brien, rather bewildered by this sudden call on her faculties, and anxious to prevent further precocious researches into French dictionaries. "I suppose your uncle meant that Mr. Vernon seemed rather tired and discontented — looked, indeed, as if he had come to the end of everything, and cared for nothing."

" I knew the dictionary was absurd," said Winnie, who looked on the dictionary in the light of a natural enemy, without which she should have learned French with as little difficulty as English. " Well, auntie, if that is what blase means, that is exactly what I am. I am tired of everything. I have come to the end of everything. I was at five parties last week, and everyone was duller than the last. I knew beforehand just what would be said and done. And now, this new story-book. It is

THE WORLD SHE LIVED W. 9

exactly like the last, only a little altered and done up fresh, as Rosalie alters my wreaths and dresses. I can't think, auntie, how people go on saying and doing the same things all their lives long. It is always round and round, the same over and over again, and nothing in it. I think the world is dreadfully small and old, aunt. If that is what blase means, that must be just what Mr. Vernon and I are. We've got to the end of everything, and don't care for anything — only, of course, auntie, it's much worse for me than for him, because Fm so much nearer the beginning."

Mrs. O'Brien laughed as she patted Winnie's round fair cheek, and mentally compared it with Mr. Vernon's sallow hollow face, and thought how amused Mr. O'Brien would be with the child's precocity.

But Maurice who had an inconvenient habit of taking in whatever was going on, however busy he seemed to be with something else, at this point interposed, and said quietly, " Winnie, I think, your French dictionary was right." Winnie, thus challenged to controversy, marched briskly to Maurice, and planted herself on a footstool at his feet.

" If," Maurice continued, " you had been given a long twist of wax taper to light up your Christmas tree for a whole evening, and you chose to burn it up in a few minutes, whose fault would it be that you had come to the end of everything, and what right would you have to complain?"

" It would be principally Rosalie's fault for giving it to me," said Winnie, perceiving the aim of her brother's shafts much too plainly not to avoid them. But I should not think of complaining. I should have enjoyed myself in my own way. And I should lie down for the rest of the time, and go to sleep. And that is just what I should like to do altogether now ; and I dare say so would Mr. Vernon," she concluded, " only we can't, and that's the unpleasant part of it. We've come to the end of all the things, and we have to go on as if we hadn't."

" Ah," rejoined Maurice, " I see you never heard of the Contracting Chamber. It is rather strange, considering how extensive your reading has been."

At first Winnie did not seem to heed, she played with a rose, pulling it very elaborately to pieces, as if she did not care for anything else. But as Maurice was rising to go into the garden, her curiosity got the better of her, and she vouchsafed to say :

6 [ What is the Contracting Chamber, Maurice? I dare say it is only one of your Ragged School stories, and I always know what you're at in them after the first few sentences."

" So do the ragged boys sometimes, I am afraid," said Maurice laughing. " You see I am not so clever as you and the ragged children. But that is only natural since you have come so close to the end of things, and they have come a little nearer than you, I am afraid, while I have not come to the end of one world yet, or of anything in it, to say nothing of the five other worlds."

"Five other worlds!" said Winnie, "what are they ? I hope they are not all the same as this. But, Maurice, this once I will be your ragged class."

" At a time not very long ago," began Maurice, " and in a country not very far ofl^ there was a palace built on very peculiar principles. Indeed, some people said it was not built at all, but grew. .The queen of this palace was very amiable and benevolent, and did what she could to make every one around her happy. She expected that all her courtiers should do the same. All her court-ladies, therefore, while they were provided with the most beautiiul suites of apartments in the palace (the furniture and situation of each being exactly suited to the tastes of the occupants), were expected to make these apartments in some way workrooms for the good of their country. That country had been sadly misgoverned by the preceding dynasty, and there was a great deal in it to be set right.

"All the apartments of the court-ladies, therefore, were also offices for some work of charity. The title of each was written on the door under the name of the occupant, so that there could be no mistake about it for applicants or inmates. One, for instance, was the office for the blind, another for the deaf and dumb, another for sick children — "

"And another for Ragged Schools, no doubt," interrupted Winnie.

" No doubt," said Maurice. " The singular thing, however, about these apartments was that if the possessor did not attend to the benevolent work assigned to her, but used them only for herself anS her own pleasure, the whole suite gradually contracted until they became so narrow as slowly to stifle the inmate, and finally to crush her into dust ; when from beautiful homes they became narrow, crumbling mausoleums."

" If many of the ladies made a bad use of their apartments, the palace must have had a very forlorn look," observed Winnie.

"Not in the least," Maurice replied. a The instant the unfaithful occupant had been crushed and buried, the mausoleum also crumbled into dust, and a new dwelling rose on the site."

" Very uncomfortable," said Winnie, " for the neV ladies to be living on the graves of the old ones."

" Not at t all," said Maurice. " They knew nothing about it. Every one everywhere is alwayd living over graves of somebody or something, and very few think of it."

" I think nothing of the amiability and benevolence of that queen," resumed Winnie, with considerable vehemence. "I think she was a hardhearted wretch."

"Not at all," said Maurice. "The queen had nothing to do with it. The apartments, as I told you, were self-acting. It was their nature to do as they did. No one could help it. They contracted in this way by the same kind of law which makes the earth go round, and the tides ebb and flow."

" But," rejoined Winne, " those court-ladies must have been exceedingly foolish. When they saw the departments contracting, if they did not like to do their work, why did they not escape in time ?"

" They never did see the apartments contracting,"

THE WORLD SHE LIVED ffl.

said Maurice. " They saw their neighbors' apartments contracting sometimes from the outside, but never their own ; and for this reason : The rooms were full of mirrors and paintings on glass, arranged in such a way as to cause a strange optical delusion. As window after window was slowly and silently crushed out it was replaced by a mirror, which made the wretched occupant think that, whatever was happening outside, all was right within. The world was growing narrower and narrower, she thought, but inside all was spacious and beautiful as ever. And so she went on admiring herself more and more in the mirrors, as window after window into the outer world vanished, until at last the stifling air of the poor narrow chamber overpowered her, and she fainted away and was crushed, and never heard of more."

Winnie's eyes had been cast down, and her face had been growing very grave and earnest during the last part of Maurice's story. When he paused, for a minute she said nothing, but looked wistfully out through the window, until, glancing up, and seeing Maurice's eyes fixed on her, she colored, and said, laughing :

" That is a very dismal story, Maurice, and I would rather hear nothing more about it. Auntie says it is not of the least use to make one's self miserable about miserable things that never happened after all."

" But suppose they did happen, and are happening," said Maurice, " and we could do something to stop their happening any more." 2

" There ! now I have caught you," she retorted. " Tou have tried to cheat me with a story which is, after all, only an allegory. And I hate allegories. I can't think why people cannot be honest, and speak out what they want to say at once."

Nevertheless Winnie could not get Maurice's story out of her head.

It haunted her. She could not help wondering if she had got into the Contracting Chamber. But she would on no account betray this to Maurice. She went with him that afternoon to the little gate which led out of the rock garden, and took leave of him in a light and easy manner, as if his words had not made the slightest impression on her. Then she returned to her favorite nook, the grotto in the rock-garden, with the little spring bubbling up in the middle of it and then oozing through a little wilderness of ferns and mosses and cool large-leaved plants to the stone basin in the centre of the garden, with the stone-seat beside it. On that seat Winnie placed herself, watching the little stream as it trickled into the basin, and made little eddies and bubbles, which rocked the water-lilies as they floated, while the forget-me-nots swayed hither and thither in the current of air, and wondering about the Contracting Chamber, and whether any one had ever got out of it. She was planning how to obtain further information on the subject from Maurice, without betraying too personal an interest in it, when she was startled by a little feeble, childish voice quite near her.

Listening attentively, she heard the words :

"Please give me a flower, lady. Please give me a flower !" repeated in a monotonous, plaintive strain, as if it were a kind of chant.

Climbing up on the seat and leaning over, Winnie saw at the garden-gate a little face peeping in.

Her first impulse was to run for safety to the house. She had always been very seriously warned about the wickedness of beggars, and their mysterious connection with wicked old women who delighted to steal rich people's children, especially naughty children, and make them miserable (partly from the pleasure of it and partly as instruments of divine vengeance) ; stories that, as Winnie's conscience was never absolutely clear, left in her mind a confused dread of beggars and of Providence.

There wa& something, however, in that little, feeble childish voice which attracted her irresistibly. So, after looking towards the house to see that there were no signs of Mademoiselle Rosalie, and over the gate out beyond the garden to assure herself that no dangerous old woman was lurking near, Winnie went to the gate and spoke to the child through the bars.

" What do you want little girl ?" she said,

"Please give me a flower, lady," repeated the little plaintive voice. "Please do give me a flower."

"Winnie's interest was aroused, and gathering several scarlet geraniums and blue lobelias, she gave them through the bars into the little eager outstretched hand.

How thin the little hand was, how wan and wizzened the little' face

The flowers were eagerly clutched, but Winnie's sense of politeness was sorely outraged by not a word of thanks being returned.

Still further was she repelled when, after smelling the flowers, the stranger held them back with a disappointed air, and the petition began again, this time more boldly than before :

"Please, lady, give me a flower. Them has no smelL And it's for Dan — poor brother Dan."

Winnie felt perplexed. The little girl had evidently not at all good manners. But then neither had she any bonnet nor shoes, which might be an extenuating circumstance. When one has no shoes, Winnie thought, one's manners perhaps necessarily deteriorate; although, in the stories about charitable children, she was quite sure there was not one instance of a gift being received in such a free and easy way. The little children in the moral tales, especially the French ones, always went into such raptures at the beneficence of the charitable young ladies, and .with streaming eyes invoked every blessing on their fair young heads.

However, she felt very sorry for the ragged little girl, and she also felt anxious to know who "Dan" was.

Accordingly, yielding to her kindly impulses, she said, although with much dignity, that the little beggar child might feel the great gulf between good manners and none at all :

" You may come into the garden, little girl, and choose for yourself; only you ought always to say, thank you."

The little girl stared in equal bewilderment at the permission and the exhortation.

But when the gate was opened she did not hesitate a moment what to choose. Paradise that the garden was to her, she was nevertheless in no way perplexed among its treasures. She walked straight to a moss-rose bush, and gathered from it one rose and one rose-bud.

"That is what Dan wanted," she said. "Dan will be so pleased, lady. It will make him smile, this will, and he hasn't smiled these days."

And though she did not say thank you, Winnie concluded that was her way of expressing the same, and modified her opinion as to her guest's manners.

"What is your name?" she asked. "And who is Dan ?"

" Dan's my brother," was the reply, " and they call me Fan, at least aunt does when she ain't cross, and uncle does when he ain't been drinking, and knows one of us from the t'other. And Dan does always. Leastways he calls me little Fan, and so used mother."

" Doesn't your mother call you Fan now ?" asked Winnie ; " what does she call you then ?"

" She don't never call me," said Fan ; " she don't never call neither Dan nor me now ; and Dan says she never won't."

" Where is she gone then ?" asked Winnie, growing confidential " My mamma, too, is a long way pff— in India."

"Mother ain't a long way oftV' said the child.

"They only took her down into the country. 'Twasn't far, they said. But she hasn't never come back. Aunt said one day when she was cross and beat me, and I was crying for mother, that they'd been and put her in a box under ground. But aunt don't mean half she says when she's cross. Dan says she's in heaven, and he says heaven ain't far off, for folks goes there all in a minute. He learned the hymn about it at the school Dan did."

" Does Dan say hymns ?" Winnie asked.

" He sings one hymn," said the little girl.

" What hymn is that ?" said Winnie.

"About the children in heaven, and glory," replied the child. " But I can't say it. Pm two years younger than Dan, come Christmas. And I never went to school. I've got to mind aunt's baby."

"Where did Dan learn his hymn?" Winnie asked.

"At the school at the end of our court," Fan replied.

" Why did he not learn any more, Fan ?"

"He did learn more," said Fan; "he learned Our Father chartneaven."

" What is that ?" said Winnie, bewildered.

"It's what Dan says mornings and evenings. I don't rightly know what it 'means; but it is good words, Dan says, and it seems to make him happy."

" Why does not Dan keep on going to the school, if he likes it so much ?" Winnie resumed.

THE WORLD SHE LIVED m. ig

"He couldn't go no more, since he broke his leg," said Fan.

"Did Dan break his leg?" Winnie exclaimed; " how dreadful ! How did he do that ?"

" Going up the chimney with the sweeps' brush for uncle," said the child.

" Was that long since ?"

"I don't know," Fan replied; "it seems very long. And he don't get no better. The doctor said he could walk, but he hasn't no strength. There isn't always much to eat, and Dan can't always eat what there is. Dan don't hardly ever smile now," she continued; "only after he says Our Father or the hymn, and when the lady opposite, who keeps the grocer's shop, brought him a flower from the country. So I came out to look for a flower like that all pink and curled up, and wrapped up in bits of green, and smelling sweet. And now," she concluded, "I must go home to Dan. He'll be watching for me from his bed at the garret window, and wondering what's come to me."

By this time Winnie's heart was quite won to the poor little girl with the sharp, thin face, and she said :

" Take some more roses, little Fan. See, I will gather them for you."

But Fan shook her head.

" Don't pick 'em, lady," she said, " they look so happy like among the bits of green. It'll be nice to think of 'em and tell Dan about 'em, and one will make Dan smile as well as hundreds. Beto WINIFRED BERTRAM, AND

sides," she added, carefully concealing her treasures in her little ragged apron, and lowering her voice, " there's the boys in our court. If they see them, they'll snatch 'em from me, and I can't hide any more."

" Where is your court ?" asked Winnie, full of projects. " Is it a long way off ?"

" It seemed pretty far," said the child, " for my feet got sore ; and it was so long before I got away from the houses. But I shall soon be back."

And as the little creature limped away, Winnie saw that her little bare feet were blistered, and she exclaimed :

« Oh wait, little Fan ! Wait ! and I will run and tell auntie. Or, if you must go, tell me exactly where you live, that I may come and see you. Where do you live ?"

" In our court," said the child.

" What is it called ?" asked Winnie.

" I don't know," said the little girl. " It's our court where we always lived. The Ragged School is at one end, and the other opens into the street with the apple-stalls close to the church with the large doors and the tall tower, where the people who have good clothes go on Sundays."

Winnie was on the point of pressing for a more minute direction, when a shrill voice echoed through the garden, and thrilled through her with a vague sense that she was doing something she ought not to do.

" Mademoiselle "Vini ! Mademoiselle Vini ! " screamed Mademoiselle Rosalie, in the purest Paris-

THE WORLD SHE LIVED IN, 2 l

ian accent ; " what voyages your eccentric habits cause me, what solicitudes, what fatigue !" Then pausing, in horror, with uplifted hands, as she beheld into what company Winnie had sunk, she appealed to Heaven to witness the impossibility of any human care ensuring the safety of that terrible child. Then with slow, distinct utterance, hissing out the words between her teeth, she chased " that monster " little Fan from the garden. Whilst Fan fled in speechless terror in one direction, Mademoiselle Rosalie drew Winnie after her in the other, in anything but speechless indignation, by the threat of telling all to madame.

"Madame!" she exclaimed, when she entered Mrs. O'Brien's presence, "it is scarcely half an hour since I miss mademoiselle. Distracted, I seek her in every corner of your domain. At length I catch a glimpse of her dress. I quicken my steps. I arrive. Picture to yourself my feelings, madame, I find her face to face with a child of the lowest people, of the mob; absolutely in the closest approximation to a creature without boots, without hat, with hair like a lioness', absolutely without toilette ; a being from whom one might catch the smallpox, the plague, anything — to say nothing of the morals of those people. Mademoiselle takes the hand of this little wretch. She is on the point of embracing her. For a moment I am crushed, annihilated. Then, recovering myself, I cry, c Go, little monster, little perfidious one, thus intruding thyself into the bosom of families of distinction !' 4 Come then,' I say to mademoiselle, 'my angel, come to my arms ! Together let us thank a merci* ful Heaven, who rescues thee from such contamination.' Mademoiselle, however," she concluded, pathetically waving her hands, "misunderstands my intentions. She fails to appreciate my sentiments. She rejects my caresses. She weeps, she is enraged. She behaves in all respects like a young person besid^ herself. Such rebuffs, madame, must a sensitive heart too often experience."

And in truth Winnie, on this occasion, to all appearance, justified mademoiselle's accusations far more than her caresses. She called her an "illnatured, spiteful thing," with other strong Saxon epithets, not at all worthy of a young lady who was learning the purest Parisian, and was altogether so excited and distressed that she could by no means make Mrs. O'Brien understand as she desired either the enormities of Rosalie or the excellences of Fan.

" My dear child," said Mrs. O'Brien at length, when Rosalie had abandoned the field, and Winnie was endeavoring to sob out her explanations, " you really must not agitate youself in this way. You are too excitable, too sensitive. Control your feelings, I entreat you."

And Mrs. O'Brien enforced her consolations by bathing Winnie's forehead with Eau de Cologne ; so that Winnie had to submit to being treated as if her sobs were hysterical, instead of sympathetic, until she had quieted herself sufficiently to say:

" O auntie ! poor little Fan I poor little Fan ! She is not a monster; Rosalie is! She is a poor little

THE WORLD 8HE LIVED IX.

girl without shoes. And I was not going to kiss her. She hadn't washed her face. She only wanted one rose to take to Dan. Dan is her poor little brother, who broke his leg. And they live in the court opposite the church with the high tower, with the Ragged School at one end of it. And I do so want to go and see them. I am sure Maurice could find it. Oh please do let me go."

" My dear child," expostulated Mrs. O'Brien, " you really should not invite any little beggar girl into the garden. It is hardly safe. You can give her sixpence through the bars when she comes again. She is sure to come again."

" Oh no," sobbed Winnie ; " she is sure never to come again I — never! Rosalie was so cross; she was like a fury. And Fan only wanted that one rose. She did not ask for anything else. And her mother is dead. Oh, don't listen to Rosalie. Please do let me go and see little .Fan."

" My darling," said Mrs. O'Brien, " you have too much feeling. There are so many little girls in the world whose mothers are dead. It is very sad. But there always were. And your uncle and I subscribe to three Orphan Asylums. Besides, no one ever could find out your little orphan with such a direction as that. There are thousands of courts in London, and hundreds of churches and ragged schools. Besides, if there is a church and a school so close, there is somebody to take care of the little girl and her sick brother."