Gertrude Millet's anxious look grew deeper as she sat with her work in
her lap, thinking of John Huish and certain tender passages which had
somehow passed between them; then of Lord Henry Moorpark, the pleasant,
elderly nobleman whose attentions had been so pleasant and so innocently
received; and as she thought of him a burning blush suffused her cheeks,
and she tried to recall the words he had last spoken to her.
The consequence was a fit of low spirits, which did not become high when
later on Mrs Frank Morrison called, dismissed her carriage, and sat
chatting for some time with her sister, Lady Millet being, she said, in
the park.
"You need not tell me I look well," said Gertrude, pouting slightly. "I
declare you look miserable."
"Oh no, dear, only a little low-spirited to-day. Have you called on
Uncle Robert lately?"
"Without you? No."
"Then let's go."
Gertrude jumped at the suggestion, and half an hour later the sisters
were making their way along Wimpole Street the gloomy, to stop at last
before the most wan-looking of all the dreary houses in that most dreary
street. It was a house before which no organ-man ever stopped to play,
no street vendor to shout his wares, nor passer-by to examine from top
to bottom; the yellow shutters were closed, and the appearance of the
place said distinctly "out of town." The windows were very dirty, but
that is rather a fashion in Wimpole Street, where the windows get very
dirty in a month, very much dirtier in two months, and as dirty as
possible in three. They, of course, never get any worse, for when once
they have arrived a this pitch they may go for years, the weather rather
improving them, what with the rain's washing and the sun's bleaching.
The paint of the front door was the worst part about that house, for the
sun had raised it in little blisters, which street boys could not bear
to see without cracking and picking off in flakes; and the consequence
was that the door looked as if it had had a bad attack of some skin
disease, and a new cuticle of a paler hue was growing beneath the old.
Wimpole Street was then famous for the knockers upon its doors. They
were large and resounding. In fact, a clever manipulator could raise a
noise that would go rolling on a still night from nearly one end of the
street to the other. For, in their wisdom, our ancestors seized the
idea of a knocker on that sounding-board, a front door, as a means to
warn servants downstairs that someone was waiting, by a deafening noise
that appealed to those in quite a different part of the place. But this
was not allowed at the house with the blistered front door, for a great
staple had been placed over one side for years, and when you had passed
the two great iron extinguishers that were never used for links, and
under the fantastic ironwork that had never held a lamp since the street
had been lit with gas, and, ascending three steps, stood at the door,
you could only contrive quite a diminutive kind of knock, such as was
given upon that occasion by Renee, for Gertrude was carrying a large
bouquet of flowers.
The knock was hard enough to bring a little bleached, sparrow-like man,
dressed in black, to the door, and his colourless face, made more pallid
by a little black silk cap he wore, brightened as he held his head first
on one side, then on the other, his triangular nose adding to his
sparrow-like appearance, and giving a stranger the idea that he would
never kiss anyone, but would peck.
"How is my uncle this morning, Vidler?" said Gertrude.
"Capital, miss," said the little man, holding wide the door for the
ladies to enter, and closing it quickly, lest, apparently, too much
light should enter at the same time.
For the place was very gloomy and subdued within. The great leather
porter's chair, the umbrella-stand, and the pictures all looked sombre
and black. Even the two classical figures holding lamps, that had not
been lighted for a quarter of a century at least, were swarthy, and a
stranger would have gone stumbling and feeling his way along; but not so
Vidler, Captain Robert Millet's handy servant. He was as much at home
in the gloom as an owl, and in a quick, hurried way that was almost
spasmodic he led the visitors upstairs, but only to stop on the first
landing.
"If I might make so bold, Miss Gertrude," he said, holding his head on
one side. "I don't often see a flower now."
The girl held up the bouquet, and the little man had a long sniff with a
noise as if taking a pinch of snuff, said, "Thank you, miss," and went
on up to the back drawing-room door, which was a little lighter than the
staircase, for the top of the shutters of one of the three tall narrow
windows was open.
A glance round the room showed that it was scrupulously clean. Time had
blackened the paint and ceiling, but everything that could be cleaned or
polished was in the highest state of perfection.
For Valentine Vidler and his wife Salome, being very religious and
conscientious people, told themselves and one another nearly every day
that as the master never supervised anything it was the more their duty
to keep the place in the best of order. For instance, Vidler would say:
"I don't think I shall clean all that plate over this week, Salome.
It's as bright as it can be."
When to him Salome: "Valentine, there's One above who knows all, and
though your master may not know that you have not cleaned the plate, He
will."
"That's very true, Salome," the little man would say with a sigh, and
then set to work in a green baize apron, and was soon be-rouged up to
the eyes as he polished away.
Another day, perhaps, it would be Salome's turn; for the temptation, as
she called it, would attack her. The weather would be hot, perhaps, and
a certain languid feeling, the result of a want of change, would come
over her.
"Valentine," she would say, perhaps, "I think the big looking-glass in
the drawing-room will do this week; it's as clean as clean."
"Hah!" would say Valentine, with a sigh, "Satan has got tight hold of
you again, my dear little woman. It is your weakness that you ought to
resist. Do you think the Lord cannot see those three fly-specks at the
bottom corner? Resist the temptation, woman; resist it."
Then little Salome, who was a tiny plump downy woman, who somehow
reminded people of a thick potato-shoot that had grown in the dark,
would sigh, put on an apron that covered her all over except her face,
climb on a pair of steps, and polish the great mirror till it was as
clear as hands could make it.
She was a pleasant-faced little body, and very neatly dressed. There
was a little fair sausage made up of rolled-up hair on each side of her
face, two very shiny smooth surfaces of hair over her forehead, and a
neat little white line up the centre, the whole being surmounted by one
of those quaint high-crowned caps which project over to the front. In
fact, there was, in spite of the potato-shoot allusion, a good deal of
resemblance in little Mrs Vidler to a plump charity child, especially
as she wore an apron with a bib, a white muslin kerchief crossed over
her bosom, and a pair of muslin sleeves up to her elbows.
The little woman was in the drawing-room armed with a duster as
Valentine showed up the young ladies, and she faced round and made two
little bobs, quite in the charity-school-child fashion, as taught by
those who so carefully make it the first duty of such children to obey
their pastors and masters, and order themselves lowly and reverently,
and make bobs and bows to--all their betters.
"Why, my dears, I am glad you're come," she exclaimed. "Miss Renee--
there, I beg your pardon--Mrs Morrison, what an age it is since I saw
you! And only to think you are a married lady now, when only the other
day you two were little things, and I used to bring you one in each
hand, looking quite frightened, into this room."
"Ah yes, Salome, times are changed," said Renee sadly. "How is uncle?"
"Very well, my dear," said the little woman, holding her head on one
side to listen in the same birdlike way adopted by her husband. "He's
not in his room yet. But what beautiful flowers!"
She, too, inhaled the scent precisely in her husband's fashion, before
fetching a china bowl from a chiffonier, and carefully wiping it inside
and out, though it was already the perfection of cleanliness.
"A jug of clean water, if you please, Vidler," she said softly.
"Yes, my dear," said the little man, smiling at the sisters, and giving
his hands a rub together, before obeying his wife.
"I was so sorry, Miss Renee--there, I must call you so, my dear; it's so
natural--I was so sorry that I did not see you when you came. Only to
think of my being out a whole month nursing my poor sister! I hadn't
been away from the place before for twenty years, and poor Vidler was so
upset without me. And I don't think," she added, nodding, "that master
liked it."
"I'm sure he would not," said Gertrude; and then, the little man coming
in very quietly and closing the door after him, water was poured in the
china bowl, the flowers duly deposited therein and placed upon a small
mahogany bracket in front of a panel in the centre of the room.
"There, my dears, I'll go now. I dare say he will not be long."
The little woman smiled at the sisters, and the little man nodded at
them in a satisfied way as if he thought them very pleasant to look
upon. Then, taking his wife's hand, they toddled together out of the
room.
A quaint, subdued old room--clean, and yet comfortless. Upon a wet day,
when a London fog hung over the streets and filled the back yards, no
female could have sat in it for an hour without moistening her
handkerchief with tears. For it was, in its dim twilight, like a
drawing-room of the past, full of sad old memories of the dead and gone,
who haunted it and clung to its furniture and chairs. It was impossible
to sit there long without peopling the seats with those who once
occupied them--without seeing soft, sad faces reflected in the mirrors,
or hearing fancied footsteps on the faded carpet.
And it was so now, as the sisters sat thinking in silence, Renee with
her head resting upon her hand, Gertrude with her eyes closed, half
dreaming of what might have been.
For Gertrude's thoughts ran back to a miniature in her father's desk of
a handsome, sun-browned young man in uniform, bright-eyed, keen, and
animated; and she thought of what she had heard of his history: how he
had loved some fair young girl before his regiment was ordered away to
Canada. How he had come back to find that she had become another's, and
then that some terrible struggle had occurred between him and his rival,
and the young officer had been maimed for life--turned in one minute
from the strong, vigorous man to a misanthrope, who dragged himself
about with difficulty, half paralysed in his lower limbs, but bruised
more painfully in his heart. For, broken in spirit as in body, he had
shut himself up, after his long illness, never seeing a soul, never
going out of the closely shuttered rooms that he had chosen for himself
in his lonely faded house.
Vidler had been a drummer in his regiment, she had heard, and he had
devoted himself to the master who had fetched him in when lying wounded
under fire; and in due time Vidler had married and brought his little
wife to the house, the couple never leaving it except on some emergency,
but growing to like the darkness in which they dwelt, and sternly doing
their duty by him they served.
"Poor uncle!" sighed Gertrude, as she thought of his desolate life, and
her own sad position. "I wonder who it was he loved."
As the thought crossed her mind, there was a slight noise in the next
room, like the tapping of a stick upon the floor, and Gertrude laid her
hand upon her sister's arm.
Then the noise ceased, and the little panel, about a foot square, before
which the flowers had been placed, was drawn aside, seeming to run into
a groove.
The sisters did not move, but waited, knowing from old experience that
at a word or movement on their part the panel would be clapped
impatiently to, and that their visit would be a fruitless one.
A stranger would have thought of rats and the action of one of those
rodents in what took place; for now that the panel had been slid back,
all remained perfectly still, as if the mover were listening and
watching. Then at last a thin, very white hand appeared, lifted the
flowers out of the bowl, and they disappeared.
There was not even a rustling noise heard for a few minutes, during
which the sisters sat patiently waiting.
At last there was a faint sigh; and a cold--so to speak, colourless--
voice said:
"Is Gertrude there?"
"Yes, dear uncle," said the young girl eagerly.
"Anyone else?"
"I am here too, dear uncle," said Renee.
"Hah! I am glad to hear you, my children--glad to hear you. How is my
brother?"
"Papa is not very well, uncle," said Gertrude. "Poor dear, his cough is
very troublesome."
"Poor Humphrey! he is so weak," said the voice, in the same cold,
monotonous way that was almost repulsive in its chilling tone. "Tell
him, when he is well enough, he can come and talk to me for half an
hour. I cannot bear more."
"Yes, dear uncle, I will tell him," said Renee.
Then there was another pause, and at last the thin white hand stole
cautiously forth, half covered with a lace frill, and the cold voice
said:
"Renee!"
The young wife left her seat, went forward, took it in her ungloved
hand, and kissed it. Then she returned to her place, and the voice
said:
"Gertrude!"
The young girl went through the same performance, and as she loosed it,
the hand was passed gently over both her cheeks, and then withdrawn,
when Gertrude returned to her seat, and there was again silence.
"You are not happy, Renee," said the voice at last, in its cold measured
accents; "there was a tear on my hand."
Renee sighed, but made no reply.
"Gertrude, child, I like duty towards parents; but I think a daughter
goes too far when, at their wish, she marries a man she does not love."
"Oh, uncle dear," cried Gertrude hysterically, "pray, pray, do not talk
like this!"
She made a brave effort to keep back her tears, and partially succeeded,
for Renee softly knelt down by her side and drew her head close to her
breast.
"Poor children!" said the voice again. "I am sorry, but I cannot help
you. You must help yourselves."
There was a nervous, querulous tone in the voice now, as if the
suppressed sobs that faintly rose troubled the speaker, but it had
passed when the voice was heard once more in a quiet way, more like an
appeal than a command:
"Sing to me."
The sisters rose and went to a very old-fashioned grand piano, opened
it, and Gertrude's fingers swept the wiry jangling chords which sounded
quite in keeping with the room; then, subduing the music as much as
possible, so that their fresh young voices dominated, rising and falling
in a rich harmony that floated through the room, they sang the old, old
duet, "Flow on, thou shining river." Every note seemed to have in it
the sadness of age, the mournful blending of the bygone when hope was
young and disappointment and care had not crushed with a load of misery
a heart once fresh as those of the singers.
A deep sigh came from the little panel, unheard, though, by the two
girls, and the hand appeared once more for the thin white fingers to tap
the wood gently in unison with the music, which was inexpressibly sweet,
though sad.
For how is it that those melodies of the past, even though major, seemed
to acquire a mournful tone that is not minor, but has all its sad
sweetness? Take what pathetic air you will of a generation or two back,
and see if it has not acquired within your knowledge a power of drawing
tears that it had not in the days of old.
From the simple duet, first one and then the other glided to the
old-fashioned ditties popular thirty or forty years before. "Those
evening bells," "Waters of Elle," and the like, till, without thinking,
Gertrude began "Love not," her sweet young voice sounding intensely
pathetic as she went on, gradually gathering inspiration from the words,
till in the midst of the sweetest, most appealing strain, she uttered a
cry of misery, and threw herself sobbing into her sister's arms.
"Oh, Gerty, darling, why did you sing that?" whispered Renee, trying to
soothe her, as her own tears fell fast, but for a few minutes in vain,
till by a brave effort Gertrude got the better of her hysterical
feelings, and, hastily wiping her eyes, glanced towards the panel, where
the bowl of water stood upon the bracket, but the opening was closed.
The sisters looked piteously at one another, and Renee whispered:
"Speak to him. Tell him you did not wish to make him angry."
Gertrude glided to the panel, and, stifling a sob, she said softly:
"Uncle, dear uncle, do not be cross with me--I am very sorry. I was so
miserable."
There was no reply--no sound to indicate that the words had been heard;
and after waiting for about a quarter of an hour the two girls crossed
to the door, went slowly out, and found that they had had an audience in
the shape of Valentine Vidler and his wife, who had been seated upon the
stairs.
"Thank you, my dears," said Salome, nodding and smiling. "We like to
hear you sing. You have made a very long stay to-day, and his lunch is
quite ready."
The sisters were too heartsore to trust themselves to say much, and
Vidler opened the door for them, admitting as little light as he could
by closing it directly and going to assist his wife.
"Renee," said Gertrude as they reached the square, "do you remember what
Uncle Robert said?"
"Yes. He could not help us--we must help ourselves."
"Then"--There was a pause.
"Yes, dear, what?"
"I'm sure mamma is planning for me to marry Lord Henry Moorpark."
"I'm afraid so."
"And I'm sure, Ren dear, he's a dear, amiable, nice old man; but if he
proposes I never will say `Yes'."
There was another pause, and then Renee smiled, passed her arm round her
handsome sister's neck, and kissed her lovingly.
"Have you got John Huish very bad?" she whispered.
Gertrude's cheeks were crimson, and the colour flushed into her neck as
she flung her arms round her sister and hid her face on her breast.
Volume 1, Chapter V.