Wee Wifie. Rosa Nouchette Carey
Fay’s hand, and asked her gently if she thought she could love him well enough to be his wife. Poor simple little child! she hardly knew how to answer him; but Hugh, who had caught a glimpse of the happy blushing face, was very gentle and patient with her shyness, and presently won from her the answer he wanted. She did like him—so much he understood her to say—he was so kind, and had given her so much pleasure. Yes—after much pressing on Hugh’s part—she was sure that she liked him well enough, but she could not be induced to say more.
But Hugh was quite content with his victory; he wanted no words to tell him that Fay adored him from the depths of her innocent heart; he could read the truth in those wonderful eyes—Fay had no idea how eloquent they were.
“How could she help loving him?” she said to herself that night, as she knelt down in the moonlight; had she ever seen any one like him. No little imprisoned princess ever watched her knight more proudly than Fay did when Hugh rode away on his big black mare. He was like a king, she thought, so kind, and handsome, and gracious; and Fay prayed with tears that she might be worthy of the precious gift that had come to her.
And so one lovely August day, when Aunt Griselda’s sunny little garden was sweet with the breath of roses and camellias, Sir Hugh and Fay were married in the little church at Daintree, and as Hugh looked down on his child-wife, something like compunction seized him, and from the depths of his sore heart he solemnly promised that he would keep his vow, and would cherish and love her, God helping, to his life’s end.
CHAPTER VI.
BEULAH PLACE.
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife.
Byron.
. … A sorrow not, a son.
Algernon C. Swinburne.
In one of the dingiest suburbs of London there is a small plot of ground known by the name of the Elysian Fields; but how it had ever acquired this singular appellation is likely to remain an unsolved problem to the end of time.
Most probably those great satirists, street denominators, had branded it with this title in ridicule, for anything further removed from the mythological meadows could not possibly be conceived, even by the most sanguine temperament. True, there was a market garden or two, and odors redolent of decaying vegetables; but, on the whole, it was rather an unsavory region, and much frequented by the costermonger and fishwoman.
The Elysian Fields were divided and subdivided into streets, rows, and alleys; some respectable, others semi-genteel, but in most cases to be defined by the three degrees of comparison—dingy, dingier, most dingy; and it was under the comparative degree that a certain street, known by the name of Beulah Place, must be classed.
It was a long narrow street, not differing much from the others that ran parallel with it, except in a general air of retirement and obscurity, owing to a “No Thoroughfare” placarded up on the blank wall of a brewery, which had rather a depressing effect on the end houses that looked full on it.
There was little that was noticeable about the street except its name—for here again the satirists had sharpened their wits, and Beulah Place looked down in conscious superiority on Paradise Row.
In conscious superiority indeed—for had not Beulah Place this distinction, that its houses were garnished with imposing flights of steps and a railed-in area, while Paradise Row opened its doors directly on the pavement?
Therefore Beulah Place noted itself eminently respectable, and put on airs; let its front and back parlors to single gentlemen or widows; and looked over its wire blinds in superb disdain at the umbrella-mender, or genteel dressmaker who lived opposite.
At the extreme corner of Beulah Place, with its one glass eye peering down High Street, was Mrs. Watkins, tea merchant and Italian warehouseman—at least, so ran the gilt-lettered inscription, which had been put up over the door in the days of her predecessor, and had remained there ever since. But it was in reality an all-sorts shop, where nearly everything edible could be procured, and to betray ignorance of Mrs. Watkins was to betray ignorance not only of Beulah Place, but of the whole of the Elysian Fields.
To be sure the long window aided the deception, and was fitted up solely with goods in the grocery line; but enter the dark low door-way, and get an odorous whiff from within, and one’s olfactory nerves would soon convince one of the contrary.
There was a flavor of everything there; a blended fragrance compounded of strong cheese, herrings, and candles, with a suspicion of matches and tarred wood, which to the uninitiated was singularly unpalatable, and suggested to them to shake off the dust of Mrs. Watkins as soon as possible.
To be sure this was only a trifle. To do her justice, Mrs. Watkins drove a very thriving trade; the very carters had a partiality for the shop, and would lurch in about twelve o’clock, with their pipes and hob-nailed boots, for a twist of tobacco or a slice of cheese, and crack clumsy jokes across the counter.
But, besides this, Mrs. Watkins had another source of profit that was at once lucrative and respectable. She let lodgings.
And very genteel lodgings they were, with a private entrance in Beulah Place, and a double door that excluded draughts and the heterogeneous odors from the shop.
These lodgers of Mrs. Watkins were the talk of the neighborhood, and many a passer-by looked curiously up at the bright windows and clean white curtains, between which in summer time bloomed the loveliest flowers, and the earliest snow-drops and crocuses in spring, in the hope of seeing two fair faces which had rather haunted their memory ever since they had first seen them.
It was six o’clock on the evening of a dreary November day. Watkins’s shop was empty, for the fog and the rawness and the cold had driven folks early to their homes; and Mrs. Watkins herself, fortified with strong tea and much buttered toast, was entering her profits on a small greasy slate, and casting furtive glances every now and then into the warm, snug parlor, where her nephew and factotum Tony was refreshing himself in his turn from the small black teapot on the hob.
A fresh, wholesome-looking woman was Mrs. Watkins, with an honest, reliable face and a twofold chin; but she had two peculiarities—she always wore the stiffest and cleanest and most crackling of print dresses, and her hair was nearly always pinned up in curl-papers under her black cap.
Mrs. Watkins was engaged in jotting down small dabs of figures on the slate and rubbing them out again, when the green baize swing-door leading to the passage was pushed back, and a tall grave-looking woman in black entered the shop and quietly approached the counter.
She was certainly a striking-looking person; in spite of the gray hair and a worn, sad expression, the face bore the trace of uncommon beauty, though all youth and freshness, animation and coloring, had faded out of it.
The profile was almost perfect, and the mouth would have been lovely too but for a certain proud droop of the lips which gave an impression of hardness and inflexibility; but the dark eyes were very soft and melancholy, and seemed to hold a world of sadness in their depths.
“Mrs. Watkins,” she began hurriedly, in a sweet, cultivated voice, and then stopped and drew back as another person came into the shop; “no, do not let me interrupt you. I was only going to say that one of the young ladies at Miss Martingale’s seems very poorly, and Miss Theresa is a little troubled about her, so I have promised to go back for an hour or two; but I have my key with me if I should be late.”
“Dear bless my heart, Mrs. Trafford,” exclaimed Mrs. Watkins, fussily, as she looked at her lodger’s pale, tired face, “you are never going out on such an evening, and all the streets swept as clean as if with a new broom; and you with your cough, and the fog, and not to mention the rawness which sucks into your chest like a lozenge;” and here Mrs. Watkins shook her head, and weighed out a quarter of a pound of mixed tea, in a disapproving manner.