by G. A. Henty
CHAPTER VII.
A BROKEN LIFE.
And so I returned to dear old Canterbury. I had so many friends there,and the town itself, which I loved better than them all, that as Ilooked out of the window of the fly as I drove through itswell-remembered streets, it seemed to me as if the events of the lastfour years were all obliterated from my mind, and that I was coming backafter only a short absence to my dear old home. Mrs. Mapleside, withwhom, as I have said, I was going to stay, was an elderly lady when Iwas a young girl. She was then known as Miss Mapleside; but she had nowtaken brevet rank, and was grievously displeased if she were addressedin any other way; she was now more than seventy-five, but was stillbrisk and lively, and her heart was kindness itself. She was short, butvery upright, and generally dressed in brown plum-coloured, or blacksilk. She inclined to bright colours in her bonnet, and rather pridedherself upon her taste in dress. Personally she was the reverse of vain,and wore the most palpable wig I ever saw, and a pair of spectacles,with tortoiseshell rims of an immense thickness. She had besides a pairof heavy gold double eye-glasses, which hung upon her chain on stateoccasions, and which she sometimes put on; but I think this was merelyfrom a little harmless pride in their possession, for whenever she hadreally to look at anything, she always pulled out her tortoiseshellspectacles, and not unfrequently tried to put them on, forgetful thatthe gold spectacles were already fixed on her nose.
Mrs. Mapleside lived in a pretty little house on the terrace overlookingthe market-place; and when I arrived that evening, she received me withan almost motherly affection and interest. She would hardly allow me togo upstairs, to take my things off. She was sure that I must be soterribly fatigued, for to her a three hours' journey by rail was anundertaking not to be lightly entered upon, and involving immense riskand fatigue. The old lady had once when a girl made a journey to London,and the coach had been snowed up, and they had been two days on theroad; and she still retained a vivid remembrance of her sufferings. Forthe last fifty years she had never been beyond Whitstable or Ramsgate,to one or other of which places she made an expedition for a fortnightor so every two years; always going in the coach, as long as coachesran, and after that in some friend's carriage; for the railway to herwas a terrible monster, and nothing would convince her that collisionsand catastrophes of all sorts were not its normal state of being. Sheexpressed her gratitude to Providence most warmly that I should havebeen preserved from destruction on the way, and seemed to think that analmost special dispensation had taken place in my favour.
Mrs. Mapleside read the _Times_ regularly, getting it on the third dayfrom the library, and her principal object of interest in it was tosearch for railway accidents; and as few days pass without some mishapof greater or less importance being recorded, she was constantly quotingthem in support of her pet theory. It was in vain that I assured herthat the number of accidents was as nothing in proportion to the immensenumber of trains which ran daily. This was a light in which she wouldnot look at it; but had an argument, quite original to herself, withwhich she always triumphantly confuted anything I could urge on theopposite side of the question.
"Now, my dear," she would say, "this accident happened by the trainwhich left York at ten o'clock in the morning. Will you be kind enoughto look in Bradshaw, which I never can understand, and see by whichtrain we must have left Canterbury, to have reached York in time to havegone on by that ten-o'clock train?"
I would get the book and find that if we had gone up to London by thefour o'clock train the evening before, and then on by the night mail toYork, and had slept there for a few hours, we could have gone on by theten o'clock train to which the accident happened.
"There, my dear," she would exclaim triumphantly, "you see we have had awonderful escape. If we had started by that four o'clock train on ourway to Scotland we should have been very likely killed, and if youremember, if we had gone by the twelve o'clock train the day before toBath, we should have been in that dreadful accident at the bridge, whereso many people were killed. No, no, my dear, there is hardly a daypasses when if we had taken our places by one of the trains from here,and gone on a journey to some part of England or other, we should nothave met with some accident or other; perhaps only run over a signalman,but even that would have been very unpleasant to the feelings. You maysay what you like, my dear, but nothing will persuade me that we do nothave almost daily the most providential escapes from destruction."
This was Mrs. Mapleside's great hobby. She had only one other curiousconviction; and that was that the population of London was composedalmost exclusively of bad characters, and that an inhabitant there mustexpect, as an ordinary occurrence, to have his house destroyed by fire.The columns of the _Times_ afforded her an immense array of facts insupport of this theory; and as some one had unfortunately once told her,that not one in fifty of the cases before the London magistrates werereported, the argument that these cases were as nothing in proportion tothe population, carried no weight with her whatever. She was absolutelypathetic in her description of the fires.
"There, my dear," she would say, "four fires on last Tuesday night: onlythink, Agnes, what a terrible spectacle to look out of one's window andsee the town blazing in four directions all at once; the clank of theengines--I saw a fire once my dear, and I shall never forget it,--andthe roaring of the flames, and the cries of the lookers on; and the poorpeople getting their furniture out of the next houses, and the waterrunning down the street; and only think of seeing all this in fourdirections at once."
These are Mrs. Mapleside's peculiarities, and nothing will shake herfaith in her view of the subjects; on all other points she is the mosteasy old lady possible, hardly having any opinion of her own, and readyto do, or say anything to give pleasure to others. On the whole she isone of the kindest and most cheerful old ladies in the world.
Her welcome to me was, as I have said, most affectionate, and when teawas over, she made me sit down in a large easy chair by the fire--foralthough it was hardly cold enough for one, she had it lighted becauseshe was sure I should come in perished with cold from my journey.
I sat there, contented and snug, listening and yet hardly hearing Mrs.Mapleside as she ran on, telling me all the changes which had takenplace in Canterbury in those four years that I had been away. The oldnames sounded very pleasant to me, and called up many happy memories ofthe past; and that night, when I had gone up to my own room, I threw upthe window, and looked out; and as I heard the old cathedral bellschiming the hour, I felt once more at home again, and that my life,although it could no longer be bright and happy as I had hoped, mightyet be a very contented and cheerful one.
In a day or two all my old friends called upon me, and in a week I feltcompletely at home. The place itself was so perfectly unchanged, thevery goods in the shop windows seemed arranged in precisely the sameorder in which they had been when I had last walked down the HighStreet. I found my acquaintances and friends exactly as I had left them;I had changed so much that it seemed almost strange to me that theyshould have altered so little. I had at seventeen been as merry and asfull of fun as any of them. My separation from Percy and my ill health,had certainly changed me a good deal a year and a half after that; butin the three years before papa's death I had again recovered my spirits,and had been able to take my place again with my old playfellows andfriends. Only two months back I had been as merry and perhaps more happythan any of them, but now how changed I was! they were still livelygirls, I was a quiet sad woman. It was not of course in feature that Iwas so much altered, it was in expression. I think sometimes now, when Ilook in the glass, that if I could but laugh again, and if my eyes couldonce more light up, I should not be so much changed from what I wasseven years ago; but I know that can never be again. I have fought myfight for happiness, and have lost; I staked my whole life upon onethrow, and after so many years weary waiting, when it seemed as if theprize would soon be mine, the cup was dashed in an instant from my lips;and henceforth I know that I am no longer an actor in the lon
g drama oflife, but a mere spectator--content to look on at the play, and to feel,I hope, an interest in the success of others.
So I told all my friends who came to see me on my first arrival--and whowere proposing little schemes of pleasure and amusement--that I shouldnot, at any rate for some time, enter into any society even of thequietest kind; but that I should be glad, very glad if they would comeand sit with me, and talk to me, and make me a confidant in their hopesand plans, as they had done long ago. At first my old playfellows wererather shy of me, I seemed so different to themselves, so grave and sadin my deep mourning, that they could hardly feel at home with me. Theyknew that I had gone through some great sorrow, and perhaps guessed atits nature, but they had heard no particulars, nor who it was that Imourned; for although my engagement with Percy had been generally known,it had been supposed by every one--from my illness after the will waslost, and from Percy's departure for India--that it had been broken off;and we had never deemed it necessary to tell any one how the matterreally stood, as a long engagement like ours is such a very uncertainaffair, even at the best. So every one supposed that I had becomeengaged in London, and that death had in someway broken it off, and Ihave never given any further explanation of it.
Now that six months have passed, and my friends are more accustomed tomy changed appearance and manners--and now that I am, perhaps, a littlemore cheerful--their timidity has worn off, and few days pass that oneof them does not bring in her work and come and sit for an hour and chatwith me.
But if my old playmates find me strangely quiet and old, I see butlittle alteration in them. They are all girls still, as merry and genialas of old. Even those who were many years older than I, who had beenelder girls at our children's parties when I was one of the youngest ofthe little ones, are still quite young women, and have by no meansceased to consider themselves as eligible partners at a ball. Thesesometimes try to rally me out of my determination never again to go intosociety. They tell me that I am only a little over twenty-five, a merechild yet, and that I shall think better of it some day. But I know thatit will never be otherwise. My heart is dead, and I have neither thoughtnor hope of any change as long as my life lasts. But, of course, theycannot know this, and I let them prophecy and predict as they please,knowing that their anticipations can never turn out true.
With hardly an exception, nearly all my young friends are there still,and all are like myself, single. Indeed, it cannot well be otherwise,for there is literally no one for them to marry. The boys, as they havegrown up, have left the town, and are seen no more; and of them all--ofall those rude, unruly boys who used to go to our parties, and blow outthe lights and kiss us, hardly one remains. Many are dead. Rivers waskilled at the Cape; Jameson died of fever in India; Smithers, Lacy, andMarsden, all sleep far away from their English homes, under the richsoil of the Crimea; Thompson was drowned at sea. Many of them are in thearmy and navy, and scattered all over the world. Two or three haveemigrated to Australia. Hampton is a rising young barrister on theNorthern circuit. Travers is a struggling curate in London; and Douglas,more fortunate, has a living in Devonshire. Two of the Hoopers areclerks in the Bank of Ireland, and one of them a medical man of goodposition near Reigate. Many of them have married; but they have chosentheir wives in the neighbourhoods where their profession had thrownthem. Anyhow, none of them had taken Canterbury girls; andthese--pretty, amiable, and ladylike, as many of them are--seemed doomedto remain unmarried. One or two of them only, frightened at the hopelesslook-out, have recklessly taken up with marching subalterns from thegarrison; but the rest look but gravely upon such doings, for theCanterbury girls are far too properly brought up to regard a red coatwith anything but a pious horror, as a creature of the most dangerousdescription, very wild, and generally very poor; but withal exceedinglyfascinating, to be approached with great caution, and to be flirted withdemurely at the race-ball, and during the cricket-week, but at othertimes to be avoided and shunned; and it is an agreed thing among them,supported by the general experience of the few who have tried theexperiment, that even a life of celibacy at Canterbury is preferable tothe lot of a sub.'s wife in a marching regiment.
Thus it happens that all my old schoolfellows were still single, andindeed we have a riddle among ourselves, "Why is Canterbury like heaven?Because we neither marry nor are given in marriage."
Before I had been long in Canterbury I found myself so comfortable withMrs. Mapleside, that I was convinced that any change must be for theworse. I therefore suggested to the dear old lady that we should enterinto an arrangement for me to take up my abode permanently with her. Tothis she assented very willingly; for, she said, she found it far morecheerful than living by herself; besides which my living would not addvery much to her expenses, and the sum I proposed to pay, sixty pounds ayear, would enable her to indulge in many little additional luxuries;for her income, although just sufficient to live upon in the way she wasaccustomed to, was still by no means large.
Thus the arrangement would be mutually beneficial to us, and when it wassettled, I looked with increased pleasure at my beautifully neat littlebedroom, where before I had only been as a guest, but which I could nowlook upon as my own sanctuary--my home.
I am very comfortable now, more even than when I had been a visitor; forthen the good old lady fussed a little about my comforts, and I couldseldom leave her and get up to my room in quiet; but now that I am apermanent inmate of the house, I am able to mark out my own day, and topursue my course while Mrs. Mapleside keeps hers.
Mrs. Mapleside keeps one servant, a tidy, cheerful-looking young womanof about seven-and-twenty. She has been thirteen years with her, Mrs.Mapleside having taken her from the national school, and trained herinto a perfect knowledge of all her little ways. Her name is Hannah, butMrs. Mapleside always addressed her as "child."
My life here is not eventful, but on the other hand it is not dull. I amnever unoccupied, and time passes away in an easy, steady flow, which isvery tranquillizing and soothing to me. The first thing after breakfastI read the _Times_ aloud to Mrs. Mapleside, and then whenever there isan accident I look out the train in Bradshaw, and she is always devoutlythankful for another hairbreadth escape which she insists we have had.About eleven, either one or other of my friends comes in with her workand sits with us until lunch-time, or else I myself go out to call uponone of them. After lunch we go for a walk, or at least I do, and Mrs.Mapleside makes calls--to which she is very partial, and of which Iconfess I have quite a horror. Indeed, I never pay regular visits,preferring much to take my work and sit for a while of a morning at thehouses where I am intimate. After dinner, Mrs. Mapleside dozes, and I goup into my room--for it has been summer--and write my story. I have nowbeen here six months, and in that time have, between dinner and tea,written this little history of the principal events in my life, and inthe lives of those dear to me; and the exercise has been a great solaceand amusement to me. I have nearly come to an end now.
After I had been down here for four months I yielded to Polly'sentreaties, and made my first half-yearly visit to them, from which Ihave only returned a fortnight. I confess that I had rather dreaded thismeeting, but now that it is over I am very glad that I made it. It is sopleasant to think of Polly in her happy home, for it is a very happyone. Charley is such a capital fellow, so thoroughly good and hearty,and I am sure he would cut off his little finger if he thought it wouldgive Polly pleasure. I tell her that I think she has her own way toomuch, more than it is good that a wife should, but Polly only laughs,and says, "That her dear old bear is quite contented with his chain, butthat if he were to take it into his head to growl, and pull his own way,that he would find the chain only a flimsy pretence after all."
I believe they are as happy as it is possible for a couple to be. Pollysays it would be quite perfect if she only had me with them. Charley andshe tried very hard to persuade me, but I was firm in my resolution.Canterbury is my home, and shall always remain so; but when my spiritsget better I shall make my visits longer in Lo
ndon; but not till I feelthat my dull presence is no drawback to the brightness of their hearth:and this will not be for a long time yet. I try very hard to be patient,but I feel at times irritable and impatient at my sorrow, I hope, withtime, that this will die away, and that I shall settle down into atranquil, even-tempered, cheerful old maid. I find it difficult, atpresent, to enter into all the tittle-tattle and gossip of this town,but I endeavour to do so, for I know that I shall not be the same asthose around me if I do not. So I am beginning to join in the workingparties and tea-meetings, which form the staple of the amusements of ourquiet set, and where we discuss the affairs of Canterbury to our hearts'content. And now I lay down my pen, which has already run on far beyondthe limits I had originally assigned for it.
I have told briefly, in general--but in those parts which I thought ofmost interest, more at length--the story of my life, and of the lives ofthose dear to me, and I have now arrived at a proper point to stop; butshould any unexpected event occur--not in my life, for that is out ofthe question, but in theirs--I shall again take up my pen to narrate it.But this is not likely, for Polly, Harry, and Ada are all married, andhave a fair chance of having the old ending to all the fairy stories Iused to read as a child, written at the end of the chapter of theirlives, "And so they married and lived very happily ever after."