MRS. PIGGOTT’S ASSISTANT.
It was late on in the autumn by this time, and most of the visitors who
had come down to the Hollow in the bright summer weather were now
elsewhere.
Miss Hope, having patched up a peace with her nephew, was at Copt Hall;
Mrs. Ormson at Torquay, with her eldest son, the state of whose health
was considered unsatisfactory; Mrs. Black, at Hastings; Mr. Black, much
in town; Mr. Harcourt, in Scotland; and Bessie, at home, keeping house
for her father.
There was no one left at Berrie Down, in fact, excepting Master Marsden,
who remained on at the Hollow, because the state of Dr. Marsden’s
finances prevented the boy being sent to school; while the state of his
mother’s health rendered it an act of real charity to keep the “noisy,
ill-mannered, ill-conditioned young whelp” (this was Arthur’s summary of
him) away from that small, uncomfortable, wretchedly-managed suburban
house.
Early in November, Alick was to enter on his new duties; and at
Christmas, by special desire of Arthur, there was to be another and,
larger family gathering in Berrie Down. All kinds of people were to meet
all other kinds of people; and the Hollow, he said, “should see
Christmas kept in thorough good old English style, for once.”
Already the younger Dudleys were speculating as to whether there would
be an abundance of berries on the holly bushes, and Mrs. Piggott was
looking to the fattening of her turkeys, and meditatively calculating
how many of those unfortunate birds the expected guests would, in all
probability, consume.
Already she was pouring into the ears of her youthful handmaiden, Prissy
Dobbin by name, tales which sounded to that unsophisticated damsel like
romances, anent the number of plums she should have to stone, currants
to wash and dry and pick, about the quantity of mixed peel she must cut
up, and the amount of suet she would have to chop, for the Christmas
puddings. As for mincemeat, Mrs. Piggott avowed her intention of
commencing that whenever the twenty-first of November was come and past;
and had the Israelites been journeying, for a second time, out of Egypt,
and purposed making a halt at Berrie Down on their way, the worthy
housekeeper could scarcely have “salted down” a larger quantity of
butter, nor looked more anxiously at the tenants of the poultry-yard and
the contents of the nests than she did.
As for herbs—Miss Priscilla Dobbin’s private opinion was, that “the
deuce was in Mrs. Piggott about them.” For ever, so she told her mother,
she was rubbing off those herbs into bottles, and tying them down;
while, in respect of pickles, it is on record, the assistant made
herself so frightfully ill with devouring those exhilarating articles of
diet wholesale, that the cook assured her she should be sent home
forthwith if she could not content herself for the future with cooler
viands than chilies and chutnee.
“Drat them girls!” exclaimed Mrs. Piggott; “they’re every one alike
now—for crinolines, and vinegar, and piccalilly. I remember a young
housemaid as used to come and see me when I was taking care of General
Furdie’s house in Gloucester Place—I believe she used to live on
pickles—bought them at the oilman’s, sixpenny-worth at a time, and if
she came and sat with me for half an hour, she would finish the lot
while she sat talking. Ah! girls ain’t like what they used to be.”
“And a good job too that they bain’t,” retorted Priscilla, who was
certainly as unlike one of Mrs. Piggott’s ideal maidens as can well be
conceived.
Except that she could “get through her work,” when she chose to devote
herself to it, and that she was sufficiently “owdacious and comical” to
make time pass fast in the Berrie Down kitchen, Priscilla Dobbin was not
possessed, in Mrs. Piggott’s eyes, of a solitary virtue.
She was not “one” the cook would ever have had about the house; but, of
course, Mrs. Dudley knew best—a severely ironical expression, which
meant that Mrs. Dudley knew nothing whatever about the matter; indeed,
Mrs. Piggott had been heard to say, that “a baby in arms was as fit to
choose a servant as her mistress.”
After all, however, Priscilla was not exactly an importation of Mrs.
Dudley’s. A girl had been wanted, and this girl, a protégée of Bessie’s,
stepped at once from a wretched home to service at Berrie Down, where
she worked harder, and idled more persistently, than any young person
“of her inches,” that it had ever been Mrs. Piggott’s misfortune
previously to come into contact with.
And yet with all she was as good company, in her rank, as Bessie Ormson
in a higher; better, perhaps, for she possessed artistic, histrionic,
and imitative powers, of which the young lady was utterly destitute.
Miss Dobbin had been taught at school to curtsey, or “bob,” as she
called it; but elsewhere she had learned to dance with anybody, and to
execute “steps” which were the delight and envy of the kitchen at Berrie
Down. At school she had been taught psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs; but out of hours she had acquired a stock of ballads that would
have horrified the propriety of the vicar of North Kemms, Priscilla’s
native parish, had he been privileged to hear them. At school she was
taught to read, write, cipher, and do sampler work; out of school it had
ever been her pleasure and delight to mimic the peculiarities of
mistress and master, of clergyman and clergyman’s wife, of the ladies
who visited the school, and of her fellow-companions, playmates, father,
mother, and society generally.
She was but a young thing when she came to the Hollow, sixteen or
thereabouts, with a scanty supply of clothes, a crinoline which was at
once the plague and delight of her life, a net to contain her hair, and
induce people to believe it was long like a grownup woman’s, and a stock
of impudence that was, were Mrs. Piggott’s testimony on the subject
reliable, “more than enough.”
With Priscilla it was not, however, perhaps, that she had so much
impudence as that she had so little reverence; and for this reason,
spite of Mrs. Piggott’s high social position, her imposing cap, her
stately manner, and her reminiscences of the good old times, the young
girl treated her with as little ceremony as she might one of her
playmates, and “answered the housekeeper back,”—an indignity which had
never previously been inflicted on that individual by anyone, gentle or
simple.
“She had always lived with people above and below, as knew their places
and kept to them, till ‘you came,’” she stated to Miss Dobbin; whereupon
Miss Dobbin inquired—
“O Lor’, there, ain’t you glad I am come, that you may see some new
life?”
Did Mrs. Piggott threaten to report Prissy to Mrs. Dudley, that young
person entreated of her to make haste and do so, “before her shoes wore
out.” Did the housekeeper, talking at Priscilla, endeavour to point a
moral and adorn a tale by stating what was done in her young days—and
what her first mistress, the lady of Mr. Serjeant Hickley, counsellor to
the King (so Mrs. Piggott understood K.C.), said when she saw a servant
with a bow or a bonnet, let alone a flower, added Mrs. Piggott
parenthetically—Priscilla, rich in ribbons, flowers, and laces, flung to
her from Miss Ormson’s stores, thanked her stars “she had not lived in
them days, and thought it was quite time the good old times were gone
and past, if anybody was to have any comfort of their lives.”
“I’m sure I’m glad I warn’t born then, Mrs. Piggott; for one thing I’d
be as old as you, and have nothing before me; I’d have lived it all, and
not have a thing to look forward to.”
“Better have nothing to look forward to than some things to look back
upon,” answered Mrs. Piggott, sententiously; which immediately elicited
from Miss Dobbin the inquiry whether she had got that out of her own
head or somebody else’s, and if these were some things she did not care
to look back upon.
Clearly, the housekeeper said the girl could come to no good, and yet in
her heart Mrs. Piggott liked this feminine ne’er-do-weel, and would have
felt the house lonely without her.
On the whole, she preferred Prissy’s chatter to the more staid and
sensible discourse of Jane, the housemaid, or Sarah, her assistant in
dairy and kitchen. Though torture could not have wrung such a confession
from her, Mrs. Piggott dearly loved gossip; and, if she had searched the
home counties through, she could not have discovered a more industrious
collector and retailer of news than Priscilla Dobbin.
From the colour of the moire antique the vicar’s wife wore when she went
to dine at Moorlands, to the name of Miss Amy Raidsford’s “intended,”
Priscilla had every atom of parish information at her fingers’ ends. Why
the lady’s-maid was dismissed from Moorlands—what Lord Kemms said when
he found his gardener sending all the best fruit to Covent Garden, and
only retaining windfalls for dessert at the Park—Prissy knew as well as
though she had been present.
Nor was it only from the neighbourhood of North Kemms that Miss Dobbin
collected materials for conversation. She knew all about the low
marriage Mr. Harry Camperdon, the Fifield rector’s son, had contracted
with the sexton’s daughter from Palinsbridge.
“And I wouldn’t ha’ married her if she had been hung with
diamonds—should always ha’ felt or thought she had been dug up out of
the graves. Seen her?—to be sure I have, Mrs. Piggott—as thin as a
hurdle, and as pale and sickly-looking as a bit of your underdone crust.
She’s a contrast to Mrs. Raidsford. You don’t mean to say you have never
had a sight of Mrs. Raidsford! then you have a treat to come; like the
side of a house, and mean! would look after the candles’ ends, if her
husband let her, and grudges throwing away her nail-parings. There is
not a servant in the house dare give a glass of beer unbeknown, and they
all say a nicer gentleman nobody need wish to serve. It is thought Lord
Kemms would make up to one of the daughters, if it wasn’t for her; but
he can’t abide her. Well, if I was Lord Kemms, I know who I’d have—money
or no money.”
And so on, _ad libitum_, the whole day long. Making beds, cleaning
plates, shelling peas, stirring preserves, Priscilla Dobbin’s tongue
never ceased; and let the burden of her song be what it would, the
refrain never varied, and that refrain was to the effect, that, since
time began, there never had been before, and never would be again, such
a young lady as Bessie Ormson. Bessie had made her acquaintance at a
period of (to Miss Dobbin) infinite trouble. Having been despatched to
the mill to purchase some flour, she contrived by the way to lose the
money entrusted to her. Feeling it useless to proceed, and being afraid
to return home, she did the only thing which seems natural to boys and
girls under such circumstances, namely, lifted up her voice and wept.
While she sat on the stile leading away towards North Kemms, with her
bonnet tilted over her face, her knuckles in her eyes, and making a
display of feet encased in strong leather boots, and a pair of sturdy
legs, which only the extremest distress could excuse being exhibited to
public view, Bessie, coming along the field path, paused to inquire into
the cause of such despair.
A greater contrast than that presented by the pair could scarcely have
been imagined. Hot and weary with running about searching after the lost
money, sick and tired with crying, and the fear of the “hiding,” which
she explained to Bessie was sure to follow on confession; her cheeks wet
with tears, and her face generally smeared by reason of having been
rubbed over with her dirty hands, Priscilla’s personal appearance alone
entitled her to the profoundest commiseration.
Attired, on the other hand, in the coolest of muslin dresses, with the
most coquettish of hats for head-gear, with a lace shawl thrown
carelessly round her, holding a parasol, edged with deep fringe, a
little on one side, more apparently to protect the trimming of her hat
than her bright, fresh, beautiful face from the rays of the sun, Bessie,
leaning against the stile, held converse with Miss Dobbin concerning the
loss she had experienced.
“It was a whole harf a crown, Miss,” said the girl, amid a perfect gust
of sobs, “and I put it in my pocket, and I never left the path the whole
way, except to pull a branch of roses (the poor things were lying
withered and miserable, sodden and faded in her lap), and I suppose it
was when I reached up to get them the money jumped out; but I have
looked and looked, and I can’t see it. No, no more nor if it had had
legs and run away. See, it was over in the corner of that far held. I’ll
show you, if you like,” she added, with a faint hope, perhaps, that
Bessie might be able to find where she had searched in vain.
“The scene of such a catastrophe has not the slightest interest for me,”
answered Bessie. “I will take your word that the half-crown is lost, and
I will give you another in its place, or at least two shillings and
sixpence, which comes to much the same thing. You go, or have gone, to
school, I suppose?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Then you know what a moral means?”
“I think so, Miss.”
“Well, the moral of this afternoon’s work is: For the future, when your
mother sends you out for flour, don’t stop to gather roses by the way,
for it is extremely unlikely that you will a second time meet any one in
these fields worth half-a-crown.”
Having finished which speech, Bessie, toying with her dainty parasol,
still stood looking at the girl, for whom she felt that compassion,
which always moved her when she saw anything of the feminine gender
unkempt, forlorn, untidy, unhopeful, uglier than she had “a right to
be.”
To her, an ill-dressed girl or woman was precisely what a daub is to an
artist, a series of discords to a musician. She loved prettiness. Let a
woman’s dress be of cotton or of velvet, she still loved to see that
dress worn with a certain consciousness; and the terrible want of
self-assertion, the utter abandonment of all self-appreciation in the
girl who now stood opposite to her, was so distressing to Bessie, that
she entreated of her as a parting favour to wash her face, and push her
hair out of her eyes before she proceeded to the mill.
“There is plenty of water in the stream,” Bessie added; “and do make use
of it freely, for at present you look as if you had been buried without
a coffin.”
A week after, the young lady, who had forgotten all about this
occurrence, was told that a girl wanted to speak to her—a girl from
North Kemms—Priscilla Dobbin by name.
“She does not want another half-crown, I hope,” laughed Bessie, when she
heard the name; and she went out into the hall, looking, as she always
did, pretty enough to drive any man to distraction.
“Well, Priscilla, you have not lost your money again, have you?” thus
Bessie commenced the conversation.
“No, Miss—I found it. I could not rest; and so, the first afternoon
mother could spare me, I had a good look, and I took one of my little
brothers, and he got it in among a lot of weeds growing in the ditch;
and here it is back again, please, Miss—and—my duty to you,” finished
Prissy, who evidently considered the last four words an appropriate
ending to her sentence.
Bessie took the half-crown, and held it in the palm of her hand for a
moment, doubtfully.
The coin had evidently been washed, as had also Miss Dobbins face, which
was painfully red and shiny. Then she looked at the thick clump boots,
laced up with a leathern thong—at the sturdy legs, showing below the
short, scanty, hailstorm-pattern cotton gown—at the little old-fashioned
black pelerine—at the coarse school bonnet—at the light brown hair, cut
so short all round—at the greenish-grey eyes, sparkling with pleasure—at
the unmanageable mouth, which would smile and break into grins of
delight at the recovery of so great a treasure—at the hard hands, that
seemed to have done so much work—before she said—
“Sit down for a moment, I shall be back presently.” She wanted to tell
the story to Heather, and ask her advice; but, as Heather happened to be
out of the way, Bessie returned to the hall discomforted.
She did not like to give the girl back the money, or its equivalent, and
she was racking her brains what to offer, when Lally appeared on the
scene of action, with a huge wedge of cake in her hand, which it is only
right to state she was absolutely unable to eat.
“Lally, come here,” exclaimed Bessie. “I wish to give this little girl
something by which to remember me—something to remind her of having been
very careless and very good. What do you think she would like best?” and
Bessie took the child in her arms and waited, hoping, perhaps, the
stranger might suggest some desirable memento for herself.
But Prissy never spoke, nor, for some time, did Lally, who first stared
at Priscilla from head to foot, and then gravely turned and looked at
Bessie, wondering apparently whether that young lady could conveniently
part with her face as an appropriate offering to the stranger. Then her
eyes wandered to Bessie’s throat, and so fell on a tiny brooch which
fastened her collar. The moment they did so—
“Dive her ’at,” said Lally, unhesitatingly, a suggestion which she would
have made all the same had the trinket been worth a hundred guineas; as
it was, Bessie abode by her decision, and taking out the brooch, handed
it to Priscilla, remarking at the same time that, “although she might
not care for it then, she would perhaps when she grew up to be a woman.”
Not to be outdone in generosity, Lally at once presented the girl with
her piece of cake, assuring her it was “very dood,” the truth of which
statement Bessie doubted exceedingly.
Next day, over came Mrs. Dobbin to know whether it was “correct as a
young lady at Berrie Down had given her gal a golden brooch? She did not
think her gal would tell a lie, but still young uns wanted to be looked
arter.”
Assured of the rectitude of the transaction, Mrs. Dobbin, after having
been refreshed with ale and a slice of bread and meat, was permitted to
depart. “Altogether, the half-crown threatens to prove a costly matter,”
Bessie remarked; but Heather only said they seemed to be very honest,
worthy people, and the subject dropped.
But when, a little later on in the summer, Mrs. Dudley perceived it
would be necessary to procure some young person to assist in the
housework, Bessie proposed that a trial should be given to Priscilla;
and never ceased her entreaties for the girl to be engaged until Heather
said Bessie and the girls might walk over to North Kemms and talk to
Mrs. Dobbin about the matter.
Nothing loath was Mrs. Dobbin for Priscilla to “go out,” “except,” she
said, “that in the matter of clothes she feared Prissy warn’t fit to be
seen in a gentleman’s house.”
“Let her come over to me, and we will arrange that,” Miss Ormson
answered; and accordingly, when Prissy came, out of her own wardrobe the
young lady furnished that of the new servant—telling her at the same
time, laughingly, she was “made up for life.”
“And you may think yourself a lucky gal,” remarked the mother on the
first Sunday when Priscilla went home, about a month after her entrance
on her duties at Berrie Down—“having plenty of victuals, and good
clothes to your back, and a kind mistress.”
John Dobbin was sitting in the porch during this colloquy, looking
askance at his daughter’s finery the while. When she came to exhibit her
new dress to him, he observed, first, that “fine feathers didn’t make
fine birds,” and then inquired—
“Who was that chap I saw thee talking to last evening, this side
Moorlands?”
“I warn’t out yesterday evening, father,” answered the girl.
“Warn’t thou?”
“No,” was the reply.
“Thou mayn’t have told a lie about that half-a-crown piece, but I doubt
thou’rt telling a lie now, my lass,” he said.
“Well, you can ask Mrs. Dudley if I went out yesterday,” retorted
Prissy, defiantly.
“I take it Madam Dudley has something else to do than watch the coming
and going of a wench like thou,” he answered; “mayhap she don’t know the
one-half of what anybody in the house does; but I can tell thee this
much, Prissy—that if I catches thee going wrong, I’ll break every bone
in thy body, if it was covered an inch thick with silks and satins.”
“I warn’t out,” persisted Prissy.
“See that thou bain’t then,” returned her uncompromising parent; and as
the weeks and the months passed by without John having any further
occasion to find fault with his first-born, it may reasonably be
presumed that she heeded his admonition.
Further, in a general way, she gave satisfaction at the Hollow, where
she was on good terms with every one, unless, indeed, it might be Master
Marsden, who was, as she took various opportunities of informing him, an
“ill-behaved limb,” and no “young gentleman.”
The last occasion on which Priscilla found herself moved to this
confession of faith, was when she boxed Master Marsden’s ears for
holding Muff, and instructing Leonard to rub turpentine over her coat,
preliminary—so she ascertained from Lally, who came rushing to her in an
agony of distress—to “making a bonfire of my poor tittens.”
That Master Marsden never forgave this interference with his legitimate
pleasures, and that his wrath was very grievously moved, both at Lally’s
tale-bearing and Prissy’s prompt interference, may be gathered from the
fact that he informed Lally she was a “nasty little tell-tale tit.”
“Lally not,” lamented the child.
“Yes, you are—and ‘your tongue shall be slit, and every little puppy-dog
shall get a little bit,’” persisted Master Marsden, with his own tongue
very far out; adding, to Priscilla, by way of appendix to this poem—
“As for you, you ugly, snub-nosed, green-eyed little——”
“No names, Harry,” interposed Alick, who chanced to come up at the
instant; “and what have you been doing with the cat? What’s all this, I
ask?” and he looked angrily round the group.
“I was only going to singe her hair; it is too long, like some people’s
tongues,” answered the boy, impudently.
“Now look here, Harry,” said Alick; “I won’t take you to Arthur, because
he would not lay a finger on you; but I’m your brother, and I’ll give
you a thrashing for this you’ll perhaps remember. Teaching Leonard such
tricks, too, you cruel little cur!”
“Cur yourself!” retorted Harry; and in a moment he was grappling with
Alick, trying to wrest the riding-whip he held out of his hand—kicking,
plunging, biting even; and all the time Alick kept shaking and striking
him,—Lally crying bitterly the while—till, panting and frightened, the
boy shrieked out for mercy.
Then the elder loosed his grasp and bade him go, saying, “Though you
make such a noise I know you are not much hurt, but never let me catch
you playing such tricks again, or I will hurt you next time.”
“I’ll be even with you all yet,” observed Harry, gratefully, as he
skulked away; and this threat, which probably had not the slightest
meaning attached to it in the boy’s mind, was remembered to his
disadvantage subsequently.
When the day came that it was remembered, no one believed his
declaration of not having “meant anything”—of not having intended to do
anybody any harm. When every creature in the house treated him like a
pariah, and avoided him as though he had leprosy, Harry felt that he
could better have endured a dozen worse thrashings than such social
ostracism. When his assertions were received with silent
incredulity—when his questions were answered reluctantly and with
withering disdain and dislike—when his food was handed to him as if he
were some unclean animal, unfit to eat or associate with civilized
beings—when there was a great silence in the house—when people went
about on tiptoe, and, if they met the boy, passed him either with
averted heads or with looks of reproach and anger—when Leonard turned
king’s evidence and bore testimony against him—when he sat in his own
room, or else wandered about the farm, kicking twigs and stones
listlessly before him—Harry felt it was all more than he could bear,
and, turning at last on Cuthbert, told that youth he did not see why
they were all so hard upon him. “You were not a bit better, any one of
you, when you were young,” he finished, passionately.
“_We_ did not try to kill people,” answered his step-brother, with
dignity, as he retreated from the room, followed by Harry’s indignant
remonstrance of—
“No more didn’t I—no more didn’t I!”