Mattie:-A Stray Volume I Part 13

Mattie was at the door, when Harriet called her back.

"Mattie, never a word about this again. I daresay I shall soon forget it, for I am very young; and though it was LOVE, yet I won't let it break my heart. I'm very wretched now. I shall be glad," she added with a yawn, "to lie down and think of all my sorrows."

"And sleep them away."

"Oh! I shall not close an eye to-night. Good night, Mattie."

Miss Harriet Wesden, a young lady who had begun life early, was sleeping soundly three minutes after Mattie's departure from the room.

CHAPTER III.

OUR CHARACTERS.

In our last chapter we have implied that life began early for Harriet Wesden. Before her school-days were finished, and with that precocity for which school-girls of the present era are unhappily distinguished, she was thinking of her lover, and const.i.tuting herself the heroine of a little romance, all the more dangerous for being unreal and out of the common track. A tender-hearted girl, with a head not the most strong in the world, is easily impressed by the sentiment, real or a.s.sumed, of the first good-looking young fellow whom she may meet. In her own opinion she is not too young to receive admiration, and the consciousness of having impressed one of the opposite s.e.x, arouses her vanity, changes the current of her thoughts, makes the world for awhile a very different place--bright, etherial and unreal. All this very dangerous ground to tread, but the more delightful for its pitfalls; all this a something that has occurred in a greater or less degree to most of us in our time, though we have the good sense to say nothing about it, or to laugh at the follies and the troubles we rashly sought in our nonage. Boys and girls begin their courtships early in these latter days--there is not a girl of sixteen who does not consider herself fit to love and be loved, however demure she may appear, or however much she may be kept back by detestable short frocks and frilled indescribables. And as for our boys, why, they are men of the world immediately they leave school--men of a world that is growing more rapid in its revolutions, and hardens its inhabitants wonderfully fast. It is a singular fact in the history of shop-keeping, that children's toys are becoming unfashionable. "Bless you, sir, children don't buy toys now, they're much too old for those amus.e.m.e.nts!" was the a.s.sertion of one of the trade to the writer of this work. And how many little misses and masters can most of us call to mind who are growing pale over their fancy work, their books, and their "collections," children who will do anything but play, and have souls above "Noah's Arks."

Therefore, in these precocious times, Harriet Wesden, seventeen next month, was no exceptional creature; moreover, she had been to a boarding-school, where she had met with many of her own age who were twice as womanly and worldly--big girls, who were always talking about "the chaps," as Mattie had inelegantly phrased it.

There is no occasion in this place to retrace the school-career of Harriet Wesden, to see how much she has kept back or extenuated; her story to Mattie was a truthful one, told with no drawbacks, but with a half-pride in her achievements which her girlish sorrows were not capable of concealing. There was something satisfactory in having loved and having been loved; and though the love had vanished away, still the reminiscence was not wholly painful, however much she might fancy so at that period.

Mattie had listened to her story, and offered all the consolation in her power; Mattie was a girl of hard, plain facts, and looked more soberly at the world than her contemporaries. She had a dark knowledge of the worst part of it, and her early years had aged her more than she was aware of herself--aged her thoughts rather than her heart, for she was always cheerful, and her spirits were never depressed; she went her way in life quietly and earnestly, grateful for the great change by which that life had been characterized; grateful to all who had helped to turn it in a different channel. At this period, Mattie was happy; there was nothing to trouble her; it was an important post to hold in that stationer's shop; everybody had confidence in her, and had given her kind words; she had learned to know right from wrong; they were interested in her moral progress, both the shopkeeper and the lodgers on the first floor; she was more than content with her position in society--she was thankful for it.

The Hinchfords had maintained their interest in Mattie, from the day of her attempt to explain her long search for the brooch. The father, a student of human nature, as he termed himself, had persuaded her to attend evening school, to study to improve in reading and writing at home; and Master Hinchford, who wrote a capital hand, set her copies in his leisure, and gave his verdict on her calligraphic performances.

Mattie s.n.a.t.c.hed at the elements of her education in a fugitive manner; Mr. Wesden did not object to her progress, but she was his servant, afterwards his shop-woman, and he wanted his money's worth out of her, like a man who understood business in all its branches. Mattie never neglected work for her studies, and yet made rapid advancement; and, by-and-bye, Mr. Hinchford, during one of his quiet interviews with the stationer, had obtained for her more time to attend her evening cla.s.ses--and hence the improvement which we have seen in Mattie. So time had gone on, till Miss Wesden's return for good--so far, then, had the stationer's daughter and the stray made progress.

Mattie, with a judgment beyond her years, had perceived the evanescent nature of Harriet Wesden's romance, and prophesied concerning it. She did not believe in the depth or intensity of Harriet's sorrow; moreover, she knew Harriet was not of a fretful disposition, and that new faces and new pursuits would exercise their usual effect upon a nature impressionable, and--just a little weak! Mattie was a judge of character without being aware of it, and her own unimpressionability set her above her fellows, and gave her a clear insight into events that were pa.s.sing around her. A girl of observation also, who let few things--serious or trivial--escape her, but glanced at them in their revolutions, and remembered them, if necessary. This acuteness had possibly been derived from her hand-to-mouth existence in the old days; in her time of affluence, the habit of storing up and taking mental notes of everything, had not deserted her. Take her altogether, she was a sharp girl, and suited Mr. Wesden's business admirably.

Quietly Mattie set herself to take stock of Harriet Wesden, after the latter's confession, to note if the love to which she had confessed were likely to be a permanency or not. Harriet and Mattie spoke but little concerning the adventures at Brighton; Mattie shunned the subject, and turned the conversation when Harriet felt p.r.o.ne to dilate upon her melancholy sensations. Besides, Mattie knew her place, kept to the shop, whither Harriet seldom followed her--that young lady having a soul above the business, by which she had benefited. Mr. and Mrs. Wesden rather admired this; they had saved money, and the business, to the latter at least, was but a secondary consideration; they had paid a large sum to make a lady of Harriet, and when they retired from business, Harriet would go with them, and be their hope and comfort, with her lady-like ways, in their little suburban residence. They were not slow in letting Harriet know this; they spoke of a private life very frequently; when Harriet was two years older, they would retire and live happily ever afterwards! Or, Mr. Wesden thought more prudently, if they did not give up the business for good, still they would live away from it, and leave the management of it to some trustworthy personage--Mattie, for instance, who would see after their interests, whilst they took their ease in their old age.

Mr. Hinchford, senior, had listened to these flying remarks more than once; he spoke of his own establishment in the future in _his_ turn--where and how he should live with that clever boy of his, who would redeem the family credit by a.s.suming the Hinchfords' legitimate position.

"I kept my carriage once, Mr. Wesden--I hope to do it again. My boy's very clever, very energetic--he has gained the esteem of his employers, and I believe that they will make a partner of him some day."

What Sidney Hinchford believed, did not appear upon the surface. He was a youth--say a young man--who kept a great many thoughts to himself, and pushed on in life steadily and undemonstratively. His father was right; Sidney had gained the esteem of his employers; he _was_ very clever at figures, handy as a correspondent, never objected to over-work, did more work than any one of the old hands; evinced an apt.i.tude for business and an interest in his employers' success--very remarkable in these egotistical times. His employers were wholesale tea-dealers in Mincing Lane--well-to-do men, without families of their own--men who had risen from the ranks, after the fashion of City-men, who have a nice habit of getting on in the world. Sidney Hinchford's manner pleased them, but they kept their own counsel, and watched his progress--and Sidney's was a remarkable progress, for a youth of his age.

Sidney, be it said here, was an ambitious youth in his heart. His father had been a rich man; his father's family, from which they held themselves aloof, were rich people, and his hope was in recovering the ground which, by some means or other never satisfactorily explained to him, the Suffolk Street lodgers had managed to lose. Young men brought up in City counting-houses have a wonderful reverence for money; Sidney saw its value early in life, and became just a trifle too careful; for over-carefulness makes a man suspicious, and keeps the heart from properly expanding with love and charity to those who need it. An earnest and an honourable young man, as we hope to prove without labelling our character at the outset, yet he stood too much upon what was legal, what was a fair price, or a good bargain, and pushed his way onwards without much thought for the condition of beings less lucky than he. There was a prize ahead of him; he could see it above the crowd which jostled him for bread, for fame, for other prizes worth the winning, and by which he set no store, and he kept his eyes upon it steadfastly and dreamed of it in his sleep. He became grave-faced and stern before his time--he was a man at nineteen, with a man's thoughts, and doing a man's work.

And then a something came to soften him and turn his thoughts a little aside from the beaten track, and this is how it came about.

CHAPTER IV.

A NEW ADMIRER.

Master Sidney Hinchford in old times had been a playfellow of Harriet Wesden--lodging in the same house together, returning from school at the same hours, they had become almost brother and sister, entertaining for each other that child's affection, which it was but natural to expect would have been developed under the circ.u.mstances.

Mr. Hinchford, a widower, with no great ability in the management of children, was glad to see his boy find an attraction in the stationer's parlour, and leave him to the study of his books or the perusal of his newspapers, after the long office-hours. He was a thoughtful man, too, who considered it best for his son to form a friendship with one of his own age; and he had become attached to the Wesdens, as people who had been kind to him and his boy in a great trouble. And it was satisfactory to pair off Harriet Wesden--who was in the way of business, and generally considered at that period a tiresome child, seldom of one mind longer than five minutes together--with Master Hinchford, and so keep her out of mischief and out of the shop where the draughts were many and likely to affect her health. This good understanding had never diminished between Harriet Wesden and Sidney Hinchford; only the boarding-school at last had set them apart. When they met once a year, they were still the same warm friends, and it was like a brother meeting a sister when the Christmas holidays came round. The last holiday but one, when Harriet, who had grown rapidly, returned from Brighton, a girl close upon sixteen years of age, there was a little shyness at first between them, which wore off in a few days. Sidney met her after a year's absence without kissing her, stared and stammered, and found it hard to a.s.sume a natural demeanour, and it was only Harriet's frank and girlish ways that eventually set him at his ease.

The present Christmas all was altered, very much for the worse, Sidney thought. He had met, for the first time, a pale-faced, languishing young lady--a lady who had become very beautiful certainly, but was not the Harriet Wesden whom he had hitherto known. He had escorted her from the Brighton station, thinking that she had altered very much, and that he did not like her new ways half so well as the old; he had seen her every evening after that return, noted the variableness of her moods, set her down, in his critical way, for an eccentric girl, whom it was impossible to understand.

If she were dull, he fancied he had offended her; if she were lively, he became thin-skinned enough to imagine that she was making fun of him. He did not like it, he thought; but he found the new Harriet intruding upon his business ideas, getting between him and the rows of figures in his ledger, perplexing him with the last look she gave him, and the last musical word that had rung in his ears. He did not believe that he was going to fall in love with her--not when he was really in love with her, and found his sensations a nuisance.

And Harriet Wesden, who had already succ.u.mbed to the love-G.o.d, and been enraptured by the dulcet notes of the stranger, she thought Sidney Hinchford had not improved for the better; that his gla.s.ses rendered him almost plain, that his dry hard voice grated on her ears, and that he had even grown quite a cross-looking young man. She took occasion to tell him these unpleasant impressions with a sisterly frankness to which he appeared to object; gave him advice as to deportment, set of his neckerchief, size of his gloves, and only became a little thoughtful when she noted the effect which her advice had upon him, and the lamb-like docility with which he obeyed all her directions. Finally, all her spirits came back; she had her doubts as to the state of Sidney Hinchford's heart, and whether her first judgment on his personal appearance were correct in the main; she began to observe him more closely; life appeared to present an object in it once more; her vanity--for she was a girl who knew she was pretty, and was proud of the influence which her pretty face exercised--was flattered by his rapt attention; and though she should never love anybody again--never, never in all her life!--yet it was pleasant to know that Sidney was thinking of her, and to see how a smile or a frown of hers brightened his looks or cast them back into shadow.

Harriet Wesden was partial to experimentalizing on the effect which her appearance might create on society. She was not a strong-minded girl, who despised appearances; on the contrary, as weak and as vain as that Miss Smith or Miss Brown, whose demerits our wives discuss over their tea-tables. She was not strong-minded--she was pretty--and she was seventeen years of age!

If she went for a walk, or on a shopping excursion, she was particular about the bonnet she wore; and if young men, and old men too, some of them, looked admiringly at her pretty face as they pa.s.sed her, she was flattered at the attention in her heart, although she kept steadily on her way, and looked not right or left in her progress. If the army of nondescripts in the great drapers' was thrown into a small flutter at her appearance therein, and white neckclothed servility struggled behind the boxes for the distinction of waiting on her, it was a gratification which she felt all the more for remaining so lady-like and unmoved on the high chair before the counter. She was a girl who knew her attractions, and was proud of them; but unfortunately she was a girl who knew but little else, and who thought but of little else just then.

There was a pleasure in knowing that, let her step into any part of the London streets, people would notice her, even stop and look after her; and it did not strike her that there were other faces as pretty as hers, who received the same amount of staring and gaping at, and met with the same little "romantic" incidents occasionally.

From her boarding-school days, Harriet had been inclined to romance; the one foolish _escapade_ had tinged life with romantic hues, and pretty as she was, her opinion of her own good looks was considerably higher than any one else's. She pa.s.sed through life from seventeen to eighteen years of age taking everything as a compliment--flattered by the rude stares, the impertinent smiles from shallow-brained puppies who leer at every woman _en route_; rather pleased than otherwise if a greater idiot or a nastier beast than his contemporaries tracked her footsteps homewards, and lingered about Great Suffolk Street in the hope of seeing her again.

All this the spell of her beauty which lured men towards her; all this without one thought of harm--simply an irresistible vanity that took delight in her influence, and was pleased with immoderate fooleries.

Pretty, vain, foolish, and fond of attention, on the one side; but good-tempered, good-hearted, and innocent of design on the other. A b.u.t.terfly disposition, that would carry its owner through life if the sun shone, but would be whirled heaven knows where in a storm. She would have been happy all her life, had all mankind been up to the dead level of honest intentions, which it is not, just at present, thanks to the poor wretches like us who get our living by story-telling.

Most young ladies const.i.tuted like Harriet Wesden have an ordeal to pa.s.s through for better for worse; if for worse, G.o.d help them! Harriet Wesden's came in due course.

It was, in the beginning, but another chapter of romance--another conquest! Love at first sight in London Streets, and the fervour of a new-born pa.s.sion carrying the devotee out of the track, and leading him to follow in her footsteps, worshipping at a distance. It had occurred twice before, and was a compliment to the power of her charms--her heart quite fluttered at these little breaks in a somewhat monotonous existence. It was rather aggravating that the romance always ended in an old-fashioned bookseller's shop in Great Suffolk Street, where "the mysterious strangers" were jostled into the mud by people with baskets, and then run down by bawling costers with barrows. That was not a nice end to the story, and though she wished the story to conclude at the door, yet she would have preferred something more graceful as a "wind-up." Nevertheless, take it for all in all, a satisfactory proof that she had a face pretty enough to lure people out of their way, and rob them of their time--lead them without a "mite of encouragement" on her part to follow her fairy footsteps. If there were hypocrisy in her complaints to Mattie concerning the "impudence" of the fellows, she scarcely knew it herself; and Mattie would not believe in hypocrisy in the girl whom she served with a Balderstonian fidelity. The third fugitive adorer of the stationer's daughter was of a different stamp to his predecessors. He was one of a cla.s.s--a gentleman by birth and position, and a prowler by profession. A prowler in fine clothes of fashionable cut, hanging about fashionable thoroughfares when London was in town, and going down to fashionable watering-places when London needed salt water. A man of the lynx order of bipeds, hunting for prey at all times and seasons, meeting with many rebuffs, and anon--and alas!--with sufficient encouragement--attracted by every fresh, innocent face; seeking it out as his profession; following it with a pertinacity that would have been creditable in any other pursuit--in fact, a scamp of the first water!

Harriet Wesden had gone westward in search of a book ordered by a customer, and had met this man, when homeward bound, in Regent Street.

Harriet's face attracted him, and in a business-like manner, which told of long practice, he started in pursuit, regulating his conduct by the future manoeuvres of the object in view. Harriet fluttered on her way homewards, conscious, almost by intuition, that she was followed; proceeding steadily in a south-eastern direction, and pertinaciously keeping the back of her straw bonnet to the pursuer. Had she looked behind once, our prowler would have increased his pace, and essayed to open a conversation--a half smile, even a look of interest, the ghost of an _oeillade_ would have been sufficient test of character for him, and he would have chanced his fortunes by a _coup d'etat_.

But he was in doubt. Once in crossing the Strand, towards Waterloo Bridge, he managed to veer round and confront her, but she never glanced towards him; so with a consideration not generally apparent in prowlers, he contented himself with following her home. He had his time on his hands--he had not met with an adventure lately--he was approaching a region that was not well known to him, and the smell of which disgusted him; but there was a something in Harriet Wesden's face which took him gingerly along, and he was a man who always followed his adventures to an end. Cool, calculating and daring, he would have made an excellent soldier--being brought up as an idler, he turned out a capital scoundrel.

Harriet reached her own door and gave a half timid, half inquiring glance round, before she pa.s.sed into the shop; our prowler took stock of the name and the number--he had an admirable memory--examined everything in the shop window; walked on the opposite side of the way; looked up at the first and second floor, and met with nothing to reward his vigilance but the fierce face of old Hinchford; finally entered the shop and purchased some cigars, grinding his teeth quietly to himself over Mr.

Wesden's suspicions of his sovereign being a counterfeit.

We should not have dwelt upon this incident, had it thus ended, or had no effect upon our story's progress. But, on the contrary, from the man's persistency, strange results evolved.

Twice or thrice a week this tall, high-shouldered, moustached _roue_, of five-and-thirty, appeared in Suffolk Street--patronized the bookseller's shop by purchases--hulked about street corners, watching the house, and catching a glimpse of Harriet occasionally. This was the Brighton romance over again, only Harriet was a year older now, and the hero of the story was sallow-faced and sinister--there was danger to any modest girl in those little scintillating eyes of his; and that other hero had been much younger, and had really loved her, she believed!

Pertinacity appears like devotion to some minds, and our prowler had met with his reward more than once by keeping doggedly to his post; he held his ground therefore, and watched his opportunity. Harriet Wesden had become frightened by this time; the adventure had lost its romantic side, and there was something in her new admirer's face which warned even her, a girl of no great penetration.

Mattie was always Harriet's _confidante_ in these matters--Harriet was fond of asking advice how to proceed, although she did not always take the same with good grace. That little, black-eyed confidante kept watch in her turn upon the prowler, and resolved in her mind the best method of action.

"I'm afraid of him, Mattie," whispered Harriet; "I should not like father to know he had followed me home, lest he should think I had given the man encouragement, and father can be very stern when his suspicions are aroused. Besides, I shouldn't like Sidney to know."

"But he wouldn't believe that you had given him encouragement; he thinks too much of you, I fancy."

"You're full of fancies, Mattie."

"And--oh! there's the man again, looking under the _London Journals_.

How very much like the devil in a French hat he is, to be sure!"