She rose superior,above all,on the happy fact that there were always gentlemen in town and that gentlemen were her greatest admirers;gentlemen from the City in especial--as to whom she was full of information about the passion and pride excited in such breasts by the elements of her charming commerce.The City men did in short go in for flowers.There was a certain type of awfully smart stockbroker--Lord Rye called them Jews and bounders,but she didn't care--whose extravagance,she more than once threw out,had really,if one had any conscience,to be forcibly restrained.It was not perhaps a pure love of beauty:it was a matter of vanity and a sign of business;they wished to crush their rivals,and that was one of their weapons.Mrs.Jordan's shrewdness was extreme;she knew in any case her customer--she dealt,as she said,with all sorts;and it was at the worst a race for her--a race even in the dull months--from one set of chambers to another.And then,after all,there were also still the ladies;the ladies of stockbroking circles were perpetually up and down.They were not quite perhaps Mrs.Bubb or Lady Ventnor;but you couldn't tell the difference unless you quarrelled with them,and then you knew it only by their making-up sooner.These ladies formed the branch of her subject on which she most swayed in the breeze;to that degree that her confidant had ended with an inference or two tending to banish regret for opportunities not embraced.There were indeed tea-gowns that Mrs.Jordan described--but tea-gowns were not the whole of respectability,and it was odd that a clergyman's widow should sometimes speak as if she almost thought so.She came back,it was true,unfailingly to Lord Rye,never,evidently,quite losing sight of him even on the longest excursions.That he was kindness itself had become in fact the very moral it all pointed--pointed in strange flashes of the poor woman's nearsighted eyes.She launched at her young friend portentous looks,solemn heralds of some extraordinary communication.The communication itself,from week to week,hung fire;but it was to the facts over which it hovered that she owed her power of going on."They are,in one way and another,"she often emphasised,"a tower of strength";and as the allusion was to the aristocracy the girl could quite wonder why,if they were so in "one way,"they should require to be so in two.
She thoroughly knew,however,how many ways Mrs.Jordan counted in.
It all meant simply that her fate was pressing her close.If that fate was to be sealed at the matrimonial altar it was perhaps not remarkable that she shouldn't come all at once to the scratch of overwhelming a mere telegraphist.It would necessarily present to such a person a prospect of regretful sacrifice.Lord Rye--if it WAS Lord Rye--wouldn't be "kind"to a nonentity of that sort,even though people quite as good had been.
One Sunday afternoon in November they went,by arrangement,to church together;after which--on the inspiration of the moment the arrangement had not included it--they proceeded to Mrs.Jordan's lodging in the region of Maida Vale.She had raved to her friend about her service of predilection;she was excessively "high,"and had more than once wished to introduce the girl to the same comfort and privilege.There was a thick brown fog and Maida Vale tasted of acrid smoke;but they had been sitting among chants and incense and wonderful music,during which,though the effect of such things on her mind was great,our young lady had indulged in a series of reflexions but indirectly related to them.One of these was the result of Mrs.Jordan's having said to her on the way,and with a certain fine significance,that Lord Rye had been for some time in town.She had spoken as if it were a circumstance to which little required to be added--as if the bearing of such an item on her life might easily be grasped.Perhaps it was the wonder of whether Lord Rye wished to marry her that made her guest,with thoughts straying to that quarter,quite determine that some other nuptials also should take place at Saint Julian's.Mr.Mudge was still an attendant at his Wesleyan chapel,but this was the least of her worries--it had never even vexed her enough for her to so much as name it to Mrs.Jordan.Mr.Mudge's form of worship was one of several things--they made up in superiority and beauty for what they wanted in number--that she had long ago settled he should take from her,and she had now moreover for the first time definitely established her own.Its principal feature was that it was to be the same as that of Mrs.Jordan and Lord Rye;which was indeed very much what she said to her hostess as they sat together later on.
The brown fog was in this hostess's little parlour,where it acted as a postponement of the question of there being,besides,anything else than the teacups and a pewter pot and a very black little fire and a paraffin lamp without a shade.There was at any rate no sign of a flower;it was not for herself Mrs.Jordan gathered sweets.
The girl waited till they had had a cup of tea--waited for the announcement that she fairly believed her friend had,this time,possessed herself of her formally at last to make;but nothing came,after the interval,save a little poke at the fire,which was like the clearing of a throat for a speech.
