With hardly an exception, nearly all my young friends are there still, and all are like myself, single. Indeed, it cannot well be otherwise, for there is literally no one for them to marry. The boys, as they have grown up, have left the town, and are seen no more; and of them all—of all those rude, unruly boys who used to go to our parties, and blow out the lights and kiss us, hardly one remains. Many are dead. Rivers was killed at the Cape; Jameson died of fever in India; Smithers, Lacy, and Marsden, all sleep far away from their English homes, under the rich soil of the Crimea; Thompson was drowned at sea. Many of them are in the army and navy, and scattered all over the world. Two or three have emigrated to Australia. Hampton is a rising young barrister on the Northern circuit. Travers is a struggling curate in London; and Douglas, more fortunate, has a living in Devonshire. Two of the Hoopers are clerks in the Bank of Ireland, and one of them a medical man of good position near Reigate. Many of them have married; but they have chosen their wives in the neighbourhoods where their profession had thrown them. Anyhow, none of them had taken Canterbury girls; and these—pretty, amiable, and ladylike, as many of them are—seemed doomed to remain unmarried. One or two of them only, frightened at the hopeless look-out, have recklessly taken up with marching subalterns from the garrison; but the rest look but gravely upon such doings, for the Canterbury girls are far too properly brought up to regard a red coat with anything but a pious horror, as a creature of the most dangerous description, very wild, and generally very poor; but withal exceedingly fascinating, to be approached with great caution, and to be flirted with demurely at the race-ball, and during the cricket-week, but at other times to be avoided and shunned; and it is an agreed thing among them, supported by the general experience of the few who have tried the experiment, that even a life of celibacy at Canterbury is preferable to the lot of a sub.'s wife in a marching regiment.
Thus it happens that all my old schoolfellows were still single, and indeed we have a riddle among ourselves, "Why is Canterbury like heaven? Because we neither marry nor are given in marriage."
Before I had been long in Canterbury I found myself so comfortable with Mrs. Mapleside, that I was convinced that any change must be for the worse. I therefore suggested to the dear old lady that we should enter into an arrangement for me to take up my abode permanently with her. To this she assented very willingly; for, she said, she found it far more cheerful than living by herself; besides which my living would not add very much to her expenses, and the sum I proposed to pay, sixty pounds a year, would enable her to indulge in many little additional luxuries; for her income, although just sufficient to live upon in the way she was accustomed to, was still by no means large.
Thus the arrangement would be mutually beneficial to us, and when it was settled, I looked with increased pleasure at my beautifully neat little bedroom, where before I had only been as a guest, but which I could now look upon as my own sanctuary—my home.
I am very comfortable now, more even than when I had been a visitor; for then the good old lady fussed a little about my comforts, and I could seldom leave her and get up to my room in quiet; but now that I am a permanent inmate of the house, I am able to mark out my own day, and to pursue my course while Mrs. Mapleside keeps hers.
Mrs. Mapleside keeps one servant, a tidy, cheerful-looking young woman of about seven-and-twenty. She has been thirteen years with her, Mrs. Mapleside having taken her from the national school, and trained her into a perfect knowledge of all her little ways. Her name is Hannah, but Mrs. Mapleside always addressed her as "child."
My life here is not eventful, but on the other hand it is not dull. I am never unoccupied, and time passes away in an easy, steady flow, which is very tranquillizing and soothing to me. The first thing after breakfast I read the Times aloud to Mrs. Mapleside, and then whenever there is an accident I look out the train in Bradshaw, and she is always devoutly thankful for another hairbreadth escape which she insists we have had. About eleven, either one or other of my friends comes in with her work and sits with us until lunch-time, or else I myself go out to call upon one of them. After lunch we go for a walk, or at least I do, and Mrs. Mapleside makes calls—to which she is very partial, and of which I confess I have quite a horror. Indeed, I never pay regular visits, preferring much to take my work and sit for a while of a morning at the houses where I am intimate. After dinner, Mrs. Mapleside dozes, and I go up into my room—for it has been summer—and write my story. I have now been here six months, and in that time have, between dinner and tea, written this little history of the principal events in my life, and in the lives of those dear to me; and the exercise has been a great solace and amusement to me. I have nearly come to an end now.
After I had been down here for four months I yielded to Polly's entreaties, and made my first half-yearly visit to them, from which I have only returned a fortnight. I confess that I had rather dreaded this meeting, but now that it is over I am very glad that I made it. It is so pleasant to think of Polly in her happy home, for it is a very happy one. Charley is such a capital fellow, so thoroughly good and hearty, and I am sure he would cut off his little finger if he thought it would give Polly pleasure. I tell her that I think she has her own way too much, more than it is good that a wife should, but Polly only laughs, and says, "That her dear old bear is quite contented with his chain, but that if he were to take it into his head to growl, and pull his own way, that he would find the chain only a flimsy pretence after all."
I believe they are as happy as it is possible for a couple to be. Polly says it would be quite perfect if she only had me with them. Charley and she tried very hard to persuade me, but I was firm in my resolution. Canterbury is my home, and shall always remain so; but when my spirits get better I shall make my visits longer in London; but not till I feel that my dull presence is no drawback to the brightness of their hearth: and this will not be for a long time yet. I try very hard to be patient, but I feel at times irritable and impatient at my sorrow, I hope, with time, that this will die away, and that I shall settle down into a tranquil, even-tempered, cheerful old maid. I find it difficult, at present, to enter into all the tittle-tattle and gossip of this town, but I endeavour to do so, for I know that I shall not be the same as those around me if I do not. So I am beginning to join in the working parties and tea-meetings, which form the staple of the amusements of our quiet set, and where we discuss the affairs of Canterbury to our hearts' content. And now I lay down my pen, which has already run on far beyond the limits I had originally assigned for it.
I have told briefly, in general—but in those parts which I thought of most interest, more at length—the story of my life, and of the lives of those dear to me, and I have now arrived at a proper point to stop; but should any unexpected event occur—not in my life, for that is out of the question, but in theirs—I shall again take up my pen to narrate it. But this is not likely, for Polly, Harry, and Ada are all married, and have a fair chance of having the old ending to all the fairy stories I used to read as a child, written at the end of the chapter of their lives, "And so they married and lived very happily ever after."
Chapter VIII.
Risen From The Dead.
I take up my pen again, but in what a different spirit to that with which I laid it down, as I thought for ever. Then I believed that I had done with the world; that its joys and its pleasures, its griefs and anxieties, were no more for me, but that I was to remain a mere spectator of the drama; interested indeed, as a spectator always is, hoping that virtue will be rewarded, and the villains of the play unmasked and punished in the end, and giving my best wishes to all the young lovers, but really caring only for the happiness of Harry, and Polly and Ada; and my greatest ambition and hope being to become some day a quiet, contented old maid, the friend and confidant of the young people round me, and the beloved aunty of Polly's and Harry's children. But in these three months two events have happened, the first of which is important enough for me to have taken up my pen to have chronicled; but the second, and which is the one of which I shall write first, has once more altered all my life, has at once changed all the plans which I had, in my sagacity, thought so unalterably settled, and has, when I least dreamt of it, given me fresh life, and hope, and happiness. I cannot stay to tell it as it was told me, my heart is too full,