Mattie:-A Stray Volume I Part 29

"What are _you_ sitting up for?"

"To see to the gas-burners in the drawing-room."

"Turn the gas off at the meter, and leave him in the dark next time,"

said Mr. Wesden. "You can go to bed now. I'll sit up for a little while; I'm going to sleep here to-night."

"Indeed, sir! Oh! sir, I hope that nothing serious _has_ happened?"

"Nothing at all. It's not so very wonderful that I should come to my own house, I suppose, Mattie?"

"N--no," she answered, hesitating; "but it's past one o'clock."

"I couldn't sleep--and Harriet was at home with the good lady," he said, as if by way of excuse; adding very sulkily, a moment afterwards, "I never could sleep in that Camberwell place--I wish I'd never left the shop!"

Mr. Wesden hazarded no further reason for his eccentric arrival, and Mattie went up-stairs to lay it with the rest of her stock of mysteries daily acc.u.mulating round her. Mr. Wesden remained down-stairs, fidgeting with shop drawers, counting the money left in the till, and wandering up and down in a reckless, hypochondriacal fashion, very remarkable in a man of his phlegmatic temperament, and which it was as well for Mattie not to have seen.

Finally he groped his way down-stairs into the kitchen, and the coal-cellar where the gas-meter was placed, and with a wrench cut off the supply of gas for that night, casting Sidney Hinchford so suddenly into darkness, that he leaped up with an exclamation far from appropriate to his character.

"What the devil next?"

The next thing for Sidney was to knock over the chair he had been sitting upon, which came down on the drawing-room floor with a b.u.mping noise that shook the house, and woke up his father, who shouted forth his name.

"Coming, coming,'' said Sidney, walking into the double-bedded room, and giving up further study or brooding for that night.

"What's the matter, Sid, my boy?" asked the father, from the corner; "haven't you been in bed yet?"

"Must have fallen asleep in the next room, I think."

"And a terrible row you've made in waking, Sid. Good night, my boy--G.o.d bless you!"

The old gentleman turned on his side, and was soon indulging in the snores of the just again. There was a night-light burning there, and Sidney took it from its saucer of water and held it above his head, looking down at that old, world-worn, yet handsome face of the father.

"G.o.d bless _you_!" he said, re-echoing his father's benediction; "how will you bear it when the time comes, I wonder?"

CHAPTER VI.

A BURST OF CONFIDENCE.

Yes, Mr. Wesden, late of Suffolk Street, had become nervous and eccentric in his old age--many people do, besides stationers. He had retired from business too late to enjoy the relaxation from business cares; he had better have died in harness than have given up the shop, for isolation therefrom began to work its evil.

He had not had much to worry him in his middle age; his youth had been a struggle, but he had been young and strong to bear with it, blest by a homely and affectionate wife, who struggled with him and consoled him; then had followed for more years than we care to reckon just now, the everyday life of a London shopkeeper--a life of business-making and money-making, plodding on in one groove, with little change to distract his attention, or trouble his brain. All quiet and monotonous, but possessing for John Wesden peace of mind, which, if not exactly happiness, was akin to it. And now in his old age, when every habit had been burned into him as it were, business was over, and idleness became a sore trial to him. And then after idleness came his daughter to worry him, not to mention Mattie, who worried him most of all, for reasons which we shall more closely particularize a chapter or two hence.

So with these troubles bearing all at once upon a mind that had been at its ease in its stronger days, Mr. Wesden turned eccentric. Want of method rendered him fidgety, the mysteries in _his_ path, as well as Mattie's, perplexed him; he was verging upon hypochondriacism without being aware of it himself; and that suspicious nature which had been born with him, began to develop itself more, and give promise of bearing forth bitter fruit. Possibly before his concern for his daughter's health, was his concern for the shop in Great Suffolk Street, which he considered that he had neglected in leaving to the charge of a girl not eighteen years of age, and which, since the robbery, was an oppression that weighed heavily upon him. He was full of fancies concerning that shop; his mind--which unfortunately was fed by fancies at that time--began to give way somewhat when he took it in his head to think something had happened, at twelve o'clock at night, and start at once for Great Suffolk Street, as we have noticed in our preceding chapter.

The ice once broken, the eccentricities of Mr. Wesden did not diminish; he had his old bed-room seen to in the house again, and surprised Mattie more than once after this by sudden appearances at untimely hours. He had a right to look after his business--did _people_ think that he had lost his interest in the shop, because he lived away from it?--did _people_ think that he was not sharp enough for business still? With these changes he became more nervous, more irritable, and less considerate; yet brightening up sometimes for weeks together, and becoming his old stolid self again, to the relief of his wife and daughter. That daughter detected the change in her father also, woke up at last to the fact that her own thoughtfulness had tended to unsettle him, and became more like her old self also--or rather, more of an actress, with the power to impersonate that self from which she had seceded.

Everything was going wrong with our characters, when Harriet Wesden broke through the ice one night with that impulsiveness which she had not lived down or grown out of. It was strange that she always broke down in Mattie's presence; that only in the company of the stray did she feel the wish to avow all, and seek counsel in return. To Harriet Wesden the impulse was incomprehensible, but it was beyond her strength, at times, and carried her away. She loved Mattie; she saw in her the faithful friend rather than the servant; she knew that the child's pa.s.sionate love for her had grown with Mattie's growth, and absorbed her being. But love was but half the reason with Harriet, and she would not own--which was the secret--that the weak and timid nature sought relief from a mind that had grown strong and practical in a rough school.

A need of sympathy, a perplexity becoming greater every day, allied to a love for the confidante, brought about the truth, which escaped in the old fashion.

She had been paying her visit--an afternoon one in this instance--to Mattie at the shop; it was a dull season, and no business stirring; the December gloom preyed upon the spirits of most people abroad that day; it affected Harriet more than usual, or the pressure of the old thoughts reduced her to subjection at last. The two girls were sitting by the fireside, Mattie with her face turned to the shop door, when Harriet Wesden laid both her hands suddenly on our heroine's.

"Mattie," she cried, "look me in the face a moment!"

"Come round to the little light there is left, then."

"There!"

Harriet Wesden set her pretty face, pale and anxious then, more into the light required. Mattie regarded it attentively.

"Isn't it a false face?" asked Harriet, in an excited manner--"the face of one who brings sorrow and wrong to all who know her?"

"I hope not."

"It is!" she a.s.serted. "Oh! Mattie, I am in distress, and terrible doubt--I have been foolish, and acted inconsiderately--I am in a maze, that becomes more tangled with every step I take--tell me what to do!"

"You ought to know best, dear--you should not have any troubles which you are afraid to confess to your father and mother, and--and Mr.

Hinchford."

"Yes, yes, but not to them first of all," she cried. "Oh! Mattie, I am not a wicked girl, G.o.d knows--I have never had a thought of wickedness--I would like everybody in the world to be as happy as I was once myself."

"Once!" repeated Mattie. "Oh! I won't have that."

"I don't think," she added, very thoughtfully regarding the fire, "that I shall be ever happy again. Now, Mattie dear, I'm going to swear you to secrecy, and then ask what you would do in my place."

"You're very kind to trust in me--but is there no one else?--Miss Eveleigh, for instance."

"She's a worse silly than I am!"

"Your mother."

"I should frighten her to death--she and father are both weak, and altering very much. Oh! Mattie, if they should die and leave me alone in the world!"

"Need you get nervous about that just now?"

"I'm nervous about everything--I'm unsettled--Mattie, I have acted very treacherously to _him_."

"To Mr. Sidney!--not to Mr. Sidney?"

"Yes," was the answer.

Mattie became excited. How had it occurred?--who had done it?--who had stolen her thoughts away from him?

"I have been trying very hard to love him--sometimes I think I do love him better than the--the _other_--just for a while, when he is very happy sitting near me, and very full of the future, that can never, never come."