LEAVING BERRIE DOWN.
The programme of domestic arrangements which Arthur Dudley had so
ingeniously sketched out, as he travelled from London to Palinsbridge,
was, like many other programmes, destined to undergo much revision
before being presented to the public.
In the first place, Mrs. Piggott’s prudence, or possibly, even her
morality, objected to being left alone with Ned at Berrie Down in charge
of that establishment. A house without a mistress had always been Mrs.
Piggott’s special abhorrence,—a house where things, as she said, “ran
wild.”
Further, Mrs. Dudley most earnestly desired that if her lot were to be
cast in town, it should not be cast there in company with strange
servants; and, after much anxious discussion, it was accordingly agreed
that Susan should take Mrs. Piggott’s position, and a new housemaid be
engaged to fill Jane’s place, while Prissy and Jane and Mrs. Piggott
accompanied the family to London. As an almost necessary consequence of
this arrangement, it was decided that Agnes and Laura should remain at
the Hollow; Agnes willingly undertaking to “see to things” as much as
possible, and write Heather an account of the farm proceedings every
week.
Ned, of course, was to take charge of out-door matters, as hitherto; and
Lucy and Cuthbert were to proceed to town.
It seemed to Mr. Black, when he heard these various decisions, that the
whole family must suddenly have taken leave of their senses.
“Why the deuce you could not have put in a care-taker, and sold the
cows, and got rid of all the poultry, and let that Ned fellow see to the
ploughing and sowing, passes my comprehension. The girls will never get
married down there; why, I don’t suppose they see a man from one year’s
end to another!”
“There is one of them coming up, remember,” said Arthur Dudley, in a
tone of apology, as though some excuse were necessary for not putting
his sisters in the way of matrimonial chances; “and Heather and they
settled it, somehow, amongst them. It appeared to me rather a good
arrangement.”
“Well, it may be, if you wish to have them on your hands for ever,”
answered Mr. Black; at which remark Arthur bit his lip.
He did not like being interfered with, or advised overmuch. If he wished
his sisters to stay at Berrie Down, what business was it of Mr. Black’s
whether they remained there or not? He had maintained them when no other
member of the family could or would have done so, and he did not see
that any person had a right to make comments on what he did or left
undone.
“You need not look crusty, Squire,” proceeded Mr. Black; “what I said is
merely my opinion, and you may take it for what it is worth; only I
consider it to be a confoundedly bad plan to have two establishments,
and so I tell you. I would shut up Berrie Down, and move the whole
party, bag and baggage, to town. That is what I should do; but, of
course, you can do as you like.”
“Yes; and that is what I intend to do: much obliged, at the same time,
for your kind permission.”
“Hoity-toity!” said Mr. Black, taking off his hat, and bowing low as he
spoke;—it was in one of the empty rooms of Arthur’s house in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields that this conversation occurred,—“hoity-toity! your most
obedient, sir, and humbly beg pardon for the liberty.”
In a pet, Arthur turned away, and walking to one of the windows, looked
out over the Square, while Mr. Black regarded him with a smile, in which
there lurked not merely amusement, but also triumph and contempt.
“You’re a nice chicken, you are,” thus ran the promoter’s secret
thought; “and you have a sweet temper, Mister Squire Dudley; and you
think you are able to manage your affairs, though anybody, willing to
take the trouble, might put a ring through your nose, and lead you from
here to Jericho. And so you intend to do as you like! It will be as I
like before we have done with one another, I fancy; a conceited,
upsetting ass!”
But Mr. Black was much too wise a man to allow even a word of all this
to pass his lips. He had his game still to play; and he would not mar
the chances of success by any irritated or indiscreet remark.
“Come, Dudley,” he said, “we are not going to quarrel over trifles, are
we? I meant no offence, and am sorry if you have taken any. I have
knocked about the world too much to be as mealy-mouthed as most of your
acquaintances, but I should be as sorry to vex you, perhaps, as any of
them. I am glad you like the papers I have chosen; you will find
everything in apple-pie order when you bring up Mrs. Dudley and the
children. So your wife is going to try moving Miss Lally? I am glad of
it; I believe she will get well in half the time in town.”
That was what Heather trusted also; she hoped that some of the great
doctors in London would be able to do more for her little girl in a
month than the general practitioner at Fifield had effected in five.
Every one told her she was doing the wisest thing possible in taking
Lally to town! every one was so kind and good!
Mrs. Poole Seymour sent her carriage to convey mother and child to the
station, and Mr. Plimpton was at Palinsbridge, ready to conduct Lally
across the bridge, and deposit her safely in the compartment he had
secured for the travellers.
Miss Baldwin promised to call upon the girls “very often,” and said she
should not “forget to find her way to Lincoln’s Inn when in town;” while
Mrs. Raidsford came lumbering over in the great family chariot, and, not
to be outdone in neighbourly thoughtfulness and delicate consideration,
brought Heather a basket of the worst grapes growing in the Moorlands
conservatory, and offered to lend her “one of the footmen,” if he could
be of any service in seeing to her luggage.
It was fortunate for Heather she had, towards the last, so many people
to see, so many things to occupy and distract her mind, or else that
parting from Berrie Down, when the spring flowers were budding, when the
fresh leaves were clothing all the trees, when the birds were singing on
every branch and bough, must almost have broken her heart.
She loved the spring-time—that time which always seems more full of
hope, and joy, and life, and promise than any other period in the year.
It had been her delight, ever since she came to Berrie Down, to watch
the buds gradually forming, to peep with the children at the nests,
where eggs, speckled, and blue, and white, and green, were covered by
birds that rarely took fright at sight, of the familiar faces; to her,
the lambing season was the pleasantest of the four—the long, long summer
stretched away beyond the spring, and the rich, glowing autumn beyond
that, and all these good things were to be had and enjoyed before the
winter, with its leafless trees, with its snows and frosts, with its
rain and storms, came again to Berrie Down.
To any person passionately fond of the country, of its sights, and
sounds, and pleasures, the coming of spring is as the beginning of a
feast, as the sunrise on the morning of a bright glad holiday. To
Heather, this had always been the happiest, most delicious time at
Berrie Down—these months when the lambs commenced to dot the fields,
when the daisies perked up their faces among the green grass, when the
hyacinths began to bud in the dells, when the “sunny celandine” opened
on the hedge-bank, when the children gathered branches of the
crab-apple, when the first broods of chickens chipped their shells and
went chirruping and scratching about the warmest corners of the
farm-yard—when the sun really had some power, when the fruit-trees were
in blossom and the lilacs showed for flower, when the tiger-lily reared
its head in the garden, when every hedge-row was clad in its fresh robe
of green, and there was that nameless scent of spring pervading that
air—that scent with which the summer odours vainly strive to compete.
With a new sense of happiness upon her, with a sensuous delight in the
soft balmy air, in the fragrance which pervaded the atmosphere, in the
sunny smile which shone on the face of Nature, in the sudden stir which
there seemed on every bough, in every blade of grass—Heather, I say,
when all the things I have mentioned came to pass, would stand at the
open window of the drawing-room, looking down over the Hollow, and away
to the woods surrounding Kemms’ Park, repeating to herself the while—
“The winter is past—the rain is over and gone—the flowers appear on the
earth—the time for the singing-birds is come—and the voice of the turtle
is heard in the land.”
And now this time was come, and she had to leave it behind.
Just when the hawthorn-buds were forming—when the chestnut-trees were
clothing themselves in great masses of foliage, to be relieved presently
and lighted up with cone after cone of pure white flowers—when the
laburnums were about loosening their golden curls, and the lilacs
bethought themselves of filling the air with a delicious fragrance—when
the westeria was hanging out its purple clusters, and the pyracanthas at
the gate were a perfect sheet of bloom—when the white anemone and the
starry stitchwort dotted the woods—when everything was looking its
loveliest, and brightest, and purest, Heather was compelled to leave the
place her heart had grown to during the years of her married life.
For some time previously, Arthur had been resident in town; but Mrs.
Dudley, having many preparations to make, many arrangements to complete,
remained at Berrie Down, not merely until the spring blossoms were come,
but also until Lally was sufficiently recovered to travel.
The child still kept weakly and delicate; her once tireless, limbs now
refused to carry her for any long period. If she started to run along
one of the garden walks, she soon returned to her mother with, “Carry
me, pease—legs ache.” The colour did not return to her cheeks, nor
strength to her body, neither did she get plump and soft again, as
Heather hoped would have been the case.
The poor wasted arms, and little white face, and thin slight figure, had
a pleading pitifulness about them, which the child’s eager desire for
exercise, her unquenched vivacity, made more pathetic still.
Whatever Lally saw any other creature doing, that she desired to essay
also. She wanted to run after the lambs, and scamper like the dogs, and
be out over the fields with Cuthbert, and trotting behind Agnes and Mrs.
Piggott, to dairy, and poultry-yard, and paddock; but it was not to be!
The spirit was there—strong, restless, excitable as ever; but the body
was changed. No more gallops for Lally on any one’s shoulder—no more
charming excursions in Ned’s wheelbarrow—no more clambering up ladders,
and lofty thrones on the top of haystacks and corn-ricks—no more playing
at hide-and-seek in the hollow—no more running after the ducks, and
shrill laughter at seeing them take to the water in order to escape the
pursuit of their tiny persecutor—no more searchings after hens that had
stolen away to lay—no more of these old happinesses for Lally. Sickness
had caught her one day, when his advent was least looked for—caught and
put her in a cage, which would not permit her to move far in any
direction, against the bars of which the little restless heart fluttered
and beat only to its own hurt—a cage from which no human hand could
release her, though loving friends were all around, and kindly eyes,
often with tears in them, regarded the impatient child.
Tired—tired—always tired! Many and many a time, when Heather, hearing
this plaint, lifted her child in her arms, she had to turn aside lest
Lally should see she was weeping; but one day Lally, peeping round,
beheld the tears on her mother’s face, and said—
“’Oo crying, ma?—is it about Lally? Big, fat lady told Lally she’ll get
some-sing when she goes to London, that will make her better as well.
When are we going, ma—when?”
And because her own hopes were identical with Lally’s words, Mrs. Dudley
did not grieve so much concerning leaving Berrie Down as might otherwise
have been the case. As regarded the increase of income, the prospect of
greater pecuniary comfort, Heather felt no elation whatever.
If Arthur were satisfied, she could easily make herself satisfied also;
but she had little faith that anything in which Mr. Black figured as
prime mover would ultimately prove advantageous to her husband.
Besides, if a person have half a million a year, he can but be happy;
and Heather knew perfectly well that the secret of being happy, even on
two hundred a year, is to be satisfied therewith.
Arthur had never been contented, and she was quite aware that the
increase to his income could not make him so. She understood her
husband’s peculiarities sufficiently by this time to know that his wants
would only grow with what they fed on.
If Mr. Black’s cry were always more capital, Arthur’s had always been a
larger revenue.
Looking back over her married life with eyes from which the glamour of
early love was now completely cleared away, Heather saw that money
matters might have been better with them for years past, had Arthur only
been energetic, and strong, and determined, like other men—had he
finished his draining instead of leaving it half completed—had he turned
up his land and laid out money by degrees, as he could spare it, on that
which never proves ungrateful for capital wisely expended, for care
judiciously bestowed.
She could not be blind to the fact that, as a rule, they had bought
stock dear and sold it cheap—that what Alick had often said, “Arthur is
neither master nor man: neither master to give orders and see them
carried out, nor man to obey orders if given by anybody else,” was true.
There was no fairy mist hanging before her mental vision now. Like Mr.
Stewart, she feared the person who could not make money at Berrie Down,
plainly and economically as they had lived for years, would not be
likely to make or to keep much money elsewhere. Certainly the thousand a
year was something tangible—a peg on which to hang her faith, had any
faith been left; but, like most women who have passed all the most
important years of their lives in the country, Heather entertained a
perfect horror of the expenses of living in town.
She did not believe one sentence of what Mr. Black said about an income
going as far there as in the country. She knew, no one better, how very
small a money outlay had sufficed to maintain the family at Berrie Down
comfortably and respectably.
Those only who have eaten of the fat of their own lands, and beheld the
wheat growing which is afterwards to be ground into flour—who have
scarcely missed from amongst the rough abundance of all farm produce,
the poultry and milk, the butter, eggs, hams, vegetables, and meat
necessary for the consumption even of a large family—can tell what a
very difficult thing it is to cater for an establishment in town, where
everything, to the country imagination, seems sold according to its
weight in gold—where a housekeeper’s hand is never out of her pocket
from one week’s end to another—where it is either bills or cash, but, in
any case, ultimately money—where even a few sprigs of parsley, even a
bunch of savoury herbs, cannot be procured without purchase, without
going through the ceremony of buying that which, at the old home, grew
wild, almost, along the sunniest borders—wild, to be had for the mere
trouble of gathering.
Of that mongrel country life which exists in the suburbs of great towns,
and which has given rise to various sayings concerning home-laid eggs at
a shilling a-piece, carrots at half-a-guinea the bunch, butter
half-a-crown a pound, and milk eighteen-pence a quart, Heather had no
experience. She only knew that her father’s glebe lands and Arthur’s
farm had enabled their respective families to make both ends meet,
without pinching in the parlour, or an over-strict and painful economy
in the kitchen; and she dreaded entering on what was to her an utterly
untried career—that of managing a town establishment, and entering every
item, from cream to laundry work, in her formerly easily-kept
housekeeping book.
All these matters she had discussed, after a woman’s diffuse fashion,
with Agnes and Mrs. Piggott; and Agnes and Mrs. Piggott had both agreed
that much might still be forwarded from Berrie Down; that it would only
be Ned’s time and the pony’s to run over to Palinsbridge with a weekly
hamper for town; “and besides, you will be often down yourself, I hope,
Heather,” added Agnes; but Heather shook her head.
“The expense,” she said, “will be more than I should like to incur
frequently. I am afraid, although a thousand a year sounds a great deal,
it will not go very far in London, more especially in the style Arthur
talks of living.”
“But his shares, you know, Heather?” suggested Agnes, hopefully.
“Yes, I had forgotten them,” was the reply, evidently intended to be
affirmative of the girl’s cheerful views, but failing of its purpose,
because Mrs. Dudley’s tone implied that, now she did remember the
shares, her spirits were not unduly raised.
She had heard too many revelations from Mrs. Black to be mightily
exalted at the idea of being even indirectly connected with a company.
That lady had favoured her with too many descriptions of how they had
“up and down,” “seeing and sawing,” for Mrs. Dudley’s heart to flutter
at the prospect of wealth suddenly spread out before them.
“If it was here to-day, it was gone to-morrow,” Mrs. Black had sadly
lamented; “and, while it was here, we had nothing but anxiety; and when
it was there, we had a trouble to keep the wolf from the door. I am
sure, my dear, what I have gone through would make a history.”
Heather Dudley not having the slightest desire to go through experiences
sufficiently varied and unpleasant to justify any one compiling a
history concerning her, would, had the choice been offered, decidedly
have preferred remaining where there was no chance of such ups and downs
as Mrs. Black mentioned occurring in her life.
The choice, however, not being offered, she had at last no alternative
left but to bid adieu to Berrie Down; and, accompanied by Miss Hope, who
kindly came up from Tunbridge Wells to “see the last” of her old
favourite drive over to Palinsbridge, whence she travelled by one of the
afternoon trains to London.
“I told you how it would be,” said that Job’s comforter, Alithea Hope,
spinster, as she and Mrs. Dudley drove along the pleasant country roads
to the station—Heather crouched up into one corner of Mrs. Seymour’s
carriage, so that her child might lie on the seat with her head resting
on her mother’s lap—“I told you how it would be, if you refused to take
my advice; and now I hope you are satisfied at the result of your
non-interference principle. Sweetness, and amiability, and submission,
and all that kind of thing, are delightful traits, no doubt, in a wife,
but they are qualities thrown away on Arthur Dudley—and so you will find
out some day. The kindest thing you could have done to your husband
would have been to say:
“‘Now, look here, Arthur: if you are resolved to make a fool of
yourself, I won’t make a fool of myself with you. Go to town if you
like, but I stay at Berrie Down. If you are determined to take the bread
out of your children’s mouths, I am equally resolved we shall not all be
left paupers, if I can prevent it; therefore, I mean to remain and
manage the farm, and whenever you are tired of your shares and your
companies, and your Blacks and your town life, you can come home
again.’”
Heather laughed; she was a little hysterical about leaving Berrie Down
and all the kind friends she had recently found there, and so even while
she laughed the tears came into her eyes again.
The idea of her making such a speech to Arthur; of her taking such a
stand and setting her will up in open defiance of his; of her twitting
her husband with his decision, and prophesying failure for him! Heather
could not choose but laugh, and then she cried; and then Miss Hope told
her she was a soft, silly, stupid creature, who had no more business to
marry Arthur Dudley than Mr. Raidsford had to marry that great vulgar
illiterate dowdy, who “came over in her caravan to see you this morning;
you don’t want me to speak about Mrs. Raidsford before Lally,—is that
the meaning of all those signs? The sooner Lally is taught to repeat
nothing she hears, the better; the sooner little girls learn their
mouths and ears were given them to be kept tight shut, the more
sugar-plums will be bought and popped in between their little red lips.
Are you attending to me, Lally?”
“Iss; but how’s me to eat sugar-plums if I keeps mows shut?” inquired
Miss Hope’s pupil.
“You are to open it at proper times,” answered her teacher; “but not to
repeat what older people say before you.”
“Lally don’t ’peat,” replied the child, wearily. “Ma, is it far to
London now? will it be long before we are there? me so tired—me so
tired!”
Whereupon mother and aunt looked at each other, and Miss Hope said,—
“You will send for a doctor soon, Heather; and do try that delightful
man I was speaking to you about. His manner with children is quite
charming: wins their little hearts, and makes them feel at home with him
directly. I am sure, when I went to him with Mrs. Walter Hope about her
Charlie’s legs, if he had been the boy’s father he could not have taken
more interest in his case; said he must see him at least once a week,
for six months; took the child on his knee, and made himself so
pleasant. There was only one stupid remark he made, which surprised me
in so clever a man, namely, that he could tell in a moment whose child
Charlie was, his likeness to his mother being remarkable. I longed to
ask him where his eyes were, for the boy is a Hope, every inch of him,
and very like me,—even his own father admits that.”
Heather laughed again; she was evidently in a laughing mood, for the
slightest thing provoked her merriment. Perhaps it was a comfort to this
“silly goose” to discover that even Miss Hope had her weak points, and
could be touched through them like her neighbours; perhaps the
description of Charlie’s model doctor tickled her fancy; any way she
laughed; and Lally, putting up her little hand, patted her mother’s
cheek, and smiled a weak, faint smile in sympathy, while she asked,—
“Ma, was that ’tild as ill as me?”
“Now I wonder,” broke out Miss Hope, “if it be a consequence of
‘original sin’ that children always speak bad grammar. Is it the
depravity of our human nature which always confounds the parts of
speech, and makes a jumble of the personal pronouns? She never heard bad
grammar spoken by any one belonging to her, and only listen to her
English; if you can call such a language as she speaks English. You want
to know if Charlie was as ill as ‘me,’” added the spinster, directly
addressing Lally; “yes; and a great deal-worse; his legs were like a
bow, bent out like that;” and Miss Hope would have practically
demonstrated what Charlie’s legs were like on Lally’s person, but that
the child resisted any such experiments being attempted with her limbs.
“Positively, Heather, you never saw such a sight as the child was,” she
continued; “but Doctor Chickton assured Fanny he could make a perfect
cure.”
“Will he cure me?” asked Lally, egotistical as most sick people are.
Months of undivided maternal solicitude, the devotion of a whole
household, the visits of ladies vieing one with another who should bring
Lally most toys and dainties, had spoiled the child a little, perhaps;
or it may be that long illness and a close and undivided consideration
of her own ailments, had produced a certain self-consciousness and
absorption. In either case, there can be no question but that Lally was
exceedingly sorry for herself, that she felt her case to be a very hard
one; and that she was precisely in that state of mind and body which
might well tire out any love except a mother’s, any patience save that
which seems well-nigh inexhaustible.
On the previous day Leonard and Lucy, and Cuthbert, together with Mrs.
Piggott and Priscilla Dobbin, had journeyed to town, and now Heather and
her first-born were bringing up the rear of the Dudley domestic army. It
was a great point that Heather should have nothing to attend to
excepting Lally, that she should not be troubled with luggage or
parcels, or anything besides the sick child; and all the others being
gone before, was a relief to her, so as to obviate the necessity for
conversation or movement, or stir or sound, likely to disturb the little
girl.
Mr. Plimpton, one of the most good-natured men who ever existed, saw
Mrs. Dudley into her compartment, and impressed the guard with the
importance of permitting no other passengers to intrude into it.
“The child is very ill indeed,” he explained; which explanation he
perhaps made clearer by slipping half-a-crown into the man’s hand.
“I declare, if it were not that Lady Emily might wonder what had become
of me, I would run up to town with you myself, Mrs. Dudley, and see you
safe; but I think the guard will take care that no other passengers get
in. Good-bye—good-bye, Miss Lally; don’t quite forget me, though you are
going to live in London. Have you any message for my wife? she will be
certain to inquire whether you sent her one.”
“Lally’s love give her,” said the child, who was now all excitement at
the bustle, and the noise, and the steam, and the number of the people,
and the general variety,—“Lally’s love—and a tiss;” and she kissed the
tall gentleman, spite of his bushy whiskers and bristling moustache,
both articles which ordinarily tried her equanimity and temper not a
little.
“That child will never be better,” was Mr. Plimpton’s summary of Lally’s
state on his return home. “They may take her where they like, and send
for whom they like, but she will never be strong again. Poor Mrs. Dudley
believes it to be a question of treatment, but I am confident no
treatment will ever put the little creature to rights.”
As for Miss Hope, she drove back to Berrie Down “crying like an idiot,”
so she informed Agnes all the way. “Dear me, I wish people would not
have children,” she said; “that Lally is enough to break a person’s
heart. Why cannot she get strong as any other child would? I declare I
am out of patience with her, month after month, and like a bag of bones
at the end. And of all things on earth she must set up a lamentation for
that Bessie, whom she ought to have forgotten long ago; asking her
mother if they should see her in London, and whether she would not be
with them always, and sing to her at night. As if Heather were not vexed
enough and sad enough without that;” and Miss Hope tossed aside her
bonnet, which Laura carried upstairs, for the spinster was going to stay
with the girls for a time, to see how they went on and managed by
themselves.
Then came a millennium of “Christian cookery,” and of “coffee fit to be
swallowed;” then Miss Hope was in her element,—a mistress over two young
mistresses, who obeyed her implicitly, and allowed her to order Susan
about as much as she pleased.
But having one’s own way is not always conducive to perfect happiness;
being monarch of all one’s surveys does not invariably produce perfect
contentment. Even a contest with Mrs. Piggott would occasionally have
served to break the monotony of being able to do as she pleased, which
Miss Hope at length felt to be insupportable; and every day, and a score
of times during the course of every day, she repeated that Berrie Down
was not Berrie Down without Heather, who, the guard proving faithful to
the trust reposed in him, travelled alone to London with Lally, and was
met at King’s Cross by Alick and Lucy, the former of whom could only
say, “Well, mother, this is a happy change for me,” as he helped her out
of the carriage, and walked beside her along the platform, carrying
Lally in his arms.
There was no loneliness about that arrival in the great Babylon, even
although Arthur could not meet his wife;—for the strong hands which had
smoothed her way, and helped her through many a difficulty at Berrie
Down, were stretched forth now to guide and guard her through the midst
of the human wilderness whither she had come.