As a child I had always associated my godmother with the crocodile (though not with Mr. Bosch’s charming conception of it, in his picture of the Creation). Yet there were no tears in her faded eyes when she explained that of my father’s modest fortune not a pittance remained. In a few days the house, with everything in it except my own small sticks of furniture, was to be sold by auction. I must keep my door locked against intruders. All that would be left to me was a small income of about £110 per annum, derived from money bequeathed to me by a relative of my mother’s whom I had never seen.
“I fancy your father knew nothing about it,” she concluded, “at least so your dear mother seemed to imply. But there! it’s a sad business, a sad business. And that Tapa scandal; a lamentable affair.” Having thus prepared the way, my godmother proposed that I should take up my residence in her house, and commit my future entirely to her charge.
“You cannot be an expensive guest,” she explained, “and I am sure you will try to be a grateful one. No truly conscientious godparent, my dear child, ever relinquishes the soul committed to her care. I sometimes wonder whether your poor dear mother realized this.”
But it was my soul, if that is brother to the spirit and can be neighbour to pride, that revolted against her proposition. I had to shut my eyes at the very remembrance of Miss Fenne’s prim and musty drawing-room. Every intimation, every jerk of her trembling head, every pounce of her jewelled fingers only hardened my heart. Poor Miss Fenne. Her resentment at my refusal seemed to increase her shortness of sight. Looking in on her from my balcony, I had the advantage of her, as she faced me in the full light in her chair, dressed up in her old lady’s clothes like a kind of human Alp among my pygmy belongings. I tried to be polite, but this only increased her vexation. One smart tap of the ivory ball that topped her umbrella would have been my coup de grâce. She eyed me, but never administered it.
At last she drew in her lips and fell silent. Then, as may happen at such moments, her ill-temper and chagrin, even the sense of her own dignity drooped away, and for a while in the quietness we were simply two ill-assorted human beings, helpless in the coils of circumstance. She composed her mouth, adjusted her bonnet strings, peered a moment from dim old eyes out of the window, then once more looked at me.
“It must be, then, as God wills,” she said in a trembling voice. “The spirit of your poor dear mother must be judge between us. She has, we may trust, gone to a better world.”
For a moment my resolution seemed to flow away like water, and I all but surrendered. But a rook cawed close overhead, and I bit my lip. Little more was said, except that she would consider it her duty to find me a comfortable and God-fearing home. But she admonished me of the future, warned me that the world was a network of temptations, and assured me of her prayers. So we parted. I bowed her out of my domain. It was the last time we met. Two days afterwards I received her promised letter:—
“My Dear Godchild—Mr. Ambrose Pellew, an old clergyman friend of mine, in whose discretion and knowledge of the world I have every confidence, has spoken for you to an old married, respectable servant of his now living a few miles from London—a Mrs. Bowater. For the charge of thirty shillings a week she has consented to give you board, lodging, and reasonable attendance. In all the circumstances this seems to me to be a moderate sum. Mr. Pellew assures me that Mrs. B. is clean, honest, and a practising Christian. When this dreadful Sale is over, I have arranged that Pollie shall conduct you safely to what will in future be your home. I trust that you will be as happy there as Providence permits, though I cannot doubt that your poor dear mother and your poor father, too, for that matter, would have wished otherwise—that the roof of her old friend who was present at your Baptism and insisted on your Confirmation, should have been your refuge and asylum now that you are absolutely alone in the world.
“However, you have rejected this proposal, and have chosen your own path. I am not your legal guardian, and I am too deeply pained to refer again to your obstinacy and ingratitude. Rest assured that, in spite of all, I shall remember you in my prayers, and I trust, D.V., that you will escape the temptations of this wicked world—a world in which it has pleased God, in spite of self-sacrificing and anxious friends, to place you at so distressing a disadvantage. But in His Sight all men are equal. Let that be your continual consolation. See Amos 7:2; Prov. 31:24–28; Eccles. 12:1.
