A Morning Mist

Front matter

a A MOKNING MIST A MORNING MIST I'.V SARAH TYTLER, Author of "Citoynne Jacqueline," "St. Mungo's City," $c, SjC. ILoiiTjou : JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET 1892. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. — Mrs. Hobbs and Little Martha 1 II. — The Little Lady aud her Surroundings ... ... 8 III. — Joe and Mattie's Speculations on Maisonette and its Occupants ... 19 IV. — Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs in Arcady 35 V. — Mrs. Hobbs resumes au old role with signal success 47 VI. — Joe Hobbs, senior, imparts his Recollections to the Wife of his Bosom... ... ... ... ... 64 VII. — The Inmates of the Maisonette 79 VIII. — Constance and Miss West's Misadventure at Kingsmeadows ... ... ... ... ... 95 IX. — Bread and Salt, with the Seasoning of Subsequent Comments ... ... ... ... ... ... 109 X. — Sir John Beauchamp appears on the Scene — making a Virtue of Necessity 123 XI. — Brother and Sister 134 XII. — Sir John makes Himself at Home at Maisonette ... 143 XIII.— The Usages of Society 155 XIV. — Constance's First "Dinner " ... ... ... ... 165 XV. — The Entertainment provided for a Debutante ... 177 XVI.— The Kingsmeadows Party for the Hunt Ball ... 189 XVII. — Constance Beauchamp's First and Last Ball ... 210 XVIII.— The Desolation that Cometh in a Night 222 XIX.—" That Dreadful Woman," one of Job's Comforters 232 XX. — An Opportune Proposal ... ... ... ... 244 XXI.— " You could not do better " 259 XXIL— Beaten 276 XXIIL— In Exile 290 XXIV. — An Inopportune Proposal 308 XXV.— The Truth 322 XXVI.— The Fruits 334 XXVIL— The Two Mrs. Hobbses 344 XXVIIL— Sir John's Champion

Chapter I. Mrs

HOBBS AND LITTLE MARTHA. The stretch of sea-sands at Dinglemouth offered the usual spectacle which such a scene presents .on a fine summer evening. Dinglemouth was a watering-place, not a seaport. Even as a watering-place its claims to importance were not extensive. It was not large or convenient as the goal of a run down from London, or from any great manufacturing centre. It had no pretension to be an antique, therefore it had no historic remains good for filling half-a-dozen pages of a local guidebook. It was not picturesque to speak of. It could not boast of any speciality in the shape of fish or crustacæ, or zoophite, however moderately rare, supposing the rage for making aquariums had not died a natural death. It had not even a remote member of the samphire, or the horn-poppy family, all its own.

Its peculiar butterflies and exceptional beetles were nil. The chief merits of Dinglemouth were that, though it had a quarter given over to fishermen, it was a fairly clean little place, and its lodgings, whether of the dignity of seaside residences, or of the simplicity of furnished apartments, were to be had at a moderate rate. Its sea was salt and blue — not with the cobalt of the Medi teranean, but with the peacock blue, shot with green, of which, in favourable weather, on the English coast, one has excellent specimens, relieving the silver or leaden gray of other hours of the days, and months of the year. Above all, the air of Dinglemouth was fresh and sweet in its brininess, for on the land side it blew over a purely agricultural country, and brought wafts of new-mown hay, blossoming beans, and the almond scent of haw thorn hedges, all white with flowers, to temper the trifle of keenness in the breeze from the sea border.

Withal, Dinglemouth was not greatly frequented ; no fashionable physician had recommended it, no great lady's whim had made the place. Its seaweed was not extraordinarily salubrious. It had not the slightest right to call itself a Spa, and did not even indulge in the most modest of hot and cold bathing establishments ; while neither of its two inns had an ordinary, developing on occasions ; and its pier lacked a brass band. The neighbouring downs, circumscribed at the best, were not given over to games — the golf of the North, or the cricket of the South. There were out-of-date croquet-greens, or present-day tennis-courts open for a consideration, that the public might be amused ; one of the inns, the oldest of the two, had a bowling-alley, while the " True Briton " and the " Fair Mermaid " — ale-houses in the fishermen's quarters — had skittle grounds, but these were for the private accommodation of customers.

Such ex ceptions only proved the rule that Dinglemouth, with its comparative trimness and daintiness, was "deadly dull " to a certain order of critic. Dinglemouth was like that highly-respectable class of hotels known as "family hotels." It was a family watering-place. Its clients were chiefly families, for the most part of little people attended by the proper staff of guardians, in the shape of mothers and nurses. Once a week samples of the English citizen paterfamilias ex hibited themselves for a few holiday Sundays among their young barbarians on the sands, as the French bourgeois versions of the same article display themselves on Sundays for the greater part of the year in the gardens of the Tuileries. "Where there was any variety among the visitors to MRS. HOBBS AND LITTLE MARTHA. 3 Dinglemouth it was supplied chiefly by the presence of maiden aunts and elderly dowagers.

The last had come to reckon a week or two's sojourn in the little watering place as somehow essential to the year's well doing. They were there for the purpose of reading daily newspapers and yellow-backed novels, on baked or wind scoured benches, on which each seat was jealously disputed by cohorts of nurse-maids and files of long stranded bachelors and consoled widowers. The gayest time at Dinglemouth was during the morning, when the bathing-machines were in full operation, and juvenile bathing in the open sea went on, we may say, in matches and batches. In the afternoon the donkeys, which were Dinglemouth's sole contribution of a strictly festal and not largely utilitarian character to the day's engagements, took the place to some extent of the bathing-machines. But in the evening the long curves of primitive sands and shingle, which as yet held the place of a succession of marine parades and esplan ades, were comparatively deserted.

The small urchins and nymphs were gone to bed. The matrons and nurse. maids were taking well-earned rest from their labours within doors. The maiden aunts and elderly dowagers had a dread of lurking damp doing its work in tooth aches and ear-aches. The very gentlemen who were the ladies' contemporaries were not without prudent thoughts of rheumatic shoulders and stiffened knees. Only the robust or the reckless among the shifting population cast all doubts to the winds, and haunted the beach, the happy hunting-ground of old and young, till the'sun set and the moon rose, when a sense of wan dullness, savouring of sobs and tears, and wailing lamentations, was apt to steal into the sight and sound of the waves beating monotonously on the shore. Among the exceptional visitors who braved the depressing influence, remaining out till it was dusk, and only returning to their rooms to supper and bed, were a mother and her little daughter.

The mother was between thirty and forty, a squarely-made, spare woman, dark haired, and decidedly comely in features and complexion. She wore good and tidy, but neither expensive nor fashionable, mourning. It was not widow's weeds, nor was it a panoply of crape, the depth of which measured the extent of her loss, while its sombreness was relieved by high lights of jet trimming. It was of suitable, substantial, unpretending black cloth and cash mere, a little oppressive, perhaps, for summer wear, but then Hannah Hobbs was a light footed, active woman, and nothing ever seemed to oppress her. She had the air which one person in a neighbourhood generally possesses, of being capable of taking the whole burdens of the world on his or her shoulders, and summarily disposing of them without more ado.

She looked an unflinching, uncomplaining, though by no means an unfeeling, woman. She was careful of the little girl, also in mourning, who ran by her side, and kind to her with a far-reaching kindness, which was characteristic of the mother. Most women in Hannah Hobbs's circumstances would have been fussing over her little daughter, and coddling her, guarding her from every wind that blew, shutting her up, as it were, in a glass case lined with cotton wool on cold days, on damp days, and especially after sundown. There were acquaintances of Mrs. Hobbs's at Dingle mouth who viewed her conduct disapprovingly, and remarked it was just like her to be so high-headed and foolhardy to go risking the life of one of her only two remaining children in this way. There the mother was, dragging the girl off her feet, keeping her in the open air from morning till night, letting her paddle about bare footed in the pools in the morning, and suffering the child to be her mother's companion in her last stroll between eight and nine in the evening, when all properly brought-up children of seven years of age were being undressed in improvised nurseries, bathed in salt water, heard their prayers, and consigned to their respective cots for the next twelve hours.

What mumps and hoarseness, and croupy coughs, passing into measles, scarlet-fever, and diphtheria, did not Mrs. Hobbs bang MRS. HOBBS AND LITTLE MARTHA. 5 over the head of another of her doomed children ? Determined, obstinate woman, who would believe that within the last nine months she had lost three ? Yet what was to be expected for the offspring of a mother so hardened, even, in her natural affections ? For nobody doubted that Mrs. Hobbs had loved her children living, and mourned them dead in her own strong, self-restrained way. The fact was that Mrs. Hobbs knew a great deal better than her critics what was best for her little daughter Martha. She knew that Martha was at present a perfectly sound and vigorous child. She also knew that there could be no better plan for developing in her the strain of weakness which had early shown itself, and had prevailed over every effort to counteract it, in her younger sister and brothers, than to treat Mattie like a hot-house flower by confining her to a house, loading her with clothes, feeding her by rule and measure, and watching every breath she drew.

But probably Mrs. Hobbs, who was really not wrong headed, though she was always a little one-sided and straitened in her reasoning, would have stopped short, in the process of hardening the little Martha, at taking her out iu the evening had not another motive come into play. The mother wished the child to have as much of the sea-air as possible, while their stay at Dinglemouth was limited. Joe Hobbs, the locomotive boiler-maker, though he had already laid the foundation of the great trade, one of the results of which was to heap together a great fortune, had been not so long ago merely a servant to the firm whose manager he now was, in which he already held a junior partnership. When he was a servant — in that not very long ago — his wages, though good, in acknowledgment of valuable services, required economical management.

To this day Mrs. Hobbs distrusted the family's growing prosperity, and anxiously treated it — as for that matter much trade prosperity in the bud had better be treated — as a thing of infinite fluctuations, up to-day and down to-morrow, less to be depended upon even than wages, so long as a man is steady, and in his prime, with a good head-piece, and an excellent constitution. If there was nothing else, Mrs. Hobbs had a passion for being at the helm of domestic affairs. She hated to think of her Joe returning home after long business hours at the foundry, and finding himself alone, dependent on the tender mercies of the single servant girl who represented the domestic staff iu the little house at Willesdeu. It did not matter so much for " the boy," young Joe, since he was a day-boarder at the best school in the neighbourhood, but how could Mrs. Hobbs bear the reflected burden of old Joe's solitude of an evening, and of his meals each day, not seen to as she liked them to be, while she and little Martha prolonged more than was absolutely necessary their outing at Dinglemouth ?

No, they must be back punc tually at the end of the second week, and in the meantime the child should not be stinted in the sea-air so long as the weather was fine, and the little woman was well wrapped up against falling dew and changing temperature. " Mother," said little Martha, in her clear treble, holding her mother's hand iu a confiding clasp, and taking a few steps in addition to her mother's firm foot falls, " come and let us see the little lady building castles, below the Gable House." " I don't know that there is much to be seen about ' the little lady,' as you call her," objected Mrs. Hobbs (she had an inveterate trick of objecting, but her friends knew it did not keep her from yielding where nothing save her inclination was concerned) — " look where you are going, Mattie — a stage-dressed little creature not fit to take her freedom, and not sufficiently protected against the night air.

I should say the boats and the landing of their cargoes make a good deal finer sight ; but if you're set on watching this other child I'll not baulk you, though I am afeared it isn't the best of manners. But for that matter you and me ain't extra mannerly, and a cat may look at a king. She is but a child like yourself after all " ; and with a sniff self- MRS. HOBBS AND LITTLE MARTHA. 7 respectful rather than aggressive, Mrs. Hobbs and Martha set off for their goal. It was the third evening that little Martha had con templated with much fascination the same spectacle. The first time it had been by pure accident ; on the second occasion it had been by a little childish ruse, of which, child as she was, she had the grace to feel ashamed. This third time it was by a direct request, boldly made to her mother.

Chapter II. The Little Lady And Her Surroundings

The Gable House was one of those seaside residences occupied by the aristocracy and plutocracy among the visitors to Dinglemouth. It was the chief of these residences, having quite extensive and pretty grounds, lawn, gardens, and shrubberies, stretching landward behind the house ; while in order that the occupants might enjoy the full benefit of the waves and breezes, and such stir as was going on in the place, the Gable House fronted the beach, and was only separated from it by a road extending for some distance, from six to twelve feet above it. There was no sea-wall, because a natural barrier of rocks served the same purpose. These rocks descended by a gradual slope to the sands, affording a rough yet sufficiently safe path for small feet to scramble up and down, twenty times a day. In winter the stormy sea dashed against the rocks, swept across them, obliterating for the moment the road itself, lashed against the house, dimmed its window panes with spray and sand, and did all the damage that such an untamed force can do.

But there were rarely such casualties in summer, though at full tide the water lapped the rocky barrier, and its lower shelves were encrusted with shells, and draped with green and brown seaweed. The bow-windows of one gable be longed to the dining-room, and that of the other to the drawing-room of the house, and each commanded, not only a wide stretch of sea and sky, but a close-at-hand view of the rocks and sands in the immediate vicinity. The Gable House had once owned a distinction &* HER SURROUNDINGS. 9 which the natives of Dinglemouth never forgot. It had been tenanted for a summer by a veritable earl and countess — albeit Scotch, in the depth of genteel poverty, and the height of an extraordinarily large family. Whatever their troubles, however little they spent in Dinglemouth, they left an aroma of nobility about the house which never altogether left it.

Gable House was thenceforth a high-class dwelling, which could not be offered by the local house-agent to any tenant who was not of a superior order. At present it was occupied by Sir Randal Beauchamp and his family, and Sir Randal, as everybody knew, was a Northamptonshire squire and baronet who had run through a great deal of money in his day7, and otherwise achieved no small notoriety among his equals. At the moment when Mrs. Hobbs and little Martha approached the Gable House, by the sands, both the dining-room and drawing-room windows, facing the sea, stood open, for the day had been warm and the evening was fine. In the bay of the dining-room lolled a big, fine-looking man, in spite of the thick silvering of his auburn hair, and the waste wrought in his florid face by other factors than those represented by the fiftytwo years quoted against him in the pages of Debrett.

He had exchanged his dress-coat for a smoking-jacket, and was sitting with his elbows on the arms of one shabby, morocco-covered easy-chair, and his long legs and slippered feet extended on the seat of another. A small table with decanters and glasses was at his elbow, and he lazily puffed a cigar as he leant his head against the woodwork of the window, and gazed, with halfclosed, somewhat bleared eyes — if the truth were told — at an object in the foreground of the scene. In the other bay a couch had been pulled forward so as to fill the recess. On it lay stretched a faded shadow of a woman, elaborately dressed in a faint-coloured evening dress, and wearing a brilliant theatre wrap. Her thin hair, auburn also, was studiously frizzed and piled in curls forming a positively painful contrast to her hollow cheeks, and to the blaze of hectic red which, like the fiery fingers of autumn on shrivelled leaves, ripe to decay, stained rather than flushed her prominent cheek bones.

The solitary concession to weakness was the plush cloak drawn round the thin shoulders raised on the pillows of the couch. The weary head was turned in the same direction as Sir Randal's. The dim eyes watched still more intently the figure which claimed his regard. It was that of a little girl of Martha Hobbs' age. She was provided with a toy spade and pail, and was busily engaged in constructing a miniature canal, with a row of fortresses on the strip of sand, not long laid bare by the receding tide. Never was a small engineer and architect of the gentler sex worse equipped for her labours. She was dressed, as she had lately appeared at her father's elbow, for dessert, as she would presently sidle up to her mother's couch for the last chocolate bonbon, which should reconcile her to the dreadfully dull and stale process of going to bed.

She wore a little silk frock of a pale blue tint, peculiarly adapted for easy ruin by sea air and water. The stockings on her slim little legs were of silk, and the soles of her small bronze shoes were about the thickness of a wafer. She had, it is true, a quaint " Mother Hubbard " cloak over the smart frock, but the texture of it was little thicker than that of the embroidered muslin pinafore which came between the frock and the mantle ; while on her small head was an exaggerated Kate Greenaway bonnet of rich cream-coloured satin. No wonder the superb, fantastic little apparition attracted the attention of more than her contemporary, Martha Hobbs, and was the tea-table talk in the little watering place, as if this was a case in which people were entitled to talk. There was no precedent for such folly and magnificence.

The poor earl's numerous daughters, to the manner born, where aristocratic graces and privileges were concerned, had played on those very rocks and sands in nothing more costly than gingham frocks and straw hats. Certainly they had been provided with a &* HER SURROUNDINGS. 11 more discreet and imposing-looking keeper, in the shape of a hard-featured, dowdy old nurse, who was as unlike the jaunty young woman with a flower in her hat and linen cuffs down to her knuckles, presiding over the antics of the solitary " little lady," as Sir Randal Beauchamp's daughter was far removed iu idiosyncrasies from the juvenile Ladies Lumsden. " Go it, Conny ! " cried the gentleman in the dining room window, removing the cigar from his mouth to deliver the adjuration, and speaking in a naturally pleasant, mellow voice, slightly roughened by ill-usage.

" What do you call your operations ? Is that rock Gib, and is that precipice Ehrenbreitstein, and yon baby fortress Edinburgh or Dumbarton Castle ? Is your ditch the Suez Canal, or do you intend to cover it over and call it the Channel Tunnel ? " " I am going to make them all, papa, if Baker will let me alone and give me time," the little girl shouted back, gleefully. Then she indulged in a short run and jump on her spade, which sent it squashing into the wet sand, and caused the water beneath to spurt up with a gurgle aud engulf the fairy feet so ill shod for the encounter. There was a half-stifled shriek from the small performer, then followed a rush to the rescue by the careless young person in charge of the child, and a considerable stir and commotion at the drawing-room window. A maid, of much the same showy, useless kind as Baker, who had been sitting sewing unseen behind her mistress's couch, got up and leaned out in the direction of the dining-room window, in order to address an appeal to her master : "If you please, Sir Randal, my lady thinks it is time Miss Conny were indoors.

She says she must not stop out after she has wet her feet like that." " Bless my soul ! is your mistress still at the open window? " cried Sir Randal, startled out of his ease and his lazy sense of amusement. " My dear Bessie, how can you be so foolish ? " He leant out in his turn, and addressed Lady Beauchamp in tones that vibrated between kindly indulgence and half-despairing im patience. " What will Robins say, when he makes his morning call to-morrow? I hoped Baker would have the sense to bring Conny in, without waiting to be told to do so, after she has let the monkey paddle her own canoe into difficulties ; but we'll not trust to so faint a chance. Hey ! Baker, bring in the child at once, do you hear ? '' he shouted down to the nurse. " Lady Beauchamp has sent for her. Conny, no nonsense, your mamma wants you, and it is high time that you went to her, and then were off to bed.

Your extensive operations must wait till another day. Hullo ! What hardy little woman is this ? " In the interval, Mrs. Hobbs and Martha, who had come along to see the show, had approached quite near without any actual intrusion, of which Mrs. Hobbs was the last woman to be guilty. Then, as luck would have it, a couple of acquaintances of hers in Dinglemouth came up in the opposite direction, and arrested her, keeping her standing by them while Martha drew a little apart, transfixed, gazing at the object of her extreme wonder and admiration. At the moment of the catastrophe Martha did more than gaze ; being a helpful child for her years, and zealous in whatever cause she was interested, she darted forward into the middle of the group composed of the putabout nursemaid and the typical princess who hopped from one foot to the other, and held up and shook each dripping foot, with an air half refractory, half discomfited, and wholly helpless.

Martha Hobbs was not come of a helpless stock ; she stooped down, feeling the emergency so great that she could not think of any danger of damage to her own black woollen frock and stout square-toed boots. She pulled out a little handkerchief — not an embroidered muslin rag, but a square of linen, strong and durable like the rest of her apparel, and proceeded, tenderly and carefully, to dry the bronze slippers and silk stockings. The next moment a fit of shyness seized Mattie. She got up hastily, and drew back a step. Then the two &* HER SURROUNDINGS. 13 children stood staring at each other, open-eyed as only two children could stare. They presented a marked contrast in all save their years. The little lady, fragile, fine, fantastic, without any choice of her own, and at this moment distressingly bedraggled ; the daughter of the people in her well-nigh ostentatiously homely, woollen frock, and jacket of the most prosaic cut, her sailor hat fitting tightly to her head, with its dark hair clipped well off the eyes and short to the nape of the neck, without qualification or mercy.

The utter absence of all lightness and brightness about the child's clothes was accentuated by the fact that she wore unrelieved black. Withal it was a straight, firm figure, rather tall for its years ; a wholesome, embrowned, and reddened apple face, lit up by a facsimile of Hannah Hobbs's deep brown eyes surmounted by black brows. " I say, my little woman, who are you ? What is j7our name ? " called down Sir Randal from the vantage-ground of his window. He was a man who had always been easily arrested and diverted from whatever he had on hand, save when it happened to be the pursuit of his own pleasure. It had been his nature to be quickly aud superficially interested in the most trivial novelty that crossed his path. At this moment he was highly tickled by the arrival and bearing of the youthful stranger, so unlike his Conny.

The little girl answered his question obediently, and without pause in the middle of her shyness, " My name is Martha Hobbs, please, sir." She did not bob him a curtsey, but instinctively she bent her head with a quaintly courteous acknowledgment. " And my name is Constance Geraldine Beauchamp," broke in the other clear treble voice, not to be outdone. " I am much obliged to you, Martha Hobbs, for trying to dry my shoes," added Constance Geraldine Beauchamp, with grave condescension ; " but you have not been able to do it. See, I can squeeze the water from my toes," and she stood on tip-toe to exhibit the feat. " Off with you instantly, Conny," called her father, in a tone that admitted of no further lingering. " Baker, see that Miss Conny's shoes and stockings are pulled off without loss of time.

I trust I may depend upon you for that simple precaution. If she takes cold — which she is safe to do, otherwise — Lady Beauchamp will worry. As for you, you sturdy little woman with a sturdy little name "—he turned smiling to Mattie, while Baker led off her unwilling charge—" what can I do for you in return for your kindly assistance to my foolish young madam ? Do you care for fruit ? Most little people do." He looked round at the fruit-dishes which had been left on the table at his elbow, and picked out the finest bunch of grapes, and the ripest of the peaches. " Hold out your frock and catch when I throw," he told Martha. At this moment Mrs. Hobbs, who had just parted from her friends, came hurrying back. Sir Randal stopped in the act of dropping the fruit. His practised eye, accustomed to deal with different classes as well as with varieties of men and women, made out at a glance something about Martha's mother which showed that she was not a woman in a position to be patronised.

Neither was she a person with whom the most debonnaire of careless gentlemen could lightly take liberties. "I beg your pardon, madam," he said, with gracious contrition and a smile. That smile had once been peculiarly winning, before the lined, handsome face which wore it had acquired the haggard, battered look of a man who had seen life in all phases — creditable and sorry alike — who had "knocked about," as he would have said, in quarters both reputable and disreputable ; ' ' I trust I am not guilty of any offence ; I did not mean it. Your little girl was kind to mine in a child's strait, and I was taking it upon me to reward her with a trifling boon, which I am accustomed to find exceedingly acceptable." "There is no offence, sir," said Mrs. Hobbs, with a shade of rustic stiffness, and at the same time with a quiet self-respect and good sense which matched the gentleman's perfect breeding.

"As to begging our pardon, it is rather me as should beg yours, for suffering my Martha to be so taken up with your little daughter Sr* HER SURROUNDINGS. 15 as to forget herself by making up to her in a childish way." " Don't say so, madam ; it is Conny, my little girl, who lies under the obligation. But if your little girl is ' taken up,' as you say, with mine, why shouldn't they make friends, and be playmates in this Arcadian spot ? Con is rather at a loss for a playmate, and probably your little mite is in the same difficulty," he added, quickly, while a shade of something which was more like pain than awkwardness might have been perceptible, to a close observer, in the pleasant tones of his voice. "Thank you, sir; Martha is much obliged to you," said Mrs. Hobbs, with a suspicion of reserve in her manner.