She was of a serious turn by nature and unlike many serious people she
made no particular study of the art of being gay. Had her circumstances
been different she might have done so, but she lived in a merry house
(heaven save the mark! as she used to say) and therefore was not driven
to amuse herself for conscience sake. The diversions she sought were of
a serious cast and she liked those best which showed most the note of
difference from Selina's interests and Lionel's. She felt that she was
most divergent when she attempted to cultivate her mind, and it was a
branch of such cultivation to visit the curiosities, the antiquities,
the monuments of London. She was fond of the Abbey and the British
Museum--she had extended her researches as far as the Tower. She read
the works of Mr. John Timbs and made notes of the old corners of history
that had not yet been abolished--the houses in which great men had lived
and died. She planned a general tour of inspection of the ancient
churches of the City and a pilgrimage to the queer places commemorated
by Dickens. It must be added that though her intentions were great her
adventures had as yet been small. She had wanted for opportunity and
independence; people had other things to do than to go with her, so that
it was not till she had been some time in the country and till a good
while after she had begun to go out alone that she entered upon the
privilege of visiting public institutions by herself. There were some
aspects of London that frightened her, but there were certain spots,
such as the Poets' Corner in the Abbey or the room of the Elgin marbles,
where she liked better to be alone than not to have the right companion.
At the time Mr. Wendover presented himself in Grosvenor Place she had
begun to put in, as they said, a museum or something of that sort
whenever she had a chance. Besides her idea that such places were
sources of knowledge (it is to be feared that the poor girl's notions of
knowledge were at once conventional and crude) they were also occasions
for detachment, an escape from worrying thoughts. She forgot Selina and
she 'qualified' herself a little--though for what she hardly knew.
The day Mr. Wendover dined in Grosvenor Place they talked about St.
Paul's, which he expressed a desire to see, wishing to get some idea of
the great past, as he said, in England as well as of the present. Laura
mentioned that she had spent half an hour the summer before in the big
black temple on Ludgate Hill; whereupon he asked her if he might
entertain the hope that--if it were not disagreeable to her to go
again--she would serve as his guide there. She had taken him to see Lady
Davenant, who was so remarkable and worth a long journey, and now he
should like to pay her back--to show _her_ something. The difficulty
would be that there was probably nothing she had not seen; but if she
could think of anything he was completely at her service. They sat
together at dinner and she told him she would think of something before
the repast was over. A little while later she let him know that a
charming place had occurred to her--a place to which she was afraid to
go alone and where she should be grateful for a protector: she would
tell him more about it afterwards. It was then settled between them that
on a certain afternoon of the same week they would go to St. Paul's
together, extending their ramble as much further as they had time. Laura
lowered her voice for this discussion, as if the range of allusion had
had a kind of impropriety. She was now still more of the mind that Mr.
Wendover was a good young man--he had such worthy eyes. His principal
defect was that he treated all subjects as if they were equally
important; but that was perhaps better than treating them with equal
levity. If one took an interest in him one might not despair of teaching
him to discriminate.
Laura said nothing at first to her sister about her appointment with
him: the feelings with which she regarded Selina were not such as to
make it easy for her to talk over matters of conduct, as it were, with
this votary of pleasure at any price, or at any rate to report her
arrangements to her as one would do to a person of fine judgment. All
the same, as she had a horror of positively hiding anything (Selina
herself did that enough for two) it was her purpose to mention at
luncheon on the day of the event that she had agreed to accompany Mr.
Wendover to St. Paul's. It so happened however that Mrs. Berrington was
not at home at this repast; Laura partook of it in the company of Miss
Steet and her young charges. It very often happened now that the
sisters failed to meet in the morning, for Selina remained very late in
her room and there had been a considerable intermission of the girl's
earlier custom of visiting her there. It was Selina's habit to send
forth from this fragrant sanctuary little hieroglyphic notes in which
she expressed her wishes or gave her directions for the day. On the
morning I speak of her maid put into Laura's hand one of these
communications, which contained the words: 'Please be sure and replace
me with the children at lunch--I meant to give them that hour to-day.
But I have a frantic appeal from Lady Watermouth; she is worse and
beseeches me to come to her, so I rush for the 12.30 train.' These lines
required no answer and Laura had no questions to ask about Lady
Watermouth. She knew she was tiresomely ill, in exile, condemned to
forego the diversions of the season and calling out to her friends, in a
house she had taken for three months at Weybridge (for a certain
particular air) where Selina had already been to see her. Selina's
devotion to her appeared commendable--she had her so much on her mind.
Laura had observed in her sister in relation to other persons and
objects these sudden intensities of charity, and she had said to
herself, watching them--'Is it because she is bad?--does she want to
make up for it somehow and to buy herself off from the penalties?'
Mr. Wendover called for his _cicerone_ and they agreed to go in a
romantic, Bohemian manner (the young man was very docile and
appreciative about this), walking the short distance to the Victoria
station and taking the mysterious underground railway. In the carriage
she anticipated the inquiry that she figured to herself he presently
would make and said, laughing: 'No, no, this is very exceptional; if we
were both English--and both what we are, otherwise--we wouldn't do
this.'
'And if only one of us were English?'
'It would depend upon which one.'
'Well, say me.'
'Oh, in that case I certainly--on so short an acquaintance--would not go
sight-seeing with you.'
'Well, I am glad I'm American,' said Mr. Wendover, sitting opposite to
her.
'Yes, you may thank your fate. It's much simpler,' Laura added.
'Oh, you spoil it!' the young man exclaimed--a speech of which she took
no notice but which made her think him brighter, as they used to say at
home. He was brighter still after they had descended from the train at
the Temple station (they had meant to go on to Blackfriars, but they
jumped out on seeing the sign of the Temple, fired with the thought of
visiting that institution too) and got admission to the old garden of
the Benchers, which lies beside the foggy, crowded river, and looked at
the tombs of the crusaders in the low Romanesque church, with the
cross-legged figures sleeping so close to the eternal uproar, and
lingered in the flagged, homely courts of brick, with their
much-lettered door-posts, their dull old windows and atmosphere of
consultation--lingered to talk of Johnson and Goldsmith and to remark
how London opened one's eyes to Dickens; and he was brightest of all
when they stood in the high, bare cathedral, which suggested a dirty
whiteness, saying it was fine but wondering why it was not finer and
letting a glance as cold as the dusty, colourless glass fall upon
epitaphs that seemed to make most of the defunct bores even in death.
Mr. Wendover was decorous but he was increasingly gay, and these
qualities appeared in him in spite of the fact that St. Paul's was
rather a disappointment. Then they felt the advantage of having the
other place--the one Laura had had in mind at dinner--to fall back upon:
that perhaps would prove a compensation. They entered a hansom now (they
had to come to that, though they had walked also from the Temple to St.
Paul's) and drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Laura making the reflection
as they went that it was really a charm to roam about London under valid
protection--such a mixture of freedom and safety--and that perhaps she
had been unjust, ungenerous to her sister. A good-natured, positively
charitable doubt came into her mind--a doubt that Selina might have the
benefit of. What she liked in her present undertaking was the element of
the _imprevu_ that it contained, and perhaps it was simply the same
happy sense of getting the laws of London--once in a way--off her back
that had led Selina to go over to Paris to ramble about with Captain
Crispin. Possibly they had done nothing worse than go together to the
Invalides and Notre Dame; and if any one were to meet _her_ driving that
way, so far from home, with Mr. Wendover--Laura, mentally, did not
finish her sentence, overtaken as she was by the reflection that she had
fallen again into her old assumption (she had been in and out of it a
hundred times), that Mrs. Berrington _had_ met Captain Crispin--the idea
she so passionately repudiated. She at least would never deny that she
had spent the afternoon with Mr. Wendover: she would simply say that he
was an American and had brought a letter of introduction.
The cab stopped at the Soane Museum, which Laura Wing had always wanted
to see, a compatriot having once told her that it was one of the most
curious things in London and one of the least known. While Mr. Wendover
was discharging the vehicle she looked over the important old-fashioned
square (which led her to say to herself that London was endlessly big
and one would never know all the places that made it up) and saw a great
bank of cloud hanging above it--a definite portent of a summer storm.
'We are going to have thunder; you had better keep the cab,' she said;
upon which her companion told the man to wait, so that they should not
afterwards, in the wet, have to walk for another conveyance. The
heterogeneous objects collected by the late Sir John Soane are arranged
in a fine old dwelling-house, and the place gives one the impression of
a sort of Saturday afternoon of one's youth--a long, rummaging visit,
under indulgent care, to some eccentric and rather alarming old
travelled person. Our young friends wandered from room to room and
thought everything queer and some few objects interesting; Mr. Wendover
said it would be a very good place to find a thing you couldn't find
anywhere else--it illustrated the prudent virtue of keeping. They took
note of the sarcophagi and pagodas, the artless old maps and medals.
They admired the fine Hogarths; there were uncanny, unexpected objects
that Laura edged away from, that she would have preferred not to be in
the room with. They had been there half an hour--it had grown much
darker--when they heard a tremendous peal of thunder and became aware
that the storm had broken. They watched it a while from the upper
windows--a violent June shower, with quick sheets of lightning and a
rainfall that danced on the pavements. They took it sociably, they
lingered at the window, inhaling the odour of the fresh wet that
splashed over the sultry town. They would have to wait till it had
passed, and they resigned themselves serenely to this idea, repeating
very often that it would pass very soon. One of the keepers told them
that there were other rooms to see--that there were very interesting
things in the basement. They made their way down--it grew much darker
and they heard a great deal of thunder--and entered a part of the house
which presented itself to Laura as a series of dim, irregular
vaults--passages and little narrow avenues--encumbered with strange
vague things, obscured for the time but some of which had a wicked,
startling look, so that she wondered how the keepers could stay there.
'It's very fearful--it looks like a cave of idols!' she said to her
companion; and then she added--'Just look there--is that a person or a
thing?' As she spoke they drew nearer to the object of her reference--a
figure in the middle of a small vista of curiosities, a figure which
answered her question by uttering a short shriek as they approached. The
immediate cause of this cry was apparently a vivid flash of lightning,
which penetrated into the room and illuminated both Laura's face and
that of the mysterious person. Our young lady recognised her sister, as
Mrs. Berrington had evidently recognised her. 'Why, Selina!' broke from
her lips before she had time to check the words. At the same moment the
figure turned quickly away, and then Laura saw that it was accompanied
by another, that of a tall gentleman with a light beard which shone in
the dusk. The two persons retreated together--dodged out of sight, as it
were, disappearing in the gloom or in the labyrinth of the objects
exhibited. The whole encounter was but the business of an instant.
'Was it Mrs. Berrington?' Mr. Wendover asked with interest while Laura
stood staring.
'Oh no, I only thought it was at first,' she managed to reply, very
quickly. She had recognised the gentleman--he had the fine fair beard of
Captain Crispin--and her heart seemed to her to jump up and down. She
was glad her companion could not see her face, and yet she wanted to get
out, to rush up the stairs, where he would see it again, to escape from
the place. She wished not to be there with _them_--she was overwhelmed
with a sudden horror. 'She has lied--she has lied again--she has
lied!'--that was the rhythm to which her thought began to dance. She
took a few steps one way and then another: she was afraid of running
against the dreadful pair again. She remarked to her companion that it
was time they should go off, and then when he showed her the way back to
the staircase she pleaded that she had not half seen the things. She
pretended suddenly to a deep interest in them, and lingered there
roaming and prying about. She was flurried still more by the thought
that he would have seen her flurry, and she wondered whether he believed
the woman who had shrieked and rushed away was _not_ Selina. If she was
not Selina why had she shrieked? and if she was Selina what would Mr.
Wendover think of her behaviour, and of her own, and of the strange
accident of their meeting? What must she herself think of that? so
astonishing it was that in the immensity of London so infinitesimally
small a chance should have got itself enacted. What a queer place to
come to--for people like them! They would get away as soon as possible,
of that she could be sure; and she would wait a little to give them
time.
Mr. Wendover made no further remark--that was a relief; though his
silence itself seemed to show that he was mystified. They went upstairs
again and on reaching the door found to their surprise that their cab
had disappeared--a circumstance the more singular as the man had not
been paid. The rain was still coming down, though with less violence,
and the square had been cleared of vehicles by the sudden storm. The
doorkeeper, perceiving the dismay of our friends, explained that the cab
had been taken up by another lady and another gentleman who had gone out
a few minutes before; and when they inquired how he had been induced to
depart without the money they owed him the reply was that there
evidently had been a discussion (he hadn't heard it, but the lady seemed
in a fearful hurry) and the gentleman had told him that they would make
it all up to him and give him a lot more into the bargain. The
doorkeeper hazarded the candid surmise that the cabby would make ten
shillings by the job. But there were plenty more cabs; there would be
one up in a minute and the rain moreover was going to stop. 'Well, that
_is_ sharp practice!' said Mr. Wendover. He made no further allusion to
the identity of the lady.