Mrs. Mapleside read the Times regularly, getting it on the third day from the library, and her principal object of interest in it was to search for railway accidents; and as few days pass without some mishap of greater or less importance being recorded, she was constantly quoting them in support of her pet theory. It was in vain that I assured her that the number of accidents was as nothing in proportion to the immense number of trains which ran daily. This was a light in which she would not look at it; but had an argument, quite original to herself, with which she always triumphantly confuted anything I could urge on the opposite side of the question.
"Now, my dear," she would say, "this accident happened by the train which left York at ten o'clock in the morning. Will you be kind enough to look in Bradshaw, which I never can understand, and see by which train we must have left Canterbury, to have reached York in time to have gone on by that ten-o'clock train?"
I would get the book and find that if we had gone up to London by the four o'clock train the evening before, and then on by the night mail to York, and had slept there for a few hours, we could have gone on by the ten o'clock train to which the accident happened.
"There, my dear," she would exclaim triumphantly, "you see we have had a wonderful escape. If we had started by that four o'clock train on our way to Scotland we should have been very likely killed, and if you remember, if we had gone by the twelve o'clock train the day before to Bath, we should have been in that dreadful accident at the bridge, where so many people were killed. No, no, my dear, there is hardly a day passes when if we had taken our places by one of the trains from here, and gone on a journey to some part of England or other, we should not have met with some accident or other; perhaps only run over a signalman, but even that would have been very unpleasant to the feelings. You may say what you like, my dear, but nothing will persuade me that we do not have almost daily the most providential escapes from destruction."
This was Mrs. Mapleside's great hobby. She had only one other curious conviction; and that was that the population of London was composed almost exclusively of bad characters, and that an inhabitant there must expect, as an ordinary occurrence, to have his house destroyed by fire. The columns of the Times afforded her an immense array of facts in support of this theory; and as some one had unfortunately once told her, that not one in fifty of the cases before the London magistrates were reported, the argument that these cases were as nothing in proportion to the population, carried no weight with her whatever. She was absolutely pathetic in her description of the fires.
"There, my dear," she would say, "four fires on last Tuesday night: only think, Agnes, what a terrible spectacle to look out of one's window and see the town blazing in four directions all at once; the clank of the engines—I saw a fire once my dear, and I shall never forget it,—and the roaring of the flames, and the cries of the lookers on; and the poor people getting their furniture out of the next houses, and the water running down the street; and only think of seeing all this in four directions at once."
These are Mrs. Mapleside's peculiarities, and nothing will shake her faith in her view of the subjects; on all other points she is the most easy old lady possible, hardly having any opinion of her own, and ready to do, or say anything to give pleasure to others. On the whole she is one of the kindest and most cheerful old ladies in the world.
Her welcome to me was, as I have said, most affectionate, and when tea was over, she made me sit down in a large easy chair by the fire—for although it was hardly cold enough for one, she had it lighted because she was sure I should come in perished with cold from my journey.
I sat there, contented and snug, listening and yet hardly hearing Mrs. Mapleside as she ran on, telling me all the changes which had taken place in Canterbury in those four years that I had been away. The old names sounded very pleasant to me, and called up many happy memories of the past; and that night, when I had gone up to my own room, I threw up the window, and looked out; and as I heard the old cathedral bells chiming the hour, I felt once more at home again, and that my life, although it could no longer be bright and happy as I had hoped, might yet be a very contented and cheerful one.
In a day or two all my old friends called upon me, and in a week I felt completely at home. The place itself was so perfectly unchanged, the very goods in the shop windows seemed arranged in precisely the same order in which they had been when I had last walked down the High Street. I found my acquaintances and friends exactly as I had left them; I had changed so much that it seemed almost strange to me that they should have altered so little. I had at seventeen been as merry and as full of fun as any of them. My separation from Percy and my ill health, had certainly changed me a good deal a year and a half after that; but in the three years before papa's death I had again recovered my spirits, and had been able to take my place again with my old playfellows and friends. Only two months back I had been as merry and perhaps more happy than any of them, but now how changed I was! they were still lively girls, I was a quiet sad woman. It was not of course in feature that I was so much altered, it was in expression. I think sometimes now, when I look in the glass, that if I could but laugh again, and if my eyes could once more light up, I should not be so much changed from what I was seven years ago; but I know that can never be again. I have fought my fight for happiness, and have lost; I staked my whole life upon one throw, and after so many years weary waiting, when it seemed as if the prize would soon be mine, the cup was dashed in an instant from my lips; and henceforth I know that I am no longer an actor in the long drama of life, but a mere spectator—content to look on at the play, and to feel, I hope, an interest in the success of others.
So I told all my friends who came to see me on my first arrival—and who were proposing little schemes of pleasure and amusement—that I should not, at any rate for some time, enter into any society even of the quietest kind; but that I should be glad, very glad if they would come and sit with me, and talk to me, and make me a confidant in their hopes and plans, as they had done long ago. At first my old playfellows were rather shy of me, I seemed so different to themselves, so grave and sad in my deep mourning, that they could hardly feel at home with me. They knew that I had gone through some great sorrow, and perhaps guessed at its nature, but they had heard no particulars, nor who it was that I mourned; for although my engagement with Percy had been generally known, it had been supposed by every one—from my illness after the will was lost, and from Percy's departure for India—that it had been broken off; and we had never deemed it necessary to tell any one how the matter really stood, as a long engagement like ours is such a very uncertain affair, even at the best. So every one supposed that I had become engaged in London, and that death had in someway broken it off, and I have never given any further explanation of it.
Now that six months have passed, and my friends are more accustomed to my changed appearance and manners—and now that I am, perhaps, a little more cheerful—their timidity has worn off, and few days pass that one of them does not bring in her work and come and sit for an hour and chat with me.
But if my old playmates find me strangely quiet and old, I see but little alteration in them. They are all girls still, as merry and genial as of old. Even those who were many years older than I, who had been elder girls at our children's parties when I was one of the youngest of the little ones, are still quite young women, and have by no means ceased to consider themselves as eligible partners at a ball. These sometimes try to rally me out of my determination never again to go into society. They tell me that I am only a little over twenty-five, a mere child yet, and that I shall think better of it some day. But I know that it will never be otherwise. My heart is dead, and I have neither thought nor hope of any change as long as my life lasts. But, of course, they cannot know this, and I let them prophecy and predict as they please, knowing that their anticipations