PART IV.
THE LIEUTENANT’S WIFE.
(Continued.)
WHAT a strange little quaint place Chester is! I thought I should never have been tired walking along those ramparts, looking over the soft green slopes, and up to the blue hills in the distance, and down here and there upon the grey old churches and the quiet busy little town; but at first we had our lodgings to look for, which was a much more serious matter. I had made up my mind from the very first not to expect to be called upon, nor to go into society; or rather I had set my face against any chance of it, knowing always that we could not do it on the little money we had. But now I found out that Harry was not content with this. He was very anxious to have better lodgings, where ladies could come to see me. I should say dearer lodgings, for better than Mrs. Saltoun’s we could not have had. He wanted me to have quite a drawing-room instead of our nice, cosy, old-fashioned parlour, which was good for everything; and then to think people might be asking us to dinner, and how many embarrassments and troubles we might meet with! For it is embarrassing to be asked out, and to be obliged to let the people suppose you are sulky, and ill-tempered, and won’t go; or else to invent excuses which, besides being sinful, are always sure to be found out; when the real reason is simply that one has not a dress, and cannot afford to get one just then. The other ladies in the regiment might wonder what sort of person I could be, and tell each other that poor young Langham had married some poor girl, and been very foolish. It was exactly true—so he had; and as I can’t say I had any idea that he could be ashamed of me, I took it all very quietly. So long as we were happy, and could afford to live in our own way, I did not mind; but now Harry had got discontented, somehow or other. He was quite in a fuss to think that I was not received as I ought to be, and a great many more things like that—perhaps somebody had said something to him, as if he were supposed to be ashamed of me—at all events he had changed his mind from our first plan; and though I felt quite convinced my way was the wisest, I had to change it as before. Anything was better than having him uncomfortable and discontented. I supported myself with Mrs. Saltoun’s opinion, and went with resignation to look at all those expensive lodgings.
The people seemed all to guess that we belonged to the new regiment; and some of them were quite great ladies, and quite enlightened me as to what we should require. For most of the day I was in a perfect panic; every place seeming dearer than another. When we went into those expensive rooms I always found out something that it was quite impossible for me to tolerate (quite independent, of course, you know, of any question of price!) till Harry quite fretted at my fastidiousness. At last we did find a place that suited me. It was no great thing in point of situation. It was a first floor, a front and back drawing-room. I believe, candidly, that the back room was about as big as Mrs. Saltoun’s good substantial old dining-table, which we used to have in our sitting-room in Edinburgh; but then there were folding-doors; and the front drawing-room was decorated and ornamented to such a pitch that one was quite afraid to sit down in any of the chairs. When I heard what the rent was, I was charmed with the rooms. Harry could not understand my enthusiasm. I found it the handiest place in the world;—and then it showed such discrimination in the landlady to ask so moderate a rent. We fetched Lizzie and baby from the inn directly, and dismissed Harry to look at the town. And really, when we got a little settled, it was not so uncomfortable; though, to be sure, to give up the sizeable room for company (and they never came!), and to live in that little box behind was very foolish, as I always thought. However, when, I above and Lizzy below, we had investigated the house, and when the landlady was made to comprehend, with difficulty, that our washing was done at home, and that her toleration of these processes was needful, and when her wonder and the first shock to her system conveyed in this piece of intelligence was over, things looked tolerably promising. The worst was, we had no view; no view whatever except the bit of garden plot before the house, filled with dusty evergreens, and the corner of a street which led to the railway station. The cabs and people, going to and from the trains, made the only variety in the prospect; and anybody will allow that was sadly different from windows which looked sidelong over the corner of Bruntsfield Links, upon the Castle, and the Crags, and Arthur’s Seat. However, what I had to think of, in the meantime, was how to live without getting into debt; for, of course, people like us, with just so much money coming in (and oh, how very, very little it was!), had neither any excuse nor any way of saving themselves if once they ventured into debt.
Thus we got established in our new quarters; and many a long ramble I took with Harry along those strange superannuated walls.—To think how they once stood up desperate, in defence, round the brave little town! to think of the wild Welsh raging outside on that tranquil turf, where the races were now-a-days; to think of those secure streets down there, that lengthened themselves out presumptuously beyond the ramparts, and even cut passages through them, once cowering in alarm below their shadow! The place quite captivated me; and then the streets themselves, the strange dark covered pathways, steps up from the street, with the shops lurking in their shadow! like some of the German towns, Harry told me. Looking into them from the street, and seeing the stream of passengers coming and going, through the openings and heavy wooden beams of the railing; or looking out of one of those openings upon a kind of street-scenes and life that had nothing in the world to do with the strange old-world arcade, from which one looked out as from a balcony, was as good as reading a book about ancient times. It was not like my dear Edinburgh, to be sure, but it was very captivating; and Harry and I enjoyed exploring together. It was all new and fresh to us—and it was spring; and when you have nothing to trouble you much, it is delightful to see new places, and get new pictures into the mind. Chester was quite as novel, and fresh, and captivating, though it was only in our own country, as that German Munich which Harry told me of—Harry had been a great traveller before he joined, while his father was so long ill—could have been.
Lizzie, however, was not nearly so much at her ease as I was. When she felt herself laughed at, and looked at, and misunderstood, Lizzie fell back into her chronic state of awkwardness. Her national pride was driven to enthusiasm by her contact with “thae English.” Lizzie entertained a steady disbelief that the tongue in which she heard everybody speak—which was far enough from being a refined one, however,—was their native and natural speech. “They were a’ speaking grand for a purpose o’ their ain, to make folk believe they were lords and leddies,” Lizzie said; and with a still higher pitch of indignation, “Mem, you aye understood me, though you’re an English leddy; and think o’ the like o’ them setting up no’ to understand what your lass means when she’s speaking! I dinna understand them, I’m sure,—no half a dozen words. To hear that clippit English, and the sharp tongues they have, deaves me. The very weans in the street they’ve nae innocence in them. They’re a’ making a fashion of speaking as fine as you.”
“Never mind, Lizzie; you’ll soon get accustomed to them, and make friends,” said I, with an attempt at consolation.
“Friends! I never had anybody belonging to me but a faither,” said Lizzie, who understood relations to be signified by that word: “but I’m no heeding now; and I’ll soon learn to nip the ends off the words like the rest o’ them. There’s a grand green for drying, that Mrs. Goldsworthy calls the back ga’den; and, if you’ll no’ be angry, I can do the ironing grand mysel’.”
“You! but I dare not trust you, Lizzie,” said I, shaking my head. “Mr. Langham would find it out—I mean he would find me out—if they were not quite so well done; and you don’t consider what quantities of things you will have to do—to keep the drawing-room nice, and get tea and breakfast, and wash, and I don’t know what; and yet always to be tidy, and keep baby all day long. You don’t know what you have on your hands already, you unlucky girl.”
“Eh, I’m glad!” cried Lizzie, clapping her hands together with fervour; and her brown eyes sparkled, and her uncouth figure grew steady with the delight of conscious energy and power. If she had been eighteen she would not have been so simple-minded. Never anybody was so fortunate as I had been in my little maid.