The Crosses, mother and daughter, lived at Walham Green. The house was
less pleasant than another which Mrs. Cross owned at Putney, but it
also represented a lower rental, and poverty obliged them to take this
into account. When the second house stood tenantless, as had now been
the case for half a year, Mrs. Cross' habitually querulous comment on
life rose to a note of acrimony very afflictive to her daughter Bertha.
The two bore as little resemblance to each other, physical or mental,
as mother and child well could. Bertha Cross was a sensible, thoughtful
girl, full of kindly feeling, and blest with a humorous turn that
enabled her to see the amusing rather than the carking side of her
pinched life. These virtues she had from her father. Poor Cross, who
supplemented a small income from office routine by occasional comic
journalism, and even wrote a farce (which brought money to a theatrical
manager), made on his deathbed a characteristic joke. He had just
signed his will, and was left alone with his wife. "I'm sure I've
always wished to make your life happy," piped the afflicted woman. "And
I yours," he faintly answered; adding, with a sad, kind smile, as he
pointed to the testamentary document, "Take the will for the deed."
The two sons had emigrated to British Columbia, and Bertha would not
have been sorry to join her brothers there, for domestic labour on a
farm, in peace and health, seemed to her considerably better than the
quasi-genteel life she painfully supported. She had never dreamt of
being an artist, but, showing some facility with the pencil, was sent
by her father to South Kensington, where she met and made friends with
Rosamund Elvan. Her necessity and her application being greater than
Rosamund's, Bertha before long succeeded in earning a little money;
without this help, life at home would scarcely have been possible for
her. They might, to be sure, have taken a lodger, having spare rooms,
but Mrs. Cross could only face that possibility if the person received
into the house were "respectable" enough to be called a paying guest,
and no such person offered. So they lived, as no end of "respectable"
families do, a life of penury and seclusion, sometimes going without a
meal that they might have decent clothing to wear abroad, never able to
buy a book, to hear a concert, and only by painful sacrifice able to
entertain a friend. When, on a certain occasion, Miss Elvan passed a
week at their house (Mrs. Cross approved of this friendship, and hoped
it might be a means of discovering the paying guest), it meant for them
a near approach to starvation during the month that ensued.
Time would have weighed heavily on Mrs. Cross but for her one
recreation, which was perennial, ever fresh, constantly full of
surprises and excitement. Poor as she was, she contrived to hire a
domestic servant; to say that she "kept" one would come near to a
verbal impropriety, seeing that no servant ever remained in the house
for more than a few months, whilst it occasionally happened that the
space of half a year would see a succession of some half dozen
"generals." Underpaid and underfed, these persons (they varied in age
from fourteen to forty) were of course incompetent, careless,
rebellious, and Mrs. Cross found the sole genuine pleasure of her life
in the war she waged with them. Having no reasonable way of spending
her hours, she was thus supplied with occupation; being of acrid
temper, she was thus supplied with a subject upon whom she could
fearlessly exercise it; being remarkably mean of disposition, she saw
in the paring-down of her servant's rations to a working minimum, at
once profit and sport; lastly, being fond of the most trivial gossip,
she had a never-failing topic of discussion with such ladies as could
endure her society.
Bertha, having been accustomed to this domestic turbulence all her life
long, for the most part paid no heed to it. She knew that if the
management of the house were in her hands, instead of her mother's,
things would go much more smoothly, but the mere suggestion of such a
change (ventured once at a moment of acute crisis) had so amazed and
exasperated Mrs. Cross, that Bertha never again looked in that
direction. Yet from time to time a revolt of common sense forced her to
speak, and as the only possible way, if quarrel were to be avoided, she
began her remonstrance on the humorous note. Then when her mother had
been wearying her for half an hour with complaints and lamentations
over the misdoings of one Emma, Bertha as the alternative to throwing
up her hands and rushing out of the house, began laughing to herself,
whereat Mrs. Cross indignantly begged to be informed what there was so
very amusing in a state of affairs which would assuredly bring her to
her grave.
"If only you could see the comical side of it, mother," replied Bertha.
"It really has one, you know. Emma, if only you would be patient with
her, is a well-meaning creature, and she says the funniest things. I
asked her this morning if she didn't think she could find some way of
remembering to put the salt on the table. And she looked at me very
solemnly, and said, 'Indeed, I will, miss. I'll put it into my prayers,
just after 'our daily bread.'"
Mrs. Cross saw nothing in this but profanity. She turned the attack on
Bertha, who, by her soft way of speaking, simply encouraged the
servants, she declared, in negligence and insolence.
"Look at it in this way, mother," replied the girl, as soon as she was
suffered to speak. "To be badly served is bad enough, in itself; why
make it worse by ceaseless talking about it, so leaving ourselves not a
moment of peace and quiet? I'm sure I'd rather put the salt on the
table myself at every meal, and think no more about it, than worry,
worry, worry over the missing salt-cellars from one meal to the next.
Don't you feel, dear mother, that it's shocking waste of life?"
"What nonsense you talk, child! Are we to live in dirt and disorder? Am
I _never_ to correct a servant, or teach her her duties? But of course
everything _I_ do is wrong. Of course _you_ could do everything so very
much better. That's what children are nowadays."
Whilst Mrs. Cross piped on, Bertha regarded her with eyes of humorous
sadness. The girl often felt it a dreary thing not to be able to
respect--nay, not to be able to feel much love for--her mother. At such
times, her thought turned to the other parent, with whom, had he and
she been left alone, she could have lived so happily, in so much mutual
intelligence and affection. She sighed and moved away.
The unlet house was a very serious matter, and when one day Norbert
Franks came to talk about it, saying that he would want a house very
soon, and thought this of Mrs. Cross's might suit him, Bertha rejoiced
no less than her mother. In consequence of the artist's announcement,
she wrote to her friend Rosamund, saying how glad she was to hear that
her marriage approached. The reply to this letter surprised her.
Rosamund had been remiss in correspondence for the last few months; her
few and brief letters, though they were as affectionate as ever, making
no mention of what had formerly been an inexhaustible topic--the
genius, goodness, and brilliant hopes of Franks. Now she wrote as if in
utter despondency, a letter so confused in style and vague in
expression, that Bertha could gather from it little or nothing except a
grave doubt whether Franks' marriage was as near as he supposed. A week
or two passed, and Rosamund again wrote--from Switzerland; again the
letter was an unintelligible maze of dreary words, and a mere moaning
and sighing, which puzzled Bertha as much as it distressed her.
Rosamund's epistolary style, when she wrote to this bosom friend, was
always pitched in a key of lyrical emotion, which now and then would
have been trying to Bertha's sense of humour but for the sincerity
manifest in every word; hitherto, however, she had expressed herself
with perfect lucidity, and this sudden change seemed ominous of
alarming things. Just when Bertha was anxiously wondering what could
have happened,--of course inclined to attribute blame, if blame there
were, to the artist rather than to his betrothed--a stranger came to
inquire about the house to let. It was necessary to ascertain at once
whether Mr. Franks intended to become their tenant or not. Mrs. Cross
wrote to him, and received the briefest possible reply, to the effect
that his plans were changed.
"How vexatious!" exclaimed Mrs. Cross. "I had very much rather have let
to people we know! I suppose he's seen a house that suits him better."
"I think there's another reason," said Bertha, after gazing for a
minute or two at the scribbled, careless note. "The marriage is put
off."
"And you knew that," cried her mother, "all the time, and never told
me! And I might have missed twenty chances of letting. Really, Bertha,
I never did see anything like you. There's that house standing empty
month after month, and we hardly know where to turn for money, and you
knew that Mr. Franks wouldn't take it, and yet you say not a word! How
can you behave in such an extraordinary way? I think you really find
pleasure in worrying me. Any one would fancy you wished to see me in my
grave. To think that you knew all the time!"