There are few streets in London better known to that large army of martyrs, the genteelly poor, than those which run northward from the Strand, and are lost in the two vast tracts of brick known under the name of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Lodging-house keepers do not affect these streets, preferring the narrow no-thoroughfares on the other side of the Strand, abutting on the river, streets eternally ringing with the hoarse voice of the costermonger, who descends on one side and ascends on the other, eternally echoing to the grinding of the organ-man, who gets through his entirerépertoiretwice over during his progress to the railing overlooking the Embankment, and his return to the pickle-shop at the top, eternally haunted by the beer-boy and the newspaper-boy, by postmen infuriated with wrongly addressed letters, and by luggage-laden cabs. In the streets bearing northward no costermonger screams and no organ is found; the denizens are business-people, and would very soon put a stop to any such attempt.
Business, and nothing but business, in that drab-coloured house with the high wire-blinds in the window, over which you can just catch a glimpse of the top of a hanging white robe. Cope and Son are the owners of the drab-coloured house, and Cope and Son are the largest retailers of clerical millinery in London. All day long members of "the cloth," sleek, pale, emaciated, high-church curates, stout, fresh-coloured, huge-whiskered, broad-church rectors, fat, pasty-faced, straight-haired evangelical ministers, are pouring into Cope and Son's for clothes, for hoods, for surplices, for stoles, for every variety of ecclesiastical garment. Cope and Son supply all, in every variety, for every sect; the M.B. waistcoat and stiff-collared coat reaching to his heels in which the Honourable and Reverend Cyril Genuflex looks so imposing, as he, before the assembled vestry, defies the scrutiny of his evangelical churchwarden; the pepper-and-salt cutaway in which the Reverend Pytchley Quorn follows the hounds; the black-stuff gown in which the Reverend Locock Congreve perspires and groans as he deals out denunciations of those sitting under him; and the purple bed gown, turned up with yellow satin, and worked all over with crosses and vagaries, in which poor Tom Phoole, such a kind-hearted and such a soft-headed vessel, goes through his ritualistic tricks,--all these come from the establishment of Cope and Son's, in Rutland Street, Strand.
The next house on the right is handy for the high-church clergymen, though the evangelicals shut their eyes and turn away their heads as they pass by it. Here Herr Tubelkahn, from Elberfeld, the cunning worker in metals, the artificer of brass and steel and iron, and sometimes of gold and silver, the great ecclesiastical upholsterer, has set up his Lares and Penates, and here he deals in the loveliest of mediaevalisms and the choicest of renaissance wares. The sleek long-coated gentry who come to make purchases can scarcely thread their way through the heterogeneous contents of Herr Tubelkahn's shop. All massed together without order; black oaken chairs, bought up by Tubelkahn's agents from occupants of tumbledown old cottages in midland districts, crosiers and crucifixes, ornate and plain, from Elberfeld, sceptres and wands from Solingen, lecterns in the shape of enormous brazen eagles with outstretched wings from Birmingham, enormous candelabra and gaseliers of Gothic pattern from Liège, and sculptured pulpits and carved altar-rails from the Curtain Road, Shoreditch. Altar-cloths hang from the tables, and altar-carpets, none of your common loom-woven stuff, but hand-worked and--as Herr Tubelkahn gives you to understand--by the fairest fingers, are spread about to show their patterns to the best advantage, while there is so much stained glass about ready for immediate transfer to the oriel windows of country churches, that when the sun shines, Herr Tubelkahn's customers seem to be suddenly invested with Joseph's garment of many colours, and the whole shop lights up like a kaleidoscope.
Many of the customers, both of Messrs. Cope and Tubelkahn, were customers, or, more euphuistically, clients, of Messrs. Camoxon, who kept the celebrated Clerical and Educational Registry higher up the street; but these customers and clients invariably crossed and recrossed the road, in proceeding from the one to the other of these establishments, in order to avoid a certain door which lay midway between them. A shabby swing-door, sun-blistered, and with its bottom panel scored with heel and toe kicks from impatient entrance-seeking feet; a door flanked by two flaming bills, and surrounded by a host of close-shaven, sallow-faced men, in shabby clothes and shiny hats, and red noses and swinging canes, noble Romans, roistering cavaliers, clamorous citizens, fashionable guests, virtuous peasants--all at a shilling a night; for the door was, in fact, the stage-door of the Cracksideum Theatre. The shabby men in threadbare jauntiness smiled furtively, and grinned at each other as they saw the sleek gentlemen in shining broad-cloth step out of their path; but the said gentlemen felt the proximity of the Thespian temple very acutely, and did not scruple to say so to Messrs. Camoxon, who, as in duty bound, shrugged their shoulders deprecatingly, and--changed the conversation. They were very sorry, but--and they shrugged their shoulders. When men shrug their shoulders to their customers it is time that they should retire from business. It was time that the Messrs. Camoxon so retired, for the old gentleman now seldom appeared in Rutland Street, but remained at home at Wimbledon, enacting his favourite character of the British squire, and actually dressing the part in a blue coat and gilt buttons, gray knee-breeches, and Hessian boots; while young George Camoxon hunted with the Queen's hounds, had dined twice at the Life Guards' mess at Windsor, and had serious thoughts of standing for the county.
But the business was far too good to give up; every one who had a presentation or an advowson to sell took it to Camoxons'; the head clerk could tell you off-hand the net value of every valuable living in England, the age of the incumbent, and the state of his health. Every rector who wanted assistance, every curate who wanted a change, in servants' phrase, "to better himself," every layman who wanted a title for orders, every vicar who, oddly enough, wanted to change a dull, bleak living in the north for a pleasant social sphere of duty in a cheerful neighbourhood in the south of England; parents on the lookout for tutors, tutors in search of pupils--all inscribed their names on Camoxon's books, and looked to him for assistance in their extremity. There was a substantial, respectable, orthodox appearance about Camoxons', in the ground-glass windows, with the device of the Bible and Sceptre duly inscribed thereon; in the chaste internal fittings of polished mahogany and plain horsehair stools, with the Churchman's Almanack on the wall in mediaeval type, very illegible, and in a highly mediaeval frame, all bosses and clamps; in the big ledgers and address-books, and in the Post-office Directory, which here shed its truculent red cover, and was scarcely recognisable in a meek sad-coloured calf binding; and, above all, in the grave, solemn, sable-clad clerks, who moved noiselessly about, and who looked like clergymen playing at business.
Up and down Rutland Street had Walter Joyce paced full a thousand times since his arrival in London. The name of the street and of its principal inhabitants was familiar to him through the advertisements in the clerical newspaper which used to be sent to Mr. Ashurst at Helmingham; and no sooner was he settled down in his little lodging in Winchester Street than he crossed the mighty artery of the Strand, and sought out the street and the shops of which he had already heard so much. He saw them, peered in at Copes', and at Tubelkahn's, and looked earnestly at Camoxons' ground-glass window, and half thought of going in to see whether they had anything which might suit him on their books. But he refrained until he had received the answers to a certain advertisement which he had inserted in the newspaper, setting forth that a young man with excellent testimonials--he knew he could get them from the rector of Helmingham--was desirous of giving instruction in the classics and mathematics. Advertising, he thought, was a better and more gentlemanly medium than causing a detailed list of his accomplishments to be inscribed in the books of the Ecclesiastical Registry, as a horse's pedigree and performances are entered in the horsedealer's list; but when, after hunting for half an hour through the columns of the newspaper's supplement, he found his advertisement amongst a score of others, all of them from men with college honours, or promising greater advantages than he could hold forth, he began to doubt the wisdom of his proceeding. However, he would wait and see the result. He did so wait for three days, but not a single line addressed, as requested, to W.J. found its way to Winchester Street. Then he sent for the newspaper again, and began to reply to the advertisements which he thought might suit him. He had no high thoughts or hopes, no notions of regenerating the living generation, or of placing tuition on a new footing, or rendering it easy by some hitherto unexplained process. He had been an usher in a school; for the place of an usher in a school he had advertised; and if he could have obtained that position he would have been contented. But when the few answers to his advertisement arrived, he saw that it was impossible to accept any of the offers they contained. One man wanted him to teach French with a guaranteed Parisian accent, to devote his whole time out of school-hours to the boys, to supervise them in the Indian-sceptre athletic exercises, and to rule over a dormitory of thirteen, "where, in consequence of the lax supervision of the last didaskolos, severe measures would be required," for twenty pounds a year. Another gentleman, whose notepaper was ornamented with a highly florid Maltese cross, and who dated his letter "Eve of S. Boanerges," wished to know his opinion of the impostor-firebrand M. Luther, and whether he (the advertiser) had any connections in the florist or decorative line, with whom an arrangement in the mutual-accommodation way could be entered into; while a third, evidently a grave sententious man, with a keen eye to business, expressed, on old-fashioned Bath-post, gilt-edged letter-paper, his desire to know "what sum W.J. would be willing to contribute for the permission to state, after a year's residence, that he had been one of Dr. Sumph's most trusted helpmates and assistants."
No good to be got that way, then, and a visit to Camoxons' imminent, for the money was running very, very short, and the conventional upturning of stones, by no means leaving one in its normal position, must be proceeded with. Visit to Camoxon's paid, after much staring through the ground-glass window (opaque generally, but transparent in the Bible and Sceptre artistic bits), much ascent and descent of two steps cogitatively, final rush up top step wildly, and hurried, not to say pantomimic, entrance through the ground-glass door, to be confronted by the oldest and most composed of the sable-clad clerks. Bows exchanged; name and address required; name and address given in a low and serious whisper, and repeated aloud in a clear high treble, each word as it was uttered being transcribed in a hand which was the very essence of copperplate into an enormous book. Position required? Second or third mastership in a classical school, private tutorship, as secretary or librarian to a nobleman or gentleman. So glibly ran the old gentleman's steel pen over these items that Walter Joyce began to fancy that applicants for one post were generally ready and willing to take all or any, as indeed they were. "Which University, what college?" The old gentleman scratched his head with the end of his steel penholder, and looked across at Walter, with a benevolent expression which seemed to convey that he would rather the young man would say Christchurch than St. Mary's, and Trinity in preference to Clare Hall. Walter Joyce grew hot to his ear-tips, and his tongue felt too large for his mouth, as he stammered out, "I have not been to either University--I----" but the remainder of the sentence was lost in the loud bang with which the old gentleman clapped-to the heavy sides of the big book, clasped it with its brazen clasp, and hoisted it on to a shelf behind him with the dexterity of a juggler.
"My good young friend," said the old clerk blandly, "you might have saved yourself a vast amount of vexation, and me a certain amount of trouble, if you had made that announcement earlier! Good morning!"
"But do you mean to say----"
"I mean to say that in that book at the present moment are the names of sixty gentlemen seeking just the employment which you have named, all of whom are not merely members of colleges, but members who have taken rank--prizemen, first-class men, wranglers, senior optimes; they are on our books, and they may remain there for months before we get them off. You may judge, then, what chance you would have. At most agencies they would have taken your money and given you hope. But we don't do that here--it isn't our way. Good morning!"
"Then you think I have no chance----"
"I'm sure of it--through us, at least. Good morning!"
Joyce would have made another effort, but the old gentleman had already turned on his heel, and feigned to be busy with some letters on a desk before him, so Walter turned round too, and silently left the registry-office.
Silently, and with an aching heart. The old clerk had said but little, but Walter felt that his dictum was correct, and that all hopes of getting a situation as a tutor were at an end. Oh, if his father had only left him money enough to go to college, he would have had a future before him which---- But then, Marian? He would never have known that pure, faithful, earnest love, failing which, life in its brightest and best form would have been dull and distasteful to him. He had that love still, thank Heaven, and in that thought there were the elements of hope, and the promptings to bestir himself yet once more in his hard, self-appointed task of bread-winning.
Money running very short, and time running rapidly on. Not the shortest step in advance since he had first set foot in London, and the bottom of his purse growing painfully visible. He had taken to frequenting a small coffee-house in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, where, as he munched the roll and drank the tea which now too often served him as a dinner, he could read the newspapers, and scan the advertisements to see if there were anything likely to suit him among the myriad columns. It was a quiet and secluded little place, where but few strangers entered; he saw the same faces night after night, as he noticed--and where he could have his letters addressed to him under his initials, which was a great comfort, as he had noticed lately that his landlady in his riverside lodging-house had demurred to the receipt of so much initialed correspondence, ascribing it, as Walter afterwards learned from the "slavey," or maid-of-all-work, either to "castin' 'orryscopes, tellin' charickters by 'andwritin', or rejen'rative bolsum for the 'air!"--things utterly at variance with the respectability of her establishment.
A quiet, secluded little place, sand-floored and spittoon-decorated, with a cosy clock, and a cosy red-faced fire, singing with steaming kettles, and cooking chops, and frizzling bacon, with a sleepy cat, a pet of the customers, dozing before the hearth, and taking occasional quarter-of-an-hour turns round the room, to be back-rubbed and whisker-scratched, and tit-bit fed, with tea and coffee and cocoa, in thick blue china half-pint mugs, and with bacon in which the edge was by no means to be cut off and thrown away, but was thick, and crisp, and delicious as the rest of it, on willow-pattern plates, with little yellow pats of country butter, looking as if the cow whose impressed form they bore had only fed upon buttercups, as different from the ordinary petrified cold cream which in London passes current for butter as chalk from cheese. "Bliffkins's"--the house was supposed to have been leased to Bliffkins as the Elephant, and appeared under that title in the Directories; but no one knew it but as Bliffkins's--was a Somersetshire house, and kept a neat placard framed and glazed in its front window to the effect that theSomerset County Gazettewas taken in. So that among the thin, pale London folk who "used" the house you occasionally came upon stalwart giants, big-chested, horny-handed, deep-voiced, with z's sticking out all over their pronunciation, jolly Zummerzetshire men, who brought Bliffkins the latest gossip from his old native place of Bruton and its neighbourhood, and who, during their stay--and notably at cattle-show period--were kings of the house. At ordinary times, however, the frequenters of the house never varied--indeed, it was understood that Bliffkins's was a "connection," and did not in the least depend upon chance custom. Certain people sat in certain places, ordered certain refreshment, and went away at certain hours, never varying in the slightest particular. Mr. Byrne, a wizened old man, who invariably bore on his coat and on his hair traces of fur and fluff and wool, who was known to be a bird-stuffer by trade, and an extreme Radical in politics, and who was reputed to be the writer of some of those spirit-stirring letters in the weekly press signed "Lucius Junius Brutus" and "Scrutator," sat in the right-hand corner box nearest the door, where he was out of the draught, and had the readiest chance of pouncing upon the boy who brought in the evening papers, and securing them before his rival, Mr. Wickwar, could effect a seizure. Mr. Wickwar, who was a retired tailor, and had plenty of means, the sole bane of his life being the danger to the Constitution from the recklessly advanced feeling of the times, sat at the other end of the room, being gouty and immobile, contented himself with glaring at his democratic enemy, and occasionally withering him with choice extracts from theMagna Chartaweekly journal. The box between them was usually devoted of an evening to Messrs. O'Shane and Begson, gentlemen attached to the press, capital company, full of anecdote and repartee, though liable to be suddenly called away in the exigence of their literary pursuits. The top of the policeman's helmet or the flat cap of the fireman on duty just protruded through the swing-door in this direction acted as tocsins to these indefatigable public servants, cut them off in the midst of a story, and sent them flying on the back of an engine, or at the tail of a crowd, to witness scenes which, portrayed by their graphic pencils, afforded an additional relish to the morning muffin at thousands of respectable breakfast-tables. Between these gentlemen and a Mr. Shimmer, a youngish man, with bright eyes, hectic colour, and a general sense of nervous irritation, there was a certain spirit ofcamaraderiewhich the other frequenters of Bliffkins's could not understand. Mr. Shimmer invariably sat alone, and during his meal habitually buried himself in one of the choice volumes of Bliffkins's library, consisting of old volumes of Blackwood's, Bentley's, and Tait's magazines, from which he would occasionally make extracts in a very small hand in a very small note-book. It was probably from the fact of a printer's boy having called at Bliffkins's with what was understood to be a "proof," that a rumour arose and was received throughout the Bliffkins's connection that Mr. Shimmer edited theTimesnewspaper. Be that as it might, there was no doubt, both from external circumstances and from the undefined deference paid to him by the other gentlemen of the press, that Mr. Shimmer was a literary man of position, and that Bliffkins held him in respect, and, what was more practical for him, gave him credit on that account. An ex-parish clerk, who took snuff and sleep in alternate pinches; a potato salesmen in Covent Garden, who drank coffee to keep himself awake, and who went briskly off to business when the other customers dropped off wearily to bed; a "professional" at an adjoining bowling-alley, who would have been a pleasant fellow had it not been for his biceps, which got into his head and into his mouth, and pervaded his conversation; and a seedsman, a terrific republican, who named his innocent bulbs and hyacinths after the most sanguinary heroes of the French revolution,--filled up the list of Bliffkins's "regulars."
Among these quiet people Walter Joyce took up his place night after night, until he began to be looked upon as of and belonging to them. They were intolerant of strangers at Bliffkins's, of strangers, that is to say, who, tempted by the comforts of the place, renewed their visits, and threatened to make them habitual. These were for the most part received at about their third appearance, when they came in with a pleasant smile and thought they had made an impression, with a strong stare and a dead silence, under the influences of which they ordered refreshment which they did not want, had to pay for, and went away without eating, amid the contemptuous grins of the regulars. But Walter Joyce was so quiet and unobtrusive, so evidently a gentleman desirous of peace and shelter and refuge at a cheap-rate, that the great heart of Bliffkins's softened to him at once; they themselves had known the feelings under which he sought the asylum of that Long-Acre Patmos, and they respected him. No one spoke to him, there was no acknowledgment of his presence among them; they knew well enough that any such manifestation would have been out of place; but when, after finishing his very simple evening meal, he would take a few sheets of paper from his pocket, draw to him theTimessupplement, and, constantly referring to it, commence writing a series of letters, they knew what all that portended, and all of them, including old Wickwar, the ex-tailor and great Conservative, silently wished him Godspeed.
Ah, those letters, dated from Bliffkins's coffee-house, and written in Walter Joyce's roundest hand, in reply to the hundred of chances which each day's newspaper-sheet offered to every enterprising bread-seeker, chances so promising at the first glance, so barren and so full of rottenness when they came to be tested! Clerkships? clerkships in galore! legal, mercantile, general clerks were wanted everywhere, only apply to A.B. or Y.Z., and take them! But when A. B. or Y. Z. replied, Walter Joyce found that the legal clerks must write the regular engrossing hand, must sweep out the office ready for the other clerks by nine a.m., and must remain there occasionally till nine p.m., with a little outdoor work in the service of writs and notices of ejectment. The duties required of the mercantile clerk were but little better, and those of the general clerks were worst of all, while throughout a net income of eighteen shillings a week appeared to be the average remuneration. "A secretary wanted?" certainly, four secretaries wanted nearly every day, to public companies which were about to bring forth an article in universal demand, but of which the supply had hitherto been limited, and which could not fail to meet with an enormous success and return a large dividend. In all cases the secretary must be a man of education and of gentlemanly manners, so said the advertisements; but the reply to Walter Joyce's application said in addition that he must be able to advance the sum of three hundred pounds, to be invested in the shares of the company, which would bear interest at the rate of twenty-five per cent, per annum. The Press? through the medium of their London fraternity the provincial press was clamorous for educated men who could write leading articles, general articles, and reviews; but on inquiry the press required the same educated men to be able to combine shorthand reporting with editorial writing, and in many cases suggested the advisability of the editorial writer being able to set up his own leaders in type at case. The literary institutions throughout the country were languishing for lecturers; but when Walter Joyce wrote to them, offering them a choice of certain subjects which he had studied, and on which he thought himself competent of conveying real information, he received answers from the secretaries, that only men of name were paid by the institutions, but that the committee would be happy to set apart a night for him if he chose to lecture gratis, or that if he felt inclined to address the inhabitants of Knuckleborough on his own account, the charge for the great hall was three pounds, for the smaller hall thirty shillings a night, in both cases exclusive of gas, while the secretary, who kept the principal stationer's shop and library in the town, would be happy to become his agent, and sell his tickets at the usual charge of ten per cent. Four pounds a week, guaranteed! Not a bad income for a penniless man! to be earned, too, in the discharge of a light and gentlemanly occupation, to be acquired by the outlay of three shillings' worth of postage stamps. Walter Joyce sent the postage stamps, and received in return a lithographic circular, vary dirty about the folded edges, instructing him in the easiest method of modelling wax flowers!
That was the final straw. On the receipt of that letter, or rather on the reading of it--he had taken it from the stately old looking-glass over the fireplace to the box where of late he usually sat--Walter Joyce gave a deep groan, and buried his face in his hands. A minute after he felt his hair slightly touched, and looking up, saw old Jack Byrne bending over him.
"What ails ye, lad?" asked the old man tenderly.
"Misery--despair--starvation!"
"I thought so!" said the old man calmly. Then taking a small battered flask from his breast and emptying its contents into a clean cup before him--"Here, drink this, and come outside. We can't talk here!"
Walter swallowed the contents of the cup mechanically, and followed his new friend into the street.
When they stood in the street, with the fresh night-wind blowing upon them, the old man stopped, and, peering anxiously into his companion's face, said abruptly--
"Better?"
"Much better, thank you; quite well, in fact. There's no occasion for me to trouble you any more; I----"
"What? All gaff, eh? Old Jack Byrne sold, eh? Swallowed his brandy, and want to cut--is that the caper?"
"I beg your pardon, I don't quite clearly understand you, I'm sorry to say"--for Walter knew by the tone of his voice that the old man was annoyed--"I'm very weak and rather stupid--I mean to say, in--in the ways and the talk of London--and I don't clearly follow what you said to me just now; only you were so kind to me at first, that----"
"Provinces!" muttered the old man to himself. "Just like me; treating him to my pavement patter, and thinking he understood it! All right, I think, as far as one can judge, though God knows that's often wrong enough!" Then, aloud, "Kind! nonsense! I'm an odd old skittle, and talk an odd language; but I've seen the ups and downs of life, my lad, and can give you good advice if I can't give anything else. Have you anything to do to-night? Nothing? Sure I'm not keeping you from the Opera, or any swell party in Park Lane? No! Then come home with me and have a bit o' pickled salmon and a glass of cold gin-and-water, and let's talk matters out."
Before he had concluded his sentence, the old man had slipped Joyce's arm through his own, and was making off at a great rate, and also with an extraordinary shamble, in which his shoulder appeared to act as a kind of cutwater, while his legs followed considerably in the rear. Walter held on to him as best he could, and in this fashion they made their way through the back streets, across St. Martin's Lane, and so into Leicester Square. Then, as they arrived in front of a brilliantly lighted establishment, at the door of which cabs laden with fashionably dressed men and gaudily dressed women were continually disgorging their loads, while a never-ceasing stream of pedestrians poured in from the street, Jack Byrne came to a sudden halt, and said to his companion----
"Now I'm going to enjoy myself!"
Walter Joyce had noticed the style of people pouring in through the turnstiles and paying their admission money at the brilliantly lit boxes; and as he heard these words he unconsciously drew back. You see, he was but a country-bred young man, and had not yet been initiated into the classical enjoyments of London life. Jack Byrne felt the tug at his arm, and looked at him curiously.
"What is it?" said he. "You thought I was going in there? I? Oh, my dear young friend, you'll have to learn a great deal yet; but you're on the suspicious lay, and that's a chalk to you! You thought I'd hocussed the brandy I gave you at Bliffkins's; you thought I was going to take you into this devil's crib, did you? Not I, my dear boy; I'd as soon take you in as myself, and that's saying a good deal. No; I told you I was going to enjoy myself--so I am. My enjoyment is in watching that door, and marking those who go through it, not in speculating on what's going on inside, but in waiting for the end, my young friend--in waiting for the end! Oh yes, jump out of your brougham, my Lord Tomnoddy; but don't split your lavender gloves in attempting to close the door behind you--the cad will do that, of course! Beautiful linen, white as snow, and hair all stuck close to his head, look. But mark his forehead--what's your name--Joyce? Mark his forehead, Joyce; see how it slopes straight away back. Look at that noble space between his nose and his upper lip--the ape type, my friend--the ape type! That's one of your hereditary rulers, Joyce, my boy! That fellow sits and votes for you and me, bless him! He's gone in now to improve his mind with the literature of comic songs, and the legs of the ballet, and the fascinations of painted Jezebels, and to clear his brain with drinks of turpentine and logwood shavings! And that's one of our hereditary legislators! Oh, Lord, how much longer--how much longer!"
The policeman on duty at the door, whose mission it was to keep the pathway clear, now sallied forth from the portico and promenaded in the little crowd, gently pushing his way amongst them with a monotonous cry of "Move on, there, please--move on!" Joyce noticed that his companion regarded this policeman with a half-defiant, half-pitying air, and the old man said to him, as they resumed their walk--
"That's another of the effects of our blessed civilization! That gawk in blucher boots and a felt helmet--that machine in a shoddy great-coat, who can scarcely tell B from a bull's foot, and yet has the power to tell you and me and other men, who pay for the paving-rate--ay, and for the support of such scum as he is, for the matter of that--to move on! Suppose you think I'm a rum un, eh?" said Mr. Byrne, suddenly changing his voice of disgust into a bantering tone. "Not seen many like me before; don't want to see any more, perhaps?"
"I don't say that," said Joyce, with a half smile; "but I confess the sentiments are new to me, and----"
"Brought up in the country; my lord or the squire, eh? So pleased to receive notice coming out of church, 'plucks the slavish hat from the villager's head,' and all that! Sorry I've not a manorial hall to ask you into, but such as it is you're welcome. Hold hard, here."
The old man stopped before a private door in a small street of very small shops running between Leicester Square and the Haymarket, took out a key, and stood back for his companion to pass before him into a dark and narrow passage. When the door was closed behind him, Mr. Byrne struck a light, and commenced making his way up the narrow staircase. Joyce followed him flight after flight, and past landing after landing, until at length the top story was reached. Then Mr. Byrne took out another key, and, unlocking the door immediately in front of him, entered the room and bade his companion follow him.
Walter Joyce found himself in a long low room, with a truckle bed in one corner, bookshelves ranged round three sides, and in the middle, over which the curtains were now drawn, a large square table, with an array of knives and scissors upon it, a heap of wool in one corner, and an open case of needles of various kinds, polished bright and shining. On one end of the mantelpiece stood a glass case containing a short-horned white owl, stuffed, and looking wonderfully sagacious; on the other a cock, with full crop and beady eye, and open bill, with one leg advanced, full of self-sufficiency and conceit. Over the mantlepiece, in a long low case, was an admirably carried out bit of Byrne's art, representing the death-struggles of a heron struck by a hawk. Both birds were stuffed, of course, but the characteristics of each had been excellently preserved; the delicate heron lay completely at the mercy of his active little antagonist, whose "pounce" had evidently just been made, and who with beak and talons was settling his prey.
While Joyce was looking round at these things, the old man had lit a lamp suspended from the ceiling, and another standing on the square work-table; had opened a cupboard, and from it had produced a black bottle, two tumblers, and a decanter of water; had filled and lit a mighty pipe, and had motioned his companion to make free with the liquor and with the contents of an ancient-looking tobacco-jar, which he pushed towards him.
"Smoke, man!" said he, puffing out a thin line of vapour through his almost closed lips, and fanning it away lazily with his hand--"smoke!--that's one thing they can't keep from us, though they'd like. My lord should puff at his havannah while the commonalty, the plebs, theprofanum vulgus,who are hated and driven away, should 'exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming weed!' Thank God we've altered all that since poor John Philips's day; he'd get better change for his Splendid Shilling now than ever he did in his time, eh? Talking Greek to you, am I? or worse than Greek, for that you'd understand, I dare say, and you'll never understand my old mutterings and quotations. You can read Greek?"
"Yes," Joyce said; "I am reckoned a tolerable Grecian."
"Indeed!" said the old man, with a grin; "ah! no doubt you were an honour to your college."
"Unfortunately," said Walter, "I have never been to college."
"Then your state is the more gracious! By George! I thought I'd picked up with a sucking don, all trencher-cap, and second aorist, and Conservative principles, Church and State, a big Bible with a sceptre stretched across it, and a fear of the 'swart mechanics' bloody thumbs' printed off on my lord's furniture, as provided by Messrs. Jackson and Graham! You don't follow me, young fellow? Like enough, like enough. I think myself I'm a little enigmatical when I get on my hobby, and it requires a good steady stare of honest wonderment, such as I see on your face now, to bring me up short. I'm brought up short now, and can attend to more sublunary matters, such as yours. Tell me about yourself."
"What shall I tell you?" asked Joyce. "I can tell nothing beyond what you already know, or can guess. I'm without friends, without work; I've lost hope----"
"No, no, my boy not lost, only mislaid it. We never lose hope so long as we're good for anything! Sometimes, when I've been most depressed and down, about the only thing in life that has any interest for me now--and you've no idea what that is, have you, Joyce, eh?"
"No, indeed; unless, perhaps, your children!"
"Children! Thank God, I never had a wife or a child to give me a care. No; the People's cause, my boy, the People's cause! That's what I live for, and sometimes, as I've been saying, I've been downhearted about that. I've seen the blood beating us down on the one side, and the money beating us down on the other, and I've thought that it was useless kicking against the pricks, and that we had better cave in and give up!"
"But you say you never lost hope?"
"Never, entirely. When I've been at my lowest ebb, when I've come home here with the blood in my veins tingling from aristocratic insult, and with worse than that, contempt for my own fellow working-men surging up in my heart, I've looked up at that case there over the mantelshelf, and my pluck's revived. That's a fine bit of work, that is, done by an old pupil of mine, who worked his soul out in the People's cause in '48, and died in a deep decline soon after. But what a fancy the lad had! Look at that heron! Is not it for all the world like one of your long, limp, yaw-yaw, nothing-knowing, nothing-doing young swells? Don't you read 'used-up' in his delicate plumage, drooping wings, lack-lustre eye? And remark how the jolly little hawk has got him! No breed about him; keen of sight, swift of wing, active with beak and talon--that's all he can boast of; but he's got the swell in his grip, mind you! And he's only a prototype of what's to come!"
The old man rose as he spoke, and taking the lamp from the table, raised it towards the glass case. As he set it down again he looked earnestly at Joyce, and said--
"You think I'm off my head, perhaps--and I'm not sure that I'm not when I get upon this topic--and you're thinking that at the first convenient opportunity you'll slip away, with a 'Thank ye!' and leave the old lunatic to his democratic ravings? But, like many other lunatics, I'm only mad on one subject, and when that isn't mentioned I can converse tolerably rationally, can perhaps even be of some use in advising one friendless and destitute. And you, you say, are both."
"I am, indeed; but I scarcely think you can help me, Mr. Byrne, though I don't for an instant doubt your friendship or your wish to be of service. But it happens that the only people from whom I can hope to get anything in the way of employment, employment that brings money, belong to that class against which you have such violent antipathies, the--the 'swells,' as you call them."
"My dear young fellow, you mistake me. If you do as I should like you, as an honest Englishman with a freeman's birthright, to do; if you do as I myself--old Jack Byrne, one of the prisoners of '48; 'Bitter Byrne,' as they call me at the club--if you do as I do, you'll hate the swells with all your heart, but you'll use 'em. When I was a young man, young and foolish, blind and headstrong, as all young men are, I wouldn't take off my cap to a swell, wouldn't take a swell's orders, wouldn't touch a swell's money! Lord bless you, I saw the folly of that years ago! I should have been starved long since if I hadn't. My business is bird-stuffing, as you may have heard or guessed; and where should I have been if I'd had to live upon all the orders for bird-stuffing I got from the labouring classes? They can't stuff themselves enough, let alone their birds! The swells want owls, and hawks, and pheasants, and what not, stuffed with outspread wings for fire-screens, but the poor people want the fire itself, and want it so badly that they never holloa for screens, and wouldn't use 'em if they had 'em. No, no; hate the swells, my boy, but use 'em. What have you been?"
"An usher in a school."
"Of course! I guessed it would be some of those delightful occupations for which the supply is unlimited and the demand nothing, but I scarcely thought it could be so bad as that! Usher in a school! hewer in a coal-pit, stone-breaker on a country road, horse in a mill, anything better than that!"
"What could I do?"
"What could you do? Sell your books, pawn your watch, take a steerage passage and go out to Australia. Black boots, tend sheep, be cad to an omnibus, or shopwalker to a store out there; every one of 'em better than dragging on in the conventional torture of this played-out staggering old country! That's gassy a little, you'll think, and so it is; but I mean better than that. I've long-standing and intimate connections with the Zoological Acclimatisation Society in Melbourne, and if you can pay your passage out, I'll guarantee that, in the introductions I give you, they'll find you something to do. If youcan'tfind the money for your passage out, perhaps it can be found for you!"
Not since James Ashurst's death, not for some weeks before that event, indeed, when the stricken man had taken leave of his old pupil and friend, had Walter Joyce heard the words of friendship and kindness from any man. Perhaps, a little unmanned by the disappointment and humiliation he had undergone since his arrival in London, he was a little unmanned at this speech from his newly found friend; at all events, the tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was husky as he replied--
"I ought to be very much obliged to you, and indeed, indeed I am; but I fear you'll think me an ungrateful cub when I tell you that I can't possibly go away from England. Possibly is a strong word, but I mean, that I can't think of it until I've exhausted every means, every chance of obtaining the barest livelihood here!"
The old man eyed him from under his bent brows earnestly for a moment, and then said abruptly, "Ties, eh? father?"
"No!" said Joyce, with a half blush--very young, you see, and country bred--"as both my mother and father are dead, but--but there is----"
"Oh, Lord!" grunted Mr. Byrne, "of course there is; there always is in such cases! Blind old bat I was not to see it at first! Ah, she was left lamenting, and all the rest of it; quite knocks the Australian idea on the head? Now let me think what can be done for you here! There's Buncombe and Co., the publishers, want a smart young man, smart and cheap they said in their letter, to contribute to their new Encyclopaedia, the Naturalist. That'll be one job for you, though it won't be much."
"But, Mr. Byrne," said Joyce, "I have no knowledge, or very little, of natural history. Certainly not enough to----"
"Not too much to prevent your being too proud to take a hint or two from Goldsmith'sAnimated Nature,my boy, as he took several from those who preceded him. That, and a German book or two you'll find on the shelves--you understand German? that's right--will help you to all the knowledge Buncombe will require of you, or all they ought to expect, for the matter of that, at ten-and-six the column. You can come here of a morning--you won't interfere with me--and grind away until dark, when we'll have a walk and a talk; you shall tell me all about yourself, and we'll see what more can be done, and then we'll have some food at Bliffkins's and learn all that's going on!"
"I don't know how to thank you," commenced Joyce.
"Then don't attempt to learn!" said the old man. "Does it suit you, as a beginning only, mind! do you agree to try it--we shall do better things yet, I hope; but will you try it?"
"I will indeed! If you only knew----"
"I do: good night! I got up at daybreak, and ought to have been in bed long since. Good night!"
Not since he had been in London, had Walter Joyce been so light of heart as when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind him. Something to do at last! He felt inclined to cry out for joy; he longed for some one to whom he could impart his good fortune.
His good fortune! As he sat upon his wretched bed in his tiny lodging, luxurious words rang in his ears. "And the chance of achieving fame and fortune, keep that in the foreground!" Fame and fortune! And he had been overjoyed because he had obtained a chance of earning a few shillings as a bookseller's hack, a chance for which he was indebted to a handicraftsman. But a poor first step towards fame and fortune, Marian would think! He understood how utter had been her inexperience and his own; he had learned the wide distance between the fulfilment of such hopes as theirs, and the best of the bare possibilities which the future held for them, and the pain which this knowledge brought him, more for the sake of his own share in it, was doubly keen for hers. It was very hard for Walter Joyce to have to suffer the terrible disappointment and disenchantment of experience; but it was far harder for him to have to cause her to share them. Marian would indeed think it a "poor first step." He little knew how much more decisive a one she was about to take herself.
Marian Ashurst dearly loved her home. To her concentrative and self-contained nature local associations were peculiarly precious; the place in which she had lived the life so essentially her own was very dear. The shabby old house, though she perfectly understood its shabbiness, and would have prized the power of renovating and adorning it as thoroughly as anypetite maîtressewould have prized the power of adorning herbijouresidence with all the prettiness of modern upholstery, was a shrine in her eyes. Base and unbeautiful, but sacred, the place in which her father had dutifully and patiently passed his laborious life--had it not been wasted? the proud discontented spirit asked itself many a time, but found no voice to answer "no."
She had often pictured to her fancy what the house might have been made, if there had but been money to make it anything with, money to do anything with; if only they had not always been so helpless, so burdened with the especially painful load of genteel poverty. She had exercised her womanly ingenuity, put forth her womanly tastes, so far as she could, and the house was better than might have been expected under all the circumstances; but ingenuity and taste, which double the effect of money when united to that useful agency, are not of much avail without it, and will not supply curtains and carpet, paint, varnishing, and general upholstery. There was not a superfluous ornament, and there were many in the drawing-rooms at Woolgreaves very offensive to her instinctively correct taste,--whose price would not have materially altered the aspect of Marian Ashurst's home, as she had recognised with much secret bitterness of spirit, on her first visit to the Creswells. She would have made the old house pretty and pleasant, if she could, especially while he lived, to whom its prettiness and pleasantness might have brought refreshment of spirit, and a little cheerfulness in the surroundings of his toilsome life; but she loved it, notwithstanding its dulness and its frigid shabbiness, and the prospect of being obliged to leave it gave her exquisite pain. Marian was surprised when she discovered that her feelings on this point were keener than those of her mother. She had anticipated, with shrinking and reluctance of whose intensity she felt ashamed, the difficulty she should experience when that last worst necessity must arise, when her mother must leave the home of so many years, and the scene of her tranquil happiness. Mrs. Ashurst had been a very happy woman, notwithstanding her delicate health, and the difficulties it had brought upon the little household. In the first place, she was naturally of a placid temperament. In the second, her husband told her as little as possible of the constantly pressing, hopelessly inextricable trouble of his life. And lastly, Mrs. Ashurst's inexperience prevented her realising danger in the future from any source except that one whence it had actually come, fallen in its fullest, fatalmost might--the sickness and death of her husband.
When that tremendous blow fell upon her, it stunned the widow. She could not grieve, she could not care about anything else. She was not a woman of an imaginative turn of mind; feeling had always been powerful and deep in her; but fancy had ever been active, so that when the one awful and overwhelming fact existed, it was quite enough for her, it swamped everything else, it needed not to bring up any reinforcements to her discomfiture. She was ready to go anywhere with Marian, to do anything which Marian advised or directed. The old house was to be left, a new home was to be sought for. A stranger was coming to be the master where her husband's firm but gentle rule had made itself loved, respected, and obeyed for so long; a stranger was to sit in her husband's seat, and move about the house where his step and his voice were heard no more, listened for no longer, not even now, in the first confused moments of waking after the blessed oblivion of sleep.
And in that awful fact all was included. Poor Mrs. Ashurst cared little for the linen and the china now. Whether they should be packed up and removed to the humble lodgings which were to be the next home of herself and her daughter, or whether Mr. Ashurst's successor should be asked to take them at a valuation, were points which she left to Marian's decision. She had not any interest in anything of the kind now. It was time that Marian's mind should be made up on these and other matters; and the girl, notwithstanding her premature gravity and her habit of decision, found her task difficult in fact and sentiment. Her mother was painfully quiescent, hopelessly resigned. In every word and look she expressed plainly that life had come to a standstill for her, that she could no longer feel any interest or take any active part in its conduct; and thus she depressed Marian very much, who had her own sense of impending disappointment and imperative effort, in addition to their common sorrow, to struggle against.
Mrs. Ashurst and her daughter had seen a good deal of the family at Woolgreaves since the day on which Marian's cherished belief in the value and delight of wealth had been strengthened by that visit to the splendid dwelling of her father's old friend. The young ladies had quite "taken to" Mrs. Ashurst, and Mrs. Ashurst had almost "taken to" them. They came into Helmingham frequently, and never without bringing welcome contributions from the large and lavishly kept gardens at Woolgreaves. They tried, in many girlish and unskilful ways, to be intimate with Marian; but they felt they did not succeed, and only their perception of their uncle's wishes prevented their giving up the effort. Marian was very civil, very much obliged for their kindness and attention; but uncordial, "un-getatable," Maude Creswell aptly described it.
The condition of Mr. Ashurst's affairs had not proved to be quite so deplorable as had been supposed. There was a small insurance on his life; there were a few trifling sums due to him, which the debtors made haste to pay, owing, indeed, to the immediate application made to them by Mr. Creswell, who interfered as actively as unostentatiously on behalf of the bereaved woman; altogether a little sum remained, which would keep them above want, or the almost equally painful effort of immediate exertion to earn their own living,with management. Yes, that was the qualification which Marian understood thoroughly, understood to mean daily and hourly self-denial, watchfulness, and calculation, and more and worse than that--the termination on her part of the hope of preventing her mother's missing the material comforts which had been procured and preserved for her by a struggle whose weariness she had never been permitted to comprehend.
The old house had been shabby and poor, but it had been comfortable. It had given them space and cleanliness, and there was no vulgarity in its meagreness. But the only order of lodgings to which her mother and she could venture to aspire was that which invariably combines the absence of space and of cleanliness with the presence of tawdriness and discomfort. And this must last until Walter should be able to rescue them from it. She could not suffice to that rescue herself, but he would. He must succeed! Had he not every quality, every facility, and the strongest of motives? She felt this--that, in her case, the strongest motive would have been the desire for success,per se;but in his the strongest was his love of her. She recognised this, she knew this, she admired it in an odd abstract kind of way; when her heart was sufficiently disengaged from pressing care to find a moment for any kind of joy, she rejoiced in it; but she knew she could not imitate it--that was not in her. She had not much experience of herself yet, and the process of self-analysis was not habitual to her; but she felt instinctively that the more selfish instincts of love were hers, its noble influences, its profounder motives her lover's.
It was, then, to him she had to look, in him she had to trust, for the rescue that was to come in time. In how much time? in how little? Ah, there was the ever-present, ever-pressing question, and Marian brought to its perpetual repetition all the importance, all the unreasonable measurement of time, all the ignorance of its exceeding brevity and insignificance inseparable from her youth.
She had nearly completed the preparations for departure from the old home; the few possessions left her and her mother were ready for removal; a lodging in the village had been engaged, and the last few days were dragging themselves heavily over the heads of Mrs. Ashurst and Marian, when Mr. Creswell, having returned to Woolgreaves after a short absence, came to see them.
Mrs. Ashurst was walking in the neglected garden, and had reached the far end of the little extent when Mr. Creswell arrived at the open door of the house. A woman-servant, stolid and sturdy, was passing through the red-tiled square hall.
"Is Mrs. Ashurst in?" asked the visitor. "Mrs. Ashurst is in the garden, I see--don't disturb her."
Marian, who had heard the voice, answered Mr. Creswell's question by appearing on the threshold of the room which had been her father's study, and which, since his death, her mother and she had made their sitting-room. She looked weary; the too bright colour which fatigue brings to some faces was on hers, and her eyelids were red and heavy; her black dress, which had the limp, ungraceful, lustreless look of mourning attire too long unrenewed, hung on her fine upright figure after a fashion which told how little the girl cared how she looked; and the hand she first held out to Mr. Creswell, and then drew back with a faint smile, was covered with dust.
"I can't shake hands," she said; "I have been tying up the last bundles of books and papers, and my hands are disgraceful. Come in here, Mr. Creswell; I believe there isoneunoccupied chair."
He followed her into the study, and took the seat she pointed out, while she placed herself on a pile of folios which lay on the floor in front of the low wide window. Marian laid her arm upon the window-sill, and leaned her head back against one of the scanty frayed curtains. Her eyes closed for a moment, and a slight shudder passed over her.
"You are very tired, Miss Ashurst, quite worn out," said Mr. Creswell; "you have been doing too much--packing all those books, I suppose."
"Yes," said Marian, "I looked to that myself, and, indeed, there was nobody else to do it. But it is tiring work, and dirty,"--she struck her hands together, and shook her dress, so that a shower of dust fell from it--"and sad work besides. You know, Mr. Creswell"--here her face softened suddenly, and her voice fell--"how much my father loved his books. It is not easy to say good-bye to them; it is like a faint echo, strong enough to pain one, though, of the good-bye to himself."
"But why are you obliged to say good-bye to them?" asked Mr. Creswell, with genuine anxiety and compassion.
"What could we do with them?" said Marian; "there's no place to keep them. We must have taken another room specially for them if we took them to our lodgings, and there is no one to buy them here, so we are going to send them to London to be sold. I suppose they will bring a very small sum indeed--nothing, perhaps, when the expenses are paid. But it is our only means of disposing of them; so I have been dusting and sorting and arranging them all day, and I am tired and dusty and sick--sick at heart."
Marian leaned her head on the arm which lay on the window-sill, and looked very forlorn. She also looked very pretty, and Mr. Creswell thought so. This softened mood, so unusual to her, became her, and the little touch of confidence in her manner, equally unusual, flattered him. He felt an odd sort of difficulty in speaking to her--to this young girl, his old friend's orphan child, one to whom he intended so kindly, towards whom his position was so entirely one of patronage, not in any offensive sense, of course, but still of patronage.
"I--I never thought of this," he said hesitatingly; "I ought to have remembered it, of course; no doubt the books must be a difficulty to you--a difficulty to keep and a harder one to part with. But bless me, my dear Miss Ashurst, you say there is no one here to buy them--you did not remember me? Why did you not remember me? Of course I will buy them. I shall be only too delighted to buy them, to have the books my good friend loved so much--of course I shall."
"I had seen your library at Woolgreaves," said Marian, replying to Mr. Creswell's first impetuous question, "and I could not suppose you wanted more books, or such shabby ones as these."
"You judge of books like a lady, then, though you were your father's companion as well as his pet," said Mr. Creswell, smiling. "Those shabby books are, many of them, much more valuable than my well-dressed shelf-fillers. And even if they were not, I should prize them for the same reason that you do, and almost as much--yes, Miss Ashurst, almost as much. Men are awkward about saying such things, but I may tell his daughter that but for James Ashurst I never should have known the value of books--in other than a commercial sense, I mean."
"I don't know what they are worth," said Marian, "but if you will find out, and buy them, my mother and I will be very thankful. I know it will be a great relief to her to think of them at Woolgreaves, and all together. She has fretted more about my father's books being dispersed, and going into the hands of strangers, than about any other secondary cause of sorrow. The other things she takes quietly enough."
The widow could be seen from the window by them both as she pursued her monotonous walk in the garden, with her head bowed down and her figure so expressive of feebleness.
"Does she?" said Mr. Creswell. "I am very glad to hear that. Then"--and here Mr. Creswell gave a little sigh of relief--"we will look upon the matter of the books as arranged, and to-morrow I will send for them. Give yourself no further trouble about them. Fletcher shall settle it all."
"You will have them valued?" Marian asked with business-like seriousness.
"Certainly," returned Mr. Creswell. "And now tell me what your plans are, and where these lodgings are to which you alluded just now. Maude and Gertrude have not seen you, they tell me, since you took them?"
"No," said Marian, without the least tone of regret in her voice; "we have not met since your visit to Manchester. Miss Creswell's cold has kept her at home, and I have been much too busy to get so far as Woolgreaves."
"Your mother has seen my nieces?"
"Yes; Miss Gertrude Creswell called, and took her for a drive, and she remained to lunch at Woolgreaves. But that was one day when I was lodging-hunting--nothing had then been settled."
"The girls are very fond of Mrs. Ashurst."
"They are very kind," said Marian absently. The Misses Creswell were absolutely uninteresting to her, and as yet Marian Ashurst had never pretended to entertain a feeling she did not experience. The threshold of that particular school of life in which the art of feigning is learned lay very near her feet now, but they had not yet crossed it.
Marian and Mr. Creswell remained a long time together before Mrs. Ashurst came in. The girl spoke to the old gentleman with more freedom and with more feeling than on any previous occasion of their meeting; and Mr. Creswell began to think how interesting she was, in comparison with Maude and Gertrude, for instance; how much sense she had, how little frivolity. How very good-looking she was also; he had no idea she ever would have been so handsome--yes, positively handsome--he used the word in his thoughts--she certainly had not possessed anything like it when he had seen her formerly--a dark, prim, old-fashioned kind of girl, going about her father's study with an air of quiet appreciative sharpness and shrewdness which he did not altogether like. But she really had become quite handsome then, in her poor dress, with her grieved, tired face, her hair carelessly pushed off it any way, and her hands rough and soiled; she had made him recognise and feel that she had the gift of beauty also.
Mr. Creswell thought about this when he had taken leave of Mrs. Ashurst and Marian, having secured their promise to come to Woolgreaves on the day but one after, when he hoped Marian would assist him in assigning places to the books, which she felt almost reconciled to part with under these new conditions. He thought about them a good deal, and tried to make out, among the dregs of his memory, who it was who had said within his hearing, when Marian was a child, "Yes, she's a smart little girl, sure enough, and a dead hand at a bargain."
Marian Ashurst thought about Mr. Creswell after he left her and her mother. Mrs. Ashurst was very much relieved and gratified by his kindness about the books, as was Marian also. But the mother and daughter regarded the incident from different points of view. Mrs. Ashurst dwelt on the kindness of heart which dictated the purchase of the dead friend's books as at once a tribute to the old friendship and a true and delicate kindness to the survivors. Marian saw all that, but she dwelt rather on the felicitous condition which rendered it easy to indulge such impulses. Here was another instance, and in her favour, of the value of money.
"It has made more than one difference to me," she thought that night, when she was alone, and looked round the dismantled study; "it has made me like old Mr. Creswell, and hitherto I have only envied him."
"Do be persuaded, dear Mrs. Ashurst," said Maude Creswell, in a tone of sincere and earnest entreaty. She had made her appearance at the widow's house early on the day which succeeded her uncle's visit, and had presented, in her own and in her sister's name, as well as in that of Mr. Creswell, a petition, which she was now backing up with much energy. "Do come and stay with us. We are not going to have any company; there shall be nothing that you can possibly dislike. And Gerty and I will not tease you or Miss Ashurst; and you shall not be worried by Tom or anything.Docome, dear, dear Mrs. Ashurst; never mind the nasty lodgings; they can go on getting properly aired, and cleaned, and so on, until you are tired of Woolgreaves, and then you can go to them at any time. But not from your own house, where you have been so long, into that little place, in a street, too. Say you will come, now do."
Mrs. Ashurst was surprised and pleased. She recognised the girl's frank affection for her; she knew the generous kindness of heart which made her so eager to do her uncle's bidding, and secure to those desolate women a long visit to the splendid home he had given his nieces. Nothing but a base mean order of pride could have revolted against the offer so made and so pressed. Mrs. Ashurst yielded, and Maude Creswell returned to her uncle in high delight to announce that she had been successful in the object of her embassy.
"How delightful it will be to have the dear old lady here, Gerty!" said Maude to her sister. "The more I see of her the better I like her; and I mean to be so kind and attentive to her. I think Miss Ashurst is too grave, and she always seems so busy and preoccupied: I don't think she can rouse her mother's spirits much."
"No, I think not," said Gertrude. "I like the old lady very much too; but I don't quite know about Miss Ashurst; I think the more I see of her, the less I seem to know her. You must not leave her altogether to me, Maude. I wonder why one feels so strange with her? Heigh-ho!" said the girl, with a comical look, and a shake of her pretty head, "I suppose it's because she's so superior."
On the following day, Mrs. Ashurst and Marian took leave of their old home, and were conveyed in one of Mr. Creswell's carriages to Woolgreaves.