At Love's Cost Part 50

She had been told by her cousin, as they drove in a four-wheeled cab through the depressing streets of a London suburb, that the family consisted of his wife and a son and a daughter; that the son's name was Joseph and the daughter's Isabel; that Joseph was a clerk in the city, and that Isabel was about the same age as Ida.

"We are a very quiet family," Mr. Heron had said, "and you will no doubt miss the s.p.a.ce and grandeur of Heron Hall, but I trust we are contented and happy, and that though our means are limited, our sphere of usefulness is wider than that of some wealthier people. My wife is, unfortunately, an invalid, and requires constant care and attention; but I have no doubt she will find strength to bear any fresh burden which Providence may see fit to put upon her. Though our circ.u.mstances are comfortable, we are not surrounded by the luxuries which so often prove a stumbling-block to weaker brethren. I trust you may be happy in our humble home, and that you may find some opportunity of usefulness in this new state of life to which you are called."

Ida tried to remember all this as she stood in the centre of the drawing-room and looked round upon the modern but heavy and ugly objects with which it was furnished.

The room was seedy and shabby, but with a different seediness and shabbiness from that of Heron Hall; for there was an attempt to conceal its loss of freshness with antimaca.s.sars, large in size and hideous of pattern. A grim and ugly portrait of Mr. John Heron occupied a great portion of one of the walls, and was confronted by a portrait, of a similar size, of his wife, a middle-cla.s.s woman of faded aspect and languis.h.i.+ng expression. The other pictures were of the type that one usually sees in such houses; engravings printed from wornout plates, and third-cla.s.s lithographs. There was a large sofa covered with dirty cretonne, and with a hollow in the middle showing that the spring had "gone;" the centre-table was adorned by several well-known religious books arranged at regular intervals. A cage containing a canary hung between the curtains in the window, and the bird, a wretched-looking animal--it was moulting--woke up at their entrance and shrilled in the hateful manner peculiar to canaries. This depressing room was lit by one gas-burner, which only permitted Ida to take in all that had been described but vaguely and dimly.

She looked round aghast and with a sinking of the heart. She had never been in any room like this before, and its lack of comfort, its vulgarity, struck upon her strained nerves like a loud discordant note in music; but its owner looked round complacently and turned the gas a little higher, as he said:

"I will go and fetch your cousin. Won't you sit down?"

As he spoke, the door opened and the original of the portrait on the wall entered, followed by her daughter Isabel. Ida rose from the b.u.mpy sofa and saw a thin, hara.s.sed-looking woman, more faded even than the portrait, and a tall and rather a good-looking girl whose face and figure resembled, in a vague, indefinite way, those of both her father and mother; but though she was not bad-looking, there was a touch of vulgarity in her widely opened eyes, with a curious stare for the newcomer, and in her rather coa.r.s.e mouth, which appalled and repelled poor Ida; and she stood looking from one to the other, trying to keep her surprise and wonder and disapproval from revealing themselves through her eyes. She did not know that these two ladies, being the wife and daughter of a professional man, considered themselves very much the superior of their friends and neighbours, who were mostly retired trades-people or "something in the city;" and that Mrs. Heron was extremely proud of her husband's connection with the Herons of Herondale, and was firmly convinced that she and her family possessed all the taste and refinement which belong to "the aristocracy."

A simpler and a homelier woman would have put her arm round the girl's neck and drawn her towards her with a few loving words of greeting and welcome; but Mrs. Heron only extended a hand, held at the latest fas.h.i.+onable angle, and murmured in a languid and lackadaisical voice:

"So you have come at last, my dear Miss Heron! Your train must have been very late, John; we have been expecting you for the last hour, and I am afraid the dinner is quite spoilt. But anyway, I am glad to see you."

"Thank you," said poor Ida.

It was Isabel's turn, and she now came forward with a smile that extended her mouth from ear to ear, and in a gus.h.i.+ng manner said, in staccato sentences:

"Yes, we are so glad to see you! How tired you must be! One always feels so dirty and tumbled after a long journey. You'll be glad of a wash, Miss Heron. But there! I mustn't call you that; it sounds so cold and formal! I must call you Ida, mustn't I? 'Ida!' It sounds such an _odd_ name; but I suppose I shall get used to it in time."

"I hope so," said poor Ida, trying to smile and speak cheerfully and amiably, as Miss Isabel's rather large hand enclosed round hers; but she looked from one to the other with an appalling sensation of strangeness and aloofness, and a lump rose in her throat which rendered the smile and any further speech on her part impossible; and as she looked from the simpering, lackadaisical mother to the vulgar daughter with meaningless smile, she asked herself whether she was really awake, whether this room was indeed to be her future home, and these strange people her daily companions, or whether she was only asleep and dreaming, and would wake to find the honest face of Jessie bending over her, and to see the familiar objects of her own room at Heron Hall.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

When Ida went upstairs for the wash, the need for which Miss Isabel had so kindly informed her of, she found that her room was clean and fairly comfortable, though its appearance seemed strange after the huge and old-fas.h.i.+oned one at the Hall. The furniture was cheap and unsubstantial, the towels were small and thin; in place of pictures, aggressively illuminated texts scarred the walls like freshly made wounds, and the place had a bare, homeless look which made Ida shudder.

The dining-room, when she went down to it, did not impress her any more favourably; for here, too, the furniture was new and s.h.i.+ny with a sticky kind of s.h.i.+niness, as if the treacly varnish had not yet dried; there was not a comfortable chair in the room; the pictures were the most gruesome ones of Dore's, and there was a text over the mantel-piece as aggressive and as hideous in colouring as those in her room. A lukewarm leg of mutton, very underdone, was on the table, the cloth of which was by no means clean; the dishes, which contained quite cold vegetables, were cracked and did not match; the bread was of the commonest kind, that which is called "household;" the knives were badly cleaned, and the plate was worn off the forks and spoons. It was considered inelegant to have gas in the dining-room, therefore a cheap paraffin-lamp was in the centre of the table, and was more liberal of scent than light. The curtains to the window were of that annoying red which shrieks down any other colour near it; they made Ida's tired eyes ache.

While she was trying to eat the slice of gory mutton, Mrs. Heron and Isabel watched her, as if she were some aboriginal from a wild and distant country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron broke off to ask:

"Where is Joseph? He is late to-night."

"He is kept at the office," replied his mother. "Poor boy! I hope he is not working too hard; he has been kept nearly every night this week."

Isabel smiled at Ida, for what reason Ida could not guess; and while she was wondering, there came a knock at the outer door, and presently Joseph entered.

He was an unprepossessing young man with small eyes and thick lips, over which it would have been wise of him to wear a big moustache; but it was the fas.h.i.+on in the city to be clean-shaven, and Mr. Joseph considered himself the pink of fas.h.i.+on. His clothes fitted him too tightly, he wore cheap neckties, and ready-made boots, of course, of patent leather. His dark hair was plastered on the low, retreating forehead; his face was flushed instead of being, as one would expect, pale from overwork.

Ida disliked him at the first glance, and disliked him still more at the second, as she caught his s.h.i.+fty eyes fixed on her with a curious and half-insolently admiring expression.

He came round and shook hands--his were damp and cold like his father's--as Mr. Heron introduced them, and in a voice which unpleasantly matched his face, said that he was glad to see her.

"Tired, Joseph, dear?" murmured his mother, regarding him with a mixture of pride and commiseration.

"Oh, I'm worn out, that's what I am," he said, as he sank into a chair and regarded the certainly untempting food with an eye of disfavour.

"Been hard at it all the evening"--he spoke with a c.o.c.kney, city accent, and was rather uncertain about his aspirates--"I work like a n.i.g.g.e.r."

"Labour is prayer," remarked his father, as if he were enunciating something strikingly original. "Nothing is accomplished without toil, my dear Joseph."

My dear Joseph regarded his father with very much the same expression he had bestowed upon the mutton.

"And how do you like London, Cousin Ida?" he asked.

He hesitated before the "Cousin Ida," and got it out rather defiantly, for there was something in the dignity of this pale, refined face which awed him. It was perhaps the first time in his life Mr. Joseph had sat at the same table with a lady; for Mr. John Heron had married beneath him, and for money; and in retiring from the bar, at which he had been an obvious failure, had sunk down to the society of his wife's cla.s.s.

"I have seen so little of it," replied Ida. "I have only pa.s.sed through London twice, on my way from France to Herondale, and from Herondale here." Mr. Joseph was duly impressed by the sound of Herondale.

"Oh, you must tell me all about your old home," he said, with an air of overconfidence to conceal his nervousness; "and we must show you about London a bit; it's a tidy little place."

He grinned with an air of knowingness, and seemed rather disconcerted that Ida did not return his smile.

"Shall I give you some water, Ida?" said Mr. Heron. "I regret that I cannot offer you any wine. We have no intoxicants in the house. We are all total abstainers, on principle."

The other members of the family looked down uncomfortably, and, to Ida's surprise, as if they were ashamed.

"Thank you," she said; "I do not care for wine."

"I am afraid there are a great many things you will miss here," said Mr. Heron. "We are a plain, but I trust, G.o.dfearing family, and we are content with the interest which springs from the daily round, the common task. You will find no excitements at Laburnum Villa."

Ida, as she glanced at the family, could not help feeling that they were indeed plain, but she made haste to say that she did not need any excitements and that her life had hitherto been devoid of them. They seemed to think that it was the proper thing to sit round the table while she was making her pretence of a meal; but when it was finished, Mr. Joseph stretched himself out in what was erroneously called an easy-chair, and proceeded to monopolise the conversation.

"Regular busy time in the city," he remarked to his father. "Never saw such a hum. It's all over this boom in South Africa. They're floating that new company I was telling you about, and the Stock Exchange is half wild about it. They say the shares will run to a hundred per cent.

premium before the week's out; and if you've got any money to spare, guv'nor, I should recommend you to have a little flutter; for it's a certainty."

Mr. Heron seemed to p.r.i.c.k up his ears with an amount of worldly interest which scarcely harmonised with his saintly character.

"What company is that?" he asked Joseph.

"The company started to work Sir Stephen Orme's," replied Joseph, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, and stretching out his legs still farther so that he could admire his large, patent-leather clad feet. "It's about the biggest thing on record, and is going to sweep the market. All the big 'uns are in it, Griffenberg and Wirsch and the Beltons. They say Sir Stephen has made half a million of money out of it already, and that he will make a couple of millions before he has done with it. There was a rumour in the city to-day that he was to get a peerage; for it's a kind of national affair, you see."

Ida was sitting beyond the radius of the light from the evil-smelling lamp, so that the others did not perceive the sudden pallor of her face. It seemed to her a cruel fate that she could not escape, even here, so many miles away from Herondale, from the reminder of the man she had loved and lost. The name struck on her heart like a stroke causing actual physical pain. She sat perfectly still, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, as the wave of misery swept over her.

"Here is an instance of toil rewarded," said Mr. Heron, promptly improving the occasion. "The labourer is worthy of his hire; and no doubt Sir Stephen Orme, by bringing vast tracts under the beneficent influence of civilisation, merits the approval of his sovereign and a substantial reward at the hands of his fellow-subjects. Let us trust that he will use his wealth and high position for the welfare of the heathen who rage in the land which he has--er--"

"Collared," put in Mr. Joseph, in an undertone and with a grin.

--"Added to the queen's dominions," said Mr. Heron. "I will consider about the shares. I do not approve of speculation--the pursuit of Mammon--but as I should use the money for charitable purposes, I may on this occasion--"

"Better make up your mind pretty soon," remarked Joseph, with a yawn.

"There's a rush for them already."

"Now that the gentlemen have got on to business, my dear, I think we had better retire to the drawing-room," said Mrs. Heron, with an attempt at the "grand lady."