Rupert Godwin

HOMELESS AND FRIENDLESS.

Very early in the chill spring morning Violet and her mother drove away from the Grange in a hired fly that was to convey them to Winchester.

They took nothing with them but their own personal property and the two portraits of Harley Westford. These Mrs. Westford knew she had no legal right to possess, but she stooped to infringe the letter of the law rather than leave her dead husband’s likeness in the hands of his hateful rival.

Thus it was that the widow and her daughter left their happy home, with all its luxurious belongings undisturbed, to fall into the hands of strangers.

It was still early when they reached Winchester; and it was just one o’clock when the train entered the Waterloo terminus, where Lionel Westford was waiting on the platform, very pale and very grave, and altogether different from the light-hearted, careless young Oxonian who had brought life and gaiety to his home whenever he had come to it, and whose greatest trouble was the fear of being disappointed in his hope of University honours.

The young man bore his reverses nobly. He greeted his mother and sister with one of his old smiles, and then ran off to attend to their luggage, which he saw conveyed to a cab.

In this cab they speedily drove away from the station, and went through two or three small streets in the neighbourhood of the Waterloo-road.

The cab stopped at a shabby but clean-looking house in one of the smallest of these streets.

Lionel Westford watched his mother’s face with an anxious expression. He was thinking how horrible this dingy street, that shabby, poverty-stricken house must appear, when contrasted with the dear old Grange, and its lovely lawns and flower-beds, its avenue of stately elms, and spreading meadows sheltered with old oaks and beeches.

“It is very poor, very common, dear mother,” said the young man; “but the landlady seems a decent sort of person, and this place was the best I could get at present. However, this time of poverty and trial shall not last long, if any effort of mine can shorten it.”

He pressed his mother’s hand as he spoke, and she answered him by a look of the deepest gratitude and affection.

“My treasures!” she exclaimed, looking fondly at her two children, “should I not be a wretch to repine while you are still left to me?”

Lionel had done all in his power to impart an appearance of cheerfulness to the shabby sitting-room which had been prepared for the new-comers. A fire burned in the little grate; a bunch of early spring-flowers adorned the table.

Only true and pure affection supported the banker’s victims during these first days of poverty and trial.

The trial was very bitter; for poverty was new to them, and everything around seemed to send a fresh chill to their hearts.

But they were none of them people to waste time in idle complaints. Every morning, as soon as he had eaten his frugal breakfast, Lionel Westford set out upon his weary travels in the great desert of London.

What desert can be more lonely than that wealthy and crowded city to the wanderer who has neither friends nor money?

Every morning Violet and her mother also left their dingy lodgings, and went out into the world by separate ways to seek for bread. Yes, for bread! For now only a very slender hoard remained between them and absolute starvation.

Violet was no more fortunate than her brother. She was accomplished; but there were many portionless girls in London, all more or less accomplished, and all eager to earn the merest pittance. Who could hope that there would ever be enough employment for all of them?

Mrs. Westford also sought to turn her talents to some use; but she too sought for a long time most vainly. She offered herself as a morning governess, and spent what to her was a large sum in the postage of letters replying to advertisements in the morning papers. But no answers came to these letters. Education seemed to have become the most valueless drug in the London market. The Captain’s widow was troubled by none of those ultra-refined compunctions which restrain the actions of some among the ranks of the shabby-genteel. When she found her educational powers would not obtain her the merest pittance, she fell back upon her mechanical skill in all kinds of elegant fancy-work. She visited half the Berlin-wool shops and fancy repositories in London and the suburbs, and at last succeeded in finding a speculative trader, who agreed to give her a starvation price for her work.

At last, however, when a kind of heart-sickness had seized upon both mother and daughter, a faint glimmer of sunshine broke through the dense black clouds that darkened the horizon. It was only a chilly April radiance at best, but still it was the sun.

Violet was amongst the crowd of clever and accomplished women who answered an advertisement inserted in the Times by a lady who required a morning governess for her young daughters—two pretty-looking, half-educated girls of seventeen and nineteen.

Mrs. Montague Trevor was a frivolous woman, whose heart and intellect were alike absorbed in the delights of the fashionable world. She had been a beauty, and had flourished for her brief hour as belle of a second-rate watering-place, where she had been fortunate enough to win the affections of a popular Queen’s Counsel, who fell in love with her pretty face, and was too busy ever to have leisure in which to find out how empty the head was behind it. Mr. Montague Trevor had therefore been very well content with his choice, and in due course had worked himself to death, leaving the watering-place beauty a widow with a handsome fortune. On the strength of this fortune, and her late husband’s professional celebrity, Mrs. Trevor had obtained an extended circle of acquaintance, and amongst these she still played off some of the airs and graces which she had cultivated as a belle of nineteen.

She was intensely vain; and she fancied that every man who laid her a compliment was desperately in love with her. She had no disinclination to part with her freedom to a new lord and master; but she wanted a rich husband, for her habits were terribly extravagant, and, in spite of her excellent income, she was always more or less in debt.

Unfortunately, though her admirers were numerous, they were not many of them rich, and the vain and frivolous Annabella sighed in vain for a wealthy husband, whose boundless purse should supply money for all her whims and fancies.

It was this lady whose advertisement Violet Westford saw in the Times newspaper, and it was in Mrs. Trevor’s fashionably-furnished drawing-room in the Regent’s Park that the young girl sat amongst a crowd of other applicants, waiting the nervous moment when she should be summoned before the lady who was to decide her fate.

She knew that poverty, dire and terrible, was fast approaching that miserable lodging near the Waterloo-road, and she felt a painful anxiety to be of some use to her mother, and to her brave young brother, on whose brow she already saw the impress of despair.

At last the moment arrived, and a smartly dressed maid conducted Violet to Mrs. Trevor’s morning-room, or boudoir, as it was always called by elegant Annabella.

Mrs. Trevor was reclining on a sofa, dressed in an elaborately beflounced muslin morning-dress, dotted about with infantine bows of sky-blue ribbon, her hair arranged à la vierge, an expensive fan in her hand, and a tiny Maltese dog in her lap. On a table near her there was a scent-bottle with a gold stopper and an elegant little Dresden chocolate-service. The two Miss Trevors were lounging near the windows, and staring idly out into the Park.

As Violet entered the room, nervously anxious, Mrs. Trevor uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“What a sweet face!” she cried. “My dear Theodosia, my darling Anastasia, did you ever see a sweeter face?”

Violet had no idea that this speech could possibly apply to her. She stood opposite the one lady on the sofa, almost trembling with anxiety, for repeated failure had depressed her spirits, and she had a morbid apprehension of disappointment.

“You were so good as to send for me madam,” she faltered.

“Yes, my love; I sent for you, and I am absolutely charmed with you. I like to see everything lovely about me—my rooms, my flowers, my china; and you are lovely! Beauty is almost as necessary to me as the air I breathe, and you are beautiful! I am sure we shall suit each other delightfully. Such objects, such creatures, such absolute Gorgons as I have seen this morning, my dear!—really enough to give a sensitive person the horrors; and I am so excruciatingly sensitive. Anastasia, my love, don’t you think there is something of a likeness between Miss—Miss——”

“Westford, madam,” interposed Violet.

“Between Miss Westford and me? About the nose, Anastasia? Miss Westford has exactly that delicate style of nose which your poor papa used to call a perfect Grecian.”

Miss Anastasia Trevor did not take the trouble to answer her mother’s question. Nor was there any occasion that she should do so, as the volatile Annabella rarely gave any one time to reply to her remarks.

“I am sure you will suit me, my love!” she exclaimed. “You play and sing, of course?”

“O yes, madam.”

Mrs. Trevor waved her jewelled hand towards an open piano.

“Let me hear you, my dear.”

Violet seated herself, and after a brilliant prelude which displayed her execution and expression as a pianiste, she sang a simple little Italian barcarole, in which her mezzo-soprano voice rang out soft and clear.

“Charming!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor. “You draw and paint in water-colours, I suppose?”

Violet blushed as she answered this question, for she remembered how her artist-lover had admired her sketches, and how much her taste had been cultivated in his society.

She opened a little portfolio which she had brought with her, and showed Mrs. Trevor some water-colour sketches of the forest.

“Delicious!” exclaimed the fashionable widow. “There is a taste, a lightness, a warmth, an atmosphere, a chiaro-oscuro which is really charming. You speak French, German, and Italian, of course, as those were mentioned as requisite in the advertisement?”

Violet replied that she was familiar with all three languages.

“And your references are irreproachable, I conclude?”

“I can refer you to Mr. Morton, the clergyman of the parish in which we lived in my dear father’s lifetime.”

Violet’s eyes filled with tears as she referred to that happy past, which contrasted so cruelly with the present.

“Nothing can be more satisfactory,” said Mrs. Trevor, as Violet handed her the address of the Hampshire rector. “I shall write to this gentleman by to-day’s post. I take it for granted that the answer will be favourable, therefore we may as well conclude arrangements at once. This is Wednesday. On Friday I can receive the rector’s answer, and on Monday morning you can commence your duties. Good morning.—Anastasia, my love, the bell.”

Violet rose; but she lingered hesitatingly.

“There is one question,” she murmured; “the salary, madam?”

“Ah, to be sure!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor. “What a forgetful creature I am! You will want a salary, I suppose—though really, as it is your first engagement as a governess, there are many people who would object to giving you a salary. However, I am not one of those illiberal persons.—You know, Anastasia, your poor dear papa used to call me ridiculously generous.—The salary, Miss Westford, will be half-a-guinea a week.”

Violet had expected a great deal more; but poverty stared her in the face, and even this pittance would be something.

“And the hours?” she asked.

“The hours will be from nine till two, which will enable you to dine comfortably at home with your own family,” Mrs. Trevor answered, with a benevolent smile.

From nine till two—six days a week—for half-a-guinea! Four-pence an hour was the value set upon accomplishments the acquirement of which had cost a small fortune!

Violet sighed as she thought of her expensive masters, her handsomely paid governess, and the time and trouble which had been bestowed upon her education.

“Perhaps the situation will not suit you?” said the sweet Mrs. Trevor rather sharply.

“O, yes, madam; it will suit me very well.”

“And you accept the terms?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Then in that case I shall expect you on Monday. You can then begin your duties; that is, of course, in the event of the reference proving satisfactory.”

“I do not fear that, madam. Good morning.”

And Violet left the richly furnished boudoir comparatively happy; for half-a-guinea a week was at least some small provision against absolute starvation.

Half-a-guinea a week for the salary of an accomplished governess! And this from Mrs. Montague Trevor, who thought nothing of paying a five-pound note for a cup and saucer of Sèvres china.

As the door closed upon Violet, the diplomatic widow turned with a look of triumph to her eldest daughter.

“Well, I think I managed that business admirably!” she exclaimed. “Half-a-guinea a week! Why, my dear Anastasia, the girl is worth a hundred guineas a year at the very least. Look at the salary that elderly Gorgon with the blue spectacles had the presumption to ask me. This girl is worth as much again as the Gorgon, whose voice was like a screech owl’s.”

The younger Miss Trevor, who bore no resemblance to her mother either in person or disposition, lifted her eyes reproachfully to the flighty widow’s face.

“But if this young lady is worth so much, is it not very cruel, and almost dishonest, to offer her so little, mamma?” she asked gravely.

“Cruel! dishonest!” ejaculated Mrs. Trevor. “Why, child, you’re a perfect idiot! You’ll never make a bargain as long as you live.”