Bath was sleeping as soundly as if it had been a quaker town: any sounds
of riot were scattered and subdued. The dowager did not count her gains
as she clutched them, while borne along the street by the glare of the
dropping flambeaux. Her son, who, like the young Duke of Marlborough and
his brother peer, carried no meaner change than golden guineas, did not
clink them as he tossed them to the chairmen fighting for the prize.
The "Bear" was reasonably still for a great public-house with twos and
threes of travellers departing at all hours, as waiters and ostlers
stirred on their behalf, horses trotted out from adjoining stables, and
circles of chariots suffered displacement--all in addition to the
distinct and fervent sensation of the night coach.
Suddenly a noise and a flurry arose in the grey light and its general
repose. Accents of terror and anxiety are heard, and a movement of pity
and distress arises and grows in the establishment. A young girl is
attacked by violent illness--a life in its spring-time is threatened
with sudden extinction; friends at hand are seeking remedies and
bewailing the calamity--friends at a distance, all unconscious, are
mentioned with subdued voices and averted eyes.
Mrs. Price was wiping her eyes and carrying up restoratives with her own
hands. "'Twas Mistress Fiddy, whom she had known from a child; the niece
of Master Rowland, who had always supported the house; and madam, her
mother, away at the Vicarage, and the dear child, so good and quiet."
"I will come, my good Mrs. Price. My sister had these fainting fits; I'm
used to them. I'll revive the child: the poor child, I am sure she'll
not be offended at the liberty. Pooh! I can sit up as well as sleep
after playing. Dear! dear! Many a night I was happy to sit up with Deb,"
pleaded an urgent, benevolent voice, waxing plaintive towards the
conclusion of the speech.
"Indeed you are too gracious, my lady--I mean madam," protested the
perplexed, overwhelmed Mrs. Price; "but I dare not venture without
Master Rowland's consent: he will do everything himself, issue his
orders even, although Dr. Fulford's been upstairs lending his advice
these ten minutes."
"A fudge for doctors when there's a helpful woman at hand, Mrs. Price?
Convey my message to the squire; inform him that I've had
experience--mind, experience--and am a full-grown, reasonable woman, and
not a fine lady. I know the poor little sister will be shaking like a
leaf, and frightening the darling; and you are stiff in the joints
yourself, Mrs. Price, and a little overcome. I'm just the person, so let
me in!"
Master Rowland, without his coat (for though he had an orderly turn of
his own, he was not a methodical enough man to travel with a gown and
slippers in his valise), was labouring to recover his niece; Mistress
Prissy, with her cloak huddled round her, was making magnanimous
efforts to aid her uncle; while the poor little sufferer--guileless,
affectionate Mistress Fiddy--lay pale, faint, and chill, with life
flickering beneath her half-closed eyelids and in the gushes of her
fitful breath. Master Rowland's trouble rendered him outwardly cold
and hard, as it does some men; yet Mistress Fiddy's closing eyes
turned trustfully to him, and her weak fingers clung tightly to his
strong hand.
"No, no; the fewer onlookers the better. What would a stranger do here,
Mrs. Price?" he inquired angrily, remembering, with a pang, that certain
new, unaccountable, engrossing emotions had quite banished Fiddy from
his thoughts and notice, when he might have detected the signs of
approaching illness, met them and vanquished them before their climax.
"Bid him speak a word with me, Mrs. Price, a gentleman cannot refuse. I
have reasons which will excuse my importunity," reiterated that
sympathetic voice.
He walked out doggedly, and never once lifted his eyes. "Madam, I am
your servant; but we do not need your help: my niece would be scared by
the presence of a stranger. Reserve your charity----" "for the poor" he
was about to add; but she put her frank hand upon his arm, and said,
"Your worship, I believe I could nurse the young lady better than
anybody: I have seen my dear sister afflicted, as I judge similarly. Do
not stand on ceremony, sir, and deprive a poor girl of a benefit which
Providence has sent her, if you would not regret it. I beg your pardon,
but do let me succour her."
He looked up. There she stood in her white wrapping-gown and cap, ready
prepared for her patient; so appropriate-looking in dress and face, with
her broad forehead full of thought, and her cheek flushed with feeling;
an able tender woman in her prime, endeavouring to do Christian offices,
longing to pour balm into gaping, smarting wounds, imploring to be
allowed to fulfil her mission. He bowed, and stood aside; she curtsied,
and passed in. He heard her voice the next moment, low, but perfectly
audible, cheerful and pleasant, addressing Mistress Prissy. "My dear
madam, your uncle has permitted me to count myself a mature friend, like
madam your mother; and after this introduction you will excuse me for
taking care of you. Doctor, what drops do you favour? You have them
there; if you please, I'll offer them: I've administered them before."
She spoke to the doctor very courteously; perhaps remarking that he was
young and somewhat agitated. "Mayn't I chafe Mistress Fiddy's hands,
doctor? You're better, my dear?"
Mistress Fiddy's head was on her arm; her eyes were raised to her
nurse's face wonderingly but complacently, and, though quite conscious,
Mistress Fiddy involuntarily sighed out "mother." Very motherly was the
elder woman's assurance: "Yes, my dear, I'll serve as madam your mother
in her absence, till madam herself comes; and she'll laugh at our
confusion and clumsiness, I warrant."
Mistress Fiddy smiled a little smile herself. Nature was reacting in its
own redemption; the necessary stimulus was obtained, and the little lass
was in a fair way of recovery.
But Mistress Betty did not leave off her cares; she elected herself
mistress of the sick room--for she reigned there as everywhere else.
She dismissed shivering, tearful, grateful Prissy with a hug, and a
whispered promise that her dear sister Fiddy would be as lively as a
grig in the morning; got rid of the doctor and Mrs. Price, and all
but routed Master Rowland, succeeding in driving him as far as the
next room.
How light her foot was--light as her fingers were nimble; how cleverly
she shaded the sick girl from the light, without depriving her of air!
How resigned Fiddy was to be consigned to her! how quickly and entirely
the child had confided in her; she had hailed her as another mother!
Mistress Betty was putting the chamber to rights, in defiance of all
the chamber-maids of the "Bear;" she was concocting some refreshing
drink, for which Mrs. Price had supplied the materials, over the fire,
which she had ordered in case of mould and damp, even in the
well-seasoned "Bear." Once she began to sing softly what might have been
a cradle-song, but stopped short, as if fearing to disturb Fiddy, and
composed herself to perfect stillness. Then Master Rowland heard
Mistress Fiddy question Mistress Betty in her weak, timid voice, on
Fiddy's own concerns. "You said you had seen these fits before, madam?
May I be so bold as to ask, did the sufferer recover?"
There was a moment's silence. "It was my sister, Fiddy: she was much
older than I. She had a complication of diseases, besides being liable
to swoons all her life. My dear, she died, as we must all die when our
time comes; and may we all be as well prepared as was Deb! In the
meantime we are in God's hands. I have been taken with fainting fits
myself, Fiddy, ere now. I think they are in my constitution, but they
are not called out yet, and I believe they will be kept under; as, I
fully trust, country air, and exercise, and early hours, will conquer
yours."
"And you will take great care of yourself, and go into the country
sometimes, dear Mistress Betty," pleaded the girl fondly, forgetting
herself.
Mistress Betty laughed, and turned the conversation, and finally read
her patient to sleep with the Morning Lesson, given softly and
reverently, as good Bishop Ken himself might have done it.
The poor squire was a discomfited, disordered Sir Roger. He could not
cope with this fine woman; and then it came home to him imperatively
that he was precisely in that haggard, unbecoming state of looks and
costume significantly expressed in those days by the powder being out of
a man's hair and his frills rumpled. So he absented himself for an hour,
and returned freshened by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig.
But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress
Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked
apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green
floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her mob-cap, and sticking in her
bosom a bunch of dewy ponceau polyanthuses, had beat him most
completely.
Mistress Fiddy was, as Mistress Betty had predicted, so far
re-established that she could breakfast with the party and talk of
riding home later in the day; though wan yet, like one of those roses
with a faint colour and a fleeting odour in their earliest bud. And
Mistress Betty breakfasted with the Parnells, and was such company as
the little girls had never encountered before; nor, for that matter,
their uncle before them, though he kept his discovery a profound secret.
It was not so pleasant in one sense, and yet in another it made him feel
like a king.
This was Mistress Betty's last day in Bath, and she was to travel up to
Town in the train of my Lord and Lady Salop, by easy stages and long
halts; otherwise she must have hired servants, or carried pistols, and
been prepared to use them, in the mail. Fortunately the Salops' chariots
and gigs did not start till the afternoon, so that Mistress Betty had
the morning to spend with her new friends, and she was delighted to
bestow it on them; though my Lord and Lady and their satellites were
perpetually sending lacqueys with compliments, conveniences, and little
offerings to court Mistress Betty,--the star in the plenitude of her
lustre, who might emulate Polly Peacham, and be led to the altar by
another enslaved Duke of Bolton.
How pleasant Mistress Betty was with the girls! Upon the whole, she
slighted "the Justice," as she had dubbed him. She saw with her quick
eyes that he was something superior; but then she saw many men quite as
well-looking, well-endowed, well-mannered, and with as fair intellects,
and more highly cultivated than he.
But she did not often find a pair of unsophisticated little girls won to
her by her frankness and kindness, and dazzled by her goodness and
greatness. How she awoke Fiddy's laugh with the Chit-Chat Club and the
Silence Stakes. What harmless, diverting stories she told them of high
life--how she had danced at Ranelagh, sailed upon the Thames, eaten her
bun at Chelsea, mounted one of the eight hundred favours which cost a
guinea a piece when Lady Die became a countess, and called upon Lady
Petersham, in her deepest mourning, when she sat in her state-bed
enveloped in crape, with her children and grandchildren in a row at her
feet! And then she told that she was born in a farmhouse like that on
the hill, and would like to know if they roasted groats and played at
shovelboard there still; and ended by showing them her little silver
tankard, which her godfather the jolly miller had given her, and out of
which her elder sister, who had never taken kindly to tea, had drunk
her ale and her aniseed water. And Fiddy and Prissy had each a draught
of milk out of it, to boast of for the rest of their lives, as if they
had sipped caudle out of the caudle-cup at a royal heir's christening.
Mistress Betty made the girls talk, too,--of their garden, the old
parish clerk, the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, granny, madam, the vicar,
and, to his face, of Uncle Rowland, his horses and colts, his cows and
calves, his pictures and cabinets. They spoke also of Foxholes, of Letty
and Grizel, of Sedley and Bearwood, and Dick Ashbridge--at whose name
Prissy laughed saucily, and Fiddy bit her lips and frowned as fiercely
as she was able. With what penetration Mistress Betty read their
connections, and how blithely and tenderly she commented upon them!
Mistress Betty promised to send her young friends sets of silk for their
embroidery (and kept her word); she presented Prissy with her enamel
snuff-box, bearing an exact representation of that ugly building of St.
James's; and Fiddy with her "equipage"--scissors, tablets, and all,
chased and wreathed with tiny pastorals, shepherds reclining and piping
on sylvan banks, and shepherds and shepherdesses dancing on velvet
lawns.
Mistress Betty kissed the girls at parting, and wished them health,
peace, and good husbands; she held out her hand to Master Rowland, who
took it with a crimson cheek, and raised it to his lips: pshaw! she
never once looked at him.
The poor bachelor squire drove off, but for his manhood, groaning
inwardly. Lady Betty had acted, and caught not only her share of Master
Rowland's ticket, to which she was fairly entitled, but the cream of his
fancy and the core of his heart; with which she had no manner of
business, any more than with the State Papers and the Coronation-jewels.