Old Kensington Part 11

Lady Sarah looked at George very gravely over her knitting, and her needles began to tremble a little.

'What do you wish me to say, George? That you failed because you couldn't or because you wouldn't try?'

'Some one must fail,' said George.

'It is not fair upon me,' said Lady Sarah, 'that you should be the one.

No, Dolly, I am not at all unkind.'

I have said very little of the changes and economies that had been made at Church House, they affected Lady Sarah and Dolly so little; but when George came home, even in disgrace, a certain difference was made in the still ways of the house. Old Sam's niece, Eliza Twells, stayed all day, and was transformed into a smiling abigail, not a little pleased with her promotion. One of Lady Sarah's old grey gowns was bestowed upon her.

A cap and ribbons were concocted by Dolly; the ribbons were for ever fluttering in and out of the sitting-room, and up and down the pa.s.sages.

There was a sound of voices now, a show of life. Dolly could not talk to herself all through the long months when George was away; but when she had him safe in his little room again the duet was unceasing.

Eliza Twells down below in the pan-decorated kitchen, in all the excitement of her new dignities, kept the ball going. You could hear old Sam's chuckles all the way upstairs, and the maiden's loud, croaking, cheerful voice.

'It's like a saw-mill,' said George, 'but what is that?'

'That is Eliza laughing,' said Dorothea, laughing herself; 'and there is dear old Marker scolding. Oh! George, how nice it is to have you home again; and then, as most happy vibrations bring a sadder after-tone, Dolly sighed and stopped short.

'Disgrace _is_ hard to bear,' said George moodily.

'Disgrace! What do you mean?' wondered Dolly, who had been thinking of something quite apart from those unlucky examinations--something that was not much, and yet she would have found it hard to put her thought into words. For how much there is that is not in words, that never happens quite, that is never realised altogether; and yet it is as much part of our life as anything else.

CHAPTER XIV.

RAG DOLLS.

And slight Sir Robert, with his watery smile And educated whisker.

These were days not to be forgotten by Dolly or by her aunt. Don't we all know how life runs in certain grooves, following phases of one sort or another? how dreams of coming trouble haunt us vaguely all through a night? or, again, is it hope that dawns silently from afar to lighten our hearts and to make sweet visions for us before we awake to the heat of the day?

It was all tranquil progress from day to day. Raban came to see them once or twice while George was away. It seemed all peace and silence during those years in the old house, where the two women lived so quietly each their own life, thinking their own thoughts. Rumours came now and then of Mrs. Palmer's return; but this had been put off so often, from one reason or another, that Dolly had almost ceased to dwell upon it. She had settled down to her daily occupations. John Morgan had set her to work in one of his districts. She used to teach in the Sunday-school, help her aunt in a hundred ways. This eventful spring she went into Yorks.h.i.+re with Marker and a couple of new gowns, on a visit to her uncle, Sir Thomas Henley, at Smokethwaite. She enjoyed herself extremely, and liked her uncle and the girls very much. Her aunt was not very kind; 'at least, not so kind as I'm used to,' said Dolly afterwards. They had gone for long walks across the moors; they had ridden for twenty miles one day. She had seen her mother's picture, and slept in the room that used to be hers when she was a girl, and her cousin Norah had taken her about; but her Aunt Henley was certainly very cross and always saying uncomfortable things, and she was very glad to be home again, and didn't want to go away for years and years. Robert Henley had been there for a couple of days, and had come up to town with her. Jonah Henley was a very kind, stupid boy, not at all like Robert.

He was very friendly to Dolly, and used to confide in her. He had made his mother very angry by insisting upon going into the Guards.

'She asked my advice,' said Dolly. 'She wanted to know if I didn't think it a foolish, idle sort of life.'

'And what did you say?' said Lady Sarah.

'I said that it might be so for some people who were clever and thoughtful, but that he seemed to have no interests at all, and never opened a book.'

'My dear child,' cried Lady Sarah, 'no wonder Lady Henley was annoyed!'

'Oh, dear me! I am so very sorry,' cries Dolly, penitently, as she walked along. They were going along one of the narrow alleys leading to the Square.

Day after day Lady Sarah used to leave home and trudge off with her basket and her well-known shabby cloak--it was warm and green like the heart that beat under it--from house to house, in and out, round and about the narrow little Kensington streets. The parents, who had tried to impose upon her at first, soon found that she had little sympathy for pathetic att.i.tudes, and that her quick tongue paid them back in their own coin. They bore no malice. Poor people only really respect those who know them as they are, and whose sympathy is personal and not ideal.

Lady Sarah's was genuine sympathy; she knew her flock by name, and she spared no trouble to help those who were trying to help themselves. The children would come up shyly when they saw the straight, scant figure coming along, and look into her face. Sometimes the basket would open and red apples would come out--s.h.i.+ning red apples in the dirty little back streets and by-lanes behind Kensington Square. Once Robert Henley, walking to Church House, across some back way, came upon his aunt sitting on an old chair on the step of a rag-shop with a little circle of children round her, and Dolly standing beside her, straight and upright. Over her head swung the legless form of a rag doll, twirling in the wind. On one side of the door was some rhymed doggerel about 'Come, cookey, come,' and bring 'your bones,' plastered up against the wall.

Lady Sarah, on the step, seemed dispensing bounties from her bag to half-a-dozen little clamorous, half-fledged creatures.

'My dear Lady Sarah, what does this mean?' said Robert, trying to laugh, but looking very uncomfortable.

'I was so tired, Robert, I could not get home without resting,' said Lady Sarah, 'and Mr. Wilkins kindly brought me out a chair. These are some of my Sunday-school children, and Dolly and I were giving them a treat.'

'But really this is scarcely the place to----If any one were to pa.s.s--if----Run away, run away, run away,' said Mr. Henley affably to the children, who were all closing in a ragged phalanx and gazing admiringly at his trousers. 'I'll get you a cab directly,' said the young man, looking up and down. 'I came this short cut, but I had no idea----'

'There are no cabs anywhere down here,' said Dolly, laughing. 'This is Aunt Sarah's district; that is her soup-kitchen.' And Dolly pointed up a dismal street with some flapping was.h.i.+ng-lines on one side. It looked all empty and deserted, except that two women were standing in the doorways of their queer old huddled-up houses. A little further off came a branch street, a blank wall, and some old Queen Anne railings and doorways leading into Kensington Square.

'Good-by, little Betty,' said Lady Sarah, getting up from her old straw chair, and smiling.

She was amused by the young man's unaffected dismay. Philanthropy was quite in Henley's line, but that was, Robert thought, a very different thing from familiarity.

'Now then, Betty, where's your curtsey?' says Dolly, 'and Mick, sir!'

Mick grinned, and pulled at one of his horrible little wisps of hair.

The children seemed fascinated by the 'gentleman.' They were used to the ladies, and, in fact, accustomed to be very rude to Dolly, although she was so severe.

'If you will give me an arm, Robert,' said Lady Sarah, 'and if you are not ashamed to be seen with me----'

'My dear Lady Sarah!' said Robert, hastily, offering his arm.

'Now, children, be off,' says Dolly.

'Please, sir, won't you give us 'napeny?' said Mick, hopping along with his little deft, bare feet.

'Go away,--for shame, Mick!' cried Dolly again, while Henley impatiently threw some coppers into the road, after which all the children set off scrambling in an instant.

'Oh, Robert, you shouldn't have done that,' cried Dolly, rus.h.i.+ng back to superintend the fair division of kicks and halfpence.

Robert waited for her for a moment, and looked at her as she stood in her long grey cloak, with a little struggling heap at her feet of legs and rags and squeaks and contortions. The old Queen Anne railings of the corner house, and the dim street winding into rags, made a background to this picture of modern times: an old slatternly woman in a nightcap came to her help from one of the neighbouring doorways, and seizing one of the children out of the heap, gave it a cuff and dragged it away. Dolly had lifted Mick off the back of a smaller child--the crisis was over.

'Here she comes,' said Lady Sarah, in no way discomposed.

Robert was extremely discomposed. He hated to see Dolly among such sights and surroundings. He tried to speak calmly as they walked on, but his voice sounded a little cracked.

'Surely,' he said, 'this is too much for you at times. Do you go very often?'

'Nearly every day, Robert,' said Dorothea. 'You see what order I have got the children into.'

She was laughing again, and Henley, as usual, was serious.

'Of course I cannot judge,' said he, 'not knowing what state they were in originally.' Then he added, gravely turning to Lady Sarah, 'Don't you somehow think that Dolly is very young to be mixed up with a--rag-shops and wickedness?'

'Dolly is young,' said her aunt, not over pleased; 'but she is very prudent, and I am not afraid of her p.a.w.ning her clothes and taking to drink.'

'My dear aunt, you don't suppose I ever thought of such a possibility,'

Robert exclaimed. 'Only ladies do not always consider things from our point of view, and I feel in a certain degree responsible and bound to you as your nearest male protector (take care--here is a step). I should not like other people, who might not know Dolly as we do, to imagine that she was accustomed already to----'