A Crooked Path. Mrs. Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ have heard of his death. I suppose he is still living on in Camden Town."

      "Not a very agreeable quarter," returned Katherine, carelessly. "Good-by, mother dear! Do not expect me to dinner. I can have something whenever I come in."

      Katherine walked briskly toward town, intending to save some of her omnibus fare, for she had planned a long and daring expedition—an undertaking which taxed all her courage. In truth, though she had never known the ease or luxury of wealth, she had been most tenderly brought up. Her mother had constantly shielded her from all the roughness of life, and the deed she contemplated seemed to her mind an almost desperate effort of independent action.

      Through one of the very few sleepless nights she had ever experienced she had thought out an idea which had flashed through her brain while Mrs. Liddell was explaining her difficulties, and which she had carefully kept to herself.

      She saw clearly enough the hopelessness of their position; probably with the intensity of youth she exaggerated it, which was scarcely necessary, as a small rut is apt to widen into a bottomless pit if it crosses the path of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income. As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation which memory supplied—her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live like a gentlewoman on a pittance, her tender thought for the welfare and happiness of her children—she felt she could walk through a burning fiery furnace if by so doing she could earn ease and repose for her mother's weary spirit.

      "She is looking ill and worn," thought Katherine, "and years older. She has never been the same since that attack of bronchitis last year. Ada and the boys are too much for her, though they are dear little fellows; but they are costly. If Ada would even give us twenty pounds a year more it would be a great help."

      The project Katherine had evolved through the night-watches was to visit her uncle and ask him, face to face, for help! It is, she argued, harder to say "no" than to write it; even if she failed she should know her fate at once, and not have to endure the agony of waiting for a letter. Nor, were she refused, need her mother ever know now she had humiliated herself in the dust.

      How her young heart sank within her at the thought of being harshly, contemptuously rejected! It was a positive painful physical sense of faintness that made her limbs tremble as she pressed on faster than she was aware. "But I will do it—I will! If I succeed no humiliation will be too great," she said to herself. "I will speak with all my soul! When I begin, this horrible feeling that my tongue is dry and speechless will go away. I must find out where this awful old man is; what is his street and number. I dared not ask mother. First I will try the publisher; as the 'servants' hall' publications have rejected it, I shall offer Darrell's Doom to a first-rate house. Why not try Channing & Wyndham? They cannot say worse than 'no,' and I shall no doubt see a Directory there." Thus communing with herself, she took an omnibus down Park Lane and walked thence to the well-known temple of the Muses in Piccadilly.

      Arrived there, a civil clerk took her card—which was her mother's—and soon returning, asked if she had an appointment. "No, I have not, but pray ask Mr. Channing or Mr. Wyndham to see me; I will not stay more than a few minutes." The young man smiled slightly; he was accustomed to such assurances. Almost as Katherine spoke, a stout "country gentleman" looking person came into the warehouse, slightly raising his hat as he passed her. A sudden inspiration prompted her to say, "Pray excuse me, but are you Mr. Wyndham?"

      "I am."

      "Then do let me speak to you for five minutes."

      "With pleasure," said the great publisher, graciously, and ushered her into a sort of literary loose box or small enclosure in the remote back-ground.

      "I have ventured to bring you a manuscript," began Katherine, smiling with all her might, with an abject desire to propitiate the arbiter of her mother's fate.

      "So I see," he returned, ruefully but politely.

      "It is a beautiful story, and I thought it ought to be published by a great house like yours," pursued Katherine.

      "Thank you," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "Pray is it your own?"

      "Mine! Oh dear no! It is my mother's. She is not very strong, so I brought it."

      There was a slight faltering in her voice that suggested a good deal to her hearer. "Then you are not Mrs. W. Liddell," glancing at the card, "but Mrs. Liddell's daughter. Pray put down that heavy parcel. Three volumes, I suppose?"

      "Yes, three volumes, but they are not very long, and the story is most interesting."

      "No doubt. I hope it is not historical?"

      "Oh no! quite modern."

      "So much the better. Well, Miss Liddell, I will look at the manuscript, or rather our reader shall, and let you know the result in due course; but I must warn you that we are rather overdone with three-volume novels, and there are already a large number of manuscripts awaiting perusal, so you must not expect our verdict for some little time."

      "When you will, but oh! as soon as you can," she urged.

      "I will keep your address, and you shall hear at the earliest date we can manage. Good-morning. Very damp, uncomfortable day."

      Katherine felt herself dismissed, and almost forgot her ulterior intention. "Would you be so very good as to let me look at the Directory, if you have one?"

      "Certainly," said Wyndham, who was slipping the card under the string of poor Katherine's parcel. "Here, Tompkins, let this young lady see the Directory. Excuse me—I am a good deal pressed for time;" and with a bow he went off, the manuscript under his arm.

      "Well, it is really in his hands, at all events," thought Katherine, looking wistfully after it.

      A boy with inky hands here placed that thick volume, the Post-Office Directory, before her, and she proceeded to search confusedly among the endless pages of names, a little strengthened and cheered by her brief interview with the publisher. It seemed that she was in a lucky vein: trouble is always conducive to superstition. When visible hope fails, poor human hearts turn to the invisible and the improbable.

      At last she paused at "John Wilmot Liddell, 27 Legrave Crescent, Camden Town, N. W." That must be her uncle; they were all Wilmot Liddells. How to reach his abode was the question.

      The inky boy soon gave her the requisite information. "You take a Waterloo 'bus at Piccadilly Circus; it runs through to Camden Town; that is, to the beginning of Camden Town," he said. Katherine thanked him, and again set forth.

      It was a long, tedious drive. The omnibus was crammed with warm passengers and damp umbrellas, but Katherine was too racked with impatience and fear to heed small discomforts. Would her dreaded relative order her out of his sight at once? Was her interview with the publisher a good omen?

      At last she reached the end of her journey, and addressing herself to the tutelary policeman solemnly pacing past the Tavern where the omnibus paused, she asked to be directed to Legrave Crescent.

      It was an old-fashioned row of houses, before them a few sooty trees in a half-moon of grass, one side railed off from the street and dignified with gates at either end—gates which were always open.

      The place had a still, deserted air, but about the middle stood a cab, on which a rheumatic driver, assisted by a small boy, was placing a cumbrous box. As Katherine approached she found that the house before СКАЧАТЬ