CHAPTER VII.
A TELEGRAM FOR MISS WEST.
The very morning after Madeline had despatched her letter, a telegram was handed in for Miss West, 2, Solferino Place. The landlady herself mounted, breathless, to the attics, with the tan-coloured envelope in her hand.
“I was just for sending it away, Mrs. Wynne,” she gasped, surveying her with an inquiring eye; “but it came into my mind as I’d show it to you on the chance.”
“Thank you; it is for me,” rejoined her lodger, hastily tearing it open and running her eyes over it. As she read, she became crimson with amazement and agitation. “Come at once—to-day if possible. News of your father.—From Mrs. Harper, Streambridge,” was the message.
“But it’s for Miss West, and you’ve gone and opened it!” exclaimed the landlady, suspiciously. “How is that, eh? I never would have supposed—no, never,” folding her arms belligerently, “as you wasn’t on the square; and as I’ve allus kep’ a respectable ’ouse, I couldn’t think——”
“You need not think, Mrs. Kane; you need not alarm yourself about the matter, it is all quite right. I am Mrs. Wynne, but I was Miss West once upon a time. The sender of the message does not know that I am married,” interrupted Madeline, speaking with studied composure—though her heart was beating fearfully fast.
Insolent as Mrs. Kane was, she dared not quarrel with her. Her roof covered them on sufferance. Were she to thrust them forth, where were they to go? They were entirely at her mercy, for they owed her money; and latterly she had been inclined to take out a large amount of interest in rude insolence, biting gibes, and unpleasant hints with regard to “paupers a coming and settling down on poor, honest, hard-working people—paupers as could afford dress, and theatres, and pianos once, and saved nothing for a rainy day!”
Paupers—impecunious people like the Wynnes, especially Mrs. Wynne, who bore the brunt of these encounters—could not afford to stand on their dignity, and be independent and “move on.” They must submit humbly; but it was insufferably galling—as galling to Madeline as Miss Selina’s yoke, that had pressed upon her so sorely but one little year ago.
Who but herself knew with what deprecating eyes and voice she had pleaded with her impatient landlady for a little time, how humbly she ventured to ask for coals, how stealthily she crept up and down stairs, carrying baby, and doing her own miserable errands, making her presence as unobtrusive as possible, for fear of offending her hostess’s threatening eyes.
The hostess’s threatening eyes were fixed upon her now, with a look that was an insult, as she listened to her hurried explanation with a down-drawn lip.
“Oh, well, I suppose, as I know no better, I must believe you,” and with a noisy sniff that intimated quite the reverse, Mrs. Kane glared once round their squalid sitting-room, to see if anything were broken or missing, or the valuable property damaged in any way; and, failing to discover the smallest pretext for complaint, passed out of the apartment with a heavy and aggressive strut, and banged the door behind her.
Madeline lost not a second in rushing to the invalid with the great news, and placing the slip of pink paper in his hand.
“There is something at last! I feel that a change is coming; these terrible days cannot—cannot go on for ever. I believe my father is alive, and coming home! What do you think, Laurence?” she asked, and her voice trembled.
Laurence, still holding the telegram in his thin, transparent hand, gazed at his wife for some seconds in silence. How changed she was, he thought, with a pang of self-reproach. She was shabby—very genteelly shabby. Her black dress was all mended and pieced, her face was haggard, her eyes sunken, their look eager, anxious, almost desperate.
An intelligent spectator would have declared that she was obviously half-starved, and so she was. But how furiously she would have disclaimed such a pronouncement. She would rather have died than have admitted that truth. As long as Laurence had meat once a day, as long as baby had milk, she did very well on anything, and anything may mean almost nothing—it is an elastic word. Meanwhile, Laurence had been telling himself that he had been a culpable wretch to marry Madeline West. What would he say to her father when he placed his daughter in his arms—a daughter in all but rags, with a face pinched with famine, without a friend, without a penny, and weighted with a dying husband and a peculiarly ill-tempered baby?
How much better would it have been if he had curbed his foolish fancy—nipped it in the bud, and left Madeline to her fate. Why had he not wired to Mrs. Wolferton? What would her father say? Would he cast her off?
Madeline had hinted that, as well as she could judge her father from his letters, he was fond of show and style and great people. He wished her to dance and sing and play well, and to speak French; but he had never said a word about literature, or the English classics, or what Laurence called “the higher education of women.” On the other hand, he hoped that she would always make acquaintance with girls her equals, or even superiors, and never lower herself by school-friendships that it would be impossible for him to recognize. Madeline had once innocently repeated this to her husband verbatim, and it came vividly before him now. Madeline had done more than form a friendship of which her aspiring parent would disapprove, a friendship that could be slipped out of like an old glove. Here she was tied for life to a poor man, whose only career seemed likely to be that of an invalid—a stone round her neck as long as he lived.
He had but faint hopes of his own recovery; everything was against it. He knew that this could not be helped, and he was very patient. If he had good wine, wholesome delicacies to tempt his appetite, instead of gruesome scraps of stale, ill-cooked meat and poisonous port at a shilling; if he could have a change to pure, invigorating air, he might yet have a chance. And he knew that he might as well long for the moon—for the entire firmament!
“What is to be done, Laurence?” asked Madeline, rather surprised at his long silence. “What do you think of it?”
“You must go, of course,” he returned at last. “Go to-day.”
“To-day! My dear Laurence, what are you thinking of?” sitting down on a rush chair as she spoke, and staring at him in amazement. “Where is the money to come from? Look here,” producing a shabby little purse, with a brass clasp, and turning out the pitiably small contents, “all I possess is two and sevenpence.”
“Still you must go, Maddie, by hook or crook; much may depend on it. A return third-class——”
“A return third-class would be twenty-two shillings—one pound two,” she interrupted. “And, besides, I could not go in this,” looking down at her gown; “now,” appealingly, “could I?”
“No, you could not,” he replied, with a little flush on his pale face. “And you must get something out. To get something out something else must go in. And,” speaking with an effort, “I never thought to part with them, but they could not go in a better cause. I mean,” wiping his damp forehead, “my mother’s miniature and my father’s medals. The miniature is framed in seed pearls; the back is gold—it ought to fetch a couple of pounds. It’s in my desk, Maddie, in a little morocco case.” There were other things in his desk—neatly-copied-out manuscripts. These, alas! were valueless—he had proved them. “Take it, my dear, and welcome; and the medals—they will fetch a few shillings.”
“Oh, Laurence,” suddenly kneeling down beside him, “I don’t like to! Must I really? I know you think so much of them. They are the only relics you possess. No, no; I really can’t!”
“Yes, you can, and you shall,” said the sick man, with sudden decision. “Here, at last, is an opening for you, my poor Maddie. Something tells me that your father is alive—is coming home rich. You are his only child, his heiress. You will be looked after and cherished when I am gone. Yes, my dear, it will be best for you in the end. It was most wicked of me to marry you. I see it all now, only too plainly. I had put by nothing for such a strait, and I had no wealthy friends. But I never dreamt that it would come to this, Maddie; believe me, I never did. Forgive me!” he urged, and tears, born of weakness and remorse, stood in his hollow eyes.
“Laurence!” she interrupted, attempting to place her hand on his mouth.
“I should have walked home in the snow that night; I should have taken you to the Wolfertons’ house, and telegraphed for her; I should have gone to the parish clergyman—done anything but what I did, and which led to my dragging you into such a pit as this!” with an inclusive wave of his hand and a glance round the mean little attic. “But it won’t be for long now,” he added in a lower voice.
“Oh, Laurence,” she almost screamed as she seized his arm, “why are you telling me such terrible things, when we have a little gleam of hope at last? It is cruel—cruel of you. You couldn’t mean that, after all we have gone through together—that when we are approaching smooth water—you—you would leave me!”
And here she suddenly broke down and burst into tears, for, alas! she had an agonizing inward conviction that there was truth in what he said. How pale and thin and wasted he looked! No one would recognize him who had seen him last year, with his shorn head, gaunt cheekbones, and sunken eyes; and she had a heart-breaking feeling that it was not mere actual illness, nor the dregs of that terrible fever, that were to blame for this, but that cruel, pitiless, ferocious wolf called WANT. He was dying of the lack of mere necessaries, and she, miserable woman, was powerless to procure them; and for this she laid down her head and wept as if her heart would burst—her passionate sobbing fairly frightened Laurence. Madeline’s tears were rarely seen; Madeline was always bright, cheery, almost gay, at the very worst of times; and now came a reaction, and she was weeping as he had never seen any one weep before.
“Don’t, Maddie, don’t,” he whispered, feebly stroking her hair; “you will be better without me, though you don’t think so now. You are young—only nineteen—many bright days may be in store for you. I will leave you contentedly, if your father has come home. The greatest horror I have ever known will be lifted from my mind. You don’t know, dearest, what torments have racked me as I lay awake through the long, dark nights, listening to the clocks striking hour after hour, and wondering what would become of you? Now Providence has answered the question; your father will give you and the child a home. There, Maddie, there, don’t; I can’t bear to see you cry like this; and I—I may get over it, and—— And now, you see, you have awakened the baby!” as a shrill, querulous cry from the next room interrupted what he was about to say.
The maternal instinct thus roused, he hoped that her tears would cease, as he was powerless to arrest them. And Madeline completely broken down—Madeline, who was always so brave, who had come out in a new light under the scorching flames of the furnace of affliction—was a sight that completely unmanned him.
Madeline hastily dried her eyes, strangled her sobs, took her shrieking offspring out of his cradle, and gave him his midday bottle—an operation which appeased his appetite and soothed his feelings. Then she came back to her husband with the child in her arms, and said in a husky voice, “If you had change of air, good food, properly cooked, fruit, wine, and the little delicacies all sick people require, you would get well—I know you would. Promise me, promise that you will try to get better! Promise me that you will wish to get better, Laurence,” she continued tremulously, “for—for our sake.”
“I can promise that, at any rate, Maddie,” he answered with a dim smile; “but you know the old proverb about wishes.”
“And you know that while there’s life there’s hope,” she answered quickly. “I have hope; you must have hope too! And now I am going out, you will have to mind baby,” placing the white bundle beside his father, who eyed his charge dubiously, as it stared at him stolidly, thumb in mouth.
Madeline hurriedly put on her hat and jacket, and, taking a key, unlocked a brass-bound desk, and, after a little search, drew out the morocco case. “Is this it?” she asked, holding it up. “This is what you mean?”
A nod assured her that it was.
“You would like to look at it once more,” she said, gently laying it in his hand. “I don’t know how to take it. You are so like her, too,” looking down at the little oval miniature of a pretty, spirited girl with dark eyes and dark hair, and seeing her husband’s gaze fixed greedily on the portrait. “You were so fond of her, Laurence.”
“Not more than I am of you, Maddie,” he answered, closing the case with a decisive snap. “And my father’s medals,” he said, as he held them up, and looked at them wistfully. “Well, they will fetch a few shillings, and they go in a good cause. Here, take them, my dear, and go, and don’t be long.”
Needless to add this formula. Was she ever long? But time passed very slowly when Madeline was absent from those two poor attics which were called home.