A Widow's Tale, and Other Stories

On one of these evenings she met her husband's partner, old Fareham, as he was always called, at dinner, at a large sumptuous Liverpool party. There was to be a great ball that evening, and Mrs Lycett-Landon and her two eldest children had come "across" for the two entertainments, and were to stay all night. The luxury of the food and the splendour of the accompaniments I may leave to the imagination. It was such a dinner as is rarely to be seen out of commercial circles. The table groaned, not under good cheer, as used to be the case, but under silver of the highest workmanship, and the most costly flowers. The flowers alone cost as much as would have fed a street full of poor people, for they were not, I need scarcely say, common ones, things that any poor curate or even clerk might have on his table, but waxy and wealthy exotics, combinations of the chemist's skill with the gardener's, all the more difficult to be had in such profusion because the season was summer and the gardens full of Nature's easy production. Mr Fareham nodded to his partner's wife, catching her eye with difficulty between the piles of flowers. "Heard from London lately?" he said across the table, and nodded again several times when she answered, "Not for some days." Old Fareham was usually a jocose old gentleman, less perfect in his manners than the other member of the firm, and of much lower origin, though perhaps more congenial to the atmosphere in which he lived; but he was not at all jocose that evening. He had a cloud upon his face. When his genial host tried to rouse him to his usual "form" (for what can be more disappointing than an amusing man who will not do anything to amuse?) he would brighten up for a moment, and then relapse into dulness. As soon as he came into the drawing-room after dinner he made his way to his partner's wife.

"So you haven't been hearing regularly from London?" he said, taking up his post in front of her, and bending over her low chair.

"I didn't say that; I said not for a few days."

"Neither have we," said old Fareham, shaking his white head. "Not at all regular. D'ye think he is quite well? He has been a deal in town this year."

She could scarcely restrain a little indignation, thinking if old Fareham only knew the reason, and how it was to save his relative and set him right! But she answered in an easy tone, "Yes, he has thought it expedient – for various reasons." If he had the least idea of his nephew's irregularities, this, she thought, would make him wince.

But it did not. "Oh, for various reasons?" he said, lifting his shaggy eyebrows. "And did you think it expedient too?"

"You know I enter very little into business matters," she replied, with the calm she felt. "Of course we all miss him very much when he is away from home; but I never have put myself in Robert's way."

"You've been a very good wife to him," said the old man with a slight shake of the head, "an excellent wife; and you don't feel the least uneasy? Quite comfortable about his health, and all that sort of thing? I think I'd look him up if I were you."

"Have you heard anything about his health? Is Robert ill, Mr Fareham, and you are trying to break it to me?" she said, springing to her feet.

"No, no, nothing of the sort," he said, putting his hand on her arm to make her reseat herself. "Nothing of the sort; not a word! I know no more than you do – probably not half or quarter so much. No, no, my dear lady, not a word."

"Then why should you frighten me so?" she said, sitting down again with a flutter at her heart, but a faint smile; "you gave me a great fright. I thought you must have heard something that had been concealed from me."

"Not at all, not at all," said the old man. "I'm very glad you're not uneasy. Still it is a bad practice when they get to stay so long from home. I'd look him up if I were you."

"Do you know anything I don't know?" she said, with a recurrence of her first fear.

"No, no!" he cried – "nothing, nothing, I know nothing; but I don't think Landon should be so long absent. That's all; I'd look him up if I were you."

Mrs Lycett-Landon did not enjoy the ball that night. For some time indeed she hesitated about going. But Milly and Horace were much startled by this idea, and assailed her with questions – What had she heard? Was papa ill? Had anything happened? She was obliged to confess that nothing had happened, that she had heard nothing, but that old Fareham thought papa should not be so long away, and had asked if she were not uneasy about his health. What if he should be ill and concealing it from them? The children paled a little, then burst forth almost with laughter. Papa conceal it from them! he who always wanted so much taking care of when he was poorly. And why should he conceal it? This was quite unanswerable; for to be sure there was no reason in the world why he should not let his wife know, who would have gone to him at once, without an hour's delay. So they went to the ball, and spent the night in Liverpool, and next morning remembered nothing save that old Fareham was always disagreeable. "If he knew your father's real object in spending so much time in London!" Mrs Lycett-Landon said. It was her husband's generous wish to keep this anxiety from the old man; and how little such generous motives are appreciated in this world. It was evening before they returned home – for of course with so large a family there is always shopping to do, and the ladies waited till Horace left the office. But when they reached the Elms, as their house was called, there was a letter waiting which was not comfortable. It was directed in a hand which they could scarcely identify as papa's; not from his club as usual, nor on the office paper – with no date but London. And this was what it said: —

"My dear, – You must not be disappointed if I write only a few words. I have hurt my hand, which makes writing uncomfortable. It is not of the least importance, and you need not be uneasy: but accept the explanation if it should happen to be some days before you hear from me again. Love to the children. – Yours affectionately,

R. L. L."

Mrs Lycett-Landon grew pale as she read this note. "I see it all," she said; "there has been an accident, and Mr Fareham did not like to tell me of it. Horace, where is the book of the trains? I must go at once. Run, Milly, and put up a few things for me in my travelling-bag."

"What is it, mother? Hurt his hand? Oh, but that is not much," Horace said.

"It is not much perhaps; but to be so careful lest I should be anxious is not papa's way. 'If it should happen to be some days – ' Why, it is ten days since he wrote last. I am very anxious. Horry, my dear, don't talk to me, but go and see about the trains at once."

"I know very well about the trains," said Horace. "There is one at ten, but then it arrives in the middle of the night. Stop at all events till to-morrow morning. I will telegraph."

"I am going by that ten train," his mother said.

"Which arrives between three and four in the morning!"

"Never mind, I can go to the Euston, where papa always goes. Perhaps I shall find him there. He has never said where he was living."

"You may be sure," said Horace, "you will not find him at the Euston. No doubt he is in the old place in Jermyn Street. He only goes to the Euston when he is up for a day or two."

"I shall find him easily enough," Mrs Lycett-Landon said.

And then a little bustle and commotion ensued. Dinner was had which nobody could eat, though they all said it was probably nothing, and that papa would laugh when he knew the disturbance his letter had made. At least the children said this, their mother making little reply. Milly thought he would be much surprised to see mamma arrive in the early morning. He would like it, Milly thought. Papa was always disposed to find his own ailments very important, and thought it natural to make a fuss about them. She wanted to accompany her mother, but consented, not without a sense of dignity, that it was more necessary she should stay at home to look after the children and the house. But Horace insisted that he must go; and though Mrs Lycett-Landon had a strange disinclination to this which she herself could not understand, it seemed on the whole so right and natural that she could not stand out against it. "There is no occasion," she said. "I can look after myself quite well, and your father too." But Horace refused to hear reason, and Milly inquired what was the good of having a grown-up son if you did not make any use of him? Their minds were so free, that they both tittered a little at this, the title of grown-up son being unfamiliar and half absurd, in Milly's intention at least. She walked down with them to the boat in the soft summer night. The world was all aglow with softened lights – the moon in the sky, the lamps on the opposite bank, reflecting themselves in long lines in the still water, and every dim vessel in the roadway throwing up its little sea-star of colour. "I shouldn't wonder," said Milly, "if it is a touch of the gout, like that he had last year, and no accident at all."

"So much the more need for good nursing," her mother said, as she stepped into the boat.

Milly walked back again with Charley, her next brother, who was fifteen. They went up to the summer-house among the trees and watched the boat as it went rustling, bustling through the groups of shipping in the river, and made little bets between themselves as to whether it would beat the Birkenhead boat, or if the Seacombe would get there first of all. There were not so many ferry-boats as usual at this hour of the night, but one or two were returning both up and down the river which had been out with pleasure-parties, with music sounding softly on the water. "It is only that horrid old fiddle if we were near it," said Milly, "but it sounds quite melodious here," – for the soft night and the summer air, and the influence of the great water, made everything mellow. The doors and windows of the happy house were still all open. It was full of sleeping children and comfortable servants, and life and peace, though the master and the mistress were both away.

CHAPTER IV.

GOING TO LOOK HIM UP

They reached London in the dawn of the morning, when the blue day was coming in over the housetops, before the ordinary stir of the waking world had begun. Of course, at that early hour it was impossible to do anything save to take refuge in the big hotel, and try to rest a little till it should be time for further proceedings. They found at once from the sleepy waiter who received them that Mr Lycett-Landon was not there. He remembered the gentleman; but they hadn't seen him not since last summer, the man said.

"I told you so, mamma," said Horace; "he is in Jermyn Street, of course. If he had been anywhere else, he would have put the address."

They drove together to Jermyn Street as soon as it was practicable, but he was not there; and the landlord of the house returned the same answer that the waiter at the Euston had done. Not since last summer, he said. He had been wondering in his own mind what had become of Mr Lycett-Landon, and asking himself if the rooms or the cooking had not given satisfaction. It was a thing that had never happened to him with any of his gentlemen, but he had been wondering, he allowed, if there was anything. He would have been pleased to make any alteration had he but known. Mrs Lycett-Landon and her son looked at each other somewhat blankly as they turned away from this door. She smiled and said, "It is rather funny that we should have to hunt your father in this way. One would think his movements would be well enough known. But I suppose it's this horrid London." She was a little angry and hurt at the horrid London which takes no particular note even of a merchant of high standing. In Liverpool he could not have been lost sight of, and even here it was ridiculous, a thing scarcely to be put up with.

"Oh, we'll soon find him at the club," Horace said; and they drove there accordingly, more indignant than anxious. It was still early, and the club servants had scarcely taken the trouble to wake up as yet. Club porters are not fond of giving addresses, knowing how uncertain it is whether a gentleman may wish to be pursued to their last stronghold. The porter in the present instance hesitated much. He said Mr Lycett-Landon had not been there for some time; that there was a heap of letters for him, which he took out of a pigeon-hole and turned over in his hands as he spoke, and among which Horace (with a jump of his heart) thought he could see some of his mother's; but nothing had been said about forwarding them, and he really couldn't take upon himself to say that he knowed the address.

"But I'm his son," said Horace.

The porter looked at him very knowingly. "That don't make me none the wiser, sir," he said with great reason.

The youth went out to his mother somewhat aghast. "They don't know anything of him here," he said; "they say he hasn't been for long. There's quite a pile of letters for him."

"Then we must go to the office," Mrs Lycett-Landon said. "He must have been very busy, or – or something."

That was an assertion which no one could dispute. When the cab drove off again she repeated the former speech with an angry laugh. "It is ridiculous, Horace, that you and I should have to run about like this from pillar to post, as if papa could slip out of sight like a – like a – mere clerk." The mercantile world does not make much account of clerks, and she did not feel that she could find anything stronger to say.

"Nobody would believe it," said Horace, "if we were to tell them; but in the City it will be different," he added, gravely.

In Liverpool it must be allowed the City was not thought very much of. It had not the same prestige as the great mercantile town of the north. The merchant princes were considered to belong to the seaports, and the magnates of the City had an odour of city feasts and vulgarity about them; but in the present circumstances it had other attractions.

"The name of Lycett-Landon can't be unknown there," said the lad.

His mother was wounded even by this assertion. She drew herself up. "A Lycett-Landon has no right to be unknown anywhere," she said. "We don't need to take our importance from any firm, I hope. But London is insufferable; nobody is anybody that comes from what they are pleased to call the country 'here.'"

There was an indignant tone in Mrs Lycett-Landon's voice. But yet she too felt, though she would not acknowledge it, that for once the City would be the most congenial. They drove along through the crowded, noisy streets in a hansom, feeling, after all, a little more at home among people who were evidently going to business as the men did in their own town. The sight of a well-brushed, well-washed, gold-chained commercial magnate in a white waistcoat with a rose in his button-hole did them good. And thus they arrived at "the office," that one home-like spot amid all the desert of unaccustomed streets.

"Perhaps," the mother said, "we shall find him here, ready to laugh at us for this ridiculous expedition."

"Well, I hope not," said Horace, "for he will be angry. Papa doesn't like to be looked after."

This speech chilled Mrs Lycett-Landon a little, for it was quite true; and for her part she was not a woman who liked to be found fault with on account of silly curiosity. As a matter of fact, few women do. So that it was with a little check to their eagerness that they got out at the office door among all the press of people coming to their daily labour. Horace, though he had been intended to work there, scarcely knew the place; and his mother, though she had driven down three or four times to pick up her husband on the occasions when they were in town together, was but little better acquainted with it. And the clerks did not at all recognise these very unlikely visitors. Ladies appeared very seldom at the office, and at this early hour never.

"Your father, of course, would not be here so early," Mrs Lycett-Landon said as they went up-stairs; "and I don't suppose young Mr Fareham either is the sort of person – but we must ask for Mr Fareham."

Remembering all that her husband had said, she did not in the least expect to find that young representative of the house. How curious it was to wait until she had been inspected by the clerk, to be asked who she was, to be requested to take a seat, till it was known if Mr Fareham was disengaged! An impulse which she could scarcely explain restrained her from giving her name, which would at once have gained her all the respect she could have desired; and for the first time in her life Mrs Lycett-Landon realised what it must be to come as a poor petitioner to such a place. The clerks made their observations on her and her son behind their glass screen. They decided that she must want a place in the office for the young fellow, but that Fareham would soon give her her answer. These young men did not think much of the personal appearance of Horace, who was clearly from the country – a lanky youth whom it would be difficult to make anything of. Their consternation was extreme when young Mr Fareham, coming out somewhat superciliously to see who wanted him, exclaimed suddenly, "Mrs Landon!" and went forward holding out his hands. "If I had known it was you!" he said. "I hope I have not kept you waiting. But some mistake must have been made, for I was not told your name."

"It was no mistake," she said, looking graciously at the young clerk, who stood by very nervous and abashed. "I did not give my name. We shall not detain you a moment, we only want an address."

While she spoke she had time to remark the perfectly correct and orthodox appearance of young Fareham, of whom it was almost impossible to believe that he had ever committed an irregularity of any description in the course of his life. He led the way into his room with all the respect which was due to the wife of the chief partner, and gave her a chair. "My time is entirely at your service," he said; "too glad to be able to be of any use."

Mrs Lycett-Landon sat down, and then there ensued a moment of such embarrassment as perhaps in all her life she had never known before. There was a certain surprise in the air with which he regarded her, and not the slightest appearance of any idea what she could possibly want him for at this time in the morning. And somehow this surprised unconsciousness on his part brought the most curious painful consciousness to her. She was silent; she looked at him with a kind of blank appeal. She half rose again to go away without putting her question. She seemed to be on the eve of a betrayal, of a family exposure. How foolish it was! She looked at Horace's easy-minded, tranquil countenance, and took courage.

"Do you expect," she said, "Mr Landon here to-day?" with a smile, yet a catch of her breath.

"Mr Landon!" The astonishment of young Fareham was extreme. "Is he in town? We have not seen him since May."

"Horace," said Mrs Lycett-Landon, half-rising from her chair and then falling back upon it. "Horace, your father must be very ill. He must have had – some operation – he must have thought I would be over-anxious – "

She became very pale as she uttered these broken words, and looked as if she were going to faint; and Horace, too, stared with bewildered eyes. Young Fareham began to be alarmed. He saw that his quick response was altogether unexpected, and that there was evidently some mystery.

"Let me see," he said, appearing to ponder, "perhaps I am making a mistake. Yes, I am sure he was here in May – he had just come back from the Continent. Wasn't it so? Oh, then, I must have misunderstood him. I thought he said – Now I remember, he certainly was here in town. Yes, came to tell me something about letters – what was it?"

"Perhaps where you were to send his letters," Mrs Landon said quickly. "That is what we want to know." While she was listening to him, her mind had been going through a great many questions, and she had brought herself summarily back to calm. If it should be serious illness, all her strength would be wanted. She must not waste her forces with foolish fainting or giving in, but husband them all.

Then there arose an inquiry in the office. One clerk after another was called in to be questioned. One said Mr Lycett-Landon's letters were all forwarded to the Liverpool house, or to the Elms, Rockferry, his private address; another, that they were sent to the club; and it was not till some time had been lost that one of the youngest remembered an address to which he had once been sent, to a lodging where Mr Landon was staying. He remembered all about it, for it was a pretty house, with a garden, very unlike Jermyn Street.

"It was just after Mr Landon came back from abroad," the youth said; and by degrees he remembered exactly where it was, and brought it written down, in a neat, clerkly hand, on an office envelope. It was a flowery address, a villa in a road, both of them fanciful with a cockney sentiment.

Mrs Lycett-Landon took the paper from him with a smile of thanks; but she was so bewildered and confused that she rose up and went out of the office without even saying good-morning to young Fareham.

"Mamma, mamma," cried Horace after her, "you have never said – "

"Oh, don't trouble her," said young Fareham; "I can see she is anxious. You'll come back, won't you, and let me know if you've found him? But I hope there is some mistake."

He did not say what kind of mistake he hoped for, nor did Horace say anything as he followed his mother. He, like Milly, thought it impossible that papa would have hidden himself thus to be ill. He was a little nervous of speaking to his mother when he saw how pale and preoccupied she looked.

"Shall I call a cab?" he said. "Mother, do you really think there is so much to fear?"

"He has never been on the Continent," was all his mother could say.

"No; that's true. They just have got that into their heads. It was no business of theirs where he went."

"It is everybody's business where a man goes – a man like him. I think I know what it is, Horace. He has been fretful for some time, and restless; he must have been ill, and he has been going through an operation. Don't say anything; I feel sure of it. Perhaps there was danger in it, and he feared the fuss, and that I should be over-anxious."

"We always thought as children that papa liked to be made a fuss with," said simple Horace.

"You thought so in the nursery, because you liked it yourselves. Yes, we had better have a cab. How full the streets are! one cannot hear oneself talking."

Then she was silent a little till the hansom was called. It was a very noisy part of the City, where the traffic is continual, and it was very difficult to hear a woman's voice. She paused before she got into the cab.

"Now I think of it," she said, "you had better go and telegraph to Milly, for she will be anxious. Go back to the hotel and do it. Tell her that we have got to town all safe, and that you will send her word this evening how papa is."

"But, mother, you are not going without me! and it will be better to telegraph after we know."

"That is what I wish you to do, Horace. It might upset him. I think it a great deal better for me to go by myself. Just do what I tell you. Milly will want to know that we have arrived all right; and wait at the hotel till I send for you."

"You had much better let me come with you, mother."

The noise was so great that she only made a "No" with her mouth, shaking her head as she got into the cab, and gave him the address to show the cabman. Then, before Horace had awakened from his surprise, she was gone, and he was left, feeling very solitary, pushed about by all the passers-by upon the pavement. The youth was half angry, half astonished. To go back to the hotel was not a thing that tempted him, but he was so young that he obeyed by instinct, meaning to pour forth his indignation to Milly. Even in a telegram there is a possibility of easing one's heart.

CHAPTER V.

THE HOUSE WITH THE FLOWERY NAME

Mrs Lycett-Landon drove off through the crowded City streets in a curious trace of excited feeling. She had a sense that something was going to happen to her; but how this was she could not have told. Nor could she have told why it was she had sent Horace away. Perhaps his father might not wish to see him, perhaps he might prefer to explain to her alone the cause of his absence. She felt the need of first seeing her husband alone, though she could not tell why. It was a very long drive. Out of the bustling City streets she came to streets more showy, less encumbered, though perhaps scarcely less crowded, and then to some which showed the lateness of the season by shut-up houses and diminished movement, and then to line after line of those dingy streets, all exactly like each other, which form the bulk of London. There are so many of them, and they are so indistinguishable. She looked out of the hansom and noted them all as she drove on – but yet as if she noted them not, as if it were they that glided by her, as in a dream. Then she reached the suburbs, the roads with the flowery names, houses buried in gardens, with trees appearing behind the high enclosing walls. This perhaps was the strangest of all. She could not think what he could want here, so far out of the world, until she recalled to herself the idea of an illness and an operation which had already faded out of her mind – for that, like every other explanation, was so strange, so much unlike all his habits. Her heart began to beat as the cab turned into the street, going slowly along to look for the special house, and she found herself on the point of arriving at her destination. Though she was so anxious to find her husband, she would now, if she could, have deferred the arrival, have called out to the driver that it was not here, and bidden him go on and on. But there could not be any mistake about it – there was the name of the house painted on the gate. It was a little gate in a wall, affording a glimpse of a pretty little garden shaded with trees inside. She would not let the cabman ring the bell, but got out first and paid him, and then, when she could not find any further excuse, rang it – so faintly at first that no sound followed. She waited, though she knew she could not have been heard, to leave time for an answer. Looking in under the little arch of roses to the smooth bit of lawn, the flowers in the borders, she said to herself that there was not very much taste displayed in the flowers – red geraniums and mignonette, the things that everybody had, and great yellow nasturtiums clustering behind – not very much taste or individuality, but yet a great deal of brightness, and the look as of a home; not lodgings, but a place where people lived. There were some garden-chairs about, and on a rustic table something that looked like a woman's work. How natural it all seemed, how peaceable! It was curious that he should be living in such a place. Perhaps, she said to herself, it was the house of some clerk of the better sort – some one who had known him in his early years, and had wished to be kind: and in good air, and out of the noise of the streets. She made all these explanations as she stood at the door waiting for some one to answer a ring which she knew very well could not have been heard – unable to understand her own strange pause, and the manner in which she dallied with her anxiety. But this could not last for ever. After she had waited more than the needful time she rang again, and presently the door was opened by an unseen spring, and she went in within the pretty enclosure. How pretty it was – only red geraniums and nasturtiums, it was true, but the soft odour of the mignonette, and the sunshine, and the silence – all so peaceful and so calm. There came over her a certain awe as she stepped across the threshold and closed behind her the garden-door. The windows were all open, the house-door open. Under the trees on the little lawn were two basket-chairs, and a white heap of muslin, which some woman must have been working at, on the table. Mrs Lycett-Landon felt like an intruder in this peaceful place. She said to herself at last that there must be some mistake, that it could not be here.