"Good-night to you," replied Frank.
And Mr. Blase Pellet sauntered on, enjoying the icicles of the winter night. Frank went in, and barred and bolted his door.
"I wish to Heaven it needed nothing but bars and bolts to keep the fellow out!" spoke Frank in his dismay. "How long he will be kept out, I know not. Talk of whether the affair will crop up again!—why, it is cropping up. And I have a bitter enemy in Blase Pellet."
[CHAPTER IV.]
HUMILIATION
Again the weeks and the months went on, bringing round the autumn season of another year. For in real life—and this is very much of a true history—time passes imperceptibly when there are no special events to mark its progress. Seasons succeed each other, leaving little record behind them.
It was a monotonous life at best—that of the Raynors'. It seemed to be spent in a quiet, constant endeavour to exist; a patient, perpetual struggling to make both ends meet: to remain under the humble roof of Laurel Cottage, and not to have to turn from it; to contrive that their garments should be decent, something like gentlepeople's, not ragged and shabby.
But for Edina they would never have done it. Even though they had her fifty pounds a-year, without her presence they would never have got on. She managed and worked, and had ever a cheerful word for them all. When their spirits failed, especially Mrs. Raynor's, and the onward way looked unusually dark and dreary, it was Edina who talked of a bright day-star to arise in the distance, of the silver lining that is sure to be in every cloud. But for Edina they might almost have lost faith in Heaven.
The one most altered of all was Charles. Altered in looks, bearing, manner; above all, in spirit. All his pride had flown; all his self-importance had disappeared as a summer mist before the sun: disappeared for ever. Had the discipline he was subjected to been transient, lasting for a few weeks, let us say, or even months, its impressions might have worn away with renewed prosperity, had such set in again, leaving no lasting trace for good. But when this sort of depressing mortification continues for years, the lesson it implants in the mind is generally permanent. Day by day, every day of his life, and every hour in the day, Charles was subjected to the humiliations (as he looked upon them, and to him they were indeed such) that attend the position of a working clerk. He who had been reared in the habits and ideas of a gentleman, had believed himself the undoubted heir to Eagles' Nest, found himself reduced by fate to this subordinate capacity, ordered about by the articled clerks, and regarded as an individual not at all to be ranked with them. He was at their beck and call, and obliged to be so; he had to submit to them as his superiors, not only his superiors in the office, but his superiors socially; above all, he had to submit to their off-hand tones, which always implied, unwittingly, perhaps, to themselves, but all too apparent to Charles, a consciousness of the distinction that existed between them.
How galling it all was to Charles Raynor, the reader may imagine; but it can never be described. At first it was all but unbearable. Over and over again he thought he must run away from it, and escape to a land where these distinctions do not exist. He might dig for gold in California; he might clear a settlement for himself in the back-woods of America: and the life in either place would be as paradise compared with this one at Prestleigh and Preen's. Nothing but the broad fact that the wages he earned were absolutely necessary to his mother's and the family's support, detained him. To give that aid was his imperative duty before God: for had it not been through him and his carelessness that they were reduced to this terrible extremity? So Charles Raynor, helped on by the ever-ready counsel of Edina, endured his troubles, put up with his humiliation, and bore onwards with the best resolution he could call up. Who knew, who could ever know, how much of this wonderful change was really due to Edina?