The Galaxy, March, 1877 / Vol. XXIII, No. 3

by Various

"OH, MUCH DESIRED PRIZE, SWEET LIBERTY!"

The summer had gone and much even of the autumn, and Miss Grey and her companion were settled in London. Minola had had everything planned out in her mind before they left Dukes-Keeton, and little Miss Blanchet was positively awed by her leader's energy, knowledge, and fearlessness. The first night of their arrival in town they went to a quiet, respectable, old-fashioned hotel, well known of Keeton folk, where Miss Grey's father used to stay during his visits to London for many years, and where his name was still well remembered. Then the two strangers from the country set out to look for lodgings, and Miss Grey was able to test her knowledge of London, and satisfy her pride of learning, by conducting her friend straightway to the region in which she had resolved to make a home for herself. She had been greatly divided in mind for a while between Kensington and the West Centre; between the neighborhood of the South Kensington Museum, the glades of the gardens, and all the charms of the old court suburb, and the temptations of the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the old-fashioned squares and houses around the latter. She decided for the British Museum quarter. Miss Blanchet would have preferred the brightness and air of fashion which belonged to Kensington, but Miss Grey ruled that to live somewhere near the British Museum was more like living in London, and she energetically declared that she would rather live in Seven Dials than out of London.

To find a pleasant and suitable lodging would ordinarily have been a difficulty; for the regular London lodging-house keeper detests the sight of women, and only likes the gentleman who disappears in the morning and returns late at night. But luckily there are Keeton folk everywhere. As a rule nobody is born in London, "except children," as a lady once remarked. Come up to London from whatever little Keeton you will, you can find your compatriots settled everywhere in the metropolis. Miss Grey obtained from the kindly landlady of the hotel—who had herself been born in Keeton, and was married to a Glasgow man—a choice of Keeton folk willing to receive respectable and well-recommended lodgers—"real ladies" especially. Miss Grey, being cordially vouched for by the landlady as a real lady, found out a Keeton woman in the West Centre who had a drawing-room and two bedrooms to let.

Had Miss Grey invented the place it could not have suited her better. It was an old-fashioned street, running out of a handsome old-fashioned square. The street was no thoroughfare. Its other end was closed by a solemn, sombre structure with a portico, and over the portico a plaster bust of Pallas. This was an institution or foundation of some kind which had long outlived the uses whereto it had been devoted by its pious founder. It now had nothing but a library, a lecture hall, an enclosed garden (into which, happily for her, the windows of Miss Grey's bedroom looked), an old fountain in the garden, considerable funds, a board of trustees, and an annual dinner. This place lent an air of severe dignity to the street, and furthermore kept the street secluded and quiet by blocking up one of its ends and inviting no traffic. The house in which our pair of wanderers was lodging was itself old-fashioned, and in a manner picturesque. It had broad old staircases of stone, and a large hall and fine rooms. It had once been a noble mansion, and the legend was that its owner had entertained Dr. Johnson there and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and that Mrs. Thrale had often been handed up and down that staircase. Minola loved association with such good company, and it may be confessed went up and down the stairs several times for no other purpose whatever than the pleasure of fancying herself following in the footsteps of bright Mrs. Thrale, with whose wrongs Miss Grey, as a misanthrope, was especially bound to sympathize.

The drawing-room happily looked at least aslant over the grass and the trees of the square. Minola's bedroom, as has been said, looked into the garden of the institution, with its well-kept walks, its shrubs, and its old-fashioned fountain, whose quiet plash was always heard in the seclusion of the back of the house. Had the trunks of the trees been just a little less blackened by smoke our heroine might well have fancied, as she looked from her bedroom window of nights, that she was in some quaint old abode in a quiet country town. But in truth she did not desire to encourage any such delusion. To feel that she was in the heart of London was her especial delight. This feeling would have brightened and glorified a far less attractive place. She used to sit down alone in her bedroom of nights in order to think quietly to herself, "Now I am at last really in London; not visiting London, but living in it." There at least was one dream made real. There was one ambition crowned. "Come what will," she said to herself, "I am living in London." In London and freedom she grew more and more healthy and happy. As a wearied Londoner might have sought out say Keeton, and found new strength and spirits there, so our Keeton girl, who was somewhat pale and thin when she sat on the steps of the ducal mausoleum, grew stronger and brighter every day in the West Centre regions of London.

A happier, quieter, freer life could hardly be imagined, at least for her. She spent hours in the National Gallery and the Museum; she walked with Mary Blanchet in Regent's Park, and delighted to find out new vistas and glimpses of beauty among the trees there, and to insist that it was ever so much better than any place in the country. As autumn came on and the trees grew barer and the skies became of a heavier silver gray, Minola found greater charms in their softened half tones than the brighter lights of summer could give. Even when it rained—and it did rain sometimes—who could fail to see the beauty, all its own, of the green of grass, and the darker stems and branches of trees, showing faintly through the veil of the mist and the soft descending shower? It was, indeed, a delightful Arcadian life. Its simplicity can hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that our adventurous pair of women always dined at one o'clock—when they dined at all—off a chop, except on Sundays, when they invariably had a cold fowl.

Much as Miss Grey loved London, however, it was still a place made up of men whom she considered herself bound to dislike, and of women who depended far too much on these men. Therefore she made studies of scraps of London life, and amused herself by satirizing them to her friend.

"I have accomplished a chapter of London, Mary," she said one evening before their reading had set in. "I have completed my social studies of our neighbors in Gainsborough Place"—a little street of shops near at hand. "I am prepared to give you a complete court guide as to the grades of society there, Mary, so that you may know at once how to demean yourself to each and all."

"Do tell me all about it; I should very much like to know."

"Shall we begin with the highest or the lowest?"

"I think," Miss Blanchet said with a gentle sigh, expressive of no great delight in the story of the lower classes, "I would rather you begin low down, dear, and get done with them first."

"Very well; now listen. The lowest of all is the butcher. He is a wealthy man, I am sure, and his daughter, who sits in the little office in the shop, is a good-looking girl, I think. But in private life nobody in Gainsborough Place mixes with them on really cordial terms. Their friends come from other places; from butchers' shops in other streets. They do occasionally interchange a few courtesies with the family of the baker; but the baker's wife, though not nearly so rich, rather patronizes and looks down upon Mrs. Butcher."

"Dear me!" said the poetess. "What odd people!"

"Well, the pastry-cook's family will have nothing to do, except in the way of business, with butcher or baker; but they are very friendly with the grocer, and they have evenings together. Now the two little old maids, who keep the stationer's shop where the post-office is, are very genteel, and have explained to me more than once that they don't feel at home in this quarter, and that their friends are in the West End. But they are not well off, poor things, I fear, and they like to spend an evening now and then with the family of the grocer and the pastry-cook, who are rather proud to receive them, and can give them the best tea and Madeira cake; and both the little ladies assure me that nothing can be more respectable than the families of the pastry-cook and the grocer—for their station in life, they always add."

"Oh, of course," Miss Blanchet said, who was listening with great interest as to a story, having that order of mind to which anything is welcome that offers itself in narrative form, but not having any perception of a satirical purpose in the whole explanation. Minola appreciated the "of course," and somehow became discouraged.

"Well," she said, "that's nearly all, except for the family of the chemist, who live next to the little ladies of the post-office, and who only know even them by sufferance, and would not for all the world have any social intercourse with any of the others. It's delightful, I think, to find that London is not one place at all, but only a cluster of little Keetons. This one street is Keeton to the life, Mary. I want to pursue my studies deeper though; I want to find out how the gradations of society go between the mothers of the boy who drives the butcher's cart, the baker's boy, and pastry-cook's boy."

"Oh, Minola dear!"

"You think all this very unpoetic, Mary, and you are shocked at my interest in these prosaic and lowly details. But it is a study of life, my dear poetess, and it amuses and instructs me. Only for chance, you know, I might have been like that, and it is a grand thing to learn one's own superiority."

"You never could have been like that, Minola; you belong to a different class."

"Yes, yes, dear, that is quite true. I belong to the higher classes entirely; my father was a country architect, my stepfather is a Nonconformist minister—these are of the aristocracy everywhere."

"You are a lady—a woman of education, Minola," the poetess said almost severely. She could not understand how even Miss Grey herself could disparage Miss Grey and her parentage in jest.

"I can assure you, dear, that one of the pastry-cook's daughters, whom I talked with to-day, is a much better educated girl than I am. You should hear her talk French, Mary. She has been taught in Paris, dear, and speaks so well that I found it very hard to understand her. She plays the harp, and knows all about Wagner. I don't. I like her very much, and she is coming here to take tea with us."

The poetess was not delighted with this kind of society, but she never ventured to contradict her leader.

"You can talk to every one I do really believe," she said. "I find it so hard to get on with people—with some people."

"I feel so happy and so free here. I can say all the cynical things that please me—you don't mind—and I can like or dislike as I choose."

"I am afraid you dislike more than you like, Minola."

"I think I could like any one who had some strong purpose in life; not the getting of money, or making a way in society. There are such, I suppose; I don't know."

"When you meet my brother I am sure you will acknowledge that he has a purpose in life which is not the getting of money," said Miss Blanchet. "But you don't like men."

Minola made no reply. Poor little Miss Blanchet felt so kindly to all the race of men that she did not understand how any woman could really dislike them.

"I am going to do something that will please you to-morrow," Miss Grey said, feeling that she owed her companion some atonement for not warming to the mention of her brother. "I am positively going to hunt out Lucy Money. They must have returned by this time."

This was really very pleasant news for Miss Blanchet. She had been longing for her friend to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy Money, about whom she had many dreams. It did not occur to Mary Blanchet to question directly even in her own mind the decrees of Miss Grey, or to say to herself that the course of life which they were leading was not the most delightful that could be devised. But, if the little poetess could have ventured to translate vague yearnings into definite thoughts, she would, perhaps, have acknowledged to herself a faint desire that the brilliant passages of the London career she had marked out for herself in anticipation should come rather more quickly than they just now seemed likely to do. At present there was not much difference perceptible to her between London and Duke's-Keeton. Nobody came to see them. Even her brother had not yet presented himself. Her poem did not make much progress; there was no great incentive to poetic work. Minola and she did not know any poets, or artists, or publishers. Mary Blanchet's poetic tastes were of a somewhat old-fashioned school, and did not include any particular care for looking at trees, and fields, and water, and skies, although these objects of natural beauty were made to figure in the poems a good deal in connection with, and illustrative of, the emotions of the poetess. Therefore the rambles in the park were not so delightful to her as to her leader; and when the evening set in, and Minola and she read to each other, Mary Blanchet was always rather pleased if an opportunity occurred for interrupting the reading by a talk. She was particularly anxious that Minola should renew her acquaintance with her old schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money, whose father she understood to be somehow a great sort of person, and through whom she saw dimly opening up a vista, perhaps the only one for her, into society and literature. But the Money family were out of town when our friends came to London, and Miss Blanchet had to wait; and, even when it was probable that they had returned, Miss Grey did not seem very eager to renew the acquaintance. Indeed, her resolve to visit Miss Money now was entirely a good-natured concession to the evident desire of Mary Blanchet. Minola saw her friend's little ways and weaknesses clearly, and smiled now and then as she thought of them, and liked her none the less for them—rather, indeed, felt her breast swell with kindliness and pity. It pleased her generous heart to gratify her companion in every way, to find out things that she liked and bring them to her, to study her little innocent vanities, that she might gratify them. What little dainties Mary Blanchet liked to have with her tea, what pretty ribbons she thought it became her to wear—these Miss Grey was always perplexing herself about. When she found that she liked to be alone sometimes, that she must have a long walk unaccompanied, that she must have thoughts which Mary would not care to hear, then she felt a pang of remorse, as if she were guilty of a breach of true camaraderie, and she could not rest until she had relieved her soul by some special mark of attention to her friend. On the other hand, Mary Blanchet, for all her dreams and aspirations, was a sensible and managing little person, who got for Miss Grey about twice the value that she herself could have obtained out of her money. This was a fact which Minola always took care to impress upon her companion, for she dreaded lest Miss Blanchet should feel herself a dependent. Miss Blanchet, however, in a modest way, knew her value, and had besides one of the temperaments to which dependence on some really loved being comes natural, and is inevitable.

So Minola set out next day, about three o'clock, to look up her schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money. She went forth on her mission with some unwillingness, and with a feeling as if she were abandoning some purpose or giving up a little of a principle in doing so. "I came to London to live alone and independent," she said to herself sometimes, "and already I am going out to seek for acquaintances. Why do I do that? I want strength of purpose. I am just like everybody else"; and she began, as was her wont, to scrutinize her own weaknesses, and bear heavily on them. For, absurd as it may seem, this odd young woman really did propose to live alone—herself and Mary Blanchet—in London until they died—alone, that is, so far as social life and acquaintanceships in society were concerned. Vast and vague schemes for doing good to her neighbors, and for striving in especial to give a helping hand to troubled women, were in Miss Grey's plans of life; but society, so called, was to have no part in them. It did not occur to her that she was far too handsome a girl to be allowed to put herself thus under an extinguisher or behind a screen. When people looked after her as she passed through the streets, she assumed that they noticed some rustic peculiarity in her dress or her hat, and she felt a contempt for them. Her love of London did not imply a love of Londoners, whom in general she thought rude and given to staring. But even if she had thought people were looking at her because of her figure, her face, her eyes, her superb hair, she would have felt a contempt for them all the same. She had a proud indifference to personal beauty, and looked down upon men whose judgment could be affected by the fact that a woman had finer eyes, or brighter hair, or a more shapely mould than other women.

Once Minola was positively on the point of turning back, and renouncing all claim on the acquaintanceship of her former school companion. She suddenly remembered, however, that in condemning her own fancied weakness she had forgotten that her visit was undertaken to oblige Mary Blanchet. "Poor Mary! I have only one little acquaintanceship that has anything to do with society, and am I to deny her that chance if she likes it?" She went on rapidly and resolutely. Sometimes she felt inclined to blame herself for bringing Mary Blanchet away from Keeton, although Mary had for years been complaining of her life and her work there, and beseeching Miss Grey not to leave her behind when she went to live in London.

It was a beautiful autumn day. London looks to great advantage on one of these rare days, and Miss Grey felt her heart swell with mere delight as she looked from the streets to the sky and from the sky to the streets. She passed through one or two squares, and stopped to see the sun, already going down, send its light through the bare branches of the trees. The western sky was covered with gray, silver-edged clouds, which brightened into blots of golden fire as they came closer in the track of the sun. The air was mild, soft, and almost warm. All poets and painters are full of the autumnal charms of the country; but to certain oddly constituted minds some street views in London on a fine autumn day have an unspeakable witchery. Miss Grey walked round and round one of the squares, and had to remind herself of her purpose on Mary Blanchet's behalf in order to impel herself on.

The best of the day had gone, and the early evening was looking somewhat chill and gloomy between the huge ramparts of the Victoria street houses by the time that Miss Grey stood in that solemn thoroughfare, and her heart sank a little as she reached the house where her old school friend lived.

"Perhaps Lucy Money is altogether changed," Miss Grey said to herself as she came up to the door. "Perhaps she won't care about me; perhaps I shan't like her any more; and perhaps her mamma will think me a dreadful person for not honoring my stepfather and stepmother. Perhaps there are brothers—odious, slangy young men, who think girls fall in love with them. Oh, yes, here is one of them."

For just as she had rung the bell a hansom cab drove up to the door, and a tall, dark-complexioned young man leaped out. He raised his hat with what seemed to Miss Grey something the manner of a foreigner when he saw her standing at the door, and she felt a momentary thrill of relief, because, if he was a foreigner, he could not be Lucy Money's brother. Besides, she knew very well that the great houses in Victoria street were occupied by several tenants, and there was good hope that the young man might have business with the upper story, and she with the ground floor.

The young man was about to ring the bell, when he stopped and said:

"Perhaps you have rung already?"

"Yes, I have rung," Miss Grey coldly replied.

"This is Mr. Money's, I suppose?"

"Mr. Money lives here," she answered, with the manner of one resolute to close the conversation. The young man did not seem in the least impressed by her tone.

"Perhaps I have the honor of speaking to Miss Money?" he began, with delighted eagerness.

"No. I am not Miss Money," she answered, still in her clear monotone.

No words could say more distinctly than the young man's expression did, "I am sorry to hear it." Indeed, no young man in the world going to visit Mr. Money could have avoided wishing that the young lady then standing at the door might prove to be Miss Money.

The door opened, and the young man drew politely back to give Miss Grey the first chance. She asked for Miss Lucy Money, and the porter rang a bell for one of Mr. Money's servants. Miss Grey had brought a card with her, on which she had written over her engraved name, "For Lucy Money," and beneath it, "Nola," the short rendering of "Minola," which they used to adopt at school.

Then the porter looked inquiringly at the other visitor.

"If Mr. Money is at home," said the latter, "I should be glad to see him. I find I have forgotten my card case, but my name is Heron—Mr. Victor Heron; and do, please, try to remember it, and to say it rightly."