FLITTING.
Marian Ashurst dearly loved her home. To her concentrative and
self-contained nature local associations were peculiarly precious; the
place in which she had lived the life so essentially her own was very
dear. The shabby old house, though she perfectly understood its
shabbiness, and would have prized the power of renovating and adorning
it as thoroughly as any _petite maîtresse_ would have prized the power
of adorning her _bijou_ residence with all the prettiness of modern
upholstery, was a shrine in her eyes. Base and unbeautiful, but
sacred, the place in which her father had dutifully and patiently
passed his laborious life--had it not been wasted? the proud
discontented spirit asked itself many a time, but found no voice to
answer "no."
She had often pictured to her fancy what the house might have been
made, if there had but been money to make it anything with, money to
do anything with; if only they had not always been so helpless, so
burdened with the especially painful load of genteel poverty. She had
exercised her womanly ingenuity, put forth her womanly tastes, so far
as she could, and the house was better than might have been expected
under all the circumstances; but ingenuity and taste, which double the
effect of money when united to that useful agency, are not of much
avail without it, and will not supply curtains and carpet, paint,
varnishing, and general upholstery. There was not a superfluous
ornament, and there were many in the drawing-rooms at Woolgreaves very
offensive to her instinctively correct taste,--whose price would not
have materially altered the aspect of Marian Ashurst's home, as she
had recognised with much secret bitterness of spirit, on her first
visit to the Creswells. She would have made the old house pretty and
pleasant, if she could, especially while he lived, to whom its
prettiness and pleasantness might have brought refreshment of spirit,
and a little cheerfulness in the surroundings of his toilsome life;
but she loved it, notwithstanding its dulness and its frigid
shabbiness, and the prospect of being obliged to leave it gave her
exquisite pain. Marian was surprised when she discovered that her
feelings on this point were keener than those of her mother. She had
anticipated, with shrinking and reluctance of whose intensity she felt
ashamed, the difficulty she should experience when that last worst
necessity must arise, when her mother must leave the home of so many
years, and the scene of her tranquil happiness. Mrs. Ashurst had been
a very happy woman, notwithstanding her delicate health, and the
difficulties it had brought upon the little household. In the first
place, she was naturally of a placid temperament. In the second, her
husband told her as little as possible of the constantly pressing,
hopelessly inextricable trouble of his life. And lastly, Mrs.
Ashurst's inexperience prevented her realising danger in the future
from any source except that one whence it had actually come, fallen in
its fullest, fatalmost might--the sickness and death of her husband.
When that tremendous blow fell upon her, it stunned the widow. She
could not grieve, she could not care about anything else. She was not
a woman of an imaginative turn of mind; feeling had always been
powerful and deep in her; but fancy had ever been active, so that when
the one awful and overwhelming fact existed, it was quite enough for
her, it swamped everything else, it needed not to bring up any
reinforcements to her discomfiture. She was ready to go anywhere with
Marian, to do anything which Marian advised or directed. The old house
was to be left, a new home was to be sought for. A stranger was coming
to be the master where her husband's firm but gentle rule had made
itself loved, respected, and obeyed for so long; a stranger was to sit
in her husband's seat, and move about the house where his step and his
voice were heard no more, listened for no longer, not even now, in the
first confused moments of waking after the blessed oblivion of sleep.
And in that awful fact all was included. Poor Mrs. Ashurst cared
little for the linen and the china now. Whether they should be packed
up and removed to the humble lodgings which were to be the next home
of herself and her daughter, or whether Mr. Ashurst's successor should
be asked to take them at a valuation, were points which she left to
Marian's decision. She had not any interest in anything of the kind
now. It was time that Marian's mind should be made up on these and
other matters; and the girl, notwithstanding her premature gravity and
her habit of decision, found her task difficult in fact and sentiment.
Her mother was painfully quiescent, hopelessly resigned. In every word
and look she expressed plainly that life had come to a standstill for
her, that she could no longer feel any interest or take any active
part in its conduct; and thus she depressed Marian very much, who had
her own sense of impending disappointment and imperative effort, in
addition to their common sorrow, to struggle against.
Mrs. Ashurst and her daughter had seen a good deal of the family at
Woolgreaves since the day on which Marian's cherished belief in the
value and delight of wealth had been strengthened by that visit to the
splendid dwelling of her father's old friend. The young ladies had
quite "taken to" Mrs. Ashurst, and Mrs. Ashurst had almost "taken to"
them. They came into Helmingham frequently, and never without bringing
welcome contributions from the large and lavishly kept gardens at
Woolgreaves. They tried, in many girlish and unskilful ways, to be
intimate with Marian; but they felt they did not succeed, and only
their perception of their uncle's wishes prevented their giving up the
effort. Marian was very civil, very much obliged for their kindness
and attention; but uncordial, "un-getatable," Maude Creswell aptly
described it.
The condition of Mr. Ashurst's affairs had not proved to be quite so
deplorable as had been supposed. There was a small insurance on his
life; there were a few trifling sums due to him, which the debtors
made haste to pay, owing, indeed, to the immediate application made to
them by Mr. Creswell, who interfered as actively as unostentatiously
on behalf of the bereaved woman; altogether a little sum remained,
which would keep them above want, or the almost equally painful effort
of immediate exertion to earn their own living, _with management_.
Yes, that was the qualification which Marian understood thoroughly,
understood to mean daily and hourly self-denial, watchfulness, and
calculation, and more and worse than that--the termination on her part
of the hope of preventing her mother's missing the material comforts
which had been procured and preserved for her by a struggle whose
weariness she had never been permitted to comprehend.
The old house had been shabby and poor, but it had been comfortable.
It had given them space and cleanliness, and there was no vulgarity in
its meagreness. But the only order of lodgings to which her mother and
she could venture to aspire was that which invariably combines the
absence of space and of cleanliness with the presence of tawdriness
and discomfort. And this must last until Walter should be able to
rescue them from it. She could not suffice to that rescue herself, but
he would. He must succeed! Had he not every quality, every facility,
and the strongest of motives? She felt this--that, in her case, the
strongest motive would have been the desire for success, _per se_; but
in his the strongest was his love of her. She recognised this, she
knew this, she admired it in an odd abstract kind of way; when her
heart was sufficiently disengaged from pressing care to find a moment
for any kind of joy, she rejoiced in it; but she knew she could not
imitate it--that was not in her. She had not much experience of
herself yet, and the process of self-analysis was not habitual to her;
but she felt instinctively that the more selfish instincts of love
were hers, its noble influences, its profounder motives her lover's.
It was, then, to him she had to look, in him she had to trust, for the
rescue that was to come in time. In how much time? in how little? Ah,
there was the ever-present, ever-pressing question, and Marian brought
to its perpetual repetition all the importance, all the unreasonable
measurement of time, all the ignorance of its exceeding brevity and
insignificance inseparable from her youth.
She had nearly completed the preparations for departure from the old
home; the few possessions left her and her mother were ready for
removal; a lodging in the village had been engaged, and the last few
days were dragging themselves heavily over the heads of Mrs. Ashurst
and Marian, when Mr. Creswell, having returned to Woolgreaves after a
short absence, came to see them.
Mrs. Ashurst was walking in the neglected garden, and had reached the
far end of the little extent when Mr. Creswell arrived at the open
door of the house. A woman-servant, stolid and sturdy, was passing
through the red-tiled square hall.
"Is Mrs. Ashurst in?" asked the visitor. "Mrs. Ashurst is in the
garden, I see--don't disturb her."
Marian, who had heard the voice, answered Mr. Creswell's question by
appearing on the threshold of the room which had been her father's
study, and which, since his death, her mother and she had made their
sitting-room. She looked weary; the too bright colour which fatigue
brings to some faces was on hers, and her eyelids were red and heavy;
her black dress, which had the limp, ungraceful, lustreless look of
mourning attire too long unrenewed, hung on her fine upright figure
after a fashion which told how little the girl cared how she looked;
and the hand she first held out to Mr. Creswell, and then drew back
with a faint smile, was covered with dust.
"I can't shake hands," she said; "I have been tying up the last
bundles of books and papers, and my hands are disgraceful. Come in
here, Mr. Creswell; I believe there is _one_ unoccupied chair."
He followed her into the study, and took the seat she pointed out,
while she placed herself on a pile of folios which lay on the floor
in front of the low wide window. Marian laid her arm upon the
window-sill, and leaned her head back against one of the scanty frayed
curtains. Her eyes closed for a moment, and a slight shudder passed
over her.
"You are very tired, Miss Ashurst, quite worn out," said Mr. Creswell;
"you have been doing too much--packing all those books, I suppose."
"Yes," said Marian, "I looked to that myself, and, indeed, there was
nobody else to do it. But it is tiring work, and dirty,"--she struck
her hands together, and shook her dress, so that a shower of dust fell
from it--"and sad work besides. You know, Mr. Creswell"--here her face
softened suddenly, and her voice fell--"how much my father loved his
books. It is not easy to say good-bye to them; it is like a faint
echo, strong enough to pain one, though, of the good-bye to himself."
"But why are you obliged to say good-bye to them?" asked Mr. Creswell,
with genuine anxiety and compassion.
"What could we do with them?" said Marian; "there's no place to keep
them. We must have taken another room specially for them if we took
them to our lodgings, and there is no one to buy them here, so we are
going to send them to London to be sold. I suppose they will bring a
very small sum indeed--nothing, perhaps, when the expenses are paid.
But it is our only means of disposing of them; so I have been dusting
and sorting and arranging them all day, and I am tired and dusty and
sick--sick at heart."
Marian leaned her head on the arm which lay on the window-sill, and
looked very forlorn. She also looked very pretty, and Mr. Creswell
thought so. This softened mood, so unusual to her, became her, and the
little touch of confidence in her manner, equally unusual, flattered
him. He felt an odd sort of difficulty in speaking to her--to this
young girl, his old friend's orphan child, one to whom he intended so
kindly, towards whom his position was so entirely one of patronage,
not in any offensive sense, of course, but still of patronage.
"I--I never thought of this," he said hesitatingly; "I ought to have
remembered it, of course; no doubt the books must be a difficulty to
you--a difficulty to keep and a harder one to part with. But bless me,
my dear Miss Ashurst, you say there is no one here to buy them--you
did not remember me? Why did you not remember me? Of course I will buy
them. I shall be only too delighted to buy them, to have the books my
good friend loved so much--of course I shall."
"I had seen your library at Woolgreaves," said Marian, replying to Mr.
Creswell's first impetuous question, "and I could not suppose you
wanted more books, or such shabby ones as these."
"You judge of books like a lady, then, though you were your
father's companion as well as his pet," said Mr. Creswell, smiling.
"Those shabby books are, many of them, much more valuable than my
well-dressed shelf-fillers. And even if they were not, I should prize
them for the same reason that you do, and almost as much--yes, Miss
Ashurst, almost as much. Men are awkward about saying such things, but
I may tell his daughter that but for James Ashurst I never should have
known the value of books--in other than a commercial sense, I mean."
"I don't know what they are worth," said Marian, "but if you will find
out, and buy them, my mother and I will be very thankful. I know it
will be a great relief to her to think of them at Woolgreaves, and all
together. She has fretted more about my father's books being
dispersed, and going into the hands of strangers, than about any other
secondary cause of sorrow. The other things she takes quietly enough."
The widow could be seen from the window by them both as she pursued
her monotonous walk in the garden, with her head bowed down and her
figure so expressive of feebleness.
"Does she?" said Mr. Creswell. "I am very glad to hear that.
Then"--and here Mr. Creswell gave a little sigh of relief--"we will
look upon the matter of the books as arranged, and to-morrow I will
send for them. Give yourself no further trouble about them. Fletcher
shall settle it all."
"You will have them valued?" Marian asked with business-like
seriousness.
"Certainly," returned Mr. Creswell. "And now tell me what your plans
are, and where these lodgings are to which you alluded just now. Maude
and Gertrude have not seen you, they tell me, since you took them?"
"No," said Marian, without the least tone of regret in her voice; "we
have not met since your visit to Manchester. Miss Creswell's cold has
kept her at home, and I have been much too busy to get so far as
Woolgreaves."
"Your mother has seen my nieces?"
"Yes; Miss Gertrude Creswell called, and took her for a drive, and she
remained to lunch at Woolgreaves. But that was one day when I was
lodging-hunting--nothing had then been settled."
"The girls are very fond of Mrs. Ashurst."
"They are very kind," said Marian absently. The Misses Creswell were
absolutely uninteresting to her, and as yet Marian Ashurst had never
pretended to entertain a feeling she did not experience. The threshold
of that particular school of life in which the art of feigning is
learned lay very near her feet now, but they had not yet crossed it.
Marian and Mr. Creswell remained a long time together before Mrs.
Ashurst came in. The girl spoke to the old gentleman with more freedom
and with more feeling than on any previous occasion of their meeting;
and Mr. Creswell began to think how interesting she was, in comparison
with Maude and Gertrude, for instance; how much sense she had, how
little frivolity. How very good-looking she was also; he had no idea
she ever would have been so handsome--yes, positively handsome--he
used the word in his thoughts--she certainly had not possessed
anything like it when he had seen her formerly--a dark, prim,
old-fashioned kind of girl, going about her father's study with an air
of quiet appreciative sharpness and shrewdness which he did not
altogether like. But she really had become quite handsome then, in her
poor dress, with her grieved, tired face, her hair carelessly pushed
off it any way, and her hands rough and soiled; she had made him
recognise and feel that she had the gift of beauty also.
Mr. Creswell thought about this when he had taken leave of Mrs.
Ashurst and Marian, having secured their promise to come to
Woolgreaves on the day but one after, when he hoped Marian would
assist him in assigning places to the books, which she felt almost
reconciled to part with under these new conditions. He thought about
them a good deal, and tried to make out, among the dregs of his
memory, who it was who had said within his hearing, when Marian was a
child, "Yes, she's a smart little girl, sure enough, and a dead hand
at a bargain."
Marian Ashurst thought about Mr. Creswell after he left her and her
mother. Mrs. Ashurst was very much relieved and gratified by his
kindness about the books, as was Marian also. But the mother and
daughter regarded the incident from different points of view. Mrs.
Ashurst dwelt on the kindness of heart which dictated the purchase of
the dead friend's books as at once a tribute to the old friendship and
a true and delicate kindness to the survivors. Marian saw all that,
but she dwelt rather on the felicitous condition which rendered it
easy to indulge such impulses. Here was another instance, and in her
favour, of the value of money.
"It has made more than one difference to me," she thought that night,
when she was alone, and looked round the dismantled study; "it has
made me like old Mr. Creswell, and hitherto I have only envied him."
"Do be persuaded, dear Mrs. Ashurst," said Maude Creswell, in a tone
of sincere and earnest entreaty. She had made her appearance at the
widow's house early on the day which succeeded her uncle's visit, and
had presented, in her own and in her sister's name, as well as in that
of Mr. Creswell, a petition, which she was now backing up with much
energy. "Do come and stay with us. We are not going to have any
company; there shall be nothing that you can possibly dislike. And
Gerty and I will not tease you or Miss Ashurst; and you shall not be
worried by Tom or anything. _Do_ come, dear, dear Mrs. Ashurst; never
mind the nasty lodgings; they can go on getting properly aired, and
cleaned, and so on, until you are tired of Woolgreaves, and then you
can go to them at any time. But not from your own house, where you
have been so long, into that little place, in a street, too. Say you
will come, now do."
Mrs. Ashurst was surprised and pleased. She recognised the girl's
frank affection for her; she knew the generous kindness of heart which
made her so eager to do her uncle's bidding, and secure to those
desolate women a long visit to the splendid home he had given his
nieces. Nothing but a base mean order of pride could have revolted
against the offer so made and so pressed. Mrs. Ashurst yielded, and
Maude Creswell returned to her uncle in high delight to announce that
she had been successful in the object of her embassy.
"How delightful it will be to have the dear old lady here, Gerty!"
said Maude to her sister. "The more I see of her the better I like
her; and I mean to be so kind and attentive to her. I think Miss
Ashurst is too grave, and she always seems so busy and preoccupied: I
don't think she can rouse her mother's spirits much."
"No, I think not," said Gertrude. "I like the old lady very much too;
but I don't quite know about Miss Ashurst; I think the more I see of
her, the less I seem to know her. You must not leave her altogether to
me, Maude. I wonder why one feels so strange with her? Heigh-ho!" said
the girl, with a comical look, and a shake of her pretty head, "I
suppose it's because she's so superior."
On the following day, Mrs. Ashurst and Marian took leave of their old
home, and were conveyed in one of Mr. Creswell's carriages to
Woolgreaves.