besides making you her servant,” cried Harry. “And to take her present! and kiss her—pah! I would not do it for a hundred pounds.”
“Nobody asked you, sir,” said I: “but come this way, please Harry, I want to look at one shop-window—just one. I saw something there yesterday that would just do for me; and now I can afford to buy a dress.”
“By Jove!” cried Harry, “what creatures you women are; here we are, on as good as our wedding-day, walking home for the first time, and you are thinking of the shop-windows! Are you just like all the rest?”
“Oh, indeed, just precisely,” said I. “Ah, Harry, I never was in the street before that I felt quite free and yet quite protected and safe. Only think of the difference! I am not afraid of anybody or anything to-day. I am going home. If you were not so grave and proper I think I could dance all the way.”
Harry did not say another word; he held my arm close, and called me by my name. My name was Milly darling, to Harry; he said it sounded like the turn of an Irish song. He calls me Milly darling still, though we have been married two years.
And how pretty he had made that little parlour over Mrs. Grogram’s shop! Not a boot about anywhere that I could see, nor the shadow of a cigar; clean new muslin curtains up, and flowers on the table; and the landlady curtseying, and calling me Mrs. Langham. It was the very first time I had heard the name. How odd it sounded! and yet an hour after I should have laughed if any one had called me Miss Mortimer, as if that were the most absurd thing in the world.
And to make home does not require many rooms or a great deal of furniture. I have not a “house of my own” yet, and, perhaps, may not have for years. A poor subaltern, with nothing but his pay, when he is so foolish as to marry, has to take his wife to lodgings; but the best house in the world could not have felt to me a warmer, safer, more delightful home than Mrs. Grogram’s parlour above the shop.
Chapter V
“IT is only right, however,” said Harry, “that before we leave we should know all that Mrs. Connor can tell us, Milly darling, about your family and your relations. Though she’s to have your five hundred pounds, she need not have your family archives too.”
“Why, Harry, you almost speak as if you grudged her the five hundred pounds!”
“And so I do,” said Harry. “Just now, while I am so poor, it might have made you a little comfortable. Please Heaven, after a while, five hundred pounds will not matter so much; at least it is to be hoped so. If there would only come a war–”
“Harry, you savage! how dare you say so!” cried I.
“Nonsense! what’s the good of a soldier except to fight?” he said. “Active service brings promotion, Milly. You would not like to see me a subaltern at forty. Better to take one’s chance of getting knocked on the head.”
“Ah, it is very easy for you to talk,” said I; “and if I could disguise myself and ’list like Lady Fanshawe–”
“’List! you five-foot creature! you could be nothing but a drummer, Milly; and besides, Lady Fanshawe did not ’list, she–”
“Never mind, I could contrive as well as she did,” said I. “I could get upon stilts or something, and be your man, and never disclose myself till I had cut down all your enemies, and brought you safe out of the battle, and then fainted in your arms.”
“Pleasant for me,” said Harry; “but I do believe, in spite of romance, Fanshawe himself would have given his head to have had his wife safe at home that time. Do you think it would be a comfort to a man if he was shot down himself to think his wife was there with nobody to take care of her? No, Milly darling; the truest love would stay at home and pray.”
“And die,” said I; “I understand it better now. If I were ’listing and going after you, it would not be for your sake, Harry, but for my own. How do women keep alive, do you think, when those that belong to them are at the wars?”
Neither of us knew; but to think of it made us shudder and tremble,—I that should have to bear it some day! for the very people in the streets said that war was coming on.
“In the meantime let me remind you,” said Harry, “that we’re going to Aunt Connor’s to bid them good-bye, and that I mean to ask her all about your relations, and get a full history of your family, in case you might happen to be a princess in disguise, or a great heiress. By the bye, she said something like that. Only don’t be too sanguine, Milly; if there had been anything more to get on your account, Aunt Connor would have ferreted it out.”
I thought he was rather hard upon her, but could not really say anything in her defence. I had myself begged Harry, after two or three talks with Aunt Connor about it, not to say any more to her about claiming the five hundred pounds. She had only her jointure, poor lady, and could not have paid it without ruining herself. And, after all, she had always paid Nurse Richards for me, and had kept me, and been kind enough to me. So it was settled she was to keep it, and give us the five-and-twenty pounds a-year. Not that she would allow, straight out, that she had it. She always pretended it was somebody else that paid her the interest, and that it was the very best investment in the world, and she wished she could get as much for her money. Poor Aunt Connor! her pretence did not deceive anybody; but I suppose it was a sort of comfort to herself.
I did not take any part in Harry’s questions at first; it was all I could do to answer the girls, who wanted to know all how we were going to travel, and everything about it. Patricia brought me down her warm cloak that she had worn all last winter. She said, though it wasn’t new, it would be a comfortable wrap for the journey, if I would have it; and indeed I thought so too, though Harry, I dare say, would have made a fuss about it, if I had consulted him. But when Aunt Connor really began to talk about poor papa and mamma, I hushed the girls and listened. I never had heard anything about them. It was natural it should be very interesting to me.
“It was more from hearsay than knowledge, for, of course, Milly’s papa was a great deal older than me,” said Aunt Connor, with a little toss of her head. “He was forty when he married Maria, my poor Connor’s only sister; and she was not very young either; and it went very hard with her when Milly there came into the world; but though she died, poor soul! he would not call the babe Maria, do what we would, but Millicent, because it was the great name in his family. That was how we came to hear about his family at all. His head was a little touched, poor soul! He said what if she should come into the Park property after all, and not be called Milly? He said Millicent Mortimer had been a name in the family from the Conquest, or the Restoration, or something; and the heiress that wasn’t Millicent had no luck. When he got weakly, he maundered on for ever about his family. It was cousins or cousins’ children had the property, and one of them had jilted him. He used to say, in his wandering way, that one would never come to good; she’d never bring an heir to the property. But whether there were sons, or if it was only a lady between him and the estate, or how the rights of it were, I could not tell you. We used to think half of it was maundering, and my poor dear Connor never put any faith in it. Except Maria Connor that married him being not so young as she once was, not a creature about knew Mr. Mortimer. He was an Englishman, and not much of a man any how. No offence to you, Milly, dear; he was the kind of man that never does any good after he’s been jilted; so, if you should happen to meet with that cousin of his that did it, you can put out your anger upon her. He left no particulars, poor man. I don’t believe it ever came into his head that it might really matter for his poor little girl to have friends that would help her on in the world. And to be sure, Milly was but a year old when papa died.”
“But this was worth taking some pains and making some inquiries about,” said Harry. “Where did those friends live?
