CHAPTER XXXIV

LONDON IN AUTUMN

WE need not say that Mr. Bunting did not stay long at Roseberry Rocks after our heroine had left. The place seemed quite changed after she was gone. True, there was the sea, and the shore, and the downs, and the cantering horses, and the cantering ladies, and the comet; but neither the comet, nor the cantering ladies, nor the downs, nor the sea, nor the shore, without “her” were sweet. The recollection of whose company he had last seen any of them in made them quite unpalatable to him. Then as he sauntered carelessly about, the anxious gossips stared suspiciously at him, and people exclaimed “What! are you still here?” as though they thought he ought to be somewhere else. At length, when he mustered courage to take a peep at the beloved house in Sea-View Place and saw the ponderous Mrs. Barkinson and three Miss Barkinsons sunning themselves in the balcony that had heretofore held his incomparable beauty, and a great red-armed cook bargaining for a cod-fish, his too sensitive heart sickened at the sight and determined him to leave altogether.

A flit homewards has the advantage of a flit outwards, inasmuch as there is no picking and sorting and choosing, and everything is included in the order. It is “pack up my things” and away, instead of “look out my things, that I may see what to take.” So in a very short space of time after the determination was come to, Mr. Bunting’s voluminous wardrobe—his costly coats, his magnificent shirts, and various shoes, all the paraphernalia of a swell—were reposing layer upon layer and pile upon pile in very deep and convenient boxes; and having duly discharged the pecuniary obligations of the place, his profile was next seen nodding in a cab under a pyramid of luggage, which again set the gossips a-going to contradict their assertions that “It was all off between Miss McDermott and Mr. Bunting: he was gone to see about the settlements;” upon which hypothesis, and also upon the faith of what Mrs. Tartarman said she saw at the station (doubtless the assuring parting glance), sundry hats, gloves, and sovereigns changed hands, and the thing was considered as good as settled. Parties then turned their attention to the more budding and incipient flirtations—Miss Thorneycroft and Mr. Flushings, Miss Cheeseroy with Captain Rivulet, Tommy Dipnal with Mrs. Rule. And our friend Mr. Bunting, having got his ticket and ensconced himself in a corner of the carriage, one good stroke of the Magnet engine shot him away from sea and shore, and shells and sentiments, hats, habits, and hoops—all the cares and contentions of Roseberry Rocks; and as people who have nothing whatever to do are always in a desperate hurry, the flying express landed him in London ere he had turned the second couplet of a stanza he was weaving to the beautiful lady. He was then ejected from his comfortable cushions into a hard-featured Hansom upon the vast desert of the empty metropolis. At a touch of the whip the high-bred screw started off as if it had not had a fare for a week. Save in a dense yellow fog, when the place is unbearable, London is perhaps never seen to such disadvantage as in the dead of the autumn; there is nothing stirring but stagnation; the very cabmen sleep on their boxes or pore over books, as if being called off the stand was quite out of the question. The streets are deserted, save by the busses and a few drowsy old horses, too palpably drawing the doctor. Late hospitable houses now show you nothing but their shutters; lethargic town-bound men yawn about St. James’s Street, crawling from one club to another, to compare the thermometers and see if each copy of the paper is the same. Those great warrens of society are put away, carpets rolled up, mirrors gauzed, fenders dissected, waiters reduced, papers few, and the chiefs of the staff away on their travels. A barrier of a notice at the bottom of the staircase, announces that the drawing-rooms and library are getting cleaned. The hall porters at the great political clubs have little to do, either in the way of entries or letters. How changed the Park! Frizzled leaves and fried grass. Two donkeys and a goat-carriage compose the activity. Chairs are indeed at a discount, and the letters now have time to repair the astonishing mounds of broken ones that accumulate during the season. A few tawdry careless nurses, with pallid children, lounge listlessly up the line where lately

London is always completely out of town in the autumn. The lodging-letters put up their notices in a sort of matter-of-course way, and a staring stranger, with a slip of paper in his hand, attracts the cupidity of the whole street. The advertising hotel-keepers, those who, like Mr. Chousey, make out their bills by the almanac, now announce that this is the real cheap time. And so it ought, for people should be paid for staying in town.

Our friend Mr. Bunting, as he paced the silent streets and squares, might have an occasional hail out of a gun or cigar shop door from some passing-through sportsman recruiting or replenishing his stock as he went; but few, very few people pleaded guilty to being town-stayed altogether. Those who did, laboured hard to persuade him that this was the most suitable time of the year, when people saw their friends without fuss or ceremony, and met with but indifferent success in their exertions. Here, however, leaving him for the present, let us follow our fair friend to Privett Grove.