Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, came down the rain, dropping with monotonous patter on the decaying leaves that strewed the garden. Not the trim well-kept garden it used to be, but showing signs of neglect. What with the long grass, and the leaves, and the sloppy roads, and the November skies, nothing could well look more dreary than the world looked to-day, as seen from the windows of North Villa.
Time had gone on, another year, bringing its events and its changes; as time always does bring. The chief change, as connected with this little record, lay in Valentine Chandler. He had gone to the dogs. That was Islip’s expression for it, not mine. A baby had come to Tom and Emma.
Little by little, step by step, Valentine had gone down lower and lower. Some people, who are given to bad habits, make spasmodic efforts to reform; but, so far as Islip could see, Valentine never made any. He passed more time at the Bell, or at less respectable public-houses, and drank deeper: and at last neglected his business almost entirely. Enervated and good for nothing, he would lie in bed till twelve o’clock in the day. To keep on the office seemed only a farce. Its profits were not enough to pay for its one solitary clerk. Valentine was then pulled up by an illness, which confined him to his bed, and left him in a shaky state. The practice had quite gone then, and the clerk had gone; and Valentine knew that, even though he had had sufficient energy left to try to bring them back, no clients would have returned to him.
He was going to emigrate to Canada. His friends hoped he would be steady there, and redeem the past: he gave fair promises of it. George Chandler (Tom’s brother, who was doing very well there now, with a large farm about him, and a wife and children) had undertaken to receive Valentine and help him to employment. So he would have to begin life over again.
It was all so much gall and bitterness to his mother and sisters, and had been for a long while. The tears were dropping through the fingers of Mrs. Chandler now, as she leaned on her hand and watched the dreary rain on the window-panes. With all his faults, she had so loved Valentine. She loved him still, above all the trouble he had brought; and it seemed, this afternoon, just as though her heart would break.
When the business fell off, of course her income fell off also. Valentine was to have paid her a third of the profits, but if he did not make any profits, he could not pay her any. She had the private income, two hundred a-year, which Jacob had secured to her: but what was that for a family accustomed to live in the fashion? There is an old saying that necessity has no law: and Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters had proved its truth. One of the girls had gone out as a governess; one was on a prolonged visit to her aunt Cramp; and Julietta and her mother were to move into a smaller house at Christmas. The practice and the other business, once Valentine’s, and his father’s before him, had all gone over to the other firm, Paul and Chandler.
“I’m sure I don’t know what Georgiana means by writing home for money amidst all our troubles!” cried Mrs. Chandler, fretfully. “She has fifteen pounds a-year salary, and she must make that do.”
“She says her last quarter’s money is all spent, and she can’t possibly manage without a new mantle for Sunday,” returned Julietta.
“I can’t supply it; you know I can’t. I am not able to pay my own way now. Let her write to Mrs. Cramp.”
“It would be of no use, mamma. Aunt Mary Ann will never help us to clothes. She says we have had too many of them.”