CHAPTER V

It certainly was a wonderful night. Lady Helen Dalrymple had placed her box at the theatre at our disposal. She was a tall and slender woman, dressed in the extreme height of a fashion which I had never even dreamed about. Her cheeks had a wonderful colour in them, which was at once soft and vivid. Her lips were red and her eyes exceedingly dark. She greeted me with great empressement; her voice was high-pitched, and I cannot say that it impressed me agreeably.

"Welcome, welcome, my dear Heather," she said, and then she invited me to seat myself on the front chair near her own, whereas father sat behind at the back of the box.

The play began, and to me it was a peep into fairy land. I had never seen a play before, but, of course, I had read about plays and great actors and actresses, and this one —As You Like It– took my breath away. I could scarcely restrain my rapture as the different scenes flitted before my eyes, and as the characters – all real to me – fitted their respective parts. But in the midst of my delight Lady Helen bent towards me and said:

"Don't the footlights dazzle your eyes a little, child? Would you not prefer to take this chair and let your father come to the front of the box?"

Now, my eyes were quite strong, and the footlights did not dazzle them in the very least, but I slipped back into the other seat, and, after that, if the truth must be known, I only got little glimpses of the play from time to time. Lady Helen and father, instead of being in raptures over the performance, kept up a running fire of whispered talk together, not one word of which could I catch, nor, indeed, did I want to – so absorbingly anxious was I to follow the story of Rosalind in the Forest of Arden.

When at last the performance was over, father suggested that we should all go to the Savoy Hotel for supper, where, accordingly, we went. But once again, although there was a very nice table reserved for us, father and Lady Helen did all the talking, and I was left in the cold. I looked around me, and for the first time had a distinct sense of home-sickness for the very quiet little house I had left. By this time Aunt Penelope would be sound asleep in bed, and Buttons would have gone to his rest in the attic, and the parrot would have ceased to say "Stop knocking at the door!" I was not accustomed to be up so late, and I suddenly found myself yawning.

Lady Helen fixed her bright eyes on my face.

"Tired, Heather?" she asked.

I had an instinctive sort of feeling that she ought not to call me Heather, and started back a little when she spoke.

"Oh, you need not be shocked, Heather," said my father. "Lady Helen is such a very great friend of mine that you ought to be only too proud when she addresses you by your Christian name."

"I shall have a great deal to do with you in future, my dear," said Lady Helen, and then she looked at father, and they both laughed.

"The very first thing I want you to see about, kind Lady Helen," said father, in his most chivalrous manner, "is this poor, sweet child's wardrobe. She wants simply everything. Will you take her to the shops to-morrow and order for her just what she requires?"

Lady Helen smiled and nodded.

"We shall be in time to have her presented." Lady Helen bent her face towards father's and whispered something. He turned very white.

"Never mind," he said; "I always thought that presentation business was a great waste of time, and I am quite sure that we shall do well for little Heather without it."

"I am so tired," I could not help saying.

"Then home we'll go, my girl. Lady Helen, I will call early to-morrow and bring Heather with me, if I may. Whatever happens, she must be properly dressed."

"I shall be ready to receive you, Major, at eleven o'clock," said Lady Helen, and then she touched my hand coldly and indifferently, but smiled with her brilliant eyes at my father. Her motor-car was waiting for her; she was whirled away, and we drove back in our brougham to the hotel.

"Well, Heather," said my father, "what a wonderful day this must have been for you. Tell me how you felt about everything. You used to be such an outspoken little child. Didn't you just love the play, eh?"

"I loved the beginning of it," I said.

"You naughty girl! You mean to say you didn't like the end – all that part about Rosalind when she comes on the stage as a boy?"

"I could not see it, father – I could only see the back of your head; and oh, father, your head is getting very bald, but the back of Lady Helen's head isn't bald at all – it is covered with thick, thick hair, which goes out very wide at the sides and comes down low on her neck."

"It's my belief she wears a wig, Heather," said my father, bending towards me. "But we won't repeat it, will we, darling? So she and I took up all your view, poor little girl! Well, we did it in thoughtlessness."

"I don't think she did," I answered stoutly "I think she wanted to talk to you."

"She'll have plenty of time for that in the future," he said; "but tell me now, before we get to the hotel, what do you think of her ladyship? She's a very smart-looking woman – eh?"

"I don't know what that means, father, but I don't like her at all."

"You don't like her – why, child?"

"I can't say; except that I don't."

"Oh, you mustn't give way to silly fancies," said my father. "She's a very fine woman. You oughtn't to turn against her, my dear Heather."

"Do you like her, father?" I asked, nestling up to him and slipping my hand into his.

"Awfully, my dear child; she's my very dearest friend."

"Oh! not dearer than I am?" I said, my heart beating hard.

He made no reply to this, and my heart continued to beat a great deal faster than was good for it.

By and by I went to bed. I was very, very tired, so tired that the strange room, with its beautiful furniture, made little or no impression on me. The very instant I laid my head on the pillow I was far away in the land of dreams. Once more I was back with Aunt Penelope, once more the parrot screamed, "Stop knocking at the door!" once more Jonas broke some crockery and wept over his misdeeds, and once more Aunt Penelope forgave him and said that she would not send him away without a character this time. Then, in my dreams, the scene changed, and I was no longer in the quiet peace of the country, but in the bustle and excitement of London. Father was with me. Yes, after all the long years, father was with me again. How I had mourned for him – how I had cried out my baby heart for him – how glad I was to feel that I was close to him once more!

By his side was Lady Helen Dalrymple, and I did not like Lady Helen. She seemed to push herself between father and me, and when at last I awoke with the morning sun shining into my room, I found myself saying to father, as I had said to him in reality the night before, "Lady Helen is not dearer than I am?" and once again, as on the night before, father made no reply of any sort.

I was awakened by a nice-looking maid, who was evidently the maid in attendance on that special floor of the hotel, bringing me some tea and some crisp toast. I was thirsty, and the excitement of the night before had not yet subsided. I munched my toast and drank my tea, and then, when the maid asked me if I would like a hot bath in my room, I said "Yes." This luxury was brought to me, and I enjoyed it very much. I had to dress once again in the clothes that father thought so shabby, the neat little brown frock – "snuff-coloured," he was pleased to call it – the little frock, made after a bygone pattern, which just reached to my slender ankles and revealed pretty brown stockings to match and little brown shoes; for Aunt Penelope – badly as she was supposed to dress me – was very particular where these things were concerned. She always gave me proper etceteras for my dress. She expected the etceteras and the dress to last for a very long time, and to be most carefully looked after, and not on any account whatever to be used except for high days and holidays. But she had sufficient natural taste to make me wear brown ribbon and a brown hat and brown shoes and stockings to match my brown frock.

I went down to breakfast in this apparel and found father waiting for me in the private sitting-room which he had ordered in the Westminster hotel. He came forward at once when I appeared, thrusting as he did so two or three open papers into his coat pocket.

"Well, little girl," he said, "and how are you? Now, if I were an Irishman, I'd say, 'The top of the morning to you, bedad!' but being only a poor, broken-down English soldier, I must wish you the best of good days, my dear, and I do trust, my Heather, that this will prove a very good day for you, indeed."

As father spoke he rang a bell, and when the waiter appeared he ordered table d'hôte breakfast, which the man hastened to supply. As we were seated round the board which seemed to me to groan with the luxuries not only of that season, but of every season since cooking came into vogue, father remarked, as he helped himself to a devilled kidney, that really, all things considered, English cooking was not to be despised.

"Oh, but it's delicious!" I cried – "at least," I added, "the cooking at a hotel like this is too delicious for anything."

"You dear little mite!" said father, smiling into my eyes. "And how did Auntie Pen serve you, darling? What did she give you morning, noon, and night?"

I laughed.

"Aunt Penelope believed in plain food," I said.

"Trust her for that," remarked my father. "I could see at an eye's glance that she was the sort of old lady who'd starve the young."

"Oh, no," I answered; "you are quite mistaken. Aunt Penelope never starved me and was never unkind to me. I love her very dearly, and I must ask you, father, please, not to speak against her to me."

"Well, I won't, child; I admire loyalty in others. Now then, leave those kidneys and bacon alone. Have some cold tongue. What! you have had enough? Have a kipper, then. No? What a small appetite my little girl has got! At least have some bread and butter and marmalade. No again? Dear, dear – why, the sky must be going to fall! Well, I'll tell you what – we'll have some fruit."

"Oh, dad, I should like that," I said.

"Your bones are younger than mine, child," remarked the Major; "you must press that bell. Ah! here comes James. James, the very ripest melon you can procure; if you haven't it in the hotel, send out for it. Let us have it here with some powdered ginger and white sugar in less than ten minutes."

"Yes, sir," answered the man. He bowed respectfully and withdrew.

"What are you staring at, Heather?" asked my father.

"You called that man James," I said. "Is that his name?"

"Bless you, child, I don't know from Adam what his name is. I generally call all waiters 'James' when I'm in England; most of them are James, so that name as a rule hits the nail on the head. In Germany Fritz is supposed to be the word to say. But now, what are you thinking of? Oh, my little darling, it's I who am glad to have you back!"

I left the table, and when James – whose real name I afterwards heard was Edgar – came back, he found me throttling father's neck and pressing my cheek against his.

"Where's the charm I gave you, Heather? I trust you have it safe."

I pointed with great pride to where it reposed on a little chain which held my tiny watch.

"By Jove," said father, "you are a good child to have kept it so long. It will bring you luck – I told you it was a lucky stone. It was about to be placed on the tomb of the prophet Mahomet when I came across it and rescued it, but it was placed before then on many other sacred shrines. It will bring you luck, little Heather. But now, in the name of fortune, tell me who gave you this gold watch?"

"Aunt Pen gave it to me," I said. "She gave it to me my last birthday; she said it had belonged to my mother, but that she had taken it after mother's death. She said she knew that mother would wish me to have it – which, of course, is the case. I love it and I love the little gold chain, and I love the charm, father."

"The charm is the most valuable of all, for it brings luck," said my father. "Now, sit down and enjoy your melon."