“there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
autumn again! three years only since the dull september day when we first saw marion vere in her father’s house in the london square. three years ago, which have brought more than one change to her, which have more than once utterly altered the current of her life. the last change which has come over her might, to superficial observation, seem the most disastrous of all. let us see if in truth it is so.
a dull, uninteresting suburban street. secluded and “genteel.” too much so for even the enlivening neighbourhood of shops to be permitted in that portion of it where our interest lies. rows and rows of monotonous little dwellings, all of the regulation pattern—two rooms on one side of the strip of lobby, undeserving of the more important name of hall; kitchen at the end thereof, a flight of some twelve or fifteen steps leading to the half-way room above the kitchen, on again to the two or three rooms occupying the position, in town houses of importance, usually devoted to drawing-rooms.
ah, how wearied one becomes of this same everlasting pattern of house! how sick to death the architects must be of planning it, the masons of building it, and, worst of all, the occupants of living in it! only fortunately, or unfortunately, the dwellers in these same regulation abodes have seldom much leisure, even had they the inclination, for pondering on such matters. the poor dressmaker class, the struggling wives and overflowing offspring of scantily-salaried clerks in great mercantile houses, the landladies, legion by name, “who have seen better days,” and are only too thankful to see the dreadful “apartments” card out of their window—all these and the rest of the innumerable multitude constituting the lower half of our english middle-class, are not likely to complain of the shape and arrangements of their dwellings, provided they are sufficiently warm and weather tight, and not usuriously high in the matter of rent and its attendant privileges, rates.
rents are not so tremendous in the neighbourhood of smoky millington as in the suburban districts surrounding the great babylon itself. lodgings in consequence are, or were some years ago, correspondingly few and far between. for our middle-class john bull, be he but possessed of the most modest of salaries, has a wonderful tendency to feather a nest of his own, to assemble his poor little household gods—from the six “real silver” teaspoons left to mary ann by her god-mother, to his own gaudy but somewhat faded sunday-school prizes—in a retreat where they shall be sacred from the inquisitive eyes and prying hands of landladies; where he can smoke his pipe of an evening, and young mrs. john nurse her babies undisturbed by fears of complaints from the first-floor of “that horrible smell of tobacco,” or “those incessantly screaming children.”
but even the luxury of the smallest of houses of their own was as yet beyond the means of mr. and mrs. baldwin; and geoffrey was fain to be content with three tiny rooms and a civil-spoken landlady, when, preceding his wife by a few days to their new home, it fell to his share to do what he could in the way of preparing for her reception.
for the smash at mallingford had been a very thorough one. nothing as yet had been retrieved from the ruins. months hence some trifling dividend might be forthcoming; but as their share of this would be altogether insufficient to provide for their daily wants, geoffrey had declined veronica’s invitation to take up their abode with her till the exact amount should be known, and had manfully set his shoulder to the wheel by accepting the first chance of employment that came in his way.
it was not of a kind congenial to his tastes or education. a clerkship of a hundred a year in a millington shipping-house does not sound paradisaical to most ears; least of all to those of a country-bred, country-loving man of thirty, whose nightmare from earliest youth had been anything in the shape of office or desk, book-keeping, or book-learning.
but, as said the old friend of his father’s to whom he was indebted for the introduction, it was better than losing time, and would do him no harm should some more desirable opening occur hereafter.
had he been alone in the world when he thus for the first time in his life found himself face to face with poverty, geoffrey baldwin, there is no doubt, would have emigrated. he was just the man of which the right back-woodsman stuff is made, and the life would have suited him in every sense. but to his joy and his sorrow he was not alone in the world, and the being to whom every drop of his honest heart’s blood was devoted, shrank, with a not unusual or unnatural shrinking, from the unknown horrors of life in an australian sheep-farm, or the pathless “far west” forests of canada. even millington, smoky and crowded, with its vulgar rich and toil-begrimed poor, seemed to her imagination to offer a far less terrible prospect.
“for after all geoffrey, it is still england, and sooner or later something else may turn up. in two or three years harry may be coming home, and think how terrible it would be for him if we were away at the other side of the world,” said the poor girl.
so the subject of emigration was not again mooted, and the millington offer accepted. some ready money was realized by the sale of the manor farm furniture and geoffrey’s horses, but not very much, for when chairs and tables that have looked very respectable in their own corners for forty or fifty years, are dragged, to the sound of an auctioneer’s hammer, into the relentless glare of day and bargain seekers’ eyes, they, to put it mildly, do not show to the best advantage. and as to horses, they are not famous for being high in the market when one appears therein in the position of a seller. it was, too, the end of the hunting season when the smash came, and mr. baldwin was not in the habit of allowing his steeds to eat their heads off, so the lot of them were not in the showy condition conducive to the fetching of long sums.
squire copley, who, during the last few melancholy weeks of the young couple’s stay in their own house, was suffering from a curiously spasmodic form of cold in the head, which attacked him most inopportunely on several occasions when he happened to “step over” to the farm, and necessitated a distressingly lavish recourse to his pocket-handkerchief,—he by-the-by took a violent fancy to the now docile coquette.
“got her of course, under the circumstances, dirt cheap, sir, dirt cheap, i assure you,” he told his neighbours, when the details of baldwin’s sale were discussed “across the walnuts and the wine.”
the exact sum he was never known to mention, (nor did it ever reach mr. baldwin’s ears), for possibly every one might not have agreed with him in thinking two hundred and fifty pounds so very unparalleled a bargain. it went a good way to swelling the few hundreds of ready money with which in safe keeping against the possible coming of a still rainier day, geoffrey baldwin, after settling, down to the smallest, every out-standing claim upon him or his household, set out for the first time to do battle with the world, to win for himself and that other so infinitely dearer, the “daily bread” so carelessly demanded, so thanklessly received by those who have never known what it is to eat thereof “in the sweat of the face.”
but we have wandered too long from the little house in the suburban street.
in the small sitting-room looking out to the front sits marion. the same marion, only i almost think altered for the better. she looks stronger, and, to use a homely, but most expressive word, “heartier” than when we last saw her. surely there is more light and brightness over the clear, pale features; and lurking in the depths of the grey eyes, one could almost fancy there was something of gladness if not of mirth. or is it only the flickering, dancing light reflected on her face of the bright little fire which—for the evening was chilly—mrs. baldwin, after some house-wifely scruples on the score of economy, caused to be lit to greet her husband’s return?
we shall see.
she sits there in the fire-light, gazing into the red, glowing depths, but with the pleasant shadow of a smile on her face. she has been working hard enough to-day in various ways, to enjoy the half-hour’s holiday which she feels she has earned. a sensation worth trying for once in a way, oh ladies! with the soft, white hands, guiltless of aught but useless beauty, with the little feet to whom a few miles of tramp through muddy streets, over bard, unyielding pavement, is unknown. or worse still, with brains unconscious of any object in their own existence beyond the solution of some millinery problem, or the recollection of the calls falling due on their visiting list. “very hard work indeed!” i have been told more than once by those who should be qualified to judge. “and very poor pay!” i should certainly reply, though the hardness of the work may be a matter of opinion.
a ring at the bell, a step along the passage, a somewhat fagged looking face at the door, which marion sprang up to open, with bright welcome on her own.
“i’m very muddy, marion,” said the new-comer, “and rather tired too. i’d better run up at once and change my boots. i shall be awfully glad of a cup of tea.”
the voice evidently wished to be cheerful, but could not quite manage it. poor geoffrey! truly millington ways and millington smoke did not suit you.
but there was genuine, unforced gladness in the tones which replied to him.
“be quick then! as quick as you can. i have just infused the tea, and i have lots of things to tell you. i have been so busy all day!”
and as the wearied man slowly ascended the narrow staircase, some murmured words, un-heard by his wife, escaped him. “my darling! my darling! for myself i would bear it all fifty times over to know your goodness as i do.”
a short toilette sufficed for the simple meal prepared for mr. baldwin in the little parlour which served him and his wife for drawing-room and dining-room in one, and in ten minutes’ time he rejoined her. the room looked wonderfully comfortable and home-like he owned to himself, and for the time being he determined to forget the worries and annoyances of the day, and respond as far as he could to the unfailing cheerfulness of his wife.
“tell me what you have been about to-day, marion,” he said. “you look even brighter than usual, which is saying a good deal. and that red ribbon round your neck and tying up your hair is very pretty,” he added, looking at her approvingly.
“i am glad you like it,” she replied laughing, “though in the first place it isn’t a ribbon, it’s velvet.”
“but there’s such a thing as velvet ribbon, isn’t there?” he asked gravely. “i’m sure i have heard of it.”
“ribbon velvet you mean, you stupid geoffrey,” she answered. “i am really afraid you’ll never do for millington. you’re not the least of a shop-man.”
geoffrey laughed.
“you had better take care what, you say, marion. imagine the horror of old baxter if he heard you talking of his palatial warehouse as a shop!”
“but so it is, only a very big one,” persisted the incorrigible mrs. baldwin. “however you needn’t be afraid of my hurting the feelings of old baxter, as you call him, or old anybody else. not that he’s likely ever to hear me speak either of him or his shop. these millington people are far too grand ever to take any notice of us.”
“i don’t know that,” said her husband. “that reminds me i’ve a piece of news for you too. but i want to hear yours first. tell me what you’ve been doing all day.”
“this afternoon i have been busy at home like a good wife, darning your stockings, or socks, as mrs. appleby calls them. really and truly, geoffrey, i have darned four pair—that is to say three pair and a half, for in the eighth sock, to my unspeakable delight there was no hole. i poked m y hand all round inside it, but not one of my fingers came through. there weren’t even any thin places which wanted strengthening, if you know what that is? you have no idea of the excitement of looking for holes. it is almost more fascinating than pulling shirt-buttons to see if they are loose. i have to force myself to be dreadfully conscientious about it. sometimes i feel so tempted only to give a very gentle tug, which couldn’t pull even a very loose one off. millington must be a ruinous place for poor people. you have no notion how quickly you wear out your stockings.”
“no, i certainly haven’t, as my good fairy takes care i never find any holes in them,” he answered tenderly. “but never mind stockings,” he went on, “tell me what you did this morning.”
“this morning,” she replied, “oh, this morning i went a tremendously long walk.”
“by yourself?”
“no, with mrs. sharp. you know i told you that nice little mrs. sharp had called here last week. the wife of the curate at st. matthias’s. her husband was a pupil at the temples’, veronica’s father’s, years ago, and that seemed a sort of introduction. she is really very nice. she knew something about us—about the bank breaking, i mean, and why we came here. i told her the first time i saw her how anxious i was to do something to help you, and—and—don’t be angry, geoffrey—she came to-day to tell me she had heard of two pupils for me.”
“marion!” exclaimed her husband.
she crept down to the floor beside him and hid her face on his arm, as she went on.
“it seems so very nice, geoffrey. listen and don’t say anything till you hear all about it. mrs. sharp took me to see the lady—a mrs. allen—whose two little boys i am to teach. they are very little boys, the eldest only ten. they generally go to school, but scarlet fever broke out there a month ago, and they are not to return till christmas. it is only till then i am to teach them, and it is only to be three mornings in the week. just to keep them in the way of lessons a little, their mother said. she is rather nice, fat and good-humoured-looking—but guiltless of h’s. she was very kind and pleasant about ‘terms,’ as she called it. five guineas a month, i think very good. don’t you?”
but geoffrey was incapable of replying in the same light cheerful tone. he stooped down and passed his arm round marion’s waist, thus drawing her nearer to him. then he said in a choked husky voice,
“marion, my dearest, you are an angel,—but, but—i can’t stand it.”
“my being an angel?” she answered lightly. “certainly you haven’t had much experience of me in such a character—but seriously, geoffrey, do say i may do this. i really haven’t enough to do all the hours you are away. darning stockings, even, palls on one after a few hours! and it will make me so happy to feel i am earning a little money. dear geoffrey, don’t say i mustn’t.” and with a pretty air of appeal she drew his face round, so that she could see the expression in his eyes.
“it is only till christmas, you say?” he enquired, doubtfully.
“only till christmas,” she repeated.
“and the distance,” he objected. “you said it was a long walk. how are you to go there and back three times a week?”
“in fine weather, walk,” she replied, unhesitatingly. “i am a capital walker, and you see yourself i am not the least tired to-night. and on wet days you can put me in the omnibus as you go to business in the morning. it passes the corner of this street, and mrs. sharp says it is never crowded at the hours i should be coming and going.”
there was nothing for it but for geoffrey to give in; as, indeed, from the first he had instinctively feared would be the case. though the plan went sorely against his inclination, he yet had a half-defined idea that possibly it was really kinder and more unselfish to yield to his wife’s wishes—that the additional interest and occupation might be of actual benefit to her, and help her to get through the lonely, dreary millington winter he so dreaded for her in anticipation.
“you said, too, you had something to tell me, didn’t you, geoffrey?” asked marion, after a short silence, and with perhaps something of the womanly instinct of changing the conversation before the scarcely attained concession could be withdrawn.
“did i?” he answered, absently. “oh yes, i remember. it was when we were talking of the baxters, and you said they were far too grand to notice us. mr. baxter told me to-day that his wife ‘hoped shortly to have the pleasure of calling on you.’ what do you think of that?”
“i am rather vexed,” she replied, speaking slowly and deliberately. “we have been very happy here by ourselves without anybody noticing us, and i would rather go on the same way. i am not silly or prejudiced, geoffrey. i like nice people, whoever they are, but i cannot help shrinking a little from these terribly rich millington people. i am afraid i am just a little bad in one way. i can’t endure being patronised.”
geoffrey looked pained.
“i know, i know,” he said, hastily. “it is horrible for you. perfectly unbearable. you don’t think i don’t know it, and feel it. heaven knows how bitterly! i was more than half inclined to tell the old fellow his wife might keep her precious visits to herself; only i dared not risk offending him. condescension, indeed! vulgar wretches!—as if we wanted them to come prying about us, the purse-proud——”
marion jumped up and put her hand on his mouth.
“hush, geoffrey. it is very wicked of me to put such notions into your head. i had no business to talk about hating being patronised. it is very silly, and low, and mean of me. of course they intend to be kind, and of course i should be civil to mrs. baxter, if she is as ugly as the queen of the cannibal islands. so don’t say any more about her. i suppose she is elderly, and fat. these dread-fully prosperous people are always fat. they can’t help it, i suppose.”
“i don’t know, i’m sure,” said geoffrey, listlessly. “oh yes, by-the-by, i remember some one at the office saying mrs. baxter was much younger than her husband. an heiress too, i believe. that’s always the way.”
“he looked weary and dispirited, and marion felt remorseful for having caused it. so she played to him (mrs. appleby’s front room actually boasted a piano, such as it was) soft, simple airs—for he was no connoisseur in music—till he went to sleep on the hard, uncomfortable little sofa of the regulation lodging-house pattern, the designers of which seem to be under the impression that human beings can at pleasure unhook their legs and fasten them on again sideways. in which posture only could anything like comfortable repose be possible for the wretched victims of upholstery torture.
mrs. baxter was as good as her word, or rather as mr. baxter’s.
two days later, a chariot, of the imposing appearance and dimensions suited for the conveyance of a millington millionairess, drawn by two prancing, rocking-horsey greys, comfortably conscious of their own amazingly good condition and unimpeachable harness, drew up at mrs. appleby’s modest door. a gorgeous footman having made the enquiry necessary to preclude the possibility of his mistress’s getting in and out of her equipage for nothing, and having reported to the lady that mrs. baldwin was at home, or “hin,” as mrs. appleby’s factotum expressed it, the door of the chariot opened, and thence emerged one of the very smallest women marion had ever seen.
from where she sat, all that passed in front of the house was visible to mrs. baldwin, and she observed with considerable amusement the immense pomposity of the whole affair, resulting in the appearance of the almost absurdly minute person of mrs. baxter.
but if the body was small, the mind evidently felt itself great. no five-feet-eight or nine woman ever sailed into a room with half the awe-compelling dignity, the incomparable “air de duchesse” of little mrs. baxter. it had done her good service in her day, this magnificent mien of hers; it (and the fact of her being “poor dear papa’s only child”) had won her the adoring homage of various young millingtonians more inclined to spend than to earn, had finally achieved the conquest of old baxter himself, and now in these latter days had constituted her the indisputable queen of millington society.
awful words! with bated breath only to be murmured, and reverence approaching that of mrs. appleby as she peeped out of the kitchen at the end of the passage, to behold, though at a distance, her lodger’s illustrious visitor.
for mrs. baxter was not in the least pretty. her “air,” or “style” as dressmakers say, was the whole secret of the admiration she excited in the millington world.
it was thought good taste to admire her, as “far more than a merely pretty person,” —there was a faint flavour of aristocratic proclivities in the refinement of perception which saw more in this plain-looking little woman than in the sweet, rosy beauty we all love as we do the daisies, which depends not on the sweep of the robe or the richness of the material in which it is clothed. for, though i tremble while saying it, at my own audacity, there is not the shadow of a doubt that the magnificence of mrs. baxter was more than half due to her clothes. the other half lay simply in her entire, unimpregnable self-satisfaction, a quality far surpassing the fainter shades of vanity or self-conceit, which enabled her to hold her small person erect as a poker, which would have carried her without the slightest embarrassment through any conceivable womanly ordeal, from being presented at court, to rating (and soundly, too), a six-foot “jeames” who would have made at least three of herself.
ideas, i was going to say, she had none. but this is incorrect. she had two—herself and mr. baxter—and round these, revolving as lesser satellites, deriving of course all their glory from the greater luminaries, “the little baxters.” you could hardly have called her purse-proud. she was rather purse-accepting. money to her was a simple fact, a necessity of existence like the air we breathe, the blood that flows in our veins. how people lived without it, had, once or twice in her life, occurred to her as a curious problem, with which, however, she was in no wise concerned, any more than one might be with the manner of life or physical peculiarities of the inhabitants of one of the fixed stars. but that by any terrible mistake on the part of providence, she, or mr. baxter, or any of the little baxters could ever come to want money, to have even to think about it at all, never entered the somewhat circumscribed space allotted to her brain.
there were poor people in the world, she knew. at least, if questioned on the subject, she would of course have admitted the fact, adding doubtless, that mr. baxter gave largely to charitable institutions, and that she herself had more than once officiated as lady patroness at some fancy fair or charity ball.
poor people in the world? yes, of course there are. but so likewise are there lions and tigers, and various species of ferocious or disagreeable animals, black beetles and toads, and black people and cannibals who eat each other. ugh! but they don’t come in our way, and so there’s no use thinking of them.
so much for mrs. baxter’s “philosophy of life and things.” breeding, in the generally accepted sense of the word, as might have been expected from her millington education, she had none. always of course excepting the imposing “air de duchesse,” which really was very wonderful in its way, and may be cited as an instance of the great perfection to which electro-plate has been brought in these modern days. breeding of the higher kind, culture of mind and spirit, she was even yet more deficient in. under no possible circumstances, indeed, could such have been attainable by her to any great extent.
yet after all she was far from a bad little woman; only her light was so very small! not even sufficient to make visible to the owner thereof the surrounding darkness. which quotation by-the-by is hardly applicable to immaterial objects, for we are not spiritually in such a very hopeless condition if we have attained to a perception of the darkness yet to be dispersed; we are some little way up the ladder when our sight descries the bewildering multitude of rungs yet to be ascended.
mrs. baxter, i say, was not a bad little woman. she was the most dutiful of wives and “exemplary” of mothers; she paid her bills punctually, and nursed her babies irreproachably. which latter occupation may be considered as the great end of her existence, as year after year brought a new olive branch to the baxter nursery, each in turn received by its parents with perfect equanimity, and installed in its place as a member of the august household.
she went to church twice every sunday throughout the year, excepting during the few weeks of her customary retirement; she never lost her temper, and she spoke kindly to the housemaid when she had the toothache.
more than all, here she was, in deference to her husband’s wishes, performing the unheard-of act of condescension of calling on the wife of one of his clerks.
“people, they say,” she confided to one of her female admirers, “who have seen better days. a thing i specially dislike.” which was repeated as one of her bons mots through her social circle; for—really i was forgetting the very funniest thing about this little woman—she, without one spark of imagination, without one touch of humour in herself or power of appreciating it in others, had yet acquired in the small world in which she moved, a considerable reputation as a wit!
this was the lady who sailed majestically into mrs. baldwin’s little sitting-room.
marion, whose height exceeded that of the average of women, rose to greet her, feeling, as sensitive people are apt to do when forced into such contrast, uncomfortably taller than usual. but this sensation was speedily succeeded by its equally unpleasant opposite, for seldom in her life had mrs. baldwin felt herself, metaphorically speaking, smaller, than when her little visitor extended her tightly gloved hand with a species of condescending wave, and addressing her in what was intended to be a reassuring tone, begged her to reseat herself and not to “put herself out” on her, mrs. baxter’s, account.
almost before she knew what she was about marion found herself waved into a seat, while mrs. baxter proceeded calmly to ensconce herself in the most luxurious of the not very tempting chairs of the little sitting-room.
then the great little lady proceeded to enter into conversation, by remarking that she hoped mrs. baldwin liked millington.
“oh yes,” replied marion, “we like it very well. of course it takes some time to feel at home in a perfectly strange place.”
“i daresay you find it very different from living, in the country,” observed mrs. baxter with an accent of superb scorn on the last word. “for my part i can’t abide the country. people grow so stupid and old-fashioned compared to what they are in town. mr. baxter talks sometimes of buying a country-place, but i always tell him i really couldn’t do at all without my six months at least in town.”
marion felt slightly puzzled as to the exact sense in which her visitor was making use of the last word.
“then do you at present spend half the year in town?” she asked cautiously.
“half the year!” repeated mrs. baxter, “oh dear yes. three quarters at least. we spend a month or two at the sea-side in summer. it suits very well, as it generally happens so that i want a little change just then. all the children except the twins were born in spring. and there’s nothing sets one up like the sea.”
then there fell a little pause, marion’s experience in the matters referred to by the lady, not being sufficiently extensive for her to hazard an observation in the presence of one evidently thoroughly “up” on the subject.
mrs. baxter swung herself round on her chair and scrutinized her surroundings.
“i never was in this street before,” she remarked. “i was afraid the coachman would never find the house, but the footman knew it, because his sister, who is a dressmaker, lives a little higher up. mr. baxter never likes me to go through back streets for fear of infections and those sort of things. but he made a point of my calling on you. more than a week ago he asked me to do him a favour, and this was what it was. i hope you haven’t stayed in for me though all this time? mr. baxter has taken quite a fancy to your husband, mrs. baldwin. so regular and steady in his hours, and quite a gentleman. he said so i assure you. ‘that young baldwin is really quite a gentleman,’ he said to me.
marion’s face flushed.
“i think perhaps mrs. baxter,” she began, “you hardly understand——.”
but the voluble little woman interrupted her.
“i was forgetting,” she exclaimed, “that mr. baxter wished me to fix a day for your dining with us. just in a family way, nothing of a party. i thought most likely you would like better coming to luncheon, but he said it would be rather too far for your husband to walk backwards and forwards between business hours. he dines in town, i suppose? all the clerks do, i think. of course we dine late. i don’t mean an early dinner. at six, we dine, and for once in a way, i daresay mr. baldwin could get away from business early. will wednesday do? i expect some of mr. baxter’s friends to be with us, so it will be quite a family party.”
“you are very kind,” marion forced herself to say. “we have not gone into company at all since we came here, as i daresay you can understand.”
“oh don’t make any apologies,” said mrs. baxter. “of course i wouldn’t ask you except in an unceremonious way. don’t trouble yourself about dressing or anything of that sort. you will do very nicely i am sure. a high black silk, or even a merino will do quite well. of course i always wear a low dress, in the evening, but then that’s different.”
“it was not on account of my dress i was hesitating,” said marion, quietly. “i was doubtful whether mr. baldwin would like the idea of going out to dinner even in the unceremonious way you propose.”
“oh, but if you tell him mr. baxter will really make a point of it,” urged the dutiful wife, whose desire to carry the day evidently increased with the little expected hesitation she met with on mrs. baldwin’s part. “mr. baldwin is sure to agree to my husband’s wishes.”
this not very delicately expressed reminder of the relations between the two men, had its effect. with a strong effort of self-control, marion answered gravely.
“i daresay you are right, mrs. baxter. then i think i may say we shall hope to have the pleasure of dining with you next wednesday.”
her mission thus successfully accomplished, the visitor took her leave, sailing out of the room as majestically as she had entered; and in another minute the magnificent equipage of the millington millionaire rolled away in ponderous grandeur from mrs. appleby’s door.
marion shook herself and stamped her feet. then catching the reflection of herself in the little mirror above the mantel-piece she laughed at her own childishness.
“how silly i am to mind it,” she said to herself. “but what a woman! how thankful i am it is not her children but that nice kindly mrs. allen’s i am going to teach! by-the-bye i am not at all sure that mrs. baxter would have asked us to dinner if she had known i am was engaged to give daily lessons. i wish i had told her. it would have been such fun to have seen her face. i must not tell geoffrey much about her; it would infuriate him. and after all i suppose she means to be kind. but the idea of her telling me my husband was ‘was really quite a gentleman!’ my geoffrey! my poor geoffrey! what a vivid idea this gives me of what he must have to endure among these people in his daily life. and how uncomplainingly he bears it. at least let me do my part to smooth things to him.”
she kept her resolution. when geoffrey returned home in the evening marion told him in the simplest, most matter-of-fact way of mrs. baxter’s visit and invitation. “it is kind of them to ask us,” she said, “and i thought it best not to chill or hurt them by declining it.”
geoffrey looked thoughtful.
“yes,” he replied at last. “i think you did right to accept it. it goes rather against the grain, and no doubt it will be rather an ordeal to both of us. but you did right, dear, as you always do,” he added fondly.
marion had her reward.
“what sort of a person is mrs. baxter?” he asked presently.
“a little woman,” replied marion, “not pretty, but very well dressed. rather lively too. at least with plenty to say for herself. good-natured too, i should think, though of course not very refined. but we got on very well.”
he looked relieved.
“i am glad you did not find it very dis-agreeable,” he said. “after all, dear, it may be a good thing for you to have a few acquaintances here, and even a family dinner at the baxters’ may be a little variety for you.”
she was leaving the room as he spoke. as she passed him she stooped and kissed his forehead as he lay back on the regulation sofa.
“yes, dear geoffrey,” she said; “i have no doubt it will be rather amusing than otherwise. besides, it is always interesting and good for one to see the different sorts of people there are in this queer world.”
he caught her hands and clasped them in his own, looking up at her with ineffable tenderness in his eyes.
“marion,” he said again, as he had said a few evenings before, “my darling, you are an angel!”
he had no great command of language, you see, poor fellow!
