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Round the Sofa

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell · English · Gutenberg #2533 · 821,331 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Round the Sofa

Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell


        
Release date: March 1, 2001 [eBook #2533]
                Most recently updated: December 22, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2533

Credits: David Price, Vanessa Mosher, Jennifer Lee, Alev Akman, Andy Wallace, Audrey Emmitt and Eugenia Corbo


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND THE SOFA ***




               ROUND THE SOFA.

             by Elizabeth Gaskell




Long ago I was placed by my parents under the medical treatment of a
certain Mr. Dawson, a surgeon in Edinburgh, who had obtained a
reputation for the cure of a particular class of diseases. I was sent
with my governess into lodgings near his house, in the Old Town. I was
to combine lessons from the excellent Edinburgh masters, with the
medicines and exercises needed for my indisposition. It was at first
rather dreary to leave my brothers and sisters, and to give up our
merry out-of-doors life with our country home, for dull lodgings, with
only poor grave Miss Duncan for a companion; and to exchange our romps
in the garden and rambles through the fields for stiff walks in the
streets, the decorum of which obliged me to tie my bonnet-strings
neatly, and put on my shawl with some regard to straightness.

The evenings were the worst. It was autumn, and of course they daily
grew longer: they were long enough, I am sure, when we first settled
down in those gray and drab lodgings. For, you must know, my father and
mother were not rich, and there were a great many of us, and the
medical expenses to be incurred by my being placed under Mr. Dawson’s
care were expected to be considerable; therefore, one great point in
our search after lodgings was economy. My father, who was too true a
gentleman to feel false shame, had named this necessity for cheapness
to Mr. Dawson; and in return, Mr. Dawson had told him of those at No. 6
Cromer Street, in which we were finally settled. The house belonged to
an old man, at one time a tutor to young men preparing for the
University, in which capacity he had become known to Mr. Dawson. But
his pupils had dropped off; and when we went to lodge with him, I
imagine that his principal support was derived from a few occasional
lessons which he gave, and from letting the rooms that we took, a
drawing-room opening into a bed-room, out of which a smaller chamber
led. His daughter was his housekeeper: a son, whom we never saw,
supposed to be leading the same life that his father had done before
him, only we never saw or heard of any pupils; and there was one
hard-working, honest little Scottish maiden, square, stumpy, neat, and
plain, who might have been any age from eighteen to forty.

Looking back on the household now, there was perhaps much to admire in
their quiet endurance of decent poverty; but at this time, their
poverty grated against many of my tastes, for I could not recognize the
fact, that in a town the simple graces of fresh flowers, clean white
muslin curtains, pretty bright chintzes, all cost money, which is saved
by the adoption of dust-coloured moreen, and mud-coloured carpets.
There was not a penny spent on mere elegance in that room; yet there
was everything considered necessary to comfort: but after all, such
mere pretences of comfort! a hard, slippery, black horse-hair sofa,
which was no place of rest; an old piano, serving as a sideboard; a
grate, narrowed by an inner supplement, till it hardly held a handful
of the small coal which could scarcely ever be stirred up into a genial
blaze. But there were two evils worse than even this coldness and
bareness of the rooms: one was that we were provided with a latch-key,
which allowed us to open the front door whenever we came home from a
walk, and go upstairs without meeting any face of welcome, or hearing
the sound of a human voice in the apparently deserted house—Mr.
Mackenzie piqued himself on the noiselessness of his establishment; and
the other, which might almost seem to neutralize the first, was the
danger we were always exposed to on going out, of the old man—sly,
miserly, and intelligent—popping out upon us from his room, close to
the left hand of the door, with some civility which we learned to
distrust as a mere pretext for extorting more money, yet which it was
difficult to refuse: such as the offer of any books out of his library,
a great temptation, for we could see into the shelf-lined room; but
just as we were on the point of yielding, there was a hint of the
“consideration” to be expected for the loan of books of so much higher
a class than any to be obtained at the circulating library, which made
us suddenly draw back. Another time he came out of his den to offer us
written cards, to distribute among our acquaintance, on which he
undertook to teach the very things I was to learn; but I would rather
have been the most ignorant woman that ever lived than tried to learn
anything from that old fox in breeches. When we had declined all his
proposals, he went apparently into dudgeon. Once when we had forgotten
our latch-key we rang in vain for many times at the door, seeing our
landlord standing all the time at the window to the right, looking out
of it in an absent and philosophical state of mind, from which no signs
and gestures of ours could arouse him.

The women of the household were far better, and more really
respectable, though even on them poverty had laid her heavy left hand,
instead of her blessing right. Miss Mackenzie kept us as short in our
food as she decently could—we paid so much a week for our board, be it
observed; and if one day we had less appetite than another our meals
were docked to the smaller standard, until Miss Duncan ventured to
remonstrate. The sturdy maid-of-all-work was scrupulously honest, but
looked discontented, and scarcely vouchsafed us thanks, when on leaving
we gave her what Mrs. Dawson had told us would be considered handsome
in most lodgings. I do not believe Phenice ever received wages from the
Mackenzies.

But that dear Mrs. Dawson! The mention of her comes into my mind like
the bright sunshine into our dingy little drawing room came on those
days;—as a sweet scent of violets greets the sorrowful passer among the
woodlands.

Mrs. Dawson was not Mr. Dawson’s wife, for he was a bachelor. She was
his crippled sister, an old maid, who had, what she called, taken her
brevet rank.

After we had been about a fortnight in Edinburgh, Mr. Dawson said, in a
sort of half doubtful manner to Miss Duncan—

“My sister bids me say, that every Monday evening a few friends come in
to sit round her sofa for an hour or so,—some before going to gayer
parties—and that if you and Miss Greatorex would like a little change,
she would only be too glad to see you. Any time from seven to eight
to-night; and I must add my injunctions, both for her sake, and for
that of my little patient’s, here, that you leave at nine o’clock.
After all, I do not know if you will care to come; but Margaret bade me
ask you;” and he glanced up suspiciously and sharply at us. If either
of us had felt the slightest reluctance, however well disguised by
manner, to accept this invitation, I am sure he would have at once
detected our feelings, and withdrawn it; so jealous and chary was he of
anything pertaining to the appreciation of this beloved sister.

But if it had been to spend an evening at the dentist’s, I believe I
should have welcomed the invitation, so weary was I of the monotony of
the nights in our lodgings; and as for Miss Duncan, an invitation to
tea was of itself a pure and unmixed honour, and one to be accepted
with all becoming form and gratitude: so Mr. Dawson’s sharp glances
over his spectacles failed to detect anything but the truest pleasure,
and he went on.

“You’ll find it very dull, I dare say. Only a few old fogies like
myself, and one or two good sweet young women: I never know who’ll
come. Margaret is obliged to lie in a darkened room—only half-lighted I
mean,—because her eyes are weak,—oh, it will be very stupid, I dare
say: don’t thank me till you’ve been once and tried it, and then if you
like it, your best thanks will be to come again every Monday, from
half-past seven to nine, you know. Good-bye, good-bye.”

Hitherto I had never been out to a party of grown-up people; and no
court ball to a London young lady could seem more redolent of honour
and pleasure than this Monday evening to me.

Dressed out in new stiff book-muslin, made up to my throat,—a frock
which had seemed to me and my sisters the height of earthly grandeur
and finery—Alice, our old nurse, had been making it at home, in
contemplation of the possibility of such an event during my stay in
Edinburgh, but which had then appeared to me a robe too lovely and
angelic to be ever worn short of heaven—I went with Miss Duncan to Mr.
Dawson’s at the appointed time. We entered through one small lofty
room, perhaps I ought to call it an antechamber, for the house was
old-fashioned, and stately and grand, the large square drawing-room,
into the centre of which Mrs. Dawson’s sofa was drawn. Behind her a
little was placed a table with a great cluster candlestick upon it,
bearing seven or eight wax-lights; and that was all the light in the
room, which looked to me very vast and indistinct after our pinched-up
apartment at the Mackenzie’s. Mrs. Dawson must have been sixty; and yet
her face looked very soft and smooth and child-like. Her hair was quite
gray: it would have looked white but for the snowiness of her cap, and
satin ribbon. She was wrapped in a kind of dressing-gown of French grey
merino: the furniture of the room was deep rose-colour, and white and
gold,—the paper which covered the walls was Indian, beginning low down
with a profusion of tropical leaves and birds and insects, and
gradually diminishing in richness of detail till at the top it ended in
the most delicate tendrils and most filmy insects.

Mr. Dawson had acquired much riches in his profession, and his house
gave one this impression. In the corners of the rooms were great jars
of Eastern china, filled with flower-leaves and spices; and in the
middle of all this was placed the sofa, which poor Margaret Dawson
passed whole days, and months, and years, without the power of moving
by herself. By-and-by Mrs. Dawson’s maid brought in tea and macaroons
for us, and a little cup of milk and water and a biscuit for her. Then
the door opened. We had come very early, and in came Edinburgh
professors, Edinburgh beauties, and celebrities, all on their way to
some other gayer and later party, but coming first to see Mrs. Dawson,
and tell her their _bon-mots_, or their interests, or their plans. By
each learned man, by each lovely girl, she was treated as a dear
friend, who knew something more about their own individual selves,
independent of their reputation and general society-character, than any
one else.

It was very brilliant and very dazzling, and gave enough to think about
and wonder about for many days.

Monday after Monday we went, stationary, silent; what could we find to
say to any one but Mrs. Margaret herself? Winter passed, summer was
coming, still I was ailing, and weary of my life; but still Mr. Dawson
gave hopes of my ultimate recovery. My father and mother came and went;
but they could not stay long, they had so many claims upon them. Mrs.
Margaret Dawson had become my dear friend, although, perhaps, I had
never exchanged as many words with her as I had with Miss Mackenzie,
but then with Mrs. Dawson every word was a pearl or a diamond.

People began to drop off from Edinburgh, only a few were left, and I am
not sure if our Monday evenings were not all the pleasanter.

There was Mr. Sperano, the Italian exile, banished even from France,
where he had long resided, and now teaching Italian with meek diligence
in the northern city; there was Mr. Preston, the Westmoreland squire,
or, as he preferred to be called, statesman, whose wife had come to
Edinburgh for the education of their numerous family, and who, whenever
her husband had come over on one of his occasional visits, was only too
glad to accompany him to Mrs. Dawson’s Monday evenings, he and the
invalid lady having been friends from long ago. These and ourselves
kept steady visitors, and enjoyed ourselves all the more from having
the more of Mrs. Dawson’s society.

One evening I had brought the little stool close to her sofa, and was
caressing her thin white hand, when the thought came into my head and
out I spoke it.

“Tell me, dear Mrs. Dawson,” said I, “how long you have been in
Edinburgh; you do not speak Scotch, and Mr. Dawson says he is not
Scotch.”

“No, I am Lancashire—Liverpool-born,” said she, smiling. “Don’t you
hear it in my broad tongue?”

“I hear something different to other people, but I like it because it
is just you; is that Lancashire?”

“I dare say it is; for, though I am sure Lady Ludlow took pains enough
to correct me in my younger days, I never could get rightly over the
accent.”

“Lady Ludlow,” said I, “what had she to do with you? I heard you
talking about her to Lady Madeline Stuart the first evening I ever came
here; you and she seemed so fond of Lady Ludlow; who is she?”

“She is dead, my child; dead long ago.”

I felt sorry I had spoken about her, Mrs. Dawson looked so grave and
sad. I suppose she perceived my sorrow, for she went on and said—“My
dear, I like to talk and to think of Lady Ludlow: she was my true, kind
friend and benefactress for many years; ask me what you like about her,
and do not think you give me pain.”

I grew bold at this.

“Will you tell me all about her, then, please, Mrs. Dawson?”

“Nay,” said she, smiling, “that would be too long a story. Here are
Signor Sperano, and Miss Duncan, and Mr. and Mrs. Preston are coming
to-night, Mr. Preston told me; how would they like to hear an old-world
story which, after all, would be no story at all, neither beginning,
nor middle, nor end, only a bundle of recollections?”

“If you speak of me, madame,” said Signor Sperano, “I can only say you
do me one great honour by recounting in my presence anything about any
person that has ever interested you.”

Miss Duncan tried to say something of the same kind. In the middle of
her confused speech, Mr. and Mrs. Preston came in. I sprang up; I went
to meet them.

“Oh,” said I, “Mrs. Dawson is just going to tell us all about Lady
Ludlow, and a great deal more, only she is afraid it won’t interest
anybody: do say you would like to hear it!”

Mrs. Dawson smiled at me, and in reply to their urgency she promised to
tell us all about Lady Ludlow, on condition that each one of us should,
after she had ended, narrate something interesting, which we had either
heard, or which had fallen within our own experience. We all promised
willingly, and then gathered round her sofa to hear what she could tell
us about my Lady Ludlow.




MY LADY LUDLOW




CHAPTER I.


I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they were
in my youth. Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches, carrying six
inside, and making a two days’ journey out of what people now go over
in a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and a screaming whistle,
enough to deafen one. Then letters came in but three times a week:
indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a
girl, the post came in but once a month;—but letters were letters then;
and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like
books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky
notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence,
which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. Well, well!
they may all be improvements,—I dare say they are; but you will never
meet with a Lady Ludlow in these days.

I will try and tell you about her. It is no story: it has, as I said,
neither beginning, middle, nor end.

My father was a poor clergyman with a large family. My mother was always
said to have good blood in her veins; and when she wanted to maintain her
position with the people she was thrown among,—principally rich
democratic manufacturers, all for liberty and the French Revolution,—she
would put on a pair of ruffles, trimmed with real old English point, very
much darned to be sure,—but which could not be bought new for love or
money, as the art of making it was lost years before. These ruffles
showed, as she said, that her ancestors had been Somebodies, when the
grandfathers of the rich folk, who now looked down upon her, had been
Nobodies,—if, indeed, they had any grandfathers at all. I don’t know
whether any one out of our own family ever noticed these ruffles,—but we
were all taught as children to feel rather proud when my mother put them
on, and to hold up our heads as became the descendants of the lady who
had first possessed the lace. Not but what my dear father often told us
that pride was a great sin; we were never allowed to be proud of anything
but my mother’s ruffles: and she was so innocently happy when she put
them on,—often, poor dear creature, to a very worn and threadbare
gown,—that I still think, even after all my experience of life, they
were a blessing to the family. You will think that I am wandering away
from my Lady Ludlow. Not at all. The Lady who had owned the lace,
Ursula Hanbury, was a common ancestress of both my mother and my Lady
Ludlow. And so it fell out, that when my poor father died, and my mother
was sorely pressed to know what to do with her nine children, and looked
far and wide for signs of willingness to help, Lady Ludlow sent her a
letter, proffering aid and assistance. I see that letter now: a large
sheet of thick yellow paper, with a straight broad margin left on the
left-hand side of the delicate Italian writing,—writing which contained
far more in the same space of paper than all the sloping, or masculine
hand-writings of the present day. It was sealed with a coat-of-arms,—a
lozenge,—for Lady Ludlow was a widow. My mother made us notice the
motto, “Foy et Loy,” and told us where to look for the quarterings of the
Hanbury arms before she opened the letter. Indeed, I think she was
rather afraid of what the contents might be; for, as I have said, in her
anxious love for her fatherless children, she had written to many people
upon whom, to tell truly, she had but little claim; and their cold, hard
answers had many a time made her cry, when she thought none of us were
looking. I do not even know if she had ever seen Lady Ludlow: all I knew
of her was that she was a very grand lady, whose grandmother had been
half-sister to my mother’s great-grandmother; but of her character and
circumstances I had heard nothing, and I doubt if my mother was
acquainted with them.

I looked over my mother’s shoulder to read the letter; it began, “Dear
Cousin Margaret Dawson,” and I think I felt hopeful from the moment I saw
those words. She went on to say,—stay, I think I can remember the very
words:

‘DEAR COUSIN MARGARET DAWSON,—I have been much grieved to hear of the
loss you have sustained in the death of so good a husband, and so
excellent a clergyman as I have always heard that my late cousin Richard
was esteemed to be.’

“There!” said my mother, laying her finger on the passage, “read that
aloud to the little ones. Let them hear how their father’s good report
travelled far and wide, and how well he is spoken of by one whom he never
saw. COUSIN Richard, how prettily her ladyship writes! Go on,
Margaret!” She wiped her eyes as she spoke: and laid her fingers on her
lips, to still my little sister, Cecily, who, not understanding anything
about the important letter, was beginning to talk and make a noise.

‘You say you are left with nine children. I too should have had nine, if
mine had all lived. I have none left but Rudolph, the present Lord
Ludlow. He is married, and lives, for the most part, in London. But I
entertain six young gentlewomen at my house at Connington, who are to me
as daughters—save that, perhaps, I restrict them in certain indulgences
in dress and diet that might be befitting in young ladies of a higher
rank, and of more probable wealth. These young persons—all of
condition, though out of means—are my constant companions, and I strive
to do my duty as a Christian lady towards them. One of these young
gentlewomen died (at her own home, whither she had gone upon a visit)
last May. Will you do me the favour to allow your eldest daughter to
supply her place in my household? She is, as I make out, about sixteen
years of age. She will find companions here who are but a little older
than herself. I dress my young friends myself, and make each of them a
small allowance for pocket-money. They have but few opportunities for
matrimony, as Connington is far removed from any town. The clergyman is
a deaf old widower; my agent is married; and as for the neighbouring
farmers, they are, of course, below the notice of the young gentlewomen
under my protection. Still, if any young woman wishes to marry, and has
conducted herself to my satisfaction, I give her a wedding dinner, her
clothes, and her house-linen. And such as remain with me to my death,
will find a small competency provided for them in my will. I reserve to
myself the option of paying their travelling expenses,—disliking gadding
women, on the one hand; on the other, not wishing by too long absence
from the family home to weaken natural ties.

‘If my proposal pleases you and your daughter—or rather, if it pleases
you, for I trust your daughter has been too well brought up to have a
will in opposition to yours—let me know, dear cousin Margaret Dawson,
and I will make arrangements for meeting the young gentlewoman at
Cavistock, which is the nearest point to which the coach will bring her.’

My mother dropped the letter, and sat silent.

“I shall not know what to do without you, Margaret.”

A moment before, like a young untried girl as I was, I had been pleased
at the notion of seeing a new place, and leading a new life. But now,—my
mother’s look of sorrow, and the children’s cry of remonstrance: “Mother;
I won’t go,” I said.

“Nay! but you had better,” replied she, shaking her head. “Lady Ludlow
has much power. She can help your brothers. It will not do to slight
her offer.”

So we accepted it, after much consultation. We were rewarded,—or so we
thought,—for, afterwards, when I came to know Lady Ludlow, I saw that
she would have done her duty by us, as helpless relations, however we
might have rejected her kindness,—by a presentation to Christ’s Hospital
for one of my brothers.

And this was how I came to know my Lady Ludlow.

I remember well the afternoon of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her
ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the
mail-coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the ostler
said, if my name was Dawson—from Hanbury Court, he believed. I felt
it rather formidable; and first began to understand what was meant by
going among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my mother
had intrusted me. I was perched up in a high gig with a hood to it,
such as in those days was called a chair, and my companion was driving
deliberately through the most pastoral country I had ever yet seen.
By-and-by we ascended a long hill, and the man got out and walked at
the horse’s head. I should have liked to walk, too, very much indeed;
but I did not know how far I might do it; and, in fact, I dared not
speak to ask to be helped down the deep steps of the gig. We were at
last at the top,—on a long, breezy, sweeping, unenclosed piece of
ground, called, as I afterwards learnt, a Chase. The groom stopped,
breathed, patted his horse, and then mounted again to my side.

“Are we near Hanbury Court?” I asked.

“Near! Why, Miss! we’ve a matter of ten mile yet to go.”

Once launched into conversation, we went on pretty glibly. I fancy he
had been afraid of beginning to speak to me, just as I was to him; but he
got over his shyness with me sooner than I did mine with him. I let him
choose the subjects of conversation, although very often I could not
understand the points of interest in them: for instance, he talked for
more than a quarter of an hour of a famous race which a certain dog-fox
had given him, above thirty years before; and spoke of all the covers and
turns just as if I knew them as well as he did; and all the time I was
wondering what kind of an animal a dog-fox might be.

After we left the Chase, the road grew worse. No one in these days,
who has not seen the byroads of fifty years ago, can imagine what they
were. We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the way along
the deep-rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I occasionally
met with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I could not look
about me at all, I was so much occupied in holding on. The road was
too muddy for me to walk without dirtying myself more than I liked to
do, just before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow. But by-and-by, when
we came to the fields in which the lane ended, I begged Randal to help
me down, as I saw that I could pick my steps among the pasture grass
without making myself unfit to be seen; and Randal, out of pity for his
steaming horse, wearied with the hard struggle through the mud, thanked
me kindly, and helped me down with a springing jump.

The pastures fell gradually down to the lower land, shut in on either
side by rows of high elms, as if there had been a wide grand avenue here
in former times. Down the grassy gorge we went, seeing the sunset sky at
the end of the shadowed descent. Suddenly we came to a long flight of
steps.

“If you’ll run down there, Miss, I’ll go round and meet you, and then
you’d better mount again, for my lady will like to see you drive up to
the house.”

“Are we near the house?” said I, suddenly checked by the idea.

“Down there, Miss,” replied he, pointing with his whip to certain stacks
of twisted chimneys rising out of a group of trees, in deep shadow
against the crimson light, and which lay just beyond a great square lawn
at the base of the steep slope of a hundred yards, on the edge of which
we stood.

I went down the steps quietly enough. I met Randal and the gig at the
bottom; and, falling into a side road to the left, we drove sedately
round, through the gateway, and into the great court in front of the
house.

The road by which we had come lay right at the back.

Hanbury Court is a vast red-brick house—at least, it is cased in part
with red bricks; and the gate-house and walls about the place are of
brick,—with stone facings at every corner, and door, and window, such as
you see at Hampton Court. At the back are the gables, and arched
doorways, and stone mullions, which show (so Lady Ludlow used to tell us)
that it was once a priory. There was a prior’s parlour, I know—only we
called it Mrs. Medlicott’s room; and there was a tithe-barn as big as a
church, and rows of fish-ponds, all got ready for the monks’ fasting-days
in old time. But all this I did not see till afterwards. I hardly
noticed, this first night, the great Virginian Creeper (said to have been
the first planted in England by one of my lady’s ancestors) that half
covered the front of the house. As I had been unwilling to leave the
guard of the coach, so did I now feel unwilling to leave Randal, a known
friend of three hours. But there was no help for it; in I must go; past
the grand-looking old gentleman holding the door open for me, on into the
great hall on the right hand, into which the sun’s last rays were sending
in glorious red light,—the gentleman was now walking before me,—up a
step on to the dais, as I afterwards learned that it was called,—then
again to the left, through a series of sitting-rooms, opening one out of
another, and all of them looking into a stately garden, glowing, even in
the twilight, with the bloom of flowers. We went up four steps out of
the last of these rooms, and then my guide lifted up a heavy silk curtain
and I was in the presence of my Lady Ludlow.

She was very small of stature, and very upright. She wore a great lace
cap, nearly half her own height, I should think, that went round her
head (caps which tied under the chin, and which we called “mobs,” came
in later, and my lady held them in great contempt, saying people might
as well come down in their nightcaps). In front of my lady’s cap was a
great bow of white satin ribbon; and a broad band of the same ribbon
was tied tight round her head, and served to keep the cap straight. She
had a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her shoulders and across
her chest, and an apron of the same; a black silk mode gown, made with
short sleeves and ruffles, and with the tail thereof pulled through
the pocket-hole, so as to shorten it to a useful length: beneath it
she wore, as I could plainly see, a quilted lavender satin petticoat.
Her hair was snowy white, but I hardly saw it, it was so covered with
her cap: her skin, even at her age, was waxen in texture and tint; her
eyes were large and dark blue, and must have been her great beauty
when she was young, for there was nothing particular, as far as I can
remember, either in mouth or nose. She had a great gold-headed stick by
her chair; but I think it was more as a mark of state and dignity than
for use; for she had as light and brisk a step when she chose as any
girl of fifteen, and, in her private early walk of meditation in the
mornings, would go as swiftly from garden alley to garden alley as any
one of us.

She was standing up when I went in. I dropped my curtsey at the door,
which my mother had always taught me as a part of good manners, and went
up instinctively to my lady. She did not put out her hand, but raised
herself a little on tiptoe, and kissed me on both cheeks.

“You are cold, my child. You shall have a dish of tea with me.” She
rang a little hand-bell on the table by her, and her waiting-maid came in
from a small anteroom; and, as if all had been prepared, and was awaiting
my arrival, brought with her a small china service with tea ready made,
and a plate of delicately-cut bread and butter, every morsel of which I
could have eaten, and been none the better for it, so hungry was I after
my long ride. The waiting-maid took off my cloak, and I sat down, sorely
alarmed at the silence, the hushed foot-falls of the subdued maiden over
the thick carpet, and the soft voice and clear pronunciation of my Lady
Ludlow. My teaspoon fell against my cup with a sharp noise, that seemed
so out of place and season that I blushed deeply. My lady caught my eye
with hers,—both keen and sweet were those dark-blue eyes of her
ladyship’s:—

“Your hands are very cold, my dear; take off those gloves” (I wore thick
serviceable doeskin, and had been too shy to take them off unbidden),
“and let me try and warm them—the evenings are very chilly.” And she
held my great red hands in hers,—soft, warm, white, ring-laden. Looking
at last a little wistfully into my face, she said—“Poor child! And
you’re the eldest of nine! I had a daughter who would have been just
your age; but I cannot fancy her the eldest of nine.” Then came a pause
of silence; and then she rang her bell, and desired her waiting-maid,
Adams, to show me to my room.

It was so small that I think it must have been a cell. The walls were
whitewashed stone; the bed was of white dimity. There was a small piece
of red staircarpet on each side of the bed, and two chairs. In a closet
adjoining were my washstand and toilet-table. There was a text of
Scripture painted on the wall right opposite to my bed; and below hung a
print, common enough in those days, of King George and Queen Charlotte,
with all their numerous children, down to the little Princess Amelia in a
go-cart. On each side hung a small portrait, also engraved: on the left,
it was Louis the Sixteenth; on the other, Marie-Antoinette. On the
chimney-piece there was a tinder-box and a Prayer-book. I do not
remember anything else in the room. Indeed, in those days people did not
dream of writing-tables, and inkstands, and portfolios, and easy chairs,
and what not. We were taught to go into our bed-rooms for the purposes of
dressing, and sleeping, and praying.

Presently I was summoned to supper. I followed the young lady who had
been sent to call me, down the wide shallow stairs, into the great hall,
through which I had first passed on my way to my Lady Ludlow’s room.
There were four other young gentlewomen, all standing, and all silent,
who curtsied to me when I first came in. They were dressed in a kind of
uniform: muslin caps bound round their heads with blue ribbons, plain
muslin handkerchiefs, lawn aprons, and drab-coloured stuff gowns. They
were all gathered together at a little distance from the table, on which
were placed a couple of cold chickens, a salad, and a fruit tart. On the
dais there was a smaller round table, on which stood a silver jug filled
with milk, and a small roll. Near that was set a carved chair, with a
countess’s coronet surmounting the back of it. I thought that some one
might have spoken to me; but they were shy, and I was shy; or else there
was some other reason; but, indeed, almost the minute after I had come
into the hall by the door at the lower hand, her ladyship entered by the
door opening upon the dais; whereupon we all curtsied very low; I because
I saw the others do it. She stood, and looked at us for a moment.

“Young gentlewomen,” said she, “make Margaret Dawson welcome among you;”
and they treated me with the kind politeness due to a stranger, but still
without any talking beyond what was required for the purposes of the
meal. After it was over, and grace was said by one of our party, my lady
rang her hand-bell, and the servants came in and cleared away the supper
things: then they brought in a portable reading-desk, which was placed on
the dais, and, the whole household trooping in, my lady called to one of
my companions to come up and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day. I
remember thinking how afraid I should have been had I been in her place.
There were no prayers. My lady thought it schismatic to have any prayers
excepting those in the Prayer-book; and would as soon have preached a
sermon herself in the parish church, as have allowed any one not a deacon
at the least to read prayers in a private dwelling-house. I am not sure
that even then she would have approved of his reading them in an
unconsecrated place.

She had been maid-of-honour to Queen Charlotte: a Hanbury of that old
stock that flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, and heiress of all
the land that remained to the family, of the great estates which had once
stretched into four separate counties. Hanbury Court was hers by right.
She had married Lord Ludlow, and had lived for many years at his various
seats, and away from her ancestral home. She had lost all her children
but one, and most of them had died at these houses of Lord Ludlow’s; and,
I dare say, that gave my lady a distaste to the places, and a longing to
come back to Hanbury Court, where she had been so happy as a girl. I
imagine her girlhood had been the happiest time of her life; for, now I
think of it, most of her opinions, when I knew her in later life, were
singular enough then, but had been universally prevalent fifty years
before. For instance, while I lived at Hanbury Court, the cry for
education was beginning to come up: Mr. Raikes had set up his Sunday
Schools; and some clergymen were all for teaching writing and arithmetic,
as well as reading. My lady would have none of this; it was levelling
and revolutionary, she said. When a young woman came to be hired, my
lady would have her in, and see if she liked her looks and her dress, and
question her about her family. Her ladyship laid great stress upon this
latter point, saying that a girl who did not warm up when any interest or
curiosity was expressed about her mother, or the “baby” (if there was
one), was not likely to make a good servant. Then she would make her put
out her feet, to see if they were well and neatly shod. Then she would
bid her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. Then she inquired if she
could write. If she could, and she had liked all that had gone before,
her face sank—it was a great disappointment, for it was an all but
inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant who could write. But
I have known her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in
which she did so she put the girl’s principles to a further and unusual
test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert young
woman—and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a
rich draper in Shrewsbury—who had got through her trials pretty
tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt all, by saying glibly, at
the end of the last Commandment, “An’t please your ladyship, I can cast
accounts.”

“Go away, wench,” said my lady in a hurry, “you’re only fit for trade;
you will not suit me for a servant.” The girl went away crestfallen: in
a minute, however, my lady sent me after her to see that she had
something to eat before leaving the house; and, indeed, she sent for her
once again, but it was only to give her a Bible, and to bid her beware of
French principles, which had led the French to cut off their king’s and
queen’s heads.

The poor, blubbering girl said, “Indeed, my lady, I wouldn’t hurt a fly,
much less a king, and I cannot abide the French, nor frogs neither, for
that matter.”

But my lady was inexorable, and took a girl who could neither read nor
write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education towards
addition and subtraction; and afterwards, when the clergyman who was at
Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop had appointed
another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one of the points on
which he and my lady did not agree. While good old deaf Mr. Mountford
lived, it was my lady’s custom, when indisposed for a sermon, to stand up
at the door of her large square pew,—just opposite to the
reading-desk,—and to say (at that part of the morning service where it
is decreed that, in quires and places where they sing, here followeth the
anthem): “Mr. Mountford, I will not trouble you for a discourse this
morning.” And we all knelt down to the Litany with great satisfaction;
for Mr. Mountford, though he could not hear, had always his eyes open
about this part of the service, for any of my lady’s movements. But the
new clergyman, Mr. Gray, was of a different stamp. He was very zealous
in all his parish work; and my lady, who was just as good as she could be
to the poor, was often crying him up as a godsend to the parish, and he
never could send amiss to the Court when he wanted broth, or wine, or
jelly, or sago for a sick person. But he needs must take up the new
hobby of education; and I could see that this put my lady sadly about one
Sunday, when she suspected, I know not how, that there was something to
be said in his sermon about a Sunday-school which he was planning. She
stood up, as she had not done since Mr. Mountford’s death, two years and
better before this time, and said—

“Mr. Gray, I will not trouble you for a discourse this morning.”

But her voice was not well-assured and steady; and we knelt down with
more of curiosity than satisfaction in our minds. Mr. Gray preached a
very rousing sermon, on the necessity of establishing a Sabbath-school in
the village. My lady shut her eyes, and seemed to go to sleep; but I
don’t believe she lost a word of it, though she said nothing about it
that I heard until the next Saturday, when two of us, as was the custom,
were riding out with her in her carriage, and we went to see a poor
bedridden woman, who lived some miles away at the other end of the estate
and of the parish: and as we came out of the cottage we met Mr. Gray
walking up to it, in a great heat, and looking very tired. My lady
beckoned him to her, and told him she should wait and take him home with
her, adding that she wondered to see him there, so far from his home, for
that it was beyond a Sabbath-day’s journey, and, from what she had
gathered from his sermon the last Sunday, he was all for Judaism against
Christianity. He looked as if he did not understand what she meant; but
the truth was that, besides the way in which he had spoken up for schools
and schooling, he had kept calling Sunday the Sabbath: and, as her
ladyship said, “The Sabbath is the Sabbath, and that’s one thing—it is
Saturday; and if I keep it, I’m a Jew, which I’m not. And Sunday is
Sunday; and that’s another thing; and if I keep it, I’m a Christian,
which I humbly trust I am.”

But when Mr. Gray got an inkling of her meaning in talking about a
Sabbath-day’s journey, he only took notice of a part of it: he smiled and
bowed, and said no one knew better than her ladyship what were the duties
that abrogated all inferior laws regarding the Sabbath; and that he must
go in and read to old Betty Brown, so that he would not detain her
ladyship.

“But I shall wait for you, Mr. Gray,” said she. “Or I will take a drive
round by Oakfield, and be back in an hour’s time.” For, you see, she
would not have him feel hurried or troubled with a thought that he was
keeping her waiting, while he ought to be comforting and praying with old
Betty.

“A very pretty young man, my dears,” said she, as we drove away. “But I
shall have my pew glazed all the same.”

We did not know what she meant at the time; but the next Sunday but one
we did. She had the curtains all round the grand old Hanbury family seat
taken down, and, instead of them, there was glass up to the height of six
or seven feet. We entered by a door, with a window in it that drew up or
down just like what you see in carriages. This window was generally
down, and then we could hear perfectly; but if Mr. Gray used the word
“Sabbath,” or spoke in favour of schooling and education, my lady stepped
out of her corner, and drew up the window with a decided clang and clash.

I must tell you something more about Mr. Gray. The presentation to the
living of Hanbury was vested in two trustees, of whom Lady Ludlow was
one: Lord Ludlow had exercised this right in the appointment of Mr.
Mountford, who had won his lordship’s favour by his excellent
horsemanship. Nor was Mr. Mountford a bad clergyman, as clergymen went
in those days. He did not drink, though he liked good eating as much as
any one. And if any poor person was ill, and he heard of it, he would
send them plates from his own dinner of what he himself liked best;
sometimes of dishes which were almost as bad as poison to sick people. He
meant kindly to everybody except dissenters, whom Lady Ludlow and he
united in trying to drive out of the parish; and among dissenters he
particularly abhorred Methodists—some one said, because John Wesley had
objected to his hunting. But that must have been long ago for when I
knew him he was far too stout and too heavy to hunt; besides, the bishop
of the diocese disapproved of hunting, and had intimated his
disapprobation to the clergy. For my own part, I think a good run would
not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He
ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often heard
of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the sexton and
clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon came to
himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in
proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as
all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar’s saying, “The Devil take
you,” was worth a shilling any day, whereas “The Deuce” was a shabby
sixpenny speech, only fit for a curate.

There was a great deal of good in Mr. Mountford, too. He could not bear
to see pain, or sorrow, or misery of any kind; and, if it came under his
notice, he was never easy till he had relieved it, for the time, at any
rate. But he was afraid of being made uncomfortable; so, if he possibly
could, he would avoid seeing any one who was ill or unhappy; and he did
not thank any one for telling him about them.

“What would your ladyship have me to do?” he once said to my Lady Ludlow,
when she wished him to go and see a poor man who had broken his leg. “I
cannot piece the leg as the doctor can; I cannot nurse him as well as his
wife does; I may talk to him, but he no more understands me than I do the
language of the alchemists. My coming puts him out; he stiffens himself
into an uncomfortable posture, out of respect to the cloth, and dare not
take the comfort of kicking, and swearing, and scolding his wife, while I
am there. I hear him, with my figurative ears, my lady, heave a sigh of
relief when my back is turned, and the sermon that he thinks I ought to
have kept for the pulpit, and have delivered to his neighbours (whose
case, as he fancies, it would just have fitted, as it seemed to him to be
addressed to the sinful), is all ended, and done, for the day. I judge
others as myself; I do to them as I would be done to. That’s
Christianity, at any rate. I should hate—saving your ladyship’s
presence—to have my Lord Ludlow coming and seeing me, if I were ill.
’Twould be a great honour, no doubt; but I should have to put on a clean
nightcap for the occasion; and sham patience, in order to be polite, and
not weary his lordship with my complaints. I should be twice as thankful
to him if he would send me game, or a good fat haunch, to bring me up to
that pitch of health and strength one ought to be in, to appreciate the
honour of a visit from a nobleman. So I shall send Jerry Butler a good
dinner every day till he is strong again; and spare the poor old fellow
my presence and advice.”

My lady would be puzzled by this, and by many other of Mr. Mountford’s
speeches. But he had been appointed by my lord, and she could not
question her dead husband’s wisdom; and she knew that the dinners were
always sent, and often a guinea or two to help to pay the doctor’s bills;
and Mr. Mountford was true blue, as we call it, to the back-bone; hated
the dissenters and the French; and could hardly drink a dish of tea
without giving out the toast of “Church and King, and down with the
Rump.” Moreover, he had once had the honour of preaching before the King
and Queen, and two of the Princesses, at Weymouth; and the King had
applauded his sermon audibly with,—“Very good; very good;” and that was
a seal put upon his merit in my lady’s eyes.

Besides, in the long winter Sunday evenings, he would come up to the
Court, and read a sermon to us girls, and play a game of picquet with my
lady afterwards; which served to shorten the tedium of the time. My lady
would, on those occasions, invite him to sup with her on the dais; but as
her meal was invariably bread and milk only, Mr. Mountford preferred
sitting down amongst us, and made a joke about its being wicked and
heterodox to eat meagre on Sunday, a festival of the Church. We smiled
at this joke just as much the twentieth time we heard it as we did at the
first; for we knew it was coming, because he always coughed a little
nervously before he made a joke, for fear my lady should not approve: and
neither she nor he seemed to remember that he had ever hit upon the idea
before.

Mr. Mountford died quite suddenly at last. We were all very sorry to
lose him. He left some of his property (for he had a private estate) to
the poor of the parish, to furnish them with an annual Christmas dinner
of roast beef and plum pudding, for which he wrote out a very good
receipt in the codicil to his will.

Moreover, he desired his executors to see that the vault, in which the
vicars of Hanbury were interred, was well aired, before his coffin was
taken in; for, all his life long, he had had a dread of damp, and
latterly he kept his rooms to such a pitch of warmth that some thought it
hastened his end.

Then the other trustee, as I have said, presented the living to Mr. Gray,
Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. It was quite natural for us all, as
belonging in some sort to the Hanbury family, to disapprove of the other
trustee’s choice. But when some ill-natured person circulated the report
that Mr. Gray was a Moravian Methodist, I remember my lady said, “She
could not believe anything so bad, without a great deal of evidence.”




CHAPTER II.


Before I tell you about Mr. Gray, I think I ought to make you understand
something more of what we did all day long at Hanbury Court. There were
five of us at the time of which I am speaking, all young women of good
descent, and allied (however distantly) to people of rank. When we were
not with my lady, Mrs. Medlicott looked after us; a gentle little woman,
who had been companion to my lady for many years, and was indeed, I have
been told, some kind of relation to her. Mrs. Medlicott’s parents had
lived in Germany, and the consequence was, she spoke English with a very
foreign accent. Another consequence was, that she excelled in all manner
of needlework, such as is not known even by name in these days. She
could darn either lace, table-linen, India muslin, or stockings, so that
no one could tell where the hole or rent had been. Though a good
Protestant, and never missing Guy Faux day at church, she was as skilful
at fine work as any nun in a Papist convent. She would take a piece of
French cambric, and by drawing out some threads, and working in others,
it became delicate lace in a very few hours. She did the same by
Hollands cloth, and made coarse strong lace, with which all my lady’s
napkins and table-linen were trimmed. We worked under her during a great
part of the day, either in the still-room, or at our sewing in a chamber
that opened out of the great hall. My lady despised every kind of work
that would now be called Fancy-work. She considered that the use of
coloured threads or worsted was only fit to amuse children; but that
grown women ought not to be taken with mere blues and reds, but to
restrict their pleasure in sewing to making small and delicate stitches.
She would speak of the old tapestry in the hall as the work of her
ancestresses, who lived before the Reformation, and were consequently
unacquainted with pure and simple tastes in work, as well as in religion.
Nor would my lady sanction the fashion of the day, which, at the
beginning of this century, made all the fine ladies take to making shoes.
She said that such work was a consequence of the French Revolution, which
had done much to annihilate all distinctions of rank and class, and hence
it was, that she saw young ladies of birth and breeding handling lasts,
and awls, and dirty cobblers’-wax, like shoe-makers’ daughters.

Very frequently one of us would be summoned to my lady to read aloud to
her, as she sat in her small withdrawing-room, some improving book. It
was generally Mr. Addison’s “Spectator;” but one year, I remember, we had
to read “Sturm’s Reflections” translated from a German book Mrs.
Medlicott recommended. Mr. Sturm told us what to think about for every
day in the year; and very dull it was; but I believe Queen Charlotte had
liked the book very much, and the thought of her royal approbation kept
my lady awake during the reading. “Mrs. Chapone’s Letters” and “Dr.
Gregory’s Advice to Young Ladies” composed the rest of our library for
week-day reading. I, for one, was glad to leave my fine sewing, and even
my reading aloud (though this last did keep me with my dear lady) to go
to the still-room and potter about among the preserves and the medicated
waters. There was no doctor for many miles round, and with Mrs.
Medlicott to direct us, and Dr. Buchan to go by for recipes, we sent out
many a bottle of physic, which, I dare say, was as good as what comes out
of the druggist’s shop. At any rate, I do not think we did much harm;
for if any of our physics tasted stronger than usual, Mrs. Medlicott
would bid us let it down with cochineal and water, to make all safe, as
she said. So our bottles of medicine had very little real physic in them
at last; but we were careful in putting labels on them, which looked very
mysterious to those who could not read, and helped the medicine to do its
work. I have sent off many a bottle of salt and water coloured red; and
whenever we had nothing else to do in the still-room, Mrs. Medlicott
would set us to making bread-pills, by way of practice; and, as far as I
can say, they were very efficacious, as before we gave out a box Mrs.
Medlicott always told the patient what symptoms to expect; and I hardly
ever inquired without hearing that they had produced their effect. There
was one old man, who took six pills a-night, of any kind we liked to give
him, to make him sleep; and if, by any chance, his daughter had forgotten
to let us know that he was out of his medicine, he was so restless and
miserable that, as he said, he thought he was like to die. I think ours
was what would be called homoeopathic practice now-a-days. Then we
learnt to make all the cakes and dishes of the season in the still-room.
We had plum-porridge and mince-pies at Christmas, fritters and pancakes
on Shrove Tuesday, furmenty on Mothering Sunday, violet-cakes in Passion
Week, tansy-pudding on Easter Sunday, three-cornered cakes on Trinity
Sunday, and so on through the year: all made from good old Church
receipts, handed down from one of my lady’s earliest Protestant
ancestresses. Every one of us passed a portion of the day with Lady
Ludlow; and now and then we rode out with her in her coach and four. She
did not like to go out with a pair of horses, considering this rather
beneath her rank; and, indeed, four horses were very often needed to pull
her heavy coach through the stiff mud. But it was rather a cumbersome
equipage through the narrow Warwickshire lanes; and I used often to think
it was well that countesses were not plentiful, or else we might have met
another lady of quality in another coach and four, where there would have
been no possibility of turning, or passing each other, and very little
chance of backing. Once when the idea of this danger of meeting another
countess in a narrow, deep-rutted lane was very prominent in my mind I
ventured to ask Mrs. Medlicott what would have to be done on such an
occasion; and she told me that “de latest creation must back, for sure,”
which puzzled me a good deal at the time, although I understand it now. I
began to find out the use of the “Peerage,” a book which had seemed to me
rather dull before; but, as I was always a coward in a coach, I made
myself well acquainted with the dates of creation of our three
Warwickshire earls, and was happy to find that Earl Ludlow ranked second,
the oldest earl being a hunting widower, and not likely to drive out in a
carriage.

All this time I have wandered from Mr. Gray. Of course, we first saw
him in church when he read himself in. He was very red-faced, the kind
of redness which goes with light hair and a blushing complexion; he
looked slight and short, and his bright light frizzy hair had hardly a
dash of powder in it. I remember my lady making this observation, and
sighing over it; for, though since the famine in seventeen hundred and
ninety-nine and eighteen hundred there had been a tax on hair-powder,
yet it was reckoned very revolutionary and Jacobin not to wear a good
deal of it. My lady hardly liked the opinions of any man who wore his
own hair; but this she would say was rather a prejudice: only in her
youth none but the mob had gone wigless, and she could not get over
the association of wigs with birth and breeding; a man’s own hair with
that class of people who had formed the rioters in seventeen hundred
and eighty, when Lord George Gordon had been one of the bugbears of my
lady’s life. Her husband and his brothers, she told us, had been put
into breeches, and had their heads shaved on their seventh birthday,
each of them; a handsome little wig of the newest fashion forming the
old Lady Ludlow’s invariable birthday present to her sons as they each
arrived at that age; and afterwards, to the day of their death, they
never saw their own hair. To be without powder, as some underbred
people were talking of being now, was in fact to insult the proprieties
of life, by being undressed. It was English sans-culottism. But Mr.
Gray did wear a little powder, enough to save him in my lady’s good
opinion; but not enough to make her approve of him decidedly.

The next time I saw him was in the great hall. Mary Mason and I were
going to drive out with my lady in her coach, and when we went down
stairs with our best hats and cloaks on, we found Mr. Gray awaiting my
lady’s coming. I believe he had paid his respects to her before, but we
had never seen him; and he had declined her invitation to spend Sunday
evening at the Court (as Mr. Mountford used to do pretty regularly—and
play a game at picquet too—), which, Mrs. Medlicott told us, had caused
my lady to be not over well pleased with him.

He blushed redder than ever at the sight of us, as we entered the hall
and dropped him our curtsies. He coughed two or three times, as if he
would have liked to speak to us, if he could but have found something to
say; and every time he coughed he became hotter-looking than ever. I am
ashamed to say, we were nearly laughing at him; half because we, too,
were so shy that we understood what his awkwardness meant.

My lady came in, with her quick active step—she always walked quickly
when she did not bethink herself of her cane—as if she was sorry to have
us kept waiting—and, as she entered, she gave us all round one of those
graceful sweeping curtsies, of which I think the art must have died out
with her,—it implied so much courtesy;—this time it said, as well as
words could do, “I am sorry to have kept you all waiting,—forgive me.”

She went up to the mantelpiece, near which Mr. Gray had been standing
until her entrance, and curtseying afresh to him, and pretty deeply this
time, because of his cloth, and her being hostess, and he, a new guest.
She asked him if he would not prefer speaking to her in her own private
parlour, and looked as though she would have conducted him there. But he
burst out with his errand, of which he was full even to choking, and
which sent the glistening tears into his large blue eyes, which stood
farther and farther out with his excitement.

“My lady, I want to speak to you, and to persuade you to exert your kind
interest with Mr. Lathom—Justice Lathom, of Hathaway Manor—”

“Harry Lathom?” inquired my lady,—as Mr. Gray stopped to take the breath
he had lost in his hurry,—“I did not know he was in the commission.”

“He is only just appointed; he took the oaths not a month ago,—more’s
the pity!”

“I do not understand why you should regret it. The Lathoms have held
Hathaway since Edward the First, and Mr. Lathom bears a good character,
although his temper is hasty—”

“My lady! he has committed Job Gregson for stealing—a fault of which he
is as innocent as I—and all the evidence goes to prove it, now that the
case is brought before the Bench; only the Squires hang so together that
they can’t be brought to see justice, and are all for sending Job to
gaol, out of compliment to Mr. Lathom, saying it his first committal, and
it won’t be civil to tell him there is no evidence against his man. For
God’s sake, my lady, speak to the gentlemen; they will attend to you,
while they only tell me to mind my own business.”

Now my lady was always inclined to stand by her order, and the Lathoms of
Hathaway Court were cousins to the Hanbury’s. Besides, it was rather a
point of honour in those days to encourage a young magistrate, by passing
a pretty sharp sentence on his first committals; and Job Gregson was the
father of a girl who had been lately turned away from her place as
scullery-maid for sauciness to Mrs. Adams, her ladyship’s own maid; and
Mr. Gray had not said a word of the reasons why he believed the man
innocent,—for he was in such a hurry, I believe he would have had my
lady drive off to the Henley Court-house then and there;—so there seemed
a good deal against the man, and nothing but Mr. Gray’s bare word for
him; and my lady drew herself a little up, and said—

“Mr. Gray! I do not see what reason either you or I have to interfere.
Mr. Harry Lathom is a sensible kind of young man, well capable of
ascertaining the truth without our help—”

“But more evidence has come out since,” broke in Mr. Gray. My lady went
a little stiffer, and spoke a little more coldly:—

“I suppose this additional evidence is before the justices: men of good
family, and of honour and credit, well known in the county. They
naturally feel that the opinion of one of themselves must have more
weight than the words of a man like Job Gregson, who bears a very
indifferent character,—has been strongly suspected of poaching, coming
from no one knows where, squatting on Hareman’s Common—which, by the
way, is extra-parochial, I believe; consequently you, as a clergyman, are
not responsible for what goes on there; and, although impolitic, there
might be some truth in what the magistrates said, in advising you to mind
your own business,”—said her ladyship, smiling,—“and they might be
tempted to bid me mind mine, if I interfered, Mr. Gray: might they not?”

He looked extremely uncomfortable; half angry. Once or twice he began to
speak, but checked himself, as if his words would not have been wise or
prudent. At last he said—“It may seem presumptuous in me,—a stranger
of only a few weeks’ standing—to set up my judgment as to men’s
character against that of residents—” Lady Ludlow gave a little bow of
acquiescence, which was, I think, involuntary on her part, and which I
don’t think he perceived,—“but I am convinced that the man is innocent
of this offence,—and besides, the justices themselves allege this
ridiculous custom of paying a compliment to a newly-appointed magistrate
as their only reason.”

That unlucky word “ridiculous!” It undid all the good his modest
beginning had done him with my lady. I knew as well as words could have
told me, that she was affronted at the expression being used by a man
inferior in rank to those whose actions he applied it to,—and truly, it
was a great want of tact, considering to whom he was speaking.

Lady Ludlow spoke very gently and slowly; she always did so when she was
annoyed; it was a certain sign, the meaning of which we had all learnt.

“I think, Mr. Gray, we will drop the subject. It is one on which we are
not likely to agree.”

Mr. Gray’s ruddy colour grew purple and then faded away, and his face
became pale. I think both my lady and he had forgotten our presence; and
we were beginning to feel too awkward to wish to remind them of it. And
yet we could not help watching and listening with the greatest interest.

Mr. Gray drew himself up to his full height, with an unconscious feeling
of dignity. Little as was his stature, and awkward and embarrassed as he
had been only a few minutes before, I remember thinking he looked almost
as grand as my lady when he spoke.

“Your ladyship must remember that it may be my duty to speak to my
parishioners on many subjects on which they do not agree with me. I am
not at liberty to be silent, because they differ in opinion from me.”

Lady Ludlow’s great blue eyes dilated with surprise, and—I do
think—anger, at being thus spoken to. I am not sure whether it was very
wise in Mr. Gray. He himself looked afraid of the consequences but as if
he was determined to bear them without flinching. For a minute there was
silence. Then my lady replied—“Mr. Gray, I respect your plain-speaking,
although I may wonder whether a young man of your age and position has
any right to assume that he is a better judge than one with the
experience which I have naturally gained at my time of life, and in the
station I hold.”

“If I, madam, as the clergyman of this parish, am not to shrink from
telling what I believe to be the truth to the poor and lowly, no more am
I to hold my peace in the presence of the rich and titled.” Mr. Gray’s
face showed that he was in that state of excitement which in a child
would have ended in a good fit of crying. He looked as if he had nerved
himself up to doing and saying things, which he disliked above
everything, and which nothing short of serious duty could have compelled
him to do and say. And at such times every minute circumstance which
could add to pain comes vividly before one. I saw that he became aware
of our presence, and that it added to his discomfiture.

My lady flushed up. “Are you aware, sir,” asked she, “that you have gone
far astray from the original subject of conversation? But as you talk of
your parish, allow me to remind you that Hareman’s Common is beyond the
bounds, and that you are really not responsible for the characters and
lives of the squatters on that unlucky piece of ground.”

“Madam, I see I have only done harm in speaking to you about the affair
at all. I beg your pardon and take my leave.”

He bowed, and looked very sad. Lady Ludlow caught the expression of his
face.

“Good morning!” she cried, in rather a louder and quicker way than that
in which she had been speaking. “Remember, Job Gregson is a notorious
poacher and evildoer, and you really are not responsible for what goes on
at Hareman’s Common.”

He was near the hall door, and said something—half to himself, which we
heard (being nearer to him), but my lady did not; although she saw that
he spoke. “What did he say?” she asked in a somewhat hurried manner, as
soon as the door was closed—“I did not hear.” We looked at each other,
and then I spoke:

“He said, my lady, that ‘God help him! he was responsible for all the
evil he did not strive to overcome.’”

My lady turned sharp round away from us, and Mary Mason said afterwards
she thought her ladyship was much vexed with both of us, for having been
present, and with me for having repeated what Mr. Gray had said. But it
was not our fault that we were in the hall, and when my lady asked what
Mr. Gray had said, I thought it right to tell her.

In a few minutes she bade us accompany her in her ride in the coach.

Lady Ludlow always sat forwards by herself, and we girls backwards.
Somehow this was a rule, which we never thought of questioning. It was
true that riding backwards made some of us feel very uncomfortable and
faint; and to remedy this my lady always drove with both windows open,
which occasionally gave her the rheumatism; but we always went on in the
old way. This day she did not pay any great attention to the road by
which we were going, and Coachman took his own way. We were very silent,
as my lady did not speak, and looked very serious. Or else, in general,
she made these rides very pleasant (to those who were not qualmish with
riding backwards), by talking to us in a very agreeable manner, and
telling us of the different things which had happened to her at various
places,—at Paris and Versailles, where she had been in her youth,—at
Windsor and Kew and Weymouth, where she had been with the Queen, when
maid-of-honour—and so on. But this day she did not talk at all. All at
once she put her head out of the window.

“John Footman,” said she, “where are we? Surely this is Hareman’s
Common.”

“Yes, an’t please my lady,” said John Footman, and waited for further
speech or orders. My lady thought a while, and then said she would have
the steps put down and get out.

As soon as she was gone, we looked at each other, and then without a word
began to gaze after her. We saw her pick her dainty way in the little
high-heeled shoes she always wore (because they had been in fashion in
her youth), among the yellow pools of stagnant water that had gathered in
the clayey soil. John Footman followed, stately, after; afraid too, for
all his stateliness, of splashing his pure white stockings. Suddenly my
lady turned round and said something to him, and he returned to the
carriage with a half-pleased, half-puzzled air.

My lady went on to a cluster of rude mud houses at the higher end of the
Common; cottages built, as they were occasionally at that day, of wattles
and clay, and thatched with sods. As far as we could make out from dumb
show, Lady Ludlow saw enough of the interiors of these places to make her
hesitate before entering, or even speaking to any of the children who
were playing about in the puddles. After a pause, she disappeared into
one of the cottages. It seemed to us a long time before she came out;
but I dare say it was not more than eight or ten minutes. She came back
with her head hanging down, as if to choose her way,—but we saw it was
more in thought and bewilderment than for any such purpose.

She had not made up her mind where we should drive to when she got into
the carriage again. John Footman stood, bare-headed, waiting for orders.

“To Hathaway. My dears, if you are tired, or if you have anything to do
for Mrs. Medlicott, I can drop you at Barford Corner, and it is but a
quarter of an hour’s brisk walk home.”

But luckily we could safely say that Mrs. Medlicott did not want us;
and as we had whispered to each other, as we sat alone in the coach,
that surely my lady must have gone to Job Gregson’s, we were far too
anxious to know the end of it all to say that we were tired. So we all
set off to Hathaway. Mr. Harry Lathom was a bachelor squire, thirty
or thirty-five years of age, more at home in the field than in the
drawing-room, and with sporting men than with ladies.

My lady did not alight, of course; it was Mr. Lathom’s place to wait upon
her, and she bade the butler,—who had a smack of the gamekeeper in him,
very unlike our own powdered venerable fine gentleman at Hanbury,—tell
his master, with her compliments, that she wished to speak to him. You
may think how pleased we were to find that we should hear all that was
said; though, I think, afterwards we were half sorry when we saw how our
presence confused the squire, who would have found it bad enough to
answer my lady’s questions, even without two eager girls for audience.

“Pray, Mr. Lathom,” began my lady, something abruptly for her,—but she
was very full of her subject,—“what is this I hear about Job Gregson?”

Mr. Lathom looked annoyed and vexed, but dared not show it in his words.

“I gave out a warrant against him, my lady, for theft,—that is all. You
are doubtless aware of his character; a man who sets nets and springes in
long cover, and fishes wherever he takes a fancy. It is but a short step
from poaching to thieving.”

“That is quite true,” replied Lady Ludlow (who had a horror of poaching
for this very reason): “but I imagine you do not send a man to gaol on
account of his bad character.”

“Rogues and vagabonds,” said Mr. Lathom. “A man may be sent to prison
for being a vagabond; for no specific act, but for his general mode of
life.”

He had the better of her ladyship for one moment; but then she answered—

“But in this case, the charge on which you committed him is for theft;
now his wife tells me he can prove he was some miles distant from
Holmwood, where the robbery took place, all that afternoon; she says you
had the evidence before you.”

Mr. Lathom here interrupted my lady, by saying, in a somewhat sulky
manner—“No such evidence was brought before me when I gave the warrant.
I am not answerable for the other magistrates’ decision, when they had
more evidence before them. It was they who committed him to gaol. I am
not responsible for that.”

My lady did not often show signs of impatience; but we knew she was
feeling irritated, by the little perpetual tapping of her high-heeled
shoe against the bottom of the carriage. About the same time we, sitting
backwards, caught a glimpse of Mr. Gray through the open door, standing
in the shadow of the hall. Doubtless Lady Ludlow’s arrival had
interrupted a conversation between Mr. Lathom and Mr. Gray. The latter
must have heard every word of what she was saying; but of this she was
not aware, and caught at Mr. Lathom’s disclaimer of responsibility with
pretty much the same argument which she had heard (through our
repetition) that Mr. Gray had used not two hours before.

“And do you mean to say, Mr. Lathom, that you don’t consider yourself
responsible for all injustice or wrong-doing that you might have
prevented, and have not? Nay, in this case the first germ of injustice
was your own mistake. I wish you had been with me a little while ago,
and seen the misery in that poor fellow’s cottage.” She spoke lower, and
Mr. Gray drew near, in a sort of involuntary manner; as if to hear all
she was saying. We saw him, and doubtless Mr. Lathom heard his footstep,
and knew who it was that was listening behind him, and approving of every
word that was said. He grew yet more sullen in manner; but still my lady
was my lady, and he dared not speak out before her, as he would have done
to Mr. Gray. Lady Ludlow, however, caught the look of stubborness in his
face, and it roused her as I had never seen her roused.

“I am sure you will not refuse, sir, to accept my bail. I offer to bail
the fellow out, and to be responsible for his appearance at the sessions.
What say you to that, Mr. Lathom?”

“The offence of theft is not bailable, my lady.”

“Not in ordinary cases, I dare say. But I imagine this is an
extraordinary case. The man is sent to prison out of compliment to you,
and against all evidence, as far as I can learn. He will have to rot in
gaol for two months, and his wife and children to starve. I, Lady
Ludlow, offer to bail him out, and pledge myself for his appearance at
next quarter-sessions.”

“It is against the law, my lady.”

“Bah! Bah! Bah! Who makes laws? Such as I, in the House of Lords—such
as you, in the House of Commons. We, who make the laws in St. Stephen’s,
may break the mere forms of them, when we have right on our sides, on our
own land, and amongst our own people.”

“The lord-lieutenant may take away my commission, if he heard of it.”

“And a very good thing for the county, Harry Lathom; and for you too, if
he did,—if you don’t go on more wisely than you have begun. A pretty
set you and your brother magistrates are to administer justice through
the land! I always said a good despotism was the best form of
government; and I am twice as much in favour of it now I see what a
quorum is! My dears!” suddenly turning round to us, “if it would not
tire you to walk home, I would beg Mr. Lathom to take a seat in my coach,
and we would drive to Henley Gaol, and have the poor man out at once.”

“A walk over the fields at this time of day is hardly fitting for young
ladies to take alone,” said Mr. Lathom, anxious no doubt to escape from
his tete-a-tete drive with my lady, and possibly not quite prepared to go
to the illegal length of prompt measures, which she had in contemplation.

But Mr. Gray now stepped forward, too anxious for the release of the
prisoner to allow any obstacle to intervene which he could do away with.
To see Lady Ludlow’s face when she first perceived whom she had had for
auditor and spectator of her interview with Mr. Lathom, was as good as a
play. She had been doing and saying the very things she had been so much
annoyed at Mr. Gray’s saying and proposing only an hour or two ago. She
had been setting down Mr. Lathom pretty smartly, in the presence of the
very man to whom she had spoken of that gentleman as so sensible, and of
such a standing in the county, that it was presumption to question his
doings. But before Mr. Gray had finished his offer of escorting us back
to Hanbury Court, my lady had recovered herself. There was neither
surprise nor displeasure in her manner, as she answered—“I thank you,
Mr. Gray. I was not aware that you were here, but I think I can
understand on what errand you came. And seeing you here, recalls me to a
duty I owe Mr. Lathom. Mr. Lathom, I have spoken to you pretty
plainly,—forgetting, until I saw Mr. Gray, that only this very afternoon
I differed from him on this very question; taking completely, at that
time, the same view of the whole subject which you have done; thinking
that the county would be well rid of such a man as Job Gregson, whether
he had committed this theft or not. Mr. Gray and I did not part quite
friends,” she continued, bowing towards him; “but it so happened that I
saw Job Gregson’s wife and home,—I felt that Mr. Gray had been right and
I had been wrong, so, with the famous inconsistency of my sex, I came
hither to scold you,” smiling towards Mr. Lathom, who looked half-sulky
yet, and did not relax a bit of his gravity at her smile, “for holding
the same opinions that I had done an hour before. Mr. Gray,” (again
bowing towards him) “these young ladies will be very much obliged to you
for your escort, and so shall I. Mr. Lathom, may I beg of you to
accompany me to Henley?”

Mr. Gray bowed very low, and went very red; Mr. Lathom said something
which we none of us heard, but which was, I think, some remonstrance
against the course he was, as it were, compelled to take. Lady Ludlow,
however, took no notice of his murmur, but sat in an attitude of polite
expectancy; and as we turned off on our walk, I saw Mr. Lathom getting
into the coach with the air of a whipped hound. I must say, considering
my lady’s feeling, I did not envy him his ride—though, I believe, he was
quite in the right as to the object of the ride being illegal.

Our walk home was very dull. We had no fears; and would far rather have
been without the awkward, blushing young man, into which Mr. Gray had
sunk. At every stile he hesitated,—sometimes he half got over it,
thinking that he could assist us better in that way; then he would turn
back unwilling to go before ladies. He had no ease of manner, as my lady
once said of him, though on any occasion of duty, he had an immense deal
of dignity.




CHAPTER III.


As far as I can remember, it was very soon after this that I first began
to have the pain in my hip, which has ended in making me a cripple for
life. I hardly recollect more than one walk after our return under Mr.
Gray’s escort from Mr. Lathom’s. Indeed, at the time, I was not without
suspicions (which I never named) that the beginning of all the mischief
was a great jump I had taken from the top of one of the stiles on that
very occasion.

Well, it is a long while ago, and God disposes of us all, and I am not
going to tire you out with telling you how I thought and felt, and how,
when I saw what my life was to be, I could hardly bring myself to be
patient, but rather wished to die at once. You can every one of you
think for yourselves what becoming all at once useless and unable to
move, and by-and-by growing hopeless of cure, and feeling that one must
be a burden to some one all one’s life long, would be to an active,
wilful, strong girl of seventeen, anxious to get on in the world, so as,
if possible, to help her brothers and sisters. So I shall only say, that
one among the blessings which arose out of what seemed at the time a
great, black sorrow was, that Lady Ludlow for many years took me, as it
were, into her own especial charge; and now, as I lie still and alone in
my old age, it is such a pleasure to think of her!

Mrs. Medlicott was great as a nurse, and I am sure I can never be
grateful enough to her memory for all her kindness. But she was puzzled
to know how to manage me in other ways. I used to have long, hard fits
of crying; and, thinking that I ought to go home—and yet what could they
do with me there?—and a hundred and fifty other anxious thoughts, some
of which I could tell to Mrs. Medlicott, and others I could not. Her way
of comforting me was hurrying away for some kind of tempting or
strengthening food—a basin of melted calves-foot jelly was, I am sure
she thought, a cure for every woe.

“There take it, dear, take it!” she would say; “and don’t go on fretting
for what can’t be helped.”

But, I think, she got puzzled at length at the non-efficacy of good
things to eat; and one day, after I had limped down to see the doctor, in
Mrs. Medlicott’s sitting-room—a room lined with cupboards, containing
preserves and dainties of all kinds, which she perpetually made, and
never touched herself—when I was returning to my bed-room to cry away
the afternoon, under pretence of arranging my clothes, John Footman
brought me a message from my lady (with whom the doctor had been having a
conversation) to bid me go to her in that private sitting-room at the end
of the suite of apartments, about which I spoke in describing the day of
my first arrival at Hanbury. I had hardly been in it since; as, when we
read to my lady, she generally sat in the small withdrawing-room out of
which this private room of hers opened. I suppose great people do not
require what we smaller people value so much,—I mean privacy. I do not
think that there was a room which my lady occupied that had not two
doors, and some of them had three or four. Then my lady had always Adams
waiting upon her in her bed-chamber; and it was Mrs. Medlicott’s duty to
sit within call, as it were, in a sort of anteroom that led out of my
lady’s own sitting-room, on the opposite side to the drawing-room door.
To fancy the house, you must take a great square and halve it by a line:
at one end of this line was the hall door, or public entrance; at the
opposite the private entrance from a terrace, which was terminated at one
end by a sort of postern door in an old gray stone wall, beyond which lay
the farm buildings and offices; so that people could come in this way to
my lady on business, while, if she were going into the garden from her
own room, she had nothing to do but to pass through Mrs. Medlicott’s
apartment, out into the lesser hall, and then turning to the right as she
passed on to the terrace, she could go down the flight of broad, shallow
steps at the corner of the house into the lovely garden, with stretching,
sweeping lawns, and gay flower-beds, and beautiful, bossy laurels, and
other blooming or massy shrubs, with full-grown beeches, or larches
feathering down to the ground a little farther off. The whole was set in
a frame, as it were, by the more distant woodlands. The house had been
modernized in the days of Queen Anne, I think; but the money had fallen
short that was requisite to carry out all the improvements, so it was
only the suite of withdrawing-rooms and the terrace-rooms, as far as the
private entrance, that had the new, long, high windows put in, and these
were old enough by this time to be draped with roses, and honeysuckles,
and pyracanthus, winter and summer long.

Well, to go back to that day when I limped into my lady’s sitting-room,
trying hard to look as if I had not been crying, and not to walk as if I
was in much pain. I do not know whether my lady saw how near my tears
were to my eyes, but she told me she had sent for me, because she wanted
some help in arranging the drawers of her bureau, and asked me—just as
if it was a favour I was to do her—if I could sit down in the easy-chair
near the window—(all quietly arranged before I came in, with a
footstool, and a table quite near)—and assist her. You will wonder,
perhaps, why I was not bidden to sit or lie on the sofa; but (although I
found one there a morning or two afterwards, when I came down) the fact
was, that there was none in the room at this time. I have even fancied
that the easy-chair was brought in on purpose for me; for it was not the
chair in which I remembered my lady sitting the first time I saw her.
That chair was very much carved and gilded, with a countess’ coronet at
the top. I tried it one day, some time afterwards, when my lady was out
of the room, and I had a fancy for seeing how I could move about, and
very uncomfortable it was. Now my chair (as I learnt to call it, and to
think it) was soft and luxurious, and seemed somehow to give one’s body
rest just in that part where one most needed it.

I was not at my ease that first day, nor indeed for many days afterwards,
notwithstanding my chair was so comfortable. Yet I forgot my sad pain in
silently wondering over the meaning of many of the things we turned out
of those curious old drawers. I was puzzled to know why some were kept
at all; a scrap of writing maybe, with only half a dozen common-place
words written on it, or a bit of broken riding-whip, and here and there a
stone, of which I thought I could have picked up twenty just as good in
the first walk I took. But it seems that was just my ignorance; for my
lady told me they were pieces of valuable marble, used to make the floors
of the great Roman emperors palaces long ago; and that when she had been
a girl, and made the grand tour long ago, her cousin Sir Horace Mann, the
Ambassador or Envoy at Florence, had told her to be sure to go into the
fields inside the walls of ancient Rome, when the farmers were preparing
the ground for the onion-sowing, and had to make the soil fine, and pick
up what bits of marble she could find. She had done so, and meant to
have had them made into a table; but somehow that plan fell through, and
there they were with all the dirt out of the onion-field upon them; but
once when I thought of cleaning them with soap and water, at any rate,
she bade me not to do so, for it was Roman dirt—earth, I think, she
called it—but it was dirt all the same.

Then, in this bureau, were many other things, the value of which I could
understand—locks of hair carefully ticketed, which my lady looked at
very sadly; and lockets and bracelets with miniatures in them,—very
small pictures to what they make now-a-days, and called miniatures: some
of them had even to be looked at through a microscope before you could
see the individual expression of the faces, or how beautifully they were
painted. I don’t think that looking at these made may lady seem so
melancholy, as the seeing and touching of the hair did. But, to be sure,
the hair was, as it were, a part of some beloved body which she might
never touch and caress again, but which lay beneath the turf, all faded
and disfigured, except perhaps the very hair, from which the lock she
held had been dissevered; whereas the pictures were but pictures after
all—likenesses, but not the very things themselves. This is only my own
conjecture, mind. My lady rarely spoke out her feelings. For, to begin
with, she was of rank: and I have heard her say that people of rank do
not talk about their feelings except to their equals, and even to them
they conceal them, except upon rare occasions. Secondly,—and this is my
own reflection,—she was an only child and an heiress; and as such was
more apt to think than to talk, as all well-brought-up heiresses must be.
I think. Thirdly, she had long been a widow, without any companion of
her own age with whom it would have been natural for her to refer to old
associations, past pleasures, or mutual sorrows. Mrs. Medlicott came
nearest to her as a companion of this sort; and her ladyship talked more
to Mrs. Medlicott, in a kind of familiar way, than she did to all the
rest of the household put together. But Mrs. Medlicott was silent by
nature, and did not reply at any great length. Adams, indeed, was the
only one who spoke much to Lady Ludlow.

After we had worked away about an hour at the bureau, her ladyship
said we had done enough for one day; and as the time was come for her
afternoon ride, she left me, with a volume of engravings from Mr.
Hogarth’s pictures on one side of me (I don’t like to write down the
names of them, though my lady thought nothing of it, I am sure), and
upon a stand her great prayer-book open at the evening psalms for the
day, on the other. But as soon as she was gone, I troubled myself
little with either, but amused myself with looking round the room at my
leisure. The side on which the fire-place stood was all panelled,—part
of the old ornaments of the house, for there was an Indian paper with
birds and beasts and insects on it, on all the other sides. There
were coats of arms, of the various families with whom the Hanburys
had intermarried, all over these panels, and up and down the ceiling
as well. There was very little looking-glass in the room, though one
of the great drawing-rooms was called the “Mirror Room,” because it
was lined with glass, which my lady’s great-grandfather had brought
from Venice when he was ambassador there. There were china jars of all
shapes and sizes round and about the room, and some china monsters, or
idols, of which I could never bear the sight, they were so ugly, though
I think my lady valued them more than all. There was a thick carpet on
the middle of the floor, which was made of small pieces of rare wood
fitted into a pattern; the doors were opposite to each other, and were
composed of two heavy tall wings, and opened in the middle, moving on
brass grooves inserted into the floor—they would not have opened over
a carpet. There were two windows reaching up nearly to the ceiling,
but very narrow and with deep window-seats in the thickness of the
wall. The room was full of scent, partly from the flowers outside, and
partly from the great jars of pot-pourri inside. The choice of odours
was what my lady piqued herself upon, saying nothing showed birth like
a keen susceptibility of smell. We never named musk in her presence,
her antipathy to it was so well understood through the household:
her opinion on the subject was believed to be, that no scent derived
from an animal could ever be of a sufficiently pure nature to give
pleasure to any person of good family, where, of course, the delicate
perception of the senses had been cultivated for generations. She would
instance the way in which sportsmen preserve the breed of dogs who have
shown keen scent; and how such gifts descend for generations amongst
animals, who cannot be supposed to have anything of ancestral pride,
or hereditary fancies about them. Musk, then, was never mentioned
at Hanbury Court. No more were bergamot or southern-wood, although
vegetable in their nature. She considered these two latter as betraying
a vulgar taste in the person who chose to gather or wear them. She was
sorry to notice sprigs of them in the button-hole of any young man in
whom she took an interest, either because he was engaged to a servant
of hers or otherwise, as he came out of church on a Sunday afternoon.
She was afraid that he liked coarse pleasures; and I am not sure if
she did not think that his preference for these coarse sweetnesses
did not imply a probability that he would take to drinking. But she
distinguished between vulgar and common. Violets, pinks, and sweetbriar
were common enough; roses and mignionette, for those who had gardens,
honeysuckle for those who walked along the bowery lanes; but wearing
them betrayed no vulgarity of taste: the queen upon her throne might be
glad to smell at a nosegay of the flowers. A beau-pot (as we called
it) of pinks and roses freshly gathered was placed every morning that
they were in bloom on my lady’s own particular table. For lasting
vegetable odours she preferred lavender and sweet woodroof to any
extract whatever. Lavender reminded her of old customs, she said, and
of homely cottage-gardens, and many a cottager made his offering to her
of a bundle of lavender. Sweet woodroof, again, grew in wild, woodland
places where the soil was fine and the air delicate: the poor children
used to go and gather it for her up in the woods on the higher lands;
and for this service she always rewarded them with bright new pennies,
of which my lord, her son, used to send her down a bagful fresh from
the Mint in London every February.

Attar of roses, again, she disliked. She said it reminded her of the
city and of merchants’ wives, over-rich, over-heavy in its perfume. And
lilies-of-the-valley somehow fell under the same condemnation. They were
most graceful and elegant to look at (my lady was quite candid about
this), flower, leaf, colour—everything was refined about them but the
smell. That was too strong. But the great hereditary faculty on which
my lady piqued herself, and with reason, for I never met with any person
who possessed it, was the power she had of perceiving the delicious odour
arising from a bed of strawberries in the late autumn, when the leaves
were all fading and dying. “Bacon’s Essays” was one of the few books
that lay about in my lady’s room; and if you took it up and opened it
carelessly, it was sure to fall apart at his “Essay on Gardens.”
“Listen,” her ladyship would say, “to what that great philosopher and
statesman says. ‘Next to that,’—he is speaking of violets, my dear,—‘is
the musk-rose,’—of which you remember the great bush, at the corner of
the south wall just by the Blue Drawing-room windows; that is the old
musk-rose, Shakespeare’s musk-rose, which is dying out through the
kingdom now. But to return to my Lord Bacon: ‘Then the strawberry
leaves, dying with a most excellent cordial smell.’ Now the Hanburys can
always smell this excellent cordial odour, and very delicious and
refreshing it is. You see, in Lord Bacon’s time, there had not been so
many intermarriages between the court and the city as there have been
since the needy days of his Majesty Charles the Second; and altogether in
the time of Queen Elizabeth, the great, old families of England were a
distinct race, just as a cart-horse is one creature, and very useful in
its place, and Childers or Eclipse is another creature, though both are
of the same species. So the old families have gifts and powers of a
different and higher class to what the other orders have. My dear,
remember that you try if you can smell the scent of dying
strawberry-leaves in this next autumn. You have some of Ursula Hanbury’s
blood in you, and that gives you a chance.”

But when October came, I sniffed and sniffed, and all to no purpose; and
my lady—who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously—had to
give me up as a hybrid. I was mortified, I confess, and thought that it
was in some ostentation of her own powers that she ordered the gardener
to plant a border of strawberries on that side of the terrace that lay
under her windows.

I have wandered away from time and place. I tell you all the
remembrances I have of those years just as they come up, and I hope that,
in my old age, I am not getting too like a certain Mrs. Nickleby, whose
speeches were once read out aloud to me.

I came by degrees to be all day long in this room which I have been
describing; sometimes sitting in the easy-chair, doing some little piece
of dainty work for my lady, or sometimes arranging flowers, or sorting
letters according to their handwriting, so that she could arrange them
afterwards, and destroy or keep, as she planned, looking ever onward to
her death. Then, after the sofa was brought in, she would watch my face,
and if she saw my colour change, she would bid me lie down and rest. And
I used to try to walk upon the terrace every day for a short time: it
hurt me very much, it is true, but the doctor had ordered it, and I knew
her ladyship wished me to obey.

Before I had seen the background of a great lady’s life, I had thought it
all play and fine doings. But whatever other grand people are, my lady
was never idle. For one thing, she had to superintend the agent for the
large Hanbury estate. I believe it was mortgaged for a sum of money
which had gone to improve the late lord’s Scotch lands; but she was
anxious to pay off this before her death, and so to leave her own
inheritance free of incumbrance to her son, the present Earl; whom, I
secretly think, she considered a greater person, as being the heir of the
Hanburys (though through a female line), than as being my Lord Ludlow
with half a dozen other minor titles.

With this wish of releasing her property from the mortgage, skilful
care was much needed in the management of it; and as far as my lady
could go, she took every pains. She had a great book, in which every
page was ruled into three divisions; on the first column was written
the date and the name of the tenant who addressed any letter on
business to her; on the second was briefly stated the subject of the
letter, which generally contained a request of some kind. This request
would be surrounded and enveloped in so many words, and often inserted
amidst so many odd reasons and excuses, that Mr. Horner (the steward)
would sometimes say it was like hunting through a bushel of chaff
to find a grain of wheat. Now, in the second column of this book,
the grain of meaning was placed, clean and dry, before her ladyship
every morning. She sometimes would ask to see the original letter;
sometimes she simply answered the request by a “Yes,” or a “No;” and
often she would send for lenses and papers, and examine them well, with
Mr. Horner at her elbow, to see if such petitions, as to be allowed
to plough up pasture fields, were provided for in the terms of the
original agreement. On every Thursday she made herself at liberty to
see her tenants, from four to six in the afternoon. Mornings would have
suited my lady better, as far as convenience went, and I believe the
old custom had been to have these levees (as her ladyship used to call
them) held before twelve. But, as she said to Mr. Horner, when he urged
returning to the former hours, it spoilt a whole day for a farmer, if
he had to dress himself in his best and leave his work in the forenoon
(and my lady liked to see her tenants come in their Sunday clothes;
she would not say a word, maybe, but she would take her spectacles
slowly out, and put them on with silent gravity, and look at a dirty or
raggedly-dressed man so solemnly and earnestly, that his nerves must
have been pretty strong if he did not wince, and resolve that, however
poor he might be, soap and water, and needle and thread, should be used
before he again appeared in her ladyship’s anteroom). The outlying
tenants had always a supper provided for them in the servants’-hall on
Thursdays, to which, indeed all comers were welcome to sit down. For
my lady said, though there were not many hours left of a working man’s
day when their business with her was ended, yet that they needed food
and rest, and that she should be ashamed if they sought either at the
Fighting Lion (called at this day the Hanbury Arms). They had as much
beer as they could drink while they were eating; and when the food was
cleared away, they had a cup a piece of good ale, in which the oldest
tenant present, standing up, gave Madam’s health; and after that was
drunk, they were expected to set off homewards; at any rate, no more
liquor was given them. The tenants one and all called her “Madam;”
for they recognized in her the married heiress of the Hanburys, not
the widow of a Lord Ludlow, of whom they and their forefathers knew
nothing; and against whose memory, indeed, there rankled a dim unspoken
grudge, the cause of which was accurately known to the very few who
understood the nature of a mortgage, and were therefore aware that
Madam’s money had been taken to enrich my lord’s poor land in Scotland.
I am sure—for you can understand I was behind the scenes, as it were,
and had many an opportunity of seeing and hearing, as I lay or sat
motionless in my lady’s room with the double doors open between it
and the anteroom beyond, where Lady Ludlow saw her steward, and gave
audience to her tenants,—I am certain, I say, that Mr. Horner was
silently as much annoyed at the money that was swallowed up by this
mortgage as any one; and, some time or other, he had probably spoken
his mind out to my lady; for there was a sort of offended reference
on her part, and respectful submission to blame on his, while every
now and then there was an implied protest—whenever the payments of
the interest became due, or whenever my lady stinted herself of any
personal expense, such as Mr. Horner thought was only decorous and
becoming in the heiress of the Hanburys. Her carriages were old and
cumbrous, wanting all the improvements which had been adopted by those
of her rank throughout the county. Mr. Horner would fain have had the
ordering of a new coach. The carriage-horses, too, were getting past
their work; yet all the promising colts bred on the estate were sold
for ready money; and so on. My lord, her son, was ambassador at some
foreign place; and very proud we all were of his glory and dignity;
but I fancy it cost money, and my lady would have lived on bread and
water sooner than have called upon him to help her in paying off the
mortgage, although he was the one who was to benefit by it in the end.

Mr. Horner was a very faithful steward, and very respectful to my lady;
although sometimes, I thought she was sharper to him than to any one
else; perhaps because she knew that, although he never said anything, he
disapproved of the Hanburys being made to pay for the Earl Ludlow’s
estates and state.

The late lord had been a sailor, and had been as extravagant in his
habits as most sailors are, I am told,—for I never saw the sea; and yet
he had a long sight to his own interests; but whatever he was, my lady
loved him and his memory, with about as fond and proud a love as ever
wife gave husband, I should think.

For a part of his life Mr. Horner, who was born on the Hanbury property,
had been a clerk to an attorney in Birmingham; and these few years had
given him a kind of worldly wisdom, which, though always exerted for her
benefit, was antipathetic to her ladyship, who thought that some of her
steward’s maxims savoured of trade and commerce. I fancy that if it had
been possible, she would have preferred a return to the primitive system,
of living on the produce of the land, and exchanging the surplus for such
articles as were needed, without the intervention of money.

But Mr. Horner was bitten with new-fangled notions, as she would say,
though his new-fangled notions were what folk at the present day would
think sadly behindhand; and some of Mr. Gray’s ideas fell on Mr. Horner’s
mind like sparks on tow, though they started from two different points.
Mr. Horner wanted to make every man useful and active in this world, and
to direct as much activity and usefulness as possible to the improvement
of the Hanbury estates, and the aggrandisement of the Hanbury family, and
therefore he fell into the new cry for education.

Mr. Gray did not care much,—Mr. Horner thought not enough,—for this
world, and where any man or family stood in their earthly position; but
he would have every one prepared for the world to come, and capable of
understanding and receiving certain doctrines, for which latter purpose,
it stands to reason, he must have heard of these doctrines; and therefore
Mr. Gray wanted education. The answer in the Catechism that Mr. Horner
was most fond of calling upon a child to repeat, was that to, “What is
thy duty towards thy neighbour?” The answer Mr. Gray liked best to hear
repeated with unction, was that to the question, “What is the inward and
spiritual grace?” The reply to which Lady Ludlow bent her head the
lowest, as we said our Catechism to her on Sundays, was to, “What is thy
duty towards God?” But neither Mr. Horner nor Mr. Gray had heard many
answers to the Catechism as yet.

Up to this time there was no Sunday-school in Hanbury. Mr. Gray’s
desires were bounded by that object. Mr. Horner looked farther on: he
hoped for a day-school at some future time, to train up intelligent
labourers for working on the estate. My lady would hear of neither one
nor the other: indeed, not the boldest man whom she ever saw would have
dared to name the project of a day-school within her hearing.

So Mr. Horner contented himself with quietly teaching a sharp, clever lad
to read and write, with a view to making use of him as a kind of foreman
in process of time. He had his pick of the farm-lads for this purpose;
and, as the brightest and sharpest, although by far the raggedest and
dirtiest, singled out Job Gregson’s son. But all this—as my lady never
listened to gossip, or indeed, was spoken to unless she spoke first—was
quite unknown to her, until the unlucky incident took place which I am
going to relate.




CHAPTER IV.


I think my lady was not aware of Mr. Horner’s views on education (as
making men into more useful members of society), or the practice to which
he was putting his precepts in taking Harry Gregson as pupil and protege;
if, indeed, she were aware of Harry’s distinct existence at all, until
the following unfortunate occasion. The anteroom, which was a kind of
business-place for my lady to receive her steward and tenants in, was
surrounded by shelves. I cannot call them book-shelves, though there
were many books on them; but the contents of the volumes were principally
manuscript, and relating to details connected with the Hanbury property.
There were also one or two dictionaries, gazetteers, works of reference
on the management of property; all of a very old date (the dictionary was
Bailey’s, I remember; we had a great Johnson in my lady’s room, but where
lexicographers differed, she generally preferred Bailey).

In this antechamber a footman generally sat, awaiting orders from my
lady; for she clung to the grand old customs, and despised any bells,
except her own little hand-bell, as modern inventions; she would have her
people always within summons of this silvery bell, or her scarce less
silvery voice. This man had not the sinecure you might imagine. He had
to reply to the private entrance; what we should call the back door in a
smaller house. As none came to the front door but my lady, and those of
the county whom she honoured by visiting, and her nearest acquaintance of
this kind lived eight miles (of bad road) off, the majority of comers
knocked at the nail-studded terrace-door; not to have it opened (for open
it stood, by my lady’s orders, winter and summer, so that the snow often
drifted into the back hall, and lay there in heaps when the weather was
severe), but to summon some one to receive their message, or carry their
request to be allowed to speak to my lady. I remember it was long before
Mr. Gray could be made to understand that the great door was only open on
state occasions, and even to the last he would as soon come in by that as
the terrace entrance. I had been received there on my first setting foot
over my lady’s threshold; every stranger was led in by that way the first
time they came; but after that (with the exceptions I have named) they
went round by the terrace, as it were by instinct. It was an assistance
to this instinct to be aware that from time immemorial, the magnificent
and fierce Hanbury wolf-hounds, which were extinct in every other part of
the island, had been and still were kept chained in the front quadrangle,
where they bayed through a great part of the day and night and were
always ready with their deep, savage growl at the sight of every person
and thing, excepting the man who fed them, my lady’s carriage and four,
and my lady herself. It was pretty to see her small figure go up to the
great, crouching brutes thumping the flags with their heavy, wagging
tails, and slobbering in an ecstacy of delight, at her light approach and
soft caress. She had no fear of them; but she was a Hanbury born, and
the tale went, that they and their kind knew all Hanburys instantly, and
acknowledged their supremacy, ever since the ancestors of the breed had
been brought from the East by the great Sir Urian Hanbury, who lay with
his legs crossed on the altar-tomb in the church. Moreover, it was
reported that, not fifty years before, one of these dogs had eaten up a
child, which had inadvertently strayed within reach of its chain. So you
may imagine how most people preferred the terrace-door. Mr. Gray did not
seem to care for the dogs. It might be absence of mind, for I have heard
of his starting away from their sudden spring when he had unwittingly
walked within reach of their chains: but it could hardly have been
absence of mind, when one day he went right up to one of them, and patted
him in the most friendly manner, the dog meanwhile looking pleased, and
affably wagging his tail, just as if Mr. Gray had been a Hanbury. We
were all very much puzzled by this, and to this day I have not been able
to account for it.

But now let us go back to the terrace-door, and the footman sitting in
the antechamber.

One morning we heard a parleying, which rose to such a vehemence, and
lasted for so long, that my lady had to ring her hand-bell twice before
the footman heard it.

“What is the matter, John?” asked she, when he entered,

“A little boy, my lady, who says he comes from Mr. Horner, and must see
your ladyship. Impudent little lad!” (This last to himself.)

“What does he want?”

“That’s just what I have asked him, my lady, but he won’t tell me, please
your ladyship.”

“It is, probably, some message from Mr. Horner,” said Lady Ludlow, with
just a shade of annoyance in her manner; for it was against all etiquette
to send a message to her, and by such a messenger too!

“No! please your ladyship, I asked him if he had any message, and he said
no, he had none; but he must see your ladyship for all that.”

“You had better show him in then, without more words,” said her ladyship,
quietly, but still, as I have said, rather annoyed.

As if in mockery of the humble visitor, the footman threw open both
battants of the door, and in the opening there stood a lithe, wiry lad,
with a thick head of hair, standing out in every direction, as if stirred
by some electrical current, a short, brown face, red now from affright
and excitement, wide, resolute mouth, and bright, deep-set eyes, which
glanced keenly and rapidly round the room, as if taking in everything
(and all was new and strange), to be thought and puzzled over at some
future time. He knew enough of manners not to speak first to one above
him in rank, or else he was afraid.

“What do you want with me?” asked my lady; in so gentle a tone that it
seemed to surprise and stun him.

“An’t please your ladyship?” said he, as if he had been deaf.

“You come from Mr. Horner’s: why do you want to see me?” again asked she,
a little more loudly.

“An’t please your ladyship, Mr. Horner was sent for all on a sudden to
Warwick this morning.”

His face began to work; but he felt it, and closed his lips into a
resolute form.

“Well?”

“And he went off all on a sudden like.”

“Well?”

“And he left a note for your ladyship with me, your ladyship.”

“Is that all? You might have given it to the footman.”

“Please your ladyship, I’ve clean gone and lost it.”

He never took his eyes off her face. If he had not kept his look fixed,
he would have burst out crying.

“That was very careless,” said my lady gently. “But I am sure you are
very sorry for it. You had better try and find it; it may have been of
consequence.

“Please, mum—please your ladyship—I can say it off by heart.”

“You! What do you mean?” I was really afraid now. My lady’s blue eyes
absolutely gave out light, she was so much displeased, and, moreover,
perplexed. The more reason he had for affright, the more his courage
rose. He must have seen,—so sharp a lad must have perceived her
displeasure; but he went on quickly and steadily.

“Mr. Horner, my lady, has taught me to read, write, and cast accounts, my
lady. And he was in a hurry, and he folded his paper up, but he did not
seal it; and I read it, my lady; and now, my lady, it seems like as if I
had got it off by heart;” and he went on with a high pitched voice,
saying out very loud what, I have no doubt, were the identical words of
the letter, date, signature and all: it was merely something about a
deed, which required my lady’s signature.

When he had done, he stood almost as if he expected commendation for his
accurate memory.

My lady’s eyes contracted till the pupils were as needle-points; it was a
way she had when much disturbed. She looked at me and said—

“Margaret Dawson, what will this world come to?” And then she was
silent.

The lad, beginning to perceive he had given deep offence, stood stock
still—as if his brave will had brought him into this presence, and
impelled him to confession, and the best amends he could make, but had
now deserted him, or was extinct, and left his body motionless, until
some one else with word or deed made him quit the room. My lady looked
again at him, and saw the frowning, dumb-foundering terror at his
misdeed, and the manner in which his confession had been received.

“My poor lad!” said she, the angry look leaving her face, “into whose
hands have you fallen?”

The boy’s lips began to quiver.

“Don’t you know what tree we read of in Genesis?—No! I hope you have
not got to read so easily as that.” A pause. “Who has taught you to
read and write?”

“Please, my lady, I meant no harm, my lady.” He was fairly blubbering,
overcome by her evident feeling of dismay and regret, the soft repression
of which was more frightening to him than any strong or violent words
would have been.

“Who taught you, I ask?”

“It were Mr. Horner’s clerk who learned me, my lady.”

“And did Mr. Horner know of it?”

“Yes, my lady. And I am sure I thought for to please him.”

“Well! perhaps you were not to blame for that. But I wonder at Mr.
Horner. However, my boy, as you have got possession of edge-tools, you
must have some rules how to use them. Did you never hear that you were
not to open letters?”

“Please, my lady, it were open. Mr. Horner forgot for to seal it, in his
hurry to be off.”

“But you must not read letters that are not intended for you. You must
never try to read any letters that are not directed to you, even if they
be open before you.”

“Please, may lady, I thought it were good for practice, all as one as a
book.”

My lady looked bewildered as to what way she could farther explain to him
the laws of honour as regarded letters.

“You would not listen, I am sure,” said she, “to anything you were not
intended to hear?”

He hesitated for a moment, partly because he did not fully comprehend the
question. My lady repeated it. The light of intelligence came into his
eager eyes, and I could see that he was not certain if he could tell the
truth.

“Please, my lady, I always hearken when I hear folk talking secrets; but
I mean no harm.”

My poor lady sighed: she was not prepared to begin a long way off in
morals. Honour was, to her, second nature, and she had never tried to
find out on what principle its laws were based. So, telling the lad that
she wished to see Mr. Horner when he returned from Warwick, she dismissed
him with a despondent look; he, meanwhile, right glad to be out of the
awful gentleness of her presence.

“What is to be done?” said she, half to herself and half to me. I could
not answer, for I was puzzled myself.

“It was a right word,” she continued, “that I used, when I called reading
and writing ‘edge-tools.’ If our lower orders have these edge-tools
given to them, we shall have the terrible scenes of the French Revolution
acted over again in England. When I was a girl, one never heard of the
rights of men, one only heard of the duties. Now, here was Mr. Gray,
only last night, talking of the right every child had to instruction. I
could hardly keep my patience with him, and at length we fairly came to
words; and I told him I would have no such thing as a Sunday-school (or a
Sabbath-school, as he calls it, just like a Jew) in my village.”

“And what did he say, my lady?” I asked; for the struggle that seemed now
to have come to a crisis, had been going on for some time in a quiet way.

“Why, he gave way to temper, and said he was bound to remember, he was
under the bishop’s authority, not under mine; and implied that he should
persevere in his designs, notwithstanding my expressed opinion.”

“And your ladyship—” I half inquired.

“I could only rise and curtsey, and civilly dismiss him. When two
persons have arrived at a certain point of expression on a subject, about
which they differ as materially as I do from Mr. Gray, the wisest course,
if they wish to remain friends, is to drop the conversation entirely and
suddenly. It is one of the few cases where abruptness is desirable.”

I was sorry for Mr. Gray. He had been to see me several times, and had
helped me to bear my illness in a better spirit than I should have done
without his good advice and prayers. And I had gathered from little
things he said, how much his heart was set upon this new scheme. I liked
him so much, and I loved and respected my lady so well, that I could not
bear them to be on the cool terms to which they were constantly getting.
Yet I could do nothing but keep silence.

I suppose my lady understood something of what was passing in my mind;
for, after a minute or two, she went on:—

“If Mr. Gray knew all I know,—if he had my experience, he would not be
so ready to speak of setting up his new plans in opposition to my
judgment. Indeed,” she continued, lashing herself up with her own
recollections, “times are changed when the parson of a village comes to
beard the liege lady in her own house. Why, in my grandfather’s days,
the parson was family chaplain too, and dined at the Hall every Sunday.
He was helped last, and expected to have done first. I remember seeing
him take up his plate and knife and fork, and say with his mouth full all
the time he was speaking: ‘If you please, Sir Urian, and my lady, I’ll
follow the beef into the housekeeper’s room;’ for you see, unless he did
so, he stood no chance of a second helping. A greedy man, that parson
was, to be sure! I recollect his once eating up the whole of some little
bird at dinner, and by way of diverting attention from his greediness, he
told how he had heard that a rook soaked in vinegar and then dressed in a
particular way, could not be distinguished from the bird he was then
eating. I saw by the grim look of my grandfather’s face that the
parson’s doing and saying displeased him; and, child as I was, I had some
notion of what was coming, when, as I was riding out on my little, white
pony, by my grandfather’s side, the next Friday, he stopped one of the
gamekeepers, and bade him shoot one of the oldest rooks he could find. I
knew no more about it till Sunday, when a dish was set right before the
parson, and Sir Urian said: ‘Now, Parson Hemming, I have had a rook shot,
and soaked in vinegar, and dressed as you described last Sunday. Fall
to, man, and eat it with as good an appetite as you had last Sunday. Pick
the bones clean, or by—, no more Sunday dinners shall you eat at my
table!’ I gave one look at poor Mr. Hemming’s face, as he tried to
swallow the first morsel, and make believe as though he thought it very
good; but I could not look again, for shame, although my grandfather
laughed, and kept asking us all round if we knew what could have become
of the parson’s appetite.”

“And did he finish it?” I asked.

“O yes, my dear. What my grandfather said was to be done, was done
always. He was a terrible man in his anger! But to think of the
difference between Parson Hemming and Mr. Gray! or even of poor dear Mr.
Mountford and Mr. Gray. Mr. Mountford would never have withstood me as
Mr. Gray did!”

“And your ladyship really thinks that it would not be right to have a
Sunday-school?” I asked, feeling very timid as I put time question.

“Certainly not. As I told Mr. Gray. I consider a knowledge of the
Creed, and of the Lord’s Prayer, as essential to salvation; and that
any child may have, whose parents bring it regularly to church. Then
there are the Ten Commandments, which teach simple duties in the
plainest language. Of course, if a lad is taught to read and write (as
that unfortunate boy has been who was here this morning) his duties
become complicated, and his temptations much greater, while, at the
same time, he has no hereditary principles and honourable training to
serve as safeguards. I might take up my old simile of the race-horse
and cart-horse. I am distressed,” continued she, with a break in her
ideas, “about that boy. The whole thing reminds me so much of a story
of what happened to a friend of mine—Clement de Crequy. Did I ever tell
you about him?”

“No, your ladyship,” I replied.

“Poor Clement! More than twenty years ago, Lord Ludlow and I spent a
winter in Paris. He had many friends there; perhaps not very good or
very wise men, but he was so kind that he liked every one, and every
one liked him. We had an apartment, as they call it there, in the Rue
de Lille; we had the first-floor of a grand hotel, with the basement
for our servants. On the floor above us the owner of the house lived, a
Marquise de Crequy, a widow. They tell me that the Crequy coat-of-arms
is still emblazoned, after all these terrible years, on a shield above
the arched porte-cochere, just as it was then, though the family is
quite extinct. Madame de Crequy had only one son, Clement, who was
just the same age as my Urian—you may see his portrait in the great
hall—Urian’s, I mean.” I knew that Master Urian had been drowned at
sea; and often had I looked at the presentment of his bonny hopeful
face, in his sailor’s dress, with right hand outstretched to a ship
on the sea in the distance, as if he had just said, “Look at her! all
her sails are set, and I’m just off.” Poor Master Urian! he went down
in this very ship not a year after the picture was taken! But now I
will go back to my lady’s story. “I can see those two boys playing
now,” continued she, softly, shutting her eyes, as if the better
to call up the vision, “as they used to do five-and-twenty years
ago in those old-fashioned French gardens behind our hotel. Many a
time have I watched them from my windows. It was, perhaps, a better
play-place than an English garden would have been, for there were but
few flower-beds, and no lawn at all to speak about; but, instead,
terraces and balustrades and vases and flights of stone steps more in
the Italian style; and there were jets-d’eau, and little fountains that
could be set playing by turning water-cocks that were hidden here and
there. How Clement delighted in turning the water on to surprise Urian,
and how gracefully he did the honours, as it were, to my dear, rough,
sailor lad! Urian was as dark as a gipsy boy, and cared little for his
appearance, and resisted all my efforts at setting off his black eyes
and tangled curls; but Clement, without ever showing that he thought
about himself and his dress, was always dainty and elegant, even though
his clothes were sometimes but threadbare. He used to be dressed in a
kind of hunter’s green suit, open at the neck and half-way down the
chest to beautiful old lace frills; his long golden curls fell behind
just like a girl’s, and his hair in front was cut over his straight
dark eyebrows in a line almost as straight. Urian learnt more of a
gentleman’s carefulness and propriety of appearance from that lad in
two months than he had done in years from all my lectures. I recollect
one day, when the two boys were in full romp—and, my window being
open, I could hear them perfectly—and Urian was daring Clement to some
scrambling or climbing, which Clement refused to undertake, but in a
hesitating way, as though he longed to do it if some reason had not
stood in the way; and at times, Urian, who was hasty and thoughtless,
poor fellow, told Clement that he was afraid. ‘Fear!’ said the French
boy, drawing himself up; ‘you do not know what you say. If you will
be here at six to-morrow morning, when it is only just light, I will
take that starling’s nest on the top of yonder chimney.’ ‘But why not
now, Clement?’ said Urian, putting his arm round Clement’s neck. ‘Why
then, and not now, just when we are in the humour for it?’ ‘Because we
De Crequys are poor, and my mother cannot afford me another suit of
clothes this year, and yonder stone carving is all jagged, and would
tear my coat and breeches. Now, to-morrow morning I could go up with
nothing on but an old shirt.’

“‘But you would tear your legs.’

“‘My race do not care for pain,’ said the boy, drawing himself from
Urian’s arm, and walking a few steps away, with a becoming pride and
reserve; for he was hurt at being spoken to as if he were afraid, and
annoyed at having to confess the true reason for declining the feat. But
Urian was not to be thus baffled. He went up to Clement, and put his arm
once more about his neck, and I could see the two lads as they walked
down the terrace away from the hotel windows: first Urian spoke eagerly,
looking with imploring fondness into Clement’s face, which sought the
ground, till at last the French boy spoke, and by-and-by his arm was
round Urian too, and they paced backwards and forwards in deep talk, but
gravely, as became men, rather than boys.

“All at once, from the little chapel at the corner of the large garden
belonging to the Missions Etrangeres, I heard the tinkle of the little
bell, announcing the elevation of the host. Down on his knees went
Clement, hands crossed, eyes bent down: while Urian stood looking on in
respectful thought.

“What a friendship that might have been! I never dream of Urian without
seeing Clement too—Urian speaks to me, or does something,—but Clement
only flits round Urian, and never seems to see any one else!”

“But I must not forget to tell you, that the next morning, before he was
out of his room, a footman of Madame de Crequy’s brought Urian the
starling’s nest.”

“Well! we came back to England, and the boys were to correspond; and
Madame de Crequy and I exchanged civilities; and Urian went to sea.”

“After that, all seemed to drop away. I cannot tell you all. However,
to confine myself to the De Crequys. I had a letter from Clement; I knew
he felt his friend’s death deeply; but I should never have learnt it from
the letter he sent. It was formal, and seemed like chaff to my hungering
heart. Poor fellow! I dare say he had found it hard to write. What
could he—or any one—say to a mother who has lost her child? The world
does not think so, and, in general, one must conform to the customs of
the world; but, judging from my own experience, I should say that
reverent silence at such times is the tenderest balm. Madame de Crequy
wrote too. But I knew she could not feel my loss so much as Clement, and
therefore her letter was not such a disappointment. She and I went on
being civil and polite in the way of commissions, and occasionally
introducing friends to each other, for a year or two, and then we ceased
to have any intercourse. Then the terrible Revolution came. No one who
did not live at those times can imagine the daily expectation of news—the
hourly terror of rumours affecting the fortunes and lives of those whom
most of us had known as pleasant hosts, receiving us with peaceful
welcome in their magnificent houses. Of course, there was sin enough and
suffering enough behind the scenes; but we English visitors to Paris had
seen little or nothing of that,—and I had sometimes thought, indeed, how
even death seemed loth to choose his victims out of that brilliant throng
whom I had known. Madame de Crequy’s one boy lived; while three out of
my six were gone since we had met! I do not think all lots are equal,
even now that I know the end of her hopes; but I do say that whatever our
individual lot is, it is our duty to accept it, without comparing it with
that of others.

“The times were thick with gloom and terror. ‘What next?’ was the
question we asked of every one who brought us news from Paris. Where
were these demons hidden when, so few years ago, we danced and feasted,
and enjoyed the brilliant salons and the charming friendships of Paris?

“One evening, I was sitting alone in Saint James’s Square; my lord off at
the club with Mr. Fox and others: he had left me, thinking that I should
go to one of the many places to which I had been invited for that
evening; but I had no heart to go anywhere, for it was poor Urian’s
birthday, and I had not even rung for lights, though the day was fast
closing in, but was thinking over all his pretty ways, and on his warm
affectionate nature, and how often I had been too hasty in speaking to
him, for all I loved him so dearly; and how I seemed to have neglected
and dropped his dear friend Clement, who might even now be in need of
help in that cruel, bloody Paris. I say I was thinking reproachfully of
all this, and particularly of Clement de Crequy in connection with Urian,
when Fenwick brought me a note, sealed with a coat-of-arms I knew well,
though I could not remember at the moment where I had seen it. I puzzled
over it, as one does sometimes, for a minute or more, before I opened the
letter. In a moment I saw it was from Clement de Crequy. ‘My mother is
here,’ he said: ‘she is very ill, and I am bewildered in this strange
country. May I entreat you to receive me for a few minutes?’ The bearer
of the note was the woman of the house where they lodged. I had her
brought up into the anteroom, and questioned her myself, while my
carriage was being brought round. They had arrived in London a fortnight
or so before: she had not known their quality, judging them (according to
her kind) by their dress and their luggage; poor enough, no doubt. The
lady had never left her bed-room since her arrival; the young man waited
upon her, did everything for her, never left her, in fact; only she (the
messenger) had promised to stay within call, as soon as she returned,
while he went out somewhere. She could hardly understand him, he spoke
English so badly. He had never spoken it, I dare say, since he had
talked to my Urian.”




CHAPTER V.


“In the hurry of the moment I scarce knew what I did. I bade the
housekeeper put up every delicacy she had, in order to tempt the invalid,
whom yet I hoped to bring back with me to our house. When the carriage
was ready I took the good woman with me to show us the exact way, which
my coachman professed not to know; for, indeed, they were staying at but
a poor kind of place at the back of Leicester Square, of which they had
heard, as Clement told me afterwards, from one of the fishermen who had
carried them across from the Dutch coast in their disguises as a
Friesland peasant and his mother. They had some jewels of value
concealed round their persons; but their ready money was all spent before
I saw them, and Clement had been unwilling to leave his mother, even for
the time necessary to ascertain the best mode of disposing of the
diamonds. For, overcome with distress of mind and bodily fatigue, she
had reached London only to take to her bed in a sort of low, nervous
fever, in which her chief and only idea seemed to be that Clement was
about to be taken from her to some prison or other; and if he were out of
her sight, though but for a minute, she cried like a child, and could not
be pacified or comforted. The landlady was a kind, good woman, and
though she but half understood the case, she was truly sorry for them, as
foreigners, and the mother sick in a strange land.

“I sent her forwards to request permission for my entrance. In a moment
I saw Clement—a tall, elegant young man, in a curious dress of coarse
cloth, standing at the open door of a room, and evidently—even before he
accosted me—striving to soothe the terrors of his mother inside. I went
towards him, and would have taken his hand, but he bent down and kissed
mine.

“‘May I come in, madame?’ I asked, looking at the poor sick lady, lying
in the dark, dingy bed, her head propped up on coarse and dirty pillows,
and gazing with affrighted eyes at all that was going on.

“‘Clement! Clement! come to me!’ she cried; and when he went to the
bedside she turned on one side, and took his hand in both of hers, and
began stroking it, and looking up in his face. I could scarce keep back
my tears.

“He stood there quite still, except that from time to time he spoke to
her in a low tone. At last I advanced into the room, so that I could
talk to him, without renewing her alarm. I asked for the doctor’s
address; for I had heard that they had called in some one, at their
landlady’s recommendation: but I could hardly understand Clement’s broken
English, and mispronunciation of our proper names, and was obliged to
apply to the woman herself. I could not say much to Clement, for his
attention was perpetually needed by his mother, who never seemed to
perceive that I was there. But I told him not to fear, however long I
might be away, for that I would return before night; and, bidding the
woman take charge of all the heterogeneous things the housekeeper had put
up, and leaving one of my men in the house, who could understand a few
words of French, with directions that he was to hold himself at Madame de
Crequy’s orders until I sent or gave him fresh commands, I drove off to
the doctor’s. What I wanted was his permission to remove Madame de
Crequy to my own house, and to learn how it best could be done; for I saw
that every movement in the room, every sound except Clement’s voice,
brought on a fresh access of trembling and nervous agitation.

“The doctor was, I should think, a clever man; but he had that kind of
abrupt manner which people get who have much to do with the lower orders.

“I told him the story of his patient, the interest I had in her, and the
wish I entertained of removing her to my own house.

“‘It can’t be done,’ said he. ‘Any change will kill her.’

“‘But it must be done,’ I replied. ‘And it shall not kill her.’

“‘Then I have nothing more to say,’ said he, turning away from the
carriage door, and making as though he would go back into the house.

“‘Stop a moment. You must help me; and, if you do, you shall have reason
to be glad, for I will give you fifty pounds down with pleasure. If you
won’t do it, another shall.’

“He looked at me, then (furtively) at the carriage, hesitated, and then
said: ‘You do not mind expense, apparently. I suppose you are a rich
lady of quality. Such folks will not stick at such trifles as the life
or death of a sick woman to get their own way. I suppose I must e’en
help you, for if I don’t, another will.’

“I did not mind what he said, so that he would assist me. I was pretty
sure that she was in a state to require opiates; and I had not forgotten
Christopher Sly, you may be sure, so I told him what I had in my head.
That in the dead of night—the quiet time in the streets,—she should be
carried in a hospital litter, softly and warmly covered over, from the
Leicester Square lodging-house to rooms that I would have in perfect
readiness for her. As I planned, so it was done. I let Clement know, by
a note, of my design. I had all prepared at home, and we walked about my
house as though shod with velvet, while the porter watched at the open
door. At last, through the darkness, I saw the lanterns carried by my
men, who were leading the little procession. The litter looked like a
hearse; on one side walked the doctor, on the other Clement; they came
softly and swiftly along. I could not try any farther experiment; we
dared not change her clothes; she was laid in the bed in the landlady’s
coarse night-gear, and covered over warmly, and left in the shaded,
scented room, with a nurse and the doctor watching by her, while I led
Clement to the dressing-room adjoining, in which I had had a bed placed
for him. Farther than that he would not go; and there I had refreshments
brought. Meanwhile, he had shown his gratitude by every possible action
(for we none of us dared to speak): he had kneeled at my feet, and kissed
my hand, and left it wet with his tears. He had thrown up his arms to
Heaven, and prayed earnestly, as I could see by the movement of his lips.
I allowed him to relieve himself by these dumb expressions, if I may so
call them,—and then I left him, and went to my own rooms to sit up for
my lord, and tell him what I had done.

“Of course, it was all right; and neither my lord nor I could sleep for
wondering how Madame de Crequy would bear her awakening. I had engaged
the doctor, to whose face and voice she was accustomed, to remain with
her all night: the nurse was experienced, and Clement was within call.
But it was with the greatest relief that I heard from my own woman, when
she brought me my chocolate, that Madame de Crequy (Monsieur had said)
had awakened more tranquil than she had been for many days. To be sure,
the whole aspect of the bed-chamber must have been more familiar to her
than the miserable place where I had found her, and she must have
intuitively felt herself among friends.

“My lord was scandalized at Clement’s dress, which, after the first
moment of seeing him I had forgotten, in thinking of other things, and
for which I had not prepared Lord Ludlow. He sent for his own tailor,
and bade him bring patterns of stuffs, and engage his men to work night
and day till Clement could appear as became his rank. In short, in a few
days so much of the traces of their flight were removed, that we had
almost forgotten the terrible causes of it, and rather felt as if they
had come on a visit to us than that they had been compelled to fly their
country. Their diamonds, too, were sold well by my lord’s agents, though
the London shops were stocked with jewellery, and such portable
valuables, some of rare and curious fashion, which were sold for half
their real value by emigrants who could not afford to wait. Madame de
Crequy was recovering her health, although her strength was sadly gone,
and she would never be equal to such another flight, as the perilous one
which she had gone through, and to which she could not bear the slightest
reference. For some time things continued in this state—the De Crequys
still our honoured visitors,—many houses besides our own, even among our
own friends, open to receive the poor flying nobility of France, driven
from their country by the brutal republicans, and every freshly-arrived
emigrant bringing new tales of horror, as if these revolutionists were
drunk with blood, and mad to devise new atrocities. One day Clement—I
should tell you he had been presented to our good King George and the
sweet Queen, and they had accosted him most graciously, and his beauty
and elegance, and some of the circumstances attendant on his flight, made
him be received in the world quite like a hero of romance; he might have
been on intimate terms in many a distinguished house, had he cared to
visit much; but he accompanied my lord and me with an air of indifference
and languor, which I sometimes fancied made him be all the more sought
after: Monkshaven (that was the title my eldest son bore) tried in vain
to interest him in all young men’s sports. But no! it was the same
through all. His mother took far more interest in the on-dits of the
London world, into which she was far too great an invalid to venture,
than he did in the absolute events themselves, in which he might have
been an actor. One day, as I was saying, an old Frenchman of a humble
class presented himself to our servants, several of them, understood
French; and through Medlicott, I learnt that he was in some way connected
with the De Crequys; not with their Paris-life; but I fancy he had been
intendant of their estates in the country; estates which were more useful
as hunting-grounds than as adding to their income. However, there was
the old man and with him, wrapped round his person, he had brought the
long parchment rolls, and deeds relating to their property. These he
would deliver up to none but Monsieur de Crequy, the rightful owner; and
Clement was out with Monkshaven, so the old man waited; and when Clement
came in, I told him of the steward’s arrival, and how he had been cared
for by my people. Clement went directly to see him. He was a long time
away, and I was waiting for him to drive out with me, for some purpose or
another, I scarce know what, but I remember I was tired of waiting, and
was just in the act of ringing the bell to desire that he might be
reminded of his engagement with me, when he came in, his face as white as
the powder in his hair, his beautiful eyes dilated with horror. I saw
that he had heard something that touched him even more closely than the
usual tales which every fresh emigrant brought.

“‘What is it, Clement?’ I asked.

“He clasped his hands, and looked as though he tried to speak, but could
not bring out the words.

“‘They have guillotined my uncle!’ said he at last. Now, I knew that
there was a Count de Crequy; but I had always understood that the elder
branch held very little communication with him; in fact, that he was a
vaurien of some kind, and rather a disgrace than otherwise to the family.
So, perhaps, I was hard-hearted but I was a little surprised at this
excess of emotion, till I saw that peculiar look in his eyes that many
people have when there is more terror in their hearts than they dare put
into words. He wanted me to understand something without his saying it;
but how could I? I had never heard of a Mademoiselle de Crequy.

“‘Virginie!’ at last he uttered. In an instant I understood it all, and
remembered that, if Urian had lived, he too might have been in love.

“‘Your uncle’s daughter?’ I inquired.

“‘My cousin,’ he replied.

“I did not say, ‘your betrothed,’ but I had no doubt of it. I was
mistaken, however.

“‘O madame!’ he continued, ‘her mother died long ago—her father now—and
she is in daily fear,—alone, deserted—’

“‘Is she in the Abbaye?’ asked I.

“‘No! she is in hiding with the widow of her father’s old concierge. Any
day they may search the house for aristocrats. They are seeking them
everywhere. Then, not her life alone, but that of the old woman, her
hostess, is sacrificed. The old woman knows this, and trembles with
fear. Even if she is brave enough to be faithful, her fears would betray
her, should the house be searched. Yet, there is no one to help Virginie
to escape. She is alone in Paris.’

“I saw what was in his mind. He was fretting and chafing to go to his
cousin’s assistance; but the thought of his mother restrained him. I
would not have kept back Urian from such on errand at such a time. How
should I restrain him? And yet, perhaps, I did wrong in not urging the
chances of danger more. Still, if it was danger to him, was it not the
same or even greater danger to her?—for the French spared neither age
nor sex in those wicked days of terror. So I rather fell in with his
wish, and encouraged him to think how best and most prudently it might be
fulfilled; never doubting, as I have said, that he and his cousin were
troth-plighted.

“But when I went to Madame de Crequy—after he had imparted his, or
rather our plan to her—I found out my mistake. She, who was in general
too feeble to walk across the room save slowly, and with a stick, was
going from end to end with quick, tottering steps; and, if now and then
she sank upon a chair, it seemed as if she could not rest, for she was up
again in a moment, pacing along, wringing her hands, and speaking rapidly
to herself. When she saw me, she stopped: ‘Madame,’ she said, ‘you have
lost your own boy. You might have left me mine.’

“I was so astonished—I hardly knew what to say. I had spoken to Clement
as if his mother’s consent were secure (as I had felt my own would have
been if Urian had been alive to ask it). Of coarse, both he and I knew
that his mother’s consent must be asked and obtained, before he could
leave her to go on such an undertaking; but, somehow, my blood always
rose at the sight or sound of danger; perhaps, because my life had been
so peaceful. Poor Madame de Crequy! it was otherwise with her; she
despaired while I hoped, and Clement trusted.

“‘Dear Madame de Crequy,’ said I, ‘he will return safely to us; every
precaution shall be taken, that either he or you, or my lord, or
Monkshaven can think of; but he cannot leave a girl—his nearest relation
save you—his betrothed, is she not?’

“‘His betrothed!’ cried she, now at the utmost pitch of her excitement.
‘Virginie betrothed to Clement?—no! thank heaven, not so bad as that!
Yet it might have been. But mademoiselle scorned my son! She would have
nothing to do with him. Now is the time for him to have nothing to do
with her!’

“Clement had entered at the door behind his mother as she thus spoke. His
face was set and pale, till it looked as gray and immovable as if it had
been carved in stone. He came forward and stood before his mother. She
stopped her walk, threw back her haughty head, and the two looked each
other steadily in the face. After a minute or two in this attitude, her
proud and resolute gaze never flinching or wavering, he went down upon
one knee, and, taking her hand—her hard, stony hand, which never closed
on his, but remained straight and stiff:

“‘Mother,’ he pleaded, ‘withdraw your prohibition. Let me go!’

“‘What were her words?’ Madame de Crequy replied, slowly, as if forcing
her memory to the extreme of accuracy. ‘My cousin,’ she said, ‘when I
marry, I marry a man, not a petit-maitre. I marry a man who, whatever
his rank may be will add dignity to the human race by his virtues, and
not be content to live in an effeminate court on the traditions of past
grandeur.’ She borrowed her words from the infamous Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, the friend of her scarce less infamous father—nay! I will say
it,—if not her words, she borrowed her principles. And my son to
request her to marry him!

“‘It was my father’s written wish,’ said Clement.

“‘But did you not love her? You plead your father’s words,—words
written twelve years before,—and as if that were your reason for being
indifferent to my dislike to the alliance. But you requested her to
marry you,—and she refused you with insolent contempt; and now you are
ready to leave me,—leave me desolate in a foreign land—’

“‘Desolate! my mother! and the Countess Ludlow stands there!’

“‘Pardon, madame! But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts,
is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is
absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,—this
degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes!
She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends
have sown the seed. Let her alone! Doubtless she has friends—it may be
lovers—among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every
licence. Let her alone, Clement! She refused you with scorn: be too
proud to notice her now.’

“‘Mother, I cannot think of myself; only of her.’

“‘Think of me, then! I, your mother, forbid you to go.’

“Clement bowed low, and went out of the room instantly, as one blinded.
She saw his groping movement, and, for an instant, I think her heart
was touched. But she turned to me, and tried to exculpate her past
violence by dilating upon her wrongs, and they certainly were many.
The Count, her husband’s younger brother, had invariably tried to make
mischief between husband and wife. He had been the cleverer man of
the two, and had possessed extraordinary influence over her husband.
She suspected him of having instigated that clause in her husband’s
will, by which the Marquis expressed his wish for the marriage of the
cousins. The Count had had some interest in the management of the De
Crequy property during her son’s minority. Indeed, I remembered then,
that it was through Count de Crequy that Lord Ludlow had first heard
of the apartment which we afterwards took in the Hotel de Crequy; and
then the recollection of a past feeling came distinctly out of the
mist, as it were; and I called to mind how, when we first took up our
abode in the Hotel de Crequy, both Lord Ludlow and I imagined that
the arrangement was displeasing to our hostess; and how it had taken
us a considerable time before we had been able to establish relations
of friendship with her. Years after our visit, she began to suspect
that Clement (whom she could not forbid to visit at his uncle’s house,
considering the terms on which his father had been with his brother;
though she herself never set foot over the Count de Crequy’s threshold)
was attaching himself to mademoiselle, his cousin; and she made
cautious inquiries as to the appearance, character, and disposition
of the young lady. Mademoiselle was not handsome, they said; but of
a fine figure, and generally considered as having a very noble and
attractive presence. In character she was daring and wilful (said one
set); original and independent (said another). She was much indulged
by her father, who had given her something of a man’s education, and
selected for her intimate friend a young lady below her in rank, one
of the Bureaucracie, a Mademoiselle Necker, daughter of the Minister
of Finance. Mademoiselle de Crequy was thus introduced into all the
free-thinking salons of Paris; among people who were always full of
plans for subverting society. ‘And did Clement affect such people?’
Madame de Crequy had asked with some anxiety. No! Monsieur de Crequy
had neither eyes nor ears, nor thought for anything but his cousin,
while she was by. And she? She hardly took notice of his devotion, so
evident to every one else. The proud creature! But perhaps that was
her haughty way of concealing what she felt. And so Madame de Crequy
listened, and questioned, and learnt nothing decided, until one day she
surprised Clement with the note in his hand, of which she remembered
the stinging words so well, in which Virginie had said, in reply to
a proposal Clement had sent her through her father, that ‘When she
married she married a man, not a petit-maitre.’

“Clement was justly indignant at the insulting nature of the answer
Virginie had sent to a proposal, respectful in its tone, and which was,
after all, but the cool, hardened lava over a burning heart. He
acquiesced in his mother’s desire, that he should not again present
himself in his uncle’s salons; but he did not forget Virginie, though he
never mentioned her name.

“Madame de Crequy and her son were among the earliest proscrits, as they
were of the strongest possible royalists, and aristocrats, as it was the
custom of the horrid Sansculottes to term those who adhered to the habits
of expression and action in which it was their pride to have been
educated. They had left Paris some weeks before they had arrived in
England, and Clement’s belief at the time of quitting the Hotel de Crequy
had certainly been, that his uncle was not merely safe, but rather a
popular man with the party in power. And, as all communication having
relation to private individuals of a reliable kind was intercepted,
Monsieur de Crequy had felt but little anxiety for his uncle and cousin,
in comparison with what he did for many other friends of very different
opinions in politics, until the day when he was stunned by the fatal
information that even his progressive uncle was guillotined, and learnt
that his cousin was imprisoned by the licence of the mob, whose rights
(as she called them) she was always advocating.

“When I had heard all this story, I confess I lost in sympathy for
Clement what I gained for his mother. Virginie’s life did not seem to me
worth the risk that Clement’s would run. But when I saw him—sad,
depressed, nay, hopeless—going about like one oppressed by a heavy dream
which he cannot shake off; caring neither to eat, drink, nor sleep, yet
bearing all with silent dignity, and even trying to force a poor, faint
smile when he caught my anxious eyes; I turned round again, and wondered
how Madame de Crequy could resist this mute pleading of her son’s altered
appearance. As for my Lord Ludlow and Monkshaven, as soon as they
understood the case, they were indignant that any mother should attempt
to keep a son out of honourable danger; and it was honourable, and a
clear duty (according to them) to try to save the life of a helpless
orphan girl, his next of kin. None but a Frenchman, said my lord, would
hold himself bound by an old woman’s whimsies and fears, even though she
were his mother. As it was, he was chafing himself to death under the
restraint. If he went, to be sure, the wretches might make an end of
him, as they had done of many a fine fellow: but my lord would take heavy
odds, that, instead of being guillotined, he would save the girl, and
bring her safe to England, just desperately in love with her preserver,
and then we would have a jolly wedding down at Monkshaven. My lord
repeated his opinion so often that it became a certain prophecy in his
mind of what was to take place; and, one day seeing Clement look even
paler and thinner than he had ever done before, he sent a message to
Madame de Crequy, requesting permission to speak to her in private.

“‘For, by George!’ said he, ‘she shall hear my opinion, and not let that
lad of hers kill himself by fretting. He’s too good for that, if he had
been an English lad, he would have been off to his sweetheart long before
this, without saying with your leave or by your leave; but being a
Frenchman, he is all for AEneas and filial piety,—filial fiddle-sticks!’
(My lord had run away to sea, when a boy, against his father’s consent, I
am sorry to say; and, as all had ended well, and he had come back to find
both his parents alive, I do not think he was ever as much aware of his
fault as he might have been under other circumstances.) ‘No, my lady,’
he went on, ‘don’t come with me. A woman can manage a man best when he
has a fit of obstinacy, and a man can persuade a woman out of her
tantrums, when all her own sex, the whole army of them, would fail. Allow
me to go alone to my tete-a-tete with madame.’

“What he said, what passed, he never could repeat; but he came back
graver than he went. However, the point was gained; Madame de Crequy
withdrew her prohibition, and had given him leave to tell Clement as
much.

“‘But she is an old Cassandra,’ said he. ‘Don’t let the lad be much with
her; her talk would destroy the courage of the bravest man; she is so
given over to superstition.’ Something that she had said had touched a
chord in my lord’s nature which he inherited from his Scotch ancestors.
Long afterwards, I heard what this was. Medlicott told me.

“However, my lord shook off all fancies that told against the fulfilment
of Clement’s wishes. All that afternoon we three sat together, planning;
and Monkshaven passed in and out, executing our commissions, and
preparing everything. Towards nightfall all was ready for Clement’s
start on his journey towards the coast.

“Madame had declined seeing any of us since my lord’s stormy interview
with her. She sent word that she was fatigued, and desired repose. But,
of course, before Clement set off, he was bound to wish her farewell, and
to ask for her blessing. In order to avoid an agitating conversation
between mother and son, my lord and I resolved to be present at the
interview. Clement was already in his travelling-dress, that of a Norman
fisherman, which Monkshaven had, with infinite trouble, discovered in the
possession of one of the emigres who thronged London, and who had made
his escape from the shores of France in this disguise. Clement’s plan
was, to go down to the coast of Sussex, and get some of the fishing or
smuggling boats to take him across to the French coast near Dieppe. There
again he would have to change his dress. Oh, it was so well planned! His
mother was startled by his disguise (of which we had not thought to
forewarn her) as he entered her apartment. And either that, or the being
suddenly roused from the heavy slumber into which she was apt to fall
when she was left alone, gave her manner an air of wildness that was
almost like insanity.

“‘Go, go!’ she said to him, almost pushing him away as he knelt to kiss
her hand. ‘Virginie is beckoning to you, but you don’t see what kind of
a bed it is—’

“‘Clement, make haste!’ said my lord, in a hurried manner, as if to
interrupt madame. ‘The time is later than I thought, and you must not
miss the morning’s tide. Bid your mother good-bye at once, and let us be
off.’ For my lord and Monkshaven were to ride with him to an inn near
the shore, from whence he was to walk to his destination. My lord almost
took him by the arm to pull him away; and they were gone, and I was left
alone with Madame de Crequy. When she heard the horses’ feet, she seemed
to find out the truth, as if for the first time. She set her teeth
together. ‘He has left me for her!’ she almost screamed. ‘Left me for
her!’ she kept muttering; and then, as the wild look came back into her
eyes, she said, almost with exultation, ‘But I did not give him my
blessing!’”




CHAPTER VI.


“All night Madame de Crequy raved in delirium. If I could I would have
sent for Clement back again. I did send off one man, but I suppose my
directions were confused, or they were wrong, for he came back after my
lord’s return, on the following afternoon. By this time Madame de Crequy
was quieter: she was, indeed, asleep from exhaustion when Lord Ludlow and
Monkshaven came in. They were in high spirits, and their hopefulness
brought me round to a less dispirited state. All had gone well: they had
accompanied Clement on foot along the shore, until they had met with a
lugger, which my lord had hailed in good nautical language. The captain
had responded to these freemason terms by sending a boat to pick up his
passenger, and by an invitation to breakfast sent through a
speaking-trumpet. Monkshaven did not approve of either the meal or the
company, and had returned to the inn, but my lord had gone with Clement
and breakfasted on board, upon grog, biscuit, fresh-caught fish—‘the
best breakfast he ever ate,’ he said, but that was probably owing to the
appetite his night’s ride had given him. However, his good fellowship
had evidently won the captain’s heart, and Clement had set sail under the
best auspices. It was agreed that I should tell all this to Madame de
Crequy, if she inquired; otherwise, it would be wiser not to renew her
agitation by alluding to her son’s journey.

“I sat with her constantly for many days; but she never spoke of Clement.
She forced herself to talk of the little occurrences of Parisian society
in former days: she tried to be conversational and agreeable, and to
betray no anxiety or even interest in the object of Clement’s journey;
and, as far as unremitting efforts could go, she succeeded. But the
tones of her voice were sharp and yet piteous, as if she were in constant
pain; and the glance of her eye hurried and fearful, as if she dared not
let it rest on any object.

“In a week we heard of Clement’s safe arrival on the French coast. He
sent a letter to this effect by the captain of the smuggler, when the
latter returned. We hoped to hear again; but week after week elapsed,
and there was no news of Clement. I had told Lord Ludlow, in Madame de
Crequy’s presence, as he and I had arranged, of the note I had received
from her son, informing us of his landing in France. She heard, but she
took no notice, and evidently began to wonder that we did not mention any
further intelligence of him in the same manner before her; and daily I
began to fear that her pride would give way, and that she would
supplicate for news before I had any to give her.

“One morning, on my awakening, my maid told me that Madame de Crequy had
passed a wretched night, and had bidden Medlicott (whom, as understanding
French, and speaking it pretty well, though with that horrid German
accent, I had put about her) request that I would go to madame’s room as
soon as I was dressed.

“I knew what was coming, and I trembled all the time they were doing my
hair, and otherwise arranging me. I was not encouraged by my lord’s
speeches. He had heard the message, and kept declaring that he would
rather be shot than have to tell her that there was no news of her son;
and yet he said, every now and then, when I was at the lowest pitch of
uneasiness, that he never expected to hear again: that some day soon we
should see him walking in and introducing Mademoiselle de Crequy to us.

“However at last I was ready, and go I must.

“Her eyes were fixed on the door by which I entered. I went up to the
bedside. She was not rouged,—she had left it off now for several
days,—she no longer attempted to keep up the vain show of not feeling,
and loving, and fearing.

“For a moment or two she did not speak, and I was glad of the respite.

“‘Clement?’ she said at length, covering her mouth with a handkerchief
the minute she had spoken, that I might not see it quiver.

“‘There has been no news since the first letter, saying how well the
voyage was performed, and how safely he had landed—near Dieppe, you
know,’ I replied as cheerfully as possible. ‘My lord does not expect
that we shall have another letter; he thinks that we shall see him soon.’

“There was no answer. As I looked, uncertain whether to do or say more,
she slowly turned herself in bed, and lay with her face to the wall; and,
as if that did not shut out the light of day and the busy, happy world
enough, she put out her trembling hands, and covered her face with her
handkerchief. There was no violence: hardly any sound.

“I told her what my lord had said about Clement’s coming in some day, and
taking us all by surprise. I did not believe it myself, but it was just
possible,—and I had nothing else to say. Pity, to one who was striving
so hard to conceal her feelings, would have been impertinent. She let me
talk; but she did not reply. She knew that my words were vain and idle,
and had no root in my belief; as well as I did myself.

“I was very thankful when Medlicott came in with Madame’s breakfast, and
gave me an excuse for leaving.

“But I think that conversation made me feel more anxious and impatient
than ever. I felt almost pledged to Madame de Crequy for the fulfilment
of the vision I had held out. She had taken entirely to her bed by this
time: not from illness, but because she had no hope within her to stir
her up to the effort of dressing. In the same way she hardly cared for
food. She had no appetite,—why eat to prolong a life of despair? But
she let Medlicott feed her, sooner than take the trouble of resisting.

“And so it went on,—for weeks, months—I could hardly count the time, it
seemed so long. Medlicott told me she noticed a preternatural
sensitiveness of ear in Madame de Crequy, induced by the habit of
listening silently for the slightest unusual sound in the house.
Medlicott was always a minute watcher of any one whom she cared about;
and, one day, she made me notice by a sign madame’s acuteness of hearing,
although the quick expectation was but evinced for a moment in the turn
of the eye, the hushed breath—and then, when the unusual footstep turned
into my lord’s apartments, the soft quivering sigh, and the closed
eyelids.

“At length the intendant of the De Crequy estates—the old man, you will
remember, whose information respecting Virginie de Crequy first gave
Clement the desire to return to Paris,—came to St. James’s Square, and
begged to speak to me. I made haste to go down to him in the
housekeeper’s room, sooner than that he should be ushered into mine, for
fear of madame hearing any sound.

“The old man stood—I see him now—with his hat held before him in both
his hands; he slowly bowed till his face touched it when I came in. Such
long excess of courtesy augured ill. He waited for me to speak.

“‘Have you any intelligence?’ I inquired. He had been often to the house
before, to ask if we had received any news; and once or twice I had seen
him, but this was the first time he had begged to see me.

“‘Yes, madame,’ he replied, still standing with his head bent down, like
a child in disgrace.

“‘And it is bad!’ I exclaimed.

“‘It is bad.’ For a moment I was angry at the cold tone in which my
words were echoed; but directly afterwards I saw the large, slow, heavy
tears of age falling down the old man’s cheeks, and on to the sleeves of
his poor, threadbare coat.

“I asked him how he had heard it: it seemed as though I could not all at
once bear to hear what it was. He told me that the night before, in
crossing Long Acre, he had stumbled upon an old acquaintance of his; one
who, like himself had been a dependent upon the De Crequy family, but had
managed their Paris affairs, while Flechier had taken charge of their
estates in the country. Both were now emigrants, and living on the
proceeds of such small available talents as they possessed. Flechier, as
I knew, earned a very fair livelihood by going about to dress salads for
dinner parties. His compatriot, Le Febvre, had begun to give a few
lessons as a dancing-master. One of them took the other home to his
lodgings; and there, when their most immediate personal adventures had
been hastily talked over, came the inquiry from Flechier as to Monsieur
de Crequy

“‘Clement was dead—guillotined. Virginie was dead—guillotined.’

“When Flechier had told me thus much, he could not speak for sobbing; and
I, myself, could hardly tell how to restrain my tears sufficiently, until
I could go to my own room and be at liberty to give way. He asked my
leave to bring in his friend Le Febvre, who was walking in the square,
awaiting a possible summons to tell his story. I heard afterwards a good
many details, which filled up the account, and made me feel—which brings
me back to the point I started from—how unfit the lower orders are for
being trusted indiscriminately with the dangerous powers of education. I
have made a long preamble, but now I am coming to the moral of my story.”

My lady was trying to shake off the emotion which she evidently felt in
recurring to this sad history of Monsieur de Crequy’s death. She came
behind me, and arranged my pillows, and then, seeing I had been
crying—for, indeed, I was weak-spirited at the time, and a little served
to unloose my tears—she stooped down, and kissed my forehead, and said
“Poor child!” almost as if she thanked me for feeling that old grief of
hers.

“Being once in France, it was no difficult thing for Clement to get into
Paris. The difficulty in those days was to leave, not to enter. He came
in dressed as a Norman peasant, in charge of a load of fruit and
vegetables, with which one of the Seine barges was freighted. He worked
hard with his companions in landing and arranging their produce on the
quays; and then, when they dispersed to get their breakfasts at some of
the estaminets near the old Marche aux Fleurs, he sauntered up a street
which conducted him, by many an odd turn, through the Quartier Latin to a
horrid back alley, leading out of the Rue l’Ecole de Medecine; some
atrocious place, as I have heard, not far from the shadow of that
terrible Abbaye, where so many of the best blood of France awaited their
deaths. But here some old man lived, on whose fidelity Clement thought
that he might rely. I am not sure if he had not been gardener in those
very gardens behind the Hotel Crequy where Clement and Urian used to play
together years before. But whatever the old man’s dwelling might be,
Clement was only too glad to reach it, you may be sure, he had been kept
in Normandy, in all sorts of disguises, for many days after landing in
Dieppe, through the difficulty of entering Paris unsuspected by the many
ruffians who were always on the look-out for aristocrats.

“The old gardener was, I believe, both faithful and tried, and sheltered
Clement in his garret as well as might be. Before he could stir out, it
was necessary to procure a fresh disguise, and one more in character with
an inhabitant of Paris than that of a Norman carter was procured; and
after waiting indoors for one or two days, to see if any suspicion was
excited, Clement set off to discover Virginie.

“He found her at the old concierge’s dwelling. Madame Babette was the
name of this woman, who must have been a less faithful—or rather,
perhaps, I should say, a more interested—friend to her guest than the
old gardener Jaques was to Clement.

“I have seen a miniature of Virginie, which a French lady of quality
happened to have in her possession at the time of her flight from
Paris, and which she brought with her to England unwittingly; for it
belonged to the Count de Crequy, with whom she was slightly acquainted.
I should fancy from it, that Virginie was taller and of a more
powerful figure for a woman than her cousin Clement was for a man. Her
dark-brown hair was arranged in short curls—the way of dressing the
hair announced the politics of the individual, in those days, just as
patches did in my grandmother’s time; and Virginie’s hair was not to my
taste, or according to my principles: it was too classical. Her large,
black eyes looked out at you steadily. One cannot judge of the shape of
a nose from a full-face miniature, but the nostrils were clearly cut
and largely opened. I do not fancy her nose could have been pretty; but
her mouth had a character all its own, and which would, I think, have
redeemed a plainer face. It was wide, and deep set into the cheeks at
the corners; the upper lip was very much arched, and hardly closed over
the teeth; so that the whole face looked (from the serious, intent look
in the eyes, and the sweet intelligence of the mouth) as if she were
listening eagerly to something to which her answer was quite ready, and
would come out of those red, opening lips as soon as ever you had done
speaking, and you longed to know what she would say.

“Well: this Virginie de Crequy was living with Madame Babette in the
conciergerie of an old French inn, somewhere to the north of Paris,
so, far enough from Clement’s refuge. The inn had been frequented by
farmers from Brittany and such kind of people, in the days when that
sort of intercourse went on between Paris and the provinces which had
nearly stopped now. Few Bretons came near it now, and the inn had
fallen into the hands of Madame Babette’s brother, as payment for a bad
wine debt of the last proprietor. He put his sister and her child in,
to keep it open, as it were, and sent all the people he could to occupy
the half-furnished rooms of the house. They paid Babette for their
lodging every morning as they went out to breakfast, and returned or
not as they chose, at night. Every three days, the wine merchant or his
son came to Madame Babette, and she accounted to them for the money she
had received. She and her child occupied the porter’s office (in which
the lad slept at nights) and a little miserable bed-room which opened
out of it, and received all the light and air that was admitted through
the door of communication, which was half glass. Madame Babette must
have had a kind of attachment for the De Crequys—her De Crequys, you
understand—Virginie’s father, the Count; for, at some risk to herself,
she had warned both him and his daughter of the danger impending over
them. But he, infatuated, would not believe that his dear Human Race
could ever do him harm; and, as long as he did not fear, Virginie was
not afraid. It was by some ruse, the nature of which I never heard,
that Madame Babette induced Virginie to come to her abode at the very
hour in which the Count had been recognized in the streets, and hurried
off to the Lanterne. It was after Babette had got her there, safe shut
up in the little back den, that she told her what had befallen her
father. From that day, Virginie had never stirred out of the gates,
or crossed the threshold of the porter’s lodge. I do not say that
Madame Babette was tired of her continual presence, or regretted the
impulse which made her rush to the De Crequy’s well-known house—after
being compelled to form one of the mad crowds that saw the Count de
Crequy seized and hung—and hurry his daughter out, through alleys and
backways, until at length she had the orphan safe in her own dark
sleeping-room, and could tell her tale of horror: but Madame Babette
was poorly paid for her porter’s work by her avaricious brother; and
it was hard enough to find food for herself and her growing boy; and,
though the poor girl ate little enough, I dare say, yet there seemed
no end to the burthen that Madame Babette had imposed upon herself:
the De Crequys were plundered, ruined, had become an extinct race,
all but a lonely friendless girl, in broken health and spirits; and,
though she lent no positive encouragement to his suit, yet, at the
time, when Clement reappeared in Paris, Madame Babette was beginning
to think that Virginie might do worse than encourage the attentions
of Monsieur Morin Fils, her nephew, and the wine merchant’s son. Of
course, he and his father had the entree into the conciergerie of the
hotel that belonged to them, in right of being both proprietors and
relations. The son, Morin, had seen Virginie in this manner. He was
fully aware that she was far above him in rank, and guessed from her
whole aspect that she had lost her natural protectors by the terrible
guillotine; but he did not know her exact name or station, nor could he
persuade his aunt to tell him. However, he fell head over ears in love
with her, whether she were princess or peasant; and though at first
there was something about her which made his passionate love conceal
itself with shy, awkward reserve, and then made it only appear in the
guise of deep, respectful devotion; yet, by-and-by,—by the same process
of reasoning, I suppose, that his aunt had gone through even before
him—Jean Morin began to let Hope oust Despair from his heart. Sometimes
he thought—perhaps years hence—that solitary, friendless lady, pent up
in squalor, might turn to him as to a friend and comforter—and then—and
then—. Meanwhile Jean Morin was most attentive to his aunt, whom he
had rather slighted before. He would linger over the accounts; would
bring her little presents; and, above all, he made a pet and favourite
of Pierre, the little cousin, who could tell him about all the ways
of going on of Mam’selle Cannes, as Virginie was called. Pierre was
thoroughly aware of the drift and cause of his cousin’s inquiries; and
was his ardent partisan, as I have heard, even before Jean Morin had
exactly acknowledged his wishes to himself.

“It must have required some patience and much diplomacy, before Clement
de Crequy found out the exact place where his cousin was hidden. The old
gardener took the cause very much to heart; as, judging from my
recollections, I imagine he would have forwarded any fancy, however wild,
of Monsieur Clement’s. (I will tell you afterwards how I came to know
all these particulars so well.)

“After Clement’s return, on two succeeding days, from his dangerous
search, without meeting with any good result, Jacques entreated Monsieur
de Crequy to let him take it in hand. He represented that he, as
gardener for the space of twenty years and more at the Hotel de Crequy,
had a right to be acquainted with all the successive concierges at the
Count’s house; that he should not go among them as a stranger, but as an
old friend, anxious to renew pleasant intercourse; and that if the
Intendant’s story, which he had told Monsieur de Crequy in England, was
true, that mademoiselle was in hiding at the house of a former concierge,
why, something relating to her would surely drop out in the course of
conversation. So he persuaded Clement to remain indoors, while he set
off on his round, with no apparent object but to gossip.

“At night he came home,—having seen mademoiselle. He told Clement much
of the story relating to Madame Babette that I have told to you. Of
course, he had heard nothing of the ambitious hopes of Morin Fils,—hardly
of his existence, I should think. Madame Babette had received him
kindly; although, for some time, she had kept him standing in the
carriage gateway outside her door. But, on his complaining of the
draught and his rheumatism, she had asked him in: first looking round
with some anxiety, to see who was in the room behind her. No one was
there when he entered and sat down. But, in a minute or two, a tall,
thin young lady, with great, sad eyes, and pale cheeks, came from the
inner room, and, seeing him, retired. ‘It is Mademoiselle Cannes,’ said
Madame Babette, rather unnecessarily; for, if he had not been on the
watch for some sign of Mademoiselle de Crequy, he would hardly have
noticed the entrance and withdrawal.

“Clement and the good old gardener were always rather perplexed by Madame
Babette’s evident avoidance of all mention of the De Crequy family. If
she were so much interested in one member as to be willing to undergo the
pains and penalties of a domiciliary visit, it was strange that she never
inquired after the existence of her charge’s friends and relations from
one who might very probably have heard something of them. They settled
that Madame Babette must believe that the Marquise and Clement were dead;
and admired her for her reticence in never speaking of Virginie. The
truth was, I suspect, that she was so desirous of her nephews success by
this time, that she did not like letting any one into the secret of
Virginie’s whereabouts who might interfere with their plan. However, it
was arranged between Clement and his humble friend, that the former,
dressed in the peasant’s clothes in which he had entered Paris, but
smartened up in one or two particulars, as if, although a countryman, he
had money to spare, should go and engage a sleeping-room in the old
Breton Inn; where, as I told you, accommodation for the night was to be
had. This was accordingly done, without exciting Madame Babette’s
suspicions, for she was unacquainted with the Normandy accent, and
consequently did not perceive the exaggeration of it which Monsieur de
Crequy adopted in order to disguise his pure Parisian. But after he had
for two nights slept in a queer dark closet, at the end of one of the
numerous short galleries in the Hotel Duguesclin, and paid his money for
such accommodation each morning at the little bureau under the window of
the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood
outside in the gateway: Madame Babette opened a pane in her window,
counted out the change, gave polite thanks, and shut to the pane with a
clack, before he could ever find out what to say that might be the means
of opening a conversation. Once in the streets, he was in danger from
the bloodthirsty mob, who were ready in those days to hunt to death every
one who looked like a gentleman, as an aristocrat: and Clement, depend
upon it, looked a gentleman, whatever dress he wore. Yet it was unwise
to traverse Paris to his old friend the gardener’s grenier, so he had to
loiter about, where I hardly know. Only he did leave the Hotel
Duguesclin, and he did not go to old Jacques, and there was not another
house in Paris open to him. At the end of two days, he had made out
Pierre’s existence; and he began to try to make friends with the lad.
Pierre was too sharp and shrewd not to suspect something from the
confused attempts at friendliness. It was not for nothing that the
Norman farmer lounged in the court and doorway, and brought home presents
of galette. Pierre accepted the galette, reciprocated the civil
speeches, but kept his eyes open. Once, returning home pretty late at
night, he surprised the Norman studying the shadows on the blind, which
was drawn down when Madame Babette’s lamp was lighted. On going in, he
found Mademoiselle Cannes with his mother, sitting by the table, and
helping in the family mending.

“Pierre was afraid that the Norman had some view upon the money which
his mother, as concierge, collected for her brother. But the money
was all safe next evening, when his cousin, Monsieur Morin Fils,
came to collect it. Madame Babette asked her nephew to sit down, and
skilfully barred the passage to the inner door, so that Virginie, had
she been ever so much disposed, could not have retreated. She sat
silently sewing. All at once the little party were startled by a very
sweet tenor voice, just close to the street window, singing one of the
airs out of Beaumarchais’ operas, which, a few years before, had been
popular all over Paris. But after a few moments of silence, and one or
two remarks, the talking went on again. Pierre, however, noticed an
increased air of abstraction in Virginie, who, I suppose, was recurring
to the last time that she had heard the song, and did not consider, as
her cousin had hoped she would have done, what were the words set to
the air, which he imagined she would remember, and which would have
told her so much. For, only a few years before, Adam’s opera of Richard
le Roi had made the story of the minstrel Blondel and our English Coeur
de Lion familiar to all the opera-going part of the Parisian public,
and Clement had bethought him of establishing a communication with
Virginie by some such means.

“The next night, about the same hour, the same voice was singing outside
the window again. Pierre, who had been irritated by the proceeding the
evening before, as it had diverted Virginie’s attention from his cousin,
who had been doing his utmost to make himself agreeable, rushed out to
the door, just as the Norman was ringing the bell to be admitted for the
night. Pierre looked up and down the street; no one else was to be seen.
The next day, the Norman mollified him somewhat by knocking at the door
of the conciergerie, and begging Monsieur Pierre’s acceptance of some
knee-buckles, which had taken the country farmer’s fancy the day before,
as he had been gazing into the shops, but which, being too small for his
purpose, he took the liberty of offering to Monsieur Pierre. Pierre, a
French boy, inclined to foppery, was charmed, ravished by the beauty of
the present and with monsieur’s goodness, and he began to adjust them to
his breeches immediately, as well as he could, at least, in his mother’s
absence. The Norman, whom Pierre kept carefully on the outside of the
threshold, stood by, as if amused at the boy’s eagerness.

“‘Take care,’ said he, clearly and distinctly; ‘take care, my little
friend, lest you become a fop; and, in that case, some day, years hence,
when your heart is devoted to some young lady, she may be inclined to say
to you’—here he raised his voice—‘No, thank you; when I marry, I marry
a man, not a petit-maitre; I marry a man, who, whatever his position may
be, will add dignity to the human race by his virtues.’ Farther than
that in his quotation Clement dared not go. His sentiments (so much
above the apparent occasion) met with applause from Pierre, who liked to
contemplate himself in the light of a lover, even though it should be a
rejected one, and who hailed the mention of the words ‘virtues’ and
‘dignity of the human race’ as belonging to the cant of a good citizen.

“But Clement was more anxious to know how the invisible Lady took his
speech. There was no sign at the time. But when he returned at night,
he heard a voice, low singing, behind Madame Babette, as she handed him
his candle, the very air he had sung without effect for two nights past.
As if he had caught it up from her murmuring voice, he sang it loudly and
clearly as he crossed the court.

“‘Here is our opera-singer!’ exclaimed Madame Babette. ‘Why, the Norman
grazier sings like Boupre,’ naming a favourite singer at the neighbouring
theatre.

“Pierre was struck by the remark, and quietly resolved to look after the
Norman; but again, I believe, it was more because of his mother’s deposit
of money than with any thought of Virginie.

“However, the next morning, to the wonder of both mother and son,
Mademoiselle Cannes proposed, with much hesitation, to go out and make
some little purchase for herself. A month or two ago, this was what
Madame Babette had been never weary of urging. But now she was as much
surprised as if she had expected Virginie to remain a prisoner in her
rooms all the rest of her life. I suppose she had hoped that her first
time of quitting it would be when she left it for Monsieur Morin’s house
as his wife.

“A quick look from Madame Babette towards Pierre was all that was needed
to encourage the boy to follow her. He went out cautiously. She was at
the end of the street. She looked up and down, as if waiting for some
one. No one was there. Back she came, so swiftly that she nearly caught
Pierre before he could retreat through the porte-cochere. There he
looked out again. The neighbourhood was low and wild, and strange; and
some one spoke to Virginie,—nay, laid his hand upon her arm,—whose
dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a side-street) Pierre did not
know; but, after a start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream,
Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two turned up the side street
whence the man had come. Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of this
street; no one was there: they had disappeared up some of the alleys.
Pierre returned home to excite his mother’s infinite surprise. But they
had hardly done talking, when Virginie returned, with a colour and a
radiance in her face, which they had never seen there since her father’s
death.”




CHAPTER VII.


“I have told you that I heard much of this story from a friend of the
Intendant of the De Crequys, whom he met with in London. Some years
afterwards—the summer before my lord’s death—I was travelling with him
in Devonshire, and we went to see the French prisoners of war on
Dartmoor. We fell into conversation with one of them, whom I found out
to be the very Pierre of whom I had heard before, as having been involved
in the fatal story of Clement and Virginie, and by him I was told much of
their last days, and thus I learnt how to have some sympathy with all
those who were concerned in those terrible events; yes, even with the
younger Morin himself, on whose behalf Pierre spoke warmly, even after so
long a time had elapsed.

“For when the younger Morin called at the porter’s lodge, on the evening
of the day when Virginie had gone out for the first time after so many
months’ confinement to the conciergerie, he was struck with the
improvement in her appearance. It seems to have hardly been that he
thought her beauty greater: for, in addition to the fact that she was not
beautiful, Morin had arrived at that point of being enamoured when it
does not signify whether the beloved one is plain or handsome—she has
enchanted one pair of eyes, which henceforward see her through their own
medium. But Morin noticed the faint increase of colour and light in her
countenance. It was as though she had broken through her thick cloud of
hopeless sorrow, and was dawning forth into a happier life. And so,
whereas during her grief, he had revered and respected it even to a point
of silent sympathy, now that she was gladdened, his heart rose on the
wings of strengthened hopes. Even in the dreary monotony of this
existence in his Aunt Babette’s conciergerie, Time had not failed in his
work, and now, perhaps, soon he might humbly strive to help Time. The
very next day he returned—on some pretence of business—to the Hotel
Duguesclin, and made his aunt’s room, rather than his aunt herself, a
present of roses and geraniums tied up in a bouquet with a tricolor
ribbon. Virginie was in the room, sitting at the coarse sewing she liked
to do for Madame Babette. He saw her eyes brighten at the sight of the
flowers: she asked his aunt to let her arrange them; he saw her untie the
ribbon, and with a gesture of dislike, throw it on the ground, and give
it a kick with her little foot, and even in this girlish manner of
insulting his dearest prejudices, he found something to admire.

“As he was coming out, Pierre stopped him. The lad had been trying to
arrest his cousin’s attention by futile grimaces and signs played off
behind Virginie’s back: but Monsieur Morin saw nothing but Mademoiselle
Cannes. However, Pierre was not to be baffled, and Monsieur Morin found
him in waiting just outside the threshold. With his finger on his lips,
Pierre walked on tiptoe by his companion’s side till they would have been
long past sight or hearing of the conciergerie, even had the inhabitants
devoted themselves to the purposes of spying or listening.

“‘Chut!’ said Pierre, at last. ‘She goes out walking.’

“‘Well?’ said Monsieur Morin, half curious, half annoyed at being
disturbed in the delicious reverie of the future into which he longed to
fall.

“‘Well! It is not well. It is bad.’

“‘Why? I do not ask who she is, but I have my ideas. She is an
aristocrat. Do the people about here begin to suspect her?’

“‘No, no!’ said Pierre. ‘But she goes out walking. She has gone these
two mornings. I have watched her. She meets a man—she is friends with
him, for she talks to him as eagerly as he does to her—mamma cannot tell
who he is.’

“‘Has my aunt seen him?’

“‘No, not so much as a fly’s wing of him. I myself have only seen his
back. It strikes me like a familiar back, and yet I cannot think who it
is. But they separate with sudden darts, like two birds who have been
together to feed their young ones. One moment they are in close talk,
their heads together chuchotting; the next he has turned up some
bye-street, and Mademoiselle Cannes is close upon me—has almost caught
me.’

“‘But she did not see you?’ inquired Monsieur Morin, in so altered a
voice that Pierre gave him one of his quick penetrating looks. He was
struck by the way in which his cousin’s features—always coarse and
common-place—had become contracted and pinched; struck, too, by the
livid look on his sallow complexion. But as if Morin was conscious of
the manner in which his face belied his feelings, he made an effort, and
smiled, and patted Pierre’s head, and thanked him for his intelligence,
and gave him a five-franc piece, and bade him go on with his observations
of Mademoiselle Cannes’ movements, and report all to him.

“Pierre returned home with a light heart, tossing up his five-franc piece
as he ran. Just as he was at the conciergerie door, a great tall man
bustled past him, and snatched his money away from him, looking back with
a laugh, which added insult to injury. Pierre had no redress; no one had
witnessed the impudent theft, and if they had, no one to be seen in the
street was strong enough to give him redress. Besides, Pierre had seen
enough of the state of the streets of Paris at that time to know that
friends, not enemies, were required, and the man had a bad air about him.
But all these considerations did not keep Pierre from bursting out into a
fit of crying when he was once more under his mother’s roof; and
Virginie, who was alone there (Madame Babette having gone out to make her
daily purchases), might have imagined him pommeled to death by the
loudness of his sobs.

“‘What is the matter?’ asked she. ‘Speak, my child. What hast thou
done?’

“‘He has robbed me! he has robbed me!’ was all Pierre could gulp out.

“‘Robbed thee! and of what, my poor boy?’ said Virginie, stroking his
hair gently.

“‘Of my five-franc piece—of a five-franc piece,’ said Pierre, correcting
himself, and leaving out the word my, half fearful lest Virginie should
inquire how he became possessed of such a sum, and for what services it
had been given him. But, of course, no such idea came into her head, for
it would have been impertinent, and she was gentle-born.

“‘Wait a moment, my lad,’ and going to the one small drawer in the inner
apartment, which held all her few possessions, she brought back a little
ring—a ring just with one ruby in it—which she had worn in the days
when she cared to wear jewels. ‘Take this,’ said she, ‘and run with it
to a jeweller’s. It is but a poor, valueless thing, but it will bring
you in your five francs, at any rate. Go! I desire you.’

“‘But I cannot,’ said the boy, hesitating; some dim sense of honour
flitting through his misty morals.

“‘Yes, you must!’ she continued, urging him with her hand to the door.
‘Run! if it brings in more than five francs, you shall return the surplus
to me.’

“Thus tempted by her urgency, and, I suppose, reasoning with himself to
the effect that he might as well have the money, and then see whether he
thought it right to act as a spy upon her or not—the one action did not
pledge him to the other, nor yet did she make any conditions with her
gift—Pierre went off with her ring; and, after repaying himself his five
francs, he was enabled to bring Virginie back two more, so well had he
managed his affairs. But, although the whole transaction did not leave
him bound, in any way, to discover or forward Virginie’s wishes, it did
leave him pledged, according to his code, to act according to her
advantage, and he considered himself the judge of the best course to be
pursued to this end. And, moreover, this little kindness attached him to
her personally. He began to think how pleasant it would be to have so
kind and generous a person for a relation; how easily his troubles might
be borne if he had always such a ready helper at hand; how much he should
like to make her like him, and come to him for the protection of his
masculine power! First of all his duties, as her self-appointed squire,
came the necessity of finding out who her strange new acquaintance was.
Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was
previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when
any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves
believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty.

“In the course of a very few days, Pierre had so circumvented Virginie as
to have discovered that her new friend was no other than the Norman
farmer in a different dress. This was a great piece of knowledge to
impart to Morin. But Pierre was not prepared for the immediate physical
effect it had on his cousin. Morin sat suddenly down on one of the seats
in the Boulevards—it was there Pierre had met with him accidentally—when
he heard who it was that Virginie met. I do not suppose the man had the
faintest idea of any relationship or even previous acquaintanceship
between Clement and Virginie. If he thought of anything beyond the mere
fact presented to him, that his idol was in communication with another,
younger, handsomer man than himself, it must have been that the Norman
farmer had seen her at the conciergerie, and had been attracted by her,
and, as was but natural, had tried to make her acquaintance, and had
succeeded. But, from what Pierre told me, I should not think that even
this much thought passed through Morin’s mind. He seems to have been a
man of rare and concentrated attachments; violent, though restrained and
undemonstrative passions; and, above all, a capability of jealousy, of
which his dark oriental complexion must have been a type. I could fancy
that if he had married Virginie, he would have coined his life-blood for
luxuries to make her happy; would have watched over and petted her, at
every sacrifice to himself, as long as she would have been content to
live with him alone. But, as Pierre expressed it to me: ‘When I saw what
my cousin was, when I learned his nature too late, I perceived that he
would have strangled a bird if she whom he loved was attracted by it from
him.’

“When Pierre had told Morin of his discovery, Morin sat down, as I said,
quite suddenly, as if he had been shot. He found out that the first
meeting between the Norman and Virginie was no accidental, isolated
circumstance. Pierre was torturing him with his accounts of daily
rendezvous: if but for a moment, they were seeing each other every day,
sometimes twice a day. And Virginie could speak to this man, though to
himself she was coy and reserved as hardly to utter a sentence. Pierre
caught these broken words while his cousin’s complexion grew more and
more livid, and then purple, as if some great effect were produced on his
circulation by the news he had just heard. Pierre was so startled by his
cousin’s wandering, senseless eyes, and otherwise disordered looks, that
he rushed into a neighbouring cabaret for a glass of absinthe, which he
paid for, as he recollected afterwards, with a portion of Virginie’s five
francs. By-and-by Morin recovered his natural appearance; but he was
gloomy and silent; and all that Pierre could get out of him was, that the
Norman farmer should not sleep another night at the Hotel Duguesclin,
giving him such opportunities of passing and repassing by the
conciergerie door. He was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to repay
Pierre the half franc he had spent on the absinthe, which Pierre
perceived, and seems to have noted down in the ledger of his mind as on
Virginie’s balance of favour.

“Altogether, he was much disappointed at his cousin’s mode of receiving
intelligence, which the lad thought worth another five-franc piece at
least; or, if not paid for in money, to be paid for in open-mouthed
confidence and expression of feeling, that he was, for a time, so far a
partisan of Virginie’s—unconscious Virginie—against his cousin, as to
feel regret when the Norman returned no more to his night’s lodging, and
when Virginie’s eager watch at the crevice of the closely-drawn blind
ended only with a sigh of disappointment. If it had not been for his
mother’s presence at the time, Pierre thought he should have told her
all. But how far was his mother in his cousin’s confidence as regarded
the dismissal of the Norman?

“In a few days, however, Pierre felt almost sure that they had
established some new means of communication. Virginie went out for a
short time every day; but though Pierre followed her as closely as he
could without exciting her observation, he was unable to discover what
kind of intercourse she held with the Norman. She went, in general, the
same short round among the little shops in the neighbourhood; not
entering any, but stopping at two or three. Pierre afterwards remembered
that she had invariably paused at the nosegays displayed in a certain
window, and studied them long: but, then, she stopped and looked at caps,
hats, fashions, confectionery (all of the humble kind common in that
quarter), so how should he have known that any particular attraction
existed among the flowers? Morin came more regularly than ever to his
aunt’s; but Virginie was apparently unconscious that she was the
attraction. She looked healthier and more hopeful than she had done for
months, and her manners to all were gentler and not so reserved. Almost
as if she wished to manifest her gratitude to Madame Babette for her long
continuance of kindness, the necessity for which was nearly ended,
Virginie showed an unusual alacrity in rendering the old woman any little
service in her power, and evidently tried to respond to Monsieur Morin’s
civilities, he being Madame Babette’s nephew, with a soft graciousness
which must have made one of her principal charms; for all who knew her
speak of the fascination of her manners, so winning and attentive to
others, while yet her opinions, and often her actions, were of so decided
a character. For, as I have said, her beauty was by no means great; yet
every man who came near her seems to have fallen into the sphere of her
influence. Monsieur Morin was deeper than ever in love with her during
these last few days: he was worked up into a state capable of any
sacrifice, either of himself or others, so that he might obtain her at
last. He sat ‘devouring her with his eyes’ (to use Pierre’s expression)
whenever she could not see him; but, if she looked towards him, he looked
to the ground—anywhere—away from her and almost stammered in his
replies if she addressed any question to him.

“He had been, I should think, ashamed of his extreme agitation on the
Boulevards, for Pierre thought that he absolutely shunned him for these
few succeeding days. He must have believed that he had driven the Nor

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