A NEW MOTHER
“One day I received a terrible shock. Child as I was, I felt it
severely. It came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it fell like a
thunderbolt upon me.
“It was a morning in November when the carrier’s cart stopped at the
manor house, and left a box directed to me, in the care of the steward.
“When it was opened, it revealed a beautiful cake wrapped in many folds
of silver paper. I was delighted, for I had not tasted cake for months.
“But, oh! I did not taste it even then! The letter that lay on the top
of the cake poisoned it.
“That letter told me that my father had married and was spending his
honeymoon in Paris. I had a stepmother! A being whom, I knew not how, or
why, unless perhaps from the idle talk of servants, I had learned to
hate as an evil and to dread as an enemy—though it never occurred to me
that my father would give me one. And yet he had married within five
months after my mother’s death.
“I could not touch the poisoned cake! I know not what became of it.
“I cried all that day and many days after. The steward and his wife and
the two old servants who had known and loved and served my mother,
encouraged me with their sympathy and lamentations to yield to my grief
and despair; but the governess frowned upon me and lectured me upon my
duty to my parents, as it was her business to do—only it seemed to me
cruel in her.
“As days passed my passionate grief subsided.
“My father did not bring his bride to Weirdwaste, which was, indeed, no
fit place to bring a fine lady. Nor did he send for me to join them
wherever they might be.
“He heard regularly from me through the doctor, the vicar, the steward,
or my governess. And he seemed to be content with my condition.
“So the year passed away. I was thankful to my father for one thing—that
he did not bring my stepmother and myself together.
“This was all wrong, but I did not know it then. I was unconsciously
influenced by the sentiments of my own mother’s own old servants who
were about me, and who, whenever Miss Murray was out of sight, would
commiserate with me on the subject of my stepmother, and then rejoice
with me on the fact that no future heir to Enderby that might be born of
the second marriage, could deprive me of my inheritance of Weirdwaste,
which was mine in right of my own mother.
“Ah me! Enderby Castle and Weirdwaste sounded well enough in the
peerage, but in point of fact the united rent roll of both places did
not reach over a thousand pounds per annum, and my father, for his rank,
was a very poor man.
“I expected to see my father at Christmas. He wrote to the steward to
say that he would come and bring Lady Enderby with him, and that the
house must be made as comfortable as possible for her reception; and
that the suit of rooms pointing south must be fitted up for her especial
use.
“This letter filled my soul with dismay. I could have looked forward
with delight to the visit of my father, had he been coming alone; but I
could only dread the meeting with my stepmother.
“However, both the pleasure and the pain were saved me, for after the
servants had got the house ready for the reception of my father and his
new wife, there came another letter saying that the delicate health of
Lady Enderby obliged him to take her to Italy for the winter. And in
place of my father and stepmother’s visit, came a box of presents.
“I was again divided in my feelings—sorry not to see my father, glad not
to see my stepmother.
“The Christmas box was a large and well-filled one, packed with flannels
and blankets, and tea and sugar for the old women in the huts on the
waste, and containing another smaller box with cakes, sweetmeats and
sugar plums for me and my small household.
“I heard the steward remark to his wife that the new countess must be
well off, or the earl must have come into money some way, for this was
the very first Christmas that he had ever sent anything to the poor on
the estate. As the guardian of his daughter, the heiress, he forgave
many of them their rent, but he never helped them in any other way. And
so at Christmas the old people on the waste were made happy. And now let
me add here that as long as I remained at the old manor house this
Christmas dole came every year.
“After this I heard less of the cruelty of my father in afflicting me
with a stepmother. I heard even less of the wickedness of stepmothers in
general and the probable enormity of my stepmother in particular.
“The old people from the waste came down in crowds to the manor house on
Christmas Day to thank me for the dole that had been sent to them on
Christmas Eve. This was the only pleasure we had. There was no
merrymaking, and the state of the roads prevented us even from going to
church.
“Oh, the dreary winter that followed! No one came to the house except
the vicar and the doctor, who made weekly calls to report to my father.
And we went nowhere at all. That was my first winter at Weirdwaste. And
here let me add that all succeeding winters were like that.
“I had no companions, no amusements, no occupations except my
schoolbooks and my piano. I had not even a pet bird, or cat, or dog.
“The steward and his wife were good to me, but they were engaged in
their affairs. Miss Murray was faithful, but when she was not hearing my
lessons, or guiding my fingers over the keys of the piano, she was
busied in reading. I never knew anybody to read so much as she did. She
had no other recreation.
“When the spring returned we began to take walks on the sand again when
the tide was out; and we drove to church on Sundays when the state of
the roads permitted us.
“On the first of August we received news from my father. He was at
Enderby Castle, to which he had taken my stepmother for a temporary
sojourn. He wrote to the steward to tell him that an heir had been born
to Enderby; and he wrote to me to say that my new mother had given me a
dear little brother, and that he hoped I would love them both very much.
“I was not quite four years old when my own dear mother died. I was but
a few weeks past five now when I was told that I had a little brother by
my father’s new wife, and that I must love both.
“I could not do it. You will see what a sensitive and badly trained
child I was when I tell you that I fell into hysterical sobs and tears,
and refused to be comforted. It seemed to me that I had quite lost my
father—that he had been taken away from me by the new woman and the new
child. I remember crying aloud to my own mother in heaven to come and
take me away, because no one cared for me on earth.
“Miss Murray coaxed, lectured, remonstrated, all in vain. I would not
hear reason or receive consolation.
“The two O’Nallys and the two old servants sympathized with me, and
petted me, and cried over me. They never said a word against my father
or my stepmother, personally or in my presence; but I often overheard
them saying it was ‘a burning shame to neglect a child as I was
neglected; that I ought to be with my father and stepmother, wherever
they were,’ etc., etc. And their words deepened in me the sense of
injury I felt.
“And yet, in justice to my father and his wife, I must say that no wrong
was intended me. We were all the victims of circumstances, as you will
judge as I go on.
“It was on this occasion that I wrote my first letter to my father, with
much help from my governess.
“As soon as I had got over my paroxysms of grief, which did not happen
for days, Miss Murray insisted that I should answer my father’s letter
and wish him joy of his heir, and send my love to my new mother and
little brother.
“This I most positively refused to do, declaring, with a new burst of
tears, that I did not wish him any joy in his son; that I did not love
my new brother, and that I had no new mother. I had but one mother, who
was in heaven, and I should never have another.
“My governess insisted, and tried to intimidate me into compliance.
Whereupon I told her that she should not wish to make me write
falsehoods, and that for my part I was quite ready to be burned at the
stake, like Bishop Bonner, for the truth’s sake, rather than write what
I did not feel and what was not true.
“You see from this what a morbid, sensitive, extravagant little soul I
was even at that tender age, and what exaggerated views I took of every
trial.
“My governess had to yield the point. How could she even wish her pupil
to write falsely? We compromised the matter by my consenting to write a
short note to my father, telling him that I was glad to hear that he was
well, and asking him when he would come to see me.
“A week later I got a most affectionate letter from my father, saying
that he would visit his ‘dear little daughter’ as soon as he thought it
would be safe to leave his wife, who had lain in a low condition ever
since the arrival of her babe.
“But my father did not come.
“It was, in fact, October before the countess was able to leave her
room. Then her physicians ordered her to the south of France, whither my
father soon took her, with her infant son.
“Another dreary winter followed me at Weirdwaste. The same confinement
to the house, without companions, or amusements, or occupations—except
my elderly attendants and my schoolbooks and music. No visitors except
the vicar and the doctor. No visits except to church on exceptional
Sundays when the roads were passable. I grew into a very strange child,
precocious in a certain sort of intelligence gained from books, but
backward in all knowledge of child life and depressed in spirits.
“I received occasional letters from my father, and wrote others, touched
up by my governess.”