How It All Came Round Part 1

How It All Came Round.

by L. T. Meade.

CHAPTER I.

THE RICH CHARLOTTE.

The room had three occupants, two were men, the third a woman. The men were middle-aged and gray-haired, the woman on the contrary was in the prime of youth; she was finely made, and well proportioned. Her face was perhaps rather too pale, but the eyes and brow were n.o.ble, and the sensitive mouth showed indications of heart as well as intellect.

The girl, or rather young woman, for she was past five and twenty, sat by the fire, a book on her knee. The two men had drawn chairs close to a table. The elder of these men bore such an unmistakable likeness to the girl, that even the most casual observer must have guessed the relations.h.i.+p which existed between them. He was a handsome man, handsomer even than his daughter, but the same individualities marked both faces. While, however, in the woman all was a profound serenity and calm, the man had some anxious lines round the mouth, and some expression, now coming, now going, in the fine gray eyes, which betokened a long-felt anxiety.

The other and younger man was shrewd-looking and commonplace; but a very close observer of human nature might have said, "He may be commonplace, but do not feel too certain; he simply possesses one of those faces which express nothing, from which not the cleverest detective in Scotland Yard could extract any secret."

He was a man with plenty to say, and much humor, and at the moment this story opens he was laughing merrily and in a heart-whole way, and his older and graver companion listened with evident enjoyment.

The room in which the three sat bore evidence of wealth. It was a library, and handsome books lay on the tables, and rare old folios could have been found by those who cared to look within the carefully locked bookcases. Some ma.n.u.scripts were scattered about, and by the girl's side, on a small table, lay several carefully revised proofs, and even now she was bending earnestly over a book of reference.

"Well, Jasper," said the elder man, when the younger paused for an instant in his eager flow of words, "we have talked long enough about that fine land you have just come from, for even Australian adventures can keep--I am interested in something nearer home. What do you say to Charlotte there? She was but a baby when you saw her last."

"She was five years old," replied Jasper. "A saucy little imp, bless you! just the kind that would be sure to grow into a fine woman. But to tell the truth I don't much care to look at her, for she makes me feel uncommonly old and shaky."

"You gave me twenty years to grow into a woman, uncle," answered the pleasant voice of Charlotte Harman. "I could not choose but make good use of the time."

"So you have, la.s.s--so you have; I have been growing old and you have been growing beautiful; such is life; but never mind, your turn will come."

"But not for a long, long time, Lottie my pet," interrupted the father.

"You need not mind your uncle Jasper. These little speeches were always his way. And I'll tell you something else, Jasper; that girl of mine has a head worth owning on her shoulders, a head she knows how to use. You will not believe me when I say that she writes in this magazine and this, and she is getting a book ready for the press; ay, and there's another thing. Shall I tell it, Charlotte?"

"Yes, father; it is no secret," replied Charlotte.

"It is this, brother Jasper; you have come home in time for a wedding.

My girl is going to leave me. I shall miss her, for she is womanly in the best sense of the word, and she is my only one; but there is a comfort--the man she is to marry is worthy of her."

"And there is another comfort, father," said Charlotte; "that though I hope to be married, yet I never mean to leave you. You know that well, I have often told you so," and here this grave young girl came over and kissed her father's forehead.

He smiled back at her, all the care leaving his eyes as he did so. Uncle Jasper had sprung impatiently to his feet.

"As to the la.s.s being married," he said, "that's nothing; all women marry, or if they don't they ought to. But what was that you said, John, about writing, writing in a printed book? You were joking surely, man?"

"No, I was not," answered the father. "Go and show your uncle Jasper that last article of yours, Charlotte."

"Oh, heaven preserve us! no," said uncle Jasper, backing a pace or two.

"I'm willing with all my heart to believe it, if you swear it, but not the article. Don't for heaven's sake, confront me with the article."

"There's nothing uncommon in my writing for magazines, Uncle Jasper; a great many girls do write now. I have three friends myself who----"

Uncle Jasper's red face had grown positively pathetic in its agitation.

"What a place England must have become!" he interrupted with a groan.

"Well, la.s.s, I'll believe you, but I have one request to make. Tell me what you like about your wedding; go into all the raptures you care for over your wedding dress, and even over the lucky individual for whom you will wear it; tell me twenty times a day that he's perfection, that you and you alone have found the eighth wonder of the world, but for the love of heaven leave out about the books! The other will be hard to bear, but I'll endeavor to swallow it--but the books, oh! heaven preserve us--leave out about the printed books. Don't mention the unlucky magazines for which you write. Don't breathe to me the thoughts with which you fill them. Oh, if there's an awful creature under the sun 'tis a blue-stocking, and to think I should have come back from England to find such a horror in the person of my own niece!"

CHAPTER II.

THE POOR CHARLOTTE.

While this light and playful scene was being enacted in a wealthy house in Prince's Gate, and Charlotte Harman and her father laughed merrily over the Australian uncle's horror of authors and their works, another Charlotte was going through a very different part, in a different place in the great world's centre.

There could scarcely be a greater contrast than between the small and very shabby house in Kentish Town and the luxurious mansion in Kensington. The parlor of this house, for the drawing-rooms were let to lodgers, was occupied by one woman. She sat by a little shabbily covered table, writing. The whole appearance of the room was shabby: the furniture, the carpet, the dingy window panes, the tiny pretence of a fire in the grate. It was not exactly a dirty room, but it lacked all brightness and freshness. The chimney did not draw well, and now and then a great gust of smoke would come down, causing the busy writer to start and rub her smarting eyes. She was a young woman, as young as Charlotte Harman, with a slight figure and very pale face. There were possibilities of beauty in the face. But the possibilities had come to nothing; the features were too pinched, too underfed, the eyes, in themselves dark and heavily fringed, too often dimmed by tears. It was a very cold day, and sleet was beginning to fall, and the smoking chimney had a vindictive way of smoking more than ever, but the young woman wrote on rapidly, as though for bare life. Each page as she finished it, was flung on one side; some few fell on the floor, but she did not stop even to pick them up.

The short winter daylight had quite faded, and she had stood up to light the gas, when the room door was pushed slightly ajar, and one of those little maids-of-all-work, so commonly seen in London, put in her untidy head.

"Ef you please, 'em, Harold's been and hurt Daisy, and they is quarreling h'ever so, and I think as baby's a deal worse, 'em."

"I will go up to them, Anne, and you may stay down and lay the cloth for tea--I expect your master in early to-night."

She put her writing materials hastily away, and with a light, quick step ran upstairs. She entered a room which in its size and general shabbiness might better have been called an attic, and found herself in the presence of three small children. The two elder ran to meet her with outstretched arms and glad cries. The baby sat up in his cot and gazed hard at his mother with flushed cheeks and round eyes.

She took the baby in her arms and sat down in a low rocking-chair close to the fire. Harold and Daisy went on their little knees in front of her. Now that mother had come their quarrel was quite over, and the poor baby ceased to fret.

Seated thus, with her little children about her there was no doubt at all that Charlotte Home had a pleasant face; the care vanished from her eyes as she looked into the innocent eyes of her babies, and as she nursed the seven-months-old infant she began crooning a sweet old song in a true, delicious voice, to which the other two listened with delight:----

"In the days when we went gipsying, A long time ago."

"What's gipsying, mother?" asked Harold, aged six.

"Something like picnicking, darling. People who live in the country, or who are rich,"--here Mrs. Home sighed--"often, in the bright summer weather, take their dinner or their tea, and they go out into the woods or the green fields and eat there. I have been to gypsy teas; they are great fun. We lit a fire and boiled the kettle over it, and made the tea; it was just the same tea as we had at home, but somehow it tasted much better out-of-doors."

"Was that some time ago, mother?" asked little Daisy.

"It would seem a long, long time to you, darling; but it was not so many years ago."

"Mother," asked Harold, "why aren't we rich, or why don't we live in the country?"

A dark cloud, caused by some deeper emotion than the mere fact of being poor, pa.s.sed over the mother's face.

"We cannot live in the country," she said, "because your father has a curacy in this part of London. Your father is a brave man, and he must not desert his post."

"Then why aren't we rich?" persisted the boy.

"Because--because--I cannot answer you that, Harold; and now I must run downstairs again. Father is coming in earlier than usual to-night, and you and Daisy may come down for a little bit after tea--that is, if you promise to be very good children now, and not to quarrel. See, baby has dropped asleep; who will sit by him and keep him from waking until Anne comes back?"

"I, mother," said Harold, and, "I, mother," said Daisy.

"That is best," said the gentle-voiced mother; "you both shall keep him very quiet and safe; Harold shall sit on this side of his little cot and Daisy at the other."