A BURST OF CONFIDENCE.
Yes, Mr. Wesden, late of Suffolk Street, had become nervous and eccentric in his old age—many people do, besides stationers. He had retired from business too late to enjoy the relaxation from business cares; he had better have died in harness than have given up the shop, for isolation therefrom began to work its evil.
He had not had much to worry him in his middle age; his youth had been a struggle, but he had been young and strong to bear with it, blest by a homely and affectionate wife, who struggled with him and consoled him; then had followed for more years than we care to reckon just now, the everyday life of a London shopkeeper—a life of business-making and money-making, plodding on in one groove, with little change to distract his attention, or trouble his brain. All quiet and monotonous, but possessing for John Wesden peace of mind, which, if not exactly happiness, was akin to it. And now in his old age, when every habit had been burned into him as it were, business was over, and idleness became a sore trial to him. And then after idleness came his daughter to worry him, not to mention Mattie, who worried him most of all, for reasons which we shall more closely particularize a chapter or two hence.
So with these troubles bearing all at once upon a mind that had been at its ease in its stronger days, Mr. Wesden turned eccentric. Want of method rendered him fidgety, the mysteries in his path, as well as Mattie's, perplexed him; he was verging upon hypochondriacism without being aware of it himself; and that suspicious nature which had been born with him, began to develop itself more, and give promise of bearing forth bitter fruit. Possibly before his concern for his daughter's health, was his concern for the shop in Great Suffolk Street, which he considered that he had neglected in leaving to the charge of a girl not eighteen years of age, and which, since the robbery, was an oppression that weighed heavily upon him. He was full of fancies concerning that shop; his mind—which unfortunately was fed by fancies at that time—began to give way somewhat when he took it in his head to think something had happened, at twelve o'clock at night, and start at once for Great Suffolk Street, as we have noticed in our preceding chapter.
The ice once broken, the eccentricities of Mr. Wesden did not diminish; he had his old bed-room seen to in the house again, and surprised Mattie more than once after this by sudden appearances at untimely hours. He had a right to look after his business—did people think that he had lost his interest in the shop, because he lived away from it?—did people think that he was not sharp enough for business still? With these changes he became more nervous, more irritable, and less considerate; yet brightening up sometimes for weeks together, and becoming his old stolid self again, to the relief of his wife and daughter. That daughter detected the change in her father also, woke up at last to the fact that her own thoughtfulness had tended to unsettle him, and became more like her old self also—or rather, more of an actress, with the power to impersonate that self from which she had seceded.
Everything was going wrong with our characters, when Harriet Wesden broke through the ice one night with that impulsiveness which she had not lived down or grown out of. It was strange that she always broke down in Mattie's presence; that only in the company of the stray did she feel the wish to avow all, and seek counsel in return. To Harriet Wesden the impulse was incomprehensible, but it was beyond her strength, at times, and carried her away. She loved Mattie; she saw in her the faithful friend rather than the servant; she knew that the child's passionate love for her had grown with Mattie's growth, and absorbed her being. But love was but half the reason with Harriet, and she would not own—which was the secret—that the weak and timid nature sought relief from a mind that had grown strong and practical in a rough school.
A need of sympathy, a perplexity becoming greater every day, allied to a love for the confidante, brought about the truth, which escaped in the old fashion.
She had been paying her visit—an afternoon one in this instance—to Mattie at the shop; it was a dull season, and no business stirring; the December gloom preyed upon the spirits of most people abroad that day; it affected Harriet more than usual, or the pressure of the old thoughts reduced her to subjection at last. The two girls were sitting by the fireside, Mattie with her face turned to the shop door, when Harriet Wesden laid both her hands suddenly on our heroine's.
"Mattie," she cried, "look me in the face a moment!"
"Come round to the little light there is left, then."
"There!"
Harriet Wesden set her pretty face, pale and anxious then, more into the light required. Mattie regarded it attentively.
"Isn't it a false face?" asked Harriet, in an excited manner—"the face of one who brings sorrow and wrong to all who know her?"
"I hope not."
"It is!" she asserted. "Oh! Mattie, I am in distress, and terrible doubt—I have been foolish, and acted inconsiderately—I am in a maze, that becomes more tangled with every step I take—tell me what to do!"
"You ought to know best, dear—you should not have any troubles which you are afraid to confess to your father and mother, and—and Mr. Hinchford."
"Yes, yes, but not to them first of all," she cried. "Oh! Mattie, I am not a wicked girl, God knows—I have never had a thought of wickedness—I would like everybody in the world to be as happy as I was once myself."
"Once!" repeated Mattie. "Oh! I won't have that."
"I don't think," she added, very thoughtfully regarding the fire, "that I shall be ever happy again. Now, Mattie dear, I'm going to swear you to secrecy, and then ask what you would do in my place."
"You're very kind to trust in me—but is there no one else?—Miss Eveleigh, for instance."
"She's a worse silly than I am!"
"Your mother."
"I should frighten her to death—she and father are both weak, and altering very much. Oh! Mattie, if they should die and leave me alone in the world!"
"Need you get nervous about that just now?"
"I'm nervous about everything—I'm unsettled—Mattie, I have acted very treacherously to him."
"To Mr. Sidney!—not to Mr. Sidney?"
"Yes," was the answer.
Mattie became excited. How had it occurred?—who had done it?—who had stolen her thoughts away from him?
"I have been trying very hard to love him—sometimes I think I do love him better than the—the other—just for a while, when he is very happy sitting near me, and very full of the future, that can never, never come."
"Go on please," said the curious Mattie.
"Mattie, you remember Mr. Darcy?" she asked, spasmodically.
"Mr. Darcy—no," said the puzzled Mattie.
"The gentleman who—who fell in love with me when I was a child," she explained, very rapidly, and with still greater excitement, "whom I thought I had forgotten, and who had forgotten me, until I met him again."
"Oh! this is wrong!" exclaimed Mattie.
"I know it—I have owned it!" cried Harriet; "let me tell the story out. I met him, parted coldly from him, met him again, all by accident on my part; met him for a third time at the Eveleighs, with whom he had got on visiting terms; met him day after day, evening after evening there, until the spell was on me which overpowered me, and robbed me of my peace—until I loved him, Mattie!"
"And he knows——"
"He knows nothing, save that I am engaged to be another's—and that I dare scarcely think of him."
"He knows too much, I know," said Mattie, reflectively; "and he has found a way to turn you against Mr. Sidney. What a wonder he must be!"
"Poor Sidney!"
"And to think it's all over between you and him," added Mattie—"him who thinks so much of you, and is growing old to my eyes, with the fear upon him which I understand now, and which is now so natural!"
"What fear!"
"Of losing you."
"I am so sorry—so very sorry for him. And I am ashamed to think that I have led him on to build his hopes upon me, and now must dash them down."
"Yes—to-night," said Mattie, thoughtfully.
"Tonight!" exclaimed Harriet, in alarm.
"I don't know much about these things—I never understood what love for a young man was, having had too much to do," she added, with a little laugh that echoed strangely in that shadowy room, "but it don't seem quite the thing to keep the two on, or both of them in suspense about you."
"Do you think I would?" asked Harriet, proudly.
"It seems to me that if I were in your place, I should take a pattern from Mr. Sidney, and speak out at once—go straight at it, as he calls it—and tell him everything."
"But——"
Mattie became excited in her turn.
"It isn't right—it isn't fair to let a man keep thinking of you, when you've turned against him," she cried; "it's cowardly and base to hide the truth from him, or be afraid of telling it. It won't kill him, Harriet, for he's a proud spirit, that will bear up through it all, bitterly as he will feel it for a while."
"I'm not afraid—it is not that," said Harriet; "I only wish to know what you would think the best method of telling him all, and yet sparing him pain. I have been fancying that if you hinted to him at first the truth——"
"I hint!" exclaimed Mattie, "not for the world. I'm only a servant here, and you might as well ask poor Ann Packet to hint the truth as me. I'm sorry—you will never know how sorry I am—that you two are going to break it off forever; but I should be more sorry still if you let to-night go by, and not try hard to face him."
"Mattie, I will face him," said Harriet, with her lips compressed; "I will tell him all. After all, it was not an engagement, and I was as free as he to make my choice elsewhere if I preferred. I am not in the wrong to tell him that my girlish fancy was a mistake."
"No—only in the wrong to keep the truth back."
"You will not think that I have intentionally attempted to deceive poor Sidney, will you?"
"God forbid, my dear."
"Vain—frivolous, and weak—anything but cruel. Yes, I will tell him all when he comes back to-night. There is no use in delay."
"Only danger," added Mattie, remembering her copy-book admonition; a copy which Sidney Hinchford had set her himself in the old days, when she was deep in text-hand.
"And then when it is all told, and he knows that I am free, happiness will come again, I suppose. Heigho! I was very happy once."
"Happiness will come again," said Mattie, more cheerfully, "to be sure."
"Mattie, I have been trying very hard to think of Mr. Sidney, first of all; it is that trying which has made me ill. I know he loves me very much, and will never think of anybody else; and it is—it is hard upon him now!"
"You must be very fond of this other one," said Mattie. "Is he handsome?"
"Very."
"And very fond of you, of course?"
"Yes; but it is a struggle to keep his love back—I am cold to him—and I—I will not listen to him, and so drive him to despair. Oh! I am a miserable wretch! I make everybody unhappy whom I meet."
The weak girl burst into tears, and rocked herself to and fro on the chair before the fire. Mattie passed her arms round her neck and drew the pretty agitated face to her bosom, soothing it there as though she had been a mother troubled with love-sick daughters of her own.
"It will soon be over now," Mattie said, when Harriet was more composed. "Try and be calm; think of what you shall say to poor Sidney, while I attend to the shop a bit."
Mattie went into the shop, leaving Harriet Wesden with her chin clutched in both hands, looking dreamily at the fire. She was more composed now the whole truth had escaped her; she felt that she should be happy in time, after Sidney Hinchford had been told all, and that terrible ordeal of telling it had been gone through. One more scene, which had made her shudder to forestall by sober thought, and then the new life, brighter and rosier from that day!
Poor Sidney, what should she say to him, to soften the look which would rise to his dark eyes and transfix her? What was best to say and do, to keep him from thinking ill of her, and despising her for vacillation?
Mattie came in, looking white and scared; but Harriet, possessed by a new thought which had suddenly dashed in upon her, failed to observe the change.
"Mattie, dear," she cried, "if he should think I give him up because he's poorer than Mr. Darcy—that it is for the sake of money that I turn away from him!"
"Money's a troublesome thing," said Mattie, snatching up her bonnet from the sideboard, and putting it on her head with trembling hands; "if you take your eyes from it for an instant, it's gone."
"But, Mr. Darcy——"
"Oh! bother Mr. Darcy," was the half-peevish exclamation. "I have been listening to you, and they've robbed the shop again. Everything's against me just now! Mind the place till I come back, please."