No doubt it has been surmised from what has gone before, that when Henry said to himself that he would go and see Aunt Tipping, he did not propose to himself a visit to the country seat of some quaint old lady of quality. Baronial towers and stately avenues of ancestral elm did not make a picturesque background for his thoughts as he recalled Aunt Tipping.
Poor kind Aunt Tipping, it is a shame to banter her memory even in so obvious a fashion; for if ever there was a kind heart, it was hers. In fact she possessed, in a degree that amounted to genius, one of the rarest of human qualities,--unconditional pity for the unhappy human creature. Within her narrow and squalid sphere, she was never known to fail of such succour as was hers to give to misfortune, however well-merited, or misery however self-made.
No religion or philosophy has ever yet been merciful enough to human weakness. Matilda Tipping repaired the lack so far as she went. In fact, she had unconsciously realised that weakness is human nature. It would be difficult to fix upon an offence that would disqualify you for Aunt Tipping's pity. To the prodigalities of the passions, and the appetites disastrously indulged, she was accustomed by a long succession of those sad and shady lodgers to whom it was part of her precarious livelihood to let her rooms, and, not infrequently, to forgive them their rent. That men and women should drink too much, and love too many, was, her experience told her, one of those laws of nature that seemed to make a good deal of unnecessary inconvenience in mortal affairs, but against which mere preaching or punishment availed nothing. All that was to be done was, so far as possible, to repair their ravages in particular instances, and heal the wounds of human passion with simple human kindness.
Of two vessels, one for honour and the other for dishonour, surely nature never made so complete a contrast as Matilda Tipping and her sister, Mary Mesurier. Both country girls, born in a humble, though defiantly respectable, stratum of society, the ways of the two sisters had already parted in childhood. Mary was studious, neat, and religious; Matilda was tomboyish, impatient of restraint, and fond of unedifying associates.
"Your aunt never aspired," Mrs. Mesurier would say of Aunt Tipping sometimes to her children; and, while still a child, she had often reproached her with her fondness for gossiping with companions "beneath her." Matilda could never be persuaded to care for books. She was naturally illiterate, and even late in life had a fixed aversion to writing her own letters; whereas, at the age of seven, Mary had been public scrivener for the whole village. But with these regrettable instincts, from the first Matilda had also manifested a whimsical liveliness, an unconquerable lightheartedness which made you forgive her anything, and for which, poor soul, she had use enough before she was done with life. At seventeen, added to good looks, of which at fifty there was scarcely a trace in the thin and meanly worn face, this vivacity had proved a tragic snare. A certain young capitalist--known as a great gentleman--of that countryside had pounced down on the gay and careless young Matilda, and had at once provided her life with its formative tragedy and its deathless romance. Even at fifty, hopelessly buried among the back streets and pawnshops of life, heaven still opened in the heart of Matilda Tipping at the mention of the name of William Allsopp. For several years she had lived with the Mesuriers, as general help to her sister, between whom and her, in spite of surface disparities, there was an indissoluble bond of affection; till, at thirty-five or so, she had suddenly won the heart of a sad old widower of fifty-five, named Samuel Tipping.
Samuel Tipping was no ordinary widower. As you looked at his severe, thoughtful face, surmounted by a shock of beautiful white hair, you instinctively respected him; and when you heard that he lived by cobbling shoes by day and playing a violin in the Theatre Royal orchestra by night, occasionally putting off his leather apron to give a music lesson in the front parlour of an afternoon, you respected him all the more. There had been but one thing against Mr. Tipping's eligibility for marriage, Matilda Tipping would tell you, even years after, with a lowering of her voice: he was said to be an "atheist," and a reader of strange books. Yet he seemed a quiet, manageable man, and likely--again in Mrs. Tipping's phrase--to prove a "good provider;" so she had risked his heterodoxy, which indeed was a somewhat fanciful objection on her part, and made him, as he declared with his dying breath, the best of wives.
It chanced that when Henry, in pursuance of his over-night resolve, made his way the following afternoon through a dingy little street, and knocked on the door of a dingy little house, bearing upon a brass plate the legend "Boots neatly repaired," Mr. Tipping was engaged in giving one of those very music lessons. A dingy little maid-of-all-work opened the door, and said that Mrs. Tipping was out shopping, but would be back soon. From the front parlour came the lifeless tum-tumming of the piano, and Mr. Tipping's voice gruffly counting time to the cheerless five-finger exercises of a very evident beginner.
"One--two--three! One--two--three! One--two--three!" went Mr. Tipping's voice, with an occasional infusion of savagery.
"But Mr. Tipping is at home?" said Henry. "I will wait till he is disengaged. I will make myself comfortable in the kitchen," (Henry knew his way about at Aunt Tipping's, and remembered there was only one front parlour) adding, with something of pride, "I'm Mrs. Tipping's nephew, you know."
Presently the torture in the front parlour was at an end; and, as Mr. Tipping was about to turn upstairs to the little back room where he mended his shoes, Henry emerged upon him from the kitchen. They had had some talks on books and the general misgovernment of the universe,--for Mr. Tipping really was something of an "atheist,"--on Henry's occasional visits, and were no strangers to each other.