HOLLY BERRIES.
The accident at Berrie Down brought, during the course of the few weeks
preceding Christmas, an unprecedented number of visitors to the Hollow.
Never before in the memory of any individual connected with the
establishment had so many carriages, driven up to the door in the course
of one day as was the case when once news of Lally’s precarious state
came to be bruited abroad.
People who had never called on Mrs. Dudley now called to inquire after
her child, and there had to be a piece of cork fastened under the
knocker, and some baize tied round the clapper of the bell, in order to
prevent Heather being maddened by the incessant rat-tat-tat and
ting-ting-ting of her neighbours’ grand footmen.
Very little social courtesy had been extended to Mrs. Dudley since her
marriage. Long before her advent, the Dudleys had dropped off the
visiting lists of their more aristocratic acquaintances, and no one felt
much inclined to take steps towards reviving the old intimacy when
Arthur Dudley brought home to the Hollow a wife of whom no one knew
anything, who might, in fact, be “anybody”—as Mrs. Poole Seymour, the
great lady of North Kemms, vaguely expressed herself.
When society does not take notice of a woman on the occasion of her
marriage, it is difficult for any member composing it subsequently to
repair that omission; and thus, although there was scarcely a lady in
the three parishes who would not willingly enough have extended her
countenance to Mrs. Dudley, and although most persons’ consciences
pricked them when they passed the Hollow, or met the pretty woman and
her children, and the brothers and sisters-in-law whom she had so
speedily tamed and civilized, in Berrie Down Lane, still Heather’s
circle of acquaintances had remained extremely limited, and might have
remained so for many a year longer, had not Lally’s accident broken the
conventional ice, and brought, as I have said, visitors and kind
inquiries to Berrie Down in abundance.
The excitement produced by the little girl’s illness and danger was,
indeed, something astonishing. Mothers had a fellow-feeling for the poor
creature who sat—so the doctor reported—day and night by her little
girl’s side. Those who were childless had perhaps even a keener, because
a more imaginative and sentimental sympathy in the matter. Gentlemen, as
a rule, admired Heather, and regretted that any trouble should fall upon
her; and, added to all these causes of compassion, there was a strong
feeling in the small community round about Berrie Down that Mrs. Dudley
was a victim—an unappreciated victim, moreover; that she must have had a
hard time of it with those boys and girls, and that “proud, useless
husband,” and that it was quite time somebody took her up and made her
position more endurable.
The world’s pity is usually abundant in inverse proportion to the
necessity that exists for it to be vouchsafed at all.
Certainly, Heather did not consider the five brothers and sisters a
cause for repining, nor had she ever murmured because she and her
husband often found it a hard struggle to make the two ends of their
income meet.
If, of late, she had occasionally wept over any paragraph in her life’s
story, those tears were never shed in public—of their bitterness she
never complained to any created being.
Her happiness the world could not mar, her grief the world could not
cure; and, perhaps for both these reasons, and also because she felt
that society was by no means an inexpensive luxury, she did not respond
to the advances now made with so much alacrity as the ladies of the
three parishes thought she might have done under the circumstances.
“Under the circumstances” meant, that, although they—the ladies—had
neglected Mrs. Dudley at first, still they had availed themselves of the
earliest opportunity which offered of making amends to her for their
former want of attention.
They were willing to forget all the years during which the Dudleys had
voluntarily put themselves on one side, if the Dudleys would forget
those years likewise; but Heather did not, as has been stated, appear
unduly elated by the somewhat tardy honour which was now sought to be
thrust upon her. It was not in her nature to be unthankful or
ungracious; but her mind was troubled about her child, she said, and she
trusted visitors would excuse her coming down to them.
Thus Bessie Ormson and Agnes Dudley were in the habit of repulsing great
ladies day after day; but, somehow, the autocrats of their various ilks
did not take these apologetic messages in bad part,—rather, on the
contrary, they professed their anxiety that poor dear Mrs. Dudley should
not leave her little girl, and appeared quite content to hear the story
of the accident from the lips of other members of Squire Dudley’s
family.
Hitherto, most decidedly, the younger Dudleys had been rather a trouble
to the minds of those exalted persons who occasionally deigned to
discuss Berrie Down Hollow and the persons who dwelt there.
They were regarded as a species of fungus which had been permitted to
grow upon and disfigure a very old and a very good tree. Grandchildren
were they of an alderman—a poor alderman, be it remembered, who had not
even thought it worth his while to recognise the honour birth had
conferred on him and his, by leaving a sufficient amount of money behind
to patch up the broken fortunes of the Dudleys of Berrie Down.
If trade were to be tolerated at all, it could only be tolerated for the
sake of the wealth it brought to aristocratic, but empty coffers.
In itself, like a servant, it was an evil; but like a servant also, if
it did its work, its presence might be both tolerated and approved.
If it failed to perform its appointed task—if it grew poor and
pretentious, like its betters, then the sooner it was stamped out the
better.
A poor alderman seemed in the eyes of those great people nothing more
nor less than an arrant impostor. Of course, any gentleman marrying the
daughter of such a person would conclude she had money, and for her not
to have money was a downright deception.
Then for her to have five children. “Those kind of vulgar women always
have tribes of children, my dear,” said Mrs. Poole Seymour, who was
childless, to the Honourable Augusta Baldwin (Lord Kemms’ aunt), who was
popularly supposed never to have had an offer. “If poor Major Dudley had
lived much longer, there is no telling how many sons and daughters might
have been left for his heir to support. Shocking I call it. You
remember, the first wife had only one child, and this present Mrs.
Dudley but two. Quite enough, to my mind—just a nice number; but as for
those five other creatures, it is perfectly heartbreaking to think of
any man being burdened with them.”
This was the bird’s-eye view of the question which society from an
exalted position was good enough to take.
When, however, society condescended to a nearer inspection, affairs
assumed a somewhat different aspect. The Dudley girls were not uncouth
young women, with large bones, rough hair, loud voices, and red hands;
rather they were, to borrow from Mrs. Poole Seymour once more, decidedly
pleasing girls—very nice and unaffected in their manners, and
irreproachable as to their accent. Altogether, a call at Berrie Down
grew to be considered an agreeable object for a morning drive. The
ladies of the three parishes were, perhaps, a trifle weary of each
other, and liked, moreover, having something to do.
Fruit and flowers, game, picture-books, dolls, toys, came daily to the
Hollow, together with compliments and kind inquiries. Callers arrived
also, assured that some day Heather herself would become visible, and
also very certain that half an hour at Berrie Down passed more rapidly
than ten minutes anywhere else.
Bessie did her best to amuse the great people, and the great people were
pleased to approve her efforts. “You and your sisters, really must come
over and stay with me,” Mrs. Poole Seymour was good enough at last to
declare; and then Bessie had to explain she was not a Miss Dudley at
all,—only a cousin wishful to help Mrs. Dudley at that trying period. A
“sort of nurse,” added Bessie, mischievously, whereupon Agnes Dudley
observed, “A very pearl of nurses; I do not know what we should have
done without her;” at which little speech Mrs. Poole Seymour smiled
graciously, and said they were good, sweet girls, of whom she trusted
she should yet have the pleasure of seeing a great deal.
“She has all the trust, and all the pleasure on her side, then,”
remarked Bessie, after their visitor departed; but, in spite of this
depreciating observation, there can be no question but that Miss Ormson
liked playing hostess—that she delighted in trying her strength and
testing her power on grand ladies who were to the manner born, and never
seemed disturbed or put out by any circumstance, or any person.
Another thing pleased her also—the vain coquettish puss—namely, to run
up to her room after the various callers had departed, and looking in
the glass consider how much prettier—how much more graceful she was than
any of them.
Mrs. Crompton Raidsford was amongst the earliest of Mrs. Dudley’s
visitors. No one, not even the Earl’s daughter, who married Mr.
Plimpton, of Thornfield—a man commonly believed to be rolling in
wealth—came in such style to Berrie Down as the contractor’s wife.
She had the shortest distance to drive of any lady in the neighbourhood,
yet she arrived in a great chariot, drawn by a pair of horses, seventeen
hands high if they were an inch, with coachman and footman on the box,
and another footman behind.
As Bessie subsequently remarked, “Anybody might have thought the Lord
Mayor of London had come out in his state carriage to visit us. I really
felt quite subdued by such unnecessary magnificence.”
“And if you only saw Mrs. Raidsford, Heather,” she went on; “if you
could only imagine the mass of satin, and velvet, and sable, and
pretension and vulgarity, which descended, assisted by two footmen, from
that chariot, you would be astonished to think Mr. Raidsford has lived
with her so long. I never did behold such a woman. I dare not look at
Agnes while she was talking. Do you think I could at first imagine whom
she meant by ‘your gentleman,’ or conceive why she wanted to know what
sized nursery you had? I consider it was most clever of Agnes to
interrupt me when I was going to say I could get a rule from Cuthbert
and measure it for her. How came you to guess, Aggy, that was her way of
inquiring how many children Heather had? She said she hoped you would
not think she had condescended in coming over so soon—”
“What!” exclaimed Heather in astonishment.
“She meant intruded, I believe,” explained Bessie, “for that Mr.
Raidsford had never given her a moment’s peace about calling ever since
he heard of the collusion your little girl had met with. I may safely
say,” proceeded Bessie, “that she did not use a single long word in its
right sense. She informed us—talking of ghosts, that she was not
supercilious—that if we would come over to Moorlands any day she would
be very glad to show us the apiary Mr. R. had built for British birds;
that her young ladies were not much of ones for pedestrian exercise,
that they preferred walking to riding, only their ‘papar’ thought it was
well for them to be learned how to do it. She told us her nerves never
would have been strong enough for her to do anything in that way; in
fact, it always put her heart in her mouth to see Lord Kemms a leaping
of that Black Knight of his over the fossil on the lawn. If she
mentioned Lord Kemms once during the time she was here,” went on Bessie,
“she did sixty times. That is the worst of a man rising; he has to carry
his wife a dead weight, up with him. Well, there must be some of her to
be some of all sorts—so let us rest and be thankful.”
Utterly astonished was Arthur at sight of the visitors who came to
inquire concerning the health of his eldest born.
“Leonard might have broken every bone in his body before they would have
offered any such civility,” he grumbled; but Bessie bade him
“hush—sh—sh—”
“It was really your good child Leonard, Arthur, who pushed her in,” she
said; “and if we have been wise enough to keep that fact in the
background, I pray you not to be ungrateful. It was poor Heather’s
sinner who fell into the water, but it was your saint who was the cause
of her doing so. And it is natural such a catastrophe should bring wives
and mothers to Berrie Down. It brought me, so you ought not to be
surprised at anything after that.”
“It was very kind of you, Bessie,” answered Squire Dudley; but,
nevertheless, he refused to see their visitors, and it was long before
the honours of Berrie Down were done by Heather in person.
Then, indeed, Mrs. Poole Seymour, and the Honourable Augusta Baldwin,
Mrs. Plimpton, and Mrs. Carroll, and Mrs. Raidsford, and Mrs. Lynford,
and Mrs. Hulst, and a multitude of other morning callers, professed
themselves charmed, and wondered how it happened they could have resided
for so long a time within visiting distance of Berrie Down without
knowing that dear, sweet, gentle Mrs. Dudley.
“Anything prettier than Mrs. Dudley and her little girl,” opined
society, “had never been exhibited at the Royal Academy;” and,
certainly, in those days, both mother and child were very
touching—Heather pathetic, with pale thin face and anxious eyes; Lally
so easily tired, so soon wearied, even with fresh toys and strange
faces.
“Oo dood to Lally,” she said to Mrs. Poole Seymour when that lady bought
her a doll’s house furnished complete, and would have had the child play
with and enjoy it; “oo dood to Lally, but Lally tired mamma—tell
lady—Lally’s very bad.”
There was not a woman who went up in due time to the room where Lally
lay that left it with dry eyes. Even Mrs. Raidsford declared the scene
was “quite effective.” As for Mrs. Poole Seymour, she was never weary of
bringing over toys for the child, which the poor little creature always
clutched with weak avidity, and then next moment almost wearily
relinquished.
There were two spirits in poor Lally then; the spirit of health and the
spirit of sickness, the spirit of her former self, and the spirit which
entered into her body as she rose for the last time struggling for life
in the cold waters of Mr. Scrotter’s pond. The first was all eagerness,
excitement, vivacity; the last was languid, weary, inactive; the first
hastened her pulses, sent the blood to her cheeks, loaded her tongue
with eager words, and tipped her fingers with quicksilver; the second
laid a depressing weight on her heart, caused the unspoken words to die
away on her white lips, drew the bright colour from her face, checked
the impulses of the little hands, and caused the tired head to be laid
on her mother’s breast almost before the new toys were examined,—the
latest wonder in doll creation critically inspected.
“Put ’em away,” she was wont to say with the air of a matron of forty,
“put ’em away, Lally look at ’em by-and-by.”
But by-and-by came and went,—came and went without bringing much more
inclination to Lally to inspect her new possessions.
The loveliest doll on earth could not have retained her attention very
long in the days of which I am writing. She would look at it for a
moment and then turn her eyes wearily away. “Lally not well,” that was
the burden of the song then; “Ma,—Lally not well.”
“But you are better, my pet,” Heather was wont to say. “You are not very
bad now, Lally.”
“No, but Lally not well;” and then mother and doctor and friends would
look at each other and declare “she is much better, and the spring will
do wonders for her.”
Of that spring and of the summer Lally might have been said to rave.
Each morning when she opened her eyes, she would ask between sleeping
and waking, “Bessie, are the leaves come yet?” or “are the trees green?
Is it spring now?”
“Nonsense, puss,” Bessie always answered, “Christmas has not come yet;
you are to get well, you know, and be carried downstairs to eat your
plum pudding. Little girls who sham sickness are not to have any good
things at all. You are to be taken into the drawing-room and kissed
under the misletoe—kissed till you are black and blue, you bad child,
for all the trouble and anxiety you have caused us.”
Whereupon Lally would declare she “wadn’t bad tild, and she wouldn’t be
tissed back and bue; Lally has had more tisses than ze liked these days;
Lally tired of ladies tissing of her.”
“You little ungrateful monkey!”
“Big fat ooman tissed Lally, and hurt her with her beard,” the child
complained, “and Lally did not like her sweet-sweets; they were nasty.”
“You ought not to have had any, you know, you dreadful child!”
“Lally ought; Lally would like some this minute, if they was dood, and
not mortar. Issy said they were mortar, and that Mrs. Aidsford had no
business to bring them: but Issy says wicked things, and Lally isn’t to
’tend to her.”
Having finished which speech, Lilian Dudley nestled her head in her
pillow, and thought over her various visitors.
“I’d like to have Muff,” she said at last, as a consolatory conclusion;
and, accordingly, Muff was brought; and from that day forth the cat
rarely left its little mistress’s side. By some mysterious means, the
creature seemed to understand there was a terrible fight going on in the
silent room, and it would lie for hours quietly beside the child,
purring vigorously, never moving, unless Lally said, tenderly, “poor
titty,” or “poor puss,” in which case it would open its eyes and blink
at her gratefully, or else march backwards and forwards over her breast,
rubbing sides, and head, and tail against the pinched, changed face of
the little child.
There was nothing much sadder, in those days, than the contemplation of
Lally and “pussens,” as she styled her cat.
There was the meek, unassuming, yet intense sympathy of the dumb
creature, not unmixed, it might be, with a perfect appreciation of the
physical comforts which Lally’s illness provided for her. There was, on
the other hand, the irritable and unreasonable affection of the higher
creature—the exacting fondness of a mistress who expected Muff
continually to get up out of her sleep, to rub against and make much of
her.
Which Muff did—greatly to her credit, as I consider.
A dozen times in an hour the cat was roused from her slumber, with
invariably the same result; and, sleepy or not sleepy, she was always
expected, if Lally wished that she should do so, to fold her paws, lie
quiet, put down her head, commence purring, and so wander into dreamland
once again.
“Poor pussens, poor tittens, poor Muff!” and so mistress and cat would
fall to rest, mutually caressing each other; and sometimes Bessie,
watching the pair, would turn her head aside and cry silently.
They were gathering holly berries in those days; and Lally had longed to
go out and watch the holly being cut “in Berrie Down Lane, and just
round about, ma,” she said; but in this matter Heather was firm. “My pet
must not put her little face outside the doors till spring comes,” she
answered; and then Lally very piteously asked, “Will spring be long,
ma,—will spring be long?”
“Look at the beautiful dress I have made for Lally’s own self,” said
Bessie on Christmas-eve—holding up a little frock of white cashmere,
which she had bound and trimmed, and decked out prettily with light blue
ribbon. “My child is to be dressed up in all this loveliness to-night,
and carried down in Bessie’s arms, to say to mamma and papa ‘merry
Christmas, happy new year.’ Lally won’t be awake soon enough in the
morning to say all that long sentence. Would Lally like to be dressed,
and go now?”
Lally conceiving that she would, the grand dress was slipped on over her
little night-gown, then a soft blue shawl was thrown round her neck, and
thus attired, with her head resting on Bessie’s shoulder, Lally put in
her first appearance in the family circle.
“My darling, my darling!” Heather said; and she stood up white and
trembling as she spoke.
“Is that my little girl?” Arthur exclaimed, making a movement to take
her, in which he was restrained, however, by Lally’s statement that she
was not to be hurt. “Lally’s been very sore, pa,” she explained. “Merry
Chris-mes, dood new year!”
“That is not it,” whispered Bessie, giving her a little admonitory
shake,—“happy.”
“Ma, happy Chris-mes, merry new year!” and the little creature made the
round of the family, not forgetting Master Marsden, whom Bessie
reluctantly allowed to kiss her. Surreptitiously and remorsefully that
young gentleman conveyed into Lally’s hand five or six marbles, which
had been secreted about his person.
“They are for you,” he whispered; and the gift Lally religiously carried
upstairs, falling asleep with the precious stones laid in a heap beside
her.
“Ver pret,” she said, pointing to the great branch of holly, with its
red berries glowing among the glossy leaves, which Bessie had suspended
over the top of her little bed, “ver—pret.”
“Yes, my darling, they are ver—ver pret,” answered Bessie, while she
took off Lally’s finery, and laid her down among the snowy napery; and
when all that was done, and Lally was tucked up for the night, Bessie
took her seat beside the bed, and told the child, as well as she could,
what event the holly berries were hung there to commemorate; told her
how, more than eighteen centuries before, the wise men came to worship
at Bethlehem, and how the star had gone before them, and stood over the
manger where Jesus was laid.
“That is why we hang our houses with holly branches, Lally,” Bessie went
on, “because to-morrow is the birthday of One who loved us all
exceedingly. Do you understand me, pet?”
“Iss,” was the reply, “Lally does; Lally heard all that before long ago,
that is why we have plum-pudden too.”
Rather disheartened at this view of the question, Bessie observed, that
when people were glad they prepare a feast, and “make merry,” and that
plum-pudding happened to be part of the good things provided at
Christmas.
“Did He have dood tings?” Lally immediately inquired, with the terrible
perception of the incongruous, which makes it so difficult to talk to
children on serious subjects in connection with their daily life.
Altogether, it seemed to Bessie that she had better have left her
religious instruction alone; but she had gone too far to recede, and
accordingly she answered that “He had been poorly lodged, poorly fed,
evilly treated while He remained on earth; that though He had done so
much for men, men had used Him despitefully, and mocked and forsaken
Him. But He loved little children, Lally,” finished Bessie, “and so,
when you look at the holly berries, you must always think of Him. He was
so good, Lally, that Child born eighteen hundred years ago. He was so
good!”
“Are you dood, Bessie?” asked the little creature.
“No, my darling, I am not; I wish I were; oh! Lally, I wish I were!”
“You are dood to Lally,” was the encouraging reply. “Bessie, I do love
’oo; thing to I, please; thing I to thleep.”
But Bessie refused to sing at all till Lally said “sleep” properly.
“Seep dere den,” Lally exclaimed in a tone of such triumph that Bessie
was fain to kiss her a dozen times ere commencing one of those dear old
Christmas carols that one never hears now-a-days, that went out of
fashion with the Christmas frosts and snows.
By the time the strain was ended, Lally had fallen asleep; but through
the night she wakened and asked Agnes, who sat beside her bed, to tell
her more about the Child.
“What child, dear?” said Agnes, who thought she was dreaming or
wandering.
“It is His birthday, you know; the Child;” and then Agnes knew what she
meant, and told her stories about Him and His goodness till Lally said
plaintively, “I wis He was here now, Aggy.”
“I wish He were, my darling, for He would make you better in a moment,”
Agnes answered, sorrowfully.
“Agnes!”—it was Heather coming into the room with a loose dressing-gown
thrown around her that made Agnes turn at this point,—“He is here, and
He will make my child well, if it seemeth Him good. I prayed for her all
the time she was so very ill, as it would have been impossible for me to
have prayed, had I not felt He was with me, standing near; but I tried
not to pray too much, dear, lest in granting my petition He should
punish me for it.”
And so mother and aunt talked while the child dropped off into slumber
once again, and so the Christmas morning dawned—fine, and clear, and
bright; and the holly berries looked red and warm as the December sun
peered through the windows of the Hollow, and found everything there in
due order for a quiet, happy Christmas.
The child was not well, but she was out of danger, and Heather felt she
must that day go to church and thank God for delivering her darling from
the lions—for giving her back from the very jaws of death, to life, and
hope, to parents, and friends.