She smiled, and her daughters smiled. They understood, and believed her—believed, Stasy especially, almost too unquestioningly. For when the train drew up in Victoria Station that mid-November afternoon, the poor girl turned to her mother with dismay.
“Mamma,” she exclaimed, “it isn’t three o’clock, and it is quite dark. And such a queer kind of darkness! It came all of a sudden, just when the houses got into rows and streets. I thought at first it was smoke from some great fire. But it can’t be, for nobody seems to notice it—at least as far as I can see anybody. And the porters are all going about with lanterns. Oh mamma, can it be—surely it isn’t always like this?”
And Stasy seemed on the point of tears.
Poor Mrs Derwent had had her unacknowledged suspicions. But she looked out of the window as if for the first time she had noticed anything amiss.
“Why, yes,” she replied, “it is rather unlucky; but, after all, it will be an amusing experience. We have made our début in the thick of a real London fog!”
Herty, who had been asleep, here woke up and began coughing and choking and grumbling at what he called “the fire-taste” in his mouth; and even the cheerful-minded Aline, the maid, looked rather blank.
Blanche said nothing, but from that moment a vague idea that, if no suitable house offered itself at Blissmore, she would use her influence in favour of London itself as their permanent headquarters, was irrevocably dismissed from her mind.
“We should die!” she said to herself; “at least mamma and Stasy, who are not as strong as I, would. Oh dear, I hope we are not going to regret our great step!”
For they had left Bordeaux in the full glow of sunshine—the exquisite “autumn summer” of the more genial south, where, though the winter may not infrequently be bitingly cold, at least it is restricted to its own orthodox three months.
“And this is only November,” proceeded Blanche in her unspoken misgivings. “Everybody says an English spring never really sets in till May, if then. Fancy fully five months of cold like this, and not improbable fog. No, no; we cannot stay in London: the cold must be faced, but not the fog.”