But Marian's mother was not listening to her. Her mind had returned to its familiar train of thought again.
Something had been said that day about Mrs. Ashurst's paying Woolgreaves a longer visit, going for a week or two, of course accompanied by Marian. Mrs. Ashurst had not decidedly accepted or negatived the proposition. She felt rather nervous about it herself, and uncertain as to Marian's sentiments, and her daughter had not aided her by word or look. Nor did Marian recur to the subject when she found themselves at home again in the evening. But she remembered it, and discussed it with herself in the night. Would it be well that her mother should be habituated to the comforts, the luxuries of such a house, so unattainable to her at home, so desirable in her state of broken health and spirits? This was the great difficulty which beset Marian, and she felt she could not decide it then.
Her long waking reverie of that night did not concern itself with the people she had been with. It was fully occupied with the place. Her mind mounted from floor to floor of the handsome house, which represented so much money, reviewing and appraising the furniture, speculating on the separate and collective value of the plate, the mirrors, the hangings, the decorations. Thousands and thousands of pounds, she thought, hundreds and hundreds of times more money than she had ever seen, and nothing to do for it all. Those girls who lived among it, what had they done that they should have all of it? Why had she, whose mother needed it so much, who could so well appreciate it, none of it? Marian's last thought 'before she fell asleep that night was, not only that money was a great thing, but that almost anything would be worth doing to get money.
[CHAPTER VI.]
BREAD-SEEKING.
There are few streets in London better known to that large army of martyrs, the genteelly poor, than those which run northward from the Strand, and are lost in the two vast tracts of brick known under the name of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Lodging-house keepers do not affect these streets, preferring the narrow no-thoroughfares on the other side of the Strand, abutting on the river, streets eternally ringing with the hoarse voice of the costermonger, who descends on one side and ascends on the other, eternally echoing to the grinding of the organ-man, who gets through his entire répertoire twice over during his progress to the railing overlooking the Embankment, and his return to the pickle-shop at the top, eternally haunted by the beer-boy and the newspaper-boy, by postmen infuriated with wrongly addressed letters, and by luggage-laden cabs. In the streets bearing northward no costermonger screams and no organ is found; the denizens are business-people, and would very soon put a stop to any such attempt.
Business, and nothing but business, in that drab-coloured house with the high wire-blinds in the window, over which you can just catch a glimpse of the top of a hanging white robe. Cope and Son are the owners of the drab-coloured house, and Cope and Son are the largest retailers of clerical millinery in London. All day long members of "the cloth," sleek, pale, emaciated, high-church curates, stout, fresh-coloured, huge-whiskered, broad-church rectors, fat, pasty-faced, straight-haired evangelical ministers, are pouring into Cope and Son's for clothes, for hoods, for surplices, for stoles, for every variety of ecclesiastical garment. Cope and Son supply all, in every variety, for every sect; the M.B. waistcoat and stiff-collared coat reaching to his heels in which the Honourable and Reverend Cyril Genuflex looks so imposing, as he, before the assembled vestry, defies the scrutiny of his evangelical churchwarden; the pepper-and-salt cutaway in which the Reverend Pytchley Quorn follows the hounds; the black-stuff gown in which the Reverend Locock Congreve perspires and groans as he deals out denunciations of those sitting under him; and the purple bed gown, turned up with yellow satin, and worked all over with crosses and vagaries, in which poor Tom Phoole, such a kind-hearted and such a soft-headed vessel, goes through his ritualistic tricks,--all these come from the establishment of Cope and Son's, in Rutland Street, Strand.
The next house on the right is handy for the high-church clergymen, though the evangelicals shut their eyes and turn away their heads as they pass by it. Here Herr Tubelkahn, from Elberfeld, the cunning worker in metals, the artificer of brass and steel and iron, and sometimes of gold and silver, the great ecclesiastical upholsterer, has set up his Lares and Penates, and here he deals in the loveliest of mediaevalisms and the choicest of renaissance wares. The sleek long-coated gentry who come to make purchases can scarcely thread their way through the heterogeneous contents of Herr Tubelkahn's shop. All massed together without order; black oaken chairs, bought up by Tubelkahn's agents from occupants of tumbledown old cottages in midland districts, crosiers and crucifixes, ornate and plain, from Elberfeld, sceptres and wands from Solingen, lecterns in the shape of enormous brazen eagles with outstretched wings from Birmingham, enormous candelabra and gaseliers of Gothic pattern from Liège, and sculptured pulpits and carved altar-rails from the Curtain Road, Shoreditch. Altar-cloths hang from the tables, and altar-carpets, none of your common loom-woven stuff, but hand-worked and--as Herr Tubelkahn gives you to understand--by the fairest fingers, are spread about to show their patterns to the best advantage, while there is so much stained glass about ready for immediate transfer to the oriel windows of country churches, that when the sun shines, Herr Tubelkahn's customers seem to be suddenly invested with Joseph's garment of many colours, and the whole shop lights up like a kaleidoscope.
Many of the customers, both of Messrs. Cope and Tubelkahn, were customers, or, more euphuistically, clients, of Messrs. Camoxon, who kept the celebrated Clerical and Educational Registry higher up the street; but these customers and clients invariably crossed and recrossed the road, in proceeding from the one to the other of these establishments, in order to avoid a certain door which lay midway between them. A shabby swing-door, sun-blistered, and with its bottom panel scored with heel and toe kicks from impatient entrance-seeking feet; a door flanked by two flaming bills, and surrounded by a host of close-shaven, sallow-faced men, in shabby clothes and shiny hats, and red noses and swinging canes, noble Romans, roistering cavaliers, clamorous citizens, fashionable guests, virtuous peasants--all at a shilling a night; for the door was, in fact, the stage-door of the Cracksideum Theatre. The shabby men in threadbare jauntiness smiled furtively, and grinned at each other as they saw the sleek gentlemen in shining broad-cloth step out of their path; but the said gentlemen felt the proximity of the Thespian temple very acutely, and did not scruple to say so to Messrs. Camoxon, who, as in duty bound, shrugged their shoulders deprecatingly, and--changed the conversation. They were very sorry, but--and they shrugged their shoulders. When men shrug their shoulders to their customers it is time that they should retire from business. It was time that the Messrs. Camoxon so retired, for the old gentleman now seldom appeared in Rutland Street, but remained at home at Wimbledon, enacting his favourite character of the British squire, and actually dressing the part in a blue coat and gilt buttons, gray knee-breeches, and Hessian boots; while young George Camoxon hunted with the Queen's hounds, had dined twice at the Life Guards' mess at Windsor, and had serious thoughts of standing for the county.
But the business was far too good to give up; every one who had a presentation or an advowson to sell took it to Camoxons'; the head clerk could tell you off-hand the net value of every valuable living in England, the age of the incumbent, and the state of his health. Every rector who wanted assistance, every curate who wanted a change, in servants' phrase, "to better himself," every layman who wanted a title for orders, every vicar who, oddly enough, wanted to change a dull, bleak living in the north for a pleasant social sphere of duty in a cheerful neighbourhood in the south of England; parents on the lookout for tutors, tutors in search of pupils--all inscribed their names on Camoxon's books, and looked to him for assistance in their extremity. There was a substantial, respectable, orthodox appearance about Camoxons', in the ground-glass windows, with the device of the Bible and Sceptre duly inscribed thereon; in the chaste internal fittings of polished mahogany and plain horsehair stools, with the Churchman's Almanack on the wall in mediaeval type, very illegible, and in a highly mediaeval frame, all bosses and clamps; in the big ledgers and address-books, and in the Post-office Directory, which here shed its truculent red cover, and was scarcely recognisable in a meek sad-coloured calf binding; and, above all, in the grave, solemn, sable-clad clerks, who moved noiselessly about, and who looked like clergymen playing at business.