"Oh, Jim, dear, do you think she is so sure to succeed?"
"If she doesn"t, it will be pure cussedness on her part, and nothing else," said Jim.
Clara reflected that she would tell Lettice what her husband said. She moved to the window and looked out. She was waiting for her guests, Lettice and Mrs. Campion, in the soft dusk of a sweet May evening, and she was a little impatient for their arrival. She had had a comfortable, nondescript meal, which she called dinner-tea, set ready for them in the dining-room, and as this room was near the hall-door, she had installed herself therein, so that she could the more easily watch for her visitors. Mr. Graham, a tall, thin man, with coal-black beard, deep-set dark eyes, and marked features, had thrown himself into a great arm-chair, where he sat buried in the current number of a monthly magazine. His wife was universally declared to be a very pretty woman, and she was even more "stylish," as women say, than pretty; for she had one of those light, graceful figures that give an air of beauty to everything they wear. For the rest, she had well-cut features, bright dark eyes, and a very winning smile. A brightly impulsive and affectionate nature had especially endeared her to Lettice, and this had never been soured or darkened by her experiences of the outer world, although, like most people, she had known reverses of fortune and was not altogether free from care. But her husband loved her, and her three babies were the most charming children ever seen, and everybody admired the decorations of her bright little house in Edwardes Square; and what more could the heart of womankind desire?
"I wonder," she said presently, "whether Sydney will come with them. He was to meet them at Liverpool Street; and of course I asked him to come on."
"I would have gone out if you had told me that before," said Mr. Graham, tersely.
"Why do you dislike Sydney Campion so much, Jim?"
"Dislike? I admire him. I think he is the coming man. He"s one of the most successful persons of my acquaintance. It is just because I feel so small beside him that I can"t stand his company."
"I must repeat, Jim, that if you talk like that to Lettice----"
"Oh, Lettice doesn"t adore her precious brother," said Graham, irreverently. "She knows as well as you and I do that he"s a selfish sort of brute, in spite of his good looks and his gift of the gab. I say, Clara, when are these folks coming? I"m confoundedly hungry."
"Who"s the selfish brute now?" asked Clara, with triumph. "But you won"t be kept waiting long: the cab"s stopping at the door, and Sydney hasn"t come."
She flew to the door, to be the first to meet and greet her visitors.
There was not much to be got from Mrs. Campion that evening except tears--this was evident as soon as she entered the house, leaning on Lettice"s arm; and the best thing was to put her at once to bed, and delay the evening meal until Lettice was able to leave her. Graham was quite too good-natured to grumble at a delay for which there was so valid a reason; for, as he informed his wife, he preferred Miss Campion"s conversation without an accompaniment of groans. He talked lightly, but his grasp of the hand was so warm, his manner so sympathetic, when Lettice at last came down, that Clara felt herself rebuked at having for one moment doubted the real kindliness of his feeling.
Lettice in her deep mourning looked painfully white and slender in Clara"s eyes; but she spoke cheerfully of her prospects for the future, as they sat at their evening meal. Sad topics were not broached, and Mr.
Graham set himself to give her all the encouragement in his power.
"And as to where you are to set up your tent," he said, "Clara and I have seen a cottage on Brook Green that we think would suit you admirably."
"Where is Brook Green?" asked Lettice, who was almost ignorant of any save the main thoroughfares of London.
"In the wilds of Hammersmith----"
"West Kensington," put in Clara, rather indignantly.
"Well, West Kensington is only Hammersmith writ fine. It is about ten minutes" walk from us----"
"Oh, I am glad of that," said Lettice.
"--And it is not, I think, too large or too dear. You must go and look at it to-morrow, if you can."
"Is there any garden?"
"There is a garden, with trees under which your mother can sit when it is warm. Clara told me you would like that; and there is a gra.s.s-plot--I won"t call it a lawn--where you can let your dog and cat disport themselves in safety. I am sure you must have brought a dog or a cat with you, Miss Campion. I never yet knew a young woman from the country who did not bring a pet animal to town with her."
"Jim, you are very rude," said his wife.
"I shall have to plead guilty," Lettice answered, smiling a little. "I have left my fair Persian, Fluff, in the care of my maid, Milly, who is to bring her to London as soon as I can get into my new home."
"Fluff," said Clara, meditatively, "is the creature with a tail as big as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little housemaid; I remember and approve of them both."
The subject of the new house served them until they went upstairs into Clara"s bright little drawing-room, which Graham used to speak of disrespectfully as his wife"s doll"s house. It was crowded with pretty but inexpensive knick-knacks, the profusion of which was rather bewildering to Lettice, with her more simple tastes. Of one thing she was quite sure, that she would not, when she furnished her own rooms, expend much money in droves of delicately-colored china pigs and elephants, which happened to be in fashion at the time. She also doubted the expediency of tying up two peac.o.c.ks" feathers with a yellow ribbon, and hanging them in solitary glory on the wall flanked by plates of Kaga ware, at tenpence-halfpenny a-piece. Lettice"s taste had been formed by her father, and was somewhat masculine in its simplicity, and she cared only for the finer kinds of art, whether in porcelain or painting. But she was fain to confess that the effect of Clara"s decorations was very pretty, and she wondered at the care and pains which had evidently been spent on the arrangement of Mrs. Graham"s "Liberty rags" and Oriental ware. When the soft yellow silk curtains were drawn, and a subdued light fell through the jewelled facets of an Eastern lamp upon the peac.o.c.k fans and richly-toned Syrian rugs, and all the other hackneyed ornamentation by which "artistic" taste is supposed to be shown, Lettice could not but acknowledge that the room was charming. But her thoughts flew back instantly to the old study at home, with its solid oak furniture, its cushioned window-seats, its unfashionable curtains of red moreen; and in the faint sickness of that memory, it seemed to her that she could be more comfortable at a deal table, with a kitchen chair set upon unpolished boards, than in the midst of Clara"s pretty novelties.
"You are tired," Mr. Graham said to her, watching her keenly as she sat down in the chair that he offered her, and let her hands sink languidly upon her lap. "We won"t let you talk too much. Clara is going to see after her bairns, and I"m going to read the _Pall Mall_. Here"s the May number of _The Decade_: have you seen it?"
She took it with a grateful smile; but she did not intend to read, and Mr. Graham knew it. He perused his paper diligently, but he was sufficiently interested in her to know exactly at what point she ceased to brood and began to glance at the magazine. After a little while, she became absorbed in its pages; and only when she laid it down at last, with a half suppressed sigh, did he openly look up to find that her eyes were full of tears.
"I hope that you discovered something to interest you," he said.
"I was reading a poem," Lettice answered, rather guiltily.
"Oh--Alan Walcott"s "Sorrow"? Very well done, isn"t it? but a trifle morbid, all the same."
"It is very sad. Is he--has he had much trouble?"
"I"m sure I couldn"t tell you. Probably not, as he writes about it,"
said Graham, grimly. "He"s a pessimist and a bit of a dilletante. If he would work and believe in himself a little more, I think he might do great things."
"He is young?"
"Over thirty. He comes to the house sometimes. I daresay you will meet him before long."
Lettice said nothing. She was not in a mood to enjoy the prospect of making new acquaintances; but the poem had touched her, and she felt a slight thrill of interest in its writer.
"Yes," she said, "I shall be pleased to make his acquaintance--some day." And then the conversation dropped, and Graham understood from her tone that she was not disposed as yet to meet new faces.
The house on Brook Green proved eminently satisfactory. She agreed to take it as soon as possible, and for the next few weeks her mind was occupied with the purchase and arrangement of furniture, and the many details which belong to the first start in a new career. Although her tastes differed widely from those of Clara Graham, she found her friend"s advice and a.s.sistance infinitely valuable to her; and many were the expeditions taken together to the Kensington shops to supply Lettice"s requirements. She had not Clara"s love for shopping, or Clara"s eagerness for a bargain; but she took pleasure in her visits to the great London store-houses of beautiful things, and made her purchases with care and deliberation.
So at the end of June she settled down with her mother in the pleasant cottage which was thenceforth to be their home. In addition to the new plenishing, there were in the house a few favorite pieces of furniture which had been saved from the wreck at Angleford; and Sydney--perhaps as a sign that he recognized some redeeming features in her desire to be independent--had made one room look quite imposing with an old-fashioned bookcase, and a library table and chair. There was a well-established garden behind the house, with tall box and bay-trees of more than a generation"s growth, and plenty of those old English border plants without which a garden is scarcely worthy of its name. On the whole, Lettice felt that she had not made a bad selection out of the million or so of human habitations which overflow the province of London; and even Mrs. Campion would occasionally end her lamentations over the past by admitting that Maple Cottage was "not a workhouse, my dear, where I might have expected to finish my life."
The widow had a fixed idea about the troubles which had fallen upon her.
She would talk now and then of the "shameful robberies" which had broken her husband"s heart, and declare that sooner or later the miscreants would be discovered, and rest.i.tution would be made, and they would "all end their days in peace." As for Sydney, he was still her hero of heroes, who had come to their rescue when their natural protector was done to death, and whose elevation to the woolsack might be expected at any moment.
Lettice"s friends, the Grahams, had naturally left her almost undisturbed during her visit to them, so far as invited guests were concerned. Nevertheless, she casually met several of Mr. Graham"s literary acquaintances, and he took care to introduce her to one or two editors and publishers whom he thought likely to be useful to her. James Graham had plenty of tact; he knew just what to say about Miss Campion, without saying too much, and he contrived to leave an impression in the minds of those to whom he spoke that it might be rather difficult to make this young woman sit down and write, but decidedly worth their while to do it if they could.
"Now I have thrown in the seeds," Graham said to her before she left Edwardes Square, "and by the time you want to see them the blades will be springing up. From what you have told me I should say that you have quite enough to do in the next three months. There is that article for me, and the translation of Feuerbach, and the Ouf stories."
This reminiscence of Sydney"s criticism made Lettice laugh--she was beginning to laugh again--and Graham"s forecast of her future as a woman of letters put her into a cheerful and hopeful mood.
The summer pa.s.sed away, and the autumn, and when Lettice lighted her first study fire, one cold day at the end of October, she could look forward to the coming winter without misgiving. In four months she had done fifty pounds" worth of work, and she had commissions which would keep her busy for six months more, and would yield at least twice as much money. Mr. Graham"s seeds were beginning to send up their blades; and, in short, Lettice was in a very fair way of earning not only a living, but also a good literary repute.
One call, indeed, was made upon her resources in a very unexpected manner. She had put by four five-pound notes of clear saving--it is at such moments that our unexpected liabilities are wont to find us out--and she was just congratulating herself on that first achievement in the art of domestic thrift when her maid Milly knocked at her door, and announced a visitor.
"Please, miss, here is Mrs. Bundlecombe of Thorley!"
Mrs. Bundlecombe was a bookseller in her own right, in a village some three miles from Angleford. Her husband had died four years before Mr.
Campion, and his widow made an effort to carry on the business. The rector in his palmy days had had many dealings with Mr. Bundlecombe, who was of some note in the world as a collector of second-hand books; but, as Lettice had no reason to think that he had bought anything of Mrs.
Bundlecombe personally, she could not imagine what the object of this visit might be.
"Did she say what her business was, Milly?"