Aunt Anne, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Mrs. W. K. Clifford

CHAPTER II.

any things had happened to Mr. and Mrs. Hibbert in those seven years. Most important of all—to themselves, at least—was the birth of their two children, lovely children Mrs. Hibbert declared them to be, and in his heart her husband agreed with her. But the time came when Walter found to his dismay that even lovely children would sometimes cry, and that as they grew older they wanted room to run about with that constant patter-pattering sound that is usually more delightful to a mother’s ear than to a fathers, especially when he has to produce intelligible copy. So the Hibberts moved away from the little flat in which they had begun their married life, to an ugly little upright house sufficiently near Portland Road to enable Walter to get quickly to the office. There a nursery could be made at the top of the house, where the children would be not only out of sight, but out of hearing.

Walter did a great deal of work, and was fairly well paid, but that did not mean a large income for a young couple with two children and three servants, trying to keep up an appearance before the world. He wrote for magazines and literary journals, occasionally he did a long pot-boiler for one of those reviews he called refuges for destitute intellects; and altogether was thrown much among men better off than himself, so that he did not like to look poor. Besides, he preferred to live with a certain amount of comfort, even though it meant a certain amount of anxiety, to looking poverty-stricken or shabby for the sake of knowing precisely how he would stand at the end of the quarter, or being able at any moment to lay his hand on a ten-pound note.

“You not only feel awkward yourself if you look poor, but cause other people to feel so,” he said; “and that is making yourself a nuisance: you have no business to do that if you can avoid it.”

So, though the Hibberts had only a small house, it was pretty and well arranged. Their simple meals were daintily served, and everything about them had an air that implies content dashed with luxury. In fact, they lived as people can live now, even on a small income, and especially in London, in comfort and refinement.

Still, it was a difficult task to pull through, and Walter felt that he ought to be making more money. He knew, too, though he did not tell his wife so, that the constant work and anxiety were telling on him; he wanted another but a far longer bracing-up than the one he had had seven years ago at Brighton. “A sea voyage would be the thing,” he thought, “only I don’t see how it could be managed, even if I could get away.”

The last year had been a fortunate one in some respects: an aunt of Mrs. Hibbert’s had died, leaving them a hundred pounds and a furnished cottage near Witley, in Surrey. It was a dear little cottage, they both protested—red brick, of course, as all well-bred cottages are nowadays, standing in an acre and a half of its own fir-wood, and having round it a garden with tan paths and those prim flowers that grow best in the vicinity of fir. It would be delightful to stay there in the summer holidays, they agreed, or to run down from Saturday to Monday, or, by-and-by, to send the children there for a spell with the governess when their parents were not able to get away from town. Walter had tried sending Florence and the children and going down every week himself, but he found “it didn’t work.” She was always longing to be with him, and he with her. It was only a broad sea and a few thousand miles that would make separation possible, and he did not think he could endure that very long: he was absurdly fond of his dear little wife.

All this he thought over as he walked along the Strand one morning to his office. He was going to see his chief, who had sent for him on a matter of business. His chief was Mr. Fisher, an excellent editor, though not quite enough of a partisan perhaps to have a strong following. The Centre was a model of fairness, and the mainstay of that great section of the reading public that likes its news trustworthy and copious, but has no pronounced party leanings. Still, if it was a paper without political influence, it was one of great political use, for it invariably stated a question from all points of view with equal fairness, though it leant, if at all, from sheer editorial generosity, towards making the best of it for the weakest side. Thus a minority looked to it almost as to an advocate, and the majority knew that any strength that was against them would be set forth in The Centre, and that if none was pleaded there, the right and the triumph were together. Mr. Fisher liked Walter Hibbert; and though by tacit agreement their relations inside the office were purely formal, outside they were a good deal more intimate. Occasionally they took the form of a quiet dinner, or a few hours in the little house near Portland Road; for Florence was rather a favourite of the editors—perhaps, for one reason, because she was obviously of opinion that he ought to be married. A man generally likes a woman who pays him this compliment, especially when it is disinterested. Mr. Fisher was a widower and childless. There was some story connected with his marriage, but the Hibberts never heard the rights of it, and it was evidently a painful subject to him. All that was known in the office was that years before a gaunt-looking woman used to sometimes come for him, and that they always walked silently away together. Some one said once that he had married her because he had known her for years, and she was poor and he did not know how to provide for her except by marrying her, and that she was querulous and worried him a good deal. After a time she grew thin and feeble-looking. One day, about three years after the marriage, her death appeared in the paper; her husband looked almost relieved, but very sad, and no one ventured to ask him any questions.