room, the promised brown cupboard, all wainscoted with delicious cedar, so deeply and uniformly panelled, that when shut, the door was not obvious; and it was like being in a box, for there were no wardrobes, only shelves shut by doors into the wall, which the old usage of the household tradition called awmries (armoires). The furniture was reasonably modern, but not obtrusively so. There was a delicious recess in the deep window, with a seat and a table in it, and a box of mignonette along the sill. It looked out into the little high-walled entrance court, and beyond to the wall of the warehouse opposite; and the roar of the great city thoroughfare came like the distant surging of the ocean. Seldom had young maiden’s bower given more satisfaction. Phœbe looked about her as if she hardly knew how to believe in anything so unlike her ordinary life, and she thanked her friend again and again with such enthusiasm, that Miss Charlecote laughed as she told her she liked the old house to be appreciated, since it had, like Pompeii, been potted for posterity.
‘And thank you, my dear,’ she added with a sigh, ‘for making my coming home so pleasant. May you never know how I dreaded the finding it full of emptiness.’
‘Dear Miss Charlecote!’ cried Phœbe, venturing upon a warm kiss, and thrilled with sad pleasure as she was pressed in a warm, clinging embrace, and felt tears on her cheek. ‘You have been so happy here!’
‘It is not the past, my dear,’ said Honora; ‘I could live peacefully on the thought of that. The shadows that people this house are very gentle ones. It is the present!’
She broke off, for the gates of the court were opening to admit a detachment of cabs, containing the persons and properties of the new incumbent and his wife. He had been a curate of Mr. Charlecote, since whose death he had led a very hard-working life in various towns; and on his recent presentation to the living of St. Wulstan’s, Honora had begged him and his wife to make her house their home while determining on the repairs of the parsonage. She ran down to meet them with gladsome steps. She had never entirely dropped her intercourse with Mr. Parsons, though seldom meeting; and he was a relic of the past, one of the very few who still called her by her Christian name, and regarded her more as the clergyman’s daughter of St. Wulstan’s than as lady of the Holt. Mrs. Parsons was a thorough clergyman’s wife, as active as himself, and much loved and esteemed by Honora, with whom, in their few meetings, she had ‘got on’ to admiration.
There they were, looking after luggage, and paying cabs so heedfully as not to remark their hostess standing on the stairs; and she had time to survey them with the affectionate curiosity of meeting after long absence, and with pleasure in remarking that there was little change. Perhaps they were rather more gray, and had grown more alike by force of living and thinking together; but they both looked equally alert and cheerful, and as if fifty and fifty-five were the very prime of years for substantial work.
Their first glances at her were full of the same anxiety for her health and strength, as they heartily shook hands, and accompanied her into the drawing-room, she explaining that Mr. Parsons was to have the study all to himself, and never be disturbed there; then inquiring after the three children, two daughters, who were married, and a son lately ordained.
‘I thought you would have brought William to see about the curacy,’ she said.
‘He is not strong enough,’ said his mother. ‘He wished it, but he is better where he is; he could not bear the work here.’
‘No; I told him the utmost I should allow would be an exchange now and then when my curates were overdone,’ said Mr. Parsons.
‘And so you are quite deserted,’ said Honor, feeling the more drawn towards her friends.
‘Starting afresh, with a sort of honeymoon, as I tell Anne,’ replied Mr. Parsons; and such a bright look passed between them, as though they were quite sufficient for each other, that Honor felt there was no parallel between their case and her own.
‘Ah! you have not lost your children yet,’ said Mrs. Parsons.
‘They are not with me,’ said Honor, quickly. ‘Lucy is with her cousins, and Owen—I don’t exactly know how he means to dispose of himself this vacation; but we were all to meet here.’ Guessing, perhaps, that Mr. Parsons saw into her dissatisfaction, she then assumed their defence. ‘There is to be a grand affair at Castle Blanch, a celebration of young Charles Charteris’s marriage, and Owen and Lucy will be wanted for it.’
‘Whom has he married?’
‘A Miss Mendoza, an immense fortune—something in the stockbroker line. He had spent a good deal, and wanted to repair it; but they tell me she is a very handsome person, very ladylike and agreeable; and Lucy likes her greatly. I am to go to luncheon at their house to-morrow, so I shall treat you as if you were at home.’
‘I should hope so,’ quoth Mr. Parsons.
‘Yes, or I know you would not stay here properly. I’m not alone, either. Why, where’s the boy gone? I thought he was here. I have two young Fulmorts, one staying here, the other looking in from the office.’
‘Fulmort!’ exclaimed Mr. Parsons, with three notes of admiration at least in his voice. ‘What! the distiller?’
‘The enemy himself, the identical lord of gin-shops—at least his children. Did you not know that he married my next neighbour, Augusta Mervyn, and that our properties touch? He is not so bad by way of squire as he is here; and I have known his wife all my life, so we keep up all habits of good neighbourhood; and though they have brought up the elder ones very ill, they have not succeeded in spoiling this son and daughter. She is one of the very nicest girls I ever knew, and he, poor fellow, has a great deal of good in him.’
‘I think I have heard William speak of a Fulmort,’ said Mrs. Parsons. ‘Was he at Winchester?’
‘Yes; and an infinite help the influence there has been to him. I never saw any one more anxious to do right, often under great disadvantages. I shall be very glad for him to be with you. He was always intended for a clergyman, but now I am afraid there is a notion of putting him into the business; and he is here attending to it for the present, while his father and brother are abroad. I am sorry he is gone. I suppose he was seized with a fit of shyness.’
However, when all the party had been to their rooms and prepared for dinner, Robert reappeared, and was asked where he had been.
‘I went to dress,’ he answered.
‘Ah! where do you lodge? I asked Phœbe, but she said your letters went to Whittington-street.’
‘There are two very good rooms at the office which my father sometimes uses.’
Phœbe and Miss Charlecote glanced at each other, aware that Mervyn would never have condescended to sleep in Great Whittington-street. Mr. Parsons likewise perceived a straight-forwardness in the manner, which made him ready to acknowledge his fellow-Wykehamist and his son’s acquaintance; and they quickly became good friends over recollections of Oxford and Winchester, tolerably strong in Mr. Parsons himself, and all the fresher on ‘William’s’ account. Phœbe, whose experience of social intercourse was confined to the stately evening hour in the drawing-room, had never listened to anything approaching to this style of conversation, nor seen her brother to so much advantage in society. Hitherto she had only beheld him neglected in his uncongenial home circle, contemning and contemned, or else subjected to the fretting torment of Lucilla’s caprice. She had never known what he could be, at his ease, among persons of the same way of thinking. Speaking scarcely ever herself, and her fingers busy with her needle, she was receiving a better lesson than Miss Fennimore had ever yet been able to give.
