I could have answered the question promptly and briefly in a single word “Poverty;” but, as it was a term my relative specially detested, I merely shrugged my shoulders, and continued to gaze into the miserable apology for a garden which ran between our quarters and the high street of Stonebrook, an insignificant market town in Sussex.
Certainly there was not much to see, amid the creeping shadows of a November afternoon. A dripping hen, wading carefully across the road; a coal-cart, the driver enveloped in empty sacks; and the undertaker’s retriever—black and curly, as an undertaker’s dog should be—sitting in his master’s doorway, and yawning most infectiously. If we had lived opposite to the post-office, the lending library, or even the hotel, we should have enjoyed a livelier outlook, but “Mound & Son—Funeral Establishment—Coffins, Hearses, and every Requisite,” to quote from the inscription over the door, in rigid white characters on a mourning ground, afforded but a gloomy and dispiriting prospect. It was too dark to descry more than the outline of an ornamental sign, on which was depicted an elegant open glass vehicle, drawn by four prancing black horses, with nodding plumes and streaming tails—triumphant-looking steeds, who seemed to say, “Man treats most of us barbarously all our lives, then kills us, and makes money of our very skin and bones; it affords us sincere pleasure to carry him to the grave, and ‘see the last of him.’”
The interior of our sitting-room corresponded with its dreary view—a lodging-house apartment pur et simple, with narrow windows, hideous wall-paper, the inevitable round table, cheap chiffonier, and bulgy green rep sofa, to complete the picture. The fire was low, and unquestionably in a bad temper, emitting every now and then slow and sullen puffs of yellow smoke. It was raining hard outside, and at regular intervals an intrusive drop came spluttering down the chimney.
“Dear me, what a sigh!” exclaimed my stepmother. “Mariana in the Moated Grange could scarcely surpass it! Cheer up, Gwen; a girl of nineteen has no business to be melancholy—though I grant that you have some provocation. Never meet troubles half-way, that is my motto. I have an idea that our luck will turn soon: I saw two magpies to-day.”
I burst into a short, involuntary laugh.
“Oh yes, you may laugh, my old-head-on-young-shoulders, but I mean to have a regular good talk with the cards by and by; in the meanwhile, we will ring for the lamp and tea. Mrs. Gabb will say it is too early, but I intend to brave her for once. Britons never shall be slaves!”
And she gave the bell a peal far more befitting the summons of a wealthy woman than of a reduced widow lady, who was going to dine on poached eggs, and was two weeks in arrears with her rent.
There was only a difference of twelve years between us, and Emma, as my stepmother wished me to call her, was a pretty little Irishwoman, with black hair, dark blue eyes (wonderful eyes and lashes), and a radiant smile. No more generous, hospitable, or impulsive creature ever breathed. She was, moreover, a determined optimist, who looked steadily at the bright side of things, and enjoyed extraordinary high spirits, and the comic (or sunny) view of life. Generally, she was to be seen on what is called “the top of the wave,” though, occasionally, there came a terrible reaction, and she sank, overwhelmed, into the black abysmal depths which are the birthright of those who are endowed with a nervous, highly strung, mercurial temperament.
Two years previous to this dreary November day, my father had died in India, and six months later, Emma, having returned home, had summoned me from school to join her in London.
I had previously been given to understand that we were now very poor—my lessons had been curtailed, my mourning was inexpensive; I was therefore astonished to find my stepmother established in most luxurious lodgings in Sloane Street, for which she paid—it being the season—twelve guineas a week. These rooms were crammed with quantities of the choicest blooms, cut and in pots, for Emma was passionately fond of flowers—she declared that she could not exist without them. Her weeds were as gloomy and superb as it was possible for weeds to be, and in no quarter was there the smallest hint of that detestable visitor who, when it comes in at the door, sends another inmate flying out through the window.