CHAPTER IV
There had been very little time left for preparations, and hardly any one, Sophy told me, was aware they were going away. Except myself, no one of the neighbours knew. All the arrangements were hastily made. Ursula wanted to be gone if possible before Mr. Oakley could take any further step. I went over early next morning to see if I could be of any use. Ursula was in her room, doing her packing. To see her in her old black silk with her simple little cap covering her gray hair, and to think she was being driven from her home by the importunities of a too-ardent lover, struck me as more ridiculous than it had ever done before. She saw it herself, and laughed as she stood for a moment before the long glass, in which she had caught a glimpse of herself.
‘I am a pretty sort of figure for all this nonsense,’ she said, permitting herself for the first time an honest laugh on the subject; but then her face clouded once more. ‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘it would all be mere nonsense, but for George. It is he that takes it so much to heart.’
‘Indeed,’ said I. ‘I think it is not at all nice of the General; and I don’t think it would be nonsense in any case. There is some one else I acknowledge, Ursula, that I think of more than the General.’
She did not say anything more. Her face paled, then grew red again, and she went on with her packing. It is needless to say that I was of no manner of use. I got rid of a little of my own excitement by going, that was all. I went again in the evening to see the last of them. It was a lovely September evening. There had been a wonderfully fine sunset, and the whole horizon was still flaming, the trees standing out almost black in their deep greenness, though touched with points of yellow, against the broad lines of crimson and wide openings of wistful green blueness in the sky. The days were already growing short. There is no time of the year at which one gets so much good of the sunset. As I went across the corner of the Green the gables and irregular chimneys of the old house stood up among the heavy foliage against the lower band of colour where the green and blue died into yellow the ‘daffodil sky’ of the poet. They too looked black against that light, and there was a wistful look, I thought, about the whole place, protesting dumbly against its abandonment. Why should people go away from such a pleasant and peaceful place to wander over the world? There was a solitary blackbird singing clear and loud, filling the whole air with his song. I wonder if that song is really much less beautiful than the nightingale’s. I was thinking how blank and cold the house would be when they were all gone. The chimneys and gables already looked so cold, smokeless, fireless, appealing against the glare of the summer, which carried away the dwellers inside, and extinguished the cheerful fire of home. As I went in I saw the fly from the ‘Barleymow’ creeping along towards the house to carry the luggage to the station. The old white horse came along quite reluctantly, as if he did not like the errand. I suppose all that his slow pace meant was that he had gone through a long day’s work, and was tired; but it is so natural to convey a little of one’s own feelings to everything, even the chimneys of the old house. There was nobody down-stairs when I went in. Simms told me in a dolorous tone that Miss Stamford was putting on her bonnet.
‘And I don’t like it, ma’am—I don’t like it—going away like this, just when the country’s at its nicest. If it was the General for his bit of sport, his shooting, or that, I wouldn’t mind,’ said Simms; ‘but what call have the ladies got away from home? They’ll go a-catching fevers or something, see if they don’t. It’s tempting Providence.’
‘I hope not, Simms,’ said I; but Simms took no comfort from my hoping. He shook his head and he uttered a groan as he set a chair for me in the centre of the drawing-room. No more cosy corners, the man seemed to say—no more low seats and pleasant talk—an uncompromising chair in the middle of the room, and a business object. These were all of which the old drawing-room would be capable when the ladies were away. I set down Simms along with the house itself, protesting with all its chimneys, and the old white horse lumbering reluctantly along to fetch the luggage, and the blackbird remonstrating loudly among the trees. They were all opposed to Ursula’s departure, and so was I.
The door opened, and Sophy came in more despondent than all of these sundry personages and things put together. ‘They are rather late—the boxes are just being put on to the fly. Will you come out here and bid her good-bye?’ said Sophy, who was limp with crying. I never could tell whether it was imagination or a real quickening of my senses, but at that moment, as I rose to follow Sophy, I heard as clearly as I ever heard it in my life the galloping of horses on the dry, dusty summer road. I heard it as distinctly as I hear now the soft dropping of the rain, a sound as different as possible from all the other sounds I had been hearing—horses galloping at their very best, a whip cracking, the sound of a frantic energy of haste. Then I went out into the hall, following Sophy. It must have been imagination, for with all these lawns and shrubberies round, one could not, you may well believe, hear passing carriages like that. Ursula was standing at the foot of the stairs in her travelling dress. It was a large, long hall, more oblong than square, into which all the rooms opened; the drawing-room was opposite the outer door, and the General’s room (the library as it was called) was further back nearer the stairs. He was inside, but the door was open. Ursula stood outside talking to the cook, who was to be a kind of housekeeper while they were away. ‘Don’t trouble Miss Sophy except when you are perplexed yourself. On ordinary occasions you will do quite nicely, I am sure; you will do everything that is wanted,’ she was saying in her kind, cheerful voice, for Ursula did not show any appearance of regret, though all of us who were staying behind were melancholy. The men were hoisting up the trunks with which the hall was encumbered on the top of the fly, which was visible with its old white horse standing tired and pensive at the open door. And Mrs. St. Clair appeared behind her sister, slowly coming down-stairs with a cloak over her arm and a bag in her hand. There was nothing left but to say good-bye and wish them a good journey and a speedy return.
But all at once in a moment there was a change. The horses I had been dreaming of, or had heard in a dream, drew up with a whirlwind of sound at the gate. Then something darted across the unencumbered light beyond the fly and came between the old white horse and the door. I think he—for to use any neutral expressions about him from the first moment at which he showed himself would be impossible—I think he lifted his hand to the men who were putting up the trunks to arrest them; at all events they stopped and scratched their heads and opened their mouths, and stood staring at him, as did Sophy and I, altogether confounded, yet with sudden elation in our hearts. He stepped past us all as lightly as any young paladin of twenty, taking off his hat. His white hair seemed all in a moment to light up everything, to quicken the place. Ursula was the last to see him. She was still talking quite calmly to the cook, though even Mrs. St. Clair on the stairs had seen the new incident, and had dropped her cloak in amazement. He went straight up to her, without a pause, without drawing breath. I am sure we all held ours in spellbound anxiety and attention. When Ursula saw him standing by her side she started as if she had been shot—she made a hasty step back and looked at him, catching her breath too with sudden alarm. But he had the air of perfect self-command.
‘Miss Stamford,’ he said, ‘will you grant me half an hour’s interview before you go?’
For the first time Ursula lost her self-possession; she fluttered and trembled like a girl, and could not speak for a moment. Then she stammered out, ‘I hope you will excuse me. We shall be—late for the train.’
‘Half an hour?’ he said; ‘I only ask half an hour—only hear me, Miss Stamford, hear what I have got to say. I will not detain you more than half an hour.’
Ursula looked round her helplessly. Whether she saw us standing gazing at her I cannot tell, or if she was conscious that the General behind her had come out to the door, and was standing there petrified, staring like the rest of us. She looked round vaguely, as if asking aid from the world in general. And whether her impetuous old lover took her hand and drew it within his arm, or if she accepted his arm, I cannot say. But the next thing of which we were aware was that they passed us, the two together, arm in arm, into the drawing-room. He had noted the open door with his quick eye, and there he led her trembling past us. Next moment it closed upon the momentous interview, and the chief actors in this strange scene disappeared. We were left all gazing at each other—Sophy and I at one side of the hall, Mrs. St. Clair on the stairs, where she stood as if turned to stone, her cloak fallen from her arm; and the General at the door of his room with a face like a thunder-cloud, black and terrible. We stared at each other speechless, the central object at which we had all been gazing withdrawn suddenly from us. There were some servants also of the party, Simms standing over Miss Stamford’s box, the address of which he affected to be scanning, and the cabman scratching his head. We all looked at each other with ludicrous, blank faces. It was the General who was the first to speak. He took no notice of us. He stepped out from his door into the middle of the hall, and pointed imperiously to the box. ‘Take all that folly away,’ he said harshly, and with another long step strode out of the house and disappeared.
He did not come back till late that night, when all thoughts of the train had long departed from everybody’s head. Before that time need I say it was all settled? I had always been doubtful myself about Ursula. She had been afraid of making a joke of herself by a late marriage. She had shrunk, perhaps, too, at her time of life, from all the novelty and the change; but even at fifty-seven a woman retains her imagination, and it had been captivated in spite of herself by the bit of strange romance thus oddly introduced into her life. Is any one ever old enough to be insensible to the pleasure of being singled out and pursued with something that looked like real passion? I do not suppose so; Ursula had been alarmed by the softening of her own feelings; she had been remorseful and conscience-stricken about her secret treachery to her brother. In short, I had felt all along that she must have had very little confidence in herself when she was driven to the expedient of running away.
They would not let me go, though I felt myself out of place at such a moment, so that I had my share in the excitement as I had in the suspense. And after all the struggle and the suspense it is inconceivable how easy and natural the settlement of the matter seemed, and what a relief it was that it should be decided.
As soon as the first commotion was over Mrs. Douglas came to me, took my hands in hers, and led me out by the open window. ‘George!’ she said to me with a little gasp. ‘What shall we do about George? How will he take it? And if he comes in upon us all without any preparation, what will happen? I don’t know what to do.’
‘He must know what has happened,’ said I; ‘he saw there was only one thing that could happen. He must know what he has to expect.’
Mrs. St. Clair clasped her hands together. What with the excitement and the pleasure and the pain the tears stood in her eyes. ‘Ursula was always his favourite sister,’ she said; ‘how will he take it? and where is he?—wandering about, making himself wretched this melancholy night.’
It was not in reality a melancholy night. It was dark, and the colour had gone out of the sky, which looked of a deep wintry blue between the black tree-tops which swayed in the wind. Mrs. St. Clair shivered a little, partly from the contrast with the bright room inside, partly from anxiety. ‘Where can he be?—where can he be wandering?’ she said. We had both the same idea—that he must have gone into the woods and be wandering about there in wild resentment and distress. ‘And we must not stay out here or Mr. Oakley will think something is wrong, and Ursula will be unhappy,’ she said with a sigh.
It was then I proposed that I should stay outside to break the news to the General when he appeared—a proposal which, after a while, Mrs. Douglas was compelled to accept, though she protested—for after all, my absence would not be remarked, and it was easy to say that I had gone home, as I meant to do. But I cannot say that the post was a pleasant one. I walked about for some time in front of the house, and then I came and sat down in the porch ‘for company.’ There was nothing, as I have said, specially melancholy about the night, but the contrast of the scene within and this without struck the imagination. When a door opened the voices within came with a kind of triumph into the darkness where the disappointed and solitary brother was wandering: and so absorbed was I in thoughts of General George and his downfall that I almost missed the subject of them, who came suddenly round the corner of the house when I was not looking for him. It was he who perceived me, rather than I who was on the watch for him. ‘You here, Mrs. Mulgrave!’ he said in amazement. I believe he thought, as I started to my feet, that I had been asleep.
‘General!’ I cried then in my confusion. ‘Stop here a moment, do not go in. I have something to say to you.’
He laughed—which was a sound so unexpected that it bewildered me. ‘My kind friend,’ he said, ‘have you stayed here to break the news to me? But it is unnecessary—from the moment I saw Oakley arrive I knew how it must be. Ursula has been going—she has been going. I have seen it for three or four weeks past.’
‘And, General! thank Heaven you are not angry, you are taking it in a Christian way.’
He laughed again—a sort of angry laugh. ‘Am I taking it in a Christian way? I am glad you think so, Mrs. Mulgrave. When a thing cannot be cured it must be endured, you know. I am out of court—I have no ground to stand upon, and he is master of the field. I don’t mean to make her unhappy whatever happens. Is he here still?’
‘Yes,’ I said trembling. He offered me his arm precisely as Mr. Oakley had offered his to Ursula. ‘Then we’ll go and join them,’ he said.
This was how it all ended. There was not a speck on his boots or the least trace of disorder. Instead of roaming the woods in despair, as we thought, he had been quietly drinking Lady Denzil’s delightful tea and playing chess with Sir Thomas. They had seen nothing unusual about him, we heard afterwards, and never knew that he ought to have been starting for the Continent when he walked in that evening, warmly welcomed to tea—which shows what sentimental estimates we women form about the feelings of men.
The marriage took place very soon after. Mr. Oakley bought Hillhead, the finest place in the neighbourhood, very soon after; he was so rich that he bought a house whenever he found one that pleased him, as I might buy an old blue china pot. The one was a much greater extravagance to me than the other was to him. And they lived very happy ever after, and nobody, so far as I know, has ever had occasion to regret this love at first sight at sixty—this elderly romance.
MRS. MERRIDEW’S FORTUNE
CHAPTER I
There are two houses in my neighbourhood which illustrate so curiously two phases of life, that everybody on the Green, as well as myself, has been led into the habit of classing them together. The first reason of this of course is, that they stand together; the second, that they are as unlike in every way as it is possible to conceive. They are about the same size, with the same aspect, the same green circle of garden surrounding them; and yet as dissimilar as if they had been brought out of two different worlds. They are not on the Green, though they are undeniably a part of Dinglefield, but stand on the Mercot Road, a broad country road with a verdant border of turf and fine trees shadowing over the hedgerows. The Merridews live in the one, and in the other are Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella. The house of the two ladies, which has been already described, is as perfect in all its arrangements as if it were a palace: a silent, soft, fragrant, dainty place, surrounded by lawns like velvet; full of flowers in perfect bloom, the finest kinds, succeeding each other as the seasons change. Even in autumn, when the winds are blowing, you never see a fallen leaf about, or the least symptom of untidiness. They have enough servants for everything that is wanted, and the servants are as perfect as the flowers—noiseless maids and soft-voiced men. Everything goes like machinery, with an infallible regularity; but like machinery oiled and deadened, which emits no creak nor groan. This is one of the things upon which Mrs. Spencer specially prides herself.
And just across two green luxuriant hedges, over a lawn which is not like velvet, you come to the Merridews’. It is possible if you passed it on a summer day that, notwithstanding the amazing superiority of the other, you would pause longer, and be more amused with a glance into the enclosure of the latter house. The lawn is not the least like velvet; probably it has not been mown for three weeks at least, and the daisies are irrepressible. But there, tumbled down in the midst of it, are a bunch of little children in pinafores—‘all the little ones,’ as Janet Merridew, the eldest daughter, expresses herself, with a certain soft exasperation. I would rather not undertake to number them or record their names, but there they are, a knot of rosy, round-limbed, bright-eyed, living things, some dark and some fair, with an amazing impartiality; but all chattering as best they can in nursery language, with rings of baby laughter, and baby quarrels, and musings of infinite solemnity. Once tumbled out here, where no harm can come to them, nobody takes any notice of the little ones. Nurse, sitting by serenely under a tree, works all the morning through, and there is so much going on indoors to occupy the rest.
Mr. and Mrs. Merridew, I need not add, had a large family—so large that their house overflowed, and when the big boys were at home from school, was scarcely habitable. Janet, indeed, did not hesitate to express her sentiments very plainly on the subject. She was just sixteen, and a good child, but full of the restless longing for something, she did not know what, and visionary discontent with her surroundings, which is not uncommon at her age. She had a way of paying me visits, especially during the holidays, and speaking more frankly on domestic subjects than was at all expedient. She would come in, in summer, with a tap on the glass which always startled me, through the open window, and sink down on a sofa and utter a long sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave!’ she would say, ‘what a good thing you never had any children!’ taking off, as she spoke, the large hat which it was one of her grievances to be compelled to wear.
‘Is that because you have too many at home?’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, far too many; fancy, ten! Why should poor papa be burdened with ten of us? and so little money to keep us all on. And then a house gets so untidy with so many about. Mamma does all she can, and I do all I can; but how is it possible to keep it in order? When I look across the hedges to Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella’s and see everything so nice and so neat I could die of envy. And you are always so shady, and so cool, and so pleasant here.’
‘It is easy to be neat and nice when there is nobody to put things out of order,’ said I; ‘but when you are as old as I am, Janet, you will get to think that one may buy one’s neatness too dear.’
‘Oh, I delight in it!’ cried the girl. ‘I should like to have everything nice, like you; all the books and papers just where one wants them, and paper-knives on every table, and ink in the ink-bottles, and no dust anywhere. You are not so dreadfully particular as Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella. I think I should like to see some litter on the carpet or on the lawn now and then for a change. But oh, if you could only see our house! And then our things are so shabby: the drawing-room carpet is all faded with the sun, and mamma will never have the blinds properly pulled down. And Selina, the housemaid, has so much to do. When I scold her, mamma always stops me, and bids me recollect we can’t be as nice as you other people, were we to try ever so much. There is so much to do in our house. And then those dreadful big boys!’
‘My dear,’ said I, ‘ring the bell, and we will have some tea; and you can tell Jane to bring you some of that strawberry jam you are so fond of—and forget the boys.’
‘As if one could!’ said Janet, ‘when they are all over the place—into one’s very room, if one did not mind; their boots always either dusty or muddy, and oh, the noise they make! Mamma won’t make them dress in the evenings, as I am sure she should. How are they ever to learn to behave like Christians, Mrs. Mulgrave, if they are not obliged to dress and come into the drawing-room at night?’
‘I dare say they would run out again and spoil their evening clothes, my dear,’ I said.
‘That is just what mamma says,’ cried Janet; ‘but isn’t it dreadful to have always to consider everything like that? Poor mamma, too—often I am quite angry, and then I think—perhaps she would like a house like Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella’s as well as I should, if we had money enough. I suppose in a nice big house with heaps of maids and heaps of money, and everything kept tidy for you, one would not mind even the big boys.’
‘I think under those circumstances most people would be glad to have them,’ said I.
‘I don’t understand how anybody can like boys,’ said Janet, with reflective yet contemptuous emphasis. ‘A baby-boy is different. When they are just the age of little Harry, I adore them; but those great long-legged creatures, in their big boots! And yet, when they’re nicely dressed in their evening things,’ she went on, suddenly changing her tone, ‘and with a flower in their coats—Jack has actually got an evening coat, Mrs. Mulgrave, he is so tall for his age—they look quite nice; they look such gentlemen,’ Janet concluded, with a little sisterly enthusiasm. ‘Oh, how dreadful it is to be so poor!’
‘I am sure you are very fond of them all the same,’ said I, ‘and would break your heart if anything should happen to them.’
‘Oh, well, of course, now they are there one would not wish anything to happen,’ said Janet. ‘What did you say I was to tell Jane, Mrs. Mulgrave, about the tea? There now! Selina has never the time to be as nice as that—and Richards, you know, our man– Don’t you think, really, it would be better to have a nice clean parlour-maid than a man that looks like a cobbler? Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella are always going on about servants,—that you should send them away directly when they do anything wrong. But, you know, it makes a great difference having a separate servant for everything. Mamma always says, “They are good to the children, Janet,” or, “They are so useful and don’t mind what they do.” We put up with Selina because, though she’s not a good housemaid, she is quite willing to help in the nursery; and we put up with nurse because she gets through so much sewing; and even the cook– Oh, dear, dear! it is so disagreeable. I wish I were—anybody but myself.’
Just at this moment my maid ushered in Mrs. Merridew, hastily attired in a hat she wore in the garden, and a light shawl wrapped round her. There was an anxious look in her face, which indeed was not very unusual there. She was a little flushed, either by walking in the sunshine or by something on her mind.
‘You here, Janet,’ she said, when she had shaken hands with me, ‘when you promised me to practise an hour after luncheon? Go, my dear, and do it now.’
‘It is so hot. I never can play in the middle of the day; and oh, mamma, please it is so pleasant here,’ pleaded Janet, nestling herself close into the corner of the sofa.
‘Let her stay till we have had some tea,’ I said. ‘I know she likes my strawberry jam.’
Mrs. Merridew consented, but with a sigh; and then it was that I saw clearly she must have something on her mind. She did not smile, as usual, with the indulgent mother’s smile, half disapproving, yet unwilling to thwart the child. On the contrary, there was a little constraint in her air as she sat down, and Janet’s enjoyment of the jam vexed her, and brought a little wrinkle to her brow. ‘One would think you had not eaten anything all day,’ she said with a vexed tone, and evidently was impatient of her daughter’s presence, and wished her away.
‘Nothing so nice as this,’ said Janet, with the frank satisfaction of her age; and she went on eating her bread and jam quite composedly, until Mrs. Merridew’s patience was exhausted.
‘I cannot have you stay any longer,’ she said at length. ‘Go and practise now, while there is no one in the house.’
‘Oh, mamma!’ said Janet, beginning to expostulate; but was stopped short by a look in her mother’s eye. Then she gathered herself up reluctantly, and left the paradise of my little tea-table with the jam. She went out pouting, trailing her great hat after her; and had to be stopped as she stepped into the blazing sunshine, and commanded to put it on. ‘It is only a step,’ said the provoking girl, pouting more and more. And poor Mrs. Merridew looked so worried, and heated, and uncomfortable as she went out and said a few energetic words to her naughty child. Poor soul! Ten different wills to manage and keep in subjection to her own, besides all the other cares she had upon her shoulders. And that big girl who should have been a help to her, standing pouting and disobedient between the piano she did not care for, and the jam she loved.—Sometimes such a little altercation gives one a glimpse into an entire life.
‘She is such a child,’ Mrs. Merridew said, coming in with an apologetic, anxious smile on her face. She had been fretted and vexed, and yet she would not show it to lessen my opinion of her girl. Then she sank down wearily into that corner of the sofa from which Janet had been so unwillingly expelled. ‘The truth is, I wanted to speak to you,’ she said, ‘and could not while she was here. Poor Janet! I am afraid I was cross, but I could not help it. Something has occurred to-day which has put me out.’
‘I hope it is something I can help you in,’ I said.
‘That is why I have come: you are always so kind; but it is a strange thing I am going to ask you this time,’ she said, with a wistful glance at me. ‘I want to go to town for a day on business of my own; and I want it to be supposed that it is business of yours.’
The fact was, it did startle me for the moment—and then I reflected like lightning, so quick was the process (I say this that nobody may think my first feeling hard), what kind of woman she was, and how impossible that she should want to do anything that one need be ashamed of. ‘That is very simple,’ I said.
Then she rose hastily, and came up to me and gave me a sudden kiss, though she was not a demonstrative woman. ‘You are always so understanding,’ she said, with the tears in her eyes; and thus I was committed to stand by her, whatever her difficulty might be.
‘But you sha’n’t do it in the dark,’ she went on; ‘I am going to tell you all about it. I don’t want Mr. Merridew to know, and in our house it is quite impossible to keep anything secret. He is on circuit now; but he would hear of “the day mamma went to town” before he had been five minutes in the house. And so I want you to go with me, you dear soul, and to let me say I went with you.’
‘That is quite simple,’ I said again; but I did feel that I should like to know what the object of the expedition was.
‘It is a long story,’ she said, ‘and I must go back and tell you ever so much about myself before you will understand. I have had the most dreadful temptation put before me to-day. Oh, such a temptation! resisting it is like tearing one’s heart in two; and yet I know I ought to resist. Think of our large family, and poor Charles’s many disappointments, and then, dear Mrs. Mulgrave, read that.’
It was a letter written on a large square sheet of thin paper which she thrust into my hand: one of those letters one knows a mile off, and recognizes as lawyers’ letters, painful or pleasant, as the case may be; but more painful than pleasant generally. I read it, and you may judge of my astonishment to find that it ran thus:—
‘Dear Madam,—We have the pleasure to inform you that our late client, Mr. John Babington, deceased on the 10th of May last, has appointed you by his will his residuary legatee. After all his special bequests are paid, including an annuity of a hundred a year to his mother, with remainder to Miss Babington, his only surviving sister, there will remain a sum of about £10,000, at present excellently invested on landed security, and bearing interest at four and a half per cent. By Mr. Babington’s desire, precautions have been taken to bind it strictly to your separate use, so that you may dispose of it by will or otherwise, according to your pleasure, for which purpose we have accepted the office of your trustees, and will be happy to enter fully into the subject, and put you in possession of all details, as soon as you can favour us with a private interview.
‘We are, madam,‘Your obedient servants,‘Fogey, Featherhead & Down.’
‘A temptation!’ I cried; ‘but, my dear, it is a fortune; and it is delightful: it will make you quite comfortable. Why, it will be nearly five hundred a year.’