They were nice lively girls and much liked, as they were quite a contrast to their mother. Indeed, it was surprising, considering her disposition and their bringing up, that they were what they were. Had it not been for them, Lady Dasher"s existence would have been considerably more monotonous and dreary than it was; but, thanks to their a.s.sistance, she was kept thoroughly "posted up" in all the social life going on in her midst, in which, through her own lache, she was unable to take part.
Bessie and Seraphine did not attend parties, although sprightly, taking girls like themselves would have been welcomed in almost any circle.
The fact was, people would have been glad enough to invite them, had their mother not been jealous of any attention paid to her daughters that was not extended to herself; and, hospitable as their friends might be, it was but reasonable that a monument of grief and picture of woe unutterable should not be earnestly sought after for the centre-piece of a social gathering. It was owing to the same reason, also, that neither of the girls had yet got married; for Lady Dasher would certainly have expected any matrimonial proposal to have been made to herself in the first instance, when, after declining the honour, she could have pa.s.sed the handkerchief to her daughters. Besides, the mere dread of having the infliction of such a mother-in-law would have sufficed to frighten off the most ardent wooer or rabid aspirant for connubial felicity.
Notwithstanding this, the girls went about to some extent in their own ways; and, on their return home, naturally gossiped with their mother over all they had seen and heard abroad. Thus it was that Lady Dasher was so well-informed in all local matters, and why I thought of appealing to her aid. But I should have to manage cautiously. She would think nothing--she was such a simple-minded body--of detailing all your inquiries to the very subject of them, in a fit of unguarded confidence. Cross-examining her was a most diplomatic proceeding. If you went the right way about it, you could get anything out of her without committing yourself in the slightest way; whereas, if you set to work wrongly, you might not only be foundered by a provoking reticence, which she could a.s.sume at times, but might, also, some day hear that your secret intentions and machiavellian conduct were the common talk of the parish.
Lady Dasher, although of a strictly pious turn of mind, did not object to Sunday callers. Good. I would go there that very afternoon after lunch, and see how the land lay.
I kept my resolve, and went.
Ushered into the well-known little drawing-room of the corner house of The Terrace, whose windows had a commanding view of the main thoroughfare of our suburb, I had ample leisure, before the ladies appeared, of observing the arrangement of certain fuchsias in a monster flower-stand that took up half the room, on the growth and excellence of which Lady Dasher prided herself greatly. Praise her fuchsias, and you were the most excellent of men; pa.s.s them by unnoticed, and you might be capable of committing the worst sin in the decalogue.
Is it not curious, how particular scents of flowers and their appearance will call up old scenes and circ.u.mstances to your memory? To this day, the mere sight of a fuchsia will bring back to my mind Lady Dasher"s little drawing-room; and I can fancy myself sitting in the old easy- chair by the window, and listening to that morbid lady"s chit-chat.
Presently my lady came in, pale and melancholy, as usual, and with her normal expression of acutest woe.
"Dear me, Mr Lorton! how very ill you are looking, to be sure. Is there not consumption in your family?"
"Not that I"m aware of, Lady Dasher, thank you," I replied; "but how well _you_ are looking, if one may judge by appearances."
"Ah!" she sighed with deep sadness, "appearances, my young friend, are very deceptive. I am _not_ well--far from it, in fact. I believe, Mr Lorton, that I am fast hastening to that bourne from whence no traveller ever returns. I would not be at all surprised to wake up some morning and find that I was dead!"
"Indeed!" I said, for the fact she hinted at would have been somewhat astonishing to a weak-minded person. I then tried to change the conversation from this sombre subject to one I had more at heart; but it was very hard to lead her on the track I wished. "We had a good congregation to-day, Lady Dasher, I think," said I; "the church seemed to be quite crammed."
"Really, now; do you think so? _I_ did not consider it at all a large gathering. When poor dear papa was alive, I"ve seen twice the number there, I am certain. _You_ may say that the falling off is due to the hot weather and people going out of town, but _I_ think it is owing to the spread of unbelief. We are living in terrible times, Mr Lorton.
It seems to me that every one is becoming more atheistic and wicked every day. I don"t know what we shall come to, unless we have another deluge, or something of that sort, to recall us to our senses!"
Fortunately at this juncture, before Lady Dasher, could get into full swing on her favourite theological hobby-horse--the degeneracy of the present age--Bessie and Seraphine entered the room. The conversation then became a trifle livelier, and we discussed the weather, the fashions, and various items of clerical gossip.
I discreetly asked if they had seen any new faces in church. But no; neither of them had, it was evident, seen my ladies in half-mourning, about whom I was diffident of inquiring directly.
Were any fresh people coming to reside in the neighbourhood that they had heard of?
"No," said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head. "No; how should they? It is not very likely that any new residents would come _here_! The place may suit poor people like _me_, but would not take the fancy of persons having plenty of money to spend, who can select a house where they like. Ah! the miseries of poverty, Mr Lorton, and to be poor but proud! I hope _you_ will never have my bitter experience, I"m sure!"--with another sad shake of her head, and an expression on her face that she was pretty certain that I _would_ one day arrive at the same hollow estimate of life as herself. "No," she continued, "no new people are at all likely to come here. I saw Mr Shuffler yesterday, and asked if that house which he has to let in The Terrace were yet taken, but he said, "not that he knew of;" he had "heard of n.o.body coming"--had I? I a.s.sure you he was quite impertinent about it. He would not have spoken to me so uncivilly had poor dear papa been alive, I know! But it is always the way with that cla.s.s of people:--they only look upon you in the light of how much you are worth!"
"Oh, ma!" said Bessie Dasher, "I think Mr Shuffler very civil and polite. He always makes me quite a low bow whenever he sees me."
"Ah! my dear," said her mother, "that"s because you are young and pretty, as I was once. He never bows to me as he used to do when your grandpapa lived."
After a little more harping on the same string, the conversation drooped; and, as none of them could give me any further information towards a.s.sisting my quest, I took my leave of Lady Dasher and her daughters, in a much less buoyant frame of mind than when I had first thought of my visit an hour or so previously.
I had made certain that they would know something of the mysterious ladies in half-mourning; consequently, I was all the more disappointed.
However, they had given me one hint; I would ask Shuffler himself, on the morrow, whether any new residents were expected in the suburb.
Shuffler was a house-agent who had to do with all the letting and taking, overhauling and repairing, of most of the habitations in our neighbourhood. He was a portly, oily personage; one who clipped his English royally, and walked, through the effects of bunions, I believe-- although some mistook it for gout, and gave him the credit of being afflicted with that painful but aristocratic malady--as if he were continuously on pattens, or wore those clumsy wooden sabots which the Normandy peasantry use. He was also one-eyed, like Cyclops, the place of the missing organ being temporarily filled with a round gla.s.s...o...b.. whose nature could be detected at a glance; this seemed to stare at you with a dull, searching look and take mental and disparaging stock of your person, while the sound eye was winking and blinking at you as jovially as you please.
Shuffler was affable enough to me, as usual, in despite of Lady Dasher having such a bad opinion of his manners; but, he could give me no information such as I wanted to hear. Everybody, really, appeared to be as cautious as "Non mi recordo" was on Queen Caroline"s trial. n.o.body had heard of anybody coming to our neighbourhood. n.o.body had seen any strange faces about. n.o.body knew anything!
It was quite vexatious.
I haunted the Prebend"s Walk. I went to church three times every Sunday, but did not meet her. The only thing I had to a.s.sure me that it was not all a dream, and that I had really seen her, was the little spray of mignonette, which I carried next my heart.
It was now July.
Sultry August came and pa.s.sed; dull September followed suit; dreary October ensued, in the natural cycle of the seasons; foggy, suicidal November came; and yet, _she_ came not!
I felt almost weary of waiting and looking out and longing, notwithstanding the inward a.s.surance I had, and the fact of my whole nature being imbued with the belief that we should meet again. We _must_ meet. I knew _that_, I felt firmly convinced of it.
Thus the year wore on. Weeks and months elapsed since our meeting in church, which I should never, never forget.
Dreary, dreary expectation! I lost interest regarding things in which I had formerly been interested. The society of people which I had previously coveted became distasteful to me.
Lady Dasher, you may be sure, I never went nigh; _she_ would have altogether overwhelmed me.
As for that insufferable a.s.s, Horner, he was always asking me whenever we met, which was much oftener than I cared about, with a provoking simper and his unmeaning, eye-gla.s.s stare and drawling voice--coupled with a tone of would-be-facetious irony--"Bai-ey Je-ove! I say, old fellah, seen those ladies in hawf-mawning yet, ah?"
Brute! I could have kicked him; and I wonder now that I didn"t!
CHAPTER THREE.
M"APPARI.
"She"s coming, my own, my sweet!
Had she never so airy a tread, My heart would hear her, and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed!"
It was now November, as I have already said; and a very dull, dismal, desolate November it was--more so, even, than usual. Fogs were frequent, rain regular, and the sun singular in his appearance. It was enough to make one feel miserable, without the haunting thoughts that affected me; so, before the weather became too much for me and turned me insane, I determined to go abroad for a short time to try what change of air and scene could do towards relaxing my mind, although nothing could banish the remembrance of _her_ from my heart.
When I came back to England, it was close on Christmas, and Christmas, you must know, was always a busy and stirring time with us in our suburb, especially so, too, for its younger and prettier parishioners.
Then the church had to be decorated--a matter not to be trifled with.
Commencing about a week or ten days before the festival, these young ladies would gather themselves together in the old school-room, which was a detached building, situated a short distance from Saint Canon"s.
Here, the scholars being dismissed for their long holidays, they would change the look of the academic apartment into that of a miniature Covent Garden market or greengrocer"s shop, filling it up with heaps of evergreens--holly and ivy and yew, ad libitum, to be transformed by the aid of their nimble fingers into all sorts of floral decorations.
Garlands were woven, elaborate illuminated texts and scrolls painted, and wondrous crosses of commingled laurel leaves and holly berries contrived; all of which went so far to change the aspect of the old church, that those well acquainted with it could not help wondering within themselves, if, indeed, it was really so _very_ old and ancient after all as learned archaeologists said; while new comers, who only saw it in its festal trim, had serious doubts as to whether they were not in a ritualistic edifice--the vicar allowing the girls to have their own way and import as much natural ornament as they pleased. The flowers and shrubs were G.o.d"s handiwork, he said, so why should they not be used in G.o.d"s service, to do honour to "the Giver of the feast?"
This year was no exception to the general practice. On my going down to the school-room on the first day that the work of "the decorations"
began, which was the very morning after my return from the continent, I found things just as they had been in previous years, save that some half-a-dozen panes of gla.s.s had been smashed in the oriel window at the eastern end of the room, through the incautious manipulation of a bunch of holly by some "green" hand.
There were the usual number of young ladies, all of whose faces I knew so well, engaged in the pious work; with Horner, Mr Mawley the curate, and one or _two_ other attendant male aides, to minister to their needs--such as stripping off leaves for wreath making--and help them to flirt the dull hours away. Dear little Miss Pimpernell, our vicar"s maiden sister and good right hand, presided, also, to preserve order and set an example for industrious souls to follow, just as she had been in the habit of presiding as far back as I could recollect.
She was not there merely as a chaperon. Oh no! If Lady Dasher, sitting on an upturned form in a corner, like a very melancholy statue of Patience, was not sufficient to prevent the prudent proprieties from being outraged, there was, also, the "model of all the virtues"
present--Miss Spight--a lady of a certain age, who, believing, as the kindly beings of her order do, that there was too large a flow of the milk of human kindness current in the world, deemed it her mission to temper this dispensation by the admixture of as much vitriol and vinegar as in her lay: she succeeded pretty well, too, for that matter, in her practice and belief.
Little Miss Pimpernell was quite a different sort of body altogether to Miss Spight. Every one who knew her, or ever saw her kindly face, loved her and venerated her.
She was the very impersonification of good-nature, good-will, and good action. Did any misfortune chance to befall some one with whom she was acquainted, or any casual stranger with whom she might be brought in contact, there was none of that "I told you so" spirit of philosophy about _her_.