THE NEW LODGER.
Some blows which Fate deals us are so severe and crushing that, for a
time, they deprive us of the power of feeling; and of such a nature was
the bereavement which Leslie had suffered. She was simply crushed and
powerless to feel or to act. Fortunately the landlady of the London
lodging-house, and the young doctor, were kind-hearted persons, and
they came to her aid.
Francis Lisle had quarreled with and separated himself from his people
years ago, and Leslie scarcely knew his relations by name, but she
found the addresses of one or two, and the doctor wrote to them.
It is a hard world. One can forgive one's relations many sins, but that
of poverty is the unpardonable one; and those of her kin to whom the
doctor wrote doubtless regarded this sudden death of Francis Lisle as
an additional injury dealt to them by that eccentric and unfortunate
man.
One brother wrote a letter to Leslie expressing the deepest sympathy,
and regretting that a severe attack of the gout would prevent him
attending the funeral, but desiring her to be sure and let him know
if he could do anything for her. A cousin sent his secretary with a
ten-pound note--if it should be needed; and another relative wrote
to say how sorry he was, and that he should, of course, attend the
funeral, and that he hoped and trusted "poor Francis" had left his
daughter well provided for. He added, incidentally, that he himself had
a large family, and had had a great deal of sickness that year; also
that he would have been glad to have taken her into his house if it
had not been so small and already overcrowded. The head of the family
wrote her a short note from a German watering place, saying that he was
in such a wretched state of health that he could not come to England,
excepting at the risk of his life, and that it would probably not be
long before he joined her father in the realms above.
"Ain't it dreadful, sir?" said the landlady to the doctor. "They don't
seem to have a heart amongst 'em."
He shook his head. He had seen similar cases.
"I am afraid Miss Lisle is not very well off," he said. "If she
had been an heiress her relatives would have flocked round her,
overflowing with sympathy and offers of assistance. It is the way of
the world, Mrs. Brown. I fear Miss Leslie will feel this neglect and
cold-heartedness very keenly. We must do all we can for her."
"Yes, sir, that we will," said the woman, with moist eyes. "As to
feeling it, I don't think dear Miss Lisle feels anything at present. I
could scarcely rouse her to see about her mourning, and it makes one's
heart ache to go into the room and see her sitting there in her plain,
black dress--she would have it so simple and no crape, though I told
her that crape was always worn for a father--sitting there and just
looking before her as if she was too weak and overcome even to think.
It's my opinion, sir, that she scarcely realizes what has happened to
her yet. Since the day he died she hasn't shed a tear. And such a sweet
young soul as she is, and so grateful for the littlest thing one does
for her. But there, she was always the nicest young lady that I ever
took in, always; and if her relations is too proud or too heartless to
look after her, why she shan't want for a friend while Martha Brown has
got a shilling."
The landlady's graphic description of Leslie's condition was a fairly
truthful one. Day after day Leslie sat with her hands lying listlessly
in the lap of her black dress, her eyes fixed on the trees in the
square, her sorrow too great for thought.
If she had overheard the landlady and the doctor discussing her future
she would have listened with perfect indifference. What did it matter
what became of her, or whether she lived or went to join the poor, weak
soul whom she had loved and cherished, and yet--ah, what bitterness
was in the thought!--deceived! If she had not listened to Yorke's
proposal, had not consented to his plan of bringing her to London, her
father might be alive now! It was true that the doctor had assured
her that the weakness of the heart which had been the immediate cause
of death had been latent for some time, and that her father had been a
doomed and sentenced man for years past, and that any shock would have
been sufficient to cause his death; but even this assurance scarcely
softened the poignancy of her remorse.
It was of her father and his loss that she thought entirely during the
days immediately following her bereavement, and it might be almost said
that she had forgotten Yorke and her great love for him. Almost, but
not quite. It was lying in the centre of her heart, buried for a time
under the load of her anguish and sorrow, but it needed only a sight of
him, only the sound of his name, to arise, like a giant, and reassert
all its old influence over her.
After a while she began to recover sufficiently to be able to think, to
realize her position, and to look vaguely and indifferently towards the
future.
The doctor, and the secretary of the great man, had gone into Francis
Lisle's affairs, and discovered that a portion of his small income had
died with him, and that what remained amounted to only a few pounds
a year--not enough, by itself, to keep body and soul together. There
was a little money in hand, but the largest part of that sum consisted
of the fifty pounds paid by Mr. Temple for the picture he had bought;
and Leslie, directly she was able to think, resolved that she would
return the money, though it, and it alone, should stand between her and
starvation.
There was something else also that she must return--the diamond pendant
which Yorke had given her.
That, too, must go back. She could not summon up sufficient courage to
take it from its hiding-place as yet; and, indeed, she did not know
where to send it, unless she addressed it to the Dorchester Club, and
it seemed to her that it would be wrong to send so valuable an article
to a club; that she ought to send it to the duke's residence.
A woman of the world would have been aware that the address of so
well-known a personage as the Duke of Rothbury could be found in a
London directory; but Leslie was anything but a woman of the world, and
felt helpless in her ignorance.
There was another article which lay in her box beside the diamond
pendant; Ralph Duncombe's ring.
She remembered that, in a weary, listless way. He had said, when he
placed it in her hand, that if ever she needed a friend, a helper, an
avenger, she had but to send that ring to him and he would come to her
side. But, though she were in the sorest strait in which a woman could
be placed, she would not summon Ralph Duncombe to her aid; for to do so
would be tantamount to engaging herself to him. The mere thought made
her wince and shudder; it was an insult to the love that lay dormant in
her bosom--her love for Yorke.
One day she got out her money, and spread it on the table and counted
it. With the strictest economy it would not go very far, and it was all
that stood between her and the grim wolf, destitution; for she felt
that she would rather die than appeal for assistance to her father's
relatives.
"In the struggle for life we forget our dead," says the philosopher;
and the problem of what was to become of her gradually drew her away
from the sad brooding over her bereavement.
What should she do? She could not dig, and to beg she was ashamed.
The question haunted her day and night as she sat by the window or
walked up and down the room, or lay awake at night, listening to the
multitudinous London clocks striking the hours. One afternoon she
summoned up strength enough to go out, and in her plain black clothes,
with her veil closely drawn over her face, she walked through the
squares into Oxford and Regent Streets. She felt weak and giddy at
first, and soon tired. The vast thoroughfares, and their eager, busy
crowds confused and bewildered her. It seemed to her as if every one
was looking at her, as if every individual of the throng knew of
her trouble, her double loss, and was pitying her; and she turned
homewards, faint in body and spirit.
As she reached No. 23 she saw a cab standing at the door; the cabman
was carrying a modest box into the house, and as she passed into the
narrow hall a young lady, who was talking with the landlady, made room
for her.
Leslie concluded that it was a new lodger, and went up to her own rooms
to take up the perpetual problem. What should she do?
She recalled all the novels she had read in which the heroines had been
left alone in the world, and sought some help from their experiences
and course of action. But most, if not all, these heroines had been
singularly gifted beings, who had at once stepped into fame and fortune
as singers, actors, painters, or musicians; and she, Leslie, knew that
she was not gifted in any of these directions.
"There is nothing I can do!" she told herself that night as she
undressed herself wearily and hopelessly. "Nothing! I am a cumberer of
the ground!"
She had tired herself by her walk, and slept the whole night, for the
first time since her father's death; but she dreamed that she was
married to Yorke, and that she was surrounded by a crowd--the crowd she
had seen in Regent Street--and that they called her 'Your Grace' and
'Duchess.' And she woke to a sense of the reality with a heart that
ached all the more bitterly for the pleasant dream.
Was it years ago, that drive to St. Martin's, when he had sat beside
her and shown her how to hold the reins? Or did it never happen, and
was it only a phantasy of her imagination?
So great a difference was there between then and now, so wide a
gulf, that only the present seemed real, and the past a vision of a
disordered mind! She unlocked the small box, and took out the diamond
pendant and looked at it, and the scrap of paper with the precious
words "From Yorke" written on it, until the tears blotted them from
her sight; but they had recalled all the joy, the delight, the sacred
ecstasy of the past all too distinctly.
It was true. She, Leslie Lisle, helpless, friendless, with only a few
pounds between her and want, was the Leslie Lisle who had looked on
that short sunlight of happiness.
She thought she would make another attempt to go out that morning, and
after dressing slowly, and putting off the dreaded moment of leaving
the house and facing the outside world, she went down the stairs. As
she did so the door of one of the rooms on the floor below hers opened,
and the girl she had seen in the hall yesterday came out.
She stepped back as she saw Leslie, and seemed about to beat a retreat
back into her own room again, then hesitated, and made a slight bow.
Leslie returned the bow absently and went out; and it was not until she
had got into the crowded streets that she thought of the girl; then
she remembered that she, too, was dressed in black, and that though
not more pretty, she was modest, and looked like a lady, and wore
eyeglasses. She thought no more of her than this, and after a weary
walk returned home, and rang the bell for some tea.
When the door opened she was surprised to see the girl instead of Mrs.
Brown; and her surprise must have shown itself in her face, for her
visitor colored and stopped at the threshold.
"I--I beg your pardon," she said. "I hope you will forgive me, but Mrs.
Brown has sprained her wrist, and she asked me--that is, I offered--to
come instead of her----."
Leslie rose and looked at her with the half startled expression which
indicated her condition of mind.
"I--I wanted some tea; but it does not matter," she said in a low voice.
The new-comer colored.
"Oh, but I will get it for you," she said. "I will get anything for
you; that is, if you don't mind my doing it instead of Mrs. Brown."
Leslie looked at her more attentively, and saw a pleasant, amiable face
with eyes beaming softly through eyeglasses perched on a tip-tilted
nose.
"You are very kind," she said in a low, musical voice. "But I do not
think I ought to trouble you."
"Oh, it is no trouble, Miss Lisle," said the girl, still standing on
the threshold as if she dared not venture further.
"You know my name?" said Leslie, with a faint smile.
"Yes," said her visitor, with a nod half-grave, half-smiling, and
wholly friendly and propitiatory. "Mrs. Brown told me, and--and about
your trouble. I am so sorry! But," as Leslie winced, "I won't talk of
that. I'll see that you have some tea."
"Will you not come in?" said Leslie.
The girl came into the room timidly, and took the chair which Leslie
drew forward for her.
"I think I saw you in the hall yesterday," she said. "You are a lodger,
like myself?"
"Yes. Oh, yes," replied her visitor, nodding. "And I saw you. I asked
Mrs. Brown who you were, and she told me. I hope you don't think me
inquisitive?" and she colored timidly.
"No. Oh, no. It was a very natural question," said Leslie. "Will you
tell me your name?"
"Oh, yes. My name is Somes. Lucy Somes."
"And you are paying a visit to London?" said Leslie, trying to interest
herself in this pleasant looking girl who had from sheer kindness acted
as the landlady's substitute.
"A visit?" said Lucy Somes, doubtfully. "Well, scarcely that. I'm
here--" she hesitated--"on business. But I must not keep you waiting
for your tea."
"My tea can wait until Mrs. Brown can get it," said Leslie.
"Oh, but I am going to get it for you, unless--" she hesitated, but,
encouraged by Leslie's faint smile, she continued--"unless you wouldn't
mind coming down to my room and taking tea with me. I have just got
mine; and I should be so pleased if you would come."
Leslie did not respond for a moment or two. Trouble makes solitude very
dear to us. But she fought against the desire to decline.
"Thank you," she said simply; "I shall be very pleased."
Lucy jumped up.
"Come along, then," she said with evident pleasure.
Leslie followed her downstairs, and Lucy Somes ushered her into the
tiny room which served for bedroom and sitting room.
"I hope you don't mind," said Lucy, with a sudden blush on her pleasant
face. "But you see I am not rich enough to afford two rooms, and so----."
"Why should I mind?" said Leslie, in her gentle voice.
"Oh, I can see you have been used to something better than this," said
Lucy, bustling to and fro as she spoke, and adding another cup and
saucer and plate to the tea things on the small table. "I laughed to
myself when Mrs. Brown said you were a real lady--persons like her
make such mistakes--but I see that she was right. But a lady does not
contemn poverty, does she?" and she laughed as she cut some bread and
butter.
"Especially when she is poor herself," thought Leslie, but she only
smiled.
"And so I thought I would venture to intrude upon you," continued
Lucy Somes. "I was half afraid, for you looked so--so--I want a word!
it isn't proud; so aristocratic and reserved I'll say--that I quite
trembled; and it was only by saying, 'she is only a girl and no older
than yourself and all alone and in trouble,' that I plucked up courage
to go up to you."
"Am I so very terrible?" said Leslie, with the smile that all
Portmaris--and Yorke--had found so irresistible.
"Not now when you look like that," replied Lucy Somes, "but when you
are grave and solemn, as you were when you passed by me yesterday, you
are very--very--stand-offish. Will you have some sugar in your tea?
I've made some toast. Papa--" she stopped suddenly, then went on in a
subdued voice--"papa used to say that I made toast better than any of
the others. He is dead," she added after another pause; and Leslie saw
the eyes grow dim behind the spectacles.
She put out her hand and laid it on the girl's arm.
"Did he----?"
"Three months ago," said Lucy Somes, sadly, yet cheerily. "He was a
country clergyman down in Wealdshire. He caught a fever visiting a
parishioner. There are seven of us--and mother. I'm the second."
She poured out the tea while she was speaking, and was obviously
fighting with her tears.
"Seven of us! Just fancy! Poor mother didn't know what to do! So I came
up to London to fight my way in the world. And I mean to fight it, too!
What awful stuff the London butter is, isn't it? I don't believe there
is a particle of cow's milk in it; do you? Seven of us! Three boys and
four girls. And we're as poor as poor can be. Won't you take some milk,
if one can call it milk?"
"And you are going to fight the world," said Leslie, with tender
sympathy for this young girl who could be so cheerful under such
circumstances. "What are you going to do?"
Lucy Somes laughed as she put a fresh piece of toast on the rack.
"I'm going to be a governess."
"A governess!" said Leslie. "In a gentleman's family?"
Lucy Somes shook her head emphatically.
"Oh, no, thank you! I know what that means! Six young children to
teach, all the mending to do, and heaps of other things for twenty
pounds a year; less than they give their cook! No, no! I am going to be
the mistress of one of the country schools."
"Yes?" said Leslie vaguely.
"Yes, I am going to try and get the mistressship of a Board or
Voluntary school in some country place; I couldn't live in London. I
don't seem as if I could breathe here. Every morning I wake and fancy
I have been shut up in a coal mine. Did you ever notice how the smuts
come into the room when you open the window? And that's what London
folks breathe all the time."
"It does not seem to disagree with them," said Leslie, with a faint
smile.
"It disagrees with me," retorted Lucy, laughing. "Oh, no, no, give me
the country, with plenty of space to move about, and the flowers and
the birds, and butter that isn't manufactured from fat, and milk that
isn't a mixture of chalk and water. Don't you think it will be very
nice to be the mistress of a school in some pretty village? There is
always a nice little house for one to live in, and perhaps I could
afford to keep a young girl for a servant, and--and--be able to save
some money to send to mother to help her with the rest of us."
Leslie listened, and her conscience smote her. Here was this girl, no
older than herself, alone in London, and so bravely ready to fight the
great battle; thinking little of herself, and so much of those dear
ones she had left behind.
"Of course I am rather afraid of the exams," went on Lucy, knowing
somehow that the best thing she could do for this sweet, sad-looking
girl was to talk of herself, and so coax Leslie from dwelling on her
own sorrow. "They are rather dreadful, but I have been working hard,
and I think I shall pass. I'll show you some of my books, shall I--may
I? But you must have your tea first, quite comfortably. It was so kind
of you to come down to me! I was feeling so dreadfully lonely and--and
friendless. London is such a big place to be alone in, isn't it?"
"Ah, yes!" said Leslie.
"I tried to make friends with the sparrows," said Lucy, laughing.
"I put some crumbs on the window-sill as breakfast, and they come
and eat them. But they are not like the country sparrows; they look,
somehow, so--disreputable. I suppose it's because they sit up late,
like everybody else in London. All the animals are different; the very
horses look knowing and sharp. Now you shall sit in that easy-chair
while I show you my books." And half timidly she put Leslie in the
chair, and arranged a cushion for her as if she were a great invalid.
Leslie's tender heart melted under all this gentle sunshine, and when
Lucy, kneeling beside her, opened her books, Leslie found, with a vague
kind of surprise, that she was interested.
"You see? It is a great many subjects to get up, isn't it? But I'm not
afraid. I should get on faster if some of the girls were here to hear
me repeat some of the most difficult passages; and if--papa were here
to explain things I don't quite understand. He was so clever! There was
nothing he did not know," she added with simple, loving pride.
"Let me see," said Leslie, taking up a book. "Why should I not help
you, Miss Somes?"
Lucy colored furiously.
"Oh, indeed, indeed," she said imploringly. "I did not mean that! I
could not think of allowing you. But how kind of you to offer! Oh, no,
no!"
"But the kindness will be on your part if you will let me try and be of
some help," said Leslie, with gentle insistence. "I, too, am all alone,
and I have nothing to do--" she smothered a sigh--"and the time seems
very long and weary. I could hear you repeat what you have learned as
well as one of your sisters. I could do that, at least. Let me see. I
am very ignorant; you will soon see that. But I remember something of
this book. I had it at school."
Lucy would not hear of it for some time, but at last Leslie overcame
her scruples, and with a little blush repeated some of the paragraphs
she had got off by heart.