Friends I Have Made

“‘Laurie,’ I suggested.

“‘Yes, yes; I know,’ she said sharply; ‘it is in my note. Pray, why in the name of common sense did you not sit down? Take that chair. Now then, have you been companion to a lady before?’

“‘No, ma’am,’ I replied; and then, in answer to her questions, all very sharply given, I told her so much as was necessary of my story.

“‘I don’t think you will suit me,’ she said; ‘I’ve had misery enough, and I want some one cheerful and agreeable, a lady whom I can trust, and who will be a pleasant companion. There, I’m sure there is not such a body in London, for the way I’ve been imposed upon is dreadful! I’ve had six in six months, and the number of applications I have had nearly drove me out of my senses. I’ve had one since you wrote to me – a creature whose sole idea was herself. I want one who will make me her first consideration. I don’t mind what I pay, but I want some one tall and lady-like, and you are not pretty, you know.’

“I shook my head sadly.

“‘Humph! Well,’ she went on, ‘you won’t be so giddy, and be always thinking of getting married. There, you need not blush like that; it’s what all the companions I have had seem to think about. You don’t I suppose?’

“‘I am engaged to be married,’ I said, hanging down my head, ‘in a couple of years.’

“‘Ho! Well, he mustn’t come here, for I’m a very selfish pragmatical old woman; and if I engaged you – which I don’t think I shall do – I should want you all to myself. What is he?’

“‘A surgeon – abroad,’ I faltered.

“‘Ho! That’s better; and perhaps he’ll settle there altogether without you.’

“I looked at her indignantly, and she laughed.

“‘Ah! I know, my good girl. I haven’t lived to eight-and-forty for nothing. How old are you?’

“‘Twenty,’ I said, shivering, for her rough way repelled me, and I longed to bring the interview to an end.

“‘Why, the girl’s cold,’ she said roughly. ‘H’m, twenty! Here, go up to the fire, and have a good warm; it’s dreadful weather. There, pull off your bonnet and jacket. Put them on that chair, and go closer to the fire; I’ve a deal to say to you yet, for I’m not going to engage another young person and have to change directly.’

“I obeyed her, trembling the while, for I was very weak; and she went on asking me questions and making comments.

“‘I don’t like your appearance at all: you look pale and unhealthy. Not a bit like a girl from the country.’

“‘I’m very sorry,’ I said; ‘but indeed, ma’am, I have excellent health.’

“‘Then your face tells stories about you. You play, of course?’

“‘Yes, ma’am.’

“‘You’re warm now. Go and play something. Can you sing?’

“‘Yes, ma’am.’

“‘Then sing too; and look here, Miss – Miss – Miss – ’

“I was about to tell her my name, but remembering the last rebuff, I was silent.

“‘Now, look here, my good young lady, how am I to remember your dreadful name? What is it?’

“‘Laurie, ma’am,’ I replied.

“‘Of course it is: I remember it quite well. Now go and play and sing something; and mind, I don’t want my ears deafened with fireworks, and the drums split with parrot-shriek bravuras. Sing something sweet and simple and old-fashioned – if you can,’ she added, ungraciously.

“I crossed the room and sat down to the magnificent piano, and for the next five minutes I seemed to be far away, down in the old home, as I forgot where I was, in singing my poor dead father’s favourite old ballad, ‘Robin Adair;’ while, as I finished, I had hard work to keep back the tears.

“‘Ro – bin A – dair,’ she sang, as I rose, in a not unpleasing voice. ‘Now let me hear you read. I always make my companion read to me a great deal; and mind this, I hate to hear any one drone like a school-girl. Go over there into the corner of the window, and stand there. Take that book; you’ll find the mark left in where Miss Belleville – bah! I believe her name was Stubbs, and her father a greengrocer – left off. Now then, begin!’

She pushed a lounge-chair close up to the window, and sat down with her hands in her muff, while I stood there, feeling like a school-girl, and ready to drone, as I began to read with faltering voice what happened to be Thackeray’s most beautiful chapter – The Death of poor old Colonel Newcome. I know my voice trembled at times, and a strange sense of choking came upon me as I went on, battling – oh! so hard – to read those piteous heart-stirring lines; but I was weak and suffering, I was faint with hunger and exertion, sick with that despair of hope deferred, and at last the room, with its costly furniture, seemed to swim round before me, a cold perspiration bathed my face, and with a weary sigh I caught feebly at the curtains, and then fell heavily upon the polished floor.

“I have some faint memory of being lifted, and wheeled in a chair whose castors I heard chirrup, to the front of the fire, and then, as my senses began to return, I seemed to feel arms round me, and a pleasant voice saying, half aloud:

“And she just lost her poor father too – to set her to read such a thing as that! I declare I’m about the wickedest, most thoughtless, and unfeeling old woman under the sun.”

“Then there was the refreshing odour of a vinaigrette, and the sick feeling began to pass away.

“‘I – I beg pardon,’ I faltered, trying to rise.

“‘I beg yours, my dear,’ she said, tenderly. ‘Sit still, sit still. Now then, try and drink that.’

“Some sherry was held to my lips, and then I was almost forced to eat a biscuit. They, however, rapidly revived me, and I found Mrs Porter had torn off her bonnet and mantle, and was kneeling by my side.

“That’s better, my dear,” she said, smiling at me, as she passed her arm round my waist, and drew me nearer to her, and kissed me in a gentle, motherly way. This was too much, for I was very weak and hysterical. I could fight against harshness, but her tender words and ways unlocked the flood-gates of my grief, and I laid my head down and sobbed as if my heart would break.

“An hour later, after she had literally forced me to partake of the breakfast that was ordered up, she sat beside me, holding my hand, and more than once I saw the tears steal down her pleasant face as she won from me, bit by bit, the story of my troubles and my bitter struggles here in town.

“At last I rose to go, trembling and expectant. Would she engage me? It was more than I dared to hope.

“‘Sit still, my child,’ she said, tenderly, ‘and stay with me; we shall be the best of friends.’

“I stayed – stayed to know her real worth and to win her motherly love – stayed to find, when John Murray returned, that his love was greater for my sister than for me, and patiently resigned my love to her, and then battled with a long illness when they had gone together to the far-off home. But every day gave me a new lesson on not judging too hastily. That is ten years since; and I am still in my peaceful, happy home, though only as companion to a lady.”

Chapter Nine.

My Old Sergeant

I have visited the sick a good deal in my time, and have ever found that a serious illness is one of the greatest softeners of a rugged nature. I have noticed it in workhouse and in hospital as well as in the dreary habitations that are occupied by the poor. Perhaps it is more noticeable in men than in women, and in many cases it has seemed to me to bring forth nature’s gentility where it has for years, perhaps, been encrusted with rude, rugged ways.

One of my most genuine gentlemen by nature was a quaint old sergeant of dragoons, living in ill-health upon his little pension, and at the wish of some people in the country near our old home, I sought him out, and found him, after some trouble, in one of the little streets of Walworth, and imparted to him my mission, namely, to inquire if he could tell me the whereabouts of one John Morris and his wife, relatives of the farming people who asked me to inquire.

I found the sergeant, a stern, rugged old fellow, in his lodgings, and he looked surlily at me, being, as I afterwards found, in pain, and he saluted me with a harsh “Well, ma’am, what’s for you? I’m not in the humour for visitors now.”

“I will not keep you long,” I said, and stated my business.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” he said. “I thought you came to preach at me, and tell me what a wicked old man I am. There, bless your heart, I knowed it well enough, none better. John Morris, eh?”

“Yes, and his wife, do you know where they are?”

“Dead, ma’am, dead, both of them: gone to where there’s rest and peace, and no more sorrow; ‘where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary – ’ You know the rest. Know them! Of course. John Morris was in my troop – B troop, 20th Dragoon Guards; smart, fresh-coloured, honest Lincolnshire lad – a good lad; without any of the general rough ways of a soldier: for there’s good sort of fellows among us, as well as the sweepings of towns and villages; and I loved that lad as if he’d been my own son. Why? Because he was a thorough soldier, every inch of him. He came to me to ’list – I was recruiting sergeant then. ‘Think twice of it, my lad,’ I says; ‘ours is a rough life;’ for from his talk I found he’d been having some tiff at home; so ‘think twice of it, my lad,’ I says: for I did not want to see a fine young fellow throw himself away. And it is that, you know, though it don’t sound loyal of me, as an old troop-sergeant-major, to say so; and feeling this – though I knew I should make a profit of the young fellow – I did not like to see him ’list, when a ‘rough’ would have done just as well. But he would do it; he was set upon it; and told me that if I didn’t take him, he would join the foot-regiment quartered in the town. So seeing how things stood, and sooner than he should do that, I gave him the shilling, and he entered one of the smartest heavy cavalry regiments in the service.

“I always liked him for his frank, honest, open manner, and the way he set to work to learn his duties – riding-school, foot-drill, sword-exercise, – no matter what it was, he worked at it; learned quietly and cheerfully; and in a wonderfully short time made himself a smart soldier. You never heard him snubbed for dirty belts or rusty accoutrements; everything belonging to him shone like silver or gold; while his horse was groomed till its skin was like satin. The men called him ‘Model Jack;’ for whenever some one on parade was having it for want of smartness, without pausing for a moment, the captain, or major, would shout, ‘Rein back, John Morris,’ tell the one in trouble to look at him and his traps, and then order so much punishment-drill.