Story 3—Chapter 1.
After All!—Albert Street.
“The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.”—Carlyle.
Albert Street is in a respectable neighbourhood on the outskirts of London—not quite in London, and certainly not in the country, though only a little while ago there were fields and lanes where rows of houses now stand. There are, indeed, bits of hedgerow still left where the hawthorn tries to blossom in the spring, and dingy patches and corners of field where flowers used to grow; but these have nearly all disappeared, and instead of them heaps of rubbish, old kettles, empty sardine-boxes, and broken crockery are scattered about. Only the dandelions are lowly enough to live contentedly amongst such vulgar surroundings, and still show their beaming yellow faces wherever they have a chance. It was difficult in Albert Street to feel that spring and summer meant anything else than heat and dust and discomfort. It was more bearable in the winter, Iris Graham thought; but when the warm bright weather came it was strange to remember that somewhere it was pleasant and beautiful—that there were flowers blooming, and birds singing from morning till night, and broad green fields and deep woods full of cool shadows. Iris dreamt of it all at night sometimes, and when she waked there was the cry of the milkman instead of the birds’ songs, and the cup of withered dandelions she had picked yesterday instead of banks of primroses and meadows full of cowslips. But in the daytime she did not dream, for she had no time; every bit of it was quite filled up with what she had to do—her lessons, her clothes to mend, her two little sisters to take out or amuse indoors, endless matters to attend to for the two boys who were at a day-school and came home in the evening, errands for mother, and other duties too numerous to mention. From the time she got up in the morning till she went to bed there was always something to be done, for she was the eldest, and everyone in the house seemed to expect something from her. There were five children and only one maid-servant to do all the work, so no one in Number 29 Albert Street had any idle moments on their hands. The small house was always full of noise and hurry and bustle—a baby crying or a boy rushing up and down stairs, the street-door slamming, or “Iris!” shouted in shrill impatient voices. It was hard to be for ever called upon to do something for someone else, to have no time of your very own, to be everyone’s servant—to be only thirteen years old, and yet to have so very few holidays. Iris had come to feel this more and more strongly lately, to long for ease and pleasure and idleness, and to leave off serving other people. These moods increased every day. She was tired of being busy, tired of the hurry and worry of Albert Street, she was tired of doing things for others; she should like to go quite away into the country a long way off and do just as she pleased all day. And because she kept these discontented fancies quite to herself they grew very strong, and at last took hold of her mind altogether. She began to feel that there never was such a hard-worked injured person as Iris Graham, or such a dull, unamusing life as hers. Even the sound of her little sisters’ voices as they said the verses they were learning about “the busy bee” provoked her beyond endurance. “I hate bees and I hate being busy!” she said to herself.
One warm morning in May she sat, with these thoughts in her mind and a basket of work by her side, in a little room at the back of the house called the “Boys’ Room.” Her mother was lying down upstairs with a bad nervous headache, and Iris had succeeded with great difficulty in keeping the house quiet for the last hour. The only other person in the room was her brother Max, mumbling over his lessons for the next day half aloud, and presently he threw his book across the table to her.
“Just hear me this,” he said.
Iris propped the book up against her basket and went on darning.
“Go on,” she said.
“Now came still evening on,” began Max, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling and his fingers drumming on the table, “and twilight grey had in her sober livery all things clad—all things clad—oh, bother! What’s the next?”
Iris prompted him, and he halted lamely through his task with many a sigh and groan.
“Why couldn’t Milton make his things rhyme?” he said impatiently as his sister returned the book. “I never knew such rotten stuff to learn as Paradise Lost.”
“You don’t half know it,” said Iris. “Oh, mustn’t it have been nice to be Adam and Eve!”
“Awfully slow,” answered Max, making a fancy portrait on the margin of his Milton.
“That’s just what I should like,” said Iris. “I’d rather things were slow. I don’t want them all to come huddling together. Fancy the whole long day in a lovely, lovely, garden with no lessons to do, no clothes to mend, and all your time to yourself.”
“You’d get jolly well tired of it,” said Max; “anyhow, I wish old Milton hadn’t written all this stuff about it.”
Abandoning the argument, he clasped his rough head with both hands and bent muttering over his task. The lines he had just repeated stayed in Iris’s mind like the sound of very peaceful music, and changed the direction of her thoughts, for now they turned, as her long needle went in and out of the grey sock, to her godmother’s house and garden in the country. It was called Paradise Court, and though Iris had not been there since she was eight years old, she remembered it all perfectly; a picture of it rose before her again, and in a moment she was far away from Albert Street. She saw wide stretches of green lawn, with quiet meadows beyond; snowy white blossoms in the orchard, radiant flowers in the garden, borders, a row of royal purple flags with their sword-like leaves, which had specially pleased her because their name was “Iris” as well as her own. How happy she had been for those two or three days. How the sun had shone, and the birds had sung, and what big bunches of flowers she had picked in the fields. It was paradise, indeed. And she had to live in Albert Street. With a sigh she turned her eyes from the bright picture of her fancy, and glanced round the room she sat in. It was very small, and had folding doors which could be opened into the dining-room, and it was just as shabby and untidy as Max and Clement could make it. The chief thing to be noticed about it was the number of blots and splashes of ink; they were everywhere—on the walls, on the deal table, on the mantel-piece, on the map of the world, on the dog’s-eared books, and on Max’s stumpy finger-ends—there was hardly an inch of space free from them. From the window you could see the narrow straight piece of walled garden, one of many such, stretching along side by side in even rows at the backs of the houses. They were all exactly alike, in shape, in size, in griminess, and in the parched and sickly look of the plants and grass. How hard Iris had tried to make that garden pretty and pleasant to look upon! With hope ever new, and always to be disappointed, she sowed seeds in it, and spent her pennies in roots for it, and raked and dug and watered it. In vain; nothing would grow but some spindly London pride and scarlet geraniums. And indeed this was not surprising, for the garden had many things against it in the shape of poor soil, scorching sun, and numerous sparrows, not to mention boys and cats. A constant warfare was going on in it, for the cats lay in wait for the sparrows, and the boys were always on the watch for the cats, with jugs of water, traps of string, and other cunning stratagems. There was not much chance for the flowers, and even the turf was worn away in mangy patches by the feet of eager and excited combatants. At the end of it, built against the wall, there was an erection of old wire and packing-cases, in which Max and Clement kept rabbits, white rats, and a squirrel. A strange mixed scent of animals and decayed cabbage-leaves was sometimes wafted into the house from this in the summer.
“Perhaps it would be better to shut the window,” Mrs Graham would say to Iris. Iris thought it would be better for the boys not to keep rabbits; but to any hint of this kind her mother’s answer was always the same: “They may be a little disagreeable sometimes, dear, but I couldn’t deprive the poor boys of one of their few amusements.”
Her words came into Iris’s mind this evening as her eye rested on the unsuccessful garden, and she bent over her work again with a sigh.
Always someone else to think of, someone else to work for, never a little bit of pleasure that was quite her own. How could she be happy? And if she were not happy how could she be contented? It was hard to have nothing pretty to look at. Some people lived in the midst of pretty things; there was her godmother, for instance, who never saw anything ugly or disagreeable near her, but everything that was pleasant and beautiful. People who lived in places like Paradise Court could be patient, and kind, and gentle without any difficulty, but in Albert Street—A sharp scream from the other side of the folding doors, the sound of something thrown, and then a volley of angry sobs and cries. Iris started up and rushed into the next room; she had left her two little sisters there happily at play, but she now found a very different state of things. Dottie, a child of five, stood in the middle of the room, with clenched fists and puckered red face, screaming at the top of her voice, while Susie sat on the floor near nursing a rag doll with perfect composure and calmness.
“Naughty Dottie!” said Iris earnestly, “to make such a noise. What’s the matter?”
Dottie could not speak, for she was using all her breath to scream with, but she held out an appealing dumpy arm, and pointed to the doll.
“Why, that’s Dottie’s doll, Susie,” said Iris, turning to the other little girl; “did you take it from her?”
Susie nodded, still with an unmoved countenance, and Dottie redoubled her screams. Iris put both hands over her ears in despair.
“Dottie,” she said, “if you don’t try to leave off I shall put you to bed, and let Susie keep the doll.”
It was not at all easy for Dottie to leave off when she was once well set going, but she checked herself a little.
“Give the doll back, Susie,” said Iris.
Susie looked up to see if her sister were in earnest, and meeting a glance of great severity she rose and advanced towards Dottie sideways, with one finger in her mouth, and holding the doll by the legs, head downwards. Dottie, still sniffing and sobbing, made a convulsive snatch at it.
“Kiss each other,” said Iris, for this was always a sign that the quarrel was over for the time and peace agreed on between the two little girls. They had hardly given each other the angry embrace usual at such moments when a boy’s voice rang shrilly from the top of the stairs.
“Iris, Iris! Where’s Iris? Oh, Iris, do just come here!”
Poor mother! Any chance of her getting some sleep must be over long ago. It was impossible to keep the children quiet.
“Clement,” said Iris impatiently, as a boy in knickerbockers came tumbling down-stairs at headlong speed, “I do think you might remember that mother has a headache. Why can’t you come and find me instead of shouting about like that?”
“Oh, I say,” said Clement, stopping short and staring at her, “aren’t you just cross this evening! What makes you in such a tremendous temper?”
Iris felt almost inclined to cry.
“What do you want me for?” she said in a resigned and injured voice.
“Why, just look here!” Clement raised one knee and displayed a wide rent in his knickerbockers, of the shape known as a “trap-door.” Through this he stuck his fingers, that it might be shown to better advantage. “Caught it on a nail on the squirrel-house,” he said briefly.
“Oh, dear me!” said Iris wearily; “there’s an evening’s work. And I’ve only just finished Max’s socks. Pray, don’t make it any larger, Clement.”
“You’ll mend it, won’t you?” said Clement earnestly, still gazing at his knee. “You see it shows so awfully, and I shall want to put ’em on to-morrow.”
“Yes,” said Iris, “I suppose I must. I’m sure Mary won’t have time.”
“You’re a brick,” said Clement, and he gave her a rough kiss on the cheek and rushed off.
“How tiresome the boys are!” said Iris impatiently to herself; “how tiresome it is to be poor! How tiresome everything is!” and she sat down on the last step of the stairs and rested her head mournfully on her hand. Then her eye caught sight of a letter lying on a table in the passage. It was a fat rich-looking envelope, and it was directed in a stiff upright hand. Iris knew that writing—it was her godmother’s. “How funny,” she thought, “just as I was thinking of Paradise Court. I’ll take it up to mother.”
But there was something stranger still in store for her when Mrs Graham had read that letter. It contained an invitation for Iris to spend a whole month with Mrs Fotheringham.
“Mother!” exclaimed Iris.
It was the only word she could say for some moments. It seemed too wonderful and delightful to be true.
“Can I go?” was her next breathless speech.
“Would you like so very much to go?” asked her mother smiling.
It was an unnecessary question, for Iris’s whole face was alight with joyful anticipation. Her cheeks flushed, and she shook her long hair back impatiently as though eager to take flight at once.
“It will be a nice holiday for you,” continued Mrs Graham.
Suddenly it came into Iris’s mind that it was mother who wanted a holiday. How tired she looked, and how often her head ached!
“Mother,” she exclaimed impetuously, “I won’t go! It’s horrid of me to leave you with all the children. You ought to go instead.”
“But you see I am not asked. I don’t think that would quite do.”
“Well, at any rate,” said Iris, “I’d better not go,” and she sighed.
“That would be a pity, indeed,” said her mother; “and I should be sorry to refuse your godmother’s kind offer for many reasons. And though I sha’n’t see all the beautiful things at Paradise Court, I shall have pleasure, too, while you are there, because I shall know you are enjoying them.”
“How I wish we could all have them!” said Iris.
“And yet there’s something here in Albert Street,” said her mother, “which I’ve got, and you’ve got, and even Dottie and Susie have too, which is worth more, and costs more, and does more good than all those things, and which no one could buy, if he were the richest man in the world.”
At another time Iris would have paid attention to what her mother said; but now, although she heard the words, her mind was too full of Paradise Court to make any attempt to think of their meaning. She could only say to herself that she was to go quite away from Albert Street for a whole month—away from the noise and worry, and needlework and ugliness, to a place where birds sang, and flowers bloomed, and one might be idle all the day long.