MORTOMLEY UNDERSTANDS AT LAST.
The summer following that autumn and winter when Mortomley's Estate was
in full course of liquidation proved, if not the hottest ever
remembered, at least sufficiently warm to render Londoners who had to
remain in town extremely impatient of their captivity, and to induce all
those who could get away to make a rush for any place within a
reasonable distance where sea-breezes or fresh air could be obtained.
It was a summer in which everything was as dull as can well be imagined.
Trade was dreadful; each man seemed losing money, and no man confessed
to a balance of five pounds at his bankers'. If City people were to be
believed, a series of unprecedented misfortunes compelled them, one and
all, to ask for outstanding accounts and to request the return of such
small amounts of money as in moments of mental aberration they had been
induced to lend to their impecunious friends, whilst it happened most
unfortunately that a series of disappointments and misfortunes equally
unprecedented prevented the payment of accounts and the return of loans.
Making, however, due allowance for excuses and exaggeration, things were
very bad indeed. That badness affected all trades--touched all ranks.
People were not rich enough to be ill, they could not afford to die, and
so even the doctors and the undertakers found things hard, and believed
fees and feathers had gone out of fashion.
"Persons in course of liquidation were to be envied," so Mr. Swanland
with a faint attempt at humour assured his visitors, while Mr. Asherill
declared that really he wished he could go into the 'Gazette' and so get
a holiday.
If you were on sufficiently intimate terms to inquire concerning the
fruitful vine and the olive branches belonging to any City man, you were
certain to hear the vine and the olives had been transplanted
temporarily to some easily accessible resting-place, to which the
husband and father declared to you upon his word of honour he had not
the means of proceeding on that especial Saturday afternoon when you
spoke to him in Finch Lane.
Nevertheless, had your way been his, you would have met him an hour
after, taking his ticket for some well-known terminus.
Even Mr. Dean could not manage to leave town, and Mrs. Dean was,
therefore, at Scarborough with some Essex friends who had invited her to
join their party.
Mrs. Werner was at Dassell with her children, The old lord was dead, and
that Charley, who had once wished to marry his cousin, proposed taking
up his residence at the family seat. If this resolution were carried
out, Mrs. Trebasson intended to leave the hall, notwithstanding her
nephew's cordially expressed hope that she would still consider it her
home.
Naturally, therefore, Mrs. Werner availed herself of the opportunity,
still left of paying a long visit to the old place, and Mr. Werner had
begged her not to hurry back, as "he could do very well without
her"--which utterance he did not intend to be ungracious, neither did
his wife so understand it.
As for Mortomley and his wife, they were far away from London.
In one of the most remote parts of Hertfordshire where woods cover the
lonely country for miles, where the silvery Lea flows through green
fields on its way to the sea, never dreaming of the horror and filth it
will have to encounter ere mingling with the Thames--where the dells are
in the sweet spring time carpeted with violets, blue and white, that
load the air with perfume--where rabbits scud away through copses
starred with primroses--where jays plume their brilliant feathers in the
golden sunshine--where squirrels look with bright curious eyes at the
solitary passer-by--where pheasants scarcely move out of the way of a
stranger's footsteps--where, save for the singing of birds, and the
humming of insects, and the bleating of sheep, there is a silence that
can be felt--Dolly had found a home.
As seen from the road as picturesque a cottage as painter need have
desired to see, but only a poor scrap of a cottage architecturally
considered--a labourer's cottage originally, and yet truly as Dolly
described it to Mrs. Werner--a very pretty little place.
The ground on which it stood rose suddenly from the road, and the tiny
garden in front sloped down to the highway at a sharp angle. On one side
was a large orchard, which went with the house, and on the other a great
field of growing wheat already turning colour.
Behind the cottage was first its own ample vegetable garden, and then
one of the woods I have mentioned, which formed a background for the
red-tiled roof and tumbledown chimneys of the Mortomleys' new home.
Dolly had seen the advertisement of a place she thought might suit to
let in this locality, and so chanced to penetrate into wilds so far from
London.
As usual, the place advertised was in every respect undesirable, and
Dolly wore herself out wandering about interminable lanes looking for a
vacant cottage and finding none.
All this was in the early spring when the leaves were only putting
forth, when Daffodils, Mezerion, and American currant alone decked the
modest flower-gardens--when nature, in a word, had not yet decked
herself in the beautiful garments of May, or in the glorious apparel of
the year's maturer age.
But Dolly knew how that pleasant country place would look when the
hawthorn was in bloom, and the roses climbing over the rustic porches,
and the corn cut and standing in goodly sheaves under the summer sun.
There was not a mood or tense of country life Dolly did not understand
and love, and she felt like a child disappointed of a new toy while
wending her way back to the station to think her search had proved all
in vain.
She was in this mood as she drew near the cottage I have described.
"I could be quite satisfied even with that," she considered. "I could
soon make it look different," and she stood leaning over the gate and
picturing the place with grass close under the window, with a few
evergreens planted against the palings, with a rustic garden-chair with
rustic baskets filled with flowers, on the scrap of lawn she herself had
imagined.
As she so stood an old woman came to the door and looked down the walk
at the stranger curiously.
"I was admiring your dear little place," said Dolly apologetically. "I
think it is so sweet and quiet."
The woman trotted down to the gate on hearing these words of praise, and
answered,
"Aye, it is main pretty in the summer, when the flowers are in full
blow, and the trees in full leaf. I tell my master we shall often think
of it in the strange land we are going to."
Now this sentence perplexed Dolly; owing to the tone in which it was
spoken, she could not tell whether the woman meant she and her husband
were going to heaven or to foreign parts, so she asked no question.
She only said, "I am sure you will think it no trouble to give me a
glass of water. I have been walking a long way, and I am very tired."
"Come in and rest yourself then," the old lady exclaimed heartily, and
she conducted Dolly indoors, and dusted a chair for her, and brought her
the water ice-cold; and having elicited that Mrs. Mortomley had come all
the way from London, that she had walked miles, that she had been to
look at Hughes's house, and that neither bite nor sup had passed her
lips since breakfast save that glass of cold water, she asked if her
visitor would not like a cup of tea. The kettle was on, she said, and
she could mash the tea in a few minutes.
Dolly was delighted, she wanted the tea, and she rejoiced in the
adventure. What though the bread was home-made bread and as heavy as
lead, to quote poor Hood; what though the tea was "mashed" till it was
black in the face; what though the sugar was brown and of a treacley
consistence,--the guest brought to the repast an appetite which charmed
her hostess and amazed herself.
While Dolly sipped her tea, for she understood the teapot had no great
force of resistance and could not hold out to great extremity, and the
"darling old lady," as Mrs. Mortomley called her for ever afterwards,
drank hers out of a saucer, the two women got into a friendly
conversation, and the elder told the younger how she and her master were
going to America to their only son, who, after being "awful wild," and a
"fearful radical," often going well-nigh to break his father's heart,
who had set "great store" by his boy, had started off fifteen years
previously "for Ameriky unbeknown to living soul."
Arrived there it was the old story of the prodigal repeated, with a
difference.
At home he had wasted his substance and neglected his parents. Abroad he
repented him of his evil doings, and worked as hard in a strange
country as he had idled in England.
He had married well, and was a rich man, and all he desired now was that
his father and mother should make their home near him, share his
prosperity, and see their grand-children.
"And so, ma'am, we are going as soon as ever we can let the house and
sell our bits of furniture. The house we could get rid of fast enough,
but no one wants the furniture, and my husband he is loth to let it go
for what the brokers offer."
"What do they offer?" asked Dolly.
"For every stick and stool in the house thirty shillings."
"And how much do you think they ought to give?" asked Dolly.
"Why my master he says as how we ought not to take less nor five pound
for the furniture, and two pound for the cropped garden and fowl-house,
and sty and woodshed, all of which he builded with his own hands; but
there's a sight of counting in that money, and people like us have all
their beds and chairs and tables, and I wish he'd take the dealer's
offer and be done with it, for I am longing to see my boy once more."
Dolly turned her face aside, and looked at the fire.
"What is the rent of this place?" she inquired.
"Four pound eleven a year, ma'am; and though that do sound high, still
it is a cheap place at the money, for there's a fine big garden and that
orchard you see, and it needn't stand empty an hour if only my master
would give in about the furniture."
"How many rooms have you?" Dolly asked.
"We have as good as four upstair; but two of them are open like on the
stairs. We use them for storing things, and there is this house; we call
the front room 'the house' in these parts, ma'am, and the back place,
and another back place where the stairs lead out, and--"
"Might I see it?" Dolly entreated, "I should like to see it so much."
"You'll excuse the place being in a bit of a muddle?" answered the
other, as she led the way about her small territory.
"Good Heavens! if this is a muddle, what must apple-pie order be?"
thought Mrs. Mortomley, as she looked at the well-scrubbed stairs, at
the snow-white boards, at the chest of drawers bees-waxed till she saw
her own reflection in them better than in the looking-glass, off which
half the quicksilver had peeled; at the patch-work counterpane, which,
though probably half a century old, still shone forth resplendent with
red and yellow and green, and all the colours of the rainbow.
"I do not care to see the garden," said Dolly when they were once more
in the back place; "and I have seen the orchard. I will take the house
off your hands, and your furniture, and your crops, at your own price; I
have not so much money with me, but I will leave you what I have in my
purse, and I will send down again any day you name, in order to pay you
the balance still owing and to take possession."
"You, ma'am!" repeated the woman.
"Yes," answered Dolly; "I have a husband who is in bad health, and I
must get him away from London for a short time. We cannot afford to take
a large house. We can make this answer our purpose, so now give me a
receipt for three pounds ten, on account--and--"
"I can't write," was the reply.
"Well, I will leave my address, and your husband can send me one,"
suggested Dolly.
"He is no more a schollard nor me," said the woman.
Was this the reason Dolly wondered, why at their age they were willing
to give up their home and country and go so far away to join the whilom
prodigal? Not to be able to send a line, without that line being indited
by other fingers, seen by other eyes; not to be able to understand the
contents of a letter save by the aid of a third person's reading! It was
certainly very pitiful, Dolly considered.
"It is of no consequence," she remarked, after a moment's pause devoted
to thinking this aspect of the educational question over. "Here are
three pounds ten shillings, and perhaps you can get some of your
neighbours to send me a line, saying when you wish to leave. Good-bye, I
hope you may have a pleasant voyage, and find your son well and happy at
the end of it."
And so Dolly retired mistress of the position; and so all unconsciously
she had frustrated the schemes of the poor old father, who, not wishing
to cross his wife, and not wanting to leave England, had put what he
considered a prohibitory price on his effects, and refused to leave
unless that were given for them.
"It is God's will, and I dare not gainsay it," he muttered to himself,
when he grasped the full meaning of his wife's breathless revelation.
"But it is nought less nor a miracle--what parson tells us a Sundays
ain't a bit more wonderful. It is main hard though, for me at my age
though, to be taken at my word like this."
From which utterance it will be seen he never thought of going back from
his word; indeed, regarding Dolly's visit as he did, it is probable he
imagined some judgment might fall upon him if he tried to put any
further impediment in the way.
As for Dolly, once she got possession of the place, she sent Esther down
with full directions how she was to proceed to make it habitable. Papers
were forwarded from London--papers cheap, light, pretty; and with the
help of two local workmen, who "contracted" for the job, the whole house
was whitewashed, papered, and painted, in ten days. Dogs took the place
of the old-fashioned rickety grate, the outer door was taken off its
hinges, and a new one, the upper part of which was of glass, put in its
place. A modest porch of trellis-work shaded this door, and over it grew
roses and honeysuckle, which were duly trained by a superannuated
labourer, who, thankful for a week's work, laid down that grass-plot
Dolly's heart desired, at a rate of wage which made Mrs. Mortomley feel
ashamed as she paid him the price agreed on.
To persons who have been accustomed to yield up their houses to a
professional decorator, and allow him to work his will as to cost of
material and price of labour, and the amount of improvement to be
effected, it may seem that Mrs. Mortomley must, in making her old
cottage into a new one, have spent a considerable sum of money.
This was not the case; and yet when Dolly came to go through her
accounts, which meant, in her case, counting over the sovereigns still
remaining, she felt she had exceeded the original estimate it was her
intention to adhere to, and that she must economize very strictly in the
future if her noble was not soon to be brought down to ninepence.
Mr. Mortomley had with much difficulty extracted ten pounds from the
treasury at Salisbury House, for his attendance at Mr. Swanland's
offices, and a wonderful thing had happened to Dolly.
Rupert not merely repaid the money he borrowed, but added twenty pounds
to the amount.
"I have had a great piece of good fortune happen to me," he wrote, "and
I send you share of it; I leave for the Continent next month, in company
with Mr. Althorpe, a young gentleman possessed of plenty of money and no
brains to speak of. He pays all my expenses, and gives me a handsome
salary in addition. You may expect to see me next Saturday. I long to
see your cottage, and will arrange to stay until Tuesday morning."
So Rupert was the first visitor, recalling the old days departed, who
crossed the threshold of the new home, and to whom Dolly could expatiate
on the improvements she had effected.
"You have done wonders," said Rupert, standing beside her in the little
garden which commanded a view of the Lee, winding away through pleasant
meadows. "It is really a marvellous little nest to have constructed out
of your materials, but," he added suddenly, "Archie does not like
it--Archie is breaking his heart here."
"Archie will have to like it," returned Dolly, and there was a tone in
her voice Rupert had never heard in it before. "There is no good in a
man kicking against the pricks, and pining for things even those who
love him best cannot give him. I shall have to tell him, Rupert; I feel
that, whether ill or well, it is time he took his share of the burden
with me. The sooner he knows, the sooner he will be able to look our
position straight in the face. I wish I was not such a coward. I cannot
endure the idea of letting him into the secret that everything has gone,
that there is not a thing left."
She spoke less passionately than despairingly. In truth, the change from
which she had anticipated such good results, proved the last straw which
broke her back.
She, understanding their position, had felt thankful to realise that
even so humble a home was possible for them until her husband's health
should be re-established, and the sight of his ill-concealed despair
when he beheld the cottage, proved a shock as great to her as his new
home to Mortomley.
For months and months she had been reconciling herself to the
inevitable--schooling herself to forget the past and look forward to a
future when Archie would take an interest in the modest little factory
she and Lang were to prepare, and learn to find happiness in the tiny
home she had tried so hard to beautify--but it came upon him suddenly.
He had not realised the full change in his circumstances when he left
Homewood, or when he struggled back to consciousness from long illness
at Upper Clapton; not when he had to attend at Mr. Swanland's offices;
not when the Thames Street warehouse was closed, and one of his own
clerks started a feeble business there on the strength of his late
employer's name and connection; not when the last sale took place at
Homewood--no, not once till on the morning after his arrival at Wood
Cottage, (so Dolly christened the new home), he rose early, and walking
round the house and surveying his small territory, comprehended vaguely
there was something still for him to know; that Dolly was keeping some
terrible secret.
"He knows all about it as well as you, you may depend," Rupert said in
reply to Dolly's last sentence; "nothing you can tell him now will be
news to him."
But Dolly shook her head.
Her instinct was clearer than Rupert's reason, and she felt certain if
her husband only knew the worst, he would nerve himself to face it more
bravely than he could this vague intangible trouble.
"I will tell him," she declared to Rupert, and then like a coward put
off doing so till Mortomley himself broke the ice by asking,
"Dolly, how long do you propose remaining in this charming locality?"
"Do you not think it charming?" she inquired. "I think the walks about
are lovely, and the air so pure, and the scenery so calm and peaceful--"
"Granted, my love; but it is a place one would soon grow very tired of.
I must honestly confess I find time hang very heavily on my hands
already."
"Don't say that, don't," she entreated.
"But, Dolly, if it be true why should I not say it?" he inquired.
"Because, my poor dear," and Dolly laid a trembling hand on his
shoulder, "I am afraid you will have to stay here and learn to like and
find your interests in it."
He took her hand in his, and turned so that he could see her face.
"What is it, dear, you are keeping from me? Is there any difficulty
about getting the interest of your money. Mr. Daniells is in London I
know, and the matter now ought to be put right. Tell me all about it,
dear--why are we in this place, and why do you say we must remain here?"
"Because," Dolly began, and then stopped, hesitating how to frame her
sentence.
"Because what?" he asked a little impatiently. "Come, dear, out with it;
the trouble will not seem half so great or insurmountable when you share
it with me. Because--"
"Because I have no money, Archie, now, except just a very, very little;
because that has gone like everything else."
"Do you mean your fortune?" he asked.
"Yes, dear, the whole of it," she answered, determined he should know
the worst at last.
"My God!" said Mortomley, and the expression sounded strange, coming
from the lips of a man who rarely gave vent to any vehemence of feeling.
"What a fool I have been! what a wicked, short-sighted, senseless fool!
why don't you speak hardly to me, Dolly--I who have ruined you and
Lenore?"
She stooped down and kissed him.
"Archie, I don't care a straw about the money; I did at first, and I was
afraid, but I am not afraid now; if only you will be content and brave,
and ready to believe small beginnings sometimes make great endings."
But he made no reply. He only rose, and walking to the door flung it
open, and stood looking out over the pleasant landscape.
Dolly feigned not to notice him. She went to her work-table and began
turning over her tapes and cottons with restless fingers, waiting,
waiting for her husband to speak.
Then in a moment there came a tremendous crash, and Mortomley was lying
on the matting which covered the floor, like one dead.