Chapter V: In Park Lane

"This world is not worthy of your soul. Give it not a Good-day when [Christ] cometh in competition with it."—RUTHERFORD.

THE fly from the neighbouring town was at the door. Rachael and Johnnie were assisting with the luggage. Abigail was nowhere to be seen. Heather and Bluebell looked dazed and uncomfortable, but the future had still its attractions for them. They had been into the kitchen early that morning to get a little comfort from Rachael.

"Do say you don't think us wicked, Rachael!" pleaded Heather. "It is so dreadful leaving home when Abigail is so angry. She has hardly spoken to us for the last three or four days."

"Bless you both!" exclaimed warm-hearted Rachael. "I'm trusting to the good Lord to take care of you, as I keep telling Abigail. She's not angry with you, but sore grieved about it. We learn wisdom by our mistakes sometimes. Ask the Lord's guidance, and He will give it to you, and if you get to love the world more than Him, give it up and come back. You'll want great judgment to discern, and separate yourselves from the right and wrong that is mixed up in gay society. But I'm trusting that we shall soon have you back again."

They went to find Abigail at the last moment. She was locked in her room.

"Say good-bye to us," Bluebell called out.

There was no answer for a moment, and then Abigail's stern old voice rang out, "'She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.'"

Not a word more could they get out of her.

"Oh, come on," exclaimed Heather, dragging Bluebell away. "She doesn't care a bit for us. I told you it was no good coming up to her."

When the fly drove away, Abigail leant out of her window, and with straining eyes followed it. Her heart was nearly broken. She could hardly realize that, after all these years of care and loving tyranny, her authority had been swept aside with such ease, and that her charges, in utter indifference to her threats and persuasions, had taken their future into their own hands, and had left their home in company with a comparative stranger.

When they had passed out of her sight, she wiped the tears away with her apron.

"They're gone for ever. If I see them again, they'll be no longer the innocent girls they are now."

And then she walked downstairs, and set about cleaning the house, and putting away all traces of the ones who had left her. From that time forward, she closed her lips, and would never discuss her young mistresses with Rachael or any one.

It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when the girls reached Paddington Station with their cousin. As they alighted on the platform, feeling bewildered with the bustle and confusion around them, a tall, soldier-like man came forward, and Mrs. Carter seized hold of his arms in delight.

"Hal, you old dear! I never thought you would come to meet us. Here are the girls. Let me introduce you. Now, will you see to our luggage?"

Captain Carter pulled his big moustache, and looked down upon his young wife with great affection. After the first glance at the girls, who were hardly looking their best in their country-made garments, he busied himself in carrying out his wife's directions, and he and she carried on an animated conversation during the drive home.

Heather and Bluebell were quietly enjoying all the fresh sights and sounds around them. When they came into Mrs. Carter's pretty drawing-room, full of hothouse plants and tasteful furniture, the contrast between it and their room at home struck them very forcibly.

Afternoon tea was brought in on a dainty little table, and then, just as Captain Carter was handing them a cup, the door opened, and a very tall, broad-shouldered man, bearing a great resemblance to the captain, strolled in. Mrs. Carter welcomed him warmly, to which he responded with a comical shrug of his shoulders.

"I feel I ought to do the welcoming, for Hal and I are quite at home here. We have had a most enjoyable time together during your absence. In fact, Hal has just come to the stage of believing that the house belongs to him. Imagine it!"

"You are as rude as ever, I see. Now, girls, let me introduce you to my brother-in-law, Mr. Cyril Carter. He has just been returned member for his county, and it has rather turned his head."

Cyril Carter smiled very pleasantly as he bowed to the twins.

"Your cousin is a martinet in her house. Did you know it? I hardly know now which chair I can safely sit down upon without outraging some delicate piece of work that has a trick of slipping down directly you touch it. I set to work the other day with a needle and cotton and sewed them on like grim death to the backs of the chairs to which they are supposed to belong, but one of the maids, I see, has carefully unpicked all my work. I expect she was afraid of her mistress."

"I have been wondering how many of my household gods would be destroyed," said Mrs. Carter, looking round the room as she spoke.

"I don't think I shall ever leave two men alone in the house again. I have lain awake at night thinking of the havoc I should find. Hal!"—And sitting upright in her chair, Mrs. Carter pointed severely to a small table in the window—"Where is my white flower-pot?"

Captain Carter looked in a guilty manner across at his brother, who leant back in his chair with a complacent smile.

"Don't look at me, my dear fellow. I am not your scapegoat."

Poor Captain Carter gulped down his cup of tea, and walked to the door.

"I'm just going to have a smoke," he said carelessly. "I'm very sorry, my dear, but it was when I heard that you were really coming home to-day. In the excess of joy, I was standing up to execute a 'pas seul', when my coat-tails caught the pot, and it fell—"

"'Oh, what a fall was there!'" quoted Cyril with tragic air. "'Then you and I and all the world fell down. Whilst—'"

Captain Carter had disappeared. His wife stopped her brother-in-law's quotation with a little vexed laugh.

"I might have known it! And I gave seven and sixpence for that pot! Girls, would you like to come upstairs? Don't think all members of Parliament are as frivolous as this specimen. Come along—this way!"

They had been listening to the conversation with amused faces, but followed her at once, and were charmed with their rooms, which led into one another, and were dainty in the extreme.

"My maid will come and help you to unpack. Take a good rest. We do not dine till eight."

She left them, and they looked at each other.

"Do you like it?" Heather asked.

Bluebell nodded.

"I think it seems delicious," she said; "every one is in such good spirits, and it is all so different from home. Doesn't it seem a year since this morning?"

Heather looked out of her window which faced Hyde Park, and said thoughtfully—

"I cannot get Abigail's verse out of my head. 'She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.' Where is that verse, Bluebell; do you know?"

"No. We will look when we do our reading to-night. We are not going to live in pleasure, so why should it worry you?"

"I think—we are," was Heather's slow reply.

Bluebell did not answer. She was diving into her trunk, and brought up her head with a flushed and anxious look.

"I wish our dresses were made more like Cousin Ida's," she said. "I never used to think of dress, but I am sure we look great frights. She said to-day that she would take us to her dressmaker as soon as she could. Do you like Captain Carter?"

"Yes, and his brother too. But they talk more like boys than men; don't you think so?"

"I like it. I don't feel a bit afraid of either of them."

Meanwhile, they were the subjects of discussion downstairs. Captain Carter could not stay away from his wife for very long, and he was back in the drawing-room.

"Well," he said, "you will have your hands full. I never saw such oddities. What are you going to make of them?"

"Humble imitations of your wife, sir," Mrs. Carter said, dropping him a mock curtsey. "You wait till I have got them some London frocks! I prophesy that next season they will be acknowledged beauties in society. I shall marry one to a foreign prince and the other to a duke—or shall I say a worthy millionaire? Dukes are all so poor nowadays. Well, Cyril, you old wiseacre! I saw you stealing covert glances at them through your half-closed lids. What do you think of them?"

"I think one of them is the ditto of the other," put in Captain Carter; "I don't see the object in having the two. One expects a little variety in one's guests."

"I know them apart already," said his brother. "What is the one called with the laughing eyes? They are the only bit of life about her staid little figure, but they're as merry as a cricket!"

"Oh, that is Bluebell. Isn't it a pretty name! And the graver-faced one is Heather. I think she is the more clever of the two, and she has a good bit of pride about her. I am going to give them dancing-lessons at once. Fancy their never having had any! They have been brought up in a Quaker household, and you must both be very careful not to shock them. I am going to bring them on by degrees. Oh, I must tell you of the she-dragon who has been fighting me!"

And forthwith Mrs. Carter gave a most vivid and laughable description of the quiet household in which she had been staying. Abigail's tone and manner were mimicked so successfully that her husband laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks.

The girls made their appearance at dinner with flushed cheeks and bright eyes. Before the evening was over, they were on easy terms with Captain Carter and his brother. Many things puzzled them, especially the light badinage that flew backwards and forwards, but being perfectly natural and unconscious of self, they got on far better than they had feared.

"I would like to change places with you," said Cyril to Bluebell in the course of the evening; "it must be so delightful to be viewing London and society for the first time. You ought to keep a diary—I suppose you do, don't you?"

"No," said Bluebell, laughing. "I don't see the use of diaries, do you? Unless you are very very good, and leave them for people to publish after your death, when they write your biography."

"But aren't you very very good?"

Bluebell shook her little head in the negative.

"Oh dear no. Of course we try to be—everybody does, I suppose." Then in a graver tone she added, "Our old servant Abigail thinks us very wicked to come to London, but Heather and I don't agree with her. It doesn't say much for your religion if you can only be good in one place."

Cyril twisted his moustache in silence, looking at her with amused eyes. Then he said lightly, "Let me know when our London air takes effect, and you feel yourself turning wicked. Now, what sights are you going to see to-morrow?"

Bluebell looked across at Mrs. Carter.

"I don't know," she said hesitatingly. "You must ask Mrs. Carter."

"What do you want to see most? The shops, I suppose?"

"Oh, no indeed, we have shops at home. They are only three miles off."

Cyril's eyes twinkled, but he went on gravely, "There must be a good deal you are longing to see, isn't there?"

"Yes, we want to see Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, and the Zoological Gardens, and London Bridge, and—oh, ever so many places. The Houses of Parliament too; you speak there, don't you?"

"Not always," said Cyril, dryly.

"Ask him to rehearse his maiden speech," put in Captain Carter. "It is like a page or two of Chaucer that I learnt when a boy. It was so indelibly impressed upon my brain that I shall remember it to my dying day. Your cousin and I had a private hearing of it, Miss Fotheringay. It was about one a.m. We thought we heard murmured voices, and so prowled round the house expecting to find burglars gloating over our plate. We found the sounds proceeded from his room, and putting our ears to the keyhole, heard our member, with inflated chest and sonorous tones, addressing the House. It was grand. It saved us the trouble of going to hear him the next day. He learnt every word of it by heart, and he rolled it off with the fluency of a Paddy!"

So with chat and laughter the evening wore away.

The twins came upstairs to bed very tired, but very happy.

As they were doing their evening's reading, Heather said with a sigh—"Poor old Abigail! I don't feel quite comfortable at leaving without her blessing."

"I think she was really angry at our taking our own way instead of hers," said Bluebell, thoughtfully.

"Is it our own way? It ought to be God's way."

Heather sat down by the fire and clasped her hands round her knees as she uttered these words.

Bluebell looked up from her Bible quickly.

"I don't see why it shouldn't be God's way for us. You told me you were praying to have a fuller life. And then Cousin Ida came. I am thanking God she did, and I shall thank Him every day for all our pleasures."

There was almost a defiant note in her tones.

Heather looked at her with a smile.

"You always think everything is for the best."

Bluebell did not reply for a minute, then she raised her head from her Bible again.

"Here it is. In the First Epistle to Timothy. 'But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.' It is about widows, I think."

"Well, never mind, I'm so sleepy. Let us go to bed."

But before Heather dropped off to sleep, she murmured, "Poor old Abigail! I hope her verse won't come true!"