"Step-fathering succeeds better than step-mothering," said the rector, "so far as my experience goes. Men, my dear, are not so exacting; they are more easily satisfied."
"What nonsense, Herbert! They are not brought so much in contact with the children, perhaps, you mean; they are not called on to interfere so much. But how a mother could trust her children"s future to a second husband---- For my part I would rather die."
"Let us hope you will never need to do so, my dear," said the rector, at which little pleasantry Mrs. Warrender was glad to laugh.
"Happily none of us are in danger," she said. "Chatty must take the warning to heart and beware of fascinating widowers. Is it true about the Elms--that the house is empty and every one gone?"
"Thank heaven! it is quite true; gone like a bubble burst, clean swept out, and not a vestige left."
"As every such place must go sooner or later," said Mrs. Wilberforce.
"That sort of thing may last for a time, but sooner or later----"
"I think," said the rector, "that our friend Cavendish had, perhaps, something to do with it. It appears that it is an uncle of his who bought the house when it was sold three years ago, and these people wanted something done to the drainage, I suppose. I advised d.i.c.k to persuade his uncle to do nothing, hoping that the nuisance--for, I suppose, however wicked you are, you may have a nose like other people--might drive them out; and so it has done apparently," Mr. Wilberforce said, with some complacency, looking like a man who deserved well of his kind.
"They might have caught fever, too, like other people. I wonder if that is moral, to neglect the drains of the wicked?"
"No," said Mrs. Wilberforce firmly; "they have not noses like other people. How should they, people living in that way? The sense of smell is essentially a belonging of the better cla.s.ses. Servants never smell anything. We all know that. My cook sniffs and looks me in the face and says, "I don"t get anything, m"m," when it is enough to knock you down!
And persons of _that_ description living in the midst of every evil--!
Not that I believe in all that fuss about drains," she added, after a moment. "We never had any drains in the old times, and who ever heard of typhoid fever _then_?"
"But if they had been made very ill?" said Chatty, who, up to this time, had not spoken. "I don"t think surely Mr. Cavendish would have done that."
She was a little moved by this new view. Chatty was not interested in general about what was said, but now and then a personal question would rouse her. She thought of the woman with the blue eyes, so wide open and red with crying, and then of d.i.c.k with his laugh which it always made her cheerful to think of. Chatty had in her mind no possible link of connection between these two: but the absence of any power of comprehending the abstract in her made her lay hold all the more keenly of the personal, and the thought of d.i.c.k in the act of letting in poisonous gases upon that unhappy creature filled her with horror. She was indignant at so false an accusation. "Mr. Cavendish," she repeated with a little energy, "never would have done that."
"It is all a freak of those scientific men," said Mrs. Wilberforce.
"Look at the poor people, they can do a great deal more, and support a great deal more, than we can: yet they live among bad smells. I think they rather like them. I am sure my nursery is on my mind night and day, if there is the least little whiff of anything; but the children are as strong as little ponies--and where is the drainage there?"
With this triumphant argument she suddenly rose, declaring that she knew the brougham was at the door, and that Mrs. Warrender would be late for the train. She kissed and blessed both the ladies as she took leave of them. "Come back soon, and don"t forget us," she said to Chatty; while to Mrs. Warrender she gave a little friendly pat on the shoulder. "You won"t say anything, not even to true friends like Herbert and me? but a secret like that can"t be kept, and though you mayn"t think so, everybody knows."
"Do you think that is true, mamma?" Chatty asked when the wet umbrellas had again gone glimmering through the shrubberies and under the trees, and the travellers were left alone.
"That everybody knows? It is very likely. There is no such thing as a secret in a little world like ours; everybody knows everything. But still they cannot say that they have it by authority from you and me. It is time enough to talk of it when it is a fact, if it is to be."
"But you have not any doubt of it, mamma?"
"I have doubt of everything till it is done; even," she said, with a smile as the wheels of the brougham cut the gravel and came round with a little commotion to the door, "of our going away: though I allow that it seems very like it now."
They did go away, at last, leaving the Warren very solitary, damp, and gray, under the rain,--a melancholy place enough for Theo to return to.
But he was not in a state of mind to think of that or of any of his home surroundings grave or gay. Chatty put her head out of the window to look behind her at the melancholy yet dear old house, with tears in her innocent eyes, but Mrs. Warrender, feeling that at last she had shaken herself free from that bondage, notwithstanding the anxiety in her heart for her son, had no feeling to spare for the leave-taking. She waved her hand to Mrs. Bagley at the shop, who was standing out at her door with a shawl over her cap to see the ladies go by. Lizzie stood behind her in the doorway saying nothing, while her grandmother curtsied and waved her hand and called out her wishes for a good journey, and a happy return.
Naturally Chatty"s eyes sought those of the girl, who looked after her with a sort of blank longing as if she too would fain have gone out into the world. Lizzie"s eyes seemed to pursue her as they drove past,--poor Lizzie, who had other things in her mind, Chatty began to think, beside the fashion books; and then there came the tall red ma.s.s of the Elms, with all its windows shut up, and that air of mystery which its encircling wall and still more its recent history conferred upon it. The two ladies looked out upon it, as they drove past, almost with awe.
"Mamma," said Chatty, "I never told you. I saw the--the lady, just when she was going away."
"What lady?" asked Mrs. Warrender, with surprise.
"I don"t think," said Chatty, with a certain solemnity, "that she was any older, perhaps not so old as I. It made my heart sick. Oh, dear mother, must there not be some explanation, some dreadful, dreadful fate, when it happens that one so young----"
"Sometimes it may be so--but these are mysteries which you, at your age, Chatty, have no need to go into."
"At my age--which is about the same as hers," said Chatty; "and--oh, mamma, I wanted in my heart to stop her, to bring her to you. She had been crying--she had such innocent-looking, distracted eyes--and Lizzie said----"
"Lizzie! what had Lizzie to do with it?"
"I promised to tell no one, but you are not any one, you are the same as myself. Lizzie says she knew her long ago, that she is the same as a child still, not responsible for what she is doing--fond of toys and sweets like a child."
"My dear, I am sorry that Lizzie should have kept up such a friend. I believe there are some poor souls that if an innocent girl were to do what you say, stop them and bring them to her mother, might be saved, Chatty. I do believe that: but not--not that kind."
The tears by this time were falling fast from Chatty"s eyes. "I wonder,"
she said, "if I shall ever see her again."
"Never, I hope; for you could do nothing for her. Shut the window, my dear, the rain is coming in. Poor Theo, how wet he will get coming home!
I wonder if he will have the thought to change everything now that there is no occasion to dress, now that we are away."
"Joseph will give him no peace till he does," said Chatty, happily diverted, as her mother had intended, from sadder thoughts. "And don"t you think she will make him stay to dinner on such a day? Don"t you think she must care a great deal for him, mamma?"
"She must care for him or she would not have listened to him. Poor Theo!" said the mother, with a sigh.
"But he cares very much for her: and he is happy," said Chatty, with a certain timidity, a half question; for to her inexperience there were very serious drawbacks, though perhaps not such as might have occurred to a more reasonable person. Mrs. Warrender had to change this subject, too, which Chatty showed a disposition to push too far, by making an inquiry into the number of their bags and parcels, and reminding her daughter that they were drawing near the station. It was a very forlorn little station, wet and dismal, with a few men lounging about, the collars of their coats up to their ears, and Mrs. Warrender"s maid standing by her pile of boxes, having arrived before them. It had been an event long looked for, much talked of, of late, but it was not a cheerful going away.
But the rain had gone off by the time they reached town, and a June day has a power of recovering itself, such as youth only possesses. But no, that is an error, as Mrs. Warrender proved. She had been leaning back in her corner very quiet, saying little, yet with an intense sense of relief and deliverance. She came in to London with as delightful a consciousness of novelty and freedom as any boy coming to seek his fortune. Chatty"s feelings were all very mild in comparison with her mother"s. She was greatly pleased to see the clouds clear off, and the humid sweetness of the skies, which even the breath of the great city did not obscure. "After all, Theo will have a nice evening for his drive home," she said, unexcited. Though it was all very agreeable, Chatty did not know of anything that might await her in town. She knew more or less, she believed, what awaited her,--a few parties, a play or two, the Row in the morning, the pictures, a pleasant little glimpse of the outside of that fashionable life which was said to be "such a whirl,"
which she had no expectation, nor any desire to see much of. There was no likelihood that she and her mother would be drawn into that whirl. If all the people they knew asked them to dinner, or even to a dance, which was not to be thought of, there would still be no extravagant gaiety in that. Driving from the railway to Half Moon Street was as pleasant as anything--to a girl of very highly raised expectations, it might have been the best of all: but Chatty did not antic.i.p.ate too much, and would not be easily disappointed. She neither expected nor was afraid of any great thing that might be coming to her. Her quiet heart seemed beyond the reach of any touch of fate.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
On the mantelpiece of the little lodging-house drawing-room in Half Moon Street, supported against the gilt group that decorated the timepiece, was a note containing an invitation. "Why, here is the whirl beginning already," Mrs. Warrender said. "Don"t you feel that you are in the vortex, Chatty?" Her mother laughed, but was a little excited even by this mild matter; but Chatty did not feel any excitement. To the elder woman, the mere sense of the population about her, the hurry in the street, the commotion in the air, was an excitement. She would have liked to go out at once, to walk about, to get into a hansom like a man, and drive through the streets, and see the lights and the glimmer of the shops, and the crowds of people. To be within reach of all that movement and rapidity went into her veins like wine. After the solitude and silence of so many years,--nothing but the rustle of the leaves, the patter of the rain, the birds or the winds in the branches, and the measured voices indoors, to vary the quiet,--the roar of Piccadilly mingling with everything was a sort of music to this woman. To many others, perhaps the majority, the birds and breezes would be the thing to long for; but Mrs. Warrender was one of the people who love a town and all that seems like a larger life in the collection together of many human lives. Whether it is so or not is another question, or if the ma.s.sing together of a mult.i.tude of littles ever can make a greatness. It seems to do so, which is enough for most people; and though the accustomed soul is aware that no desert can be more lone than London, to the unaccustomed its very murmur sounds like a general consent of humanity to go forth and do more than in any other circ.u.mstances. It is the const.i.tution of the ear which determines what it hears. For Chatty took the commotion rather the other way. She said, "One can"t hear one"s self speak," and wanted to close the windows. But Mrs. Warrender liked the very noise.
The dinner to which they were invited was in Curzon Street, in a house which was small in reality, but made the most of every inch of its s.p.a.ce, and which was clothed and curtained and decorated in a manner which made the country people open their eyes. The party was very small, their hostess said; but it would have been a large party at the Warren, where all the rooms were twice as big. Chatty was a little fluttered by her first party in London; but this did not appear in her aspect, which was always composed and simple, not demanding any one"s regard, yet giving to people who were _blase_ or tired of much attraction (as sometimes happens) a sense of repose and relief. She must have been more excited, however, than was at all usual with her; for though she thought she had remarked everybody in the dim drawing-room,--where the ladies in their pretty toilets and the men in their black coats stood about in a perplexing manner, chiefly against the light, which made it difficult to distinguish them, instead of sitting down all round the room, which in the country would have seemed the natural way,--it proved that there was one very startling exception, one individual, at least, whom she had not remarked. She went down to dinner with a gentleman, whose name of course she did not make out, and whose appearance, she thought, was exactly the same as that of half the gentlemen in the procession down the narrow staircase. Chatty, indeed, made disparaging reflections to herself as to society in general, on this score; the thought flashing through her mind that in the country there was more difference between even one curate and another (usually considered the most indistinguishable cla.s.s), than between these men of Mayfair. She was a little bewildered, too, by the appearance of the dining-room, for at that period the _diner a la Russe_ was just beginning to establish itself in England, and a thicket of flowers upon the table was novel to Chatty, filling her first with admiration, then with a little doubt whether it would not be better to see the people more distinctly on the other side. Dinner had gone on a little way, and her companion had begun to put the usual questions to her about where she had been, and where she was going, questions to which Chatty, who had been nowhere, and had not as yet one other invitation (which feels a little humiliating when you hear of all the great things that are going on), could make but little reply, when in one of the pauses of the conversation, she was suddenly aware of a laugh, which made her start slightly, and opened up an entirely new interest in this as yet not very exciting company. It was like the opening of a window to Chatty, it seemed to let in pure air, new light.
And yet it was only a laugh, no more. She looked about her with a little eagerness: and then it was that she began to find the flowers and the ferns, which had filled her with enthusiasm a moment before, to be rather in the way.
"I suppose you go to the Row every morning," said her entertainer.
"Don"t you find that always the first thought when one comes to town?
You ride, of course. Oh, why not in the Row? there is nothing alarming about it. A little practice, that is all that is wanted; to know how to keep your horse in hand. But you hunt? then you are all right----"
"Oh no, we never hunted." It struck Chatty with a little surprise to be talked to as if she had a stud at her command. Should she tell him that this was a mistake; that there were only two horses beside Theo"s, and that Minnie and she had once had a pony between them--which was very different from hunting, or having nerve to ride in the Row? Chatty found afterwards that horses and carriages, and unbounded opportunities for amusing yourself, and a familiar acquaintance with the entire peerage, were always taken for granted in conversation whenever you dined out; but at first she was unacquainted with this peculiarity and did not feel quite easy in her mind about allowing it to be supposed that she was so much greater a person. Her little hesitations, however, as to how she should reply and the pauses she made when she heard that laugh arrested the current of her companion"s talk, and made it necessary for her, to her own alarm, to originate a small observation which, as often happens to a shy speaker, occurred just at the time when there was a momentary lull in the general talk. What she said was, "Do you ride often in the Row?" in a voice which though very soft was quite audible. Chatty retired into herself with the sensation of having said something very ridiculous when she caught a glance or two of amus.e.m.e.nt, and heard a suppressed t.i.tter from somebody on the other side of the fashionable young man to whom she had addressed this very innocent question. She thought it was at her they were laughing, whereas the fact was that Chatty was supposed by those who heard her to be a satirist of more than usual audacity, putting a c.o.xcomb to deserved but ruthless shame.
Naturally she knew nothing of this, and blushed crimson at her evidently foolish remark, and retired in great confusion into herself, not conscious even of the stumbling reply. She was almost immediately conscious, however, of a face which suddenly appeared on the other side of the table round the corner of a bouquet of waving ferns, lit up with smiles of pleasure and eager recognition. "Oh, Mr. Cavendish! then it was you,"
she said, unawares; but the tumult of the conversation had arisen again, and it seemed very doubtful whether her exclamation could have reached his ear.
When the gentlemen came upstairs, Chatty endeavoured to be looking very naturally the other way; not to look as if she expected him; but d.i.c.k found his way to her immediately. "I can"t think how I missed you before. I should have tried hard for the pleasure of taking you down, had I known you were here," he said, with that look of interest which was the natural expression in his eyes when he addressed a woman. "When did you come to town, and where are you? I do not know anything that has been going on, I have heard nothing of you all for so long. There must be quite a budget of news."
Chatty faltered a little, feeling that Mr. Cavendish had never been so intimate in the family as these questions seemed to imply. "The Wilberforces were quite well when we left," she said, with the honesty of her nature, for to be sure it was the Wilberforces rather than the Warrenders who were his friends.
"Oh, never mind the Wilberforces," he said, "tell me something about you."
"There is something to tell about us, for a wonder," said Chatty. "My sister Minnie is married: but perhaps you would hear of that."