It was only two lines.
“DEAR MR. SMITH,—Don’t think hardly of us for going away so suddenly. Papa says it must be so.
“Yours ever faithfully,
“ISABEL.”
“I should like to keep that letter,” George said, blushing up to the roots of his hair. “Miss Sleaford writes a pretty hand.”
Chapter 4.
The End of George Gilbert’s Holiday.
The two young men acted very promptly upon that friendly warning conveyed in Mrs. Sleaford’s farewell message. The maid-of-all-work went to the greengrocer’s, and returned in company with a dirty-looking boy—who was “Mrs. Judkin’s son, please, sir”—and a truck. Mrs. Judkin’s son piled the trunks, portmanteau, and carpet-bag on the truck, and departed with his load, which was to be kept in the custody of the Judkin family until the next morning, when Sigismund was to take the luggage away in a cab. When this business had been arranged, Mr. Smith and his friend went out into the garden and talked of the surprise that had fallen upon them.
“I always knew they were thinking of leaving,” Sigismund said, “but I never thought they’d go away like this. I feel quite cut up about it, George. I’d got to like them, you know, old boy, and to feel as if I was one of the family; and I shall never be able to partial-board with any body else.”
George seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as his friend, though his acquaintance with the Sleafords was little more than four-and-twenty hours old.
“They must have known before today that they were going,” he said. “People don’t go to America at a few hours’ notice.”
Sigismund summoned the dirty maid-of-all-work, and the two young men subjected her to a very rigorous cross-examination; but she could tell them very little more than she had told them all in one breath in the first instance.
“Mr. Sleaford ‘ad ‘is breakfast at nigh upon one o’clock, leastways she put on the pertaturs for the boys’ dinner before she biled ‘is egg; and then he went out, and he come tarin’ ‘ome agen in one of these ‘ansom cabs at three o’clock in the afternoon; and he told missus to pack up, and he told the ‘ansom cabman to send a four-wheeler from the first stand he passed at six o’clock precise; and the best part of the luggage was sent round to the greengrocer’s on a truck, and the rest was took on the roof of the cab, and Master ‘Orace rode alongside the cabman, and would smoke one of them nasty penny pickwicks, which they always made ’im bilious; and Mr. Sleaford he didn’t go in the cab, but walked off as cool as possible, swinging his stick, and ‘olding his ‘ead as ‘igh as hever.”
Sigismund asked the girl if she had heard the address given to the cabman who took the family away.
“No,” the girl said. Mr. Sleaford had given no address. He directed the cabman to drive over Waterloo Bridge, and that was all the girl heard.
Mr. Smith’s astonishment knew no bounds. He walked about the deserted house, and up and down the weedy pathways between the espaliers, until long after the summer moon was bright upon the lawn, and every trailing branch and tender leaflet threw its sharp separate shadow on the shining ground.
“I never heard of such a thing in all my life,” the young author cried; “it’s like penny numbers. With the exception of their going away in a four-wheeler cab instead of through a sliding panel and subterranean passage, it’s for all the world like penny numbers.”
“But you’ll be able to find out where they’ve gone, and why they went away so suddenly,” suggested George Gilbert; “some of their friends will be able to tell you.”
“Friends!” exclaimed Sigismund; “they never had any friends—at least not friends that they visited, or anything of that kind. Mr. Sleaford used to bring home some of his friends now and then of an evening, after dark generally, or on a Sunday afternoon. But we never saw much of them, for he used to take them up to his own room; and except for his wanting French brandy and cigars fetched, and chops and steaks cooked, and swearing at the girl over the balusters if the plates weren’t hot enough, we shouldn’t have known that there was company in the house. I suppose his chums were in the law, like himself,” Mr. Smith added, musingly; “but they didn’t look much like barristers, for they had straggling moustachios, and a kind of would-be military way; and if they hadn’t been Sleaford’s friends, I should have thought them raffish-looking.”
Neither of the young men could think of anything or talk of anything that night except the Sleafords and their abrupt departure. They roamed about the garden, staring at the long grass and the neglected flower-beds; at the osier arbour, dark under the shadow of a trailing vine, that was half-smothered by the vulgar luxuriance of wild hops,—the osier arbour in which the spiders made their home, and where, upon the rotten bench, romantic Izzie had sat through the hot hours of drowsy summer days, reading her favourite novels, and dreaming of a life that was to be like the plot of a novel.
They went into the house, and called for candles, and wandered from room to room, looking blankly at the chairs and tables, the open drawers, the disordered furniture, as if from those inanimate objects they might obtain some clue to the little domestic mystery that bewildered them. The house was pervaded by torn scraps of paper, fragments of rag and string, morsels of crumpled lace and muslin, bald hair-brushes lying in the corners of the bedrooms, wisps of hay and straw, tin-tacks, and old kid-gloves. Everywhere there were traces of disorder and hurry, except in Mr. Sleaford’s room. That sanctuary was wide open now, and Mr. Smith and his friend went into it and examined it. To Sigismund a newly-excavated chamber in a long-buried city could scarcely have been more interesting. Here there was no evidence of reckless haste. There was not a single fragment of waste paper in any one of the half-dozen open drawers on either side of the desk. There was not so much as an old envelope upon the floor. A great heap of grey ashes upon the cold hearthstone revealed the fact that Mr. Sleaford had employed himself in destroying papers before his hasty departure. The candlestick that Isabel had given him upon the previous night stood upon his desk, with the candle burnt down to the socket. George remembered having heard his host’s heavy footsteps pacing up and down the room; and the occasional opening and shutting of drawers, and slamming of the lids of boxes, which had mixed with his dreams all through that brief summer’s night. It was all explained now. Mr Sleaford had of course been making his preparations for leaving Camberwell—for leaving England; if it was really true that the family were going to America.
Early the next morning there came a very irate gentleman from the Albany Road. This was the proprietor of the neglected mansion, who had just heard of the Sleaford hegira, and who was in a towering passion because of those three quarter’s rent which he was never likely to behold. He walked about the house with his hands in his pockets, kicking the doors open, and denouncing his late tenants in very unpleasant language. He stalked into the back parlour, where George and Sigismumd were taking spongy French rolls and doubtful French eggs, and glared ferociously at them, and muttered something to the effect that it was like their impudence to be making themselves so “jolly comfortable” in his house when he’d been swindled by that disreputable gang of theirs. He used other adjectives besides that word “disreputable” when he spoke of the Sleafords; but Sigismund got up from before the dirty table-cloth, and protested, with his mouth full, that he believed in the honesty of the Sleafords; and that, although temporarily under a cloud, Mr. Sleaford would no doubt make a point of looking up the three quarter’s rent, and would forward post-office orders for the amount at the earliest opportunity. To this the landlord merely replied, that he hoped his—Sigismund’s—head would not ache till Mr. Sleaford did send the rent; which friendly aspiration was about the only civil thing the proprietor of the mansion said to either of the young men. He prowled about the rooms, poking the furniture with his stick, and punching his fist into the beds to see if any of the feathers had been extracted therefrom. He groaned over the rents in the carpets, the notches and scratches upon