The girl from nowhere

by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds

"Till he came," slowly said Rona, fixing her eyes, heavy with unshed tears, upon the tablecloth, "I had never spoken to a man, except Father Lawson. But I had an idea that men were young, and handsome, and good, and that it was their mission to care for women and protect them." Suddenly she laughed harshly, pushing her cup from her, leaning her elbows on the table and hiding her face. "I know better now," she said in an undertone. "I know better now! They are creatures that sell girls, body and soul, for money. They only care for money and what it will get. My uncle said he was going to train me for the stage. He heard me sing, and said I should have my voice trained, and be taught to dance.... He has taken me every day to a place where they handle girls as if they were apes or pet dogs. I have been made to put on horrible clothes—to dance with hardly any clothes on at all, while men stood and made remarks about the way I was made. Other girls," she said, looking up in a pitiful wonder—"there were others who didn't seem to mind—others who laughed at me for minding. But, you see, I have been taught to say my prayers, and to shrink from all immodesty. Oh, if you could know what I have undergone!"

Felix growled. He clenched his hands and cursed his own physical weakness. "Well," he said—"well, what then?"

"A few days ago a man came to the dancing school who offered to buy me from my uncle. He was a man with an oily face and black curls, and had a grin like the demons that are carrying off the lost souls in the altarpiece at the Convent. He hung about all day watching me, and in the evening he said to uncle that he could train me, but he should want to take me over entirely. My uncle was in a savage mood, for he and I had battles every evening. I said I would earn my living in any honest way he liked. I would sit in a workroom ten hours a day, I would scrub or do anything he told me; but he said there was no money in such work, and I had got to make money for him. I think he was beginning to find out that he could not manage me, and was afraid I should run away. So—though at first he refused the man's offer, and said he knew a good thing when he saw it, and that in twelve months I should be setting London ablaze—still, after a bit, they came to terms. He was to pay my uncle a sum down, undertake the whole care of me, and my training, and he bound himself to pay some percentage on my earnings to my uncle when I came out. If you will believe it, all the other girls seemed to think I was fortunate. But I made up my mind that I would run away. However, my uncle suspected that, so when we got home he gave me a thrashing, and locked me in with bread and water, and said I should stay there until I had come to my senses. He had not beaten me before that, and it turned me into a tiger. I held out for five days—think of it—five days in that room, staring down on those trains, all alone, nothing to do, nothing to read, hardly anything to eat! And I was getting weak—so weak that I began to be afraid I should give in. I felt that if my uncle were to come in with a cane in his hand I should be too sick with fear to resist. So I said my prayers, and decided the only thing I could do was to kill myself. I knew that if I got into the power of the man with the black curls I should be—lost—and it was better to die. So I jumped—that's all. Oh, do let us go out! I am so nervous, I fancy every moment they may walk in—my uncle and he."

"From what you tell me," said Felix, "they are most unlikely to come here. They would go to a bar, not a cocoa-house."

"I suppose so," she said, faintly, her face livid, either with pain or fear.

Felix folded his arms, leant back, and thought profoundly. "I should think," he said, "the best thing—the only thing—would be for me to take you back to the Convent, would it not?"

She considered this, her wide gaze once more intent upon his face. "But he might go there and ask for me, and what could the Mother say?"

"She could not keep you there, of course, because you could not pay her. But she would find you some honest way to earn your living."

She nodded. "I believe she would—and not tell him that I had come to her. Yes!"—laying her two hands upon the table before her she looked him bravely in the eyes. "I will go with you," she said.

They paid their reckoning, rose with difficulty, for both were stiff, and reluctantly left the warmth of the fire and crept out into the street. Dusk had fallen, and the air was thick, but not what Londoners would call a fog. As they came out of the door an omnibus stopped close to the curb, and two men descended.