MRS. DARLINGTON was a woman of refinement herself, and had been used to
the society of refined persons. She was, naturally enough, shocked at
the coarseness and brutality of Mr. Scragg, and, ere an hour went by,
in despair at the unmannerly rudeness of the children, the oldest a
stout, vulgar-looking boy, who went racing and rummaging about the
house from the garret to the cellar. For a long time after her exciting
interview with Mr. Scragg, she sat weeping and trembling in her own
room, with Edith by her side, who sought earnestly to comfort and
encourage her.
"Oh, Edith!" she sobbed, "to think that we should be humbled to this!"
"Necessity has forced us into our present unhappy position, mother,"
replied Edith. "Let us meet its difficulties with as brave hearts as
possible."
"I shall never be able to treat that dreadful man with even common
civility," said Mrs. Darlington.
"We have accepted him as our guest, mother, and it will be our duty to
make all as pleasant and comfortable as possible. We will have to bear
much, I see--much beyond what I had anticipated."
Mrs. Darlington sighed deeply as she replied--
"Yes, yes, Edith. Ah, the thought makes me miserable!"
"No more of that sweet drawing together in our own dear home circle,"
remarked Edith, sadly.
"Henceforth we are to bear the constant presence and intrusion of
strangers, with whom we have few or no sentiments in common. We open
our house and take in the ignorant, the selfish, the vulgar, and feed
them for a certain price! Does not the thought bring a feeling of
painful humiliation? What can pay for all this? Ah me! The anticipation
had in it not a glimpse of what we have found in our brief experience.
Except Mr. and Mrs. Ring, there isn't a lady nor gentleman in the
house. That Mason is so rudely familiar that I cannot bear to come near
him. He's making himself quite intimate with Henry already, and I don't
like to see it."
"Nor do I," replied Mrs. Darlington. "Henry's been out with him twice
to the theatre already."
"I'm afraid of his influence over Henry. He's not the kind of a
companion he ought to choose," said Edith. "And then Mr. Barling is
with Miriam in the parlour almost every evening. He asks her to sing,
and she says she doesn't like to refuse."
The mother sighed deeply. While they were conversing, a servant came to
their room to say that Mr. Ring was in the parlour, and wished to speak
with Mrs. Darlington. It was late in the afternoon of the day on which
the Scraggs had made their appearance.
With a presentiment of trouble, Mrs. Darlington went down to the
parlour.
"Madam," said Mr. Ring, as soon as she entered, speaking in a firm
voice, "I find that my wife has been grossly insulted by a fellow whose
family you have taken into your house. Now they must leave here, or we
will, and that forthwith."
"I regret extremely," replied Mrs. Darlington, "the unpleasant
occurrence to which you allude; but I do not see how it is possible for
me to turn these people out of the house."
"Very well, ma'am. Suit yourself about that. You can choose between us.
Both can't remain."
"If I were to tell this Mr. Scragg to seek another boarding-house, he
would insult me," said Mrs. Darlington.
"Strange that you would take such a fellow into your house!"
"My rooms were vacant, and I had to fill them."
"Better to have let them remain vacant. But this is neither here nor
there. If this fellow remains, we go."
And go they did on the next day. Mrs. Darlington was afraid to approach
Mr. Scragg on the subject. Had she done so, she would have received
nothing but abuse.
Two weeks afterward, the room vacated by Mr. and Mrs. Ring was taken by
a tall, fine-looking man, who wore a pair of handsome whiskers and
dressed elegantly. He gave his name as Burton, and agreed to pay eight
dollars. Mrs. Darlington liked him very much. There was a certain style
about him that evidenced good breeding and a knowledge of the world.
What his business was he did not say. He was usually in the house as
late as ten o'clock in the morning, and rarely came in before twelve at
night.
Soon after Mr. Burton became a member of Mrs. Darlington's household,
he began to show particular attentions to Miriam, who was in her
nineteenth year, and was, as we have said, a gentle, timid, shrinking
girl. Though she did not encourage, she would not reject the attentions
of the polite and elegant stranger, who had so much that was agreeable
to say that she insensibly acquired a kind of prepossession in his
favour.
As now constituted, the family of Mrs. Darlington was not so pleasant
and harmonious as could have been desired. Mr. Scragg had already
succeeded in making himself so disagreeable to the other boarders, that
they were scarcely civil to him; and Mrs. Grimes, who was quite
gracious with Mrs. Scragg at first, no longer spoke to her. They had
fallen out about some trifle, quarrelled, and then cut each other's
acquaintance. When the breakfast, dinner, or tea bell rang, and the
boarders assembled at the table, there was generally, at first, an
embarrassing silence. Scragg looked like a bull-dog waiting for an
occasion to bark; Mrs. Scragg sat with her lips closely compressed and
her head partly turned away, so as to keep her eyes out of the line of
vision with Mrs. Grimes's face; while Mrs. Grimes gave an occasional
glance of contempt towards the lady with whom she had had a "tiff."
Barling and Mason, observing all this, and enjoying it, were generally
the first to break the reigning silence; and this was usually done by
addressing some remark to Scragg, for no other reason, it seemed, than
to hear his growling reply. Usually, they succeeded in drawing him into
an argument, when they would goad him until he became angry; a species
of irritation in which they never suffered themselves to indulge. As
for Mr. Grimes, he was a man of few words. When spoken to, he would
reply; but he never made conversation. The only man who really behaved
like a gentleman was Mr. Burton; and the contrast seen in him naturally
prepossessed the family in his favour.
The first three months' experience in taking boarders was enough to
make the heart of Mrs. Darlington sick. All domestic comfort was gone.
From early morning until late at night, she toiled harder than any
servant in the house; and, with all, had a mind pressed down with care
and anxiety. Three times during this period she had been obliged to
change her cook, yet, for all, scarcely a day passed that she did not
set badly cooked food before her guests. Sometimes certain of the
boarders complained, and it generally happened that rudeness
accompanied the complaint. The sense of pain that attended this was
always most acute, for it was accompanied by deep humiliation and a
feeling of helplessness. Moreover, during these first three months, Mr.
and Mrs. Grimes had left the house without paying their board for five
weeks, thus throwing her into a loss of forty dollars.
At the beginning of this experiment, after completing the furniture of
her house, Mrs. Darlington had about three hundred dollars. When the
quarter's bill for rent was paid, she had only a hundred and fifty
dollars left. Thus, instead of making any thing by boarders, so far,
she had sunk a hundred and fifty dollars. This fact disheartened her
dreadfully. Then, the effect upon almost every member of her family had
been bad. Harry was no longer the thoughtful affectionate,
innocent-minded young man of former days. Mason and Barling had
introduced him into gay company, and, fascinated with a new and more
exciting kind of life, he was fast forming associations and acquiring
habits of a dangerous character. It was rare that he spent an evening
at home; and, instead of being of any assistance to his mother, was
constantly making demands on her for money. The pain all this
occasioned Mrs. Darlington was of the most distressing character. Since
the children of Mr. and Mrs. Scragg came into the house, Edward and
Ellen, who had heretofore been under the constant care and instruction
of their mother, left almost entirely to themselves, associated
constantly with these children, and learned from them to be rude,
vulgar, and, in some things, even vicious. And Miriam had become
apparently so much interested in Mr. Burton, who was constantly
attentive to her, that both Mrs. Darlington and Edith became anxious on
her account. Burton was entire stranger to them all, and there were
many things about him that appeared strange, if not wrong.
So much for the experiment of taking boarders, after the lapse of a
single quarter of a year.