BEULAH PLACE.
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife.
BYRON.
.... A sorrow not, a son.
ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.
In one of the dingiest suburbs of London there is a small plot of
ground known by the name of the Elysian Fields; but how it had ever
acquired this singular appellation is likely to remain an unsolved
problem to the end of time.
Most probably those great satirists, street denominators, had branded
it with this title in ridicule, for anything further removed from the
mythological meadows could not possibly be conceived, even by the most
sanguine temperament. True, there was a market garden or two, and
odors redolent of decaying vegetables; but, on the whole, it was
rather an unsavory region, and much frequented by the costermonger and
fishwoman.
The Elysian Fields were divided and subdivided into streets, rows, and
alleys; some respectable, others semi-genteel, but in most cases to be
defined by the three degrees of comparison--dingy, dingier, most
dingy; and it was under the comparative degree that a certain street,
known by the name of Beulah Place, must be classed.
It was a long narrow street, not differing much from the others that
ran parallel with it, except in a general air of retirement and
obscurity, owing to a "No Thoroughfare" placarded up on the blank wall
of a brewery, which had rather a depressing effect on the end houses
that looked full on it.
There was little that was noticeable about the street except its
name--for here again the satirists had sharpened their wits, and
Beulah Place looked down in conscious superiority on Paradise Row.
In conscious superiority indeed--for had not Beulah Place this
distinction, that its houses were garnished with imposing flights of
steps and a railed-in area, while Paradise Row opened its doors
directly on the pavement?
Therefore Beulah Place noted itself eminently respectable, and put on
airs; let its front and back parlors to single gentlemen or widows;
and looked over its wire blinds in superb disdain at the
umbrella-mender, or genteel dressmaker who lived opposite.
At the extreme corner of Beulah Place, with its one glass eye peering
down High Street, was Mrs. Watkins, tea merchant and Italian
warehouseman--at least, so ran the gilt-lettered inscription, which
had been put up over the door in the days of her predecessor, and had
remained there ever since. But it was in reality an all-sorts shop,
where nearly everything edible could be procured, and to betray
ignorance of Mrs. Watkins was to betray ignorance not only of Beulah
Place, but of the whole of the Elysian Fields.
To be sure the long window aided the deception, and was fitted up
solely with goods in the grocery line; but enter the dark low
door-way, and get an odorous whiff from within, and one's olfactory
nerves would soon convince one of the contrary.
There was a flavor of everything there; a blended fragrance compounded
of strong cheese, herrings, and candles, with a suspicion of matches
and tarred wood, which to the uninitiated was singularly unpalatable,
and suggested to them to shake off the dust of Mrs. Watkins as soon as
possible.
To be sure this was only a trifle. To do her justice, Mrs. Watkins
drove a very thriving trade; the very carters had a partiality for the
shop, and would lurch in about twelve o'clock, with their pipes and
hob-nailed boots, for a twist of tobacco or a slice of cheese, and
crack clumsy jokes across the counter.
But, besides this, Mrs. Watkins had another source of profit that was
at once lucrative and respectable. She let lodgings.
And very genteel lodgings they were, with a private entrance in Beulah
Place, and a double door that excluded draughts and the heterogeneous
odors from the shop.
These lodgers of Mrs. Watkins were the talk of the neighborhood, and
many a passer-by looked curiously up at the bright windows and clean
white curtains, between which in summer time bloomed the loveliest
flowers, and the earliest snow-drops and crocuses in spring, in the
hope of seeing two fair faces which had rather haunted their memory
ever since they had first seen them.
It was six o'clock on the evening of a dreary November day. Watkins's
shop was empty, for the fog and the rawness and the cold had driven
folks early to their homes; and Mrs. Watkins herself, fortified with
strong tea and much buttered toast, was entering her profits on a
small greasy slate, and casting furtive glances every now and then
into the warm, snug parlor, where her nephew and factotum Tony was
refreshing himself in his turn from the small black teapot on the hob.
A fresh, wholesome-looking woman was Mrs. Watkins, with an honest,
reliable face and a twofold chin; but she had two peculiarities--she
always wore the stiffest and cleanest and most crackling of print
dresses, and her hair was nearly always pinned up in curl-papers under
her black cap.
Mrs. Watkins was engaged in jotting down small dabs of figures on the
slate and rubbing them out again, when the green baize swing-door
leading to the passage was pushed back, and a tall grave-looking woman
in black entered the shop and quietly approached the counter.
She was certainly a striking-looking person; in spite of the gray hair
and a worn, sad expression, the face bore the trace of uncommon
beauty, though all youth and freshness, animation and coloring, had
faded out of it.
The profile was almost perfect, and the mouth would have been lovely
too but for a certain proud droop of the lips which gave an impression
of hardness and inflexibility; but the dark eyes were very soft and
melancholy, and seemed to hold a world of sadness in their depths.
"Mrs. Watkins," she began hurriedly, in a sweet, cultivated voice, and
then stopped and drew back as another person came into the shop; "no,
do not let me interrupt you. I was only going to say that one of the
young ladies at Miss Martingale's seems very poorly, and Miss Theresa
is a little troubled about her, so I have promised to go back for an
hour or two; but I have my key with me if I should be late."
"Dear bless my heart, Mrs. Trafford," exclaimed Mrs. Watkins, fussily,
as she looked at her lodger's pale, tired face, "you are never going
out on such an evening, and all the streets swept as clean as if with
a new broom; and you with your cough, and the fog, and not to mention
the rawness which sucks into your chest like a lozenge;" and here Mrs.
Watkins shook her head, and weighed out a quarter of a pound of mixed
tea, in a disapproving manner.
Mrs. Trafford smiled. "My good friend," she said, in rather an amused
voice, "you ought to know me better by this time; have you ever
remembered that either frost, or rain, or fog have kept me in-doors a
single day when duty called me out;" and here she folded her cloak
round her, and prepared to leave the shop.
"It's ill tempting Providence, neighbor," remarked the other woman,
who had been standing silently by and now put in her word, for she was
an innocent country body with a garrulous tongue; "it's ill tempting
Providence, for 'the wind and the sea obey Him.' I had a son myself
some fourteen years next Michaelmas," continued the simple creature,
"as brave and bonny a lad as ever blessed a mother's eyes, and that
feared naught; but the snow-drift that swept over the Cumberland Fells
found him stumbling and wandering, poor Willie, from the right way,
and froze his dear heart dead."
The lady advanced a few steps, and then stopped as though seized by a
sudden impulse, and looked wistfully in the other woman's face.
"God help you," she said, very softly; "and was this boy of yours a
good son?"
Perhaps in the whole of her simple, sorrowful life Elsie Deans had
never seen anything more pathetic than that white face from which the
gray hair was so tightly strained, and those anxious questionings.
"And was this boy of yours," she said, "a good son?"
"A better never breathed," faltered poor Elsie, as she drew her hand
across her eyes; "he was my only bairn, was Willie."
"Why do you weep then?" returned Mrs. Trafford in her sad voice; "do
you not know that there are mothers in the heart of this great city
who would that their sons had never been born, or that they had seen
them die in their infancy. 'He was the only son of his mother, and she
was a widow,'" she continued to herself; then aloud, and with a
strange flickering smile that scarcely lighted up the pale face,
"Good-night to you--happy mother whose son perished on the Cumberland
Fells, for you will soon meet him again. Good-night, Mrs. Watkins;"
and with this abrupt adieu she went quickly out of the shop and was
lost in the surrounding fog.
"A fine figure of a woman," ejaculated Elsie, shaking her old head
with a puzzled look on her wrinkled face; "a fine, grand figure of a
woman, but surely an 'innocent,' neighbor?"
"An innocent!" repeated Mrs. Watkins with an indignant snort; "an
innocent! Mrs. Deans; why should such an idea enter your head? A
shrewder and a brighter woman than my lodger, Mrs. Trafford, never
breathed, though folks do say she has had a deal of trouble in her
life--but there, it is none of my business; I never meddle in the
affairs of my neighbors. I am not of the sort who let their tongue run
away with them," finished Mrs. Watkins with a virtuous toss of her
head.