“Yes,” he nodded. “He was with Aunt Anita in Java for years. Her husband held some sort of minor post on one of the plantations; he was, I believe, a fairly poor man. After his death she came to England, and Druze came with her; in Java she had afforded the luxury of a butler—living is rather cheap there—but when she came to England she got rid of him. I have a distinct recollection of the letter she wrote to Lord Everreed, which I answered. I call her ‘aunt,’ ” he explained, “although she was only the half-sister of my father, and, in reality, no relation to me at all. How long Druze remained with Lord Everreed, of course I do not know. From the date of my conviction that page of history is closed. But a few years after I had gone to prison I heard in a roundabout fashion—I think it was in a letter which an old servant of ours wrote—that he had gone into the service of Lady Raytham.”
She thought over this for some time.
“When were you arrested?”
“Seven and a half years ago.”
She looked up in surprise.
“Then you served the full sentence?”
He nodded.
“Yes. I am not on ticket-of-leave. The truth is, I was rather a troublesome prisoner—I suppose most prisoners are who have the delusion of innocence. Why do you ask?”
“I have reason to believe that the Princess thought you only served five,” said the girl. “But that really doesn’t matter. I suppose she’s of an age that—I’m being cattish. Now, tell me something more.”
“You look a very sleepy cat,” he smiled, and at that moment there came through the door a strange little figure.
How old she was it was difficult to tell, but Leslie guessed her to be six, though she was tall for that age. She was painfully thin, and her little arms, which carried with solemn attention a cup of tea, were hardly more than of the thickness of the bones that showed through the flesh. Her face, pinched and thin and translucent, had a beauty which made the girl catch her breath. She raised two big eyes to survey the visitor, and then the long lashes fell on her cheeks.
“Your tea,” she said.
Leslie took the cup gently from the child’s hand and set it down.
“What’s your name?” she asked, and as she put her hand on the yellow head, the little creature shrank back, her face puckered with fear.
“That’s Belinda,” said Peter, with a smile.
The child wore a ragged old mackintosh over a nightgown that had once been of red flannelette, but which had washed to the palest of pinks. Her hands, lightly clasped before her, were almost transparent.
“I’m Mrs. Inglethorne’s little girl,” she said in a low voice. “My name is ’Lizabeth—not Belinda.”
She raised her eyes quickly to the man and dropped them again. The gravity of her tone, the low sweetness of her voice, amazed Leslie Maughan. For a second she forgot that she was too tired to be interested even in the bizarre.
“Won’t you come and talk to me?”
The child glanced at the door.
“Mother wants me—”
“Talk to the lady!”
Evidently Mrs. Inglethorne, at the bottom of the stairs, had good ears. The child started, looked apprehensively round, and came sidling towards Leslie.
“What do you do with yourself?” asked Leslie. “Do you go to school?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I think about daddy most of the time.”
Leslie remembered that daddy was at that moment serving his country in Dartmoor.
“I keep him in a book; he’s very nice—ever so nice—”
The child nodded soberly.
“In a book?” asked Leslie. “What kind of a book?”
A voice outside the door supplied an answer. Mrs. Inglethorne must have crept up the stairs the better to listen.
“Don’t take no notice of her, miss; she’s a bit cracked. Any good-looking feller she sees in a book she says is her father. Why, she used to take the King once, and then Lord What’s-his-name, and when I think of her own poor dear father, that worked his fingers to the bone and got a ‘stretch’ for nothing, as innocent as a babe unborn, it’s very hard.”
Elizabeth was tense now; her big eyes narrowed, her ear turned to the door. It was an attitude of apprehension, and Leslie’s heart ached for the child. She smoothed her hair, and this time the little girl did not shrink.
“I’ll send you some wonderful pictures, and you’ll be able to make up fathers and uncles and all sorts of nice things from them.”
Stooping, she kissed the child, and with her arm about her painfully thin shoulders, led her to the door. On the landing the unhealthy-looking Mrs. Inglethorne smirked and squirmed, a picture of gratitude for the lady’s condescension.
“I’m going to be very interested in Elizabeth,” said Leslie, her steady eyes on the woman. “You won’t mind if I come round sometimes to see how she is getting on?”
Mrs. Inglethorne made a fearful grimace which was intended to express her pleasure.
“How many children have you?”
“Five, miss.”
The woman was looking at her curiously, possibly fascinated by her first meeting with the female of the hated species.
“Five in this little house?” Leslie raised her eyebrows. “Where do you keep them all?”
Again the woman wriggled, this time uncomfortably.
“In the kitchen, miss, except the two girls; they sleep in my room.”
“I’d like to have a look at your kitchen.”
“It’s a bit late, and you’d wake ’em up,” said Mrs. Inglethorne after hesitation.
But Leslie waited, and reluctantly Mrs. Inglethorne went down the stairs, the girl following. The kitchen was at the back of the house, approached by a narrow passage. It was a room barely ten feet square, cold and miserably furnished. In the unsatisfactory light of the oil-lamp the woman carried, she saw not three, but four, little bundles; one, a child which could not have been three years old, slept in a soap box on the floor. Its coverlet was a strip of dusty carpet, which had been roughly cut to fit the shape of the box. Two children were huddled together
