CHAPTER I.
"It is my last day in London," said Alice Harper to herself.
The "last day" was a Sunday at the end of July, and Alice's box was packed, and ready for travelling. She had attended service that morning in a beautiful church, where she had often gained strength and comfort in her weariness; and the music was still echoing in her ears when she turned into Bruton Street. Wherever she went, she knew that she should hear that music still.
The smart people were all hurrying out of town as fast as they could go. But Miss de Vigny was a very dignified little lady who never cared to hurry herself in the least. She always went away on the first of August, and could not be moved sooner or later. So that when Alice went into her house, she found her friend sitting in her old chair near the window with an open book on her lap.
Miss de Vigny had always liked Alice Harper. She had watched the girl through the season that preceded the sudden change in her lot, and had thought her distinctly genuine and courageous. She did not guess how soon that quality of courage would be called into play; but when the crash came, she was not surprised that Alice bore up bravely under the blow.
One morning the daily papers announced the suicide of Mr. Harper, the well-known promoter of companies. His daughter, left quite alone in the world, gathered together her few possessions, and quietly vanished from the eyes of society. Only two or three persons knew what had become of her, or what she was doing, and Miss de Vigny was one of them.
She had found out that Alice was going to be a dressmaker, and take care of herself in future in her own way. Miss de Vigny met her one day in a side street in the West-end, dressed in plain black, and carrying a brown-paper parcel. She did not avoid the little maiden-lady as she would have avoided some of her former friends. She stopped and accepted the hand that was held out so readily.
"I shall be eighteen months in learning my business," she said. "After that I must work six months longer as 'an improver.' And when I have thoroughly mastered the art, or trade, or anything that you like to call it, I mean to go away, and set up in the country."
"Quite in the country?" Miss de Vigny asked.
"Quite in the country," Alice replied. "I shall learn what London can teach me, and leave it with a glad heart. Mind, I am sure that I could not learn properly anywhere else. But I shall rejoice when I am free to go."
"When the time comes, perhaps I can help you," Mary de Vigny said. "Meanwhile, let me see you sometimes. Come and spend next Sunday with me in Bruton Street."
"But I do not want to meet people," said Alice, flushing deeply.
"My dear, I do not want you to meet people. It will do me good to have you all to myself. I have never been a society woman; the smart people don't find me at all amusing, I believe. I am dowdy, and I do not know any good stories. Pray come."
So Alice went. Miss de Vigny was rather dowdy, and she did not know any good stories; but she knew other things that are better worth knowing. She knew how to guide a sad soul into the true way of peace. She was neither a rich woman, nor a smart woman; but she lived a life worthy of her faith, and was a light to direct others to the road that led to rest.
From Mary de Vigny's house, Alice went to Mary de Vigny's church close by. And so the two toilsome years in London were sweetened and cheered; and if her outer life was hard and painful, her inner life became peaceful and fair. The time of release had come at last, and it was Mary who had found her a new home in the country.
Miss de Vigny's room was cooler than most rooms in London, and when you went in you felt you had entered into an atmosphere of contentment. There were always flowers here; to-day Alice's eyes rested gratefully on a big bunch of mignonette and some graceful feathery grasses. Mary greeted her with genuine affection, and pointed to the nosegay.
"Only think what it will be," said she, "to have your fill of flowers!"
"Oh, I have been trying to realise the delight in store for me!" Alice cried. "My poor father never cared for the country in the very least. He always bustled me about to fashionable watering-places in the summer. If my mother had lived, life would have been different for him and for me."
She sighed; but Mary spoke cheerfully.
"We must let all the 'ifs' alone, Alice," she said. "It is better to leave 'ifs' and 'might-have-beens' lying by the wayside if we want to get on upon our journey. I know how prone we are to stop, and pick up useless regrets; it has been an old folly of my own."
They had tea together, with the mignonette on the table between them. Miss de Vigny said it was like a festival, but she thought Alice looking tired and worn.
"I don't think you could have toiled on much longer," she remarked. "It has been a weary time, my child."
"You have brightened it," said Alice gratefully. "Everybody else has forgotten me, and you know I wished to be forgotten."
"Here and there one remembers you," said Mary, looking at her with observant eyes. "Only yesterday, in this very street, I met someone who asked what had become of you."
"I hope you did not tell!" Alice cried.
"I told very little. I merely said that you were living, and working for yourself. It was Mr. Cardigan who asked for you."
Alice's mouth took a scornful curve.
"I do not like him," said she. "I detest rich men."
Miss de Vigny shook her head in reproof.
"That is rather a hard saying, my dear. For my own part, I think well of Robert Cardigan. He is natural—refreshingly natural, and I fancy he wants to know what to do with his money. After all, that money came to him in an honest way from a relation who died abroad; I do not see why it should not wear well."
"Perhaps I am prejudiced," said Alice colouring. "I have not liked what I have seen of rich men. Most of them always wanted to be richer still, and hovered round my father to be instructed in investments. Mr. Cardigan only came into his fortune just before the blow fell upon me. But I thought he was like all the rest."
Miss de Vigny dropped the subject. She was not a woman of many words, and generally knew when to hold her peace.
Alice walked to church with her a little later, looking very stately and erect beside her small companion. People had always regarded Alice Harper as a proud girl; and there was something in her bearing which certainly suggested pride. Plain clothes only accentuated her air of distinction. And this evening, although she was very pale, and there were dark shadows beneath her grey eyes, she was more beautiful than she had ever been in the days of prosperity.
Adversity either disfigures or beautifies. There are certain full-fed, insolently-prosperous girls who would be enormously improved by sorrow. Many a plain face has been made lovely by the chastening of the spirit; and Miss de Vigny, who did not possess a single good feature, had a countenance on which, at the first glance, you could read the sweet record of inward peace. She had suffered meekly, and had come out of the strife into the rest.
Afterwards, when they parted at the door in Bruton Street, Mary said "good-bye" very tenderly to her friend. She knew that she would miss Alice when she came back to town in the autumn. But above all things she desired that the girl might have peace after the weary struggle to learn her business. One had only to look at Alice to see that she was a woman who would do what she meant to do. But these resolute people do not succeed without paying the cost of their success.
"I know you will be happy at Swallow's Nest," Mary said confidently. "I have often told you how long Mrs. Bower lived with my mother, and how good and faithful she was. Some day I shall run down to the farm and see you all. You will write soon, dear, will you not?"
Alice did not find it very easy to answer. Her grey eyes were full of tears. She looked earnestly at Miss de Vigny for a moment, and went her way.
There was something dream-like about the London streets in the evening light. And Alice, walking back to the home which had sheltered her for two years, felt as if she, herself, were someone who had been living in a dream.
She thought of the only child of the rich man, brought up in a luxurious home, but always pining for the mother who had been early lost. She saw again those sunny heights of womanhood which the child's eyes had seen afar off. How bright they were then! Something of the old splendour lingered about that cloudland still, although the girl had become a sorrowful, hardworking woman. She smiled pityingly at the child who had always dreamed of doing beautiful things, and making everybody happy when she grew up! And yet, perhaps the pity was wasted after all. There are the elements of true happiness in many an unselfish dream. We cannot tell how much we have helped others by the loving desires that we could not shape into deeds. We do not see what our good angels are doing, even with the thoughts of our hearts, when they are sweet and true.
And then came a sudden remembrance of the men who had come to her father's house in Park Lane—men who had shown by their faces and by their words that they existed only for self-pleasing. The quiet girl, with her own aims and ideals, had inwardly despised them all. Robert Cardigan had been, perhaps, a little better than the rest. She could recall certain looks and tones of his that had seemed real. He had even listened, with some interest, to those schemes for helping humanity which she had spoken of, once or twice, in his hearing. Well, the power that she had longed for had come to him; but it was doubtful if he would use it as she would have done.
The child and the girl had both passed away; Alice Harper, dressmaker, was walking through these West End streets to the home for working women which had been her refuge for two long years. And Alice Harper, dressmaker, was going to leave London to-morrow to live in the country.
She had never seen Mrs. Bower, but she knew her perfectly by description. Mrs. Bower was the wife of a farmer; they had two daughters who wanted to learn dressmaking; and there was a good opening for business in their neighbourhood. Miss de Vigny had advised Alice to go to Swallow's Nest.
"If you get tired of the country you can leave it," she had said. "But you have an instinctive longing for woods and fields and fresh air, and you are sorely in need of all these blessings."
The big house was generally quiet on a Sunday evening. It was sultry weather, and all the windows were opened wide. Alice caught a glimpse of the new moon above the house-tops as she ran upstairs. It hung faint and golden over the crowded roofs, in a sky touched with pale crimson, and dim with mist.
"I shall see it to-morrow above the woods," she thought with a sudden gladness.
She took off her hat and coat in her cubicle, and ran down to supper in her muslin blouse and tweed skirt. Not a single person in that full house was acquainted with her real history. She had never talked of bygone days and lamented her vanished prosperity. She wore no jewels; her watch was the sole relic of the past that could ever be seen. One or two had remarked that it was a very beautiful watch, and she had simply said that it was a gift from someone who was dead.
But in spite of a strong natural reserve she had made many friends. Living here, a poor woman among the poor, she had learnt that one must give love if one cannot give money.
"So you are going to leave us, Miss Harper," said a young girl who sat beside her at supper. "You will be missed for many a day. There are kindnesses that we never forget."
"Ah, if only I could have been more helpful," Alice sighed.
"You don't know how much you have helped," the other answered. "People may give gold, and it may go just as far as gold can. That is a long way, some will say. Well, so it is, but even the long way has a limit. There is only one thing that is not hindered by any limit at all. It flies on, far, far beyond Time, and right into Eternity. It is Love."
"MISS DE VIGNY HAD ALWAYS LIKED ALICE HARPER."
Alice looked attentively at the girl for a moment. She was a puny young woman with round shoulders and a narrow chest. Her skin was very fair, and she had the large luminous eyes which often indicate consumption.
"How did you learn so much, Miss Dayne?" asked she with a smile.
"Just by watching life," was the reply. "I do not think that we shall ever meet here again. I am going a longer journey than you are. And yet, who knows? Perhaps it may not be so very far."
Alice had arranged to start on Monday by a very early train. She left the house before any of the other women had come downstairs. Her box was in the hall; she had supplied herself with some sandwiches, and could have a cup of tea at the station. So she was driven through the streets before the shops were open, or London had shaken off such sleep as it can get. She reached Waterloo in time to drink her tea, and secure a comfortable corner in a third-class carriage.
When the train began to move out of the station she was still thinking of herself as Alice Harper, the dressmaker, going to start afresh in a new sphere. The former Alice was merely the girl of the dream.
She smiled, rather a forlorn little smile, when she called up a vision of the dream—Alice, travelling first-class, and wearing a lovely, grey costume, as costly and as daintily simple as it could possibly be. The dressmaker was arrayed in a coat and skirt of pepper-and-salt tweed which would stand any amount of wear and tear, and a pink calico shirt. Her gloves were carefully mended; a very serviceable umbrella and sunshade were strapped up with a plain waterproof cloak; she had none of those charming superfluities which a well-to-do woman seldom goes without. And yet it was a peaceful face that was shaded by the sailor hat; and as the train rushed on into the sweet, green country her eyes grew very bright.
"I am going where I shall get lots of pleasant things without paying for them," she said to herself. "In London you must pay your penny for the simplest flower that grows. Ah, the good God must have thought of the poor when He purpled the wild land with the glory of heather!"
(To be continued.)