Pigott, Angela’s old nurse, was by no means sorry to hear of Arthur’s
visit to the Abbey House, though, having in her youth been a servant in
good houses, she was distressed at the nature of his reception. But,
putting this aside, she thought it high time that her darling should
see a young man or two, that she might “learn what the world was like.”
Pigott was no believer in female celibacy, and Angela’s future was a
frequent subject of meditation with her, for she knew very well that
her present mode of life was scarcely suited either to her birth, her
beauty, or her capabilities. Not that she ever, in her highest flights,
imagined Angela as a great lady, or one of society’s shining stars; she
loved to picture her in some quiet, happy home, beloved by her husband,
and surrounded by children as beautiful as herself. It was but a
moderate ambition for one so peerlessly endowed, but she would have
been glad to see it fulfilled. For of late years there had sprung up in
nurse Pigott’s mind an increasing dislike of her surroundings, which
sometimes almost amounted to a feeling of horror. Philip she had always
detested, with his preoccupied air and uncanny ways.
“There must,” she would say, “be something wicked about a man as is
afraid to have his own bonny daughter look him in the face, to say
nothing of his being that mean as to grudge her the clothes on her
back, and make her live worse nor a servant-girl.”
Having, therefore, by a quiet peep through the curtains, ascertained
that he was nice-looking and about the right age, Pigott confessed to
herself that she was heartily glad of Arthur’s arrival, and determined
that, should she take to him on further acquaintance, he should find a
warm ally in her in any advances he might choose to make on the
fortress of Angela’s affections.
“I do so hope that you don’t mind dining at half-past twelve, and with
my old nurse,” Angela said, as they went together up the stairs to the
room they used as a dining-room.
“Of course I don’t—I like it, really I do.”
Angela shook her head, and, looking but partially convinced, led the
way down the passage, and into the room, where, to her astonishment,
she perceived that the dinner-table was furnished with a more sumptuous
meal than she had seen upon it for years, the fact being that Pigott
had received orders from Philip which she did not know of, not to spare
expense whilst Arthur was his guest.
“What waste,” reflected Angela, in whom the pressure of circumstances
had developed an economical turn of mind, as she glanced at the
unaccustomed jug of beer. “He said he was a teetotaller.”
A loud “hem!” from Pigott, arresting her attention, stopped all further
consideration of the matter. That good lady, who, in honour of the
occasion, was dressed in a black gown of a formidable character and a
many-ribboned cap, was standing up behind her chair waiting to be
introduced to the visitor. Angela proceeded to go through the ceremony
which Pigott’s straight-up-and-down attitude rendered rather trying.
“Nurse, this is the gentleman that my father has asked to stay with us.
Mr. Heigham, let me introduce you to my old nurse Pigott.”
Arthur bowed politely, whilst Pigott made two obligatory curtsies,
requiring a step backwards after each, as though to make room for
another. Her speech, too, carefully prepared for the occasion, is
worthy of transcription.
“Hem!” she said, “this, sir, is a pleasure as I little expected, and I
well knows that it is not what you or the likes is accustomed to,
a-eating of dinners and teas with old women; which I hopes, sir, how as
you will put up with it, seeing how as the habits of this house is what
might, without mistake, be called peculiar, which I says without any
offence to Miss Angela, ‘cause though her bringing-up has been what I
call odd, she knows it as well as I do, which, indeed, is the only
consolation I has to offer, being right sure, as indeed I am, how as
any young gentleman as ever breathed would sit in a pool of water to
dine along with Miss Angela, let alone an old nurse. I ain’t such a
fool as I may look; no need for you to go a-blushing of, Miss Angela.
And now, sir, if you please, we will sit down, for fear lest the gravy
should begin to grease;” and, utterly exhausted by the exuberance of
her own verbosity, she plunged into her chair—an example which Arthur,
bowing his acknowledgements of her opening address, was not slow to
follow.
One of his first acts was, at Pigott’s invitation, to help himself to a
glass of beer, of which, to speak truth, he drank a good deal.
Angela watched the proceeding with interest.
“What,” she asked presently, “is a teetotaller?”
The recollection of his statement of the previous day flashed into his
mind. He was, however, equal to the occasion.
“A teetotaller,” he replied, with gravity, “is a person who only drinks
beer,” and Angela, the apparent discrepancy explained, retired
satisfied.
That was a very pleasant dinner. What a thing it is to be young and in
love! How it gilds the dull gingerbread of life; what new capacities of
enjoyment it opens up to us, and, for the matter of that, of pain also;
and oh! what stupendous fools it makes of us in everybody else’s eyes
except our own, and, if we are lucky, those of our adored!
The afternoon and evening passed much as the morning had done. Angela
took Arthur round the place, and showed him all the spots connected
with her strange and lonely childhood, of which she told him many a
curious story. In fact, before the day was over, he knew all the
history of her innocent life, and was struck with amazement at the
variety and depth of her scholastic acquirements and the extraordinary
power of her mind, which, combined with her simplicity and total
ignorance of the ways of the world, produced an effect as charming as
it was unusual. Needless to say that every hour he knew her he fell
more deeply in love with her.
At length, about eight o’clock, just as it was beginning to get dark,
she suggested that he should go and sit a while with her father.
“And what are you going to do?” asked Arthur.
“Oh! I am going to read a little, and then go to bed; I always go to
bed about nine;” and she held out her hand to say good-night. He took
it and said,
“Good-night, then; I wish it were to-morrow.”
“Why?”
“Because then I should be saying, ‘Good-morning, Angela,’ instead of
‘Good-night, Angela,’ May I call you Angela? We seem to know each other
so well, you see.”
“Yes, of course,” she laughed back; “everybody I know calls me Angela,
so why shouldn’t you?”
“And will you call me Arthur? Everybody I know calls me Arthur.”
Angela hesitated, and Angela blushed, though why she hesitated and why
she blushed was perhaps more than she could have exactly said.
“Y-e-s, I suppose so—that is, if you like it. It is a pretty name,
Arthur. Good-night, Arthur,” and she was gone.
His companion gone, Arthur turned and entered the house. The study-
door was open, so he went straight in. Philip, who was sitting and
staring in an abstracted way at the empty fireplace with a light behind
him, turned quickly round as he heard the footstep.
“Oh! it’s you, is it, Heigham? I suppose Angela has gone upstairs; she
goes to roost very early. I hope that she has not bored you, and that
old Pigott hasn’t talked your head off. I told you that we were an odd
lot, you know; but, if you find us odder than you bargained for, I
should advise you to clear out.”
“Thank you, I have spent a very happy day.”
“Indeed, I am glad to hear it. You must be easily satisfied, have an
Arcadian mind, and that sort of thing. Take some whisky, and light your
pipe.”
Arthur did so, and presently Philip, in that tone of gentlemanly ease
which above everything distinguished him from his cousin, led the
conversation round to his guest’s prospects and affairs, more
especially his money affairs. Arthur answered him frankly enough, but
this money talk had not the same charms for him that it had for his
host. Indeed, a marked repugnance to everything that had to do with
money was one of his characteristics; and, wearied out at length with
pecuniary details and endless researches into the mysteries of
investment, he took advantage of a pause to attempt to change the
subject.
“Well,” he said, “I am much obliged to you for your advice, for I am
very ignorant myself, and hate anything to do with money. I go back to
first principles, and believe that we should all be better without it.”
“I always thought,” answered Philip, with a semi-contemptuous smile,
“that the desire of money, or, amongst savage races, its equivalent,
shells or what not, was _the_ first principle of human nature.”
“Perhaps it is—I really don’t know; but I heartily wish that it could
be eliminated off the face of the earth.”
“Forgive me,” laughed Philip, “but that is the speech of a very young
man. Why, eliminate money, and you take away the principal interest of
life, and destroy the social fabric of the world. What is power but
money, comfort?—money, social consideration?—money, ay, and love, and
health, and happiness itself? Money, money, money. Tell me,” he went
on, rising, and addressing him with a curious earnestness, “what god is
there more worthy of our adoration than Plutus, seeing that, if we
worship him enough, he alone of the idols we set in high places, will
never fail us at need?”
“It is a worship that rarely brings lasting happiness with it. In our
greed to collect the means of enjoyment, surely we lose the power to
enjoy?”
“Pshaw! that is the cant of fools, of those who do not know, of those
who cannot feel. But I know and I feel, and I tell you that it is not
so. The collection of those means is in itself a pleasure, because it
gives a consciousness of power. Don’t talk to me of Fate; that
sovereign” (throwing the coin on to the table) “is Fate’s own seal. You
see me, for instance, apparently poor and helpless, a social pariah,
one to be avoided, and even insulted. Good; before long these will
right all that for me. I shall by their help be powerful and courted
yet. Ay, believe me, Heigham, money is a living moving force; leave it
still, and it accumulates; expend it, and it gratifies every wish; save
it, and that is best of all, and you hold in your hand a lever that
will lift the world. I tell you that there is no height to which it
cannot bring you, no gulf it will not bridge you.”
“Except,” soliloquized Arthur, “the cliffs of the Hereafter, and—the
grave.”
His words produced a curious effect. Philip’s eloquence broke off
short, and for a moment a great fear crept into his eyes.
Silence ensued which neither of them seemed to care to break. Meanwhile
the wind suddenly sprang up, and began to moan and sigh amongst the
half-clad boughs of the trees outside—making, Arthur thought to
himself, a very melancholy music. Presently Philip laid his hand upon
his guest’s arm, and he felt that it shook like an aspen- leaf.
“Tell me,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “what do you see there?”
Arthur started, and followed the direction of his eyes to the bare wall
opposite the window, at that end of the room through which the door was
made.
“I see,” he said, “some moving shadows.”
“What do they resemble?”
“I don’t know; nothing in particular. What are they?”
“What are they?” hissed Philip, whose face was livid with terror, “they
are the shades of the dead sent here to torture me. Look, she goes to
meet him; the old man is telling her. Now she will wring her hands.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Caresfoot, nonsense,” said Arthur, shaking himself
together; “I see nothing of the sort. Why, it is only the shadows flung
by the moonlight through the swinging boughs of that tree. Cut it down,
and you will have no more writing upon your wall.”
“Ah! of course you are right, Heigham, quite right,” ejaculated his
host, faintly, wiping the cold sweat from his brow; “it is nothing but
the moonlight. How ridiculous of me! I suppose I am a little out of
sorts—liver wrong. Give me some whisky, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll
drink damnation to all the shadows and _the trees that throw them_. Ha,
ha, ha!”
There was something so uncanny about his host’s manner, and his evident
conviction of the origin of the wavering figures on the wall (which had
now disappeared), that Arthur felt, had it not been for Angela, he
would not be sorry to get clear of him and his shadows as soon as
possible, for superstition, he knew, is as contagious as small-pox.
When at length he reached his great bare bed-chamber, not, by the way,
a comfortable sort of place to sleep in after such an experience, it
was only after some hours, in the excited state of his imagination,
that, tired though he was, he could get the rest he needed.