CHAPTER IX.
MRS. BEZEL.
One cannot always judge by appearances either as regards human beings or houses. Mr. Hilliston was one excellent illustration of this rule; Clarence Cottage was another. It was in a narrow and crooked lane trending downward to the right, at the summit of Fitzjohn's Avenue; an unpretentious two-story building, divided from the public thoroughfare by a well-cultivated garden. Therein grew thyme and lavender, marigolds and pansies; for the owner of the cottage loved those homely flowers, and daily gazed at them from the bow-window wherein her couch was placed.
Mrs. Bezel never walked in her garden, for the all-sufficient reason that she was a helpless paralytic, and had not used her limbs for over ten years. Still a moderately young woman of forty-five, she possessed the remains of great beauty, ravaged by years of anxiety and mental trouble. Those passing along the lane usually saw her pale face at the window, and pitied the sufferings written in every line; sufferings which were apparent even to a casual glance. Noting the homely garden, the mean-looking dwelling, the anxious expression of the invalid, they deemed her to be some poor sickly creature, the scapegoat of nature and the world, who had sought this secluded spot in order to hide her troubles. This view was not entirely correct.
She was in ill-health, it is true; she dwelt in a small house certainly; and the anxious expression was seldom absent from her face. But she was in easy circumstances, untroubled by pecuniary worries, and the interior of the cottage was furnished with a magnificence more suggestive of Park Lane than of Hampstead. The outward aspect of the house, like that of Mr. Hilliston, was a lie.
Her sitting room resembled the boudoir of some Mayfair beauty. The curtains were of silk, the carpet velvet pile, the walls were adorned with costly pictures, and every corner of the small apartment was filled with sumptuous furniture. All that art could contribute, all that affection could suggest, were confined in the tiny space, and had Mrs. Bezel possessed the mines of Golconda she could not have been more luxuriously lodged. The house was a gem of its kind, perfect and splendid.
Mrs. Bezel took little interest in these material comforts. Her life was passed between a couch in the bow-window, a well-cushioned chair by the fire, and a downy bed in the next room. She had little appetite and did not enjoy her food; mental anxiety prevented her interesting herself in the splendors around her; and the only pleasure she took was her dreary journey in a Bath-chair when the weather permitted. Then, as she inhaled the fresh breeze blowing across the Heath, she gazed with longing eyes at London, almost hidden under its foggy veil, far below, and always returned with reluctance to the familiar splendors of her narrow dwelling. Fortune had given her much, but by way of compensation had deprived her of the two things she most desired—of health and of love.
Even on this warm June evening a fire burned in the grate, for Mrs. Bezel was a chilly creature, who shrunk at the least breath of wind. According to custom, she had left the window couch at seven o'clock, and had taken her simple meal while seated in her large chair to the right of the fireplace. After dinner she took up a novel which was placed on a small table at her elbow, and tried to read; but her attention was not fixed on the book, and gradually it fell from her hands, while she gazed idly at the fire.