England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories, English
"Yes," answered Pitt, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "And I never
think of what I might have become by this time, but for pulling up, but
I thank God."
These allusions, however, may perhaps only puzzle the reader. And it is
not with Mr. Pitt, his virtues or his failings, that this paper concerns
itself, but with the history of Dorothy Grape.
We must take it up from the time Dorothy arrived in London with her
husband, Alick Mapping, after their marriage at Worcester, as already
narrated. The sum of three hundred pounds, owned by Dolly, passed into
Mr. Mapping's possession on the wedding-day, for she never suggested
such a thing as that it should be settled on herself. The proceeds,
arising from the sale of the furniture, were also transmitted to him
later by the auctioneer. Thus he had become the proprietor of Dolly,
and of all her worldly goods. After that, he and she faded out
of Worcestershire memory, and from the sight of Worcestershire
people--except for one brief meeting, to be mentioned presently.
The home in London, to which her husband conveyed her, and of which he
had boasted, Dolly found to be lodgings. Lodgings recently engaged by
him, a sitting-room and bedroom, in the Blackfriars Road. They were over
a shop, kept by one Mrs. Turk, who was their landlady. "I would not
fix upon a house, dear, without you," he said; and Dolly thanked him
gratefully. All he did was right to her.
She was, as he had told her she would be, happy as a cricket, though
bewildered with the noisy bustle of the great town, and hardly daring to
venture alone into its busy streets, more crowded than was Worcester
Cathedral on the Sundays Mr. Benson preached. The curious elucidation at
Gloucester of what her father's fate had been was a relief to her mind,
rather than the contrary, once she had got over its sadness; though the
still more curious doubt about her brother Tom, whispered to her by
Elizabeth Deavor on her wedding morning, was rarely absent from her
thoughts. But Dolly was young, Dolly was in love, and Dolly was
intensely happy. Her husband took her to the theatres, to Vauxhall, and
to other places of amusement; and Dolly began to think life was going to
be a happy valley into which care would never penetrate.
This happy state of things changed. Mr. Mapping took to be a great deal
away from home, sometimes for weeks together. He laid the fault upon his
business; travellers in the wine trade had to go all over England,
he said. Dolly was not unreasonable and accepted the explanation
cheerfully.
But something else happened now and then that was less satisfactory. Mr.
Mapping would appear at home in a condition that frightened Dolly: as if
he had made the mistake of tasting the wine samples himself, instead of
carrying them to his customers. Never having been brought into contact
with anything of the kind in her own home, she regarded it with terror
and dismay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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