MRS. PIPER’S TROUBLES.
BEATRIX HAREFIELD’S spirits improved in the society of her friend. She
was fond of Bella, and believed in Bella’s faithfulness and affection.
Her reticence on the subject of Cyril Culverhouse had not arisen from
distrust, but from a reserve natural in a girl reared in solitude,
and with a mind lofty and ardent enough to make first love sacred as
religion.
But when Bella, with every evidence of fondness, entreated to be taken
into her friend’s confidence, Beatrix was not so stoical as to refuse
the comfort of sympathy.
‘I know you are hiding something from me, Beatrix,’ said Bella, as they
were walking in the wintry garden on the first morning of her visit.
‘There is a reason for your father’s forbidding your visits to the
Vicarage--and a reason for your pale cheeks and sleepless nights. Why
are you afraid to trust me?’
‘I am not afraid to trust you. But there are things one does not care
to talk about.’
‘Does not one? What are those things, dear? Do you mean that you don’t
care to talk about Mr. Culverhouse?’
Beatrix started, and flushed crimson.
‘How do you know--did any one tell you?’
‘My dear Beatrix, I have eyes and ears, and they told me. I have seen
you together. I have heard him speak of you.’
‘And you found out----’
‘That you adore each other.’
‘It is true, Bella. I love him with all my heart and soul--and we are
to be married as soon as I am of age.’
‘With your father’s consent?’
‘With or without it. That matters very little to me.’
‘But if you offend him he may leave his estate to a hospital,’
suggested Bella, who knew a great deal more about Mr. Harefield’s
property than Beatrix.
‘He may do what he likes with it. Cyril will not marry me for my
fortune.’
‘Of course not, but fortune is a very good thing, and Mr. Culverhouse,
who is poor, must think so.’
This arrow glanced aside from the armour of Beatrix’s faith. No one
could have made her believe that her lover had any lurking greed of
wealth.
‘Then it is all settled,’ said Bella, cheerfully. ‘You will be of age
in two years, and then you are to be married, whether Mr. Harefield
likes or not. I really can’t see why you should be unhappy.’
‘I am not to see Cyril, or hear from him, for two years. He is going to
leave this place in the spring. He might be ill--dying--and I should
know nothing, till I took up the _Times_ some morning and saw the
advertisement of his death.’
‘He is young and strong,’ replied Bella. ‘There is nothing less likely
than that he should die. I don’t think you need make yourself unhappy
in advance about that.’
Her cold hard tone wounded Beatrix, who had expected more sympathy.
‘Don’t let us talk about him, Bella,’ she said.
But Bella was determined to talk about him till she had found out all
that there was for her to know. She assumed a more sympathetic tone,
and Beatrix was induced to tell of Cyril’s interview with her father,
and of the letter which her lover wrote to her after that interview.
The clocks struck eleven a few minutes after this conversation was
ended.
‘And now I must run to the Park and spend an hour with poor Mrs.
Piper,’ said Bella. ‘I promised to go over every day to make myself
useful. She is so wretched about her servants, if there is no one to
look after them.’
‘How painful to have servants that require to be looked after!’
said Beatrix, who was accustomed to a household that went as if by
clockwork, conducted by a butler and housekeeper who were trusted
implicitly.
‘It is rather dreadful,’ replied Bella. ‘I think I would sooner have
our maid-of-all-work, with her sooty face and red elbows, than poor
Mrs. Piper’s staff of smart young women, who study nothing but their
own comfort, and come and go as if the Park were an hotel; for our
poor Sarah is at least faithful, and would no more think of leaving us
than of going to the moon. Good-bye, darling, I shall be back before
luncheon.’
Beatrix went back to her quiet room, and her books. Her mind had been
much widened by her intercourse with Mr. Dulcimer and his library, and
good books were a consolation and delight to her. She had marked out
a line of serious study, which she fancied might make her fitter to
be Cyril’s wife, and was resolved not to be led astray by any flowers
of literature. Hard reading was a little difficult sometimes, for her
thoughts would wander to the lover from whom cruel fate had parted her;
but she persevered bravely, and astonished Miss Scales by the severity
of her self-discipline.
Bella tripped briskly across the fields to Little Yafford Park, which
was about half a mile from the village, and only a little less distant
from the Water House. It was Saturday morning, and she knew that Mrs.
Piper would be worried about the weekly bills, which had an unvarying
tendency to be heavier than she expected to find them.
Mrs. Piper was propped up with pillows in her easy chair by the fire,
while all the youthful Pipers--including a couple of apple-cheeked
ungainly boys from an expensive boarding-school--were making havoc of
her handsomely furnished morning-room--a process eminently calculated
to shorten the brief remnant of her days.
‘Cobbett, if you don’t leave that malachite blotting book alone
directly, I’ll ring for your pa,’ exclaimed the invalid, as Bella
entered.
Mr. Piper was a man who had read books in his time--not many, perhaps,
but he remembered them all the better on that account. He was a man
who boasted of thinking for himself; which meant that he asserted
second-hand opinions so forcibly as to make them pass for new, and put
down other people’s arguments with the high hand of a self-conscious
capitalist.
He had christened his two elder boys Cobbett and Bentham. The
chubby little plague in pinafores was Horne Tooke, the bony boy in
knickerbockers was Brougham. The two girls were living memorials of
Elizabeth Fry and Mary Wolstencroft. His ambition was to see these
children all educated up to the highest modern standard, and able to
occupy an intellectual eminence from which they could look down upon
everybody else.
‘Money and dulness are sometimes supposed to go hand in hand,’ said Mr.
Piper. ‘I shall take care that my children may be able to exhibit the
pleasing spectacle of capital allied with intelligence.’
Unhappily the young Pipers did not take to education quite so kindly as
their father expected them to do. They had no thirst for the Pierian
spring, and, instead of drinking deeply, imbibed the sacred waters in
reluctant sips, as if the fount had been some nauseous sulphur spring
offered to them medicinally. Poor Bella had laboured almost hopelessly
for the last year to drag Brougham through that Slough of Despond, Dr.
Somebody’s first Latin grammar, and had toiled valorously in the vain
effort to familiarize Horne Tooke with words of one syllable. Elizabeth
Fry, whom her mother designed for greatness in the musical world, had
not yet mastered the mysteries of a common chord, or learned the
difference between a major and minor scale. Mary Wolstencroft was a
sullen young person of eleven, who put her chubby fingers in her mouth
at the least provocation, and stubbornly refused to learn anything.
‘Oh, my dear, I am very glad you have come,’ cried Mrs. Piper. ‘These
children are positively maddening. I like to have them with me, because
it’s a mother’s duty, and I hope I shall do my duty to the last hour
of my life. But they are very trying. Bentham has spilt the ink on the
patchwork table-cover, and Mary has been pulling the Angola’s tail most
cruelly.’
The animal which Mrs. Piper insisted on calling the ‘Angola’ was a
magnificent white Angora cat, and really the handsomest living creature
in the Piper household; indeed the Piper children seemed to have
been invented as a foil to the grace and beauty of the cat, to which
they were inferior in every attribute, except the gift of speech, a
privilege they systematically abused.
Bella examined the injured table-cover, and stroked the offended cat,
and then sat down by Mrs. Piper’s sofa.
‘I dare say the children are tiresome, dear Mrs. Piper,’ she said,
whereupon Bentham secretly put out his tongue at her, ‘but it must be a
comfort to you to see them all in such good health.’
‘Yes, my dear, it is. But I really think there never were such
boisterous children. I am sure when they were all down with the measles
the house was like ‘eaven. The way they use the furniture is enough to
provoke a saint. I sometimes wish Piper hadn’t bought so many ‘andsome
ornaments for my boodwar.’
And Mrs. Piper gave a heavy sigh, inwardly lamenting the ten-roomed
villa in the broad high road outside Great Yafford--the best parlour
which no one was allowed to enter--save on special occasions and under
most restrictive conditions--and the everyday parlour, in which the
shabby old furniture could hardly be the worse for ill-usage.
‘And now, Bella, we’ll go to the books,’ said Mrs. Piper, ‘they’re
something awful this week. There’s fine goings on downstairs now that I
can’t get about.’
‘The boys being home from school must make a difference,’ suggested
Bella.
‘After allowing amply for the boys, the bills are awful. Look at the
baker’s book, Bella. It will freeze your blood.’
Bella looked, and was not actually frozen, though the amount was
startling. The household expenses seemed to have been upon an ascending
scale from the beginning of Mrs. Piper’s illness. That careful
housewife’s seclusion had certainly relaxed the stringent economy by
which larder and kitchen had been hitherto regulated.
The tradesmen’s books were gone through one by one, Mrs. Piper
lamenting much, and doubtful of almost every item. Why so much lard
and butter, why so many eggs? There were mysterious birds in the
poulterer’s book, inexplicable fish in the fishmonger’s. When they came
to the butcher’s book things grew desperate, and the cook was summoned
to render an account of her doings.
Cook was a plausible young woman in a smart cap, and she proved too
much for Mrs. Piper. She had an explanation for every pound of meat
in the book, and her mistress dared not push inquiry to the verge of
accusation, lest this smart young woman should take advantage of the
impending season and resign her situation then and there, leaving
Mrs. Piper to get her Christmas dinner cooked as she might. Piper was
particular about his dinner. It was the one sensual weakness of a great
mind, and if his meals fell in any way short of his requirements and
expectations, his family circle suffered. The simoom in the desert
was not more sudden or devastating than the whirlwind of Mr. Piper’s
wrath in the dining-room, when the fish was sodden and sloppy, or the
joint presented an interior stratum of rawness under an outer crust of
scorched flesh.
‘Piper is _so_ particular,’ his wife would remark piteously, ‘and good
cooks are so hard to get.’
The fact of the case was that no good cook would endure Mrs. Piper’s
watchfulness and suspicion, and those scathing denunciations which Mr.
Piper sent out by the parlour-maid when the dishes were not to his
liking.
‘I might have borne Mrs. Piper’s petty prying ways,’ remarked one of
the Park cooks, after giving her mistress warning, ‘or I might have
put up with Mr. Piper’s tempers; but I couldn’t stand him and her
together. That was too much for Christian flesh and blood.’
The cook was dismissed, with inward groanings on the part of Mrs.
Piper, and the money for the tradesmen was entrusted to Bella, who was
to pay the bills on her way through the village, and to make divers
complaints and objections which the cook might have omitted to deliver.
‘I never let a servant pay my bills if I can help it,’ said Mrs. Piper,
‘it gives them too much power.’
And Mrs. Piper gave another sigh for the days of old, when her villa in
the Great Yafford Road had been kept as neat as a pin by two servants,
and those two servants had been completely under their mistress’s
thumb, when she herself had given her orders by word of mouth to the
tradespeople, and not so much as a half-quartern loaf had come into the
house without her knowledge and consent. The transition from the tight
economies of mediocre comfort to the larger splendour of unlimited
wealth had been a sore trial to Mrs. Piper. The change had come too
late in her life. She could not reconcile herself to the cost of her
grandeur, although her husband assured her that he was not spending
half his income.
‘It may be so now, Piper,’ she replied, dubiously, ‘but when the
children grow up you’ll find yourself spending more money. They’ll eat
more, and their boots will come dearer. I feel the difference every
year.’
‘When I find myself with less than fifty thousand surplus capital, I
shall begin to grumble, Moggie,’ said Mr. Piper, ‘but I ain’t going to
make a poor mouth till then.’
‘Well, Piper, of course it’s nice to live in a big place like this, and
to feel oneself looked up to, and that the best of everything is hardly
good enough for us; but still there are times when I feel as if you and
me had been sent into the world to feed a pack of extravagant servants.’
‘We can’t help that, my dear,’ answered Piper, cheerily. ‘Dukes and
duchesses are the same.’
‘Ah, but then you see dukes and duchesses are born to it. They’ve not
been used to have their housekeeping in their own hands, as I have. I
suppose it’s when I’m a little low that it preys upon me,’ mused Mrs.
Piper, ‘but I do feel it very trying sometimes. When I think of the
butter and lard that are used in this house it seems to me as if we
must come to the workhouse. No fortune could be big enough to stand
against it.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Moggie,’ retorted the manufacturer, unmoved by this
pathetic suggestion. ‘When I was in business I’ve lost five thousand
pounds in a morning by the turn of the market, and I’ve come home and
eat my dinner and never said a word to you about it. What’s your butter
and lard against that?’
‘Oh, Piper, I wonder you ever lived through it.’
‘I wasn’t a fool,’ answered Piper, ‘and I knew that where there’s big
gains there must be big losses, now and again. A man that’s afraid to
lose a few odd thousands will never come out a millionaire.’
Ebenezer Piper had a high opinion of his children’s governess. He
had heard Bella grinding Latin verbs with Brougham, and admired her
tact and patience. He liked to see pretty faces about him, as he
acknowledged with a noble candour, and Bella’s face seemed to him
particularly agreeable. That pink and white prettiness was entirely to
his taste. Something soft and fresh and peachy. The kind of woman who
seemed created to acknowledge and submit to the superiority of man.
Mrs. Piper had been a very fair sample of this pink and white order
of beauty, when the rising manufacturer married her; but time and
ill-health and a natural fretfulness had destroyed good looks which
consisted chiefly of a fine complexion and a plump figure, and the Mrs.
Piper of the present was far from lovely. Her Ebenezer was not the
less devoted to her on that account. He bought her fine dresses, and
every possible combination of ormolu and malachite, mother-o’-pearl and
tortoiseshell, for her boudoir and drawing-room; and he told everybody
that she had been a good wife to him, and a pretty woman in her time,
‘though nobody would believe it to look at her now.’
On her way from Mrs. Piper’s boudoir to the hall Miss Scratchell
encountered the master of the house, coming out of the billiard-room,
where he had been knocking the balls about in a thoughtful solitude.
‘How did you find the missus?’ he asked, after saluting Bella with a
friendly nod.
‘Pretty much the same as usual, Mr. Piper. I’m afraid there is no
change for the better. She looks worn and worried.’
‘She will worry herself when there ain’t no call,’ said Piper. ‘She’s
been bothering over those tradesmen’s books this morning, I’ll warrant,
just as she used fifteen years ago when I allowed her five pounds
a week for the housekeeping. She never did take kindly to a large
establishment. She’s been wearing her life out about fiddle-faddle ever
since we came here--and yet she had set her heart on being a great
lady. She’s a good little woman, and I’m uncommonly fond of her, but
she’s narrer-minded. I ain’t so blind but what I can see that.’
‘She is all that is kind and good,’ said Bella, who had always a large
balance of affection at call for anybody who was likely to be useful to
her.
‘So she is,’ assented Ebenezer, ‘and you’re very fond of her, ain’t
you? She’s fond of you, too. She thinks you are one of the cleverest
girls out. And so you are. You’ve had a hard job with Brougham’s
Latin. He don’t take to learning as I did. I was a self-taught man,
Miss Scratchell. I bought a Latin grammar at a bookstall, when I was
a factory hand, and used to sit up of a night puzzling over it till
I taught myself as much Latin as many a chap knows that’s cost his
parents no end of money. My education never cost anybody anything,
except myself--and it cost me about a pound, first and last, for
books. I don’t know many books, you know, but them I do know I know
thoroughly. The Vicar himself couldn’t beat me at an argument, when
it comes to the subjects I’m up in. But I don’t pretend to know
everything. I ain’t a many-sided man. I couldn’t tell you what breed of
tomcats was ranked highest in Egypt, or where’s the likeliest spot in
the sky to look for a new planet.’
‘Everybody knows that you are very clever,’ said Bella, safely.
‘Well, I hope nobody has ever found me very stupid. But I want my
children to know a deal more than me. They must be able to hold their
own against all comers. I should like ’em to read off the monuments
in Egypt as pat as I can read the newspaper. Like that French fellow
Shampoleon, we heard so much of when I was a young man. Come and have a
look at the conservatory, and take home some flowers for your mar.’
‘You are very kind, Mr. Piper; but I’m rather in a hurry. I am not
going home. I am on a visit to the Water House.’
‘The deuce you are!’ exclaimed Mr. Piper. ‘There’s not many visitors
there, I take it. You must be uncommon dull.’
‘Other people might find it dull, perhaps; but I am very happy there. I
am very fond of Beatrix Harefield.’
‘Ah! she’s a fine grown young woman; but she ain’t my style. Looks as
if there was a spice of the devil in her. Come and have a look at the
conservatory. You can take Miss Harefield some flowers.’
The conservatory opened out of the hall, to which they had descended
by this time. Bella could not refuse to go in and look at Mr. Piper’s
expensive collection of tropical plants, with long Latin names.
His conservatory was an object of interest to him in his present
comparatively idle life. He knew all the Latin names, and the habits
of all the plants. He cut off some of the blossoms that were on the
wane, and presented them to Bella, talking about himself and his wife
and children all the while. She had a hard struggle to get away, for
Mr. Piper approved of her, just as Dr. Johnson approved of Kitty Clive,
as a nice little thing to sit beside one, or, in other words, a good
listener.
Bella got back to the Water House in time for luncheon, a meal which
the two girls took together in a snug breakfast parlour on the ground
floor. The dining-room was much too large for the possibility of
cheerfulness.
‘You have hardly eaten anything, Beatrix,’ remarked Bella, when they
had finished; ‘and you had only a cup of tea at breakfast time. No
wonder you are ill.’
‘I dare say if I could sleep better I should eat more,’ answered
Beatrix, listlessly, ‘but the nights are so long--when day comes I feel
too worn out to be hungry.’
‘It is all very bad and very foolish,’ said Bella. ‘Why should you have
these sleepless nights? It can’t be grief. You have nothing to grieve
about. Your way lies clear before you. It is only a question of time.’
‘I suppose so,’ assented Beatrix; ‘but I can’t see myself happy in the
future. I can’t believe in it. I feel as if all my life was to be spent
in this loveless home--my father holding himself aloof from me--Cyril
parted from me. How can I be sure that he will always love me--that I
shall be the same to him two years hence that I am now? It is a long
time.’
‘A long time to be parted without even the privilege of writing to each
other, certainly,’ said Bella; ‘but there is no fear of any change in
Mr. Culverhouse’s feelings. Think what a splendid match you are for a
poor curate.’
‘Why do you harp upon that string, Bella?’ cried Beatrix, angrily. ‘You
know that if I marry Cyril I shall forfeit my father’s fortune. Cyril
knows it too. It is a settled thing. I shall go to him penniless.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t, dear! Things will never go so far as that.
Your father will get reconciled to the idea of your marrying Mr.
Culverhouse. You must both look forward to that.’
‘We neither of us look forward to it. There is no question of fortune
between us. Never speak of such a thing again, Bella, unless you wish
to offend me. And now I am going to drive you to Great Yafford, to do
some shopping. We must buy some Christmas presents for your mamma and
brothers and sisters.’
‘Oh, Beatrix, you are too good.’
Puck, the pony, was one of the finest specimens of his race, a
thick-necked, stout-limbed animal, and a splendid goer. He would
have dragged his mistress all round England, and never asked for a
day’s rest. He never was sick nor sorry, as the old coachman said
approvingly, when summing up Puck’s qualifications. On the other hand,
he had a temper of his own, and if he was offended he kicked. He would
have destroyed a carriage once a week if he had got into bad hands. But
he understood Beatrix, and Beatrix understood him, and everything went
smoothly between them.
Great Yafford on a December afternoon was about as ugly a town as one
need care to see; but it was busy and prosperous, and seemed to take an
honest pride in its ugliness, so stoutly did its vestry and corporation
oppose any movement in the direction of beauty. There was one street of
ample breadth and length, intersected by a great many narrow streets.
There was a grimy looking canal, along which still grimier coal barges
crept stealthily under the dull gray sky. There were great piles of
buildings devoted to the purposes of commerce; factories, warehouses,
gas works, dye works, oil works, soap works, bone works, all vying with
one another in hideousness, and in the production of unsavoury odours.
Ugly as Great Yafford was, however, there was nothing Bella
Scratchell enjoyed so much as a visit to Tower Gate, the broad street
above-named, and a leisurely contemplation of the well-furnished shop
windows, where the fashions, as that morning received from Paris, were
to be seen gratis by the penniless gazer. Banbury and Banburys’, the
chief drapers, afforded Bella as much delight as a lover of pictures
derives from a noble gallery. She would have seen the Venus of Milo for
the first time with less excitement than she felt on beholding ‘our
latest novelties in Paris mantles,’ or ‘our large importation of silks
from the great Lyons houses.’
‘Drive slowly, please, Beatrix,’ said Bella, as they entered Tower
Gate; ‘I should like to have a look at Banburys’, though it can’t make
any difference to me, for I have bought my winter things.’
‘You can look as long as you like, Bella. I am going in to buy some
gloves, and a few little things. Perhaps you would like to go in with
me.’
‘I should very much, dear. They have always such lovely things inside.’
Puck was given over to the care of the groom, while the two young
ladies went into Banburys’. It was a very busy time just now. ‘Our
latest novelties’ were being scrutinized and pulled about by an eager
throng of buyers, and the patience of Banburys’ young men was tried to
the verge of martyrdom by ladies who hadn’t quite made up their minds
what they wanted, or whether they wanted anything at all. An ordinary
individual would have had ample time to study the humours of Banburys’
before being served; but Miss Harefield was known as an excellent
customer, and the shop-walker was in a fever till he had found a young
man to attend upon her. He was a pale young man, in whose face all the
colour had run into pimples, and he had a wild and worried look, which
was not unnatural in a youth whose mind had been tortured by all kinds
of fanciful objections to, and criticisms upon Banburys’ stock, from
nine o’clock that morning, and who had run to and fro over the face
of Banburys’, like a new Orestes driven by the Furies, in search of
articles that never answered the requirements of his customers, proving
always just a little too dear, or too common, too thick or too thin,
too dark or too light, too silky or too woolly for the fair buyer. To
this tormented youth Beatrix seemed an angel of light, so easily was
she pleased, so quickly did she decide upon her purchases. She bought
a dozen pairs of gloves, a pile of ribbons, laces, and other trifles
in the time that an elderly female in black, a little lower down the
counter, devoted to the thrilling question of which particular piece
out of a pile of lavender printed cotton would best survive the ordeal
of the washtub.
‘What is your sister Clementina’s size?’ inquired Beatrix, looking over
a box of gloves.
‘Oh, Beatrix, you mustn’t buy any for her,’ whispered Bella.
‘Yes, I must. And you must tell me her number.’
‘Six and three-quarters.’
‘The same as yours. I’ll take a dozen of the six and three-quarters.’
A large Honiton collar and cuffs, after the fashion of the period--a
dark age in which rufflings and fichus and all the varieties of modern
decorative art were unknown--were chosen for Miss Scales--neck ribbons
for the women servants--warm clothing for certain goodies in the
village--a noble parcel altogether. The pale and haggard youth felt
that he need not quail before the awful eye of Banbury when the day’s
takings came to be summed up.
After leaving Banburys’, Miss Harefield drove to a chemist’s, and got
out alone to make her purchases.
‘I couldn’t get what I wanted there,’ she said, and then drove into one
of the narrow streets and pulled up at another chemist’s.
She went in this way to no less than six chemists’ shops, entering each
alone, and remaining for about five minutes in each. She had a good
many little daintily sealed white parcels by the time she had finished
this round.
‘Are you going to set up as a doctor?’ Bella asked, laughing.
‘I have got what I wanted at last,’ Beatrix answered evasively.
‘What can you have in all those little parcels?’
‘Perfumery--in most of them. And now I am going to the Repository to
buy something for your small brothers and sisters.’
The Repository was a kind of bazaar in Tower Gate, where there was a
large selection of useless articles at any price from sixpence to a
guinea. Beatrix loaded herself with popular parlour games, Conversation
Cards, Royal Geographical Games, and Kings of England--games which no
one but a drivelling idiot could play more than once without being
conscious of a tendency to softening of the brain--for the young
Scratchells. She bought a handsome workbasket for the industrious
house-mother. She bought scent bottles and thimble cases for the girls,
knives and pocket-books for the boys.
‘Upon my word, Beatrix, you are too good,’ exclaimed Bella, when she
heard the destination of these objects.
‘Do you suppose that money can give me any better pleasure than to make
other people happy with it, if I can?’ answered Beatrix. ‘It will never
make me happy.’