THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER

Vol. XX.—No. 1005.]

[Price One Penny.

APRIL 1, 1899.

[Transcriber’s Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH. VARIETIES. A RAISED FLOWER-BED. ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE. HOUSEHOLD HINTS. THANK GOD FOR MAY. A HAPPY HEALTHY GIRLHOOD. “THAT LUNCHEON!” LETTERS FROM A LAWYER. THREE GIRL-CHUMS, AND THEIR LIFE IN LONDON ROOMS. “OUR HERO.” ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH

All rights reserved.]

CHAPTER I.

A lady came out of a little house set in the corner of a quiet street on the northern edge of Bloomsbury. The house she left was tiny and odd-shaped, and seemed to have been built as an afterthought on a remnant of ground spared from the erection of its high, solemn, symmetrical neighbours, which towered two storeys above it. Among the dark dingy brick houses its front alone was painted, and it was also rounded in form, probably to give a little more space to its small rooms. It had a verandah too, whose top made a sort of balcony for the upper windows, and the whole was decorated by bright hardy creepers.

As the lady left the house, she proceeded to cross the road. About midway she paused, and looking back, she smiled and nodded to somebody not very distinctly visible. Then something moving at the French window opening on the verandah caught her eye. This was a maid-servant with a little child, and the lady, nodding with greater energy and kissing her hand, hurried on her way.

She had a light, swift step, and a bright mobile face. But it bore a strain of repressed, intense emotion scarcely to be understood in a pretty young woman with a houseful of living treasures.

On and on she went, threading her way across squares and along streets, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, her thoughts evidently turned within herself. At last she emerged at the south-western side of Bloomsbury, into a street{418} chiefly taken up by shops and hotels. She slackened her pace a little, as one may if one wishes to prolong a pleasant hope which may not be crowned by realisation.

She paused opposite a shop window, wherein, backed by a half-curtain of heavy green serge, stood three low easels. Two bore sketches, one of an opal dawn over a mass of low red roofs; the other of a lurid sunset above a forest of spires and masts rising from a purplish mist. But the centre easel was empty.

She gave a slight exclamation, and hastily entered the shop. She was not long inside. When she came out, she had her purse in her hands. Though she had a smile on her lips, the emotion in her face was but more vivid, as if fuel had been added to the inner flame.

She did not retrace her steps to the little corner house with the creeper-draped verandah. She went on westward, through the quiet streets at the back of Oxford Street until she reached a long, decorous thoroughfare many of whose doors were adorned with brass plates bearing the names of well-known doctors. Again she slackened her pace and looked at her watch.

Very slowly did she walk past one great house, with heavy stained glass in the dining-room windows, and an elaborate gorgon’s head for the brass knocker. As she drew near the broad white steps, the door, which bore the name of Dr. Thomas Ivery, opened, and a woman came out, hastily drawing a veil over tear-stained features. With a sudden movement, our pedestrian stepped forward and arrested the staid man-servant in the very act of closing the door.

“Can I see Dr. Ivery?” she asked.

“Well, ma’am”—the well-trained servant hesitated—“his consulting hours are just over. Have you an appointment with him?”

“No,” she frankly admitted. “But I think he may see me. Will you ask him, please?—say that Mrs. Challoner of Pelham Street will be so grateful if he can spare her a few minutes.”

“I will ask him, ma’am,” answered the man of the imperturbable face. “Will you wait here for his answer?” And he showed her into the front room with the stained glass windows, of whose glories in the deepening gloom of the autumn afternoon little was visible save one waving streak of crimson like a stream of blood.

To her tense mood, the room seemed heavy with the atmosphere of doom. She wondered whether the apartment had any other uses, whether a happy family ever gathered about the great hearth, or a merry party ever sat around the long dining-table. There were big pictures on the walls, though all she could see of them was spaces of darkness and mystery enclosed by heavy gilt frames. A bust stood ghostly in the furthest corner.

She had not to wait long. The man-servant threw open the door.

“Dr. Ivery will see Mrs. Challoner,” he announced, as if she were one of a waiting group. “Will you walk this way, madam.”

She followed him along a gloomy passage. He ushered her into a room, cheerful and homelike compared with that she had left. This got the last of the day’s brightness through a big west window overlooking some open space; it was lined with books; a great blue jar filled with red flowers stood in one corner; one or two homely crayon portraits and weak little water-colours hung immediately behind the doctor, as he sat in front of his desk.

“Mrs. Challoner?” he said, half-interrogatively. He had never seen her in walking dress before. There was a suggestion of anxiety in his tone.

“Yes, Mrs. Challoner, Pelham Street,” she humbly explained. “Will you forgive me, sir, and tell me if I am doing wrong. I so want to speak to you about my husband.”

“Ah, your husband,” echoed the doctor. “Yes, yes—nothing wrong anew, I hope.”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “All is going on well, so well that I know——” she paused. “I want to consult you privately, Dr. Ivery. I could get no opportunity while Charlie was so very ill, and since he has been better only the young doctor has come, so I thought if I might visit you here—if you will forgive me?”

“Certainly, Mrs. Challoner, certainly. A private conversation with a patient’s nearest friend is often as much a physician’s duty as writing a prescription. Tell me just what is on your mind about your husband.”

Dr. Ivery was a tall spare man with a silvered head very high and full at the top. His composed face softened as he met the eager searching eyes of the young wife. This was a woman who must have the truth. He thanked God inwardly that though the truth for her must be hard enough, yet it was not the hardest!

“It is the future, sir,” she said, schooling her voice to absolute calmness. “Charlie is already talking of returning to the office.”

“The season of the year is against him,” remarked the physician, guardedly.

“But, apart from anything just now, sir,” she pleaded, “what do you think of Charlie’s possibilities in the long run?”

She said the only words she could bear to say. It would have killed her to ask, “Has Charlie any chance of life? Must Charlie die?”

The doctor paused. This was not because he had to extinguish hope, but because he feared to fan it too much.

“My dear lady,” he said, “I am sure I need not tell you that such symptoms as his are always serious and always mean that grave mischief has been done. At the same time, apart from these lung troubles, his general health is unusually good. The mischief seems so local, that if he could get the right climatic conditions, I would incline to believe that he may live as long and as happily and usefully as most of us.”

Mrs. Challoner’s face brightened.

“And are such climatic conditions to be found anywhere in Great Britain?” she asked wistfully.

“I fear not,” said the doctor. “I was thinking of some of the colonies in the Southern Hemisphere.”

“I thought so,” she answered with patient sadness. She and Charlie had talked over these matters before. Even before his recent illness, her husband had said that if he had known his own constitution earlier, he would not have adopted such a profession as a solicitor’s, with all the limitations which would involve a new professional training in any change of sphere.

“Would there be any good for Charlie in a long, long sea voyage?” she asked in the tone of one pleading for a dear life.

The doctor brightened.

“The very greatest good,” he said. “This is just one of the cases where a sea voyage often gives a new lease of life. But we scarcely like to suggest it to a young professional man—a young married man. We find that an absolute rearrangement of life is often more feasible.”

“A sea voyage could be managed, Dr. Ivery!” cried Mrs. Challoner. “If there is hope in it, it can be done—it shall be done!”

“To be of real service, it must be very long,” warned the physician.

“It shall be the very longest that is to be had,” she said. She had risen from her seat. “I will talk over all details with my husband,” she added. “And when you come, sir, you will support my arguments.”

“Certainly,” he said, “and most heartily too, now I am entitled to do so. We must remember that we may have disappointment,” he added, gazing-down at her eager face. “But I can assure you we shall have good grounds to hope.”

“I must not detain you longer,” she said. “How blessed you are to be able to make others as happy as you have made me.”

“I have often to make them sad,” he answered, shaking his head, “at least, so far as we poor humans know what is gladness and what is sadness. And Mr. Challoner is really doing well? My assistant always gives favourable reports. And your boy? A bonnie boy! Why, who is looking after him while you are so much absorbed in your husband?”

“Oh, he can be with us now since Charlie has been getting stronger!” she answered. “And I can always trust him with Pollie. I don’t know what I should do without her. She has been with us ever since we married. I have been so much more fortunate than most of my friends.”

“Pollie has been more fortunate than some of your friends’ Pollies probably,” laughed the doctor. “I shouldn’t wonder but you spoil her.”

“No, I don’t!” declared Mrs. Challoner, with a good housewife’s indignation. “But I knew when I had a good servant, and I kept my place open for her for six months during her mother’s last illness, and when her invalid sister was attending the Free Hospital, I had{419} her to stay with Pollie. That is how we came to hear about you, Dr. Ivery. So I am sure we have been trebly repaid. These poor people live in a little damp cottage in Essex—I don’t wonder the family are sickly. Pollie herself has grown into a different girl since she has lived in Pelham Street.”

She spoke quite volubly. The doctor understood the nervous tension thus suddenly relaxed. She scarcely knew what she was saying. Then she recollected herself, smiled—the smile mounting to her eyes—for the first time for many weeks, and modestly took her leave.

The doctor himself escorted her to his door, the watchful attendant saying to himself, “There ain’t a many ladies, be they whom they may, for whom the master does that.”

The physician returned to his study, thoughtful. He said to himself, “I wonder how they are to manage this? Challoner has said enough to me to show how necessary he felt a speedy return to business to be! I suppose she is going to work some sort of little human miracle. How she lighted up! I wish I could find such a miracle to be worked by some of my lady patients, if it would waken them up thus. But I suppose each of us must find his or her own miracles. They cost too much for any of us to be able to get them for each other.”

Mrs. Challoner turned eastward with flying feet. Her one thought now was, that at any cost this thing must be done. She felt herself like a frail little ship which has but to get the wind behind it to speedily reach its desired haven. Only she had got to steer it! If it were wrecked, the fault would lie with her, and with her only. It is something to have ever gone through such an hour of glorious life. Henceforth, come what may, we know the secret of the faith which “can remove mountains.” We know too that the great will of the universe is with all things good and glad and hopeful, though we may fail to set our little vessels where they can catch its current, or though they may come to disaster on other vessels already foundered.

Still, she had another visit to make ere she went back to the little house with the verandah.

This time she paused at a great house in one of the more important Bloomsbury squares. On its portal it bore the sign of “St. George’s Institute of Arts and Languages.”

She was admitted with smiles, for of old she had been familiar there. She stayed inside fully half an hour. When she came out her face was not less glad, but it was grave and set, as that of a sailor whose hand is already on the wheel.

She had one more interruption of her homeward journey. She was not far from Pelham Street, when she was suddenly greeted by a short, plump lady richly dressed.

“Why, Lucy, you are so absorbed that I believe you would have passed me, your very own sister!” cried the stranger.

They shook hands heartily.

“Have you been calling at our place?” asked Mrs. Challoner. “Didn’t Pollie invite you to await my return? She knew I would not be much later than this.”

“Oh, yes, she asked me to wait. ‘Her mistress would not like to miss Mrs. Brand,’” said the lady, evidently mimicking Pollie’s tone. “She was civil enough. I did sit down for a few minutes; but, as it was plain there was some cast-iron rule against my getting upstairs to see Charlie——”

Mrs. Challoner interrupted. “I had told her no visitors were to be admitted during my absence,” she said, “and she knows that when I am at home I allow nobody to go upstairs, not even Charlie’s great chum, Wilfrid Somerset, without my going too. Charlie is so lively and energetic that unless I am there to intervene and put on the brake, he would take to delivering orations, and then in a moment all that he has regained might be lost.”

“Well, I thought you might have made an exception of me,” remarked Mrs. Brand. “You might have credited me with some sense, seeing that I am your own sister—your only relative in London; it seemed hard to find myself shut out by a servant.”

“I could not know you would call, Florence,” said Mrs. Challoner very gently. She might have added, “since you have not called for more than a week,” but she refrained, partly because she did not wish to reproach, and partly because she was by no means sure that under any circumstances would she have made an exception of Florence Brand.

“It does not matter,” Mrs. Brand answered. “I don’t suppose either of us lost much. But if Charlie is so weak and so unfit to take care of himself, it’s a bad outlook for you, poor dear, and you are worn to a thread paper already.”

“Won’t you turn back with me, and have a cup of tea with us?” invited the younger lady.

“No, thanks,” said Mrs. Brand. “Mr. Brand does not like me to be out alone after dark, and already it will be dark before I get home. No, never mind; I’ve heard how Charlie is and I’ve seen you and the boy, and, by the way, Lucy, through having been left so much with Pollie, I do believe little Hugh is catching her horrid Essex accent.”

“Well, then he must let it go again!” retorted Mrs. Challoner with some spirit.

More than once she had silenced a reflection that her sister, with her well appointed nursery and her lady “mother’s help,” with no duty beyond attendance on the two little Brands, both older than Hugh, might have invited a visit from her nephew while his father lay at death’s door, and his mother and her solitary servant wrestled with sick nursing and housewifery. She had said to herself that Florence had not reflected on the struggle it was, and would have been quite ready to give help if she had been asked for it. But that could not be, though Lucy had conquered her insurgent independence sufficiently to give one or two broad hints, which had fallen dead. Yet it did seem hard that Florence, so slow to consider, should be so quick to criticise!

“Well, as things are going on so nicely, I suppose we shall see you at our place soon,” said Mrs. Brand. “I should think you ought to take Charlie for some drives before the weather gets cold. It would be a good thing for him to have a real change. It might have saved much, if only he had taken one in time. Jem and I are thinking of running down to Brighton next Saturday. Jem can stay till Tuesday morning, and maybe I’ll persuade him to leave me there for a day or two longer. It’s such a rest to get away from one’s housekeeping and one’s children and one’s callers! I can assure you I’m a very busy woman, Lucy,” she laughed, “though I see by your face that you don’t believe it. I might well envy you your nice homely little house, with only Pollie to control. Why, our table decorations alone are a perpetual worry, and the cook’s temper is awful. Ta-ta! Don’t bring Charlie to see us till I am sure to be back at home.”

They parted and Lucy Challoner went on. The little interview had not done her good. She began to feel that she was very tired—tired in body now, and tired in soul, with the sense of a steep duty stretching before her.

But when she turned the corner of Pelham Street, and saw the cheery light streaming from the windows both within and above the verandah, her feet felt lighter. Ten minutes later, presiding over the little tea-table drawn up beside her husband’s couch, Lucy Challoner was again her dauntless self, prepared to extract its uttermost from every pleasant possibility.

She brought out her purse with a dramatic air of mystery.

“Do you see this little article, Charlie,” she said. “Look at it!”

“Why, it’s the old purse I gave you during our honeymoon,” he answered in his invalid’s whisper. “Poor little girl, if I had been able to put more in it, it would have been worn out by this time!”

“Oh, never mind that nonsense,” said she. “This purse held five shillings when I went out this afternoon. What do you think it holds now?”

“Not more than four-and-sixpence I hope,” he replied, “for you have been out so long, that I trust you have treated yourself at least to a sixpenny bus fare.”

“Sir, do not trifle,” she said demurely. “Guess again. I brought home more, not less. You give it up? Well, this purse now contains three pounds eight shillings. I did not spend a penny, and Messrs. Mapp have sold my little sketch of the old Surrey mill and have handed me three guineas for it.”

“And a very good bargain somebody got,” remarked Charlie, who was straightway called “an ungrateful man.” “I should like to keep all your pictures to myself,” he said.

“That is selfish,” she answered, with quaint affectation of dogmatism. “Don’t you know that the true purpose of a work of art is to be seen and not merely possessed?”

{420}

Charlie laughed. “I would not grudge it to a gallery,” he said. “But if some fellow has got to possess it, I’d rather I was that fellow.”

“But that wasn’t in our bond,” persisted his wife. “Don’t you remember that when I gave up teaching to marry you, sir, I bargained that I might sell any sketch I did, provided that I never sketched when I ought to be doing my duty to you?”

“Nevertheless you forgot to put in a clause that I was not to buy them,” laughed Charlie. “I suppose my money is as good as any other body’s—always provided I have any,” he added, with a little sigh.

“You are so mercenary!” cried Lucy. “Do you think I cared only for the money—though I did want to be able to give you real presents, sometimes. No, sir! Let me tell you I care also for my art. I wanted it to gain criticism—I desired it to pass tests.”