COMING EVENTS.
The shadow of coming changes began to fall over us very soon after that.
Indeed, the very next morning at breakfast I noticed that mamma looked
pale and almost as if she had been crying, and father was, so to say,
"extra" kind to her and to me. He talked and laughed more than usual,
partly perhaps to prevent our noticing how silent dear mamma was, but
mostly I think because that is the way men do when they are really
anxious or troubled.
I don't fancy Haddie thought there was anything wrong--he was in a hurry
to get off to school.
After breakfast mamma told me to go and practise for half an hour, and
if she did not come to me then, I had better go on doing some of my
lessons alone. She would look them over afterwards. And as I was going
out of the room she called me back and kissed me again--almost as she
had done the night before.
That gave me courage to say something. For children were not, in my
childish days, on such free and easy terms with their elders as they are
now. And kind and gentle as mamma was, we knew very distinctly the sort
of things she would think forward or presuming on our part.
"Mamma," I said, still hesitating a little.
"Well, dear," she replied. She was buttoning, or pretending to button,
the band of the little brown holland apron I wore, so that I could not
see her face, but something in the tone of her voice told me that my
instinct was not mistaken.
"Mamma," I repeated, "may I say something? I have a feeling that--that
you are--that there is something the matter."
Mamma did not answer at once. Then she said very gently, but quite
kindly,
"Geraldine, my dear, you know that I tell you as much as I think it
right to tell any one as young as you--I tell you more, of our plans and
private matters and such things, than most mothers tell their little
daughters. This has come about partly through your being so much alone
with me. But when I _don't_ tell you anything, even though you may
suspect there is something to tell, you should trust me that there is
good reason for my not doing so."
"Yes," I said, but I could not stifle a little sigh. "Would you just
tell me one thing, mamma," I went on; "it isn't anything that you're
really unhappy about, is it?"
Again mamma hesitated.
"Dear child," she said, "try to put it out of your mind. I can only say
this much to you, I am _anxious_ more than troubled. There is nothing
the matter that should really be called a trouble. But your father and I
have a question of great importance to decide just now, and we are
very--I may say really _terribly_--anxious to decide for the best. That
is all I can tell you. Kiss me, my darling, and try to be your own
bright little self. That will be a comfort and help to me."
I kissed her and I promised I would try to do as she wished. But it was
with rather a heavy heart that I went to my practising. What _could_ it
be? I did try not to think of it, but it would keep coming back into my
mind. And I was only a child. I had no experience of trouble or anxiety.
After a time my spirits began to rise again--there was a sort of
excitement in the wondering what this great matter could be. I am afraid
I did not succeed in putting it out of my mind as mamma wished me to do.
But the days went on without anything particular happening. I did not
speak of what mamma had said to me to my brother. I knew she did not
wish me to do so. And by degrees other things began to make me forget
about it a little. It was just at that time, I remember, that some
friend--an aunt on father's side, I think--sent me a present of _The
Wide, Wide World_, and while I was reading it I seemed actually to live
in the story. It was curious that I should have got it just then. If
mamma had read it herself I am not sure that she would have given it to
me. But after all, perhaps it served the purpose of preparing me a
_little_--a very little--for what was before me in my own life.
It was nearly three weeks after the time I have described rather
minutely that the blow fell, that Haddie and I were told the whole. I
think, however, I will not go on telling _how_ we were told, for I am
afraid of making my story too long.
And of course, however good my memory is, I cannot pretend that the
conversations I relate took place _exactly_ as I give them. I think I
give the _spirit_ of them correctly, but now that I have come to the
telling of distinct facts, perhaps it will be better simply to narrate
them.
You will remember my saying that my father had lost money very
unexpectedly, and that this was what had obliged him to come to live at
Mexington and work so hard. He had got the post he held there--it was in
a bank--greatly through the influence of Mrs. Selwood, mamma's
godmother, who lived in the country at some hours' distance from the
town, and whose name was well known there, as she owned a great many
houses and other property in the immediate neighbourhood.
Father was very glad to get this post, and very grateful to Mrs.
Selwood. She took great interest in us all--that is to say, she was
interested in Haddie and me because we were mamma's children, though she
did not care for or understand children as a rule. But she was a
faithful friend, and anxious to help father still more.
Just about the time I have got to in my story, the manager of a bank in
South America, in some way connected with the one at Great Mexington,
became ill, and was told by the doctors that he must return to England
and have a complete rest for two years. Mrs. Selwood had money
connection with this bank too, and got to hear of what had happened.
Knowing that father could speak both French and Spanish well, for he had
been in the diplomatic service as a younger man, she at once applied for
the appointment for him, and after some little delay she was told that
he should have the offer of it for the two years.
Two years are not a very long time, even though the pay was high, but
the great advantage of the offer was that the heads of the bank at
Mexington promised, if all went well for that time, that some permanent
post should be given to father in England on his return. This was what
made him more anxious to accept the proposal than even the high pay. For
Mrs. Selwood found out that he would not be able to save much of his
salary, as he would have a large house to keep up, and would be expected
to receive many visitors. On this account the post was never given to an
unmarried man.
"If he accepts it," Mrs. Selwood wrote to mamma, "you, my dear Blanche,
must go with him, and some arrangement would have to be made about the
children for the time. I would advise your sending them to school."
_Now_ I think my readers will not be at a loss to understand why our
dear mother had looked so troubled, even though on one side this event
promised to be for our good in the end.
Father was allowed two or three weeks in which to make up his mind. The
heads of the Mexington bank liked and respected him very much, and they
quite saw that there were two sides to the question of his accepting the
offer. The climate of the place was not very good--at least it was
injurious to English people if they stayed there for long--and it was
perfectly certain that it would be madness to take growing children like
Haddie and me there.
_This_ was the dark spot in it all to mamma, and indeed to father too.
They were not afraid for themselves. They were both strong and still
young, but they could not for a moment entertain the idea of taking
_us_. And the thought of separation was terrible.
You see, being a small family, and living in a place like Great
Mexington, where my parents had not many congenial friends, and being
poor were obliged to live carefully, _home_ was everything to us all.
We four were the whole world to each other, and knew no happiness apart.
I do not mean to say that I felt or saw all this at once, but looking
back upon it from the outside, as it were, I see all that made it a
peculiarly hard case, especially--at the beginning, that is to say--for
mamma.
It seems strange that I did _not_ take it all in--all the misery of it,
I mean--at first, nor indeed for some time, not till I had actual
experience of it. Even Haddie realised it more in anticipation than I
did. He was two years older, and though he had never been at a
boarding-school, still he knew something of school life. There were
boarders at his school, and he had often seen and heard how, till they
got accustomed to it at any rate, they suffered from home-sickness, and
counted the days to the holidays.
And for us there were not to be any holidays! No certain prospect of
them at best, though Mrs. Selwood said something vaguely about perhaps
having us at Fernley for a visit in the summer. But it was very vague.
And we had no near relations on mamma's side except Aunty Etta, who was
in India, and on father's no one who could possibly have us regularly
for our holidays.
All this mamma grasped at once, and her grief was sometimes so extreme
that, but for Mrs. Selwood, I doubt if father would have had the
resolution to accept. But Mrs. Selwood was what is called "very
sensible," perhaps just a little hard, and certainly not _sensitive_.
And she put things before our parents in such a way that mamma felt it
her duty to urge father to accept the offer, and father felt it _his_
duty to put feelings aside and do so.
They went to stay at Fernley from a Saturday to a Monday to talk it well
over, and it was when they came back on the Monday that we were told.
Before then I think we had both come to have a strong feeling that
something was going to happen. I, of course, had some reason for this in
what mamma had said to me, though I had forgotten about it a good deal,
till this visit to Fernley brought back the idea of something unusual.
For it was _very_ seldom that we were left by ourselves.
We did not mind it much. After all, it was only two nights and one
_whole_ day, and that a Sunday, when my brother was at home, so we
stood at the door cheerfully enough, looking at our father and mother
driving off in the clumsy, dingy old four-wheeler--though that is a
modern word--which was the best kind of cab known at Mexington.
But when they were fairly off Haddie turned to me, and I saw that he was
very grave. I was rather surprised.
"Why, Haddie," I said, "do you mind so much? They'll be back on Monday."
"No, of course I don't mind _that_," he said. "But I wonder why mamma
looks so--so awfully trying-not-to-cry, you know."
"Oh," I said, "I don't think she's quite well. And she hates leaving
us."
"No," said my brother, "there's something more."
And when he said that, I remembered the feeling I had had myself. I felt
rather cross with Haddie; I wanted to forget it quite.
"You needn't try to frighten me like that," I said. "I meant to be quite
happy while they were away--to please mamma, you know, by telling her so
when she comes back."
Then Haddie, who really was a very good-natured, kind boy, looked
sorry.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," he said; "perhaps it was my fancy. I
don't want to be unhappy while they're away, I'm sure. I'm only too glad
that to-day's Saturday and to-morrow Sunday."
And he did his very best to amuse me. We went out a walk that afternoon
with the housemaid--quite a long walk, though it was winter. We went as
far out of the town as we could get, to where there were fields, which
in spring and summer still looked green, and through the remains of a
little wood, pleasant even in the dullest season. It was our favourite
walk, and the only pretty one near the town. There was a brook at the
edge of the wood, which still did its best to sing merrily, and to
forget how dingy and grimy its clear waters became a mile or two farther
on; there were still a few treasures in the shape of ivy sprays and
autumn-tinted leaves to gather and take home with us to deck our
nursery.
I remember the look of it all so well. It was the favourite walk of many
besides ourselves, especially on a Saturday, when the hard-worked
Mexington folk were once free to ramble about--boys and girls not much
older than ourselves among them, for in those days children were allowed
to work in factories much younger than they do now. We did not mind
meeting some of our townsfellows. On the contrary, we felt a good deal
of interest in them and liked to hear their queer way of talking, though
we could scarcely understand anything they said. And we were very much
interested indeed in some of the stories Lydia, who belonged to this
part of the country, told us of her own life, in a village a few miles
away, where there were two or three great factories, at which all the
people about worked--men, women, and children too, so that sometimes,
except for babies and very old people, the houses seemed quite deserted.
"And long ago before that," said Lydia, "when mother was a little lass,
it was such a pretty village--cottages all over with creepers and
honeysuckle--not ugly rows of houses as like each other as peas. The
people worked at home on their own hand-looms then."
Lydia had a sense of the beautiful!
On our way home, of course, we called at Miss Fryer's--this time we had
a whole shilling to spend, for there was Sunday's tea to think of as
well as to-day's. We had never had so much at a time, and our
consultation took a good while. We decided at last on seven crumpets
and seven Bath buns as usual, and in addition to these, three large
currant tea-cakes, which our friend Susan told us would be all the
better for toasting if not too fresh. And the remaining threepence we
invested in a slice of sweet sandwich, which she told us would be
perfectly good if kept in a tin tightly closed. The old Quakeress for
once, I have always suspected, departed on this occasion from her rule
of exact payment for all purchases, for it certainly seemed a very large
slice of sweet sandwich for threepence.
We were rather tired with our walk that evening and went to bed early.
Nothing more was said by Haddie about his misgivings. I think he hoped I
had forgotten what had passed, but I had not. It had all come back
again, the strange feeling of change and trouble in the air which had
made me question mamma that morning two or three weeks ago.
But I did not as yet really believe it. I had never known what sorrow
and trouble actually are. It is not many children who reach even the age
I was then with so sunny and peaceful an experience of life. That
anything could happen to us--to _me_--like what happened to "Ellen" in
_The Wide, Wide World_, I simply could not believe; even though if any
one had talked to me about it and said that troubles must come and _do_
come to all, and to some much more than to others, and that they might
be coming to us, I should have agreed at once and said yes, of course I
knew that was true.
The next day, Sunday, was very rainy. It made us feel dull, I think,
though we did not really mind a wet Sunday as much as another day, for
we never went a walk on Sunday. It was not thought right, and as we had
no garden the day would have been a very dreary one to us, except for
mamma.
She managed to make it pleasant. We went to church in the morning, and
in the evening too sometimes. I think all children like going to church
in the evening; there is something grown-up about it. And the rest of
the day mamma managed to find interesting things for us to do. She
generally had some book which she kept for reading aloud on Sunday--Dr.
Adams's _Allegories_, "The Dark River" and others, were great
favourites, and so were Bishop Wilberforce's _Agathos_. Some of them
frightened me a little, but it was rather a pleasant sort of fright,
there was something grand and solemn about it.
Then we sang hymns sometimes, and we always had a very nice tea, and
mamma, and father too now and then, told us stories about when they were
children and what they did on Sundays. It was much stricter for them
than for us, though even for us many things were forbidden on Sundays
which are now thought not only harmless but right.
Still, I never look back to the quiet Sundays in the dingy Mexington
street with anything but a feeling of peace and gentle pleasure.