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THERE was no obstacle to the speedy departure of Romayne and his wife from Vange Abbey. The villa at Highgate called Ten Acres Lodge, in allusion to the measurement of the grounds surrounding the house had been kept in perfect order by the servants of the late Lady Berrick, now in the employment of her nephew. On the morning after their arrival at the villa, Stella sent a note to her mother.
He being of the same mind, and equally reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours, which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way; and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort, there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss to interpret. It was midnight when I arrived at home.
More than ever he felt that he could not exist within the big metropolis, even its large intellectual life offering no compensation for the bounteous joys of nature. He almost shuddered when glancing at the huge black vault for the last time, at the turn of the Highgate Road. But he did not know it was the last time that his eyes rested upon London.
Most of all, of late, when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the affectionate creature never tired; and our interest in hearing the many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate, was equal to hers in relating them. MY aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at Highgate; I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover.
"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's made his Will." "Yes." "Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up last of the old lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a rummy. Where are you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights." Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."
At the summit I met another newspaper boy carrying a bundle of Globes, one of which I purchased, after a hard-driven bargain, for two shillings and a stud from the shirt-front of my evening dress, which was beginning to show signs of ennui. I leaned against the wall of the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institute, to read it. The news was catastrophic.
To Montgomery, then, as to the only man acquainted with his secret, he turned; and taking his spurs off his feet, and pulling out a purse of gold, he said aloud, and with as easy an air as he could assume, "Here, my Lord Montgomery, as you are going directly to Highgate, I will thank you to call at my lodge; put these spurs and this purse into the hands of the groom we spoke of; tell him they do not fit me, and he will know what use to make of them."
Some time ago it appears they had words about it and when I told Kew that bygones had best be bygones, that Highgate was very sweet upon Ethel now, and that I did not choose to lose such a good account as his, Kew was very insolent to me; his conduct was blackguardly, ma'am, quite blackguardly, and you may be sure but for our relationship I would have called him to "
Accordingly she put an advertisement into the "Times," to the following effect, liberally imitated from one by which in former years she had recovered a favourite Blenheim: STRAYED, from Ivy Cottage, Highgate, a Little Girl, answers to the name of Helen; with blue eyes and brown hair; white muslin frock, and straw hat with blue ribbons.
I then went toward Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen two hundred thousand people of all ranks and degrees, dispersed and lying along by their heaps of what they could save from the fire, deploring their loss, and, though ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for relief, which to me appeared a stranger sight than any I had yet beheld.
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