CHAPTER III

The Princess Departs

THE hour of the Princess's departure had come. Already she appeared to belong to another place than the dingy underground room. A lady dressed in nursing costume had arrived in a cab, bringing with her a large bag. With the deft, quick manner of one used to such tasks, she proceeded to wash and dress the patient, arraying her in fresh, neat garments produced from the bag.

When her toilette was completed, Prin, wearing a serge frock and jacket and a sailor hat, looked a very different being from the forlorn, sick girl who had been lying on the wretched bed. She was one who "paid for dress," as people say. Even Bert, accustomed to do homage to her, was surprised at the new grace and dignity with which the Princess seemed to be invested by her change of garb.

The nurse looked with satisfaction on the result of her efforts. She noted what a pretty, gracefully-formed girl her patient was. Then her eyes fell on the little brother, shrinking back against the wall, as if suddenly smitten with awe of his transformed sister, and she was conscious of a painful contrast. Bert was not handsome, and his thin, stunted form, clad in hopelessly ragged garments, looked its worst at this moment. He had not washed his hands since he made the fire, and his fingers had conveyed various black touches to his face, the features of which were twitching grotesquely, partly from nervousness, partly as the result of a heroic resolve not to cry.

His was a queer little face at all times, with its snub nose and the sensitive mouth, which gave itself readily to contortions; but it was redeemed from ugliness by a pair of deep blue eyes, keen in their glance, from the swift intelligence of a boy who gets his living on the London streets. As she looked into those eyes, the heart of the nurse went out to him.

"Is he your brother?" she asked.

Prin looked as if she would have liked to disown him; but she nodded in reply to the question.

The nurse moved nearer to the deplorable little figure, and spoke gently to him. "What will you do when your sister is gone, my little man? Will you be quite alone?"

Bert nodded.

The nurse looked troubled.

"I don't believe Mrs. Thornton understood that there was a brother," she said to herself. "Yet she has no home for boys, and she never sends them into the country."

Aloud she said, addressing Bert, "Would you not like to go to school with other little boys?"

"I do go to school," replied the boy. "I goes every day when we haven't measles. I'm in the fifth standard."

"Ah, that's well," said the nurse; "but would you not like to go to school altogether—to live in a school, I mean, with other boys, where they would be very kind to you and teach you a trade? I could write to Dr. Barnardo about you, if you liked, and I daresay he would take you into one of his homes."

Bert looked gravely at her. He had heard of Dr. Barnardo.

"And I should have to stay there always, and I should never see Prin," he said.

"Oh, you might see your sister sometimes; not very often, of course; but you would be allowed to see her occasionally."

Bert shook his head.

"And when I grew big enough he would send me over the sea, wouldn't he?" he asked.

"I daresay he would send you to Canada, and a grand thing it would be for you."

"Where's Canada?" asked Bert. "It's further off than Hampshire, ain't it?"

The nurse smiled. "Oh yes, a great deal farther off."

Bert shook his head again, still more decidedly.

"Then I won't go," he said. "No Dr. Barnardo for me. I wouldn't leave Prin for the world. I promised father I'd always be good to her, and it wouldn't be keepin' my promise to go off to the other side of the sea."

And his mind was not to be changed by anything the nurse could say. She had no time to waste in useless persuasions.

"Now you must bid your brother good-bye," she said to Prin; "it is time we started."

Fatigued by the exertion of dressing, Prin had sunk wearily on to a chair; but, as the nurse spoke, she rose with fresh elasticity in her bearing.

"Good-bye, Bert," she said carelessly. "Oh, do you want me to kiss you? Then you should not have such a black face. It's not fit to kiss."

Nevertheless she kissed it, though in gingerly fashion.

"You'll send me a letter, won't you, Prin?" he said imploringly.

"Oh yes, I'll send you a letter," she said.

"And you'll come back—you'll be sure to come back?"

"Yes, I'll come back—some time," said the Princess loftily.

Then with the nurse's help, she got into the cab; and seating herself, looked round with an air of queenly importance on the little crowd which had gathered to witness her departure.

"Good-bye," she said, nodding graciously to those she recognised; "Good-bye."

The cab drove off, pursued for some little distance by a number of ragged and shouting children. But Bert was not amongst these. He stood on the edge of the pavement and watched till the cab turned the corner of the street; then he ran down the area steps, and crouching in the gloomiest corner of the dismal place he called his home, he gave way to the tears which could no longer be held back. The Princess had been his ruler and tyrant, but he loved her as even those who tyrannize are sometimes loved. She was the centre of his life, and his existence seemed empty and meaningless now that she had left him alone.

Bert soon found that he had lost his home, such as it was, in losing the Princess. On the evening of the next day, when he came back after selling newspapers with more than usual success, Mrs. Kay met him with the news that the landlady had let his room to some one else.

"She says you'll be getting behind with the rent now that your sister's gone, and a boy like you does not want a room to himself; but the truth is, she sees her way to making more money by it."

"What a shame!" exclaimed Bert. "Here, I've got the money for the rent now, and if I don't want the room, we shall want it when Prin comes back."

"Yes, when she does," said Mrs. Kay significantly.

"Why do you speak in that way?" asked the boy quickly. "Prin is coming back. Do you mean to say she won't?"

"Oh, I say nothing," said Mrs. Kay; "only I shouldn't wonder if now she's gone, she were to stay away altogether. It's not such a very nice place to come back to."

"But she will come back," exclaimed Bert passionately, "I know she will! Prin is not the girl to go away and never come back. She wouldn't do such a thing as that."

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Kay. "You're too young to think of such things; but if there was a girl I loved, I would not have her come to a place so full of sin and evil as this is."

"What is sin?" asked Bert.

"Oh, you know," said Mrs. Kay.

"I don't think I do," said Bert.

"Well, you know those girls that drink and swear and do everything that's bad? You would not have Prin become like one of them?"

"No," said Bert decidedly, "not like one of them noisy, rough girls. Is it sin to drink, then?"

"Oh, don't ask me!" exclaimed Mrs. Kay, with sudden and unreasonable impatience. "You should go to Sunday-school if you want to know about such things."

And she slammed her door in Bert's face.

He retreated, wondering how he had made her so angry. He could not know the power his words had to sting her.

There had been a time when Mrs. Kay had been far from thinking of herself as a sinner. In the home of her childhood, away in the north of Scotland, she had received a religious training. No child could repeat more promptly the answers in the Catechism, or had a better knowledge of Bible history. As she grew up, the minister found her the most satisfactory scholar belonging to his "kirk." In those days she could have explained glibly enough the nature of sin and the remedy God had provided for it. Yet now, in middle life, she was a woman degraded and enslaved by sin, living without hope, and craving only to forget the happier past, having dropped, one by one, all the good habits of her earlier life.

It was through drink that she had begun to go wrong.

"Was it sin to drink?" the boy had asked. Mrs. Kay had no doubt as to the answer to that question.

In simple, boyish fashion, Bert reflected on what Mrs. Kay had said. He had ample time for reflection now, for he was much alone. Naturally it had never occurred to him that he and Prin were surrounded by a moral atmosphere as bad for their souls as the tainted air of the slums was for their bodies. But now there came back to him certain things which he had heard his father say, without at the time comprehending their meaning.

Bert's father had been that strange anomaly, a man of strong religious beliefs, yet a hopeless slave to drink. He had not succumbed to temptation without a struggle. Many times had he signed the pledge, and he had kept it for intervals, sometimes of weeks, sometimes of months. During these periods of sobriety, he had done his best to instil religious truth into the minds of his children. He had warned them against his own vice. He had besought them to be true, and honest, and sober.

He was wise enough to know that his intemperance would probably involve his children's ruin as well as his own, yet this consideration was powerless to restrain him in the moment of weakness. Living where the enemy met him at every turn, his destruction was sure and swift. He had loved his children to the end; and Bert remembered that almost the last words he had heard from his father's lips were the prayer,—

"Deliver them from the evil."

He had felt sure that the words referred to himself and the Princess, but he had never thought about their meaning. Only now did a vague notion of the evil from which their father had prayed that they might be delivered begin to form itself within his mind.