What a wonderful person her Miss Dawson was! What marvels she had seen! Emily had again the feeling she had in the schooner’s cabin: how time had slipped by, been wasted. Now she would be eleven in a few months: a great age: and in all that long life, how little of interest or significance had happened to her! There was her Earthquake, of course, and she had slept with an alligator: but what were these compared with the experiences of Miss Dawson, who knew London so well it hardly seemed any longer wonderful to her, who could not even count the number of times she had travelled in a train?
Her Earthquake … it was a great possession. Dared she tell Miss Dawson about it? Was it possible that it would raise her a little in Miss Dawson’s esteem, show that even she, little Emily, had had experiences? But she never dared. Suppose that to Miss Dawson earthquakes were as familiar as railway trains: the fiasco would be unbearable. As for the alligator, Miss Dawson had told Harold to take it away as if it was a worm.
Sometimes Miss Dawson sat silently fondling Emily, looking now at her, now at the other children at play. How difficult it was to imagine that these happy-looking creatures had been, for months together, in hourly danger of their lives! Why had they not died of fright? She was sure that she would have. Or at least gone stark, staring, raving mad?
She had always wondered how people survived even a moment of danger without dropping dead with fear: but months and months … and children. … Her head could not swallow it.
As for that other question, how dearly she would have liked to ask it, if only she could have devised a formula delicate enough.
Meanwhile Emily’s passion for her was nearing its crisis; and one day this was provoked. Miss Dawson kissed Emily three times, and told her in future to call her Lulu.
Emily jumped as if shot. Call this goddess by her Christian name? She burnt a glowing vermilion at the very thought. The Christian names of all grownups were sacred: something never to be uttered by childish lips: to do so, the most blasphemous disrespect.
For Miss Dawson to tell her to do so was as embarrassing as if she had seen written up in church Please Spit.
Of course, if Miss Dawson told her to call her Lulu, at least she must not call her Miss Dawson any more. But say … the Other Word aloud, her lips refused.
And so for some time, by elaborate subterfuges, she managed to avoid calling her anything at all. But the difficulty of this increased in geometrical progression: it began to render all intercourse an intolerable strain. Before long she was avoiding Miss Dawson.
Miss Dawson was terribly wounded: what could she have done to offend this strange child? (“Little Fairy-girl,” she used to call her.) The darling had seemed so fond of her, but now. …
So Miss Dawson used to follow her about the ship with hurt eyes, and Emily used to escape from her with scarlet cheeks. They had never had a real talk, heart to heart, again, by the time the steamer reached England.
II
When the steamer took in her pilot, you may imagine that her news travelled ashore; and also, that it quickly reached the Times newspaper.
Mr. and Mrs. Bas-Thornton, after the disaster, unable to bear Jamaica any longer, had sold Ferndale for a song and travelled straight back to England, where Mr. Thornton soon got posts as London dramatic critic to various Colonial newspapers, and manipulated rather remote influences at the Admiralty in the hope of getting a punitive expedition sent against the whole island of Cuba. It was thus the Times which, in its quiet way, broke the news to them, the very morning that the steamer docked at Tilbury. She was a long time doing it, owing to the fog, out of which the gigantic noises of dockland reverberated unintelligibly. Voices shouted things from the quays. Bells ting-a-linged. The children welded themselves into a compact mass facing outwards, an improvised Argus determined to miss nothing whatever. But they could not gather really what anything was about, much less everything.
Miss Dawson had taken charge of them all, meaning to convey them to her Aunt’s London house till their relations could be found. So now she took them ashore, and up to the train, into which they climbed.
“What are we getting into this box for?” asked Harry: “Is it going to rain?”
It took Rachel several journeys up and down the steep steps to get all her babies inside.
The fog, which had met them at the mouth of the river, was growing thicker than ever. So they sat there in semidarkness at first, till a man came and lit the light. It was not very comfortable, and horribly cold: but presently another man came, and put in a big flat thing which was hot: it was full of hot water, Miss Dawson said, and for you to put your feet on.
Even now that she was in a train, Emily could hardly believe it would ever start. She had become quite sure it was not going to when at last it did, jerking along like a cannonball would on a leash.
Then their powers of observation broke down. For the time they were full. So they played Up-Jenkins riotously all the way to London: and when they arrived hardly noticed it. They were quite loath to get out, and finally did so into as thick a pea-soup fog as London could produce at the tail end of the season. At this they began to wake up again, and jog themselves to remember that this really was England, so as not to miss things.
They had just realised that the train had run right inside a sort of enormous house, lit by haloed
