WAITING.
Podbury-street, a small and narrow street of unimportant houses, in
the south-western postal district of London, has seen various
mutations of fortune. Twenty years ago, it was Podbury-street,
Pimlico, and the unimportant houses were for the most part occupied by
persons who contented themselves with the basement floor, and let the
rest of the rooms in lodgings. The tenants of these lodgings were
generally young men who were engaged in qualifying themselves for the
medical profession by 'walking' the near-lying St. George's Hospital;
young men of convivial temperament, who attended lectures with regular
irregularity, and never thought of giving up to study or sleep the
hours which they apparently imagined should be devoted to comic
singing. It was the perpetual presence of these gentlemen, no doubt,
which caused the private residences of Podbury-street to be dotted
here and there with public-houses and tobacconists' shops. A
procession of slatternly maids-of-all-work, with the door-key in one
hand, and a jug either dependent from the finger or firmly grasped by
the other hand, was perpetually filing through Podbury-street; and the
drivers of the Royal Blue omnibuses, which at that time used it as a
thoroughfare, were, from the altitude of the box, enabled to peer into
the drawing-room floors, or to gaze down into the parlours, in both of
which localities the same spectacle of a table covered with pewter
vessels, and flanked by half-a-dozen gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves,
who, using it as a leg-rest, lay back in their armchairs with clay
pipes in their mouths, invariably presented itself.
The lapse of time, and the enterprise of the late Mr. Cubitt, effected
a wondrous change in the condition of Podbury-street. When its
denizens saw themselves gradually surrounded by squares, terraces, and
crescents of enormous mansions, which were each year springing up, and
converting into a suburb of palaces what had recently been a dismal
swamp, they unerringly perceived that the opportunity had arrived for
changing the scale of their prices and the style of their lodgings.
The medical students packed up their Lares and Penates, their
preparations and tobacco-jars, and moved off with them to more distant
quarters; the omnibuses went round another way; the beer-shops and
tobacconists disappeared as the leases fell in; finally, the name of
Pimlico became unsavoury in the nostrils of the neighbourhood, and the
lodging-house letters had 'Podbury-street, Eaton-square,' imprinted on
their cards; for they let lodgings still, but to a very different
class of tenants. Gentlemen in the government offices, who invariably
put on evening-dress even if they only dined at their club, who stuck
the looking-glass full of the cards of invitation which they received
from great people, and who smoked dainty Russian cigarettes, but would
have fainted at the notion of anything so low as a pipe; managing
mammas, who brought their marriageable daughters to London during the
season; rich valetudinarians, who came up to town to consult famous
physicians,--such were the persons of gentility who now found a
temporary abode in Podbury-street. No slatternly maids-of-all-work
were to be seen now; nearly every house boasted a page, a youth whose
waiting at table would have been more pleasant had he been able to rid
himself of the scent of the blacking which hung around him from his
early domestic duties; and during the season, when some of the
managing mammas gave little dinners or small musical evenings in
return for the hospitality which they had experienced, and in the hope
of making a special _coup_ for their marriageable daughters, the
little passage, called by courtesy the 'hall,' would be so filled up
by two footmen, that the other attendant giants in plush would have to
cool their calves in the open air.
In a drawing-room floor in Podbury-street, Lady Forestfield had taken
up her abode, and was living in seclusion, awaiting the result of her
husband's application to the Divorce Court. After the scene with Mr.
Bristow, and the degradation which she had suffered before her own
servants, she felt it impossible to stay on in Seamore-place, and
accordingly the next day, as soon as she was able to contemplate the
immediate future with some degree of calmness, and to make up her mind
as to the course she should best pursue, she had removed to these
lodgings, accompanied only by a young girl who had been a housemaid at
Seamore-place, had always shown a strong attachment for her mistress,
and now refused to be separated from her. This girl's mother, a
respectable woman, was the landlady of the house in Podbury-street,
and everything was done as far as possible to insure Lady
Forestfield's comfort.
As far as possible indeed, but, under the circumstances, worthy Mrs.
Wilson's possible went but a little way. For the first fortnight of
her tenancy, May Forestfield scarcely tasted food, scarcely lifted her
head from the pillow, but lay there passing the bygone days of her
life in review before her, and silently bemoaning her hard fate. The
loss of wealth and position--the position, that is, which her rank had
given her--affected her but little; she took no heed of them, she had
no time to give them a thought, nor did she trouble herself in regard
to the future; her whole time was occupied in thinking over the
details of her early acquaintance with her husband, and in wondering
at the infatuation which had induced her to prefer the other man to
him. Not that she ignored or attempted to deceive herself in regard to
his heartless cynicism and savage brutality. Every bitter word seemed
burnt into her brain, each cruel deed seemed to rise before her fresh
as at the time of its perpetration; and yet in her present mood she
found excuses for them all, and ascribed to herself the provocation of
epithets which a 'beggar in his drink' would not have fouled his mouth
with.
Do you wonder at this conduct? I take it, it is common enough. May
Forestfield was no peculiar character, and in some things had a
certain clearness of sense and strength of mind; but she was a woman,
and consequently when she found she had been deprived of something
which up to this point she did not value, but which it was impossible
to regain, she set about grieving after and bewailing its loss with
all her strength. Never even in the early days of her acquaintance
with Lord Forestfield, when uncertainty of his regard for her rendered
her doubly keen in the chase, had she felt that worship, that
hungering after him which now beset her.
While she was lying in this state she received the following letter,
dated from Spa:
'You will have been surprised at my silence and apparent desertion of
you, but I waited until I could learn what steps that scoundrel who
calls himself your husband was about to take. I knew him to be too
great a coward to ask satisfaction of me, but I doubted whether,
knowing with what a character he himself must come into court, he
would venture to claim the aid of the law. I learn now that he has
done so, and that in a short time you are likely to be free. His plots
were too skilfully concocted, his spies too carefully trained, to
allow of there being any doubt in the matter; the court will pronounce
for the divorce, and he will be at liberty to carry to its end a
pursuit in which he has been long engaged.
'Blinded by my passion for you, I have done you a grievous wrong, for
which there is but one reparation. That reparation I offer you now.
One line from you will bring me at once to your feet, and I swear on
my honour and my name that so soon as the decree of the court is
pronounced I will make you my wife.
'GUSTAVE DE TOURNEFORT.'
Two short weeks ago May would have welcomed this letter with
eagerness, and would have accepted the proposal it contained with
avidity; when the blow dealt her by her husband through Mr. Bristow's
agency had fallen upon her with crushing force she would have welcomed
almost any means to free herself from the thraldom which even the
retention of his name seemed to imply. She felt most deeply the
baseness of his conduct in continuing semi-amicable relations with
her, relations such as for a long time had existed between them, up to
the last moment of his leaving her for ever, and when he had planned
and matured the design of casting her forth and holding her up to the
reprobation of the world. Her caprice, passion, call it what you will,
for Gustave de Tournefort had never been sufficiently strong to
ennoble him in her eyes, or to prevent her from recognising him for
what he really was--a careless libertine; but suffering as she had
suffered at first, she would have been glad of any escape from the
tortures of shame, degradation, and abandonment, and would have
accepted his proffered hand, though knowing perfectly that what he
called his heart would have no part in the alliance.
Now, however, all was changed. In the strange reaction which she had
undergone under the revulsion of feeling which made her long to see
her husband once again, she looked upon this letter from De Tournefort
as little less than an insult. It was not a voluntary offer, she
thought on reperusing it; it had been wrung from him by his yet
remaining faint adhesion to that code of honour which even such men as
he were bound to obey, and it was made, not from any love for her, but
in order that he might stand well in the eyes of that world in which
he still doubtless hoped to play many a similar part. He had 'done her
a grievous wrong,' and he offered her 'reparation;' that was the
keynote of the whole affair, his reading of that odious word 'duty,'
which throughout her life she had always found put forward as an
excuse. Had it been otherwise, had this offer been prompted by any
feeling of liking or even of regard for what had occurred, it would
have been made long since. He must have heard, for all that world in
which he moved knew it perfectly, that she had left her home; and had
there been the least spark of chivalrous feeling in him, he would have
come to her at once. Her mind was speedily made up; she would not
demean herself by accepting a proposition which was merely made to her
out of charity, and M. de Tournefort's letter should remain
unanswered.
O, the weary, weary days in Podbury-street! The getting-up, protracted
until a late hour, in order to get over as much of the day as
possible; the wretched little breakfast, with London eggs from fowls
who lived in an area, and London milk from a cow which had not seen a
green field for years; the long mornings, spent in reading in the
newspaper the chronicled doings of that world in which she had once
played so conspicuous a part,--records of dinners, balls, and fetes,
with guest lists containing the names of persons her intimacy with
whom she could scarcely even then imagine to be broken,--gossip of
forthcoming arrangements at Goodwood and Cowes, in both of which
places she had always held her court. The journal would drop from her
hand as memory brought before her the ducal lawn, dotted all over with
loveliest dresses, and ringing with merriest laughter from happily
improvised luncheon parties; or a covered bit of sea-walk in front of
the club-house at Cowes, where on the night of the last regatta-ball
she had met De Tournefort, and listened to his impassioned pleading.
Her thoughts were far away, busy with the memories of these once-happy
times, but her eyes were gazing idly before her on the tradespeople
flitting about from house to house, the flirtations of the stalwart
and greasy young butcher with grinning Molly the cook, the
heavily-laden postmen steadily pursuing their rounds, the loitering
cabmen looking round for fares, and all the panorama of morning life
in the great city.
In the afternoon, when the carriages were rolling about, and the
little street was sonorous with the echoing double-knocks dealt on its
tiny doors by huge footmen, May would sit behind the window-curtain
watching all that was passing, and ever and anon drawing farther back
into the shadow, as though fearful of being recognised. She had little
cause for such anxiety, poor child, though in the course of the day
she would see many of those with whom but a short time ago she used to
be in constant association: the Duchess of Melrose, leaning back in
her luxurious carriage, and surveying mankind superciliously, though
not without interest, through her double glasses; Sir Wolfrey
Delapryme in his mail phaeton, tooling his roan cobs; Captain Seaver
on his neat hack; and Mrs. Ingram in her victoria. Mrs. Ingram had
stopped in Podbury-street, and had come up to see May; it being her
maxim, she said, that 'when any one had come to grief her pals should
stick by her.' Kate Ingram's sympathy, however well meant, was not put
in a very acceptable manner; she said that no doubt May had had a
'facer,' but that it was 'no use crying over spilt milk.' She spoke of
De Tournefort as that 'foreign sportsman,' said she considered him a
'snob' and a 'cad,' and that May had done quite rightly in refusing to
have anything more to say to him. She proposed to make up a little
Sunday river-party of people who 'wouldn't mind, don't you know,' and
to invite May to it, but she was rather pleased than otherwise when
she found May quietly but firmly declined; and shortly after took her
leave, promising to come again soon; a promise which she would not
keep.
Once May saw her husband. Lord Forestfield drove through
Podbury-street in a hansom cab, sitting well back, with his arms
crossed and a pleasant smile upon his face. With her renewed feeling
for him, May would rather not have seen that smile; it showed that he
was happy and careless, while she was suffering such acute misery. In
the eyes of the world she was the guilty one, and had to bear the
consequences of her guilt; but in his own inmost mind he must know
that he had been at least equally criminal, and that if it had not
been for his neglect and desertion of her she would never have
committed the crime for which he was now exacting so fearful a
penalty.
And as she pondered over this a horrible idea flashed across her; a
passage in De Tournefort's letter recurred to her mind, in which,
speaking of Lord Forestfield, he had said, 'he will be at liberty to
carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.' What
could that mean? What but that her husband had determined on divorcing
her, with the view of marrying some one else to whom he had been long
attached. Of marrying some one else! The fact that he himself was
married had had no effect in preventing his forming other connections,
but marriage while she lived undivorced was for him impossible; it was
in that view, then, that he had determined on pursuing his vengeance
to the bitter end.
The thought drove her nearly mad. She felt that she could not support
it in silence, that she must go to him at once and make one final
appeal. She rose and looked in the glass. Her beauty had suffered but
little from what she had undergone; she was perhaps a trifle paler
than usual, but Lord Forestfield had always expressed his dislike of
blooming hoydens, and there was no doubt that at one time he admired
her deeply and was greatly influenced by her beauty. Would he be so
again? She would see.
The next day the maid, who had been sent to see her former
fellow-servants in Seamore-place, returned with the information that
Lord Forestfield had gone down to Woodburn. May looked upon this as a
happy chance, and determined on following him there at once. She could
see him more readily, could speak to him more freely, in the seclusion
of Woodburn than if he had remained in town; she would go down there
that very afternoon. In pursuance of this determination she set out,
accompanied only by her maid, and dressed in a common gown and bonnet
in order to escape any recognition. After a two hours' railway journey
they arrived at Crawley, the station from which Lord Forestfield's
seat was reached, and taking a fly were driven over to the gates of
Woodburn Park. There they halted, leaving the vehicle to await their
return. The maid, who was known to the lodge-keeper, went forward; and
after learning that his lordship was there and alone, easily obtained
admission for herself and friend to pass through the gates. Up the
long avenue, the scene of her great reception by her husband's tenants
on her return home after her marriage, May Forestfield now crept with
trembling limbs and a desperate sinking at heart, her humble companion
endeavouring to sustain her by well-meant though ill-chosen
exhortation. Far away in the distance glimmered the house, a long low
stone building, from one window of which a light was shining. So far
as May could make out, this proceeded from the library, a room
immediately on the left hand of the porch, to which access was
perfectly easy. The thought of seeing her husband and completely
humbling herself before him, and of begging, not indeed to be placed
back in her old position in the eyes of the world--that she scarcely
dared to wish, much more to hope--but for restoration to his favour
and his love, for permission at least to pass some portion of her life
in his society,--the thought of this nerved her with fresh strength,
and enabled her to reach the end of the avenue. There she and her
companion halted for a moment and looked around them. So far as they
could make out through the deepening dusk the hall-door was open. It
was May's intention to creep in there, and enter the library
immediately, to throw herself at her husband's feet. By the aid of the
lamp which burned on the writing-table, she could discern through the
open window the dim outline of Lord Forestfield's figure bending over
some papers. From time to time he looked up, and it was necessary for
her to watch the moment of his absorption in order to effect her
entrance unobserved.
The opportunity offered itself, and May stole quietly towards the
porch. Just at that moment Lord Forestfield walked to the window and
peered out into the gloom.
'Who is there?' he cried, as he observed the shrinking figure.
May was silent.
'Who is there?' he repeated. 'I insist upon an answer.'
'Richard,' faltered May, spreading her hands towards him, 'I--'
'I thought it was you,' he said, in a harsh low tone. 'I shall
discharge the lodge-keeper to-morrow for having permitted you to pass
the gate. Now be off!' he cried, waving his hand; 'I should be sorry
to have to ring for the servants to turn you away. Be off, do you
hear?'
But May heard nothing. She had sunk in a fainting state on the steps.
Lord Forestfield then turned to the maid, who was hastening to her
mistress's assistance. 'Take this woman away,' he cried; 'and if you
value your own liberty, never bring her here again.' Then he violently
closed the window and returned to his papers.