MR. WESDEN TURNS ECCENTRIC.
The nights "drew in" more and more; and nearer and nearer with the shortest day approached the end of Sidney Hinchford's probation. Only a week or two between the final explanations of Sid's position—of his chances in the future perhaps—everything very quiet and still at Suffolk Street and Camberwell—a deceptive calm before the storm that was brewing.
Harriet Wesden called more frequently at the stationer's shop; she was glad to escape from the long evenings at home, and the watchful, ever anxious eyes of her father, and it was easy to frame an excuse to repair to Great Suffolk Street. Occasionally Sidney Hinchford knew of her propinquity, and escorted her home—more often missed his chances of a tête-à-tête—three or four times, and greatly to his annoyance, crossed her in the journey, and reached Camberwell to spend the evening with a fidgety old man and his invalid spouse.
At this time it also happened that Sidney Hinchford fell into a dreamy absent way, for which there appeared no valid reasons, unless he had become alive to the doubts of Harriet's affection for him; an absence of mind, and even an irritability, which was disguised well enough from the father—before whom Sidney was more or less an actor—but which Mattie, ever on the watch, was quick as usual to detect.
She had become puzzled by Harriet's abstraction, and had looked for its reflex at once in Sidney Hinchford's face—finding it there, as she thought, after a while.
Mattie, left in the dark as to the truth, and every day becoming more of a young woman, who knew her place, and felt the distance between her master's daughter, her master's lodgers, and herself, could but draw her own conclusions, and frame a story from them.
Harriet and Sidney had quarrelled, and were keeping their quarrel a secret from the good folk at Camberwell; something had happened to cast a gloom on the way that Mattie thought would be ever bright and rosy, and each day they who should have been lovers seemed drifting further apart. She would have liked to play the part of mediator between them—to see them friends again—but her position held her back, and she had not the courage of a year ago. Those two young lovers had been the bright figures in her past—her life had somehow become blended with them, and she felt that her interest was of a cumulative character, and not likely to die out with her riper womanhood. She could not disassociate her mind away from them; at every turn in her career they were before her—they haunted her thoughts, and harassed her with their seeming inconsistencies of conduct. She did not understand them, for the clue to the inner life was absent from her; she could not see why Harriet was not a girl to love this young man with all her heart, as she was loved—she felt that there was an assimilation between the strength of one, and the weakness that needed support in the other; and that Sidney's earnest love should have more deeply impressed a heart naturally susceptible to anything that was honest and true.
And yet Harriet grew paler, and looked disturbed in mind, and Sidney Hinchford came home from business every day with a deeper shade of thought upon his face. He went less often to Camberwell also—she took notice of that—and stayed up late at night in the drawing-room, after having deluded his father into the belief that he should be only a few moments after him. All was mystery in Suffolk Street, denser than the fogs which crept thither so often in the winter time.
Mr. Wesden, before retiring from business, had left strict orders with Mattie to be the last to go round the house, and see, in particular, to the gas burners, and the bolts which Ann Packet was continually leaving unfastened, and had once received warning for in Mr. Wesden's time. Mattie had injunctions to see to the drawing-room burners as well; to wait to an hour however late for the Hinchford exit.
This waiting up became a serious matter when Sidney Hinchford remained in the drawing-room till the small hours of the morning, and brooded over his papers, with which one table or another was invariably strewn. Mattie, a young woman of business, who did a fair day's work, and rose early, ventured to remonstrate at last; it was intrenching beyond her province, but she made the plunge in a manner very nervous and new to her—in a manner that even confused herself a little.
He brought the remonstrance upon himself by coming down into the shop to hunt for some writing paper, which he intended to pay for in the morning, and was a little surprised to find Mattie sewing briskly in the back parlour.
"Up still, Mattie!—late hours for you," he said.
"Ah! and for you, too, sir."
"Men can do with little rest, and I never leave one day's work for the next," said he, in that quick manner which had become habitual to him, and which appeared, to strangers, tinged with more abruptness than was really intended. "I was thinking of robbing your stationery drawer, Mattie, and lo the thief is detected in the act."
"Oh! I hope you do not intend any more work to-night, sir."
"Why not?" he asked, his eyes expressing a mild sort of surprise through his spectacles.
"I'm waiting to see the gas out in that table-lamp."
"Can't I see to it myself?"
"I thought so until I found the tap in the india-rubber pipe turned full on last night."
"Did you sit up last night, too?"
"Mr. Wesden has always wished that I should make sure everything was safe."
"But I'm busy just now; you mustn't be a slave as well as myself."
"I hope you're not a slave, Mr. Sidney," said Mattie, assuming that half-familiar style of conversation which was natural to her with her two old friends, and which always escaped in spite of of her, "or that you will not keep one much longer, for it's not improving your looks, I can tell you."
"You can tell me," said Sidney; "well, what's the matter with my looks, Mattie?"
Mattie looked steadily at him.
"You're paler than you used to be," she said after a while; "you're not like yourself; you've something on your mind."
Sidney frowned, rubbed his hair up the wrong way, after his father's fashion, cleared off suddenly and then laughed.
"Who hasn't?" was his reply.
"There's nothing which can't easily be got over, or my name isn't Mattie," said our heroine, with great firmness.
She was full of her one reason for all this thought on his side, and the confusion and perplexity on Harriet's, and she delivered her hint emphatically.
"I don't despair of getting over most things," he said, with a forced lightness that did not deceive his observer; "there's only one thing in the way that bothers me."
He said it more to himself than Mattie, who cried, instinctively—
"What's that, sir?"
"Why, that's my secret," he responded, shutting up on the instant; "and I shall keep it till the last."
He had turned very stern and rigid; Mattie felt that she had crossed the line of demarcation, and withdrew into herself and her needlework with a sigh.
Sidney Hinchford shook himself away from that dark thought instanter.
"You're as curious as ever, Mattie—you'll be a true woman. I would not be your husband for the world."
Mattie felt herself crimson on the instant, and a strange wild commotion in her heart ensued, more unaccountable than the mystery which had deepened around her. They were light, idle words of his, but they made her cheeks flush and her bosom heave; he spoke in jest, almost in sarcasm, but the words rang in her ears as though he had thundered them forth with all the power of his lungs.
When all this Suffolk Street life was over; when she and he, when she and they whom she loved had gone their separate ways, when she was an old woman, she remembered Sidney Hinchford's words.
Still she flashed back the jesting reply—or whatever it was—with a quickness that was startling.
"You'll wait till you're asked," she said.
At this moment some one knocked at the outer-door.
"Hollo!—a late customer like me," said Sidney, opening the door as he was nearer to it, and then staring with surprise at the person who had arrived—no less a person than Mr. Wesden himself.
"Hollo!" he said again; "nothing wrong, sir, I hope?"
"Not at home," was the dry response. "Is anything wrong here?"
"Oh! no."
He entered, took the door-handle from Sidney, and closed the door himself, turned the key in the lock, and drew the bolts to. Sidney Hinchford thought Mr. Wesden looked very nervous that evening—very different from his usual stolid way.
"You're quite sure—quite sure that it's all right, sir?" asked Sidney, his thoughts flashing to Harriet again.
"I said so; I never tell an untruth, Sidney. Good night"
"Good night, sir. Oh!" turning back, "the letter-paper, Mattie—I had forgotten."
Mr. Wesden watched the transfer of the writing paper from the drawer to Sidney Hinchford's hands, glanced furtively from Sidney to Mattie, gradually unwinding a woolen comforter from his neck meanwhile.
When Sidney had withdrawn, very much perplexed, but too dignified to ask any more questions, Mr. Wesden turned to Mattie.
"What's he doing down here at this time of night, Mattie?"
"He came for writing paper—he's very busy."
"What are you sitting up for?"
"To see to the gas-burners in the drawing-room."
"Turn the gas off at the meter, and leave him in the dark next time," said Mr. Wesden. "You can go to bed now. I'll sit up for a little while; I'm going to sleep here to-night."
"Indeed, sir! Oh! sir, I hope that nothing serious has happened?"
"Nothing at all. It's not so very wonderful that I should come to my own house, I suppose, Mattie?"
"N—no," she answered, hesitating; "but it's past one o'clock."
"I couldn't sleep—and Harriet was at home with the good lady," he said, as if by way of excuse; adding very sulkily, a moment afterwards, "I never could sleep in that Camberwell place—I wish I'd never left the shop!"
Mr. Wesden hazarded no further reason for his eccentric arrival, and Mattie went up-stairs to lay it with the rest of her stock of mysteries daily accumulating round her. Mr. Wesden remained down-stairs, fidgeting with shop drawers, counting the money left in the till, and wandering up and down in a reckless, hypochondriacal fashion, very remarkable in a man of his phlegmatic temperament, and which it was as well for Mattie not to have seen.
Finally he groped his way down-stairs into the kitchen, and the coal-cellar where the gas-meter was placed, and with a wrench cut off the supply of gas for that night, casting Sidney Hinchford so suddenly into darkness, that he leaped up with an exclamation far from appropriate to his character.
"What the devil next?"
The next thing for Sidney was to knock over the chair he had been sitting upon, which came down on the drawing-room floor with a bumping noise that shook the house, and woke up his father, who shouted forth his name.
"Coming, coming,'' said Sidney, walking into the double-bedded room, and giving up further study or brooding for that night.
"What's the matter, Sid, my boy?" asked the father, from the corner; "haven't you been in bed yet?"
"Must have fallen asleep in the next room, I think."
"And a terrible row you've made in waking, Sid. Good night, my boy—God bless you!"
The old gentleman turned on his side, and was soon indulging in the snores of the just again. There was a night-light burning there, and Sidney took it from its saucer of water and held it above his head, looking down at that old, world-worn, yet handsome face of the father.
"God bless you!" he said, re-echoing his father's benediction; "how will you bear it when the time comes, I wonder?"