Mrs. Jordan looked away from her now—looked, she thought, rather
injured and, as if trifled with, even a little angry. The mention of
Lady Bradeen had frustrated for a while the convergence of our
heroine’s thoughts; but with this impression of her old friend’s
combined impatience and diffidence they began again to whirl round her,
and continued it till one of them appeared to dart at her, out of the
dance, as if with a sharp peck. It came to her with a lively shock,
with a positive sting, that Mr. Drake was—could it be possible? With
the idea she found herself afresh on the edge of laughter, of a sudden
and strange perversity of mirth. Mr. Drake loomed, in a swift image,
before her; such a figure as she had seen in open doorways of houses in
Cocker’s quarter—majestic, middle-aged, erect, flanked on either side
by a footman and taking the name of a visitor. Mr. Drake then verily
_was_ a person who opened the door! Before she had time, however, to
recover from the effect of her evocation, she was offered a vision
which quite engulfed it. It was communicated to her somehow that the
face with which she had seen it rise prompted Mrs. Jordan to dash, a
bit wildly, at something, at anything, that might attenuate criticism.
“Lady Bradeen’s re-arranging—she’s going to be married.”
“Married?” The girl echoed it ever so softly, but there it was at last.
“Didn’t you know it?”
She summoned all her sturdiness. “No, she hasn’t told me.”
“And her friends—haven’t they?”
“I haven’t seen any of them lately. I’m not so fortunate as _you_.”
Mrs. Jordan gathered herself. “Then you haven’t even heard of Lord
Bradeen’s death?”
Her comrade, unable for a moment to speak, gave a slow headshake. “You
know it from Mr. Drake?” It was better surely not to learn things at
all than to learn them by the butler.
“She tells him everything.”
“And he tells _you_—I see.” Our young lady got up; recovering her muff
and her gloves she smiled. “Well, I haven’t unfortunately any Mr.
Drake. I congratulate you with all my heart. Even without your sort of
assistance, however, there’s a trifle here and there that I do pick up.
I gather that if she’s to marry any one it must quite necessarily be my
friend.”
Mrs. Jordan was now also on her feet. “Is Captain Everard your friend?”
The girl considered, drawing on a glove. “I saw, at one time, an
immense deal of him.”
Mrs. Jordan looked hard at the glove, but she hadn’t after all waited
for that to be sorry it wasn’t cleaner. “What time was that?”
“It must have been the time you were seeing so much of Mr. Drake.” She
had now fairly taken it in: the distinguished person Mrs. Jordan was to
marry would answer bells and put on coals and superintend, at least,
the cleaning of boots for the other distinguished person whom she
might—well, whom she might have had, if she had wished, so much more to
say to. “Good-bye,” she added; “good-bye.”
Mrs. Jordan, however, again taking her muff from her, turned it over,
brushed it off and thoughtfully peeped into it. “Tell me this before
you go. You spoke just now of your own changes. Do you mean that Mr.
Mudge—?”
“Mr. Mudge has had great patience with me—he has brought me at last to
the point. We’re to be married next month and have a nice little home.
But he’s only a grocer, you know”—the girl met her friend’s intent
eyes—“so that I’m afraid that, with the set you’ve got into, you won’t
see your way to keep up our friendship.”
Mrs. Jordan for a moment made no answer to this; she only held the muff
up to her face, after which she gave it back. “You don’t like it. I
see, I see.”
To her guest’s astonishment there were tears now in her eyes. “I don’t
like what?” the girl asked.
“Why my engagement. Only, with your great cleverness,” the poor lady
quavered out, “you put it in your own way. I mean that you’ll cool off.
You already _have_—!” And on this, the next instant, her tears began to
flow. She succumbed to them and collapsed; she sank down again, burying
her face and trying to smother her sobs.
Her young friend stood there, still in some rigour, but taken much by
surprise even if not yet fully moved to pity. “I don’t put anything in
any ‘way,’ and I’m very glad you’re suited. Only, you know, you did put
to _me_ so splendidly what, even for me, if I had listened to you, it
might lead to.”
Mrs. Jordan kept up a mild thin weak wail; then, drying her eyes, as
feebly considered this reminder. “It has led to my not starving!” she
faintly gasped.
Our young lady, at this, dropped into the place beside her, and now, in
a rush, the small silly misery was clear. She took her hand as a sign
of pitying it, then, after another instant, confirmed this expression
with a consoling kiss. They sat there together; they looked out, hand
in hand, into the damp dusky shabby little room and into the future, of
no such very different suggestion, at last accepted by each. There was
no definite utterance, on either side, of Mr. Drake’s position in the
great world, but the temporary collapse of his prospective bride threw
all further necessary light; and what our heroine saw and felt for in
the whole business was the vivid reflexion of her own dreams and
delusions and her own return to reality. Reality, for the poor things
they both were, could only be ugliness and obscurity, could never be
the escape, the rise. She pressed her friend—she had tact enough for
that—with no other personal question, brought on no need of further
revelations, only just continued to hold and comfort her and to
acknowledge by stiff little forbearances the common element in their
fate. She felt indeed magnanimous in such matters; since if it was very
well, for condolence or reassurance, to suppress just then invidious
shrinkings, she yet by no means saw herself sitting down, as she might
say, to the same table with Mr. Drake. There would luckily, to all
appearance, be little question of tables; and the circumstance that, on
their peculiar lines, her friend’s interests would still attach
themselves to Mayfair flung over Chalk Farm the first radiance it had
shown. Where was one’s pride and one’s passion when the real way to
judge of one’s luck was by making not the wrong but the right
comparison? Before she had again gathered herself to go she felt very
small and cautious and thankful. “We shall have our own house,” she
said, “and you must come very soon and let me show it you.”
“_We_ shall have our own too,” Mrs. Jordan replied; “for, don’t you
know? he makes it a condition that he sleeps out?”
“A condition?”—the girl felt out of it.
“For any new position. It was on that he parted with Lord Rye. His
lordship can’t meet it. So Mr. Drake has given him up.”
“And all for you?”—our young woman put it as cheerfully as possible.
“For me and Lady Bradeen. Her ladyship’s too glad to get him at any
price. Lord Rye, out of interest in us, has in fact quite _made_ her
take him. So, as I tell you, he will have his own establishment.”
Mrs. Jordan, in the elation of it, had begun to revive; but there was
nevertheless between them rather a conscious pause—a pause in which
neither visitor nor hostess brought out a hope or an invitation. It
expressed in the last resort that, in spite of submission and sympathy,
they could now after all only look at each other across the social
gulf. They remained together as if it would be indeed their last
chance, still sitting, though awkwardly, quite close, and feeling
also—and this most unmistakeably—that there was one thing more to go
into. By the time it came to the surface, moreover, our young friend
had recognised the whole of the main truth, from which she even drew
again a slight irritation. It was not the main truth perhaps that most
signified; but after her momentary effort, her embarrassment and her
tears Mrs. Jordan had begun to sound afresh—and even without
speaking—the note of a social connexion. She hadn’t really let go of it
that she was marrying into society. Well, it was a harmless
compensation, and it was all the prospective bride of Mr. Mudge had to
leave with her.