Accustomed as Blanche and Cecil had been to the luxuries and refinements of their station, it may be supposed that this ignoble boarding-house was very repugnant to them, and that they suffered bitterly from the change. It was not so, however. Change is so pleasant to every human being, that, provided it be abrupt and striking enough to produce a vivid sense of contrast, it is eminently agreeable. The man who most enjoys a well-appointed table, whose pride it is to have his dinners served with the care and splendour bestowed upon banquets, will also enjoy "roughing it," and picking the leg of a fowl with no fork but his fingers, no plate but a hunch of bread. We like from time to time to feel ourselves superior to conveniences, superior to our wealth and its advantages.
The change was quite abrupt enough to make Cecil and his wife enjoy it; and on retiring to rest that night, they were as happy as affection could make them.
CHAPTER III.
HAPPY LABOUR, HAPPY LIFE.
Si modo dignum aliquid elaborare et efficere velint, relinquenda conversatio amicorum et jucunditas urbis, deserenda cetera officia, utque ipsi dicunt, in nemora et lucos, id est, in solitudinem recedendum est.
TACITUS.—De Oratoribus.
The splendours of the first day were never renewed. Exhausted munificence sank quietly back into ancient close-fistedness. Mrs. Tring had given one banquet, but every day was not to be a holiday, as Mrs. Merryweather and Miss Bachelor mournfully confessed, when, on the succeeding morning, they found themselves returned to the salt butter, drenched tea, and implacable coffee, from which they had been one morning released. Still more dolorous was the aspect of the dinner. A return was made to the primitive allowance of one potato for each person, and the bread was as stale as before.
Cecil was of course chary of making complaints, but as he could not eat salt butter, quietly contented himself with dry toast: a proceeding which gained him the respect of Mrs. Tring, as it saved just so much butter. It was an ill-advised act, however, as it gave her the courage to make several other petty retrenchments—too petty for him to speak about—yet, nevertheless, annoying. He had not been there a fortnight before he determined on not staying beyond the three months for which he had taken his room. Having thus made up his mind that the annoyances were but temporary, he was enabled to bear them with tolerable stoicism.
Mrs. Tring had to make a living out of her boarders, and as she accepted such very low terms, the reader may imagine what nice calculations and minute economies were necessary. The house was, indeed, a field of battle, wherein, by adroit generalship, she every day gained a victory. The living was pitiable, and Cecil was forced, in self-defence, to keep a small provision in a store closet, from which he and his wife satisfied the appetite which Mrs. Tring's fare had stimulated, not appeased. It sometimes went so far as his sending out for a chop, which he cooked in his little room, over his dwarf fire. Nevertheless, with all the extra expenses into which scanty fare forced him, the place was remarkably convenient from its cheapness; and they both supported the little discomforts with happy light-heartedness.
Cecil was full of projects. He had begun a picture of considerable pretensions, the conception of which was not without grandeur: it was Nero playing while he gazed upon the blazing city of Rome. He had also sketched the libretto of a comic opera, of which he was to write both words and music. Gay and lighthearted as the hopeful and employed always are, the best qualities of his nature were brought out, and Blanche adored him, if possible, more than ever. Work—which was given to man that he might learn to know his excellence, and to know the pleasure which attends the full development of every faculty—work crowded the hours with significance, and gave to life a purpose; and Love illumined with its sunshine the difficult path which stretched itself before him. Never, no never, had Cecil known happiness till that time. He had squandered the riches of his nature as he had squandered the heritage of his parents; and now he came to know the value of what he had lost. A serious ambition occupied him, a happy affection blessed him.