Gertrude Millet's anxious look grew deeper as she sat with her work in her lap, thinking of John Huish and certain tender pa.s.sages which had somehow pa.s.sed between them; then of Lord Henry Moorpark, the pleasant, elderly n.o.bleman whose attentions had been so pleasant and so innocently received; and as she thought of him a burning blush suffused her cheeks, and she tried to recall the words he had last spoken to her.

The consequence was a fit of low spirits, which did not become high when later on Mrs Frank Morrison called, dismissed her carriage, and sat chatting for some time with her sister, Lady Millet being, she said, in the park.

"You need not tell me I look well," said Gertrude, pouting slightly. "I declare you look miserable."

"Oh no, dear, only a little low-spirited to-day. Have you called on Uncle Robert lately?"

"Without you? No."

"Then let's go."

Gertrude jumped at the suggestion, and half an hour later the sisters were making their way along Wimpole Street the gloomy, to stop at last before the most wan-looking of all the dreary houses in that most dreary street. It was a house before which no organ-man ever stopped to play, no street vendor to shout his wares, nor pa.s.ser-by to examine from top to bottom; the yellow shutters were closed, and the appearance of the place said distinctly "out of town." The windows were very dirty, but that is rather a fashion in Wimpole Street, where the windows get very dirty in a month, very much dirtier in two months, and as dirty as possible in three. They, of course, never get any worse, for when once they have arrived a this pitch they may go for years, the weather rather improving them, what with the rain's washing and the sun's bleaching.

The paint of the front door was the worst part about that house, for the sun had raised it in little blisters, which street boys could not bear to see without cracking and picking off in flakes; and the consequence was that the door looked as if it had had a bad attack of some skin disease, and a new cuticle of a paler hue was growing beneath the old.

Wimpole Street was then famous for the knockers upon its doors. They were large and resounding. In fact, a clever manipulator could raise a noise that would go rolling on a still night from nearly one end of the street to the other. For, in their wisdom, our ancestors seized the idea of a knocker on that sounding-board, a front door, as a means to warn servants downstairs that someone was waiting, by a deafening noise that appealed to those in quite a different part of the place. But this was not allowed at the house with the blistered front door, for a great staple had been placed over one side for years, and when you had pa.s.sed the two great iron extinguishers that were never used for links, and under the fantastic ironwork that had never held a lamp since the street had been lit with gas, and, ascending three steps, stood at the door, you could only contrive quite a diminutive kind of knock, such as was given upon that occasion by Renee, for Gertrude was carrying a large bouquet of flowers.

The knock was hard enough to bring a little bleached, sparrow-like man, dressed in black, to the door, and his colourless face, made more pallid by a little black silk cap he wore, brightened as he held his head first on one side, then on the other, his triangular nose adding to his sparrow-like appearance, and giving a stranger the idea that he would never kiss anyone, but would peck.

"How is my uncle this morning, Vidler?" said Gertrude.

"Capital, miss," said the little man, holding wide the door for the ladies to enter, and closing it quickly, lest, apparently, too much light should enter at the same time.

For the place was very gloomy and subdued within. The great leather porter's chair, the umbrella-stand, and the pictures all looked sombre and black. Even the two cla.s.sical figures holding lamps, that had not been lighted for a quarter of a century at least, were swarthy, and a stranger would have gone stumbling and feeling his way along; but not so Vidler, Captain Robert Millet's handy servant. He was as much at home in the gloom as an owl, and in a quick, hurried way that was almost spasmodic he led the visitors upstairs, but only to stop on the first landing.

"If I might make so bold, Miss Gertrude," he said, holding his head on one side. "I don't often see a flower now."

The girl held up the bouquet, and the little man had a long sniff with a noise as if taking a pinch of snuff, said, "Thank you, miss," and went on up to the back drawing-room door, which was a little lighter than the staircase, for the top of the shutters of one of the three tall narrow windows was open.

A glance round the room showed that it was scrupulously clean. Time had blackened the paint and ceiling, but everything that could be cleaned or polished was in the highest state of perfection.

For Valentine Vidler and his wife Salome, being very religious and conscientious people, told themselves and one another nearly every day that as the master never supervised anything it was the more their duty to keep the place in the best of order. For instance, Vidler would say:

"I don't think I shall clean all that plate over this week, Salome.

It's as bright as it can be."

When to him Salome: "Valentine, there's One above who knows all, and though your master may not know that you have not cleaned the plate, He will."

"That's very true, Salome," the little man would say with a sigh, and then set to work in a green baize ap.r.o.n, and was soon be-rouged up to the eyes as he polished away.

Another day, perhaps, it would be Salome's turn; for the temptation, as she called it, would attack her. The weather would be hot, perhaps, and a certain languid feeling, the result of a want of change, would come over her.

"Valentine," she would say, perhaps, "I think the big looking-gla.s.s in the drawing-room will do this week; it's as clean as clean."

"Hah!" would say Valentine, with a sigh, "Satan has got tight hold of you again, my dear little woman. It is your weakness that you ought to resist. Do you think the Lord cannot see those three fly-specks at the bottom corner? Resist the temptation, woman; resist it."

Then little Salome, who was a tiny plump downy woman, who somehow reminded people of a thick potato-shoot that had grown in the dark, would sigh, put on an ap.r.o.n that covered her all over except her face, climb on a pair of steps, and polish the great mirror till it was as clear as hands could make it.

She was a pleasant-faced little body, and very neatly dressed. There was a little fair sausage made up of rolled-up hair on each side of her face, two very shiny smooth surfaces of hair over her forehead, and a neat little white line up the centre, the whole being surmounted by one of those quaint high-crowned caps which project over to the front. In fact, there was, in spite of the potato-shoot allusion, a good deal of resemblance in little Mrs Vidler to a plump charity child, especially as she wore an ap.r.o.n with a bib, a white muslin kerchief crossed over her bosom, and a pair of muslin sleeves up to her elbows.

The little woman was in the drawing-room armed with a duster as Valentine showed up the young ladies, and she faced round and made two little bobs, quite in the charity-school-child fashion, as taught by those who so carefully make it the first duty of such children to obey their pastors and masters, and order themselves lowly and reverently, and make bobs and bows to--all their betters.

"Why, my dears, I am glad you're come," she exclaimed. "Miss Renee-- there, I beg your pardon--Mrs Morrison, what an age it is since I saw you! And only to think you are a married lady now, when only the other day you two were little things, and I used to bring you one in each hand, looking quite frightened, into this room."

"Ah yes, Salome, times are changed," said Renee sadly. "How is uncle?"

"Very well, my dear," said the little woman, holding her head on one side to listen in the same birdlike way adopted by her husband. "He's not in his room yet. But what beautiful flowers!"

She, too, inhaled the scent precisely in her husband's fashion, before fetching a china bowl from a chiffonier, and carefully wiping it inside and out, though it was already the perfection of cleanliness.

"A jug of clean water, if you please, Vidler," she said softly.

"Yes, my dear," said the little man, smiling at the sisters, and giving his hands a rub together, before obeying his wife.

"I was so sorry, Miss Renee--there, I must call you so, my dear; it's so natural--I was so sorry that I did not see you when you came. Only to think of my being out a whole month nursing my poor sister! I hadn't been away from the place before for twenty years, and poor Vidler was so upset without me. And I don't think," she added, nodding, "that master liked it."

"I'm sure he would not," said Gertrude; and then, the little man coming in very quietly and closing the door after him, water was poured in the china bowl, the flowers duly deposited therein and placed upon a small mahogany bracket in front of a panel in the centre of the room.

"There, my dears, I'll go now. I dare say he will not be long."

The little woman smiled at the sisters, and the little man nodded at them in a satisfied way as if he thought them very pleasant to look upon. Then, taking his wife's hand, they toddled together out of the room.

A quaint, subdued old room--clean, and yet comfortless. Upon a wet day, when a London fog hung over the streets and filled the back yards, no female could have sat in it for an hour without moistening her handkerchief with tears. For it was, in its dim twilight, like a drawing-room of the past, full of sad old memories of the dead and gone, who haunted it and clung to its furniture and chairs. It was impossible to sit there long without peopling the seats with those who once occupied them--without seeing soft, sad faces reflected in the mirrors, or hearing fancied footsteps on the faded carpet.

And it was so now, as the sisters sat thinking in silence, Renee with her head resting upon her hand, Gertrude with her eyes closed, half dreaming of what might have been.

For Gertrude's thoughts ran back to a miniature in her father's desk of a handsome, sun-browned young man in uniform, bright-eyed, keen, and animated; and she thought of what she had heard of his history: how he had loved some fair young girl before his regiment was ordered away to Canada. How he had come back to find that she had become another's, and then that some terrible struggle had occurred between him and his rival, and the young officer had been maimed for life--turned in one minute from the strong, vigorous man to a misanthrope, who dragged himself about with difficulty, half paralysed in his lower limbs, but bruised more painfully in his heart. For, broken in spirit as in body, he had shut himself up, after his long illness, never seeing a soul, never going out of the closely shuttered rooms that he had chosen for himself in his lonely faded house.

Vidler had been a drummer in his regiment, she had heard, and he had devoted himself to the master who had fetched him in when lying wounded under fire; and in due time Vidler had married and brought his little wife to the house, the couple never leaving it except on some emergency, but growing to like the darkness in which they dwelt, and sternly doing their duty by him they served.

"Poor uncle!" sighed Gertrude, as she thought of his desolate life, and her own sad position. "I wonder who it was he loved."

As the thought crossed her mind, there was a slight noise in the next room, like the tapping of a stick upon the floor, and Gertrude laid her hand upon her sister's arm.

Then the noise ceased, and the little panel, about a foot square, before which the flowers had been placed, was drawn aside, seeming to run into a groove.

The sisters did not move, but waited, knowing from old experience that at a word or movement on their part the panel would be clapped impatiently to, and that their visit would be a fruitless one.

A stranger would have thought of rats and the action of one of those rodents in what took place; for now that the panel had been slid back, all remained perfectly still, as if the mover were listening and watching. Then at last a thin, very white hand appeared, lifted the flowers out of the bowl, and they disappeared.

There was not even a rustling noise heard for a few minutes, during which the sisters sat patiently waiting.

At last there was a faint sigh; and a cold--so to speak, colourless-- voice said:

"Is Gertrude there?"

"Yes, dear uncle," said the young girl eagerly.

"Anyone else?"