The Story of Antony Grace

“Hush, mother!” said Mr Hallett, with an uneasy glance at me.

“Yes, my son; but I cannot bear you to forget all our old genteel ways. We may be poor, but we can still be respectable.”

“Yes, yes; of course, dear,” said Mr Hallett nastily, as he saw that his mother was about to shed tears. “Come, Antony, let’s be waiters.”

I jumped up to assist him, just as Linny, looking very rosy and pretty in her bonnet and jacket, hurried out of a side room, and kissing her mother, and nodding to us, hastened downstairs.

“Ah?” said Mrs Hallett, with another sigh, “we ought not to be reduced to that.”

“To what, dear?” said Mr Hallett, as he busily removed the dinner things.

“Letting that young and innocent girl go about the streets alone without a protector, offering herself as a prey to every designing wretch who casts his eyes upon her fresh, fair face.”

“My dear mother,” said Mr Hallett, laughing, “London is not quite such a sink of iniquity as you suppose, and you have tutored Linny too well for there to be any occasion for fear. There, come, lean back and rest till we have done, and then I will read you one of your favourites.”

Mrs Hallett allowed herself to be gently pressed back in her seat, and lay there still complaining that a son of hers should have to stoop, and also ask his visitor to stoop, to such a degrading toil.

“Oh, Antony doesn’t mind, dear,” he said cheerfully. “We do worse things than this at the office – eh, Antony?”

“That we do, Mr Hallett,” I cried, laughing.

“Yes,” said Mrs Hallett, “at the office. Ah, well, I suppose it is of no use to complain.”

She complained all the same, at everything, while Mr Hallett bore it with a most patient manner that set me wondering. He was never once irritable, but took every murmur in a quiet, resigned way, evidently excusing it on the score of his mother’s sufferings.

Then he got out a book to read to her, but it would not do. Then another and another one, supposed to be her favourite authors; but nothing would do but Dodd’s “Thoughts in Prison,” and the reading of this cheerful volume went on till Linny came back, as I noticed, looking hot and flushed, as if she had been hurrying; and she glanced, as I thought, suspiciously at me, her brother not raising his eyes from his reading.

Then followed tea, and a walk with Mr Hallett, and after that supper, when he walked part of the way home with me.

“Good-night, Antony,” he said. “I hope you have not found your visit too gloomy an one to care to come again.”

“Will you ask me again?” I said eagerly.

“To be sure. My poor mother is a little fretful, as you saw; but she has been an invalid now these seventeen years, and she misses some of the comforts of the past. Good-night, my boy.”

“Good-night, Mr Hallett;” and we parted – he to walk slowly away, bent of head and serious, and I to begin thinking of his unwearying patience and devotion to his invalid mother: after which I recalled a great deal about Linny Hallett, and how pretty and petulant she seemed, wondering at the same time that neither mother nor brother took any notice of her flushed and excited look as she came in from church.

“Hullo! got back, then?” said Mr Revitts, rather grumpily, as I entered the room. “Had a pleasant day?”

“Oh yes, Bill, very!” I exclaimed.

“Oh yes! It’s all very fine, though, and it’ll be all Hallett soon. But you have got back in decent time. Well, I’m tired, and I’m off to bed.”

An example I followed directly after.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Linny’s Secret

My visit to Great Ormond Street was the first of many. In a short time the office labours with Mr Jabez Rowle were merely the mechanical rounds of the day; and, like Stephen Hallett, I seemed to live only for the evening, when I took my Latin exercises and translations to him, he coming down from the attic, where he worked at some project of his own, concerning which poor murmuring Mrs Hallett and her daughter were forbidden to speak, and then returning, after making the corrections.

I felt a good deal of curiosity about that attic, but Mr Hallett had told me to wait, and I waited patiently, having, young as I was, learned to school myself to some extent, and devoted myself to my studies, one thought being always before my mind, namely, that I had to pay Mr Blakeford all my father’s debt, for that I meant to do.

I had grown so much at home now at the Halletts’, that, finding the door open one evening, I walked straight in, knocked twice, and, receiving no answer, tried the door, which yielded to my touch, swung open, and I surprised Linny writing a letter, which, with a flaming face, she shuffled under the blotting-paper, and held up a warning finger, for Mrs Hallett was fast asleep.

“Where’s Mr Hallett?” I said.

“In Bluebeard’s chamber,” cried Linny playfully; “I’ll go and tell him you are here.”

I nodded, thinking how pretty she looked with her flushed cheeks, and she went softly to the door, but only to come back quickly.

“Antony, dear,” she whispered, laying her hand on my shoulder, “you like me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” I replied.

“Did you see what I was doing?” she continued, busily readjusting my neckerchief, and then looking me full in the face.

“Yes; you were writing a letter.”

She nodded.

“Don’t tell Stephen,” she whispered.

“I was not going to.”

“He would want to know who I was writing to, and ask me such a lot of questions. You won’t tell him, will you?”

“No,” I said, “not unless he asks me, and then I must.”

“Oh, he won’t ask you,” she said merrily; “no fear. Now I’ll go and tell him.”

I sat down, wondering why she should want to keep things from her brother, and then watched Mrs Hallett, and lastly began thinking about the room upstairs – Old Bluebeard’s chamber, as Linny playfully called it – and tried to puzzle out what Stephen Hallett was making. That it was something to improve his position I was sure, and I had often thought of what hard work it must be, with so little time at his disposal, and Mrs Hallett so dead set against what she openly declared to be a folly, and miserable waste of money.

My musings were brought to an end by the reappearance of Linny, who came down holding her pretty little white hand to me.

“There, sir,” she said, “you may kiss my hand; and mind, you and I have a secret between us, and you are not to tell.”

I kissed her hand, and she nodded playfully.

“Now, sir, Bluebeard’s chamber is open to you, and you may go up.”

“Go? Upstairs?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, stroking her pretty curls; “the ogre said you were to go up.”

“Are you – sure?” I said.

“Sure? Of course. There, go along, or you’ll wake mamma.”