I am ashamed to say what feeling became strongest in my mind about this
time; next to the sympathy we all of us felt for my dear lady in her deep
sorrow, I mean; for that was greater and stronger than anything else,
however contradictory you may think it, when you hear all.
It might arise from my being so far from well at the time, which produced
a diseased mind in a diseased body; but I was absolutely jealous for my
father’s memory, when I saw how many signs of grief there were for my
lord’s death, he having done next to nothing for the village and parish,
which now changed, as it were, its daily course of life, because his
lordship died in a far-off city. My father had spent the best years of
his manhood in labouring hard, body and soul, for the people amongst whom
he lived. His family, of course, claimed the first place in his heart;
he would have been good for little, even in the way of benevolence, if
they had not. But close after them he cared for his parishioners, and
neighbours. And yet, when he died, though the church bells tolled, and
smote upon our hearts with hard, fresh pain at every beat, the sounds of
every-day life still went on, close pressing around us,—carts and
carriages, street-cries, distant barrel-organs (the kindly neighbours
kept them out of our street): life, active, noisy life, pressed on our
acute consciousness of Death, and jarred upon it as on a quick nerve.
And when we went to church,—my father’s own church,—though the pulpit
cushions were black, and many of the congregation had put on some humble
sign of mourning, yet it did not alter the whole material aspect of the
place. And yet what was Lord Ludlow’s relation to Hanbury, compared to
my father’s work and place in—?
O! it was very wicked in me! I think if I had seen my lady,—if I had
dared to ask to go to her, I should not have felt so miserable, so
discontented. But she sat in her own room, hung with black, all, even
over the shutters. She saw no light but that which was
artificial—candles, lamps, and the like—for more than a month. Only
Adams went near her. Mr. Gray was not admitted, though he called daily.
Even Mrs. Medlicott did not see her for near a fortnight. The sight of
my lady’s griefs, or rather the recollection of it, made Mrs. Medlicott
talk far more than was her wont. She told us, with many tears, and much
gesticulation, even speaking German at times, when her English would not
flow, that my lady sat there, a white figure in the middle of the
darkened room; a shaded lamp near her, the light of which fell on an open
Bible,—the great family Bible. It was not open at any chapter or
consoling verse; but at the page whereon were registered the births of
her nine children. Five had died in infancy,—sacrificed to the cruel
system which forbade the mother to suckle her babies. Four had lived
longer; Urian had been the first to die, Ughtred-Mortimar, Earl Ludlow,
the last.
My lady did not cry, Mrs. Medlicott said. She was quite composed; very
still, very silent. She put aside everything that savoured of mere
business: sent people to Mr. Horner for that. But she was proudly alive
to every possible form which might do honour to the last of her race.
In those days, expresses were slow things, and forms still slower. Before
my lady’s directions could reach Vienna, my lord was buried. There was
some talk (so Mrs. Medlicott said) about taking the body up, and bringing
him to Hanbury. But his executors,—connections on the Ludlow
side,—demurred to this. If he were removed to England, he must be
carried on to Scotland, and interred with his Monkshaven forefathers. My
lady, deeply hurt, withdrew from the discussion, before it degenerated to
an unseemly contest. But all the more, for this understood mortification
of my lady’s, did the whole village and estate of Hanbury assume every
outward sign of mourning. The church bells tolled morning and evening.
The church itself was draped in black inside. Hatchments were placed
everywhere, where hatchments could be put. All the tenantry spoke in
hushed voices for more than a week, scarcely daring to observe that all
flesh, even that of an Earl Ludlow, and the last of the Hanburys, was but
grass after all. The very Fighting Lion closed its front door, front
shutters it had none, and those who needed drink stole in at the back,
and were silent and maudlin over their cups, instead of riotous and
noisy. Miss Galindo’s eyes were swollen up with crying, and she told me,
with a fresh burst of tears, that even hump-backed Sally had been found
sobbing over her Bible, and using a pocket-handkerchief for the first
time in her life; her aprons having hitherto stood her in the necessary
stead, but not being sufficiently in accordance with etiquette to be used
when mourning over an earl’s premature decease.
If it was this way out of the Hall, “you might work it by the rule of
three,” as Miss Galindo used to say, and judge what it was in the Hall.
We none of us spoke but in a whisper: we tried not to eat; and indeed the
shock had been so really great, and we did really care so much for my
lady, that for some days we had but little appetite. But after that, I
fear our sympathy grew weaker, while our flesh grew stronger. But we
still spoke low, and our hearts ached whenever we thought of my lady
sitting there alone in the darkened room, with the light ever falling on
that one solemn page.
We wished, O how I wished that she would see Mr. Gray! But Adams said,
she thought my lady ought to have a bishop come to see her. Still no one
had authority enough to send for one.
Mr. Horner all this time was suffering as much as any one. He was too
faithful a servant of the great Hanbury family, though now the family had
dwindled down to a fragile old lady, not to mourn acutely over its
probable extinction. He had, besides, a deeper sympathy and reverence
with, and for, my lady, in all things, than probably he ever cared to
show, for his manners were always measured and cold. He suffered from
sorrow. He also suffered from wrong. My lord’s executors kept writing
to him continually. My lady refused to listen to mere business, saying
she intrusted all to him. But the “all” was more complicated than I ever
thoroughly understood. As far as I comprehended the case, it was
something of this kind:—There had been a mortgage raised on my lady’s
property of Hanbury, to enable my lord, her husband, to spend money in
cultivating his Scotch estates, after some new fashion that required
capital. As long as my lord, her son, lived, who was to succeed to both
the estates after her death, this did not signify; so she had said and
felt; and she had refused to take any steps to secure the repayment of
capital, or even the payment of the interest of the mortgage from the
possible representatives and possessors of the Scotch estates, to the
possible owner of the Hanbury property; saying it ill became her to
calculate on the contingency of her son’s death.
But he had died childless, unmarried. The heir of the Monkshaven
property was an Edinburgh advocate, a far-away kinsman of my lord’s: the
Hanbury property, at my lady’s death, would go to the descendants of a
third son of the Squire Hanbury in the days of Queen Anne.
This complication of affairs was most grievous to Mr. Horner. He had
always been opposed to the mortgage; had hated the payment of the
interest, as obliging my lady to practise certain economies which, though
she took care to make them as personal as possible, he disliked as
derogatory to the family. Poor Mr. Horner! He was so cold and hard in
his manner, so curt and decisive in his speech, that I don’t think we any
of us did him justice. Miss Galindo was almost the first, at this time,
to speak a kind word of him, or to take thought of him at all, any
farther than to get out of his way when we saw him approaching.
“I don’t think Mr. Horner is well,” she said one day; about three weeks
after we had heard of my lord’s death. “He sits resting his head on his
hand, and hardly hears me when I speak to him.”
But I thought no more of it, as Miss Galindo did not name it again. My
lady came amongst us once more. From elderly she had become old; a
little, frail, old lady, in heavy black drapery, never speaking about nor
alluding to her great sorrow; quieter, gentler, paler than ever before;
and her eyes dim with much weeping, never witnessed by mortal.
She had seen Mr. Gray at the expiration of the month of deep retirement.
But I do not think that even to him she had said one word of her own
particular individual sorrow. All mention of it seemed buried deep for
evermore. One day, Mr. Horner sent word that he was too much indisposed
to attend to his usual business at the Hall; but he wrote down some
directions and requests to Miss Galindo, saying that he would be at his
office early the next morning. The next morning he was dead.
Miss Galindo told my lady. Miss Galindo herself cried plentifully, but
my lady, although very much distressed, could not cry. It seemed a
physical impossibility, as if she had shed all the tears in her power.
Moreover, I almost think her wonder was far greater that she herself
lived than that Mr. Horner died. It was almost natural that so faithful
a servant should break his heart, when the family he belonged to lost
their stay, their heir, and their last hope.
Yes! Mr. Horner was a faithful servant. I do not think there are many
so faithful now; but perhaps that is an old woman’s fancy of mine. When
his will came to be examined, it was discovered that, soon after Harry
Gregson’s accident, Mr. Horner had left the few thousands (three, I
think,) of which he was possessed, in trust for Harry’s benefit, desiring
his executors to see that the lad was well educated in certain things,
for which Mr. Horner had thought that he had shown especial aptitude; and
there was a kind of implied apology to my lady in one sentence where he
stated that Harry’s lameness would prevent his being ever able to gain
his living by the exercise of any mere bodily faculties, “as had been
wished by a lady whose wishes” he, the testator, “was bound to regard.”
But there was a codicil in the will, dated since Lord Ludlow’s
death—feebly written by Mr. Horner himself, as if in preparation only
for some more formal manner of bequest: or, perhaps, only as a mere
temporary arrangement till he could see a lawyer, and have a fresh will
made. In this he revoked his previous bequest to Harry Gregson. He only
left two hundred pounds to Mr. Gray to be used, as that gentleman thought
best, for Henry Gregson’s benefit. With this one exception, he
bequeathed all the rest of his savings to my lady, with a hope that they
might form a nest-egg, as it were, towards the paying off of the mortgage
which had been such a grief to him during his life. I may not repeat all
this in lawyer’s phrase; I heard it through Miss Galindo, and she might
make mistakes. Though, indeed, she was very clear-headed, and soon
earned the respect of Mr. Smithson, my lady’s lawyer from Warwick. Mr.
Smithson knew Miss Galindo a little before, both personally and by
reputation; but I don’t think he was prepared to find her installed as
steward’s clerk, and, at first, he was inclined to treat her, in this
capacity, with polite contempt. But Miss Galindo was both a lady and a
spirited, sensible woman, and she could put aside her self-indulgence in
eccentricity of speech and manner whenever she chose. Nay more; she was
usually so talkative, that if she had not been amusing and warm-hearted,
one might have thought her wearisome occasionally. But to meet Mr.
Smithson she came out daily in her Sunday gown; she said no more than was
required in answer to his questions; her books and papers were in
thorough order, and methodically kept; her statements of matters-of-fact
accurate, and to be relied on. She was amusingly conscious of her
victory over his contempt of a woman-clerk and his preconceived opinion
of her unpractical eccentricity.
“Let me alone,” said she, one day when she came in to sit awhile with me.
“That man is a good man—a sensible man—and I have no doubt he is a good
lawyer; but he can’t fathom women yet. I make no doubt he’ll go back to
Warwick, and never give credit again to those people who made him think
me half-cracked to begin with. O, my dear, he did! He showed it twenty
times worse than my poor dear master ever did. It was a form to be gone
through to please my lady, and, for her sake, he would hear my statements
and see my books. It was keeping a woman out of harm’s way, at any rate,
to let her fancy herself useful. I read the man. And, I am thankful to
say, he cannot read me. At least, only one side of me. When I see an
end to be gained, I can behave myself accordingly. Here was a man who
thought that a woman in a black silk gown was a respectable, orderly kind
of person; and I was a woman in a black silk gown. He believed that a
woman could not write straight lines, and required a man to tell her that
two and two made four. I was not above ruling my books, and had Cocker a
little more at my fingers’ ends than he had. But my greatest triumph has
been holding my tongue. He would have thought nothing of my books, or my
sums, or my black silk gown, if I had spoken unasked. So I have buried
more sense in my bosom these ten days than ever I have uttered in the
whole course of my life before. I have been so curt, so abrupt, so
abominably dull, that I’ll answer for it he thinks me worthy to be a man.
But I must go back to him, my dear, so good-bye to conversation and you.”
But though Mr. Smithson might be satisfied with Miss Galindo, I am afraid
she was the only part of the affair with which he was content. Everything
else went wrong. I could not say who told me so—but the conviction of
this seemed to pervade the house. I never knew how much we had all
looked up to the silent, gruff Mr. Horner for decisions, until he was
gone. My lady herself was a pretty good woman of business, as women of
business go. Her father, seeing that she would be the heiress of the
Hanbury property, had given her a training which was thought unusual in
those days, and she liked to feel herself queen regnant, and to have to
decide in all cases between herself and her tenantry. But, perhaps, Mr.
Horner would have done it more wisely; not but what she always attended
to him at last. She would begin by saying, pretty clearly and promptly,
what she would have done, and what she would not have done. If Mr.
Horner approved of it, he bowed, and set about obeying her directly; if
he disapproved of it, he bowed, and lingered so long before he obeyed
her, that she forced his opinion out of him with her “Well, Mr. Horner!
and what have you to say against it?” For she always understood his
silence as well as if he had spoken. But the estate was pressed for
ready money, and Mr. Horner had grown gloomy and languid since the death
of his wife, and even his own personal affairs were not in the order in
which they had been a year or two before, for his old clerk had gradually
become superannuated, or, at any rate, unable by the superfluity of his
own energy and wit to supply the spirit that was wanting in Mr. Horner.
Day after day Mr. Smithson seemed to grow more fidgety, more annoyed at
the state of affairs. Like every one else employed by Lady Ludlow, as
far as I could learn, he had an hereditary tie to the Hanbury family. As
long as the Smithsons had been lawyers, they had been lawyers to the
Hanburys; always coming in on all great family occasions, and better able
to understand the characters, and connect the links of what had once been
a large and scattered family, than any individual thereof had ever been.
As long as a man was at the head of the Hanburys, the lawyers had simply
acted as servants, and had only given their advice when it was required.
But they had assumed a different position on the memorable occasion of
the mortgage: they had remonstrated against it. My lady had resented
this remonstrance, and a slight, unspoken coolness had existed between
her and the father of this Mr. Smithson ever since.
I was very sorry for my lady. Mr. Smithson was inclined to blame Mr.
Horner for the disorderly state in which he found some of the outlying
farms, and for the deficiencies in the annual payment of rents. Mr.
Smithson had too much good feeling to put this blame into words; but my
lady’s quick instinct led her to reply to a thought, the existence of
which she perceived; and she quietly told the truth, and explained how
she had interfered repeatedly to prevent Mr. Horner from taking certain
desirable steps, which were discordant to her hereditary sense of right
and wrong between landlord and tenant. She also spoke of the want of
ready money as a misfortune that could be remedied, by more economical
personal expenditure on her own part; by which individual saving, it was
possible that a reduction of fifty pounds a year might have been
accomplished. But as soon as Mr. Smithson touched on larger economies,
such as either affected the welfare of others, or the honour and standing
of the great House of Hanbury, she was inflexible. Her establishment
consisted of somewhere about forty servants, of whom nearly as many as
twenty were unable to perform their work properly, and yet would have
been hurt if they had been dismissed; so they had the credit of
fulfilling duties, while my lady paid and kept their substitutes. Mr.
Smithson made a calculation, and would have saved some hundreds a year by
pensioning off these old servants. But my lady would not hear of it.
Then, again, I know privately that he urged her to allow some of us to
return to our homes. Bitterly we should have regretted the separation
from Lady Ludlow; but we would have gone back gladly, had we known at the
time that her circumstances required it: but she would not listen to the
proposal for a moment.
“If I cannot act justly towards every one, I will give up a plan which
has been a source of much satisfaction; at least, I will not carry it out
to such an extent in future. But to these young ladies, who do me the
favour to live with me at present, I stand pledged. I cannot go back
from my word, Mr. Smithson. We had better talk no more of this.”
As she spoke, she entered the room where I lay. She and Mr. Smithson
were coming for some papers contained in the bureau. They did not know I
was there, and Mr. Smithson started a little when he saw me, as he must
have been aware that I had overheard something. But my lady did not
change a muscle of her face. All the world might overhear her kind,
just, pure sayings, and she had no fear of their misconstruction. She
came up to me, and kissed me on the forehead, and then went to search for
the required papers.
“I rode over the Connington farms yesterday, my lady. I must say I was
quite grieved to see the condition they are in; all the land that is not
waste is utterly exhausted with working successive white crops. Not a
pinch of manure laid on the ground for years. I must say that a greater
contrast could never have been presented than that between Harding’s farm
and the next fields—fences in perfect order, rotation crops, sheep
eating down the turnips on the waste lands—everything that could be
desired.”
“Whose farm is that?” asked my lady.
“Why, I am sorry to say, it was on none of your ladyship’s that I saw
such good methods adopted. I hoped it was, I stopped my horse to
inquire. A queer-looking man, sitting on his horse like a tailor,
watching his men with a couple of the sharpest eyes I ever saw, and
dropping his h’s at every word, answered my question, and told me it was
his. I could not go on asking him who he was; but I fell into
conversation with him, and I gathered that he had earned some money in
trade in Birmingham, and had bought the estate (five hundred acres, I
think he said,) on which he was born, and now was setting himself to
cultivate it in downright earnest, going to Holkham and Woburn, and half
the country over, to get himself up on the subject.”
“It would be Brooke, that dissenting baker from Birmingham,” said my lady
in her most icy tone. “Mr. Smithson, I am sorry I have been detaining
you so long, but I think these are the letters you wished to see.”
If her ladyship thought by this speech to quench Mr. Smithson she was
mistaken. Mr. Smithson just looked at the letters, and went on with the
old subject.
“Now, my lady, it struck me that if you had such a man to take poor
Horner’s place, he would work the rents and the land round most
satisfactorily. I should not despair of inducing this very man to
undertake the work. I should not mind speaking to him myself on the
subject, for we got capital friends over a snack of luncheon that he
asked me to share with him.”
Lady Ludlow fixed her eyes on Mr. Smithson as he spoke, and never took
them off his face until he had ended. She was silent a minute before she
answered.
“You are very good, Mr. Smithson, but I need not trouble you with any
such arrangements. I am going to write this afternoon to Captain James,
a friend of one of my sons, who has, I hear, been severely wounded at
Trafalgar, to request him to honour me by accepting Mr. Horner’s
situation.”
“A Captain James! A captain in the navy! going to manage your ladyship’s
estate!”
“If he will be so kind. I shall esteem it a condescension on his part;
but I hear that he will have to resign his profession, his state of
health is so bad, and a country life is especially prescribed for him. I
am in some hopes of tempting him here, as I learn he has but little to
depend on if he gives up his profession.”
“A Captain James! an invalid captain!”
“You think I am asking too great a favour,” continued my lady. (I never
could tell how far it was simplicity, or how far a kind of innocent
malice, that made her misinterpret Mr. Smithson’s words and looks as she
did.) “But he is not a post-captain, only a commander, and his pension
will be but small. I may be able, by offering him country air and a
healthy occupation, to restore him to health.”
“Occupation! My lady, may I ask how a sailor is to manage land? Why,
your tenants will laugh him to scorn.”
“My tenants, I trust, will not behave so ill as to laugh at any one I
choose to set over them. Captain James has had experience in managing
men. He has remarkable practical talents, and great common-sense, as I
hear from every one. But, whatever he may be, the affair rests between
him and myself. I can only say I shall esteem myself fortunate if he
comes.”
There was no more to be said, after my lady spoke in this manner. I had
heard her mention Captain James before, as a middy who had been very kind
to her son Urian. I thought I remembered then, that she had mentioned
that his family circumstances were not very prosperous. But, I confess,
that little as I knew of the management of land, I quite sided with Mr.
Smithson. He, silently prohibited from again speaking to my lady on the
subject, opened his mind to Miss Galindo, from whom I was pretty sure to
hear all the opinions and news of the household and village. She had
taken a great fancy to me, because she said I talked so agreeably. I
believe it was because I listened so well.
“Well, have you heard the news,” she began, “about this Captain James? A
sailor,—with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear,
deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his
successor! My dear, I have often thought of the postman’s bringing me a
letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss in heaven. But, really, I
think Mr. Horner may be thankful he has got out of the reach of news; or
else he would hear of Mr. Smithson’s having made up to the Birmingham
baker, and of his one-legged captain, coming to dot-and-go-one over the
estate. I suppose he will look after the labourers through a spy-glass.
I only hope he won’t stick in the mud with his wooden leg; for I, for
one, won’t help him out. Yes, I would,” said she, correcting herself; “I
would, for my lady’s sake.”
“But are you sure he has a wooden leg?” asked I. “I heard Lady Ludlow
tell Mr. Smithson about him, and she only spoke of him as wounded.”
“Well, sailors are almost always wounded in the leg. Look at Greenwich
Hospital! I should say there were twenty one-legged pensioners to one
without an arm there. But say he has got half a dozen legs: what has he
to do with managing land? I shall think him very impudent if he comes,
taking advantage of my lady’s kind heart.”
However, come he did. In a month from that time, the carriage was sent
to meet Captain James; just as three years before it had been sent to
meet me. His coming had been so much talked about that we were all as
curious as possible to see him, and to know how so unusual an experiment,
as it seemed to us, would answer. But, before I tell you anything about
our new agent, I must speak of something quite as interesting, and I
really think quite as important. And this was my lady’s making friends
with Harry Gregson. I do believe she did it for Mr. Horner’s sake; but,
of course, I can only conjecture why my lady did anything. But I heard
one day, from Mary Legard, that my lady had sent for Harry to come and
see her, if he was well enough to walk so far; and the next day he was
shown into the room he had been in once before under such unlucky
circumstances.
The lad looked pale enough, as he stood propping himself up on his
crutch, and the instant my lady saw him, she bade John Footman place a
stool for him to sit down upon while she spoke to him. It might be his
paleness that gave his whole face a more refined and gentle look; but I
suspect it was that the boy was apt to take impressions, and that Mr.
Horner’s grave, dignified ways, and Mr. Gray’s tender and quiet manners,
had altered him; and then the thoughts of illness and death seem to turn
many of us into gentlemen, and gentlewomen, as long as such thoughts are
in our minds. We cannot speak loudly or angrily at such times; we are
not apt to be eager about mere worldly things, for our very awe at our
quickened sense of the nearness of the invisible world, makes us calm and
serene about the petty trifles of to-day. At least, I know that was the
explanation Mr. Gray once gave me of what we all thought the great
improvement in Harry Gregson’s way of behaving.
My lady hesitated so long about what she had best say, that Harry grew a
little frightened at her silence. A few months ago it would have
surprised me more than it did now; but since my lord her son’s death, she
had seemed altered in many ways,—more uncertain and distrustful of
herself, as it were.
At last she said, and I think the tears were in her eyes: “My poor little
fellow, you have had a narrow escape with your life since I saw you
last.”
To this there was nothing to be said but “Yes;” and again there was
silence.
“And you have lost a good, kind friend, in Mr. Horner.”
The boy’s lips worked, and I think he said, “Please, don’t.” But I can’t
be sure; at any rate, my lady went on:
“And so have I,—a good, kind friend, he was to both of us; and to you he
wished to show his kindness in even a more generous way than he has done.
Mr. Gray has told you about his legacy to you, has he not?”
There was no sign of eager joy on the lad’s face, as if he realised the
power and pleasure of having what to him must have seemed like a fortune.
“Mr. Gray said as how he had left me a matter of money.”
“Yes, he has left you two hundred pounds.”
“But I would rather have had him alive, my lady,” he burst out, sobbing
as if his heart would break.
“My lad, I believe you. We would rather have had our dead alive, would
we not? and there is nothing in money that can comfort us for their loss.
But you know—Mr. Gray has told you—who has appointed all our times to
die. Mr. Horner was a good, just man; and has done well and kindly, both
by me and you. You perhaps do not know” (and now I understood what my
lady had been making up her mind to say to Harry, all the time she was
hesitating how to begin) “that Mr. Horner, at one time, meant to leave
you a great deal more; probably all he had, with the exception of a
legacy to his old clerk, Morrison. But he knew that this estate—on
which my forefathers had lived for six hundred years—was in debt, and
that I had no immediate chance of paying off this debt; and yet he felt
that it was a very sad thing for an old property like this to belong in
part to those other men, who had lent the money. You understand me, I
think, my little man?” said she, questioning Harry’s face.
He had left off crying, and was trying to understand, with all his might
and main; and I think he had got a pretty good general idea of the state
of affairs; though probably he was puzzled by the term “the estate being
in debt.” But he was sufficiently interested to want my lady to go on;
and he nodded his head at her, to signify this to her.
“So Mr. Horner took the money which he once meant to be yours, and has
left the greater part of it to me, with the intention of helping me to
pay off this debt I have told you about. It will go a long way, and I
shall try hard to save the rest, and then I shall die happy in leaving
the land free from debt.” She paused. “But I shall not die happy in
thinking of you. I do not know if having money, or even having a great
estate and much honour, is a good thing for any of us. But God sees fit
that some of us should be called to this condition, and it is our duty
then to stand by our posts, like brave soldiers. Now, Mr. Horner
intended you to have this money first. I shall only call it borrowing
from you, Harry Gregson, if I take it and use it to pay off the debt. I
shall pay Mr. Gray interest on this money, because he is to stand as your
guardian, as it were, till you come of age; and he must fix what ought to
be done with it, so as to fit you for spending the principal rightly when
the estate can repay it you. I suppose, now, it will be right for you to
be educated. That will be another snare that will come with your money.
But have courage, Harry. Both education and money may be used rightly,
if we only pray against the temptations they bring with them.”
Harry could make no answer, though I am sure he understood it all. My
lady wanted to get him to talk to her a little, by way of becoming
acquainted with what was passing in his mind; and she asked him what he
would like to have done with his money, if he could have part of it now?
To such a simple question, involving no talk about feelings, his answer
came readily enough.
“Build a cottage for father, with stairs in it, and give Mr. Gray a
school-house. O, father does so want Mr. Gray for to have his wish!
Father saw all the stones lying quarried and hewn on Farmer Hale’s land;
Mr. Gray had paid for them all himself. And father said he would work
night and day, and little Tommy should carry mortar, if the parson would
let him, sooner than that he should be fretted and frabbed as he was,
with no one giving him a helping hand or a kind word.”
Harry knew nothing of my lady’s part in the affair; that was very clear.
My lady kept silence.
“If I might have a piece of my money, I would buy land from Mr. Brooks;
he has got a bit to sell just at the corner of Hendon Lane, and I would
give it to Mr. Gray; and, perhaps, if your ladyship thinks I may be
learned again, I might grow up into the schoolmaster.”
“You are a good boy,” said my lady. “But there are more things to be
thought of, in carrying out such a plan, than you are aware of. However,
it shall be tried.”
“The school, my lady?” I exclaimed, almost thinking she did not know what
she was saying.
“Yes, the school. For Mr. Horner’s sake, for Mr. Gray’s sake, and last,
not least, for this lad’s sake, I will give the new plan a trial. Ask
Mr. Gray to come up to me this afternoon about the land he wants. He
need not go to a Dissenter for it. And tell your father he shall have a
good share in the building of it, and Tommy shall carry the mortar.”
“And I may be schoolmaster?” asked Harry, eagerly.
“We’ll see about that,” said my lady, amused. “It will be some time
before that plan comes to pass, my little fellow.”
And now to return to Captain James. My first account of him was from
Miss Galindo.
“He’s not above thirty; and I must just pack up my pens and my paper, and
be off; for it would be the height of impropriety for me to be staying
here as his clerk. It was all very well in the old master’s days. But
here am I, not fifty till next May, and this young, unmarried man, who is
not even a widower! O, there would be no end of gossip. Besides he
looks as askance at me as I do at him. My black silk gown had no effect.
He’s afraid I shall marry him. But I won’t; he may feel himself quite
safe from that. And Mr. Smithson has been recommending a clerk to my
lady. She would far rather keep me on; but I can’t stop. I really could
not think it proper.”
“What sort of a looking man is he?”
“O, nothing particular. Short, and brown, and sunburnt. I did not think
it became me to look at him. Well, now for the nightcaps. I should have
grudged any one else doing them, for I have got such a pretty pattern!”
But when it came to Miss Galindo’s leaving, there was a great
misunderstanding between her and my lady. Miss Galindo had imagined that
my lady had asked her as a favour to copy the letters, and enter the
accounts, and had agreed to do the work without the notion of being paid
for so doing. She had, now and then, grieved over a very profitable
order for needlework passing out of her hands on account of her not
having time to do it, because of her occupation at the Hall; but she had
never hinted this to my lady, but gone on cheerfully at her writing as
long as her clerkship was required. My lady was annoyed that she had not
made her intention of paying Miss Galindo more clear, in the first
conversation she had had with her; but I suppose that she had been too
delicate to be very explicit with regard to money matters; and now Miss
Galindo was quite hurt at my lady’s wanting to pay her for what she had
done in such right-down good-will.
“No,” Miss Galindo said; “my own dear lady, you may be as angry with me
as you like, but don’t offer me money. Think of six-and-twenty years
ago, and poor Arthur, and as you were to me then! Besides, I wanted
money—I don’t disguise it—for a particular purpose; and when I found
that (God bless you for asking me!) I could do you a service, I turned it
over in my mind, and I gave up one plan and took up another, and it’s all
settled now. Bessy is to leave school and come and live with me. Don’t,
please, offer me money again. You don’t know how glad I have been to do
anything for you. Have not I, Margaret Dawson? Did you not hear me say,
one day, I would cut off my hand for my lady; for am I a stick or a
stone, that I should forget kindness? O, I have been so glad to work for
you. And now Bessy is coming here; and no one knows anything about
her—as if she had done anything wrong, poor child!”
“Dear Miss Galindo,” replied my lady, “I will never ask you to take money
again. Only I thought it was quite understood between us. And you know
you have taken money for a set of morning wrappers, before now.”
“Yes, my lady; but that was not confidential. Now I was so proud to have
something to do for you confidentially.”
“But who is Bessy?” asked my lady. “I do not understand who she is, or
why she is to come and live with you. Dear Miss Galindo, you must honour
me by being confidential with me in your turn!”