Fourteen months passed quickly and quietly away in the Pennant
household, during which time the eldest son never once revisited his
old home. At first Rees wrote to his mother regularly once a week.
Very short indeed his notes were, but they were always warmly
affectionate, and they always contained messages for Deborah and a
remittance of thirty shillings or two pounds towards the house-keeping
expenses. Poor Mrs. Pennant, who had been told how difficult to get
situations in London were, was crazily proud of the immediate success
of her favorite son, and only afraid that, in the wish to send her as
much as he could, he was denying himself more than he ought to do.
Before long, however, these dutiful attentions began to fail. The
remittances dropped off first, and the notes contained excuses, to
which his doting mother replied by immediate assurances that she was
in no need of money. This was now true. The energetic Godwin, who was
acquitting himself admirably in his new position, sent home to his
mother more than enough money to keep the little household in comfort.
He also persuaded Hervey to apply for his own old situation in the
Monmouth Bank, with many artful suggestions as to its being only for a
time, and just to show people that a young man of unusual intellect
could make himself a position anywhere. Hervey had swallowed the bait,
got the situation, and, rather to his own disgust, proved a very good
clerk. Once in the bank, therefore, he remained there, as Godwin had
expected. For however high his soul might soar, and however far his
great mind might roam, his great body had a habit of remaining
docilely, in cabbage-like fashion, wherever circumstances placed it.
Both Hervey and Godwin remained as much in love with Deborah as ever,
but she resisted steadily every attempt to break down the brotherly
and sisterly relation between her and them. Godwin, in spite of
discouragement, persisted, every time that he paid his mother a visit,
in renewing his advances. But he did so in such a prosaic,
matter-of-fact manner that Deborah could treat them as a joke.
“Are you still in the same mind, Deb?” he would ask in an off-hand
tone, at the first opportunity when they were left together.
“About what?” she would say, affecting to have forgotten such a
ridiculous trifle as his last proposal.
“About marrying me.”
“Marrying you! Of course. What nonsense!”
“Very well, then, I hope you’ll die an old maid,” he would say
viciously, to close the subject.
And Deborah would only laugh to herself in a contented manner, as if
she felt that in that respect her fate was in her own hands.
As the girl was too handsome not to arouse envy among her own sex, she
was often made to feel uncomfortably conscious that people believed
she was pining for love of a man who did not care for her. Lord St.
Austell, among others, tried to take advantage of this supposition. He
had always been a great admirer of Deborah’s rich and massive beauty,
and as he belonged to that class of men who consider all women, in the
position of dependents, fair game for their attentions, he now lost no
opportunity of trying to ingratiate himself with her.
It was early in October of the year following Rees Pennant’s departure
from his home. Lord St. Austell, who was down for the cub-hunting,
called upon Mrs. Pennant, and used all the genial charm of manner for
which he was well known, in the endeavor to break down an instinctive
shyness which the beautiful Miss Audaer had always left with him. But
Deborah left him a good deal to Mrs. Pennant, who prided herself on
being a brilliant talker and a woman of enduring fascination, and had
had in her time ideas of becoming an Anglicised version of Madame
Récamier. Not to be daunted, the earl called one morning before the
old lady was prepared to receive visitors. She sent Deborah to the
drawing-room with elaborate messages of regret, which Lord St. Austell
quickly cut short.
“Well, Miss Audaer, it really doesn’t matter, I only came to leave
these papers for the old lady, and to ask” (and he dropped his voice
confidentially), “whether you had any news of our old friend, Rees. I
knew,” he went on, “that if anybody had heard from him, it would be
you.”
Deborah blushed and looked very unhappy.
“No,” she said. “For the last six weeks we have heard nothing. He
hardly ever writes to me, only to mamma, and his notes are never very
long. He travels about a great deal, he says, for the firm of lawyers
he is with, and doesn’t have much time for writing.”
“Does he ever write to you, though, except from London?”
“No.”
“Ah! And he is with a firm of lawyers, travels about, and was able
from the first to send home two pounds a week?”
“Oh, he doesn’t now. He hasn’t sent any money for a long time.”
“I wonder what the young beggar’s up to?”
Lord St. Austell was walking up and down the room, and he said this
half to himself. But Deborah, all passionate excitement, sprang up
from her seat and placed herself right in front of him.
“What do you mean, Lord St. Austell?”
“Rees has been telling his mother a parcel of falsehoods, that’s all.
Do you think an idle, self-indulgent young scamp like that would get a
salary large enough for him to spare two pounds a week? Do lawyers
send their clerks scudding about all over the country like bagmen? No,
Miss Audaer, our young friend is amusing himself, and doesn’t want his
mother to come up to interrupt his pleasures.”
“But he has no money!” said Deborah, whose face expressed the strength
of her feelings.
“How do you know? He manages to have the things that money gets, I
happen to know, for not six weeks ago I saw him at Goodwood, perfectly
dressed and perfectly mounted. Now, those are things which people can
only do when they have either money or credit. The little beggar had
the audacity to cut me, not that I bear him any malice for that,” he
added, good humoredly.
Poor Deborah was greatly troubled.
“He is so weak, so dreadfully weak; he must have got into bad hands,”
she said, in a quavering voice. “And yet, what can one do? Mamma will
not go up to see him, because from the tone of his letters she can see
he does not want her to. And she believes, or tries to believe, his
constant promise of coming down to see us.”
“Well, if you wait for that, you will have to wait until the young
scapegrace has got to the end of his tether,” said the earl, with a
short laugh.
“But what am I to do? Mamma will believe nothing; indeed, I could
scarcely wish her to. In the meantime----”
“In the meantime the lad may go one step too far, and the next news
you have of him may be--through the newspapers.”
Deborah drew her breath with a sob. These suggestions were only an
echo to the fears which had lately been haunting her.
“I’ll tell you what you could do,” the earl went on, in a kindly,
sympathetic voice. “You might discover an excuse for wanting to go to
London; I am going up myself in a day or two, and you would be very
welcome to my services as an escort, since I don’t suppose they would
let you travel alone. Then I would help you to find him out, and if
he’s got into some scrape, we’d do our best together to help him out
again.”
“Thank you,” said Deborah, “I’ll think about it.”
The earl was delighted, thinking he had advanced a step. But the girl
had the discretion which natural modesty imparts, and though she did
give his proposition a second thought, it was with a slight alteration
which he had not contemplated. The result of her reflections was that
she put it into Mrs. Pennant’s head that Rees might be ill, and that
the best thing they could do was to go up and see him without too long
a notice of their intention.
The discreet submissiveness towards the members of her family who were
of the superior sex, which had become a habit of her life, made the
old lady at first disinclined to act on Deborah’s suggestion. But, by
working upon her maternal fears, the girl at last induced Mrs. Pennant
to write a note to Rees, at the address in St. Martin’s-lane from
which he always dated his letters, informing him that she was anxious
about his health, and that she would call and see him within a few
hours of the arrival of her note.
The two ladies left Carstow by the 4.12 train one raw October morning,
before it was light. Hervey got up to see them off, but was just too
late; they caught sight of him, panting and blinking on the platform,
in the dull flicker of the gas-lamps, just as their train steamed out
of the station. They had a dreadful, slow, stopping journey, and
reached Paddington at ten minutes past ten, benumbed with cold,
sleepy, and depressed. It was Deborah’s first visit to London, and the
sensations she experienced as they drove in a shaky four-wheeled cab
across the town between Praed street and Trafalgar-square were mingled
bewilderment and disappointment. For a film of brownish fog enveloped
the houses and obscured the sun, gave a wet, greasy look to the
pavements, and to the atmosphere a heaviness which seemed suffocating
to the country girl.
“Oh, mamma, is this really London?” she asked, as, with her teeth
chattering, she looked out of the window when they came to Oxford
Circus.
“Yes, child; of course you know it is. This is where two of the
principal streets cross each other,” answered Mrs. Pennant, rather
pettishly, for she was tired with the early and unaccustomed journey.
“What a pity we have come up on such a bad day! It makes everything
look so black and gloomy.”
“If we had come up any other day it would have been the same. London
is always foggy at this time of year.”
“Always like this?” cried Deborah, in amazement. “Why, how can people
live in it?”
“They not only live in it, they like it.”
“Well, then, now I can understand all one reads about the corrupting
influences of a great city. For if people can grow to like this
atmosphere better than the pure air, it is not astonishing that they
can learn to like evil ways better than good ones.”
Mrs. Pennant did not answer; she was too cross. They drove on in
silence, Deborah filled with ever-increasing amazement and disgust.
When at length the cab drew up at an old-fashioned and dingy house in
St. Martin’s-lane, on the right hand side as you go down towards the
church, she, however, could not suppress a low cry of horror.
“Oh, mamma,” she cried, “surely poor Rees doesn’t live here?”
“Don’t be silly, Deborah, crying out like some gawky country cousin.
Of course, London is not like Carstow.”
They got out, and going up four much-worn stone steps, rang the bell,
and were admitted by an old woman, who said that she didn’t know
whether Mr. Pennant had come home yet, but she would see. She turned
and walked to the end of the hall, which was narrow, dingy, and dark.
Knocking at a door on the right, she opened it without waiting for an
answer and announced:
“Some ladies to see you, sir.”
“Show them in,” said a voice which neither recognised.
Mrs. Pennant and Deborah traversed the passage slowly, both prepared
for some great change in Rees. Therefore, at the first moment of
meeting, they were both inclined to think the alteration in him less
great than it really was. The room was small and very dark, for the
little daylight that filtered through the fog was obscured by the
backs of the neighboring houses. The furniture was of the dingy kind
peculiar to the back rooms of London lodging-houses, and the fire
which burned in the small grate gave forth plenty of smoke, but little
flame and less heat.
On a desk in front of the window were pens, ink, some sheets of blue
foolscap, and a legal looking document, one pen lying as if it had
recently been used. Rees was sitting by the fire, with a newspaper in
his hand. He got up to meet them, but it was with more nervous
excitement than pleasure that he kissed his mother and shook hands
with Deborah. Both saw at once that he was much thinner than he used
to be, and that the old boyish, light-hearted expression had left his
face. But it was not until the flush which had come into his cheeks at
their entrance had died away that they knew what a wreck of the Rees
they had known and loved was before them. His cheeks were sallow and
sunken, his eyes looked larger and blacker than ever, there were new
lines and furrows forming about his mouth and eyes, and, greater
change than all, the look which had been frank had become cynical and
bold. Even these two simple ladies could see that many people--women
especially--would have considered Rees handsomer now than in the old
time, but yet both knew that the alteration in him was for the worse.
Mrs. Pennant affected to think that her son was overworked. Deborah,
who assigned a very different cause to the change in him, wondered
whether the reticent old lady was sincere. Rees explained that he had
lost his situation at the lawyer’s through no fault of his own, and
that he was now keeping himself by law-copying at home. And he glanced
at the desk. Although he hurried this out in a mumbling tone, Mrs.
Pennant made no indiscreet comments, but contented herself with
caressing his curly head and murmuring, “Poor boy, poor boy!”
After an hour spent in the dingy little room, Rees asking many
questions about the family and about Carstow, and leaving no
opportunity for questions in return, Mrs. Pennant asked if he would
come out and take them somewhere to lunch.
“You know,” she explained gently, “we have had no breakfast.”
“Indeed, mother, I wish I were in a place where I could have had a
nice luncheon prepared for you. But I have only this little den and a
couple of cupboards--for they’re nothing more--on the second floor.
And I’m too busy to go out. But I’ll pack you up comfortably in a cab
and send you to a place where I’ve been very well served in better
times, and you might get your shopping done or whatever calls you may
have to make; and by the time you come back here I’ll have my work
done. By-the-bye, Deborah,” he went on, turning as if by an
afterthought to the girl who had risen to go, “you might stay and help
me to get this through, if you will. I can get on twice as fast if
you’ll dictate.”
The girl hesitated, but Mrs. Pennant broke in at once:
“Yes, yes; stay, my dear, and help him to get his work done. I will be
back in an hour--or two hours. Which shall it be, Rees?”
“I don’t think we can get through in less than two hours, mother.”
“Very well, then. In two hours I will be back.”
The active old lady was already out of the room, Rees following, while
Deborah, erect and very grave, waited for his return.