CHAPTER XXXI
When Angela was still quite a child, the permanent inhabitants ofSherborne Lane, King William Street, in the city of London, used tonote a very pretty girl, of small statue and modest ways, passing out--every evening after the city gentlemen had locked up their officesand gone home--from the quiet of the lane into the roar and rush ofthe city. This young girl was Mildred James, the only daughter of astruggling, a very struggling, city doctor, and her daily mission wasto go to the cheap markets, and buy the provisions that were to lastthe Sherborne Lane household (for her father lived in the same roomsthat he practised in) for the ensuing twenty-four hours. The world wasa hard place for poor Mildred in those days of provision hunting, whenso little money had to pay for so many necessaries, and to providealso for the luxuries that were necessaries to her invalid mother.Some years later, when she was a sweet maiden of eighteen, her motherdied, but medical competition was keen in Sherborne Lane, and herremoval did not greatly alleviate the pressure of poverty. At last,one evening, when she was about twenty years of age, a certain Mr.Carr, an old gentleman with whom her father had some acquaintance,sent up a card with a pencilled message on it to the effect that hewould be glad to see Dr. James.
"Run, Mildred," said her father, "and tell Mr. Carr that I will bewith him in a minute. It will never do to see a new patient in thiscoat."
Mildred departed, and, gliding into the gloomy consulting-room like asunbeam, delivered her message to the old gentleman, who appeared tobe in some pain, and prepared to return.
"Don't go away," almost shouted the aged patient; "I have crushed myfinger in a door, and it hurts most confoundedly. You are something tolook at in this hole, and distract my attention."
Mildred thought to herself that this was an odd way of paying acompliment, if it was meant for one; but then, old gentlemen withcrushed fingers are not given to weighing their words.
"Are you Dr. James' daughter?" he asked, presently.
"Yes, sir."
"Ugh, I have lived most of my life in Sherborne Lane, and never sawanything half so pretty in it before. Confound this finger!"
At this moment the doctor himself arrived, and wanted to dismissMildred, but Mr. Carr, who was a headstrong old gentleman, vowed thatno one else should hold his injured hand whilst it was dressed, and soshe stayed just long enough for him to fall as completely in love withher shell-like face was though he had been twenty instead of nearlyseventy.
Now, Mr. Carr was not remarkable for good looks, and in addition tohaving seen out so many summers, had also buried two wives. It will,therefore, be clear that he was scarcely the suitor that a lovelygirl, conscious of capacities for deep affection, would have selectedof her own free will; but, on the other hand, he was honest and kind-hearted, and, what was more to the point, perhaps the wealthiest wine-merchant in the city. Mildred resisted as long as she could, but wantis a hard master, and a father's arguments are difficult to answer,and in the end she married him, and, what is more, made him a good andfaithful wife.
She never had any cause to regret it, for he was kindness itselftowards her, and when he died, some five years afterwards, having nochildren of his own, he left her sole legatee of all his enormousfortune, bound up by no restrictions as to re-marriage. About thistime also her father died, and she was left as much alone in the worldas it is possible for a young and pretty woman, possessing in her ownright between twenty and thirty thousand a year, to be.
Needless to say, Mrs. Carr was thenceforth one of the catches of hergeneration; but nobody could catch her, though she alone knew how manyhad tried. Once she made a list of all the people who had proposed toher; it included amongst others a bishop, two peers, three members ofparliament, no less than five army officers, an American, and adissenting clergyman.
"It is perfectly marvellous, my dear," she said to her companion,Agatha Terry, "how fond people are of twenty thousand a year, and yetthey all said that they loved me for myself, that is, all except thedissenter, who wanted me to help to 'feed his flock,' and I liked himthe best of the lot, because he was the honestest."
Mrs. Carr had a beautiful house in Grosvenor Square, a place inLeicestershire, where she hunted a little, a place in the Isle ofWight that she rarely visited, and, lastly, a place at Madeira whereshe lived for nearly half the year. There never had been a breath ofscandal against her name, nor had she given cause for any. "As forloving," she would say, "the only things she loved were beetles andmummies," for she was a clever naturalist, and a faithful student ofthe lore of the ancient Egyptians. The beetles, she would explain, hadbeen the connecting link between the two sciences, since beetles hadled her to scarabaei, and scarabaei to the human husks with which theyare to be found; but this statement, though amusing, was not strictlyaccurate, as she had in reality contracted the taste from her latehusband, who had left her a large collection of Egyptian antiquities.
"I do adore a mummy," she would say, "I am small enough in mind andbody already, but it makes me feel inches smaller, and I like tomeasure my own diminutiveness."
She was not much of a reader; life was, she declared, too short towaste in study; but, when she did take up a book, it was generally ofa nature that most women of her class would have called stiff, andthen she could read it without going to sleep.
In addition to these occupations, Mrs. Carr had had various crazes atdifferent stages of her widowhood, which had now endured for some fiveyears. She had travelled, she had "gone-in for art;" once she hadspeculated a little, but finding that, for a woman, it was a losinggame, she was too shrewd to continue this last pastime. But she alwayscame back to her beetles and her mummies.
Still, with all her money, her places, her offers of marriage, and herself-made occupations, Mildred Carr was essentially "a weary woman,sunk deep in ease, and sated with her life." Within that little frameof hers, there beat a great active heart, ever urging her onwardstowards an unknown end. She would describe herself as an "ill-regulated woman," and the description was not without justice, for shedid not possess that placid, even mind which is so necessary to thecomfort of English ladies, and which enables many of them to bury ahusband or a lover as composedly as they take him. She would havegiven worlds to be able to fall in love with some one, to fill up thedaily emptiness of her existence with another's joys and griefs, butshe _could_ not. Men passed before her in endless procession, allsorts and conditions of them, and for the most part were anxious tomarry her, but they might as well have been a string of wax dolls foraught she could care about them. To her eyes, they were nothing morethan a succession of frock-coats and tall hats, full of shine andemptiness, signifying nothing. For their opinion, too, and that of thesociety which they helped to form, she had a most complete and wrong-headed contempt. She cared nothing for the ordinary laws of sociallife, and was prepared to break through them on emergency, as a waspbreaks through a spider's web. Perhaps she guessed that a good deal ofbreaking would be forgiven to the owner of such a lovely face, andmore than twenty thousand a year. With all this, she was extremelyobservant, and possessed, unknown to herself, great powers of mind,and great, though dormant, capacities for passion. In short, thislittle woman, with the baby face, smiling and serene as the blue skythat hides the gathering hurricane, was rather odder than the majorityof her sex, which is perhaps saying a great deal.
One day, about a week before Arthur departed from the Abbey House,Agatha Terry was sitting in the blue drawing-room in the house inGrosvenor Square, when Mrs. Carr came in, almost at a run, slammed thedoor behind her, and plumped herself down in a chair with a sigh ofrelief.
"Agatha, give orders to pack up. We will go to Madeira by the nextboat."
"Goodness gracious, Mildred! across that dreadful bay again; and justthink how hot it will be, and the beginning of the season too."
"Now, Agatha, I'm going, and there's an end of it, so it is no usearguing. You can stay here, and give a series of balls and dinners, ifyou like."
"Nonsense, dear; me
give parties indeed, and you at Madeira! Why, it'sjust as though you asked Ruth to entertain the reapers without Naomi.I'll go and give the orders; but I do hope that it will be calm. Whydo you want to go now?"
"I'll tell you. Lord Minster has been proposing to me again, andannounces his intention of going on doing so till I accept him. Youknow, he has just got into the Cabinet, so he has celebrated the eventby asking me to marry him, for the third time."
"Poor fellow! Perhaps he is very fond of you."
"Not a bit of it. He is fond of my good looks and my money. I willtell you the substance of his speech this morning. He stood like this,with his hands in his pockets, and said, 'I am now a cabinet minister.It is a good thing that a cabinet minister should have somebodypresentable to sit at the head of his table. You are presentable. Iappreciate beauty, when I have time to think about it. I observe thatyou are beautiful. I am not very well-off for my position. You, on theother hand, are immensely rich. With your money, I can, in time,become Prime Minister. It is, consequently, evidently to my advantagethat you should marry me, and I have sacrificed a very importantappointment in order to come and settle it.'"
Agatha laughed.
"And how did you answer him?"
"In his own style. 'Lord Minster,' I said, 'I am, for the third time,honoured by your flattering proposal, but I have no wish to ornamentyour table, no desire to expose my beauty to your perpetualadmiration, and no ambition to advance your political career. I do notlove you, and I had rather become the wife of a crossing-sweeper thatI loved, than that of a member of the government for whom I have_every_ respect, but no affection.'
"'As the wife of a crossing-sweeper, it is probable,' he answered,'that you would be miserable. As my wife, you would certainly beadmired and powerful, and consequently happy.'
"'Lord Minster,' I said, 'you have studied human nature but verysuperficially, if you have not learnt that it is better for a woman tobe miserable with the man she loves, than "admired, powerful, andconsequently happy," with one who has no attraction for her.'
"'Your remark is interesting,' he replied; 'but I think that there issomething paradoxical about it. I must be going now, as I have onlyfive minutes to get to Westminster; but I will think it over, andanswer it when we renew our conversation, which I propose to do veryshortly,' and he was gone before I could get in another word."
"But why should that make you go to Madeira?"
"Because, my dear, if I don't, so sure as I am a living woman, thatman will tire me out and marry me, and I dislike him, and don't wantto marry him. I have a strong will, but his is of iron."
And so it came to pass that the names of Mrs. Carr, Miss Terry, andthree servants, appeared upon the passenger list of Messrs. DonaldCurrie & Co.'s royal mail steamship _Warwick Castle_, due to sail forMadeira and the Cape ports on the 14th of June.