Only a clod
summer noontide. He sat for some few minutes silently thinking of that
departed time. The memory of it seemed almost like a sharp physical
pain, now that he knew that some great sorrow, some bitter woman’s
trial, had come to his cousin. A story about her--a long story! What
story should gossiping tongues have to tell of any woman, except a
history of suffering and wrong?
He did not press the postmaster to tell him anything further: but he
said presently, in an altered voice--a voice that had lost something of
its power and ringing vibration,--
“I can get to see this Mrs. Burfield, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir; I make no doubt you can. She is a very genteel person, is
Mrs. Burfield, which she have known better days, and finds herself often
a little drove like with her lodgers. Her house is Number 2, sir, in the
Terrace, Trafalgar Square, fronting sideways, and rather slantin’ like,
to the sea. You can see it, sir, from where you stand.”
Following the direction of the postmaster’s extended forefinger, Francis
Tredethlyn did see a row of unfinished-looking houses, with the
inevitable seaside bow-windows, staring out of a patch of waste ground.
Why these houses, and almost all the other houses at Coltonslough,
should have slanted away from the sea, obliging their occupants to look
out upon the expanse of waters in a sideways and sinister manner, when
they might have been built directly facing that single feature of
attraction, was a problem far beyond the comprehension of any visitor to
the infantine watering-place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI.
A VERY OLD STORY.
Mrs. Burfield was a pale-faced and pinched-looking person,
hollow-cheeked and spare of figure, who in these latter days would have
inspired a stranger with the idea that she was a rigid disciplinarian of
the school founded by Mr. Banting. She looked as if all saccharine and
fatty elements had been carefully excluded from her food; and yet, on
the other hand, she had none of the muscular energy which might be
supposed to result from a carnivorous habit. She was a depressing kind
of woman, with thin locks of whity-brown hair dangling upon each side of
her thin face, and thin garments hanging limply upon her scanty figure,
and a thin voice. There was something in Mrs. Burfield’s appearance
which called up vague images of drizzly days, and pattens, and washing
done at home, and a man in the passage clamorous for a water-rate, and
all the most unpleasant associations of poverty.
She was a woman who prefaced every sentence she uttered with a sigh. She
sighed as she admitted to Mr. Tredethlyn that her name was Burfield, as
if even that fact were in some manner an affliction. She sighed as she
told him, apologetically, that the house was full of lodgers, so she
must ask him to step down into the little sitting-room below stairs. And
yet, as she subsisted by the letting of lodgings, the crowded state of
her house should have been a cause for rejoicing.
Francis had some slight difficulty in conveying his long legs down the
narrow little staircase, in which there was a breakneck corner, whence
awkward maid-servants were wont to precipitate themselves headlong in
company with an avalanche of tea-things; but he managed to find his way
down somehow or other, and was ushered into a little faded-looking
underground parlour, where all the furniture seemed to have undergone a
prolonged course of Banting, and where the evidence of children’s
habitation was untidily visible in every direction. The children were
all at school, however, Mrs. Burfield told Francis with another sigh;
though, as she added directly afterwards that they drove her next door
to raving madness when they were at home, _that_ fact need scarcely have
depressed her.
“I had a governess for them some time back,” she said, unconsciously
approaching the subject of Mr. Tredethlyn’s business with her, “and the
young person was very useful to me in many ways; but things have been so
dull, and lodgers so uncertain, and so close as to rent and kitchen
fire, and such like, that I couldn’t afford to engage another young
person, if I could have found anyone as reasonable and as willing as
her, which wasn’t likely.”
Here Mrs. Burfield sighed again, and to her surprise found herself
echoed by her visitor.
“It is about that person, the governess, that I have come to inquire,”
said Francis. “I have reason to believe--I may say that I am almost
sure--she is my cousin; very near and very dear to me. Pray tell me all
you can about her. I am a rich man, and I am looking for my cousin, who
has a better claim than I have to the money that has lately come to me.
Pray tell me everything; you shall not find me ungrateful. I will make
it well worth your while to help me in this matter.”
It might be supposed that Mrs. Burfield, being ground into the very dust
by the iron heel of poverty, would brighten a little on hearing this
promising speech: but she did nothing of the kind; she only sighed
rather more plaintively than usual, and remarked somewhat irrelevantly
that her boys were beginning to grow up now, and the boots they knocked
out, and the way they wore their things at the knees and elbows, were
something awful.
“Tell me all you can about my cousin,” urged Mr. Tredethlyn. “Ah, you
don’t know how long I have been away from England, and how eager I am to
find that poor desolate girl. Pray tell me all you know, and quickly.”
“It’s a long story,” said Mrs. Burfield, in the very words used by the
grocer--“it’s a long story, and goodness knows the rights or the wrongs
of it; but if you are her cousin,--and you are, I suppose----”
“I do not think there can be any doubt of it,” Francis Tredethlyn
answered eagerly; “I do not think there can be any doubt that the person
of whom I have heard this morning was my cousin, Susan Tredethlyn.”
“The young person to whom _I_ allude called herself Susan Turner.”
“Yes, yes. It is only natural she should change her name. She left her
home because she had been very much persecuted there. She was no doubt
afraid of being taken back, and was anxious to hide herself under a
false name.”
“If I had known that she had come to me under a false name, never would
she have slept a night in this house,” exclaimed Mrs. Burfield, with
something between a sigh and a shudder.
“She was a good and honest girl, under whatever name she came to you,”
answered Francis Tredethlyn; “but pray tell me the story.”
But Mrs. Burfield could not immediately comply with this request; she
had to go into the kitchen first, to see that “the girl” was basting
some mutton that was being roasted for a very fastidious “front
parlour,” who had a rooted objection to baked meats; and then she had to
go out into a little area, in which the window looked out, and to hold
parley with some person above, who dropped her down divers loaves, and
disputed with her as to a certain “twopenny German” which had been had,
or had not been had, on the previous Tuesday. At last, however, she was
able to seat herself opposite poor Francis, and to begin her story, from
the narration of which she seemed to derive a dismal kind of enjoyment.
“It’s close upon seven years since my poor dear husband died,” Mrs.
Burfield began; and for some little time Francis Tredethlyn was afraid
that she was going to favour him with a sketch of her own personal
history rather than that story which he was so eager to know. “It’s
close upon seven years, seven years of toil and trouble for me, and up
to that time I’d never known what it was to want for anything in a
moderate way. He was managing clerk in an insurance office, sir, and was
as fine a looking man as you need wish to see; but he was
taken--sudden--and I was left alone to provide for four young children.
Well, sir, I tried one thing and another, but being genteelly brought
up, things seemed to go harder with me than they go with some people;
and at last an uncle, on my mother’s side, who is very wealthy, and
lately retired from the patent chimney-pot business, gave me enough to
buy a little furniture and start fresh down here. It’s been a hard life,
sir, but I shouldn’t have so much minded that if it hadn’t been for the
children. I couldn’t bear to see them running wild upon the shore, or
playing with vulgar, dirty children on the waste ground; so, a little
better than four years ago, I thought I’d try if I couldn’t get a person
to take care of them, who’d be a kind of governess to them, and would
give me a helping hand with the house when my lodgings were full, and
wouldn’t want above a few pounds a year, just to get herself a new gown
once in a way, and so on. Well, sir, I inquired for such a person, but
lor’! you might just as well inquire for anything you wanted on Robinson
Crusoe’s island as at Coltonslough, unless it’s queen’s-taxes and
poor-rates; and you can have plenty of them without asking. So at last
someone says to me--I think it was Mr. Sanders at the post-office--‘Why
don’t you advertise in the “Times,” Mrs. Burfield? it’ll cost you a
trifle, but you are sure to get what you want.’ So the long and the
short of it was, I did advertise for a genteel person who would
undertake to teach young children, and make herself generally useful, in
consideration of a comfortable home and a honorarium of ten pounds per
annum. Mr. Sanders advised me to put it in the light of a honorarium, as
he said it looked more that way. A young person from the country
preferred, I stated in the advertisement; for _the things_ that lodgers
from London bring down with their luggage, and then turn round upon you
and object to the bedding, had quite set me against Londoners. Well,
sir, I got a good many answers, but the best-written letter was signed
Susan Turner. So I wrote to Miss Turner--the address was at a little
coffee-house near the Great Western terminus--and I told her that if she
liked to come down to Coltonslough for an interview, I would be her
expenses one way. Well, she came, and I found her a very
pleasant-spoken, respectable-looking young person, and I took to her at
first sight to that degree that I allowed her to come to me without
reference, she being at variance, as she told me, with her relations in
the country.”
“She came to you at once, then?”
“Yes, she stayed with me there and then, not caring to go back to
London, the strangeness of which frightened her, she said; and she had
no luggage, except a little bit of a carpet-bag, full of things, which
she sent for next day; and then by-and-by the truth came out, that she’d
run away from home. But she had a couple of sovereigns, and she went out
and bought herself a few more things, and made herself as neat and
comfortable as she could. She didn’t make much secret of how she’d left
her home, poor girl. Her father had wanted her to marry against her own
wishes, she said, and, in her fear of him, she had run away.”
“Poor girl! poor girl!”
“Well, sir,” sighed Mrs. Burfield, “we got on very comfortable for some
months. I never met a young person more kind or more willing. The
children took to her as if she’d been their own sister, and she was
altogether the steadiest, most industrious young person. Things had gone
pretty comfortable with me that season; and in the autumn, quite late,
going on for November, when people don’t expect to see a single lodger
in all Coltonslough, what should I hear, one afternoon, but the wheels
of a fly, and a tremendous double knock at my door; and who should I see
when I opened it, but a tall, handsome-looking gentleman, who walked
straight into my parlour, and took the rooms off-hand, and without so