“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
AUTUMN again! Three years only since the dull September day when we
first saw Marion Vere in her father’s house in the London square. Three
years ago, which have brought more than one change to her, which have
more than once utterly altered the current of her life. The last change
which has come over her might, to superficial observation, seem the most
disastrous of all. Let us see if in truth it is so.
A dull, uninteresting suburban street. Secluded and “genteel.” Too much
so for even the enlivening neighbourhood of shops to be permitted in
that portion of it where our interest lies. Rows and rows of monotonous
little dwellings, all of the regulation pattern—two rooms on one side
of the strip of lobby, undeserving of the more important name of hall;
kitchen at the end thereof, a flight of some twelve or fifteen steps
leading to the half-way room above the kitchen, on again to the two
or three rooms occupying the position, in town houses of importance,
usually devoted to drawing-rooms.
Ah, how wearied one becomes of this same everlasting pattern of house!
How sick to death the architects must be of planning it, the masons
of building it, and, worst of all, the occupants of living in it! Only
fortunately, or unfortunately, the dwellers in these same regulation
abodes have seldom much leisure, even had they the inclination, for
pondering on such matters. The poor dressmaker class, the struggling
wives and overflowing offspring of scantily-salaried clerks in great
mercantile houses, the landladies, legion by name, “who have seen better
days,” and are only too thankful to see the dreadful “apartments” card
out of their window—all these and the rest of the innumerable multitude
constituting the lower half of our English middle-class, are not likely
to complain of the shape and arrangements of their dwellings, provided
they are sufficiently warm and weather tight, and not usuriously high in
the matter of rent and its attendant privileges, rates.
Rents are not so tremendous in the neighbourhood of smoky Millington as
in the suburban districts surrounding the great Babylon itself. Lodgings
in consequence are, or were some years ago, correspondingly few and far
between. For our middle-class John Bull, be he but possessed of the most
modest of salaries, has a wonderful tendency to feather a nest of his
own, to assemble his poor little household gods—from the six “real
silver” teaspoons left to Mary Ann by her god-mother, to his own gaudy
but somewhat faded Sunday-school prizes—in a retreat where they shall be
sacred from the inquisitive eyes and prying hands of landladies; where
he can smoke his pipe of an evening, and young Mrs. John nurse her
babies undisturbed by fears of complaints from the first-floor of “that
horrible smell of tobacco,” or “those incessantly screaming children.”
But even the luxury of the smallest of houses of their own was as yet
beyond the means of Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin; and Geoffrey was fain to
be content with three tiny rooms and a civil-spoken landlady, when,
preceding his wife by a few days to their new home, it fell to his share
to do what he could in the way of preparing for her reception.
For the smash at Mallingford had been a very thorough one. Nothing
as yet had been retrieved from the ruins. Months hence some trifling
dividend might be forthcoming; but as their share of this would be
altogether insufficient to provide for their daily wants, Geoffrey had
declined Veronica’s invitation to take up their abode with her till the
exact amount should be known, and had manfully set his shoulder to the
wheel by accepting the first chance of employment that came in his way.
It was not of a kind congenial to his tastes or education. A clerkship
of a hundred a year in a Millington shipping-house does not sound
paradisaical to most ears; least of all to those of a country-bred,
country-loving man of thirty, whose nightmare from earliest youth
had been anything in the shape of office or desk, book-keeping, or
book-learning.
But, as said the old friend of his father’s to whom he was indebted for
the introduction, it was better than losing time, and would do him no
harm should some more desirable opening occur hereafter.
Had he been alone in the world when he thus for the first time in his
life found himself face to face with poverty, Geoffrey Baldwin, there is
no doubt, would have emigrated. He was just the man of which the right
back-woodsman stuff is made, and the life would have suited him in every
sense. But to his joy and his sorrow he was not alone in the world, and
the being to whom every drop of his honest heart’s blood was devoted,
shrank, with a not unusual or unnatural shrinking, from the unknown
horrors of life in an Australian sheep-farm, or the pathless “far west”
forests of Canada. Even Millington, smoky and crowded, with its vulgar
rich and toil-begrimed poor, seemed to her imagination to offer a far
less terrible prospect.
“For after all Geoffrey, it is still England, and sooner or later
something else may turn up. In two or three years Harry may be coming
home, and think how terrible it would be for him if we were away at the
other side of the world,” said the poor girl.
So the subject of emigration was not again mooted, and the Millington
offer accepted. Some ready money was realized by the sale of the Manor
Farm furniture and Geoffrey’s horses, but not very much, for when chairs
and tables that have looked very respectable in their own corners for
forty or fifty years, are dragged, to the sound of an auctioneer’s
hammer, into the relentless glare of day and bargain seekers’ eyes,
they, to put it mildly, do not show to the best advantage. And as
to horses, they are not famous for being high in the market when one
appears therein in the position of a seller. It was, too, the end of the
hunting season when the smash came, and Mr. Baldwin was not in the habit
of allowing his steeds to eat their heads off, so the lot of them were
not in the showy condition conducive to the fetching of long sums.
Squire Copley, who, during the last few melancholy weeks of the young
couple’s stay in their own house, was suffering from a curiously
spasmodic form of cold in the head, which attacked him most
inopportunely on several occasions when he happened to “step over”
to the Farm, and necessitated a distressingly lavish recourse to his
pocket-handkerchief,—he by-the-by took a violent fancy to the now docile
Coquette.
“Got her of course, under the circumstances, dirt cheap, Sir, dirt
cheap, I assure you,” he told his neighbours, when the details of
Baldwin’s sale were discussed “across the walnuts and the wine.”
The exact sum he was never known to mention, (nor did it ever reach Mr.
Baldwin’s ears), for possibly every one might not have agreed with him
in thinking two hundred and fifty pounds so very unparalleled a bargain.
It went a good way to swelling the few hundreds of ready money with
which in safe keeping against the possible coming of a still rainier
day, Geoffrey Baldwin, after settling, down to the smallest, every
out-standing claim upon him or his household, set out for the first
time to do battle with the world, to win for himself and that other
so infinitely dearer, the “daily bread” so carelessly demanded, so
thanklessly received by those who have never known what it is to eat
thereof “in the sweat of the face.”
But we have wandered too long from the little house in the suburban
street.
In the small sitting-room looking out to the front sits Marion. The same
Marion, only I almost think altered for the better. She looks stronger,
and, to use a homely, but most expressive word, “heartier” than when we
last saw her. Surely there is more light and brightness over the clear,
pale features; and lurking in the depths of the grey eyes, one could
almost fancy there was something of gladness if not of mirth. Or is it
only the flickering, dancing light reflected on her face of the bright
little fire which—for the evening was chilly—Mrs. Baldwin, after some
house-wifely scruples on the score of economy, caused to be lit to greet
her husband’s return?
We shall see.
She sits there in the fire-light, gazing into the red, glowing depths,
but with the pleasant shadow of a smile on her face. She has been
working hard enough to-day in various ways, to enjoy the half-hour’s
holiday which she feels she has earned. A sensation worth trying for
once in a way, oh ladies! with the soft, white hands, guiltless of aught
but useless beauty, with the little feet to whom a few miles of tramp
through muddy streets, over bard, unyielding pavement, is unknown.
Or worse still, with brains unconscious of any object in their own
existence beyond the solution of some millinery problem, or the
recollection of the calls falling due on their visiting list. “Very hard
work indeed!” I have been told more than once by those who should be
qualified to judge. “And very poor pay!” I should certainly reply,
though the hardness of the work may be a matter of opinion.
A ring at the bell, a step along the passage, a somewhat fagged looking
face at the door, which Marion sprang up to open, with bright welcome on
her own.
“I’m very muddy, Marion,” said the new-comer, “and rather tired too. I’d
better run up at once and change my boots. I shall be awfully glad of a
cup of tea.”
The voice evidently wished to be cheerful, but could not quite manage
it. Poor Geoffrey! truly Millington ways and Millington smoke did not
suit you.
But there was genuine, unforced gladness in the tones which replied to
him.
“Be quick then! as quick as you can. I have just infused the tea, and I
have lots of things to tell you. I have been so busy all day!”
And as the wearied man slowly ascended the narrow staircase, some
murmured words, un-heard by his wife, escaped him. “My darling! my
darling! For myself I would bear it all fifty times over to know your
goodness as I do.”
A short toilette sufficed for the simple meal prepared for Mr. Baldwin
in the little parlour which served him and his wife for drawing-room and
dining-room in one, and in ten minutes’ time he rejoined her. The room
looked wonderfully comfortable and home-like he owned to himself, and
for the time being he determined to forget the worries and annoyances of
the day, and respond as far as he could to the unfailing cheerfulness of
his wife.
“Tell me what you have been about to-day, Marion,” he said. “You look
even brighter than usual, which is saying a good deal. And that red
ribbon round your neck and tying up your hair is very pretty,” he added,
looking at her approvingly.
“I am glad you like it,” she replied laughing, “though in the first
place it isn’t a ribbon, it’s velvet.”
“But there’s such a thing as velvet ribbon, isn’t there?” he asked
gravely. “I’m sure I have heard of it.”
“Ribbon velvet you mean, you stupid Geoffrey,” she answered. “I am
really afraid you’ll never do for Millington. You’re not the least of a
shop-man.”
Geoffrey laughed.
“You had better take care what, you say, Marion. Imagine the horror of
old Baxter if he heard you talking of his palatial warehouse as a shop!”
“But so it is, only a very big one,” persisted the incorrigible Mrs.
Baldwin. “However you needn’t be afraid of my hurting the feelings of
old Baxter, as you call him, or old anybody else. Not that he’s likely
ever to hear me speak either of him or his shop. These Millington people
are far too grand ever to take any notice of us.”
“I don’t know that,” said her husband. “That reminds me I’ve a piece of
news for you too. But I want to hear yours first. Tell me what you’ve
been doing all day.”
“This afternoon I have been busy at home like a good wife, darning
your stockings, or socks, as Mrs. Appleby calls them. Really and truly,
Geoffrey, I have darned four pair—that is to say three pair and a half,
for in the eighth sock, to my unspeakable delight there was no hole.
I poked m y hand all round inside it, but not one of my fingers came
through. There weren’t even any thin places which wanted strengthening,
if you know what that is? You have no idea of the excitement of looking
for holes. It is almost more fascinating than pulling shirt-buttons
to see if they are loose. I have to force myself to be dreadfully
conscientious about it. Sometimes I feel so tempted only to give a very
gentle tug, which couldn’t pull even a very loose one off. Millington
must be a ruinous place for poor people. You have no notion how quickly
you wear out your stockings.”
“No, I certainly haven’t, as my good fairy takes care I never find any
holes in them,” he answered tenderly. “But never mind stockings,” he
went on, “tell me what you did this morning.”
“This morning,” she replied, “oh, this morning I went a tremendously
long walk.”
“By yourself?”
“No, with Mrs. Sharp. You know I told you that nice little Mrs. Sharp
had called here last week. The wife of the curate at St. Matthias’s. Her
husband was a pupil at the Temples’, Veronica’s father’s, years ago, and
that seemed a sort of introduction. She is really very nice. She knew
something about us—about the bank breaking, I mean, and why we came
here. I told her the first time I saw her how anxious I was to do
something to help you, and—and—don’t be angry, Geoffrey—she came to-day
to tell me she had heard of two pupils for me.”
“Marion!” exclaimed her husband.
She crept down to the floor beside him and hid her face on his arm, as
she went on.
“It seems so very nice, Geoffrey. Listen and don’t say anything till you
hear all about it. Mrs. Sharp took me to see the lady—a Mrs. Allen—whose
two little boys I am to teach. They are very little boys, the eldest
only ten. They generally go to school, but scarlet fever broke out there
a month ago, and they are not to return till Christmas. It is only till
then I am to teach them, and it is only to be three mornings in the
week. Just to keep them in the way of lessons a little, their mother
said. She is rather nice, fat and good-humoured-looking—but guiltless
of H’s. She was very kind and pleasant about ‘terms,’ as she called it.
Five guineas a month, I think very good. Don’t you?”
But Geoffrey was incapable of replying in the same light cheerful tone.
He stooped down and passed his arm round Marion’s waist, thus drawing
her nearer to him. Then he said in a choked husky voice,
“Marion, my dearest, you are an angel,—but, but—I can’t stand it.”
“My being an angel?” she answered lightly. “Certainly you haven’t had
much experience of me in such a character—but seriously, Geoffrey, do
say I may do this. I really haven’t enough to do all the hours you are
away. Darning stockings, even, palls on one after a few hours! And
it will make me so happy to feel I am earning a little money. Dear
Geoffrey, don’t say I mustn’t.” And with a pretty air of appeal she drew
his face round, so that she could see the expression in his eyes.
“It is only till Christmas, you say?” he enquired, doubtfully.
“Only till Christmas,” she repeated.
“And the distance,” he objected. “You said it was a long walk. How are
you to go there and back three times a week?”
“In fine weather, walk,” she replied, unhesitatingly. “I am a capital
walker, and you see yourself I am not the least tired to-night. And
on wet days you can put me in the omnibus as you go to business in the
morning. It passes the corner of this street, and Mrs. Sharp says it is
never crowded at the hours I should be coming and going.”
There was nothing for it but for Geoffrey to give in; as, indeed, from
the first he had instinctively feared would be the case. Though the plan
went sorely against his inclination, he yet had a half-defined idea that
possibly it was really kinder and more unselfish to yield to his wife’s
wishes—that the additional interest and occupation might be of
actual benefit to her, and help her to get through the lonely, dreary
Millington winter he so dreaded for her in anticipation.
“You said, too, you had something to tell me, didn’t you, Geoffrey?”
asked Marion, after a short silence, and with perhaps something of
the womanly instinct of changing the conversation before the scarcely
attained concession could be withdrawn.
“Did I?” he answered, absently. “Oh yes, I remember. It was when we were
talking of the Baxters, and you said they were far too grand to notice
us. Mr. Baxter told me to-day that his wife ‘hoped shortly to have the
pleasure of calling on you.’ What do you think of that?”
“I am rather vexed,” she replied, speaking slowly and deliberately. “We
have been very happy here by ourselves without anybody noticing us,
and I would rather go on the same way. I am not silly or prejudiced,
Geoffrey. I like nice people, whoever they are, but I cannot help
shrinking a little from these terribly rich Millington people. I
am afraid I am just a little bad in one way. I can’t endure being
patronised.”
Geoffrey looked pained.
“I know, I know,” he said, hastily. “It is horrible for you. Perfectly
unbearable. You don’t think I don’t know it, and feel it. Heaven knows
how bitterly! I was more than half inclined to tell the old fellow his
wife might keep her precious visits to herself; only I dared not risk
offending him. Condescension, indeed! Vulgar wretches!—as if we wanted
them to come prying about us, the purse-proud——”
Marion jumped up and put her hand on his mouth.
“Hush, Geoffrey. It is very wicked of me to put such notions into your
head. I had no business to talk about hating being patronised. It is
very silly, and low, and mean of me. Of course they intend to be kind,
and of course I should be civil to Mrs. Baxter, if she is as ugly as
the queen of the cannibal islands. So don’t say any more about her. I
suppose she is elderly, and fat. These dread-fully prosperous people are
always fat. They can’t help it, I suppose.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Geoffrey, listlessly. “Oh yes, by-the-by,
I remember some one at the office saying Mrs. Baxter was much younger
than her husband. An heiress too, I believe. That’s always the way.”
“He looked weary and dispirited, and Marion felt remorseful for having
caused it. So she played to him (Mrs. Appleby’s front room actually
boasted a piano, such as it was) soft, simple airs—for he was no
connoisseur in music—till he went to sleep on the hard, uncomfortable
little sofa of the regulation lodging-house pattern, the designers of
which seem to be under the impression that human beings can at pleasure
unhook their legs and fasten them on again sideways. In which posture
only could anything like comfortable repose be possible for the wretched
victims of upholstery torture.
Mrs. Baxter was as good as her word, or rather as Mr. Baxter’s.
Two days later, a chariot, of the imposing appearance and dimensions
suited for the conveyance of a Millington millionairess, drawn by two
prancing, rocking-horsey greys, comfortably conscious of their own
amazingly good condition and unimpeachable harness, drew up at Mrs.
Appleby’s modest door. A gorgeous footman having made the enquiry
necessary to preclude the possibility of his mistress’s getting in and
out of her equipage for nothing, and having reported to the lady that
Mrs. Baldwin was at home, or “hin,” as Mrs. Appleby’s factotum expressed
it, the door of the chariot opened, and thence emerged one of the very
smallest women Marion had ever seen.
From where she sat, all that passed in front of the house was visible to
Mrs. Baldwin, and she observed with considerable amusement the immense
pomposity of the whole affair, resulting in the appearance of the almost
absurdly minute person of Mrs. Baxter.
But if the body was small, the mind evidently felt itself great. No
five-feet-eight or nine woman ever sailed into a room with half the
awe-compelling dignity, the incomparable “air de duchesse” of little
Mrs. Baxter. It had done her good service in her day, this magnificent
mien of hers; it (and the fact of her being “poor dear papa’s only
child”) had won her the adoring homage of various young Millingtonians
more inclined to spend than to earn, had finally achieved the conquest
of old Baxter himself, and now in these latter days had constituted her
the indisputable queen of Millington society.
Awful words! with bated breath only to be murmured, and reverence
approaching that of Mrs. Appleby as she peeped out of the kitchen at
the end of the passage, to behold, though at a distance, her lodger’s
illustrious visitor.
For Mrs. Baxter was not in the least pretty. Her “air,” or “style” as
dressmakers say, was the whole secret of the admiration she excited in
the Millington world.
It was thought good taste to admire her, as “far more than a merely
pretty person,” —there was a faint flavour of aristocratic proclivities
in the refinement of perception which saw more in this plain-looking
little woman than in the sweet, rosy beauty we all love as we do the
daisies, which depends not on the sweep of the robe or the richness of
the material in which it is clothed. For, though I tremble while saying
it, at my own audacity, there is not the shadow of a doubt that the
magnificence of Mrs. Baxter was more than half due to her clothes. The
other half lay simply in her entire, unimpregnable self-satisfaction,
a quality far surpassing the fainter shades of vanity or self-conceit,
which enabled her to hold her small person erect as a poker, which
would have carried her without the slightest embarrassment through any
conceivable womanly ordeal, from being presented at court, to rating
(and soundly, too), a six-foot “Jeames” who would have made at least
three of herself.
Ideas, I was going to say, she had none. But this is incorrect. She
had two—herself and Mr. Baxter—and round these, revolving as lesser
satellites, deriving of course all their glory from the greater
luminaries, “the little Baxters.” You could hardly have called her
purse-proud. She was rather purse-accepting. Money to her was a simple
fact, a necessity of existence like the air we breathe, the blood that
flows in our veins. How people lived without it, had, once or twice in
her life, occurred to her as a curious problem, with which, however, she
was in no wise concerned, any more than one might be with the manner of
life or physical peculiarities of the inhabitants of one of the fixed
stars. But that by any terrible mistake on the part of Providence, she,
or Mr. Baxter, or any of the little Baxters could ever come to want
money, to have even to think about it at all, never entered the somewhat
circumscribed space allotted to her brain.
There were poor people in the world, she knew. At least, if questioned
on the subject, she would of course have admitted the fact, adding
doubtless, that Mr. Baxter gave largely to charitable institutions, and
that she herself had more than once officiated as lady patroness at some
fancy fair or charity ball.
Poor people in the world? Yes, of course there are. But so likewise are
there lions and tigers, and various species of ferocious or disagreeable
animals, black beetles and toads, and black people and cannibals who eat
each other. Ugh! But they don’t come in our way, and so there’s no use
thinking of them.
So much for Mrs. Baxter’s “philosophy of life and things.” Breeding, in
the generally accepted sense of the word, as might have been expected
from her Millington education, she had none. Always of course excepting
the imposing “air de duchesse,” which really was very wonderful in its
way, and may be cited as an instance of the great perfection to which
electro-plate has been brought in these modern days. Breeding of the
higher kind, culture of mind and spirit, she was even yet more deficient
in. Under no possible circumstances, indeed, could such have been
attainable by her to any great extent.
Yet after all she was far from a bad little woman; only her light was so
very small! Not even sufficient to make visible to the owner thereof the
surrounding darkness. Which quotation by-the-by is hardly applicable to
immaterial objects, for we are not spiritually in such a very hopeless
condition if we have attained to a perception of the darkness yet to be
dispersed; we are some little way up the ladder when our sight descries
the bewildering multitude of rungs yet to be ascended.
Mrs. Baxter, I say, was not a bad little woman. She was the most dutiful
of wives and “exemplary” of mothers; she paid her bills punctually,
and nursed her babies irreproachably. Which latter occupation may be
considered as the great end of her existence, as year after year brought
a new olive branch to the Baxter nursery, each in turn received by its
parents with perfect equanimity, and installed in its place as a member
of the august household.
She went to church twice every Sunday throughout the year, excepting
during the few weeks of her customary retirement; she never lost
her temper, and she spoke kindly to the housemaid when she had the
toothache.
More than all, here she was, in deference to her husband’s wishes,
performing the unheard-of act of condescension of calling on the wife of
one of his clerks.
“People, they say,” she confided to one of her female admirers, “who
have seen better days. A thing I specially dislike.” Which was repeated
as one of her bons mots through her social circle; for—really I was
forgetting the very funniest thing about this little woman—she, without
one spark of imagination, without one touch of humour in herself or
power of appreciating it in others, had yet acquired in the small world
in which she moved, a considerable reputation as a wit!
This was the lady who sailed majestically into Mrs. Baldwin’s little
sitting-room.
Marion, whose height exceeded that of the average of women, rose to
greet her, feeling, as sensitive people are apt to do when forced into
such contrast, uncomfortably taller than usual. But this sensation was
speedily succeeded by its equally unpleasant opposite, for seldom in her
life had Mrs. Baldwin felt herself, metaphorically speaking, smaller,
than when her little visitor extended her tightly gloved hand with a
species of condescending wave, and addressing her in what was intended
to be a reassuring tone, begged her to reseat herself and not to “put
herself out” on her, Mrs. Baxter’s, account.
Almost before she knew what she was about Marion found herself waved
into a seat, while Mrs. Baxter proceeded calmly to ensconce herself
in the most luxurious of the not very tempting chairs of the little
sitting-room.
Then the great little lady proceeded to enter into conversation, by
remarking that she hoped Mrs. Baldwin liked Millington.
“Oh yes,” replied Marion, “we like it very well. Of course it takes some
time to feel at home in a perfectly strange place.”
“I daresay you find it very different from living, in the country,”
observed Mrs. Baxter with an accent of superb scorn on the last word.
“For my part I can’t abide the country. People grow so stupid and
old-fashioned compared to what they are in town. Mr. Baxter talks
sometimes of buying a country-place, but I always tell him I really
couldn’t do at all without my six months at least in town.”
Marion felt slightly puzzled as to the exact sense in which her visitor
was making use of the last word.
“Then do you at present spend half the year in town?” she asked
cautiously.
“Half the year!” repeated Mrs. Baxter, “oh dear yes. Three quarters at
least. We spend a month or two at the sea-side in summer. It suits very
well, as it generally happens so that I want a little change just then.
All the children except the twins were born in spring. And there’s
nothing sets one up like the sea.”
Then there fell a little pause, Marion’s experience in the matters
referred to by the lady, not being sufficiently extensive for her to
hazard an observation in the presence of one evidently thoroughly “up”
on the subject.
Mrs. Baxter swung herself round on her chair and scrutinized her
surroundings.
“I never was in this street before,” she remarked. “I was afraid the
coachman would never find the house, but the footman knew it, because
his sister, who is a dressmaker, lives a little higher up. Mr. Baxter
never likes me to go through back streets for fear of infections and
those sort of things. But he made a point of my calling on you. More
than a week ago he asked me to do him a favour, and this was what it
was. I hope you haven’t stayed in for me though all this time? Mr.
Baxter has taken quite a fancy to your husband, Mrs. Baldwin. So regular
and steady in his hours, and quite a gentleman. He said so I assure you.
‘That young Baldwin is really quite a gentleman,’ he said to me.
Marion’s face flushed.
“I think perhaps Mrs. Baxter,” she began, “you hardly understand——.”
But the voluble little woman interrupted her.
“I was forgetting,” she exclaimed, “that Mr. Baxter wished me to fix a
day for your dining with us. Just in a family way, nothing of a party.
I thought most likely you would like better coming to luncheon, but he
said it would be rather too far for your husband to walk backwards and
forwards between business hours. He dines in town, I suppose? All
the clerks do, I think. Of course we dine late. I don’t mean an early
dinner. At six, we dine, and for once in a way, I daresay Mr. Baldwin
could get away from business early. Will Wednesday do? I expect some of
Mr. Baxter’s friends to be with us, so it will be quite a family party.”
“You are very kind,” Marion forced herself to say. “We have not
gone into company at all since we came here, as I daresay you can
understand.”
“Oh don’t make any apologies,” said Mrs. Baxter. “Of course I wouldn’t
ask you except in an unceremonious way. Don’t trouble yourself about
dressing or anything of that sort. You will do very nicely I am sure. A
high black silk, or even a merino will do quite well. Of course I always
wear a low dress, in the evening, but then that’s different.”
“It was not on account of my dress I was hesitating,” said Marion,
quietly. “I was doubtful whether Mr. Baldwin would like the idea of
going out to dinner even in the unceremonious way you propose.”
“Oh, but if you tell him Mr. Baxter will really make a point of
it,” urged the dutiful wife, whose desire to carry the day evidently
increased with the little expected hesitation she met with on Mrs.
Baldwin’s part. “Mr. Baldwin is sure to agree to my husband’s wishes.”
This not very delicately expressed reminder of the relations between the
two men, had its effect. With a strong effort of self-control, Marion
answered gravely.
“I daresay you are right, Mrs. Baxter. Then I think I may say we shall
hope to have the pleasure of dining with you next Wednesday.”
Her mission thus successfully accomplished, the visitor took her leave,
sailing out of the room as majestically as she had entered; and in
another minute the magnificent equipage of the Millington millionaire
rolled away in ponderous grandeur from Mrs. Appleby’s door.
Marion shook herself and stamped her feet. Then catching the reflection
of herself in the little mirror above the mantel-piece she laughed at
her own childishness.
“How silly I am to mind it,” she said to herself. “But what a woman! How
thankful I am it is not her children but that nice kindly Mrs. Allen’s
I am going to teach! By-the-bye I am not at all sure that Mrs. Baxter
would have asked us to dinner if she had known I am was engaged to give
daily lessons. I wish I had told her. It would have been such fun to
have seen her face. I must not tell Geoffrey much about her; it would
infuriate him. And after all I suppose she means to be kind. But the
idea of her telling me my husband was ‘was really quite a gentleman!’ My
Geoffrey! My poor Geoffrey! What a vivid idea this gives me of what
he must have to endure among these people in his daily life. And how
uncomplainingly he bears it. At least let me do my part to smooth things
to him.”
She kept her resolution. When Geoffrey returned home in the evening
Marion told him in the simplest, most matter-of-fact way of Mrs.
Baxter’s visit and invitation. “It is kind of them to ask us,” she said,
“and I thought it best not to chill or hurt them by declining it.”
Geoffrey looked thoughtful.
“Yes,” he replied at last. “I think you did right to accept it. It goes
rather against the grain, and no doubt it will be rather an ordeal to
both of us. But you did right, dear, as you always do,” he added fondly.
Marion had her reward.
“What sort of a person is Mrs. Baxter?” he asked presently.
“A little woman,” replied Marion, “not pretty, but very well dressed.
Rather lively too. At least with plenty to say for herself. Good-natured
too, I should think, though of course not very refined. But we got on
very well.”
He looked relieved.
“I am glad you did not find it very dis-agreeable,” he said. “After all,
dear, it may be a good thing for you to have a few acquaintances here,
and even a family dinner at the Baxters’ may be a little variety for
you.”
She was leaving the room as he spoke. As she passed him she stooped and
kissed his forehead as he lay back on the regulation sofa.
“Yes, dear Geoffrey,” she said; “I have no doubt it will be rather
amusing than otherwise. Besides, it is always interesting and good for
one to see the different sorts of people there are in this queer world.”
He caught her hands and clasped them in his own, looking up at her with
ineffable tenderness in his eyes.
“Marion,” he said again, as he had said a few evenings before, “my
darling, you are an angel!”
He had no great command of language, you see, poor fellow!