at Walworth, in the hope of being in time to get a cup of tea before Mrs. Sleaford let the fire out; for that lady had an aggravating trick of letting out the kitchen-fire at half-past seven or eight o’clock on summer evenings, after which hour hot water was an impossibility; unless Mr. Sleaford wanted grog, in which case a kettle was set upon a bundle of blazing firewood.
George Gilbert did not particularly care whether or not there was any tea to be procured at Camberwell, but he looked forward with a faint thrill of pleasure to the thought of a stroll with Isabel in the twilit garden. He thought so much of this, that he was quite pleased when the big, ill-looking house and the dead wall that surrounded it became visible across the barren waste of ground that was called a common. He was quite pleased, not with any fierce or passionate emotion, but with a tranquil sense of pleasure. When they came to the wooden door in the garden-wall, Sigismund Smith stooped down and gave his usual whistle at the keyhole; but he looked up suddenly, and cried:
“Well, I’m blest!”
“What’s the matter?”
“The door’s open.”
Mr. Smith pushed it as he spoke, and the two young men went into the front garden.
“In all the time I’ve lived with the Sleafords, that never happened before,” said Sigismund. “Mr. Sleaford’s awfully particular about the gate being kept locked. He says that the neighbourhood’s a queer one, and you never know what thieves are hanging about the place; though, inter nos, I don’t see that there’s much to steal hereabouts,” Mr. Smith added, in a confidential whisper.
The door of the house, as well as that of the garden, was open. Sigismund went into the hall, followed closely by George. The parlour door was open too, and the room was empty—the room was empty, and it had an abnormal appearance of tidiness, as if all the litter and rubbish had been suddenly scrambled together and carried away. There was a scrap of old frayed rope upon the table, lying side by side with some tin-tacks, a hammer, and a couple of blank luggage-labels.
George did not stop to look at these; he went straight to the open window and looked out into the garden. He had so fully expected to see Isabel sitting under the pear-tree with a novel in her lap, that he started and drew back with an exclamation of surprise at finding the garden empty; the place seemed so strangely blank without the girlish figure lolling in the basket-chair. It was as if George Gilbert had been familiar with that garden for the last ten years, and had never seen it without seeing Isabel in her accustomed place.
“I suppose Miss Sleaford—I suppose they’re all out,” the surgeon said, rather dolefully.
“I suppose they are out,” Sigismund answered, looking about him with a puzzled air; “and yet, that’s strange. They don’t often go out; at least, not all at once. They seldom go out at all, in fact, except on errands. I’ll call the girl.”
He opened the door and looked into the front parlour before going to carry out this design, and he started back upon the threshold as if he had seen a ghost.
“What is it?” cried George.
“My luggage and your portmanteau, all packed and corded; look!”
Mr. Smith pointed as he spoke to a couple of trunks, a hatbox, a carpet-bag, and a portmanteau, piled in a heap in the centre of the room. He spoke loudly in his surprise; and the maid-of-all-work came in with her cap hanging by a single hair-pin to a knob of tumbled hair.
“Oh, sir!” she said, “they’re all gone; they went at six o’clock this evenin’; and they’re going to America, missus says; and she packed all your things, and she thinks you’d better have ’em took round to the greengrocer’s immediant, for fear of being seized for the rent, which is three-quarters doo; but you was to sleep in the house to-night, if you pleased, and your friend likewise; and I was to get you your breakfastes in the morning, before I take the key round to the Albany Road, and tell the landlord as they’ve gone away, which he don’t know it yet.”
“GONE AWAY!” said Sigismund; “GONE AWAY!”
“Yes, sir, every one of ’em; and the boys was so pleased that they would go shoutin’ ‘ooray, ‘ooray, all over the garding, though Mr. Sleaford swore at ’em awful, and did hurry and tear so, I thought he was a-goin’ mad. But Miss Isabel, she cried about goin’ so sudden and seemed all pale and frightened like. And there’s a letter on the chimbley-piece, please, which she put it there.”
Sigismund pounced upon the letter, and tore it open. George read it over his friend’s shoulder. It was only two lines.
“DEAR MR. SMITH,—Don’t think hardly of us for going away so suddenly. Papa says it must be so.
“Yours ever faithfully,
“ISABEL.”
“I should like to keep that letter,” George said, blushing up to the roots of his hair. “Miss Sleaford writes a pretty hand.”
Chapter 4.
The End of George Gilbert’s Holiday.
The two young men acted very promptly upon that friendly warning conveyed in Mrs. Sleaford’s farewell message. The maid-of-all-work went to the greengrocer’s, and returned in company with a dirty-looking boy—who was “Mrs. Judkin’s son, please, sir”—and a truck. Mrs. Judkin’s son piled the trunks, portmanteau, and carpet-bag on the truck, and departed with his load, which was to be kept in the custody of the Judkin family until the next morning, when Sigismund was to take the luggage away in a cab. When this business had been arranged, Mr. Smith and his friend went out into the garden and talked of the surprise that had fallen upon them.
“I always knew they were thinking of leaving,” Sigismund said, “but I never thought they’d go away like this. I feel quite cut up about it, George. I’d got to like them, you know, old boy, and to feel as if I was one of the family; and I shall never be able to partial-board with any body else.”
George seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as his friend, though his acquaintance with the Sleafords was little more than four-and-twenty hours old.
“They must have known before today that they were going,” he said. “People don’t go to America at a few hours’ notice.”
Sigismund summoned the dirty maid-of-all-work, and the two young men subjected her to a very rigorous cross-examination; but she could tell them very little more than she had told them all in one breath in the first instance.
“Mr. Sleaford ‘ad ‘is breakfast at nigh upon one o’clock, leastways she put on the pertaturs for the boys’ dinner before she biled ‘is egg; and then he went out, and he come tarin’ ‘ome agen in one of these ‘ansom cabs at three o’clock in the afternoon; and he told missus to pack up, and he told the ‘ansom cabman to send a four-wheeler from the first stand he passed at six o’clock precise; and the best part of the luggage was sent round to the greengrocer’s on a truck, and the rest was took on the roof of the cab, and Master ‘Orace rode alongside the cabman, and would smoke one of them nasty penny pickwicks, which they always made ’im bilious; and Mr. Sleaford he didn’t go in the cab, but walked off as cool as possible, swinging his stick, and ‘olding his ‘ead as ‘igh as hever.”
Sigismund
