"This way, ma"am," said the young man who had marshalled us up.
"Invalid-chairs," he called out, turning us over to another young man, who came forward--and shot downstairs again himself.
Cattledon picked her way in and out amidst the things, I following.
Half-way down the room she stopped to admire a tall, inlaid cabinet, that looked very beautiful.
"I never come to these places without longing to be rich," she whispered to me with a sigh, as she walked on. "One of the pleasantest interludes in life, Johnny Ludlow, must be to have a good house to furnish and plenty of money to---- Dear me!"
The extreme surprise of the exclamation following the break off, caused me to look round. We were pa.s.sing a side opening, or wing of the room; a wing that seemed to be filled with bedsteads and bedding. Critically examining one of the largest of these identical bedsteads stood the Reverend William Lake and Emma Topcroft.
So entranced was Cattledon that she never moved hand or foot, simply stood still and gazed. They, absorbed in their business, did not see us.
The parson seemed to be trying the strength of the iron, shaking it with his hand; Emma was poking and patting at the mattress.
"Good Heavens!" faintly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cattledon; and she looked as if about to faint.
"The washhand-stands are round this way, and the chests of drawers also," was called out at this juncture from some unknown region, and I knew the voice to be Mrs. Topcroft"s. "You had better come if you have fixed upon the beds. The double stands look extremely convenient."
Cattledon turned back the way she had come, and stalked along, her head in the air. Straight down the stairs went she, without vouchsafing a word to the wondering attendant.
"But, madam, is there not anything I can show you?" he inquired, arresting her.
"No, young man, not anything. I made a mistake in coming here."
The young man looked at the other young man down in the shop, and tapped his finger on his forehead suggestively. They thought her crazy.
"Barefaced effrontery!" I heard her e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e to herself: and I knew she did not allude to the young men. But never a word to me spoke she.
Peering about, on this side the street and on that, she espied another furniture shop, and went into it. Here she found the chair she wanted; paid for it, and gave directions for it to be sent to Chelmsford.
That what we had witnessed could have but one meaning--the speedy marriage of Mr. Lake with Emma Topcroft--Cattledon looked upon as a dead certainty. Had an astrologer who foretells the future come forth to read the story differently, Cattledon would have turned a deaf ear. Mrs.
Jonas happened to be sitting with Miss Deveen when we arrived home; and Cattledon, in the fulness of her outraged heart, let out what she had seen. She had felt so sure of Mr. Lake!
Naturally, as Mrs. Jonas agreed, it could have but one meaning. She took it up accordingly, and hastened forth to tell it. Ere the sun went down, it was known from one end of the parish to the other that Emma Topcroft was to be Mrs. Lake.
"A crafty, wicked hussy!" cried a chorus of tongues. "She, with that other woman, her mother, to teach her, has cast her spells over the poor weak man, and he has been unable to escape!"
Of course it did seem like it. It continued to seem like it as the week went on. Never a day dawned but the parson and Emma went to town by an omnibus, looking at things in this mart, buying in that. It became known that they had chosen the carpets: Brussels for the sitting-rooms, colour green; drugget for the bed-chambers, Turkey pattern: Mrs. Jonas fished it out. How that impudent girl could have the face to go with him upon such errands, the parish could not understand. It"s true Mrs. Topcroft always made one of the party, but what of that?
Could anything be done? Any means devised to arrest the heresy and save him from his dreadful fate? Sitting nose and knees together at one another"s houses, their cherished work all thrown aside, the ladies congregated daily to debate the question. They did not quite see their way clear to warning the parson that Emma was neither more nor less than a Mephistopheles in petticoats. They would have a.s.sured herself of the fact with the greatest pleasure had that been of any use. How sly he was, too--quite unworthy of his cloth! While making believe to be a poor man, he must have been putting by a nice nest-egg; else how could he buy all that furniture?
Soon another phase of the affair set in: one that puzzled them exceedingly. It came about through an ebullition of temper.
Mrs. Jonas had occasion to call upon the Rector one afternoon, concerning some trouble that turned up in the parish: she being a district visitor and presiding at the mothers" meetings. Mr. Lake was not at home. Emma sat in the parlour alone st.i.tching away at new table-cloths and sheets.
"He and mamma went out together after dinner," said Emma, leaving her work to hand a chair to Mrs. Jonas. "I should not wonder if they are gone to the house. The carpets were to be laid down to-day."
She looked full at Mrs. Jonas as she said it, never blushing, never faltering. What with the bold avowal, what with the sight of the sheets and the table-linen, and what with the wretched condition of affairs, the disappointment at heart, the discomfort altogether, Mrs. Jonas lost her temper.
"How dare you stand there with a bold face and acknowledge such a thing to me, you unmaidenly girl?" cried the widow, her anger bubbling over as she dashed away the offered chair. "The mischief you are doing poor Mr.
Lake is enough, without boasting of it."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Emma, opening her eyes wide, and feeling more inclined to laugh than to cry, for her mood was ever sunny, "what _am_ I doing to him?"
How Mrs. Jonas spoke out all that was in her mind, she could never afterwards recall. Emma Topcroft, gazing and listening, could not remain ignorant of her supposed fault now; and she burst into a fit of laughter. Mrs. Jonas longed to box her ears. She regarded it as the very incarnation of impudence.
"Marry me! _Me!_ Mr. Lake! My goodness!--what _can_ have put such a thing into all your heads?" cried Emma, in a rapture of mirth. "Why, he is forty-five if he"s a day! He wouldn"t think of me: he couldn"t. He came here when I was a little child: he does not look upon me as much else yet. Well, I never!"
And the words came out in so impromptu a fashion, the surprise was so honestly genuine, that Mrs. Jonas saw there must be a mistake somewhere.
She took the rejected chair then, her fears relieved, her tones softened, and began casting matters about in her mind; still not seeing any way out of them.
"Is it your mother he is going to marry?" cried she, the lame solution presenting itself to her thoughts, and speaking it out on the spur of the moment. It was Emma"s turn to be vexed now.
"Oh, Mrs. Jonas, how can you!" she cried with spirit. "My poor old mother!" And somehow Mrs. Jonas felt humiliated, and bit her lips in vexation at having spoken at all.
"He evidently _is_ going to be married," she urged presently, returning to the charge.
"He is not going to marry me," said Emma, threading her needle. "Or to marry my mother either. I can say no more than that."
"You have been going to London with him to choose some furniture: bedsteads, and carpets and things," contended Mrs. Jonas.
"Mamma has gone with him to choose it all: Mr. Lake would have been finely taken in, with his inexperience. As to me, I wanted to go too, and they let me. They said it would be as well that young eyes should see as well as theirs, especially the colours of the carpets and the patterns of the crockery-ware."
"What a misapprehension it has been!" gasped Mrs. Jonas.
"Quite so--if you mean about me," agreed Emma. "I like Mr. Lake very much; I respect him above every one in the world; but for anything else--such a notion never entered my head: and I am sure it would not enter his."
Mrs. Jonas, bewildered, but intensely relieved, wished Emma good-afternoon civilly, and went away to enlighten the world. A reaction set in: hopes rose again to fever heat. If it was neither Emma Topcroft nor her mother, why, it must be somebody else, argued the ladies, old and young, and perhaps she was not chosen yet: and the next day they were running about the parish more than ever.
Seated in her drawing-room, in her own particular elbow-chair, in the twilight of the summer"s evening, was Miss Deveen. Near to her, telling a history, his voice low, his conscious face slightly flushed, sat the Rector of St. Matthew"s. The scent from the garden flowers came pleasantly in at the open window; the moon, high in the heavens, was tinting the trees with her silvery light. One might have taken them for two lovers, sitting there to exchange vows, and going in for romance.
Miss Deveen was at home alone. I was escorting that other estimable lady to a "penny-reading" in the adjoining district, St. Jude"s, at which the clergy of the neighbourhood were expected to gather in full force, including the Rector of St. Matthew"s. It was a special reading, sixpence admission, got up for the benefit of St. Jude"s vestry fire-stove, which wanted replacing with a new one. Our parish, including Cattledon, took up the cause with zeal, and would not have missed the reading for the world. We flocked to it in numbers.
Disappointment was in store for some of us, however, for the Rector of St. Matthew"s did not appear. He called, instead, on Miss Deveen, confessing that he had hoped to find her alone, and to get half-an-hour"s conversation with her: he had been wishing for it for some time, as he had a tale to tell.
It was a tale of love. Miss Deveen, listening to it in the soft twilight, could but admire the man"s constancy of heart and his marvellous patience.
In the West of England, where he had been curate before coming to London, he had been very intimate with the Gibson family--the medical people of the place. The two brothers were in partnership, James and Edward Gibson. Their father had retired upon a bare competence, for village doctors don"t often make fortunes, leaving the practice to these two sons. The rest of his sons and daughters were out in the world--Mrs.
Topcroft was one of them. William Lake"s father had been the inc.u.mbent of this parish, and the Lakes and the Gibsons were ever close friends.
The inc.u.mbent died; another parson was appointed to the living; and subsequently William Lake became the new parson"s curate, upon the enjoyable stipend of fifty pounds a-year. How ridiculously improvident it was of the curate and Emily Gibson to fall in love with one another, wisdom could testify. They did; and there was an end of it, and went in for all kinds of rose-coloured visions after the fashion of such-like poor mortals in this lower world. And when he was appointed to the curacy of St. Matthew"s in London, upon a whole one hundred pounds a-year, these two people thought Dame Fortune was opening her favours upon them. They plighted their troth solemnly, and exchanged broken sixpences.
Mr. Lake was thirty-one years of age then, and Emily was nineteen. He counted forty-five now, and she thirty-three. Thirty-three! Daisy Dutton would have tossed her little impertinent head, and cla.s.sed Miss Gibson with the old ladies at the Alms Houses, who were verging on ninety.
Fourteen summers had drifted by since that troth-plighting; and the lovers had been living--well, not exactly upon hope, for hope seemed to have died out completely; and certainly not upon love, for they did not meet: better say, upon disappointment. Emily, the eldest daughter of the younger of the two brothers, was but one of several children, and her father had no fortune to give her. She kept the house, her mother being dead, and saw to the younger children, patiently training and teaching them. And any chance of brighter prospects appeared to be so very hopeless, that she had long ago ceased to look for it.
As to William Lake, coming up to London full of hope with his rise in life, he soon found realization not answer to expectation. He found that a hundred a-year in the metropolis, did not go so very much further than his fifty pounds went in the cheap and remote village. Whether he and Emily had indulged a hope of setting up housekeeping on the hundred a-year, they best knew; it might be good in theory, it was not to be accomplished in practice. It"s true that money went further in those days than it goes in these; still, without taking into calculation future incidental expenses that marriage might bring in its train, they were not silly enough to risk it.
When William Lake had been five years at St. Matthew"s, and found he remained just as he was, making both ends meet upon the pay, and saw no prospect of being anywhere else to the end, or of gaining more, he wrote to release Emily from her engagement. The heartache at this was great on both sides, not to be got over lightly. Emily did not rebel; did not remonstrate. A sensible, good, self-enduring girl, she would not for the world have crossed him, or added to his care; if he thought it right that they should no longer be bound to one another, it was not for her to think differently. So the plighted troth was recalled and the broken sixpences were despatched back again. Speaking in theory, that is, you understand: practically, I don"t in the least know whether the sixpences were returned or kept. It must have been a farce altogether, taken at the best: for they had just gone on silently caring for each other; patiently bearing--perhaps in a corner of their hearts even slightly hoping--all through these later years.
Miss Deveen drew a deep breath as the Rector"s voice died away in the stillness of the room. What a number of these long-enduring, silently-borne cases the world could tell of, and how deeply she pitied them, was very present to her then.