By this time we had reached the little room in the basement, where the Misses Keith took their meals and sat when the business of the day was over, and where now a cheerful fire was blazing, making me feel more comfortable than I had since I left the Victoria Station in the cab. The elder Miss Keith and her sister were glad to see me, but I thought they looked askance at each other as if I were not after all quite welcome, and in a forlorn, wretched state of mind I sat down to warm my cold feet by the fire, wondering if letting the drawing-room floor so advantageously had quite put me in the background. Evidently it had, for after a few questions as to my journey, I was left alone, while the three ladies flitted back and forth, up stairs and down, busy with the grand dinner to be served in the drawing-room for the new arrivals, Mr. and Mrs. Trevyllan, who were reported as making elaborate toilets for the occasion.
“Married just six weeks, and her dress is beautiful,” Miss Keith said to me, as she conducted me at last to my room, which she reported as ready for me.
The drawing-room door was open, and as I passed it I could not forbear glancing in at the table, set with the best damask and silver and glass which No.— afforded, and, right before the fire, under the chandelier, stood the bride in full evening dress of light silk, her golden curls falling behind from a pearl comb, and her blue eyes upturned to the husband who stood beside her, to George, as I knew in a moment, recognizing them at once as my fellow-travelers from Dover, and remembering again what the bride had said of Miss Lucy Elliston and a Mr. Gordon. Strangely enough, too, my thoughts went far back to Archie, and what I might have been had he lived, and there was a swelling of my heart, and the tears were in my eyes as I followed Miss Keith to my room, the door of which she threw wide open, and then stood back for me to see and admire.
“Oh-h! what have you done? I exclaimed, and then in an instant I comprehended the whole, and knew just how the good souls had planned, and contrived, and undoubtedly denied themselves to give me this surprise and delightful welcome home.
It was not the old dingy apartment at all, but the coziest of rooms, with fresh paint and paper, a new, light ingrain carpet of drab and blue, with chintz coverings for the furniture, of the same shade, and pretty muslin curtains looped back from the windows in place of the coarse Nottingham lace which had always been an offense to me. Add to this a bright fire in the grate, and my little round tea-table drawn up before it, with the rolls and chop, and pot of damson plums, and the teakettle boiling merrily, and you have the picture of the room which I stood contemplating, while Miss Keith blew her nose softly, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron as she said:
“You see, the girls and me (they always spoke of each other as girls, these women of fifty, fifty-five and sixty) the girls and me thought you had been forlorn long enough, and when Mrs. Winters left and was pleased to give us ten pounds extra, and we let the drawing-rooms so quick and well, pay beginning the day it was let, we said we would do something for Miss Norah, and we meant to have the fire made and a nice hot supper ready when you came, but you took us by surprise, and we had to keep you below till we could straighten up. I am glad you like it. There’s Mrs. Trevyllan’s bell, and I must go.”
She left me then and went to the little bride, who I knew did not enjoy her elaborately served dinner in her handsome parlor one-half as much as I enjoyed my simple tea in my rocking-chair before the fire, which whispered and spit so cheerily and cast such pleasant shadows on the wall. All my poverty and loneliness were for the time forgotten in the glamour of these creature comforts, but they returned to a certain extent when, my supper over and the tea-things removed, I sat down to read the few letters which had come for me within the last two weeks and not been forwarded. Was there one from Tom? I asked myself, and I was conscious of a feeling of disappointment when I found there was not.
“Tom does not care for me anymore,” I said, sadly, to myself, as I opened the first letter and read, with a pang, that Mrs. Lambert, on Warwick Crescent, had concluded to employ a governess in the house, and consequently would not need my services as French and music-teacher to her three daughters.
This was a great loss to me, and I remember a feeling of cold and almost hunger as I mechanically folded the letter and laid it aside, and as mechanically opened the second, and read that Mrs. Lennox, High street, Kensington, was going abroad for the winter with her daughters, and would not need me until spring, when she should be glad to employ me again if my time was not fully occupied.
“Fully occupied,” I said, bitterly. “Small danger of that. I shall starve at this rate,” and in a hopeless, despairing kind of way I opened the third and last letter and read that Lady Fairfax, No.—Grosvenor Square, would like me to call at once if I cared for another scholar, as she might wish to put her little daughter Maude under my instruction.