ARRIVALS.
Laura had not waited any longer than I for a special justification of a
letter. She had nothing to say, and she said it in a letter as long as
my own, which reached me at breakfast next morning.
Sitting in a spacious room, looking out into a quiet fashionable street,
in a house all of whose decorations and arrangements had an air of cold
elegance and newness, the letter, with the friendly Cardyllion postmark
on it, seemed to bring with it something of the clear air, and homely
comfort, and free life of Malory, and made me yearn all the more for the
kind faces, the old house, and beloved scenery I had left behind. It was
insufferably dull here, and I soon found myself in that state which is
described as not knowing what to do with oneself. For two days no
further letter from Laura reached me. On the third, I saw her well-known
handwriting on the letter that awaited me on the breakfast-table. As I
looked, as people will, at the direction before opening the envelope, I
was struck by the postmark "Liverpool," and turning it over and over, I
nowhere saw Cardyllion.
I began to grow too uncomfortable to wait longer; I opened the letter
with misgivings. At the top of the note there was nothing written but
the day of the week. It said--
"My Dearest Ethel,--A sudden and total change in my unhappy
circumstances separates me from you. It is impossible that I should
go to London now; and it is possible that I may not see you again
for a long time, if ever. I write to say farewell; and in doing so
to solemnly repeat my warning against permitting the person who
obtained a few days' shelter in the steward's house, after the
shipwreck, to maintain even the slightest correspondence or
acquaintance with you. Pray, dearest Ethel, trust me in this. I
implore of you to follow my advice. You may hear from me again. In
the meantime, I am sure you will be glad to know that your poor
governess is happy--happier than she ever desired, or ever hoped to
be. My fond love is always yours, and my thoughts are hourly with
you.--Ever your loving
Laura Grey."
"May God for ever bless you, darling! Good-bye."
I don't think I could easily exaggerate the effect of this letter. I
will not weary you with that most tiresome of all relations, an account
of another person's grief.
Mamma and papa arrived that evening. If I had lived less at Malory, and
more with mamma, I should not, in some points, have appreciated her so
highly. When I saw her, for the first time, after a short absence, I was
always struck by her beauty and her elegance, and it seemed to me that
she was taller than I recollected her. She was looking very well, and so
young! I saw papa but for a moment. He went to his room immediately to
dress, and then went off to his club. Mamma took me to her room, where
we had tea. She said I had grown, and was very much pleased with my
looks. Then she told me all her plans about me. I was to have masters,
and I was not to come out till April.
She then got me to relate all the circumstances of Nelly's death, and
cried a good deal. Then she had in her maid Lexley, and they held a
council together over me on the subject of dress. My Malory wardrobe,
from which I had brought up to town with me what I considered an
unexceptionable selection, was not laughed at, was not even
discussed--it was simply treated as non-extant. It gave me a profound
sense of the barbarism in which I had lived.
Laura Grey's letter lay heavy at my heart, but I had not yet mentioned
it to mamma. There was no need, however, to screw my courage to that
point. Among the letters brought up to her was one from Laura. When she
read it she was angry in her querulous way. She threw herself into a
chair in a pet. She had confidence in Laura Grey, and foresaw a good
deal of trouble to herself in this desertion. "I am so particularly
unfortunate!" she began--"everything that can possibly go wrong!
everything that never happens to any one else! I could have got her to
take you to Monsieur Pontet's, and your drives, and to shop--and--she
must be a most unprincipled person. She had no right to go away as she
has done. It is too bad! Your papa allows every one of that kind to
treat me exactly as they please, and really, when I am at home, my life
is one continual misery! What am I to do now? I don't believe any one
else was ever so entirely at the mercy of her servants. I don't know, my
dear, how I can possibly do all that is to be done for you without
assistance--and _there_ was a person I thought I could depend upon. A
total stranger I should not like, and really, for anything I can see at
present, I think you must go back again to Malory, and do the best you
can. I am not a strong person. I was not made for all this, and I really
feel I could just go to my bed, and cry till morning."
My heart had been very full, and I was relieved by this opportunity of
crying.
"I wonder at your crying about so good-for-nothing a person," exclaimed
mamma, impatiently. "If she had cared the least about you, she could not
have left you as she has done. A satisfactory person, certainly, that
young lady has turned out!"
Notwithstanding all this, mamma got over her troubles, and engaged a
dull and even-tempered lady, named Anna Maria Pounden, whose manners
were quiet and unexceptionable, and whose years were about fifty. She
was not much of a companion for me, you may suppose. She answered,
however, very well for all purposes intended by mamma. She was lady-like
and kind, and seemed made for keeping keys, arranging drawers, packing
boxes, and taking care of people when they were ill. She spoke French,
besides, fluently, and with a good accent, and mamma insisted that she
and I should always talk in that language. All the more persistently for
this change, my thoughts were with my beloved friend, Laura Grey.
From Malory, Rebecca Torkill told me, in a rather incoherent letter, the
particulars of Laura Grey's departure from Malory. She had gone out for
a walk, leaving her things half packed, for she was to go from Malory
next day. She did not return; but a note reached Mrs. Torkill, next
morning, telling her simply she could not return; and that she would
write to mamma and to me in London the same day. Mrs. Torkill's note,
like mine, had the Liverpool postmark; and her conjecture was thus
expressed: "I don't think, miss, she had no notions to leave that way
when she went out. It must have bin something sudding. She went fest, I
do sepose to Olyhed, and thens to Liverpule in one of them pakkats. Mr.
Williams, the town-clerk, and the vicar and his lady, and Doctor Mervyn,
is all certing sure it could be no other wise."
Mamma did not often come down to breakfast, during her short stay at
this unseasonable time of year in town. On one of those rare occasions,
however, something took place that I must describe.
Mamma was in a pretty morning _neglige_ as we used to call such careless
dresses then, looking as delicately pretty as the old china tea-cups
before her. Papa was looking almost as perplexingly young as she, and I
made up the little party to the number of the Graces. Mamma must have
been forty, and I really don't think she looked more than
two-and-thirty. Papa looked about five-and-thirty; and I think he must
have been at least ten years older than he looked. That kind of life
that is supposed to wear people out, seemed for them to have had an
influence like the elixir vitae; and I certainly have seen rustics, in
the full enjoyment of mountain breezes, simple fare, and early hours,
look many a day older than their years. The old rule, so harped upon,
that "early to bed and early to rise" is the secret of perpetual youth,
I don't dispute; but then, if it be early to go to bed at sunset in
winter, say four in the evening, and to rise at four in the morning, is
it not still earlier to anticipate that hour, and go to bed at four in
the morning, and get up at one in the afternoon? At all events, I know
that this mode of life seemed to agree with papa and mamma. I don't
think, indeed, that either suffered much from the cares that poison
enjoyment, and break down strength. Mamma threw all hers unexamined upon
papa; who threw all his with equal nonchalance upon Mr. Norman, a kind
of factotum, secretary, comptroller, diplomatist, financier, and every
other thing that comes within the words "making oneself generally
useful."
I never knew exactly what papa had a year to live upon. Mamma had money
also. But they were utterly unfit to manage their own affairs, and I
don't think they ever tried. Papa had his worries now and then; but they
seldom seemed to last more than a day, or at most a week or two. There
were a number of what he thought small sums, varying from two to five
thousand pounds, which under old settlements dropped in opportunely, and
extricated him. These sums ought to have been treated, not as income,
but as capital, as I heard a moneyed man of business say long ago; but
papa had not the talent of growing rich, or even of continuing rich, if
a good fairy had gifted him with fortune.
Papa was in a reverie, leaning back in his chair; mamma yawned over a
letter she was reading; I was drumming some dance music with my fingers
on my knee under the table-cloth, when suddenly he said to mamma:
"You don't love your aunt Lorrimer very much?"
"No, I don't love her--I never said I did, did I?"
"No, but I mean, you don't like her, you don't care about her?"
"No," said mamma, languidly, and looking wonderingly at him with her
large pretty eyes. "I don't very much--I don't quite know--I have an
affection for her."
"You don't love her, and you don't even like her, but you have an
affection for her," laughed papa.
"You are so teasing. I did not say that; what I mean is, she has a great
many faults and oddities, and I don't like them--but I have an affection
for her. Why should it seem so odd to you that one should care for one's
relations? I do feel that for her, and there let it rest."
"Well, but it ought not to rest there--as you do like her."
"Why, dear--have you heard anything of her?"
"No; but there is one thing I should not object to hear about her just
now."
"One thing? What do you mean, dear?"
"That she had died, and left us her money. I know what a brute I am, and
how shocked you are; but I assure you we rather want it at this moment.
You write to her, don't you?"
"N-not very often. Once since we saw her at Naples."
"Well, that certainly is not very often," he laughed. "But she writes to
you. You thought she seemed rather to like us--I mean you?"
"Yes."
"She has no one else to care about that I know of. I don't pretend to
care about her--I think her an old fool."
"She isn't that, dear," said mamma, quietly.
"I wish we knew where she is now. Seriously, you ought to write to her a
little oftener, dear; I wish you would."
"I'll write to her, certainly, as soon as I am a little more myself. I
could not do it just to-day; I have not been very well, you know."
"Oh! my darling, I did not mean to hurry you. Of course, not till you
feel perfectly well; don't suppose I could be such a monster. But--I
don't want, of course, to pursue her--but there is a middle course
between that and having to drop her. She really has no one else, poor
old thing! to care about, or to care about her. Not that _I_ care about
her, but you're her kinswoman, and I don't see why----"
At this moment the door opened, and there entered, with the air of an
assumed intimacy and a certain welcome, a person whom I little expected
to see there. I saw him with a shock. It was the man with the fine eyes
and great forehead, the energetic gait and narrow shoulders. The grim,
mean-looking, intelligent, agreeable man of fifty, Mr. Droqville.