AUTUMNagain! Three years only since the dull September day when we first saw Marion Vere in her father’s house in the London square. Three years ago, which have brought more than one change to her, which have more than once utterly altered the current of her life. The last change which has come over her might, to superficial observation, seem the most disastrous of all. Let us see if in truth it is so.
A dull, uninteresting suburban street. Secluded and “genteel.” Too much so for even the enlivening neighbourhood of shops to be permitted in that portion of it where our interest lies. Rows and rows of monotonous little dwellings, all of the regulation pattern—two rooms on one side of the strip of lobby, undeserving of the more important name of hall; kitchen at the end thereof, a flight of some twelve or fifteen steps leading to the half-way room above the kitchen, on again to the two or three rooms occupying the position, in town houses of importance, usually devoted to drawing-rooms.
Ah, how wearied one becomes of this same everlasting pattern of house! How sick to death the architects must be of planning it, the masons of building it, and, worst of all, the occupants of living in it! Only fortunately, or unfortunately, the dwellers in these same regulation abodes have seldom much leisure, even had they the inclination, for pondering on such matters. The poor dressmaker class, the struggling wives and overflowing offspring of scantily-salaried clerks in great mercantile houses, the landladies, legion by name, “who have seen better days,” and are only too thankful to see the dreadful “apartments” card out of their window—all these and the rest of the innumerable multitude constituting the lower half of our English middle-class, are not likely to complain of the shape and arrangements of their dwellings, provided they are sufficiently warm and weather tight, and not usuriously high in the matter of rent and its attendant privileges, rates.
Rents are not so tremendous in the neighbourhood of smoky Millington as in the suburban districts surrounding the great Babylon itself. Lodgings in consequence are, or were some years ago, correspondingly few and far between. For our middle-class John Bull, be he but possessed of the most modest of salaries, has a wonderful tendency to feather a nest of his own, to assemble his poor little household gods—from the six “real silver” teaspoons left to Mary Ann by her god-mother, to his own gaudy but somewhat faded Sunday-school prizes—in a retreat where they shall be sacred from the inquisitive eyes and prying hands of landladies; where he can smoke his pipe of an evening, and young Mrs. John nurse her babies undisturbed by fears of complaints from the first-floor of “that horrible smell of tobacco,” or “those incessantly screaming children.”
But even the luxury of the smallest of houses of their own was as yet beyond the means of Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin; and Geoffrey was fain to be content with three tiny rooms and a civil-spoken landlady, when, preceding his wife by a few days to their new home, it fell to his share to do what he could in the way of preparing for her reception.
For the smash at Mallingford had been a very thorough one. Nothing as yet had been retrieved from the ruins. Months hence some trifling dividend might be forthcoming; but as their share of this would be altogether insufficient to provide for their daily wants, Geoffrey had declined Veronica’s invitation to take up their abode with her till the exact amount should be known, and had manfully set his shoulder to the wheel by accepting the first chance of employment that came in his way.
It was not of a kind congenial to his tastes or education. A clerkship of a hundred a year in a Millington shipping-house does not sound paradisaical to most ears; least of all to those of a country-bred, country-loving man of thirty, whose nightmare from earliest youth had been anything in the shape of office or desk, book-keeping, or book-learning.
But, as said the old friend of his father’s to whom he was indebted for the introduction, it was better than losing time, and would do him no harm should some more desirable opening occur hereafter.
Had he been alone in the world when he thus for the first time in his life found himself face to face with poverty, Geoffrey Baldwin, there is no doubt, would have emigrated. He was just the man of which the right back-woodsman stuff is made, and the life would have suited him in every sense. But to his joy and his sorrow he was not alone in the world, and the being to whom every drop of his honest heart’s blood was devoted, shrank, with a not unusual or unnatural shrinking, from the unknown horrors of life in an Australian sheep-farm, or the pathless “far west” forests of Canada. Even Millington, smoky and crowded, with its vulgar rich and toil-begrimed poor, seemed to her imagination to offer a far less terrible prospect.
“For after all Geoffrey, it is still England, and sooner or later something else may turn up. In two or three years Harry may be coming home, and think how terrible it would be for him if we were away at the other side of the world,” said the poor girl.
So the subject of emigration was not again mooted, and the Millington offer accepted. Some ready money was realized by the sale of the Manor Farm furniture and Geoffrey’s horses, but not very much, for when chairs and tables that have looked very respectable in their own corners for forty or fifty years, are dragged, to the sound of an auctioneer’s hammer, into the relentless glare of day and bargain seekers’ eyes, they, to put it mildly, do not show to the best advantage. And as to horses, they are not famous for being high in the market when one appears therein in the position of a seller. It was, too, the end of the hunting season when the smash came, and Mr. Baldwin was not in the habit of allowing his steeds to eat their heads off, so the lot of them were not in the showy condition conducive to the fetching of long sums.
Squire Copley, who, during the last few melancholy weeks of the young couple’s stay in their own house, was suffering from a curiously spasmodic form of cold in the head, which attacked him most inopportunely on several occasions when he happened to “step over” to the Farm, and necessitated a distressingly lavish recourse to his pocket-handkerchief,—he by-the-by took a violent fancy to the now docile Coquette.
“Got her of course, under the circumstances, dirt cheap, Sir, dirt cheap, I assure you,” he told his neighbours, when the details of Baldwin’s sale were discussed “across the walnuts and the wine.”
The exact sum he was never known to mention, (nor did it ever reach Mr. Baldwin’s ears), for possibly every one might not have agreed with him in thinking two hundred and fifty pounds soveryunparalleled a bargain. It went a good way to swelling the few hundreds of ready money with which in safe keeping against the possible coming of a still rainier day, Geoffrey Baldwin, after settling, down to the smallest, every out-standing claim upon him or his household, set out for the first time to do battle with the world, to win for himself and that other so infinitely dearer, the “daily bread” so carelessly demanded, so thanklessly received by those who have never known what it is to eat thereof “in the sweat of the face.”
But we have wandered too long from the little house in the suburban street.
In the small sitting-room looking out to the front sits Marion. The same Marion, only I almost think altered for the better. She looks stronger, and, to use a homely, but most expressive word, “heartier” than when we last saw her. Surely there is more light and brightness over the clear, pale features; and lurking in the depths of the grey eyes, one could almost fancy there was something of gladness if not of mirth. Or is it only the flickering, dancing light reflected on her face of the bright little fire which—for the evening was chilly—Mrs. Baldwin, after some house-wifely scruples on the score of economy, caused to be lit to greet her husband’s return?
We shall see.
She sits there in the fire-light, gazing into the red, glowing depths, but with the pleasant shadow of a smile on her face. She has been working hard enough to-day in various ways, to enjoy the half-hour’s holiday which she feels she has earned. A sensation worth trying for once in a way, oh ladies! with the soft, white hands, guiltless of aught but useless beauty, with the little feet to whom a few miles of tramp through muddy streets, over bard, unyielding pavement, is unknown. Or worse still, with brains unconscious of any object in their own existence beyond the solution of some millinery problem, or the recollection of the calls falling due on their visiting list. “Very hard work indeed!” I have been told more than once by those who should be qualified to judge. “And very poor pay!” I should certainly reply, though the hardness of the work may be a matter of opinion.
A ring at the bell, a step along the passage, a somewhat fagged looking face at the door, which Marion sprang up to open, with bright welcome on her own.
“I’m very muddy, Marion,” said the new-comer, “and rather tired too. I’d better run up at once and change my boots. I shall be awfully glad of a cup of tea.”
The voice evidentlywishedto be cheerful, but could not quite manage it. Poor Geoffrey! truly Millington ways and Millington smoke did not suit you.
But there was genuine, unforced gladness in the tones which replied to him.
“Be quick then! as quick as you can. I have just infused the tea, and I have lots of things to tell you. I have been so busy all day!”
And as the wearied man slowly ascended the narrow staircase, some murmured words, un-heard by his wife, escaped him. “My darling! my darling! For myself I would bear it all fifty times over to know your goodness as I do.”
A short toilette sufficed for the simple meal prepared for Mr. Baldwin in the little parlour which served him and his wife for drawing-room and dining-room in one, and in ten minutes’ time he rejoined her. The room looked wonderfully comfortable and home-like he owned to himself, and for the time being he determined to forget the worries and annoyances of the day, and respond as far as he could to the unfailing cheerfulness of his wife.
“Tell me what you have been about to-day, Marion,” he said. “You look even brighter than usual, which is saying a good deal. And that red ribbon round your neck and tying up your hair is very pretty,” he added, looking at her approvingly.
“I am glad you like it,” she replied laughing, “though in the first place it isn’t a ribbon, it’s velvet.”
“But there’s such a thing as velvet ribbon, isn’t there?” he asked gravely. “I’m sure I have heard of it.”
“Ribbon velvet you mean, you stupid Geoffrey,” she answered. “I am really afraid you’ll never do for Millington. You’re not the least of a shop-man.”
Geoffrey laughed.
“You had better take care what, you say, Marion. Imagine the horror of old Baxter if he heard you talking of his palatial warehouse as a shop!”
“But so it is, only a very big one,” persisted the incorrigible Mrs. Baldwin. “However you needn’t be afraid of my hurting the feelings of old Baxter, as you call him, or old anybody else. Not that he’s likely ever to hear me speak either of him or his shop. These Millington people are far too grand ever to take any notice of us.”
“I don’t know that,” said her husband. “That reminds me I’ve a piece of news for you too. But I want to hear yours first. Tell me what you’ve been doing all day.”
“This afternoon I have been busy at home like a good wife, darning your stockings, or socks, as Mrs. Appleby calls them. Really and truly, Geoffrey, I have darned four pair—that is to say three pair and a half, for in the eighth sock, to my unspeakable delight there was no hole. I poked m y hand all round inside it, but not one of my fingers came through. There weren’t even any thin places which wanted strengthening, if you know what that is? You have no idea of the excitement of looking for holes. It is almost more fascinating than pulling shirt-buttons to see if they are loose. I have to force myself to be dreadfully conscientious about it. Sometimes I feel so tempted only to give averygentle tug, which couldn’t pull even a very loose one off. Millington must be a ruinous place for poor people. You have no notion how quickly you wear out your stockings.”
“No, I certainly haven’t, as my good fairy takes care I never find any holes in them,” he answered tenderly. “But never mind stockings,” he went on, “tell me what you did this morning.”
“This morning,” she replied, “oh, this morning I went a tremendously long walk.”
“By yourself?”
“No, with Mrs. Sharp. You know I told you that nice little Mrs. Sharp had called here last week. The wife of the curate at St. Matthias’s. Her husband was a pupil at the Temples’, Veronica’s father’s, years ago, and that seemed a sort of introduction. She is really very nice. She knew something about us—about the bank breaking, I mean, and why we came here. I told her the first time I saw her how anxious I was to do something to help you, and—and—don’t be angry, Geoffrey—she came to-day to tell me she had heard of two pupils for me.”
“Marion!” exclaimed her husband.
She crept down to the floor beside him and hid her face on his arm, as she went on.
“It seems so very nice, Geoffrey. Listen and don’t say anything till you hear all about it. Mrs. Sharp took me to see the lady—a Mrs. Allen—whose two little boys I am to teach. They are very little boys, the eldest only ten. They generally go to school, but scarlet fever broke out there a month ago, and they are not to return till Christmas. It is only till then I am to teach them, and it is only to be three mornings in the week. Just to keep them in the way of lessons a little, their mother said. She is rather nice, fat and good-humoured-looking—but guiltless of H’s. She was very kind and pleasant about ‘terms,’ as she called it. Five guineas a month,Ithink very good. Don’t you?”
But Geoffrey was incapable of replying in the same light cheerful tone. He stooped down and passed his arm round Marion’s waist, thus drawing her nearer to him. Then he said in a choked husky voice,
“Marion, my dearest, you are an angel,—but, but—I can’t stand it.”
“My being an angel?” she answered lightly. “Certainly you haven’t had much experience of me in such a character—but seriously, Geoffrey,dosay I may do this. I really haven’t enough to do all the hours you are away. Darning stockings, even, palls on one after a few hours! And it will make mesohappy to feel I am earning a little money. Dear Geoffrey, don’t say I mustn’t.” And with a pretty air of appeal she drew his face round, so that she could see the expression in his eyes.
“It is only till Christmas, you say?” he enquired, doubtfully.
“Only till Christmas,” she repeated.
“And the distance,” he objected. “You said it was a long walk. How are you to go there and back three times a week?”
“In fine weather, walk,” she replied, unhesitatingly. “I am a capital walker, and you see yourself I am not the least tired to-night. And on wet days you can put me in the omnibus as you go to business in the morning. It passes the corner of this street, and Mrs. Sharp says it is never crowded at the hours I should be coming and going.”
There was nothing for it but for Geoffrey to give in; as, indeed, from the first he had instinctively feared would be the case. Though the plan went sorely against his inclination, he yet had a half-defined idea that possibly it was really kinder and more unselfish to yield to his wife’s wishes—that the additional interest and occupation might be of actual benefit to her, and help her to get through the lonely, dreary Millington winter he so dreaded for her in anticipation.
“You said, too, you had something to tell me, didn’t you, Geoffrey?” asked Marion, after a short silence, and with perhaps something of the womanly instinct of changing the conversation before the scarcely attained concession could be withdrawn.
“Did I?” he answered, absently. “Oh yes, I remember. It was when we were talking of the Baxters, and you said they were far too grand to notice us. Mr. Baxter told me to-day that his wife ‘hoped shortly to have the pleasure of calling on you.’ What do you think of that?”
“I am rather vexed,” she replied, speaking slowly and deliberately. “We have been very happy here by ourselves without anybody noticing us, and I would rather go on the same way. I am not silly or prejudiced, Geoffrey. I like nice people, whoever they are, but I cannot help shrinking a little from these terribly rich Millington people. I am afraid I am just a little bad in one way. I can’t endure being patronised.”
Geoffrey looked pained.
“I know, I know,” he said, hastily. “It is horrible for you. Perfectly unbearable. You don’t think I don’t know it, and feel it. Heaven knows how bitterly! I was more than half inclined to tell the old fellow his wife might keep her precious visits to herself; only I dared not risk offending him. Condescension, indeed! Vulgar wretches!—as if we wanted them to come prying about us, the purse-proud——”
Marion jumped up and put her hand on his mouth.
“Hush, Geoffrey. It is very wicked of me to put such notions into your head. I had no business to talk about hating being patronised. It is very silly, and low, and mean of me. Of course they intend to be kind, and of course I should be civil to Mrs. Baxter, if she is as ugly as the queen of the cannibal islands. So don’t say any more about her. I suppose she is elderly, and fat. These dread-fully prosperous people are always fat. They can’t help it, I suppose.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Geoffrey, listlessly. “Oh yes, by-the-by, I remember some one at the office saying Mrs. Baxter was much younger than her husband. An heiress too, I believe. That’s always the way.”
“He looked weary and dispirited, and Marion felt remorseful for having caused it. So she played to him (Mrs. Appleby’s front room actually boasted a piano, such as it was) soft, simple airs—for he was no connoisseur in music—till he went to sleep on the hard, uncomfortable little sofa of the regulation lodging-house pattern, the designers of which seem to be under the impression that human beings can at pleasure unhook their legs and fasten them on again sideways. In which posture only could anything like comfortable repose be possible for the wretched victims of upholstery torture.
Mrs. Baxter was as good as her word, or rather as Mr. Baxter’s.
Two days later, a chariot, of the imposing appearance and dimensions suited for the conveyance of a Millington millionairess, drawn by two prancing, rocking-horsey greys, comfortably conscious of their own amazingly good condition and unimpeachable harness, drew up at Mrs. Appleby’s modest door. A gorgeous footman having made the enquiry necessary to preclude the possibility of his mistress’s getting in and out of her equipage for nothing, and having reported to the lady that Mrs. Baldwin was at home, or “hin,” as Mrs. Appleby’s factotum expressed it, the door of the chariot opened, and thence emerged one of the very smallest women Marion had ever seen.
From where she sat, all that passed in front of the house was visible to Mrs. Baldwin, and she observed with considerable amusement the immense pomposity of the whole affair, resulting in the appearance of the almost absurdly minute person of Mrs. Baxter.
But if the body was small, the mind evidently felt itself great. No five-feet-eight or nine woman ever sailed into a room with half the awe-compelling dignity, the incomparable “air de duchesse” of little Mrs. Baxter. It had done her good service in her day, this magnificent mien of hers; it (andthe fact of her being “poor dear papa’s only child”) had won her the adoring homage of various young Millingtonians more inclined to spend than to earn, had finally achieved the conquest of old Baxter himself, and now in these latter days had constituted her the indisputable queen of Millington society.
Awful words! with bated breath only to be murmured, and reverence approaching that of Mrs. Appleby as she peeped out of the kitchen at the end of the passage, to behold, though at a distance, her lodger’s illustrious visitor.
For Mrs. Baxter was not in the least pretty. Her “air,” or “style” as dressmakers say, was the whole secret of the admiration she excited in the Millington world.
It was thought good taste to admire her, as “farmore than a merely pretty person,” —there was a faint flavour of aristocratic proclivities in the refinement of perception which saw more in this plain-looking little woman than in the sweet, rosy beauty we all love as we do the daisies, which depends not on the sweep of the robe or the richness of the material in which it is clothed. For, though I tremble while saying it, at my own audacity, there is not the shadow of a doubt that the magnificence of Mrs. Baxter was more than half due to her clothes. The other half lay simply in her entire, unimpregnable self-satisfaction, a quality far surpassing the fainter shades of vanity or self-conceit, which enabled her to hold her small person erect as a poker, which would have carried her without the slightest embarrassment through any conceivable womanly ordeal, from being presented at court, to rating (and soundly, too), a six-foot “Jeames” who would have made at least three of herself.
Ideas, I was going to say, she had none. But this is incorrect. She had two—herself and Mr. Baxter—and round these, revolving as lesser satellites, deriving of course all their glory from the greater luminaries, “the little Baxters.” You could hardly have called her purse-proud. She was rather purse-accepting. Money to her was a simple fact, a necessity of existence like the air we breathe, the blood that flows in our veins. How people lived without it, had, once or twice in her life, occurred to her as a curious problem, with which, however, she was in no wise concerned, any more than one might be with the manner of life or physical peculiarities of the inhabitants of one of the fixed stars. But that by any terrible mistake on the part of Providence, she, or Mr. Baxter, or any of the little Baxters could ever come to want money, to have even to think about it at all,neverentered the somewhat circumscribed space allotted to her brain.
There were poor people in the world, she knew. At least, if questioned on the subject, she would of course have admitted the fact, adding doubtless, that Mr. Baxter gave largely to charitable institutions, and that she herself had more than once officiated as lady patroness at some fancy fair or charity ball.
Poor people in the world? Yes, of course there are. But so likewise are there lions and tigers, and various species of ferocious or disagreeable animals, black beetles and toads, and black people and cannibals who eat each other. Ugh! But they don’t come in our way, and so there’s no use thinking of them.
So much for Mrs. Baxter’s “philosophy of life and things.” Breeding, in the generally accepted sense of the word, as might have been expected from her Millington education, she had none. Always of course excepting the imposing “air de duchesse,” which really was very wonderful in its way, and may be cited as an instance of the great perfection to which electro-plate has been brought in these modern days. Breeding of the higher kind, culture of mind and spirit, she was even yet more deficient in. Under no possible circumstances, indeed, could such have been attainable by her to any great extent.
Yet after all she was far from a bad little woman; only her light was soverysmall! Not even sufficient to make visible to the owner thereof the surrounding darkness. Which quotation by-the-by is hardly applicable to immaterial objects, for we are not spiritually in such a very hopeless condition if we have attained to a perception of the darkness yet to be dispersed; we are some little way up the ladder when our sight descries the bewildering multitude of rungs yet to be ascended.
Mrs. Baxter, I say, was not a bad little woman. She was the most dutiful of wives and “exemplary” of mothers; she paid her bills punctually, and nursed her babies irreproachably. Which latter occupation may be considered as the great end of her existence, as year after year brought a new olive branch to the Baxter nursery, each in turn received by its parents with perfect equanimity, and installed in its place as a member of the august household.
She went to church twice every Sunday throughout the year, excepting during the few weeks of her customary retirement; she never lost her temper, and she spoke kindly to the housemaid when she had the toothache.
More than all, here she was, in deference to her husband’s wishes, performing the unheard-of act of condescension of calling on the wife of one of his clerks.
“People, they say,” she confided to one of her female admirers, “who have seen better days. A thing I specially dislike.” Which was repeated as one of her bons mots through her social circle; for—really I was forgetting the very funniest thing about this little woman—she, without one spark of imagination, without one touch of humour in herself or power of appreciating it in others, had yet acquired in the small world in which she moved, a considerable reputation as a wit!
This was the lady who sailed majestically into Mrs. Baldwin’s little sitting-room.
Marion, whose height exceeded that of the average of women, rose to greet her, feeling, as sensitive people are apt to do when forced into such contrast, uncomfortably taller than usual. But this sensation was speedily succeeded by its equally unpleasant opposite, for seldom in her life had Mrs. Baldwin felt herself, metaphorically speaking,smaller, than when her little visitor extended her tightly gloved hand with a species of condescending wave, and addressing her in what was intended to be a reassuring tone, begged her to reseat herself and not to “put herself out” on her, Mrs. Baxter’s, account.
Almost before she knew what she was about Marion found herself waved into a seat, while Mrs. Baxter proceeded calmly to ensconce herself in the most luxurious of the not very tempting chairs of the little sitting-room.
Then the great little lady proceeded to enter into conversation, by remarking that she hoped Mrs. Baldwin liked Millington.
“Oh yes,” replied Marion, “we like it very well. Of course it takes some time to feel at home in a perfectly strange place.”
“I daresay you find it very different from living, in the country,” observed Mrs. Baxter with an accent of superb scorn on the last word. “For my part I can’t abide the country. People grow so stupid and old-fashioned compared to what they are in town. Mr. Baxter talks sometimes of buying a country-place, but I always tell him I really couldn’t do at all without my six months at least in town.”
Marion felt slightly puzzled as to the exact sense in which her visitor was making use of the last word.
“Then do you at present spend half the year in town?” she asked cautiously.
“Half the year!” repeated Mrs. Baxter, “oh dear yes. Three quarters at least. We spend a month or two at the sea-side in summer. It suits very well, as it generally happens so that I want a little change just then. All the children except the twins were born in spring. And there’s nothing sets one up like the sea.”
Then there fell a little pause, Marion’s experience in the matters referred to by the lady, not being sufficiently extensive for her to hazard an observation in the presence of one evidently thoroughly “up” on the subject.
Mrs. Baxter swung herself round on her chair and scrutinized her surroundings.
“I never was in this street before,” she remarked. “I was afraid the coachman would never find the house, but the footman knew it, because his sister, who is a dressmaker, lives a little higher up. Mr. Baxter never likes me to go through back streets for fear of infections and those sort of things. But he made a point of my calling on you. More than a week ago he asked me to do him a favour, and this was what it was. I hope you haven’t stayed in for me though all this time? Mr. Baxter has taken quite a fancy to your husband, Mrs. Baldwin. So regular and steady in his hours, and quite a gentleman. He said so I assure you. ‘That young Baldwin is really quite a gentleman,’ he said to me.
Marion’s face flushed.
“I think perhaps Mrs. Baxter,” she began, “you hardly understand——.”
But the voluble little woman interrupted her.
“I was forgetting,” she exclaimed, “that Mr. Baxter wished me to fix a day for your dining with us. Just in a family way, nothing of a party. I thought most likely you would like better coming to luncheon, but he said it would be rather too far for your husband to walk backwards and forwards between business hours. He dines in town, I suppose? All the clerks do, I think. Of coursewedine late. I don’t mean anearlydinner. At six, we dine, and for once in a way, I daresay Mr. Baldwin could get away from business early. Will Wednesday do? I expect some of Mr. Baxter’s friends to be with us, so it will be quite a family party.”
“You are very kind,” Marion forced herself to say. “We have not gone into company at all since we came here, as I daresay you can understand.”
“Oh don’t make any apologies,” said Mrs. Baxter. “Of course I wouldn’t ask you except in an unceremonious way. Don’t trouble yourself about dressing or anything of that sort. You will do very nicely I am sure. A high black silk, or even a merino will do quite well. Of courseIalways wear a low dress, in the evening, but then that’s different.”
“It was not on account of my dress I was hesitating,” said Marion, quietly. “I was doubtful whether Mr. Baldwin would like the idea of going out to dinner even in the unceremonious way you propose.”
“Oh, but if you tell him Mr. Baxter will really make a point of it,” urged the dutiful wife, whose desire to carry the day evidently increased with the little expected hesitation she met with on Mrs. Baldwin’s part. “Mr. Baldwin is sure to agree to my husband’s wishes.”
This not very delicately expressed reminder of the relations between the two men, had its effect. With a strong effort of self-control, Marion answered gravely.
“I daresay you are right, Mrs. Baxter. Then I think I may say we shall hope to have the pleasure of dining with you next Wednesday.”
Her mission thus successfully accomplished, the visitor took her leave, sailing out of the room as majestically as she had entered; and in another minute the magnificent equipage of the Millington millionaire rolled away in ponderous grandeur from Mrs. Appleby’s door.
Marion shook herself and stamped her feet. Then catching the reflection of herself in the little mirror above the mantel-piece she laughed at her own childishness.
“How silly I am to mind it,” she said to herself. “Butwhata woman! How thankful I am it is not her children but that nice kindly Mrs. Allen’s I am going to teach! By-the-bye I am not at all sure that Mrs. Baxter would have asked us to dinner if she had known I am was engaged to give daily lessons. I wish I had told her. It would have been such fun to have seen her face. I must not tell Geoffrey much about her; it would infuriate him. And after all I suppose she means to be kind. But the idea of her telling me my husband was ‘was really quite a gentleman!’ My Geoffrey! My poor Geoffrey! What a vivid idea this gives me of what he must have to endure among these people in his daily life. And how uncomplainingly he bears it. At least letmedo my part to smooth things to him.”
She kept her resolution. When Geoffrey returned home in the evening Marion told him in the simplest, most matter-of-fact way of Mrs. Baxter’s visit and invitation. “It is kind of them to ask us,” she said, “and I thought it best not to chill or hurt them by declining it.”
Geoffrey looked thoughtful.
“Yes,” he replied at last. “I think you did right to accept it. It goes rather against the grain, and no doubt it will be rather an ordeal to both of us. But you did right, dear, as you always do,” he added fondly.
Marion had her reward.
“What sort of a person is Mrs. Baxter?” he asked presently.
“A little woman,” replied Marion, “not pretty, but very well dressed. Rather lively too. At least with plenty to say for herself. Good-natured too, I should think, though of course not very refined. But we got on very well.”
He looked relieved.
“I am glad you did not find it very dis-agreeable,” he said. “After all, dear, it may be a good thing for you to have a few acquaintances here, and even a family dinner at the Baxters’ may be a little variety for you.”
She was leaving the room as he spoke. As she passed him she stooped and kissed his forehead as he lay back on the regulation sofa.
“Yes, dear Geoffrey,” she said; “I have no doubt it will be rather amusing than otherwise. Besides, it is always interesting and good for one to see the different sorts of people there are in this queer world.”
He caught her hands and clasped them in his own, looking up at her with ineffable tenderness in his eyes.
“Marion,” he said again, as he had said a few evenings before, “my darling, you are an angel!”
He had no great command of language, you see, poor fellow!
“And oh we grudged her sair,To the land o’ the leal!”
SCOTCHBALLAD.
“ANDwhat sort of a person did you say Mrs. Baldwin was, my dear?” enquired Mr. Baxter of his wife, when, the engrossing ceremonial of the correct four or five courses having been gone through for the day, he established himself in heavy comfort on one of the gorgeous gold and blue couches in that lady’s drawing-room.
“Oh, she seems a nice enough young woman,” replied Mrs. Baxter. “Rather too free-and-easy in her manners for my taste. Of course she was very plainly dressed, and is quite without any sort of style. But these country-bred people always are. Besides, she has been brought up in a very plain sort of way, I suppose. Didn’t you say she was the daughter of some poor country Clergyman?”
“I really don’t know who she was,” answered the husband. “The friend who introduced Baldwin merely said he was married. He himself is so superior looking, gentleman-like a young man, I could have imagined his having rather a nice wife. But, as you say, country breeding always shows more in a woman than a man.”
Mrs. Baxter had not said anything half so original, but took care to pocket the observation for future use, a little feat she was rather clever at performing.
“I didn’t say she wasn’t nice,” she replied. “I only said she hadn’t any style.”
“And you asked them for Wednesday?” pursued Mr. Baxter. “What day do you expect Mr. and Mrs. William? I really forget.”
“Monday,” replied the lady. “And that great trollopy Maria Jane of theirs. Why they couldn’t have her at home, I can’t imagine. Mrs. William writes she is so much improved by that new school, she is growing quite a fine girl. Fine girl indeed! She will be six feet if she doesn’t leave growing soon.”
“Why isn’t she at school now?” enquired Mr. Baxter, lazily.
“There was a fortnight’s holiday because of some death in the governess’s family,” replied Mrs. Baxter, carelessly. “By-the-by that reminds me Mr. Baxter, Phillips wants to go home for a week. His sister is dead, and he wants to go to the funeral. So inconvenient, too, just as Mr. and Mrs. William are coming. I can’t abide any one but Phillips driving me; it shakes my nerves to bits, and makes me all over ‘ysterical.’ ” (It was, to do her justice, very seldom that Mrs. Baxter fell short in this way, but now and then, when somewhat excited, her h’s were apt to totter.)
“Tell him he can’t go, then,” said Monsieur, sleepily, for the combined influences of his three glasses of port, the fire and the blue and gold sofa, were growing too much for him. And to tell the truth for Mrs. Baxter too! So, till startled by the entrance of Jeames and tea, the millionaire and his wife slumbered peacefully (though in one case sonorously), on each side of that marvel of tiles and fire-brick, burnished steel and resplendent gilding, which to them served as the representation of their “ain fireside.”
Wednesday came, and at six o’clock in the evening thereof, Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, four-and-sixpence the poorer for the fly which had conveyed them from their “back-street” to the Millington West End, where the Baxter residence was situated, made their appearance in the blue and gold drawing-room.
Somewhat against her wishes Geoffrey had insisted on Marion’s attiring herself in a manner more befitting the wife of the rich Mr. Baldwin of Brackley Manor, than the helpmeet of one of Mr. Baxter’s clerks on a salary one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
“When your dresses are worn out, and I can’t afford to buy you more,” he said with some slight bitterness in his tone, “then you may go about in brown stuff if you like. Or black more likely,” he added, in an undertone, with as near an approach to a cynical smile as was possible for him, “forIshan’t live to see it. By then it is to be hoped you will be free of the curse I have been to you one way and another, my poor darling!” And with the last words, though only whispered to himself, there stole into his voice, spite of his bitter mood, an inflection of exquisite tenderness.
So the dress in which Marion Baldwin made herdébutinto “cotton at home,” socially speaking, though plain, was of the richest and best as to fashion, colour, and material.
Mr. Baxter positively started as he caught sight of her. Mrs. Baxter even, felt a little taken aback, not by the woman herself, but by her clothes, the quality of which her feminine acuteness was not slow to estimate as it deserved. Into such particulars of course Mr. Baxter, in common with his sex, did not enter, but the effect of the whole, thetout ensemblepresented by “Baldwin’s wife,” struck him with admiration and surprise.
“Country-bred!” he muttered to himself. “It seems to me, my dear Sophia, you have made a little mistake hereabouts.”
For though the range of his ideas was not so limited, nor their circle so circumscribed, as was the case with those possessed by his wife. Brain work ofanykind, even though it be confined to invoices and shipping-orders, and never soar above the usual round of mercantile interests and excitements, having an innate tendency to develop generally the mental faculties and widen their grasp.
The “family dinner” was a very gorgeous affair. Besides Mr. and Mrs. William and the “trollopy Maria Jane,” there were some six or eight of thehabituésof the Baxter circle, making in all a company of fourteen or fifteen guests.
Dinner announced, Marion, to her surprise, and the secret chagrin of the observant hostess, found herself selected by Mr. Baxter to occupy the place of honour at his right. Just, however, as she was placing her hand on the old gentleman’s arm, to her amazement a sudden rush (if so undignified a word may be applied to the movements of so stately a lady) was made from the other side of the room by Mrs. Baxter and a tall man, to whom she had the look of acting as a small but energetic tug. The pair pushed their way to the front of the company, and Marion beheld for the first time the unusual spectacle of the hostess preceding her guests to her own dining-room. Mrs. Baldwin’s cheeks, despite her philosophy, flushed.
“Can this,” she said to herself, “be done intentionally to insult me? I don’t mind for myself, but if Geoffrey thinks that little woman is rude to me it will make him so angry, and our coming here will have done more harm than good.”
Somewhat anxiously she glanced up at Mr. Baxter’s face, to see what he thought of this extraordinary procedure on the part of his wife. The worthy gentleman was smiling blandly, and modestly made way for the advancing couples, as one by one they filed out of the room, till at last, his sheep-dog occupation at an end, he and his bewildered charge brought up the rear, and, crossing the tesselated hall, through a double row of Jeamses, took their places at table.
Evidently nothing in what had occurred had in the least astonished him. The whole, therefore, must have been thoroughly “en regle,” according to Millington ideas. “Truly,” thought Mistress Marion to herself, sententiously, as her gaze fell first on the splendour of the table appointments and next on the faces surrounding her, and she began to realize something of the wonders of cottonocracy, the talent and energy which have made it what it is, the extraordinary contrasts and inconsistencies discernible in its social aspects. “Truly,” thought to herself “the wife of one of Mr. Baxter’s clerks,” “ ‘we live and learn anddothe wiser grow.’ ” Glancing across the table she caught sight at the other end of Geoffrey’s face, and a smile on it brought a bright expression to her own. He looked cheery and comfortable enough, which it relieved her to see; and in the very bottom of her heart she, though sitting there as “grandly dressed,” as the children say, as any at table, felt not a little glad that for once in a way her poor boy was sure of a really good dinner and as many glasses of excellent wine as his extremely temperate habits would allow him to consume.
For, with all her housewifely care, their living at Mrs. Appleby’s was necessarily of the plainest, and sometimes Marion had sharp misgivings that this, among other things, was beginning to tell on Geoffrey’s health. Heprofessedto dine, or lunch, in Millington, but as often as not his wife suspected that the so-called meal was nothing more substantial than a biscuit; for all their funds passed through her hands, and out of the infinitesimal sum which was all she could persuade him to appropriate to his personal expenses, very few luncheons worthy of the name, it was evident even to her inexperience, could be provided.
One of these sudden misgivings visited her just now, as glancing again in her husband’s direction she observed attentively his face, this time turned from her. Surely the profile was sharper than of yore, the cheek-bone more defined, the hollow round the eye, strangely deeper? A sort of mist came before her sight, and into her mind there flashed one of those commonplace sayings, household aphorisms, to which, till they touch us practically, we pay so little heed. “It is not always the strongest-looking men that stand the most or are the wiriest,” she had heard said a hundred times, without considering the meaning of the words. Now, however, they suddenly started before her, invested with new force and significance, and she was rapidly falling into a painful reverie, when she was recalled to present surroundings by the fat, commonplace voice of her host, remarking to her by way of saying something original, that “he hoped she liked Millington.”
Much in the same words as she had replied to the same observation on the part of Mrs Baxter, Marion answered. “Oh, yes, she liked it very well. Doubtless, in time, she would like it better.”
“When you have made a few more friends here, perhaps,” said the gentleman civilly. “I am sorry my wife was so long of calling on you, but to tell you the truth it was not till lately I was aware my friend Baldwin was married.” (A fib, of course, or at least three-quarters of one.)
“It was very kind of Mrs. Baxter to call,” said Marion, with a simple dignity that was not lost on her hearer. “And you, I know, Mr. Baxter, have beenverykind to Geoffrey. When we came here, of course, it was with no idea of living in any but the most retired way. I hardly, indeed, expected to make any acquaintances at all.”
“An expectation which, for the sake of Millington, I certainly trust may not be fulfilled,” replied Mr. Baxter gallantly.
Marion smiled, and accepted the good-natured little compliment with her usual unaffectedness.
“You have been accustomed to a country life, I believe?” continued the host.
“No,” replied she. “Till the last two years I lived principally in London.”
“Indeed!” remarked the gentleman, and forthwith discarded the poor-country-clergy-man’s-daughter hypothesis. Sophia had been at fault somehow, he began to feel sure. He rather enjoyed the idea of reminding her of her “nice enough young person.” But in the first place he must make sure of his own ground.
“Your father, I believe, ma’am, was in the church?” he enquired, gingerly.
“Oh no,” she replied, good-naturedly still, though beginning to think that all this cross-questioning must surely be another peculiarity of Millington manners. “My father was not a clergyman. At one time of his life I believe it was proposed he should go into the church, as one of his uncle’s livings was vacant; but he did not like the idea, and never entered any profession, unless you call politics such.”
“Very hard work and very poor pay, any way,” replied Mr. Baxter, rubbing his hands in a self-gratulatory manner. “I thank my starsIhad never anything to say to them. Then your late father, ma’am, was, I suppose, a Hem P.?”
“Yes,” said Marion, simply, “for ——. My father’s name was Vere—Hartford Vere.”
“You don’t say so. Ibegyour pardon,” exclaimed Mr. Baxter, though why he did so Marion could not quite understand. Upon my soul.” (“Ah, Sophia, I shall have a little crow to pluck with you.”) “Very strange,” audibly again. “Verystrange I never heard it. A great loss to his country, a very great loss, was Mr. Vere. Your father! Well, to be sure. Ah, indeed.” And with a series of such little detached, fragmentary observations the worthy gentleman composed his somewhat startled nerves.
The rest of dinner passed uneventfully enough.
Marion got on decidedly better with the gentleman than she had done with the lady. And Mr. Baxter, on his part, mentally pronounced her a most charming woman.
Geoffrey’s neighbour at table was the Maria Jane, so cuttingly described by her aunt as “trollopy.” She was tall certainly, for her age, rather alarmingly so, with the possibility in prospect of continuing to grow some four or five years to come. And thin, very thin, “lanky,” to use another of Mrs. Baxter’s favourite expressions. But at her age thinness, lankiness even, if the word be preferred, has, when coupled with gentleness and perfect absence of affectation, to my mind a certain touching, appealing sweetness of its own. But this, of course, is a matter of opinion. It may be very bad taste, but I have rather a horror offfatyoung girls.
Maria Jane Baxter was, however, really and truly a very sweet girl. Geoffrey’s heart she very speedily won, for before they had been ten minutes at table, she asked him timidly if he could tell her the name of “the lovely young lady on her uncle’s right.”
So he and she, as might have been expected from this auspicious commencement, very speedily made friends; and when the ladies retired after dinner to the drawing-room, Maria Jane took care to establish herself in a modest corner not far from Mr. Baldwin’s attractive wife.
The conversation of the elder ladies was to Marion so utterly uninteresting, to say the least, that it was with a feeling of immense relief that she heard herself accosted by name by a gentle voice, asking if she would like to examine a collection of really beautiful engravings in a portfolio on the table. Mrs. Baldwin responded cordially to the young girl’s modest attention.
Over the engravings they fell into conversation.
“Do you draw, Miss Baxter?” Marion happened to ask.
“A little,” replied the girl. “That is, I am very fond of it, and my master thinks I have taste for it. But lately I have had to give it up, as at the school where I am now they were afraid of its making me stoop.”
“Then you are at a boarding-school, I suppose?” enquired Marion. “I was never at school myself; but sometimes, being an only daughter, I used to wish my father would send me. Are you happy at your school?”
“Very,” replied Maria, heartily. “It is a very nice school. It is not like those you read of, where the girls are harshly treated. We have such pretty little bed-rooms; only two in each. I have a little girl in mine, whom I take care of. She has only lately come, and at first she was very lonely. Poor Lotty! But now she is getting accustomed to it. She is very fond of me, poor child!”
Maria felt so perfectly at ease with her new friend, that she waxed communicative in a wonderful way.
“ ‘Lotty,’ did you say your name was?” said Marion. “I once knew a little girl named Lotty.”
What memories, what associations the simple word recalled! “Lotty,” Mrs. Baldwin repeated, half mechanically. “What is her other name, Miss Baxter?”
“Severn,” replied the girl. “Lotty Severn, Charlotte Severn, that is to say,” she added, glibly. “She is an orphan. Her father was a baronet, and now her uncle is one. She has always been brought up at home till lately. But about six months ago her little sister—”
Maria stopped, something in Mrs. Baldwin’s look of intense interest arrested her.
“Her little sister—Sybil—yes, I know,” exclaimed Marion. “Go on, please, Miss Baxter. I want to hearverymuch. You don’t know how much. Only don’t say that Sybil——.”
“I don’t like to tell you,” said Maria, looking frightened and half ready to cry.
“Please go on,” repeated her companion.
“This little sister—Lotty Severn’s little sister, Sybil, she has often told me her name— Don’t look so, dear Mrs. Baldwin, you frighten me—little Sybildiedsix months ago. That was why they sent Lotty to school. She was pining so for her sister.”
“Oh, Sybil, my dear little Sybil, my poor little dove!” moaned Marion to herself, but softly, so softly that no one of the Millington ladies at the other end of the room could have suspected the sad little tragedy taking place so near them. “So you are gone, my little girl, my gentle darling! And I not to have known it! Could you not have stopped an instant on your way to kiss me goodbye, as you used to say? And the only creature left tohimto love,” she murmured, in a yet more inaudible whisper, though her former words had hardly reached the oars of the sympathizing girl beside her.
For a few moments there was silence at the little side table, whereon lay the book of costly engravings. Then Marion, with a strong effort, recovered herself, and looking up, said gently:
“Forgive me, Miss Baxter. I loved that little girl very much, and, till now, I had no idea of this. Will you be so very good as tell me all poor Lotty told you about—about her sister.”
“Lotty does notveryoften speak about her,” said Maria. “I was told not to encourage her to do so very much as it makes her cry dreadfully. So I don’t know many particulars. She was not ill very long—not at last—though I believe she was always delicate?”
Marion assented silently.
“She died of some sort of fever,” went on Miss Baxter. “Lotty might not see her to say goodbye, but poor little Sybil sent her a kiss two hours before she died. She was very fond of her uncle, Lotty says, but he was abroad at the time.”
“Did Lotty ever happen to mentions to you any one else Sybil was very fond of?” asked Marion.
“Yes,” said the girl, after some consideration. “There was a governess they had abroad. I forget her name. Lotty said Sybil cried for her when she was ill. And she sent goodbye and a kiss to her by Lotty. But Lotty thinks the lady went to India. Her grandmother, who takes care of her, told her so.”
“Will you do me a little favour, Miss Baxter?” said Marion.
The girl assented eagerly.
“When you see Lotty Severn next—(You are returning to school soon?” “The day after to-morrow,” said Maria)—“tell her that, without her knowing it, dear Sybil’s last message has been delivered. Tell her, too, that Marion Freer has never forgotten her two little pupils and will always love them. And if, dear Miss Baxter, you will continue to how kindness to poor Lotty, it will beverygood of you. You will havemygratitude if no one’s else.”
“You may be sure I will do all I can for her,” said the girl warmly. “And I will give her your message.”
“Thank you very much,” said Marion, adding, as she was obliged to turn towards the rest of the company, for the gentlemen had just entered the room, and Mr. Baxter was bearing down upon her, “You won’t mind my asking you not to mention what we have been talking about to any one?”
“Certainly, I will not,” answered Maria. “I would not have done so even if you had not asked it.” For the girl felt instinctively that her disclosure had trenched on sacred ground, and from what she had gathered of Mrs. Baldwin’s history from Geoffrey’s allusions during dinner, she was quite aware that it had been a somewhat eventful one.
“Thank you,” again said Marion, and for an instant pressed the young girl’s hand in her own.
And the poor clerk’s beautiful wife and the rich man’s young daughter, though they had never seen each other before, and would, probably enough, never see each other again, felt more like friends than many women who have lived for years in each other’s constant companionship.
“But the child that is born on a Sabbath dayIs blithe and bonny and wise and gay.”