CHAPTER XIII. A CHOICE.
’Tis better far to love and be poor,
Than be rich with an empty heart.
Mrs. Harrington was sitting in the great drawing-room in Grosvenor Gardens, alone. The butler was fuming and cleaning plate in his pantry. The maid was weeping in the workroom. Mrs. Harrington had had a busy afternoon.
“’Tis always thus when she’s alone in the house,” the cook had said, with a grandiosity of style borrowed from the Family Herald. It is easy for the cook to be grandiose when the butler and the lady’s-maid are in trouble. Thus philosophy walketh in at the back door.
Mrs. Harrington’s sharp grey face twitched at times with a certain restlessness which was hers when she had no one at hand to bully. She could not concentrate her attention on the newspaper she held in her hands, and at intervals her eyes wandered over the room in search of something to find fault with. She made the mistake common to persons under such circumstances--she forgot to look in the mirror. Mrs. Harrington was tired of herself. She wished someone would call. At the same time she felt a cordial dislike to all her friends.
It was a hopelessly grey afternoon early in December, and every one was out of London. Mrs. Harrington had a certain circle of friends - middle-aged or elderly women, rich like herself, lonely like herself - whom she despised. They all rather disliked each other, these women, but they visited nevertheless. They dined together seriously; keeping in mind the cook, and watchful over the wine. But the majority of these ladies had gone away for the winter. The Riviera was created for such.
Mrs. Harrington, however, never went abroad in the winter. She said that she had travelled too much when she was younger--in the lifetime of her husband--to care about it now. The Honourable George Henry Harrington had, in fact, lived abroad for financial reasons, and the name was not of sweet savour in the nostrils of hotel-keepers. The married life referred to occasionally in cold tones by the Honourable Mrs. Harrington had been of that order which is curtly called “cat and dog,” and likewise “hand to mouth.”
Therefore Mrs. Harrington avoided the Continent. She could easily, of her affluence, have paid certain large debts which she knew to be outstanding, but she held a theory that dead men owe nothing. And with this theory she lubricated an easy-going conscience.
The mistress of the large house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time, when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement. Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw a hansom cab.
A few minutes later the door was thrown open by the angry butler.