Now, why should a poor lodging-house keeper make such a mighty secret of having a daughter earning an honest guinea by dancing at a theatre? Why persist in calling the theatre an academy? Why did Mrs. Prior speak of it as such, to me who knew what the truth was, and to whom Elizabeth herself made no mystery of her calling?
There are actions and events in its life over which decent Poverty often chooses to cast a veil that is not unbecoming wear. We can all, if we are minded, peer through this poor flimsy screen: often there is no shame behind it:—only empty platters, poor scraps, and other threadbare evidence of want and cold. And who is called on to show his rags to the public, and cry out his hunger in the street? At this time (her character has developed itself not so amiably since), Mrs. Prior was outwardly respectable; and yet, as I have said, my groceries were consumed with remarkable rapidity; my wine and brandy bottles were all leaky, until they were excluded from air under a patent lock;—my Morel’s raspberry jam, of which I was passionately fond, if exposed on the table for a few hours, was always eaten by the cat, or that wonderful little wretch of a maid-of-all-work, so active, yet so patient, so kind, so dirty, so obliging. Was it the maid who took those groceries? I have seen the Gazza Ladra, and know that poor little maids are sometimes wrongfully accused; and besides, in my particular case, I own I don’t care who the culprit was. At the year’s end, a single man is not much poorer for this house-tax which he pays. One Sunday evening, being confined with a cold, and partaking of that mutton broth which Elizabeth made so well, and which she brought me, I entreated her to bring from the cupboard, of which I gave her the key, a certain brandy-bottle. She saw my face when I looked at her: there was no mistaking its agony. There was scarce any brandy left: it had all leaked away: and it was Sunday, and no good brandy was to be bought that evening.
Elizabeth, I say, saw my grief. She put down the bottle, and she cried: she tried to prevent herself from doing so at first, but she fairly burst into tears.
“My dear—dear child,” says I, seizing her hand, “you don’t suppose I fancy you——”
“No—no!” she says, drawing the large hand over her eyes. “No—no! but I saw it when you and Mr. Warrington last ’ad some. Oh! do have a patting lock!”
“A patent lock, my dear?” I remarked. “How odd that you, who have learned to pronounce Italian and French words so well, should make such strange slips in English? Your mother speaks well enough.”
“She was born a lady. She was not sent to be a milliner’s girl, as I was, and then among those noisy girls at that—oh! that place!” cries Bessy, in a sort of desperation clenching her hand.
Here the bells of St. Beak’s began to ring quite cheerily for evening service. I heard “Elizabeth!” cried out from lower regions by Mrs. Prior’s cracked voice. And the maiden went her way to Church, which she and her mother never missed of a Sunday; and I daresay I slept just as well without the brandy-and-water.
Slumley being gone, Mrs. Prior came to me rather wistfully one day, and wanted to know whether I would object to Madame Bentivoglio, the opera-singer, having the first floor? This was too much, indeed! How was my work to go on with that woman practising all day and roaring underneath me? But after sending away so good a customer, I could not refuse to lend the Priors a little more money; and Prior insisted upon treating me to a new stamp, and making out a new and handsome bill for an amount nearly twice as great as the last: which he had no doubt under heaven, and which he pledged his honour as an officer and a gentleman that he would meet. Let me see: That was how many years ago?—Thirteen, fourteen, twenty? Never mind. My fair Elizabeth, I think if you saw your poor old father’s signature now, you would pay it. I came upon it lately in an old box I haven’t opened these fifteen years, along with some letters written—never mind by whom—and an old glove that I used to set an absurd value by; and that emerald-green tabinet waistcoat which kind old Mrs. Macmanus gave me, and which I wore at the L—d L—t—nt’s ball, Ph-n-x Park, Dublin, once, when I danced with her there! Lord!—Lord! It would no more meet round my waist now than round Daniel Lambert’s. How we outgrow things!
But as I never presented this united bill of 43l. odd (the first portion of 23l., &c. was advanced by me in order to pay an execution out of the house),—as I never expected to have it paid any more than I did to be Lord Mayor of London,—I say it was a little hard that Mrs. Prior should write off to her brother (she writes a capital letter), blessing Providence that had given him a noble income, promising him the benefit of her prayers, in order that he should long live to enjoy his large salary, and informing him that an obdurate creditor, who shall be nameless (meaning me), who had Captain Prior in his power (as if being in possession of that dingy scrawl, I should have known what to do with it), who held Mr. Prior’s acceptance for 43l. 14s. 4d. due on the 3rd July (my bill), would infallibly bring their family to RUIN, unless a part of the money was paid up. When I went up to my old college, and called on Sargent, at Boniface Lodge, he treated me as civilly as if I had been an undergraduate; scarcely spoke to me in hall, where, of course, I dined at the Fellows’ table; and only asked me to one of Mrs. Sargent’s confounded tea-parties during the whole time of my stay. Now it was by this man’s entreaty that I went to lodge at Prior’s; he talked to me after dinner one day, he hummed, he ha’d, he blushed, he prated in his pompous way, about an unfortunate sister in London—fatal early marriage—husband, Captain Prior, Knight of the Swan with two Necks of Portugal, most distinguished officer, but imprudent speculator—advantageous lodgings in the centre of London, quiet, though near the Clubs—if I was ill (I am a confirmed invalid), Mrs. Prior, his sister, would nurse me like a mother. So, in a word, I went to Prior’s: I took the rooms: I was attracted by some children: Amelia Jane (that little dirty maid before mentioned) dragging a go-cart, containing a little dirty pair; another marching by them, carrying a fourth well nigh as big as himself. These little folks, having threaded the mighty flood of Regent Street, debouched into the quiet creek of Beak Street, just as I happened to follow them. And the door at which the small caravan halted,—the very door I was in search of,—was opened by Elizabeth, then only just emerging from childhood, with tawny hair falling into her solemn eyes.