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Atsuyuki Morishima
Andreas Rauber
Chern Li Liew (Eds.)
LNCS 10075
Digital Libraries:
Knowledge, Information, and Data
in an Open Access Society
18th International Conference
on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2016
Tsukuba, Japan, December 7–9, 2016, Proceedings
123
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 10075
Commenced Publication in 1973
Founding and Former Series Editors:
Gerhard Goos, Juris Hartmanis, and Jan van Leeuwen
Editorial Board
David Hutchison
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Takeo Kanade
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Josef Kittler
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Jon M. Kleinberg
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Friedemann Mattern
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
John C. Mitchell
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Moni Naor
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
C. Pandu Rangan
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
Bernhard Steffen
TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
Demetri Terzopoulos
University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Doug Tygar
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Gerhard Weikum
Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbrücken, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7409
Atsuyuki Morishima Andreas Rauber
•
Digital Libraries:
Knowledge, Information, and Data
in an Open Access Society
18th International Conference on Asia-Pacific
Digital Libraries, ICADL 2016
Tsukuba, Japan, December 7–9, 2016
Proceedings
123
Editors
Atsuyuki Morishima Chern Li Liew
University of Tsukuba Victoria University of Wellington
Tsukuba Wellington
Japan New Zealand
Andreas Rauber
Vienna University of Technology
Vienna
Austria
LNCS Sublibrary: SL3 – Information Systems and Applications, incl. Internet/Web, and HCI
This volume contains the papers presented at the 18th International Conference on
Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL 2016), held during December 7–9, 2016, in
Tsukuba, Japan. Since starting in Hong Kong in 1998, ICADL has become a premier
international conference for digital library research. The conference series explores
digital libraries as a broad foundation for interaction with information and information
management in the networked information society.
ICADL 2016 was jointly organized with the Asia-Pacific Forum of Information
Schools (APIS) under the umbrella of the International Forum 2016. The theme of the
International Forum 2016 was “Knowledge, Information and Data (KID) in Open
Access Society.” Open access is widely recognized as a key concept for the progress
of the networked information society – open science, open government, open data, etc.
This forum is aimed at promoting discussion around novel frameworks, technologies,
and services related to the theme and at facilitating human networks for advancing KID
research, education, and services. We believe digital libraries and information schools
play important roles in the open access society, and we hope this conference provides
the platform for exploring these further.
The ICADL series has traditionally been focused on advanced information tech-
nologies for the development of digital libraries. In its long history, ICADL 2016 was
the first conference to explicitly solicit papers that investigate and discuss social and
cultural issues related to the design and development of digital libraries, digital
archives, and digital information services. We believe this multi-disciplinary approach
is crucial to the development of a truly open access society.
ICADL 2016 presented three keynotes – by Prof. Ronald L. Larsen, Prof. Ee-peng
Lim, and Prof. Katsumi Tanaka, and two thematic sessions – one on “The Future of
Digital Library Research and iSchools” and another on “Natural Disasters and Infor-
mation Technologies.” Also unique to ICADL 2016 was the explicit solicitation of not
only academic research papers but also practitioner papers. The integration of theory,
research, and evidence-based policies and practice is critical to the discussion of
research problems and future directions for digital library research. This encourages
academics and researchers to more consciously embody our roles as the “critic and
conscience” of society by actively engaging with practitioners and in demonstrating
that theorization and constructive critiques are situated within meaningful practices.
Practitioners, on the other hand, are exposed to new visions and perspectives for the
future, driving the evolution of best practices in their environments.
Out of the 80 submissions from 16 countries received, we accepted 18 full papers, 17
work-in-progress papers, and seven practitioner papers. Collectively, these papers cover
topics such as community informatics, digital heritage preservation, digital curation,
models and guidelines, information retrieval/integration/extraction/recommendation,
privacy, education and digital literacy, open access and data, and information access
design. We would like to thank all members of the Program Committee for their effort in
VI Preface
assisting us in the timely review of all the submissions. We are especially grateful to
Prof. Shigeo Sugimoto of the University of Tsukuba, who is the general-co-chair of the
International Forum, for his relentless enthusiasm and effort in connecting all the dots,
and to the members of the Organizing Committee, who lent their support in making
ICADL 2016 a success. We gratefully acknowledge the University of Tsukuba for
hosting the forum and the support of our industrial sponsors. The forum was partially
organized by JSPS Kakenhi (#16H01754, #25240012).
Organizing Committee
Organizing Committee Co-chairs
Shigeo Sugimoto University of Tsukuba, Japan
Atsuyuki Morishima University of Tsukuba, Japan
Publicity Co-chairs
Gobinda Chowdhury Northumbria University, UK
Mitsuharu Nagamori University of Tsukuba, Japan
Bhuva Narayan University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Sueyeon Syn The Catholic University of America, USA
Treasurer
Masao Takaku University of Tsukuba, Japan
SIGIR Liaison
Edie Rasmussen University of British Columbia, Canada
Program Committee
Palakorn Achananuparp Singapore Management University, Singapore
Robert Allen Yonsei University, South Korea
Toshiyuki Amagasa University of Tsukuba, Japan
Kanwal Ameen University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Lu An Wuhan University, China
Naveed Anwar Northumbria University, UK
Thomas Baker Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Christoph Becker University of Toronto, Canada
Eric Boamah The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, New Zealand
Artur Caetano University of Lisbon, Portugal
Shu-Jiun Chen Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Gobinda Chowdhury Northumbria University, UK
Euan Cochrane Yale University Library, USA
Fabio Crestani University of Lugano, Switzerland
Sally Jo Cunningham Waikato University, New Zealand
Koji Eguchi Kobe University, Japan
Miguel Escobar Varela National University of Singapore, Singapore
Pavlos Fafalios L3S Research Center, Germany
Schubert Foo Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Edward Fox Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
USA
Nuno Freire INESC-ID, Portugal
Dion Goh Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Annika Hinze University of Waikato, New Zealand
Jieh Hsiang National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Jane Hunter University of Queensland, Australia
Isto Huvila Uppsala University, Sweden
Fidelia Ibekwe-Sanjuan Aix-Marseille Université, France
Daisuke Ikeda Kyushu University, Japan
Emi Ishita Kyushu University, Japan
Organization IX
The Rise and Fall of the Wonder Okinawa Digital Archive: Comparing
Japanese and American Conceptualizations of Digital Archives. . . . . . . . . . . 63
Andrew Wertheimer and Noriko Asato
XII Contents
Rule-Based Page Segmentation for Palm Leaf Manuscript on Color Image. . . 127
Papangkorn Inkeaw, Jakramate Bootkrajang, Phasit Charoenkwan,
Sanparith Marukatat, Shinn-Ying Ho, and Jeerayut Chaijaruwanich
Guideline for Digital Curation for the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn
Anthropology Centre’s Digital Repository: Preliminary Outcome . . . . . . . . . 203
Sittisak Rungcharoensuksri
Social Media
Abstract. This paper argues that there is a need for an awareness and
education about privacy literacy in an age where lifelogging technologies
are ubiquitous and open up private data to commercial and other uses,
wherein commercial entities build up huge digital libraries of private data
that they then mine with big data analytics. Often, data is represented
as if they are the raw material of information and algorithms, and as
neutral agents for processing these pieces of information, but in our digi-
tal society, this so-called neutral data can become open data that can be
processed easily to reveal informational metadata on individuals’ behav-
iors. Whilst much of this may be beyond individual control, and simply
an unavoidable part of our information society, there are certain types of
personal and private data that can be, and need to be, under individual
control, and not open to integration or ‘hashing’ with public data. This
requires a new type of data literacy on the part of users that we term as
privacy literacy.
1 Introduction
People leave a digital trail of data or “electronic breadcrumbs” in their daily
routines; through electronic fare cards, traffic and street cameras, internet surf-
ing, paying for purchases with credit/cash cards, creating text messages or by
making calls, and so on [1]. Additionally, with an increased awareness of personal
health and individuals to keep fit and healthy, the use of lifelogging devices to
track one’s fitness, diet, sleep, exercise, and other activities is increasing also.
These tracking applications or lifelogging devices also collect other incidental
and behavioral data such as location, patterns, and related metadata and can
be combined and re-combined to discover new data. This lifelogged information
generated by individual consumers is often privatized by service providers and
provided to third parties through their terms-and-conditions-of-use and end user
license agreements (EULA). Users are required to read lengthy legalese in pri-
vacy policies before signing up to use devices and services, which hardly anyone
c Springer International Publishing AG 2016
A. Morishima et al. (Eds.): ICADL 2016, LNCS 10075, pp. 3–9, 2016.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-49304-6 1
4 Z. Pingo and B. Narayan
reads [2,3]. Increasingly, several retail-store loyalty programs have also adopted
strategies that motivate users to link up their loyalty cards with fitness-device
data and insurance companies’ plans. This raises an important issue in regard to
privacy, which surrounds data collection strategies, surveillance, and monitoring
of people through technologies and related privacy risks, especially in light of
corporate mergers, take-overs, and other synergies between commercial entities.
This study will focus on understanding this disconnect between the intentions
of service providers with respect to lifelogging devices and apps and the trust
that individuals place in them in regard to their own personal information and
privacy through a mixed methods study.
2 Literature Review
One of the difficulties in defining the realm of the private is that privacy is a
notion that is strongly culturally relative, contingent on such factors as economics
as well as technology available in a given cultural domain [4]. This literature
review considers all perspectives of privacy around the domain of lifelogging
data created by users for purposes of health and fitness.
information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people” [10], he
does not address the use of the “derived” or “discovered” data from the digital
technologies activities [SNs, lifelogs, search engines] which props up the privacy
risks debate [11]. For instance, combination of personal data collected in different
databases pose growing privacy risks and threats in two distinct ways: (i) using
information other than its originally perceived approved purpose, and collected
at one point in time (“spot information”), and (ii) combining the fruits of “spot
information” to piece together information with other data to generate new
information for profiling purposes [12]. Such re-use of data for purposes other
than originally intended has become common commercial business practice in
the current big data analytic era. Social Network Services provide the means for
people to be seen online and to share experiences in real time, and for many, “the
desire to be visible is stronger than the desire to protect private information”
[13]. Currently the volume of data that people create themselves - communication
from voice calls, emails, and text messages, to uploaded pictures and videos, is
compelling. Moreover, as Agnellutti [14] argues, we are also at the “nascent
stage” of the Internet of Things where our appliances and devices have started
to be integrated to communicate with each other, sometimes without individual’s
awareness.
• Service data given to the service provider in order to use the application.
• Disclosed data is what one posts on one’s own page including photos, video,
comments, messages, shared to the “public” or “friends”.
• Incidental data is what other people post about you that you don’t have
control for example somebody shares or re-posts your picture.
• Behavioral data is data the sites collects on users habits by recording what
you do, who you do it with, etc. In short is a total engagements on the website.
• Derived/discovered data is data about an individual that is derived based on
combination of data sets from one or more sources.
Often data is represented as if they are the raw material of information and
algorithms, and as neutral agents for processing these pieces of information [17],
but in our digital society, this so-called neutral data can become big data and
6 Z. Pingo and B. Narayan
References
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2. Potter, W.J.: Media Literacy. Sage Publications, Santa Barbara (2015)
3. Solove, D.J.: Introduction: privacy self-management and the consent dilemma. Har-
vard Law Rev. 126, 1880 (2012)
4. DeCew, J.: Privacy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002)
5. Warren, S., Brandeis, L.: The right to privacy. Harvard Law Rev. 4(5), 193–220
(1890)
6. Altman, I.: The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space, Ter-
ritory, and Crowding. Brooks/Cole, Monterey (1975)
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(2014)
8. Solove, D.J.: Conceptualizing privacy. Calif. Law Rev. 90, 1087–1155 (2002)
9. Gindin, S.E.: Nobody reads your privacy policy or online contract: lessons learned
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Guardian, Las Vegas (2010)
11. King, N.J., Forder, J.: Data analytics and consumer profiling: finding appropriate
privacy principles for discovered data. Comput. Law Secur. Rev. 32(5), 669–796
(2016)
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(2015)
13. Jacobs, B.: Two of the grand changes through computer and network technology.
In: Hansen, M., Hoepman, J.-H., Leenes, R., Whitehouse, D. (eds.) Privacy and
Identity Management for Emerging Services and Technologies, pp. 1–11. Springer,
Heidelberg (2013)
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Issues. Nova Science Publishers Inc., New York (2014)
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Clough, P., Brockmeier, J.: Socio-technical lifelogging: Deriving design principles
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human. In: Aeon (2016)
When Personal Data Becomes Open Data 9
20. Potter, W.J.: Media Literacy. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (2013)
21. Social Intelligence: social media reports (2016)
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The Value of Public Libraries During a Major Flooding:
How Digital Resources Can Enhance Health and Disaster
Preparedness in Local Communities
Feili Tu-Keefner ✉
( )
1 Introduction
The general public today has become more demanding in searching for a variety of
health information sources. Because public libraries are community outreach centers
devoted to information services, especially to underserved populations [1], many adults
rely on them for accessing technology and Internet resources [2, 3]. Kwon and Kim
(2009) show that about 6 % of American adults consider public libraries their primary
source for health information [2]. Public health professionals recognize that local public
libraries have the potential to intervene effectively in delivering health information
services to the public [2].
Public libraries, in addition to respected local and national government agencies such
as health, fire, and police departments, are sources of credible information at difficult
times [4]. During natural disasters and crises, people need to seek information to answer
questions regarding the nature of the threat and how to respond to it. Studies indicate
that people are more satisfied with the information received about a particular threat
when needed facts are provided [5]. Source credibility is the key to successful risk
communication [6]. Public libraries have a long history of providing community
outreach programs and services to their diverse user population, including aiding access
to reliable consumer health information and electronic health resources and offering
health-information literacy programs [5]. Public libraries are uniquely positioned to aid
community members in developing specialized health information services [7]. A good
example is the creation of the HealthLink infrastructure connecting with the library’s
programs on cancer awareness and screening for adults in the Queens Library System
in New York City [7]. Ever-changing information technology has become embedded in
every aspect of communication, and public libraries have begun using social media to
communicate with their patrons. However, Zach reports that in 2011, within a month
after the Mississippi River flooded, not many public libraries posted alerts about emer‐
gency situations on their websites [8].
3 Research Questions
Given the above background, the researchers asked the following questions:
During the catastrophic flooding (between October 4–10, 2015) in the target areas
affected by flooding (i.e., Richland and Orangeburg Counties in South Carolina)
12 F. Tu-Keefner
• What types of information services did the public libraries in the target areas provide
to the community?
• What types of technology access (including computers, Internet, and social media)
did the public libraries in the target areas provide to the community?
Focus-group meetings with public library administrators and librarians were used to
examine how librarians responded during this time. The intention was to encourage
library personnel to fully discuss and comment on personal experiences, and to compare
their views with those of other participants [10]. Part of the discussions centered on the
use of resources to provide information services as well as on users’ information needs
and technology access during and after the disaster. Purposive sampling was used to
recruit as subjects library administrators and professional librarians from several loca‐
tions specifically affected by flooding, i.e., the Richland Library Main Library and its
three branches, as well as the Orangeburg County Public Library system. [12] A pool
of potential subjects was identified based on their involvement in the library operations
during and after the disaster, after which the researchers formally invited them to partic‐
ipate in this study.
Community members who were affected by flooding in the target areas were the potential
subjects for this component of the study The researchers are still recruiting subjects and
conducting interviews with community members. Selective sampling has been used to
identify subjects for one-on-one, semi-structured in-depth interviews. Altogether 20
subjects will be invited to participate in the study, with each receiving an incentive of
$25. The subjects described in 4.1 served as the main sources in identifying this popu‐
lation. Several community member subjects dropped out during the interview process
due to logistics and to personal reasons. A main reason is related to the trauma suffered
by those who had gone through this catastrophic flooding.
The Value of Public Libraries During a Major Flooding 13
Approval for the research protocol was sought from the University of South Carolina
Institutional Review Board (IRB). Each person participating in the project was informed
about the nature of the project and provided a cover letter as instructed by the IRB.
Personal information on the subjects is kept confidential by the researchers. The
researchers used email as the primary channel to contact the subjects, and the subjects’
e-mail addresses are archived separately. Any files that contain personal information on
the subjects will be destroyed after the completion of the project. The results of this
research may be published, but no information that could identify subjects will be
included. The results will be reported based on all participants collectively.
5 Results
Preliminary results are presented in this section. Altogether, twenty-five library admin‐
istrators (13/25, 52 %) and librarians (12/25, 48 %) were invited to participate in this
study. Three focus-group meetings with public library administrators and librarians were
held. Eighteen out of twenty-five members (18/25, 72 %) attended the meetings. Eight
of them are library administrators (8/18, 44.4 %), and the rest of them are librarians
(10/18, 55.6 %). Three meetings were held at the University of South Carolina, and each
meeting lasted around 60 min. The meetings were recorded digitally using Camtasia
software. The transcripts of the meetings were prepared by a commercial transcription
service. Two research assistants were onsite taking notes. Five one-on-one interviews
were conducted; each session lasted around 60 min. A FEMA Regional Manager who
served as the site manager in South Carolina was granted permission to meet with the
researchers for 90 min. The same commercial transcription service was used to prepare
the transcripts of interviews. The researchers decided to manually analyze all the tran‐
scripts individually and then compare the results. The topics selected for our analyses
are related to the following: the processes librarians used for information gathering,
distribution, and services; the community members’ information needs; and the part‐
nerships the libraries built with multi-level agencies to facilitate emergency response
and recovery.
14 F. Tu-Keefner
One of the research purposes is the investigation of public libraries’ value to their
communities and their legitimacy as partners of public health agencies during and after
a disaster. The Richland Library administrators and librarians worked with the offices
of South Carolina State Senator Joel Lourie [14] and U.S. Congressman James E.
Clyburn [15] to help get FEMA to the local communities, and created disaster recovery
centers for FEMA. In fact, 14 % of all FEMA applications were filed at the Richland
Library’s main and branch libraries. The Richland Library was a water distribution site;
librarians took books, toys, and computers to shelters. This successful collaboration with
public health agencies shows the value of public libraries in facilitating emergency
response and recovery during this disaster.
This research also examines how librarians use technology (including social media)
to provide situation-specific information and services. Preliminary results reveal that
technology access was crucial to obtaining credible information and disseminating
resources and services to the community. The Internet was predominantly used by
librarians to gather and distribute resources to community members. Librarians used
social media sites to answer patrons’ questions with an average nine-minute response
time. On the Richland Library’s Facebook site, the library’s posts were shared 1,386
times, an average of 98 shares for each post. From October 4–12, the library’s Twitter
account “gained 242 new followers.
However, the findings also show that a discrepancy exists between the reliable
resources vital to consumers and the health information shared with them by the public
libraries. Public librarians were not fully prepared to provide sufficient essential disaster
and health information for adult users, especially through an online venue, before and
after the natural disasters hit South Carolina. Information and technology literacy issues
created barriers for many community members in accessing FEMA applications and
filing claims online.
Even though public librarians are skilled at helping users find local information and
resources [16], the results also show that the public libraries and librarians in our study
were not well prepared in identifying, gathering, distributing, and promoting the use of
disaster and health information. The researchers recommend that public libraries provide
well-selected, reliable disaster and health digital resources for adult users, making them
available permanently, and updating the information consistently. In addition, it is also
critical to ensure that these resources can be easily located on the library websites. In
recent years, social media have been increasingly popular as a venue for online infor‐
mation exchange. Social media network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, can be
used to increase the awareness of these library resources and to distribute real-time
messages of interest by library personnel. By promoting the use of such resources and
services, public librarians can help community members overcome issues related to
information and technology literacies by simply clicking on links on the public libraries’
websites anytime, anywhere. In addition, health sciences librarians can support the
The Value of Public Libraries During a Major Flooding 15
selection and dissemination of trustworthy health resources and train public librarians
in the delivery of effective health information services.
References
Sweet Suzanne,
I’ll be your young man,
They’ve never made your equal
Since the world began.
Won’t you take my name?
For my heart’s aflame
For love of you,
My pretty Sue,
My sweet Suzanne.
and again:
Why the Fairy Queen should suddenly enter and break into this
drivelling song was an unanswerable enigma, and why a little boy in
an Eton suit with a very white collar and a very pink face should rise
from the front row of the circle and sing each verse over again, while
the Fairy Queen walked backward and forward with one hand held to
her apparently entranced ear, was an equally unanswerable enigma.
At any rate Letizia thoroughly disapproved of the anomaly. While
all the women in the pit and gallery and stalls and circle were
exclaiming:
“Oh, isn’t he a little love? Well, I declare, if he isn’t reelly lovely.
Oh, do listen to the little angel,” Letizia was frowning. Then with great
deliberation, unobserved by Mrs. Pottage, who was languishing upon
the sibilant cockney of this detestable young treble, she stood up on
the seat and shouted:
“Muvver!”
The Fairy Queen, while still holding one hand to an entranced ear,
shook her wand at her little mortal daughter. But Letizia was not to
be deterred from the problem that was puzzling her sense of fitness.
“Muvver!” she shouted again. “Why is that boy?”
Then Mrs. Pottage woke from the trance into which the duet had
flung her and pulled Letizia down again into a sitting posture.
“Duckie, you mustn’t call out and spoil the lovely singing.”
“I don’t like that boy,” said Letizia firmly.
“Yes, but listen.”
“And my lamb what Santy Claus gave me doesn’t like him.”
“Hush, duckie, hush!”
“And I won’t listen. And I won’t look, Mrs. Porridge.”
“Come, come, be a good girl.”
But Letizia struggled out of Mrs. Pottage’s arms and retreated
under the seat of the stall from which she did not emerge until this
enigmatic interlude in the life of the Fairy Queen came to an end
amid a tumult of applause from the profoundly moved audience.
Letizia failed to recognise her father when he came rushing on for
the Harlequinade at the end of the Transformation Scene with the
time-honoured greeting of “Here we are again!” And when Mrs.
Pottage told her who the clown was, she merely shook her head
violently and reiterated “No, no, no, no, no!”
However, the Harlequinade itself thoroughly amused her, although
she did not approve of the Harlequin’s dance with her mother the
Columbine.
“Who is that spotted man?” she asked. “Why does he frow muvver
up like that? I don’t like him. I don’t like his black face. I won’t let him
frow up my lamb what Santy Claus gave me.”
“Well, you threw it up yourself just now and hit the poor fiddle.”
“Yes,” Letizia acknowledged in a tone of plump contentment.
The Harlequinade came to an end with a wonderful trap-act, in
which the Clown was pursued by the Policeman head first through
one shop window, head first out through another, up a long flight of
stairs that turned into planks just as they both reached the top, so
that they both rolled down to the bottom and disappeared into a
cellar. Out again and diving through more windows, whirling round
doors without hinges, climbing over roofs, sliding down chimneys,
until at last the Policeman’s pursuit was shaken off and the Clown,
after bounding up ten feet into the air through a star-trap, alighted
safely on the stage whence, after snatching a basket that was
hanging up outside a shop window, he began to pelt the audience
with crackers while the orchestra stood up to play God Save the
Queen and the curtain slowly descended on a great success at the
Theatre Royal, Greenwich.
CHAPTER XI
THE END OF THE HARLEQUINADE
“I don’t think you were a very good little girl,” said Nancy
reproachfully to her daughter when she was brought round to the
dressing-room by Mrs. Pottage after the matinée.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” averred Letizia entirely impenitent. “My
lamb what Santy Claus gave me saided I was a very good little girl.
He saided ‘Oh, Tizia, you is a good little girl!’”
The landlady beamed.
“There’s one thing, she thoroughly enjoyed her little self, and so
did I, I’m bound to say, even if we was a bit noisy.”
“I’m afraid Letizia was very noisy indeed.”
“Yes, but nobody minded two penn’orth of gin except a dismal-
faced widow-woman sitting just behind us, and she’d had more than
two penn’orth before ever she come out which is my opinion.”
“My husband and I won’t have time to dress and come home
between the shows,” said Nancy. “We’re having some dinner sent in
to us here. The curtain goes up again at seven, and it’s nearly six
now.”
There was a tap on the door, and Bram, still in his clown’s dress
but without the tufted wig, peeped round the corner.
“Well, you’re a nice one,” he said to his daughter. “I nearly sent the
policeman down to you.”
“Was you that white man with a funny face?” Letizia asked
incredulously.
“There you are, I told you it was your dadda,” Mrs. Pottage put in.
“Yes,” said Letizia, and in the tone of the affirmation a desire to
admit frankly that she had been wrong was mingled with a slight
resentment that Mrs. Pottage should have been right.
When Letizia had departed with the landlady, Bram and Nancy
joined several other members of the company at a picnic meal. The
talk was mostly of the pantomime, of how this song had gone and
how that joke had got across, of whether it would not be wiser to cut
this scene out altogether and shorten that one.
“Of course it’ll play closer to-night,” said one of the company. “And
they’ll be a little quicker with the changes. Or it’s to be hoped they
will.”
“That limelight man is a bit of a jay,” said the Demon King gloomily.
“Would he follow me with that spot? Not he. And when I was singing
my song, the fool was jigging it all over the stage like a damned
rocket. His mate was better with you, Miss O’Finn.”
“He was on me all right,” Nancy allowed. “But he ruined the last
verse of my first song by letting it fizz till I could have knocked him off
his perch with my wand.”
“I think our trap-act went great, old boy,” said the Policeman to the
Clown. “I’ve never known a trap-act go so smooth the first time. The
house was eating it.”
Bram nodded.
“Yes, it went all right,” he admitted without enthusiasm. “But that
star didn’t seem to me to be working properly again. Which reminds
me, I must get hold of Worsley and tell him to have a look at it.”
“Who wants Worsley?” inquired the stage-manager, coming into
the dressing-room at that moment.
“It was about that star-trap, old man,” said Bram.
“Now, that’s all right, old chap. Don’t you worry. I’ve been down
under the stage, and it’s working to rights now. Lovely.”
“I thought I wasn’t coming through this afternoon,” Bram grumbled.
“Why, you came up like a bird,” Worsley assured him. “What are
you talking about?”
“Yes, I know I did come up,” Bram replied irritably, for he was
feeling thoroughly tired. “But it did stick for a second or two, and you
know what it would mean if I got caught.”
“Oh, Mr. Worsley,” Nancy exclaimed in a panic, “for God’s sake
see it’s all right to-night.”
“Now, don’t you worry yourself, Miss O’Finn,” the stage-manager
begged. “Good Lord, you don’t suppose I want to have an accident?”
“I wish you’d speak to that blasted limelight man about getting his
red spot on me,” said the Demon King. “He ruined every entrance
I’ve got—and I haven’t got too many.”
The stage-manager decided that he should be happier elsewhere,
and left the assembled diners.
“Have a drink, old man,” somebody called after him. But Mr.
Worsley suspected a quid pro quo and shouted back:
“Haven’t time now, old man. I’ll join you after the evening show.
I’ve got to see the property man.”
And they heard his voice go shouting along the corridors.
“Props! Props! Where the deuce is Props?”
“Poor old Mangel Worsley,” said the Demon King, with a gloomy
shake of the head. “He never ought to have gone in for panto. He’s
not up to it. He’d have done better to stick to Shakespeare. I saw his
production of Macbeth for Wilson Forbes. Very pretty little show it
was, too. Very pretty. But this sort of thing is too big for him
altogether. He can’t grasp the detail. Result? My entrances go for
nothing. For absolutely nothing! It stands to reason, if a red spot-
light’s thrown Right Centre when I come on Down Stage Left it kills
me dead. But that doesn’t trouble Worsley, because he doesn’t
realise the importance of ensemble. He niggles, and it’s a pity,
because within limits he’s quite a good stage-manager.”
How full the Theatre Royal was that Boxing Night! And Morton’s
Theatre, the rival house, was just as full. People went to the
pantomime even in days as near to us as the early nineties. They
could not amuse themselves then by sporting with Amaryllis in the
shade of a picture-palace while black-eyed heroes dreamed in profile
during two hours of a monotonous reel or black-lipped heroines
smeared their cheeks with vaseline and, intolerably magnified,
blubbered silently at an unresponsive audience. The audience of the
Theatre Royal that night was there to enjoy the performance, even
though it lasted from seven o’clock till midnight. People went to the
theatre in those days to see and to hear, to love and to hate. They
were not sitting jam-packed in that reek of oranges and dust for the
sake of cuddling one another. Nobody dressed up like a fireman
came and squirted antiseptic perfumes over them. The odor of its
own wedged-in humanity was grateful, an entity that breathed,
cheered, laughed, and wept as one. The Grand, Islington, the
Britannia, Hoxton, the Standard, Shoreditch, the transpontine Surrey,
yes, and in those days Old Drury itself still defiant of change—all
these theatres held people, not fidgety shadows gazing with lack-
lustre eyes at a representation of fidgety shadows.
In spite of their fatigue the company played Dick Whittington that
night at Greenwich with treble the vigour of the afternoon
performance. Everything went better, in spite of the absence of Mrs.
Pottage and Letizia. Even the limelight men managed to keep their
beams steadily fixed on the object of their enhancement
whencesoever he might enter, whithersoever he might move,
wheresoever he might stand. The billows of the Demon King’s bass
rolled along twice as majestically. Nancy’s song with the overwashed
chorister in the circle earned a double encore. Principal boy, principal
girl, dame, knockabout comedians, all gained the good-will of the
house. But the success was Bram. After his first scene Idle Jack had
only to appear on the stage to send the audience into a roar. The
tritest line of dialogue was received as heavenly wit. The stalest
piece of fooling was welcomed in a rapture.
“Darling, you are being so funny to-night,” Nancy told him, when
for a moment they found themselves side by side in the wings.
“I don’t feel at all funny,” Bram said. “In fact, it’s because I’m
feeling so tired and depressed off, I suppose, that I’m trying to cheer
up by being extra funny on.”
He squeezed her hand, and a moment later she heard the deep-
voiced laughter of the house greeting another of his entrances.
Bram’s success as Idle Jack that night was consolidated by his
Joey. He was not just the traditional clown with wide red mouth,
bending low in exaggerated laughter and treading always on hot
bricks. There was something of the Pierrot in his performance. Not
that he scorned tradition overmuch. The whole audience recognised
him as the authentic Joey of their imagination; but he did contrive to
be somehow the incarnate spirit of that London street much more
essentially than the heavy-footed Harlequin, much more essentially
than Columbine, whose short pink tarlatan skirt did not become
Nancy’s height, though she pirouetted on and off the stage gracefully
enough. Pantaloon, too, was good, and the actor did manage to
represent that hoary-headed ancient Londoner in his absurd
Venetian disguise. But Bram was the ghost of old London itself—a
London that was fast dying, though here in Greenwich it might seem
to be as full of vitality as ever. It was the London of sweet lavender
and cherry ripe, the London of hot cockles, of Punch and Judy
shows and four-wheelers and lumbering knife-board omnibuses, of
gas-lamps and queer beggars. Bram’s incarnation of this vanishing
city had that authentic whimsicality (the very term is nearly
unintelligible now) of old cockney humour, an urban Puckishness as
if for a while Robin Goodfellow had tried to keep pace with the times
and live in great cities. He made his audience feel that sausages
were only strung together because it was more amusing to steal a
string than a single sausage. His red-hot poker itself glowed with
such a geniality of warmth as made the audience feel that everybody
to whose seat it was applied was being slapped on the back in the
spirit of the purest good-fellowship.
Nancy had flitted for the last time across that most fantastic yet so
utterly ordinary street; and she paused in the wings for a moment,
before going up to her dressing-room, to listen to the tumultuous
laughter of the house at the great trap-act which was the climax of
the Harlequinade. She saw Bram’s white figure come diving through
the shop window and safely caught by the scene-hands stationed on
the other side. She saw the Policeman follow close upon his heels,
and watched the pair of them chase each other round and round the
revolving door. She heard the thunders of applause as the trick
staircase shot the protagonists from top to bottom, and the still
louder thunder when Bram appeared among the chimney-pots. Then
she turned away and had just reached the door of her dressing-room
when the corridors which had been echoing with the distant
applause became suddenly still as death.
“I hope that husband of mine’s not doing some particularly
breakneck feat to thrill the Bank Holiday crowd,” she said to the
principal girl with whom she shared a room and who was by now
nearly dressed. “What has happened?” Nancy repeated. This quiet
was unnatural. A gust of overwhelming dread sent her hurrying back
down the corridor, as she heard the agonised voice of Worsley
crying:
“Ring down! Ring down! For the love of God, ring down!”
At the head of the stairs she met the Pantaloon, beardless, with
startled eyes, who waved her back.
“Don’t come down on the stage for a minute, Miss O’Finn. There’s
been an accident. He was caught in the star-trap. The spring must
have broken.”
“Bram....”
He nodded, and burst into tears.
Nancy hurried past him toward the stage. Beyond the dropped
curtain she could hear the murmur of the anxious and affrighted
audience. Bram was lying beside the closed trap, the pointed
sections of which were red.
“There isn’t a doctor in the whole audience,” Worsley was saying.
“But several people have run to fetch one. How do you feel now, old
man?”
Nancy pushed her way through the staring group, and knelt beside
Bram, now unconscious, a bloody belt round his white dress, his
head pillowed on the string of sausages.
“My precious one,” she cried. “Oh, my precious one!”
His eyelids flickered at her voice, and his limp body quivered very
faintly.
“A doctor will be here in a minute, Miss O’Finn,” Worsley said.
“A doctor,” she cried. “Damn you, damn you! A doctor! He told you
the trap wasn’t working properly. If he dies, it will be you that has
killed him.”
By now, several of the ladies of the company had joined the group
round the prostrate clown.
“Hush, dear,” said one of them, “don’t say anything you may regret
afterwards.”
Nancy did not answer this pacific woman, but bent low over her
husband.
“My precious one, my precious one.”
The doctor came at last. When he had finished his examination,
he shook his head.
“He is injured mortally.”
“Dying?” Nancy whispered.
“He can hardly live many more minutes with these injuries. Has he
any relations here?”
“I am his wife.”
“My poor girl,” said the doctor quickly. “I didn’t realise that. But I
couldn’t have hidden the truth. He must lie here. He’s unconscious.
Even to move him to a dressing-room would probably kill him.”
The group round the dying man moved away and left him alone
with his wife and the doctor, on that silent bright unnatural stage.
“And is there nothing we can do?” she asked.
“Nothing, my poor girl. It is kinder to leave him unconscious and
not try to revive him. He will suffer less.”
But presently Bram’s lips moved, and Nancy bending low to his
mouth heard the dim voice speaking with a fearful effort.
“I’m dying—Nancy darling—I wish—I wish....”
The dim voice died away.
“Oh, my only love, my darling, what do you wish? Do you want to
see Letizia?”
“No—no—better not—not kind for baby girls to see death—better
not—better not—Mrs. Pottage very kind—kind and good—I wish—I
wish....”
Again the dim voice was lost.
“What, my precious one? What do you wish?”
“Nancy—if things are difficult—we haven’t saved much money—
difficult—go to Caleb—too bitter about my people—too hard—faults
on both sides—Nancy, kiss me once—quick—quick—I don’t think I
shall know soon if you kiss me....”
She touched his cold lips with hers.
“Such a darling wife—always such a darling—very happy together
—happy memories—your father’s speech—yes, Caleb will look after
you if things very difficult—give my love to grandmamma—always
kind to me—happy memories—Nancy! Nancy! I wish—oh, my own
Nancy, I do wish....”
The dim voice was lost in the great abyss of eternity that stretched
beyond this fantastic ordinary street, beyond this silent bright
unnatural stage.
“Sweetheart, what do you wish? What do you wish?”
But the Clown was dead.
CHAPTER XII
LOOKING FOR WORK
There was not much money left when the funeral expenses had
been paid and Nancy had bought her mourning—those poor black
suits of woe that in their utter inadequacy even to symbolise still less
to express her grief seemed like an insult to the beloved dead. It was
a desperate challenge to fortune to abandon the Greenwich
engagement. But Nancy could not bring herself to the point of
returning to the cast of the pantomime. That was beyond the
compass of her emotional endurance. The management offered her
a larger salary to play the Fairy Queen only, without appearing as
Columbine; but she refused. The Employers’ Liability Act did not
exist at this date; and when the management suggested, as a
reason for not paying her direct compensation, that the accident had
already cost them dearly enough in the gloom it had shed over what
promised to be a really successful production, Nancy’s grief would
not allow her even to comment on such a point of view. Bram was
dead. People told her that she had a good case against the theatre.
But Bram was dead. He was dead. He was dead. All she wanted
was to leave Greenwich for ever, and when Mrs. Pottage offered her
hospitality she refused.
“It’s not pride, dear Mrs. Pottage, that prevents my staying on with
you. You mustn’t think that. It’s simply that I could not bear to go on
living alone where he and I lived together. I’m sure to find an
engagement presently. I have enough money left to keep Letizia and
myself for quite a little time.”
“Well, don’t let’s lose sight of each other for good and all,” said the
landlady. “Let’s meet some day and go down to Margate together
and have a nice sea blow. I’ve got a friend down there—well, friend, I
say, though she’s a relation really, but she is a friend for all that, a
good friend—well, this Sarah Williams has a very natty little house
looking out on the front, and we could spend a nice time with her
when she’s not full up with lodgers. I’d say ‘come down now,’ but
Margate in January’s a bit like living in a house with the windows
blown out and the doors blown in and the roof blown off and the
walls blown down.”
So, Nancy left Starboard Alley and went to live in rooms in Soho,
perhaps in the very same house where more than a century ago
Letizia’s great-great-grandmother had been left with that cageful of
love-birds and the twenty pairs of silk stockings.
The houses in Blackboy Passage were flat-faced, thin, and tall like
the houses in Hogarth’s “Night.” At one end an archway under the
ancient tavern that gave its name to the small and obscure
thoroughfare led into Greek Street. At the other end a row of
inebriated posts forbade traffic to vehicles from Frith Street. The
houses had enjoyed a brief modishness in the middle of the
eighteenth century, but since then their tenants had gradually
declined in quality while at the same time steadily increasing in
quantity. By this date nearly every one of the tall houses had a
perpendicular line of bells beside its front door and a ladder of
outlandish names. The house in which Nancy found lodgings was an
exception, for all of it except the basement belonged to Miss
Fewkes, who was her landlady. Miss Fewkes was a dried-up little
woman of over fifty, with a long sharp nose, and raddled cheeks so
clumsily powdered as to give to her face the appearance of a sweet
which has lost its freshness and been dusted over with sugar.
Incredible as it now might seem, Miss Fewkes had had a past. She
had actually been in the Orient ballet once, and the mistress of
several men, each of whom was a step lower in the scale than his
predecessor. From each of these temporary supporters she had
managed to extract various sums of money, the total of which she
had invested in furnishing this house in Blackboy Passage, where for
many years she had let lodgings to the profession. In spite of her
paint and powder and past, Miss Fewkes wore an air of withered
virginity, and appeared to possess little more human nature than one
of her own lace antimacassars. Her thin prehensile fingers
resembled the claws of a bird; her voice was as the sound of dead
leaves blown along city pavements. Letizia disliked Miss Fewkes as
much as she had liked Mrs. Pottage. Nor did Miss Fewkes like
Letizia, whose presence in her lodgings she resented in the same
way that she would have resented a pet dog’s.
“I noticed your little girl’s finger-marks on the bedroom-door this
morning. Two black marks. Of course, as I explained to you, Miss
O’Finn, I don’t really care to have children in my rooms, but if I do
take them in I rather expect that they won’t make finger-marks. It’s
difficult enough to keep things clean in London, as I’m sure you’ll
understand.”
Nancy would have left Miss Fewkes after a week if she had had to
leave Letizia in her charge while she hung about in the outer offices
of theatrical agents in Garrick Street and Maiden Lane. Fortunately,
however, there were staying in the same house a Mr. and Mrs. Kino,
who took a great fancy to Letizia and insisted on having as much of
her company as they could obtain. Mr. Kino was the proprietor and
trainer of a troup of performing elephants, which were then
appearing at Hengler’s Circus. Mrs. Kino, a large pink and yellow
woman, had domestic ambitions and a longing for children of her
own. Possibly her dependency on elephants had begotten in her a
passion for diminutiveness. At any rate, until Letizia won her heart,
she spent all her time in stringing beads for little purses. Even when
she made friends with Letizia, the toys she always preferred to buy
for her were minute china animals and Lilliputian dolls, for which she
enjoyed making quantities of tiny dresses.
“Too large, duckie, much too large,” was her comment when
Letizia showed her the cargo of her Christmas stocking.
Miss Fewkes sniffed when she saw the china animals.
“Silly things to give a child,” she said. “Next thing is she’ll be
swallowing them and have to be taken in a cab to the hospital, but,
then, some people in this world go about looking for trouble and,
when they get it, expect every one else to sympathise. Ugh! I’ve no
patience with them, I haven’t.”
Nancy had found it impossible to persuade Letizia that she would
never see her father again in this world.
“I aspeck he’s only wented away,” she insisted. “I aspeck he’ll
come back down the chiminy one night. My lamb what Santy Claus
gave me saided he was perfickatally sure faver would come back
down the chiminy one night. So, I fink we’d better leave the gas
burning, don’t you, because he wouldn’t like to come back all in the
dark, would he?”
Mrs. Kino was in the room when Letizia put forward this theory and
with a dumpy hand she silently patted the black sleeve of Nancy,
who had turned away to hide the tears.
Perhaps the kindest thing that fortune could have done for the
young widow was to throw difficulties in the way of her obtaining an
engagement. Had she found a “shop” immediately and gone out on
tour alone after those happy years of joint engagements the
poignancy of her solitude might have overwhelmed her. The battle
for a livelihood kept her from brooding.
But it was a battle through that icy winter, with the little pile of
sovereigns growing shorter and shorter every day and Nancy nearly
starving herself that Letizia might lack nothing.
“Some people burn coal as if it was paper,” Miss Fewkes sniffed.
She did not know that every half-hundredweight meant no lunch for
her lodger, and if she had, she would only have despised her for it.
“Nothing this morning, I’m afraid,” the agent would say. “But
something may be turning up next week. Two or three companies
will be going out presently. Look in again, Miss O’Finn. I’m not
forgetting you. You shall have a chance for the first suitable
engagement on my books. Cold weather, isn’t it? Wonderful how this
frost holds. Good morning.”
Down one long flight of draughty stone stairs in Garrick Street. Up
another flight of tumbledown wooden stairs in Maiden Lane. Two
hours’ wait in an icy room with nothing to warm one but the flaming
posters stuck on the walls.
“Ah, is that you, Miss O’Finn? I’m glad you looked in to-day. Mr.
Howard Smythe is taking out The New Dress. Have you seen it?
Capital little farce. There’s a part that might suit you.”
Any part would suit her, Nancy thought, for she was beginning to
lose hope of ever being engaged again.
“Look in this afternoon, Miss O’Finn, round about three. Mr.
Howard Smythe will be here then to interview a few ladies.”
Down the long flight of tumbledown wooden stairs and out past the
Adelphi stage-door into the Strand. What was the time? Half-past
one. Mrs. Kino was taking Letizia to the circus. Not worth while to go
home. She would find a tea-shop for lunch. A damp bun and a glass
of London milk. A greasy marble table, and opposite a hungry-eyed
clerk reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while
he eked out his bun and glass of milk. The waitress, who had nine
warts on her fingers, flung down the skimpy bills with equal disdain
for both these customers. Outside, the roar of the Strand on the iron-
bound air. Inside, the rattle of plates and the harsh giggles of the
waitresses. Outside, the grey frozen sky. Inside, leathery poached
eggs and somebody arguing in a corner of the shop that he had
ordered coffee.
“That is coffee,” said the waitress, tossing her head.
“Is it? Well, I must have meant tea.”
After lunch a walk along the Embankment to get warm. Gulls
screaming and quarrelling for the crusts that were being flung to
them. Wretched men and women freezing on the benches. Plane-
trees hung with their little black balls that stirred not in this
immotionable and icy air. Back to Maiden Lane, and up the
tumbledown wooden stairs once more. Another endless wait in the
cold anteroom.
“Ah, good afternoon, Miss O’Finn. I’m sorry, but Mr. Howard
Smythe has filled up the vacancies in his cast. But if you look in
again next week, perhaps I shall have something that will suit you.”
“Anything will suit me,” Nancy sighed.
“Ah, but you won’t suit everything,” the agent laughed. “You’re so
tall, you know. The real tragedy queen, eh? And managers do not
want tragedy queens these days.”
“Och, damn it, don’t try to be funny,” Nancy burst out. “You know
I’m not a tragedy queen.”
“Sorry, I was only making a little joke.”
“Well, after a month of agents in this weather one loses one’s
sense of humour,” Nancy replied.
At home Nancy found Letizia in a tremendous state of excitement
after her visit to the circus which had concluded with an introduction
to Mr. Kino’s elephants.
“And I touched Jumbo’s trunk, muvver, and it was all hot. And he
wagged his tail. And Mrs. Jumbo opened her mouf as wide as that.”
Here Letizia endeavoured to give an elephantine yawn to illustrate
her story.
“Yes, she took to my elephants,” said Mr. Kino. “In fact, I was
nearly offering her an engagement to appear with them.”
Nancy laughed.
“No, I’m serious, Miss O’Finn. What do you say to three pounds a
week? And, of course, the missus and I would look after the kid as if
she was our own.”
“Och, no, it’s very sweet of you both, but I couldn’t give her up like
that.”
“Arthur’s joking about the performing part,” Mrs. Kino put in. “He
knows very well I wouldn’t let her do any performing. But we would
like to have her with us when we leave on Sunday week.”
“You’re leaving on Sunday week?” Nancy asked in alarm.
“Yes, we’re going out on a long tour.”
Nancy was terribly worried by the prospect of her fellow lodgers’
departure. It would mean asking Miss Fewkes to look after Letizia
while she was out. In her bedroom she counted over the money she
had left. Only seven pounds, and out of that there would be this
week’s bill to pay. Things were getting desperate.
Until now Nancy had avoided meeting her father in London,
because she felt that she could not bear the scene he would be sure
to play over her widowhood. Her life with Bram was too real and
wonderful for histrionics. But matters were now so serious that she
could not afford to let her own intimate feelings stand in the way of
getting work. Her father might be able to help her to an engagement.
He might even be able to lend her a little money in case of absolute
necessity.
So Nancy sent a note to the Piccadilly Theatre, where he was
playing, and three days later she received an answer from an
address in Earl’s Court to say that owing to severe illness he had
had to resign his part at the Piccadilly a week or two before. Would
Nancy visit him, as he was still too unwell to go out?
“Mr. O’Finn?” repeated the slatternly girl who opened the door.
“Can you see Mr. O’Finn? Who is it, please?”
“It’s his daughter, Miss O’Finn.”
The slatternly girl opened her eyes as wide as their sticky lids
would let her.
“He’s not expecting anybody this afternoon,” she muttered.
“He may not be expecting anybody this afternoon,” said Nancy
sharply, “but his daughter is not exactly anybody. He has been ill and
I want to see him.”
The slatternly girl evidently felt incapable of dealing with this crisis,
for she retreated to the head of the basement stairs, and called
down:
“Mrs. Tebbitt, here’s somebody wants to see Mr. O’Finn. Will you
come up and talk to her, please?”
A sacklike woman with a flaccid red face and sparse hair
excavated herself slowly from the basement.
“I understand my father has been very ill,” Nancy began.
“Ill?” gurgled Mrs. Tebbitt breathlessly. “It’s an illness a lot of
people would like to die of. He’s been on the drink for the last month.
That’s what he’s been. He’s drunk now, and in another hour or so
he’ll be blind drunk, because he’s just sent out for another bottle of
brandy. If you say you’re his daughter and insist on seeing him, well,
I suppose you’ll have to, but his room’s in a disgusting state and
which is not my fault, for the last time the girl went up to give it a rout
out he threw the dustpan out of the window and it hit a organist who
was walking past—I know it was a organist, because he give me his
card and said he’d lodge a complaint with the police, but we haven’t
heard nothing more since, but I’ve forbid the girl to touch his room
again till he’s sober, and which he won’t be to-day, that’s certain.”
Nancy’s heart was hardened against her father. In her present
straits she could not feel that there was any kind of an excuse for
behaviour like his.
“Thank you,” she said coldly to the landlady. “Perhaps when he
can understand what you’re telling him you’ll be kind enough to say
that Miss O’Finn called to see him, but would not come up.”
She turned away from the house in a cold rage.
In her bitterness she was tempted for a moment to accept the
Kinos’ offer to adopt Letizia and take her away with them on their
tour. The worthlessness of her own father was extended in her
thoughts to include all parents including herself. It would be better to
abandon Letizia lest one day she might fail her as to-day her father
had failed herself.
Then she saw Bram’s whimsical face looking at her from the silver
frame on her dressing-table, and she felt ashamed. She wondered
again about that last unspoken wish of his. She had put out of her
mind the idea of appealing to his brother to help in the guardianship
of Letizia. But perhaps Bram had been really anxious that Letizia
should heal the breach between them. Perhaps that had been his
unspoken wish. He might have felt that she would be unwilling to ask
a favour from his brother, and even with his dying breath have
abstained from saying anything that she could construe into the
solemnity of a last request, in case she should not like the idea of