A Girl of the North. A Story of London and Canada. Jones Susan Morrow
and feel down on my luck, I go to town.”
“Is that the fog? I think I should not like the after effect of morphia.”
“Fog?” he asked. “No, it isn’t fog, and yet it is fog, too; it deadens the brain. When someone threw me over, you bet I felt bad. I went up to town and forgot for a week. I did, really.”
“A week! It lost its effect in a week, so quickly?”
“Well, she wrote then and forgave me, and I hadn’t done anything wrong; she flirted. But she took me back, and I just licked her boots.”
“But suppose she had not taken you back?”
“Then I should have lived and forgotten her; I’m hanged if I wouldn’t,” he said, with energy. “Life does it.”
“Life? – you mean time.”
“I mean living it down.”
“But suppose you could not forget? Suppose you were so fond that you thought of her always?”
“I would forget. I mean – Well, I couldn’t, you know,” he said, and laughed. “Now I’ve got her, you see, and don’t need to try. I do not mind telling you – you seem so interested, and are so sympathetic to-day – that I only forgot her when it was noisy and all that. But when I was alone and quiet – at night, you know – I was miserable. You have nothing like that to worry you, Miss Archer? It is very kind of you to take so much interest in my trouble. You won’t think of your relations when you get to town. Are they in Canada?”
“Yes.”
“And one died – a girl, I suppose? And the others want to interfere with you; they want you to be dull because they are? Relations always do that. Now, I have an aunt – she’s a caution; she thinks I ought not to marry. But I would not stand that. Have you any aunts in town?”
“No. My father has a cousin; Mrs. Carden is her name.”
“She won’t bother you, I expect. You are lucky. Your father adores you. You have plenty of money, and are young. My Aunt Maria is a – Oh, the very deuce.”
Here he launched forth into anecdotes of his relations, and Launa murmured a polite accompaniment to his reminiscences until the bell rang for dinner.
“We’ll meet after dinner, won’t we, and finish our talk? It’s very jolly,” he said. “You have such a nice voice, too.”
“You have done me a great deal of good,” she answered. “Time is all one wants.”
“And life, amusement, and love,” he added softly, with a glance at her, which, considering the state of his feelings for another lady, was unnecessarily kind.
“Leave out love,” she answered. “I am hungry.”
On deck after dinner when he looked for her she was not to be seen, so he concluded she was tired and had gone to bed, wherefore he played poker.
But Launa was not tired. She had hidden from him. His talks about his Aunt Maria had no interest for her, except when she regarded them as a narcotic, and then his musings were soothing. That evening she wanted to think and to be alone.
Her father had insisted on her drinking champagne at dinner. Mr. Archer said a voyage was exhausting, and he looked weary. He had not recovered from the surprise which his daughter’s questions had produced. Were they caused merely by curiosity – the curiosity of an ignorant girl – or by interest? Curiosity is merely an inheritance from Eve; interest is the first instinct towards a man when a woman loves him or is going to love him.
“Launa must drink champagne to-night,” he decided. “And soon we shall be in London. But why did she ask those curious questions?”
Launa took some cushions and rugs and went forward behind the boats. The steamer was surging on, the wind was rising, and the waves were breaking below with big white heads of foam. She began to think; she drew a picture of it all for herself in her mind and called herself a fool. Suppose Paul were there on the steamer, suppose he came to her with love in his eyes, and he were hers for the time – and that was it, that was what hurt – for the time, perhaps only for a time. Would she be willing to take him at the price of another woman’s shame? And to know and to remember what was between her and him, like a bar, or a hand – the warm soft hand of a woman! No, it was over. She would shut up the book. Paul was dead, her Paul, the Paul she loved – she would think of him as she did of her dead mother – sometimes. But her mother was with the angels, and Paul was alive. She shivered a little; it was cold and damp, and the swirl of the waves as the steamer rushed through them was cruel.
She resolved to begin again, to rub out the writing of the first episode of life – such a new book to her – and to make the page ready for London and fresh impressions.
When the Archers arrived in London they took a flat near the Thames Embankment, and Launa revelled in new clothes, music, and horses. Her father soon had many friends. His wee world was exciting itself about the question of bones of fish, and he flung himself with ardour into the controversy.
After some days of continual absence on his part, and loneliness on Launa’s, she went to him and said: —
“I want to know some women. I love nice women. Don’t you know some?”
He looked surprised.
“There is your cousin, Lavinia Carden; she lives in town. I will take you to see her. Her husband is dead; poor man, he never was happy. He yearned for the country and for pigs – Lavinia only appreciated bacon, and would not live out of Bayswater. A month at the seaside was all poor Carden got in the way of country.”
“I shall not like her.”
“She will give you good advice, Launa,” he said, laughing. “You don’t like that.”
Mrs. Carden lived in a semi-detached house, beyond Bayswater, far from the region of the fashionable, in the heart of cheap villadom, where twelve pennies had to make a little over a shilling. Endeavouring to save a farthing on one’s rolls or one’s fire-lighters is an absorbing occupation, and it seems to have most interest for those to whom it is immaterial whether they do save their farthing or not. Mrs. Carden had one son. When he was at home she saw what she considered life – an occasional visit to the theatre, or a dull dinner party, both reached with due propriety in a four-wheeler.
Mrs. Carden was a selfish woman, with a firm belief in her own opinions, and her own importance; anyone who contradicted her or disagreed with her was at once a detestable person. Her affection for her son was expressed in long letters, and the frequent use of “dearest.” But her love was variable, and when he was at home he disturbed her breakfasts, while her nights were made feverish by his late hours, which kept the hall gas a-light until sometimes past twelve o’clock. Her servants assumed a more frivolous demeanour on his arrival, and it seemed to her that while their caps were coquettishly crooked and smart, her stiff house became sometimes slightly untidy.
Charlie Carden was in a line regiment stationed at Malta, with one hundred and fifty pounds a year besides his pay. His mother wondered why he never became dashing, or soldier-like, or anything of a hero, with a sprinkling from the pepper-pot of wickedness – to possess this is the bounden duty of every man when he puts on a red coat or a sword. Carden remained dull, and his mother almost despised him; he was not even selfish, nor did he bully her.
George Archer and Lavinia Carden were second cousins, she was the only relation left whom he had known as a boy. His recollections of her were hazy. In these she figured as a muslin-fichued, sandy-haired girl, in whose face piety and cruelty struggled for mastery; now she parted her hair deliberately in the middle, and indulged in them both. In her youth she had regarded George as a possible husband, and, not loving him, had forgotten him, therefore when reminded of his existence she felt angry with him. Was it not his fault that she had married a man whose only inclinations were to have a farmyard, against which she had had to struggle all her life?
The day before the Archers went to 52 Lancaster Road a note was sent to Lavinia to prepare her for their visit. Mrs. Carden therefore left off her cap for the afternoon, braving the