Charlie did not treat Nina so badly as auntie did sometimes, but for all that Nina disliked him more than she did auntie. She was vaguely conscious that he was an interloper and a sponger, and that his position in the house was doubtful; she hardly appreciated that even Charlie had vague troublings of conscience about this very matter, and that this was the reason for most of the snarlings and grumblings with which he treated her. He had struck her, too—only twice, but Nina remembered.
Nina was in the very act of conjuring up her usual daydream, wherein a very handsome daddy (he was wonderfully handsome, but the cast of his features were prone to vary with Nina’s light loves among butcher’s boys and the like) would come knocking at the door, having sprung lightly from a crystal coach with six cream horses at the pavement’s edge. And this handsome daddy would dress her in gold and jewels, and would bear her away to some land about which she felt necessarily vague, but which would be wholly delightful.
Nina, as has been said, was in the act of conjuring up this day-dream when Dawkins knocked at the door and the daydream, after a disastrous beginning, started to come true. Nina held very tight to the big gentleman’s hand; with a child’s instinct she appreciated the changes of tension in the atmosphere during the interview with auntie; she exulted to the very depths of her when Charlie was made to slink from the room. She could feel that the big gentleman was poised and tense, and that he could wring Charlie’s neck as easily as he could blow his nose. She felt her heart leap with joy and the lights turned into torrents of gold, and she felt deliciously warm and happy when the gentleman announced his intention of taking her away with him. She clung all the tighter to his hand and she could hardly keep still during the remainder of the interview, although long years of hard experience told her that it was always better to keep still when in the same room with auntie.
She sided with the big man during the argument like a wolf cub at its mother’s shoulder. She dared auntie to her face, despite memories of ingenious canings and supperless bedtimes. In time she grew impatient with the argument. Auntie kept on hesitating and delaying, and the big man would not yield an inch. She could not quite follow the ins and outs of the matter, but there was that in the air which told her it was nearly settled when the big man put down a long thin book upon the table and ran his fingers through its pretty leaves, each decorated in fine purple ink and bearing a blue stamp. The big man asked for pen and ink, and she ran to her very own pencil box for a pen for him, and she found the ink-well, and brought them to the big man.
“Call that young man in now,” said the big man, and she ran to the door and called “Charlie!” and Charlie came from his cave of Adullam in the basement. The big man was writing very carefully on one of the long slips with the purple ink, and when he had finished he tore the slip out and put the book back in his pocket, but he kept the loose slip close in front of him. Then he asked for paper, and Nina brought him some, and he set himself to further writing, very carefully, quite heedless of the new protests which Charlie was raising as auntie told him how far the argument had gone.
“There,” said the big man, straightening his back and pushing the paper across the table. “You sign that, Mrs. Royle, and you”—this to Charlie “can witness it.”
Auntie and Charlie still tried to argue, but it was clearly no use trying to argue with the big man. As soon as he picked up the purple slip again and began to put it in his pocket auntie took hold of the pen and asked, “Where do I sign?” The big man leaned across and showed her, and at the same time he turned to Nina and said, “Run and put your hat on.”
And Nina ran, her heart singing and her legs leaping. So little time was she gone that when she returned the big man was just folding up the paper auntie had signed and was putting it in his pocket. Then the big man picked up his hat and smiled at Nina—a funny, one-sided smile, but the nicest smile Nina had seen for a long time, and Nina smiled back, more of a laugh than a smile, she was so happy. And auntie said:
“Oh, you can’t take her like that, surely? What about her things? Let me make up a little parcel.”
And so they had to wait, with Nina dancing with impatience, while auntie puffed up-stairs and began to bustle about. But auntie came down soon with an untidy brown paper parcel which was just like auntie, and the big man took it and put it under his arm, and they went out through the front door and down the steps into the street where it was quite dark and smelled excitingly of fog, and the street lamps all down the road were points of light in a wonderful new world. And they went down the street and climbed on a bus, and the big man said, “Do you want to go on top?” and Nina said “Ooh, yes,” and so they ran up-stairs and went to the very front seat, and the big man sat down with the parcel at his side while Nina stood up and peered over the front of the bus to look at everything, except when, at the moments of acuter realization of what was happening, she came back to the big man and tried to talk to him until she grew too excited to sit still and jumped up to look over the front of the bus again.
The big man, as a matter of fact, was not very talkative; he had a great deal to think about. Here he was with a child on his hands to look after. Although, curiously enough, that did not bother him much—he was too pleased at the prospect of companionship. What he was really wondering was whether there was any legal significance about the deed of adoption he had devised out of his own head and which Mrs. Royle had signed. Probably it had no value at all in a court of law, but Mrs. Royle had taken his check and it was hardly likely that she would give any trouble except for trying to get another check out of him. After all, she was quite right to be chary about handing the child over to the first stranger that came along—and the fact that she had done so in exchange for money went a long way to prove that she was unfitted for guardianship. The one thing that Dawkins, for some unknown reason, would not let his mind dwell upon was the astounding likeness between Nina and the Hawk as long as her face was not in repose. It made him uncomfortable, goodness knows why.
And Nina stood and watched the people, and the big, roaring, lighted tram-cars, while the bus thundered romantically onward, over a bridge across the gray river, and soon to a place where there were a myriad of the most intriguing flashing signs. Here the big man said, “Come on, Nina,” and they plunged off the bus into the crowds on the pavement and Nina clutched very tightly his big horny hand. And they had hardly gone any distance when the big man stopped and struck his walking stick on the pavement and said:
“Great Scott, Nina! We’ve left your parcel behind.”
So they stood for a minute wondering how they were to get it back, but the big man decided they could not just at present, and so they walked along through all the people and beside the dazzling shop-windows with Nina holding on to his hand saying over and over again in a happy dream:
“Of course it doesn’t matter. Of course it doesn’t matter.”
Then they turned aside and reached a wonderful palace with shiny glass doors, which a wonderful man in uniform and two or three little boys sprang to open for them, standing at the salute as they passed through, to where there were lots and lots of lights and wonderful gold furniture and red velvet couches and marble walls. Here the big man stopped and talked to another man at a counter, and the other man looked at something in a book, and the big man wrote something down, and they talked a bit more, and then the big man said, “Come on, old lady,” and she held on to his finger as they walked on into another little room full of mirrors which turned out to be a lift. Nina knew all about lifts, of course, because she had been in one before, but she couldn’t help a little squeak when this one started to go up because she had never seen a little one like this before, nor one so grand.
And the big man took her along a carpeted corridor to a bedroom with a lamp with a pink shade, and he looked at her with a worried look and said:
“Better get your hat and coat off, I suppose. And we’ll have some tea. Would you like to have some tea?”
And Nina said, ??
?Ooh, yes,” and when she had taken off her hat they went down in the lift again to a great big room full of white tables where the roof was held up by pillars covered with gold, and a band was playing, and lots of ladies and gentlemen were sitting at the tables. And a very polite gentleman with a funny waistcoat came and bowed to them when they sat down, and the big man looked at Nina with his worried look and said:
“What do you have at this time of day? Eggs or something? And do you really have tea, or is it hot milk or that sort of thing?”
And Nina said, “Oh, I always have tea, as long as there’s lots of milk in it. And I do have an egg, sometimes.”
So the big man said something to the very polite gentleman, who hurried away, and Nina could then gaze round the room at the band and at the other ladies and gentlemen and at the big solemn face of the big man until the very polite gentleman came back in a hurry again waving a tray in the most wonderful fashion any one could possibly imagine, and he put down in front of the big man a whole lot of silver —teapot and milk jug and hotwater jug, and some cups and saucers, besides, and in front of Nina he put a dear little eggcup with a nice fresh egg in it, and a plate of the loveliest thin brown bread and butter. And Nina ate her egg and drank the tea which the big man poured out with his brown hands that looked as if they ought to be clumsy but weren’t, and she stared at him solemnly the whole time, but she was so excited she simply couldn’t say anything until she had finished her egg, and then she was given a spoon and fork and a most delightful something on a plate that looked almost like two more eggs with cream over them until she started to eat it, when it broke up into fragments of sweetness and creaminess that melted in her mouth and were simply too delicious.
And when she had finished and wiped her mouth they left the table and went back in the lift to the bedroom with the pink lamp shade and the big man stood and looked at Nina more worriedly than ever.
“It’s bedtime, now, Nina,” he said, and he was so solemn as he said it that Nina might almost have felt afraid except that she knew there was nothing to feel afraid about while the big man was near her; and he went on to say, “But what you’re going to sleep in now that we’ve lost your parcel I simply don’t know.”
And Nina said, “Ooh, supposing I slept in my combinations?”
And the big man said, “I suppose you’d better, old lady. We’ll buy you some things to-morrow.”
Then he went on looking worried, and he said, “Can you put yourself to bed?”
“Of course I can. I always do,” said Nina. “I f you come and tuck me up after.”
“Righto, old lady,” said the big man. “I’m just next door if you want me. Here’s the wash basin. You can see which is the hot tap and which is the cold tap. I’ll come back in ten minutes.”
And he went out quickly, while Nina washed her face and hands and pulled off her clothes and put them on a chair and scuttled into bed where there were nice clean sheets waiting for her which were very comfy although they were cold. And then the big man came back and said:
“Are you all right, old lady? Comfy?”
And Nina said, “Yes,” sleepily, and held up her face to be kissed, just without thinking, and he kissed her, and drew the bed-clothes straight, and asked about the light, whether he should turn it out or not. And Nina said, “Yes,” again sleepily, and so he turned out the light and went away very softly.
But it was not so nice when Nina woke up again in the dark and didn’t know where she was. The room was so different from her own bedroom that she began to grow frightened in the darkness and called out. No one answered and she called out again, louder, and still no one answered. Then she was really frightened and began to cry and feel more unhappy than ever she had felt before, until she heard the door open and heard the big man’s voice asking softly what was the matter. And she cried a little more until she felt the big man beside her, and she put up her arms round his neck. And he lifted her out of bed and held her with his great big arms so that she felt much safer than ever she did on top of a bus. And he sat down on a chair with her on his knee and lighted the gas fire so that very comforting warmth spread over both of them, and the room came to have just the right amount of light in it. Then he said, “Half a minute, old lady,” and put her down in the chair and went away and came back again almost at once with an overcoat with a nice fleecy lining which he wrapped round her. Then he held her on his knee beside the fire and didn’t say anything much, but he was just there with his big hard arms round her while she became more and more comfy and happy until at last she went off to sleep again on his shoulder and didn’t know anything more about anything, not even about being put back into bed, until she woke up again the next morning with the daylight shining into the bedroom.
Chapter XI
Dawkins’ first experience as guardian of a little girl made a very big impression on him. He was far more embarrassed about things than was Nina, who took for granted a great deal which Dawkins only approached tentatively and after considerable thought. He had lost his heart to her from the very first, of course, and the memory of that first evening would, even years afterward, send a little warm tremor through him. He had hovered about the door of Nina’s bedroom for long after she had gone to bed to make sure she was asleep, and when he came up again after dinner the pitiful little sounds he had heard from outside had brought him in in a terrible panic. He had gathered her into his arms in her ragged little combinations with a welling tenderness and gentleness which would have astonished Corporal Barroso, for instance, could he have looked down (or up, as the case might be) from whatever sphere to which Dawkins had dispatched him. He had sat by the fire with her in his arms for hours—for hours longer than was necessary, fiercely disregarding the cramps which assailed him and which wrung him with an agony worse than that he had known at the flogging post at Birds Island. After putting her back into bed —oh, so gently!—and going to bed himself he could hardly sleep for worry, and at five the next morning he was awake and up again, tiptoeing gingerly into her room to make sure she was all right. And the memory of that first kiss of hers, the free warm kiss of a little child, continually abode with him.
So that when Nina awoke after a sleep surprisingly sound despite its interval of fright she found herself smiling into the anxious blue eyes of Mr. Dawkins, who was bending over her, and she stretched and sighed with comfort under the warm bed-clothes like some small pussy-cat before a fire.
“Going to get up?” asked Mr. Dawkins.
“Ooh, yes, rather!” said Nina, with the prospect of another day of miracles before her.
It was Dawkins’ brushes and comb which she used while dressing herself, and the chambermaid found her a new toothbrush (why is it hotels can always supply toothbrushes and never hot-water bottles?), and Dawkins wrapped his overcoat round her—shamefacedly, rather—and carried her across the corridor to the bathroom. Nina fully expected Dawkins to supervise her bath and toilet, and candidly was rather pleased at the prospect, but Dawkins simply could not. The sight of the Hawk’s daughter in her combinations troubled his newly respectable soul to its depths, and he could not face the sight of her without them. It was a glowing, well-brushed, neat but shabby Nina who descended in the lift along with Dawkins at breakfast-time.
“The first thing we’d better do,” said Dawkins, eating porridge, “is to get you some clothes and things, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Nina fervently. It was a curious thing that she could not bear porridge while she lived at Field Hill, but here she was eating it with appetite opposite Dawkins.
“M’m,” said Dawkins. “We ought to have a list. There’s brushes and elastics and hair ribbons and goodness knows what. Do you wear hair ribbons, old lady?”
“Of course not,” said Nina, smoothing her shingled head.
“That’s something,” said Dawkins. “It’ll be bad enough getting your clothes; but these other things will be simply awful. Let’s write ‘em down.”
And in the intervals of
eating bacon and toast the pair of them tried to make a list of the toilet accessories necessary to a young lady of ten, but it was not much use. Dawkins was simply hopeless, of course, and Nina, when it came to saying actually what she wanted, was not much better. Nina’s wants were small, as a result of long years of doing without.
“We don’t seem to be doing much good,” said Dawkins pathetically. “I’m afraid we’ll have to give it up and buy things as we find we need’em.”
That, however, was not necessary, as they were to find. They went out through the glass doors where the uniformed gentleman and the little boys sprang to attention, and walked sedately over to the big department stores which every woman knows and even men have heard of.
“This ought to do us,” said Dawkins, throwing a guerrilla’s lightning glance along the long line of windows. “They sell little girls’ things here.”
So in they went and were received by a morning-coated shop-walker.
“I want some things for this little girl here,” began Dawkins.
“Misses’ outfitting? Third floor. First lift,” said the shopwalker, and to the lift they went, Dawkins feeling hopelessly conspicuous among the sparse early-morning shoppers, fur-coated women, all of them.