Princess Sarah, and Other Stories

by John Strange Winter

CHAPTER II

For about six months after Nancy's promise to her mother that she would not even try to write during the working hours, life went fairly prosperously with the widowed boarding-house keeper. Then a spell of bad luck set in. Several boarders left and were not replaced. Their best paying permanent boarder--a rich old gentleman, the head of a large business in the city--died suddenly, died without a will, although he had several times spoken of his intention of leaving Mrs. Macdonald a handsome legacy; and his next-of-kin did not seem to think it necessary to do more than pay the actual expenses which their relative had incurred. Twice they had visitors who left without paying their bills; and, as a last crowning act of ill-luck, the youngest child fell sick, and the doctor pronounced the illness to be scarlet fever.

"When troubles come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions";

and that is as true to-day as when Shakespeare penned the lines more than three hundred years ago.

Mrs. Macdonald was almost beside herself. She ceased to gird at any member of the family or household; she girded at Fate instead, morning, noon, and night. She discussed the situation in a frenzied manner, with tears in her eyes and a large amount of gesticulation, which would have formed an excellent object-lesson to a student for the stage; but, at the same time, it must be owned that raving appeals to the Almighty, passionate assertions that she was the most unlucky woman that the light of day had ever shone upon, bitter forebodings of what her daily life would be like when she was safely landed in the nearest workhouse, did not avail anything. No, the Macdonald family was in for a spell of bad luck, and all the asseverations in the world would not alter it or gainsay it.

At this time Nancy was like a rock in the midst of a stormy sea. She, after much self-communing, threw over her promise to her mother concerning the time of her writing. She felt, as every true artist feels, that it was in her to do great things; and that even a little money earned in such a crisis would be of double value. So every moment that she could steal from the now greatly decreased house duties she spent in her own room, working with feverish haste and anxiety at a new story, a story which was not about lords and ladies, or majestic guardsmen, or lovely heroines in costly Parisian dresses; no, she felt, all in a moment, the utter futility of trying to draw a phase of life with which she herself was not familiar. It seemed to come to her like a flash of light that her children of pen and ink were not real; that she was fighting the air; that she was like an artist drawing without a model. Like a living human voice a warning came into her mind, "Write what you know; write what you see; before all things be an impressionist." So her new child was slowly coming to life, a child born in poverty and reared in a boarding-house. The form of the child was crude, and was the work of an unpractised hand; but it was strong. It was full of life; it was a thing alive; and as line after line came from under her hand, as the story assumed shape and colour from under her nervous fingers, Nancy Macdonald felt that she was on the right tack at last, that this time she would not fail.

As soon as her story was done, she sent it with breathless hope to a well-known weekly magazine which is almost a household word, and then she sat down to wait. Oh! but it is weary waiting under such circumstances. After three days of sickening suspense, Nancy decided in her own mind that if she had to wait as many weeks she would be raving mad at the end of them. So she locked herself in her room and began another story, the story of a love affair which came about in just such a house as their own.

Meantime, it can scarcely be said that the Macdonald fortunes improved. It is true that the fever-stricken child recovered, and was sent away to a superior convalescent home at the seaside. It is true that one or two fresh boarders came, and that there were hopes that the family would be able to weather the storm, supposing, that is, that they were able to tide over the next few months. Still, in London, it is not easy to tide over a few months when your resources have been drained, and your income has been sorely diminished. There were bills for this and that, claims for that and the other, and these came in with great rapidity and with pressing demands for payment.

Mrs. Macdonald pitied herself more than ever; her tones, as she recalled the virtues of her past life, were more tragic; her debit and credit account with the Almighty she showed to be clearly falsified. Never was so good a woman so abominably used of Providence and humanity alike. She wept copiously over her deservings, and railed furiously against her fate. Poor Mrs. Macdonald! For many a weary year she had toiled to the best of her ability, and she had done her duty by her children according to her lights, which were pitiably dim, "The Lord must indeed love me," she remarked, with bitterest irony, one day, when a mysterious visitor had put a gruesome paper into her unwilling hands.

"It is but the beginning of the end, Nancy," she said resignedly, "the beginning of the end. I haven't a sovereign in the house, and how I am to pay nine pounds seventeen and fourpence is beyond me altogether. It won't last long; we shall have the roof of the workhouse over our heads soon. We can't go on like this. Where's the money to come from?"