Two had a clause forbidding the letting out of apartments, but the third and least desirable of the houses was to be the absolute property of the tenant to do what he liked with.
"That mansion," said the obliging agent, "you can sublet to your heart"s content, madam. It is a very fine house, only one hundred and eighty pounds a year. There are ten bedrooms and five sitting-rooms.
You had better close with it at once."
But this I could not do. The outlook from this house was so hideous; the only way to it was through an ugly, not to say hideous, thoroughfare. I thought of my delicate, aristocratic mother here. I thought of the friends whom I used to know visiting us in 14 Cleveland Street, and felt my castle in the clouds tumbling about my ears. What was to be done!
"I cannot decide to-day," I said; "I will let you know."
"You will lose it, madam," said the agent.
"Nevertheless, I cannot decide so soon; I must consult my mother."
"Very well, madam," said the man, in a tone of disappointment.
I left his office and returned home.
For the next few days I scarcely spoke at all about my project. I was struggling to make up my mind to the life which lay before us if we took 14 Cleveland Street. The street itself was somewhat narrow; the opposite houses seemed to bow at their neighbours; the rooms, although many, were comparatively small; and last, but by no means least, the landlord would do very little in the way of decoration.
"We can let houses of this kind over and over again," said the agent, "I don"t say that Mr. Mason won"t have the ceilings whitened for you, but as to papering, no; the house don"t require it. It was done up for the last tenant four years ago."
"And why has the last tenant left?" I asked.
"Owing to insolvency, madam," was the quick reply, and the man darted a keen glance into my face.
Insolvency! I knew what that meant. It was another word for ruin, for bankruptcy. In all probability, if we took that detestable house, we also would have to leave on account of insolvency, for what nice, cheerful, paying guests would care to live with us there? I shook my head. Surely there must be somewhere other houses to let.
During the next few days I spent all my time searching for houses. I got quite independent, and, I think, a little roughened. I was more brusque than usual in my manners. I became quite an adept at jumping in and out of omnibuses. I could get off omnibuses quite neatly when they were going at a fairly good pace, and the conductors, I am sure, blessed me in their hearts for my agile movements. Then the agents all round Bloomsbury began to know me. Finally, one of them said, on the event of my fourth visit--
"Had you not better try further afield, Miss? There are larger, brighter, and newer houses in the neighbourhood of Highbury, for instance."
"No," I said, "we must live in Bloomsbury." Then I noticed that the man examined me all over in quite a disagreeable fashion, and then he said slowly--
"14 Cleveland Street is still to be had, Miss, but of course you understand that the landlord will want the usual references."
"References!" I cried. "He shall certainly have them if he requires them." And then I wondered vaguely, with a queer sinking at my heart, to whom of all our grand friends I might apply who would vouch for us that we would not run away without paying the rent. Altogether, I felt most uncomfortable.
The days pa.s.sed. No more likely houses appeared on the horizon, and at last the afternoon came when our friends were to visit us, when I, Westenra, was to break to these fashionable society people my wild project. But I had pa.s.sed through a good deal of the hardening process lately, and was not at all alarmed when the important day dawned. This was to be our very last entertainment. After that we would step down.
Mother, exquisitely dressed in dove-coloured satin, waited for her guests in the drawing-room. I was in white. I had given up wearing white when I was going about in omnibuses, but I had several charming costumes for afternoon and evening wear still quite fresh, and I donned my prettiest dress now, and looked at my face in the gla.s.s with a certain amount of solicitude. I saw before me a very tall, slender girl; my eyes were grey. I had a creamy, pale complexion, and indifferently good features. There were some people who thought me pretty, but I never did think anything of my looks myself. I gave my own image a careless nod now, and ran briskly downstairs.
"You"ll be very careful what you say to our guests, Westenra?" queried mother. "This whole scheme of yours is by no means to my liking. I feel certain that the dear d.u.c.h.ess and Lady Thesiger will feel that they have been brought here unfairly. It would have been far franker and better to tell them that something singularly unpleasant was about to occur."
"But, dearest mother, why should it be unpleasant? and it is the fashion of the day to have sensation at any cost. Our guests will always look back on this afternoon as a sort of red letter day. Just think for yourself how startled and how interested they will be.
Whether they approve, or whether they disapprove, it will be immensely interesting and out of the common, mother. O mother! think of it!" I gripped her hand tightly, and she said--
"Don"t squeeze me so hard, Westenra, I shall need all my pluck."
Well, the hour came and also the guests. They arrived in goodly numbers. There was the usual fashionable array of carriages outside our door. There were footmen in livery and coachmen, and stately and magnificently groomed horses, and the guests poured up the stairs and entered our drawing rooms, and the chatter-chatter and hum-hum of ordinary society conversation began. Everything went as smoothly as it always did, and all the time my mother chatted with that courtly grace which made her look quite in the same state of life as the d.u.c.h.ess of Wilmot. In fact the only person in the room who looked at all nervous was the said d.u.c.h.ess. She had a way of glancing from me to mother, as if she was not quite sure of either of us, and once as I pa.s.sed her, she stretched out her hand and touched me on my sleeve.
"Eh, Westenra?" she said.
"Yes, your Grace," I replied.
"All that silliness, darling, that you talked to me the other day, is quite knocked on the head, is it not? Oh, I am so relieved."
"You must wait and find out," was my reply. "I have something to say to every one soon, and oh please, try not to be too shocked with me."
"You are an incorrigible girl," she replied, but she shook her head quite gaily at me. She evidently had not the slightest idea of what I was going to do.
As to my special friend Jasmine Thesiger, she was as usual surrounded by an admiring group of men and women, and gave me no particular thought. I looked from one to the other of all our guests: I did not think any more were likely to come. All those who had been specially invited had arrived. My moment had come. Just then, however, just before I rose from my seat to advance into the middle of the room, I noticed coming up the stairs a tall, broad-shouldered man. He was accompanied by a friend of ours, a Mr. Walters, a well-known artist. I had never seen this man before, and yet I fancied, in a sort of intangible way, that his figure was familiar. I just glanced at him for a moment, and I do not believe he came into the room. He stood a little behind Mr. Walters, who remained in the doorway. My hour had come. I glanced at mother. Poor darling, she turned very white. I think she was almost terrified, but as to myself I felt quite cheerful, and not in the least alarmed.
"I want to say something to all my dear friends," I began. I had a clear voice, and it rose above the babel. There came sudden and profound silence.
I saw a lady nudge her neighbour.
"I did not know," I heard her say, "that Westenra recited," and then she settled herself in a comfortable att.i.tude to listen.
I stood in the middle of the floor, and faced everybody.
"I have something to say," I began, "and it is not a recitation. I have asked you all to come here to-day to listen to me." I paused and looked round. How nice our guests looked, how kind, how beautifully dressed! What good form the men were in, and how aristocratic were the women. How different these men and women were from the people I had a.s.sociated with during the week--the people who took care of the houses in Bloomsbury, the agents who let the houses, the people whom I had met in the busses going to and from the houses. These nice, pleasant, well-bred people belonged to me, they were part and parcel of my own set; I was at home with them.
I just caught the d.u.c.h.ess"s eye for a moment, and I think there was alarm in those brown depths, but she was too essentially a woman of the world to show anything. She just folded her jewelled hands in her lap, leant back in her chair, and prepared to listen. One or two of the men, I think, raised their eye-gla.s.ses to give me a more critical glance, but soon even that mark of special attention subsided. Of course it was a recitation. People were beginning to be tired of recitations.
"I want to say something, and I will say it as briefly as possible," I commenced. "Mother does not approve of it, but she will do it, because she has yielded to me as a dear, good, _modern_ mother ought."
Here there was a little laugh, and some of the tension was lessened.
"I want to tell you all," I continued, "for most of you have been our friends since I was a child, that mother and I are--poor. There is nothing disgraceful in being poor, is there? but at the same time it is unpleasant, unfortunate. We were fairly well off. Now, through no fault of our own, we have lost our money."
The visitors looked intensely puzzled, and also uncomfortable, but now I raised my eyes a little above them. It was necessary that if I went on putting them to the test, I should not look them full in the face.
"We are poor," I continued, "therefore we cannot live any longer in this house. From having a fair competence, not what many of you would consider riches, but from having a fair competence, we have come down to practically nothing. We could live, it is true, in the depths of the country, on the very little which has been saved out of the wreck, but I for one do not wish to do that. I dislike what is called decent poverty, I dislike the narrow life, the stultifying life, the mean life. I am my father"s daughter. You have heard of my father, that is his picture"--I pointed as I spoke to an oil painting on the wall.
"You know that he was a man of action, I also will act." I hurried my voice a trifle here--"So mother and I mean not to accept what many people would consider the inevitable; but we mean, to use a vulgar phrase, to better ourselves."
Now it is certain, our guests were a little surprised. They began to fidget, and one or two men came nearer, and I thought, though I am not sure, that I saw the tall man, with the head of closely cropped hair, push forward to look at me. But I never looked any one full in the eyes; I fixed mine on father"s picture. I seemed to hear father"s voice saying to me--
"Go on, Westenra, that was very good, you and I are people of action, remember."
So I went on and I explained my scheme. I told it very briefly. Mother and I would in future earn our own living.
I was educated fairly well, but I had no special gifts, so I would not enter the Arena where teachers struggled and fought and bled, and many of them fell by the wayside. Nor would I enter the Arena of Art, because in no sense of the word was I an artist, nor would I go on the Stage, for my talent did not lie in that direction, but I had certain talents, and they were of a practical sort. I could keep accounts admirably; I could, I believed, manage a house. Then I skilfully sketched in that wonderful boarding-house of my dreams, that house in dull Bloomsbury, which by my skill and endeavour would be bright and render an acceptable home for many. Finally, I said that my mother and I had made up our minds to leave the fashionable part of London and to retire to Bloomsbury.
"We will take our house from September," I said, "and advertise very soon for paying guests, and we hope the thing will do well, and that in ten or twelve years we shall have made enough money to keep ourselves for the future in comfort. Now," I continued, "I appeal to no one to help us. We do not intend to borrow money from anybody, and the only reason I am speaking to you to-day is because I wish, and I am sure mother agrees with me, to be quite frank with you. Mother and I know quite well that we are doing an absolutely unconventional thing, and that very likely you, as our friends of the past, will resent it. Those of you who do not feel that you can a.s.sociate with two ladies who keep a boarding-house, need not say so in so many words, but you can give us to understand, by means known best to yourselves, whether you will know us in the future. If you want to cut us we shall consider it quite right, quite reasonable, quite fair.
Then those who do intend to stick to us, even through this great change in our lives, may be the greatest possible help by recommending us and our boarding-house to their friends, that is, if any of you present have friends who would live in Bloomsbury.
"Mother and I thought it quite fair that you should know, and we thought it best that I should tell you quite simply. We are neither of us ashamed, and mother approves, or at least she will approve presently, of what I have done."
There was a dead silence when I ceased speaking, followed by a slight rustling amongst the ladies. The men looked one and all intensely uncomfortable, and the tall man who had come in with Mr Walters, the artist, disappeared altogether.