"Mrs Hartshorne,
The Poplars."
That is all.
Nothing much in the name certainly, at first sight, nor yet such a very
extraordinary address, either in the nomenclature of the mansion, or in
its surroundings; but the two taken together were something entirely out
of the common. Mrs Hartshorne by herself, or the Poplars, considered
merely as a residence, were neither of them grand or startling
phenomena; but one could not well do without the other, and the dual in
unity formed a complete and unique integrity. In other words, "Mrs
Hartshorne, of the Poplars," was an "institution" in the land, to quote
an Americanism, although neither a thing of beauty nor a joy for ever.
She was a _rara avis in terris_, a millionaire Hecate, a rich and
slightly-over-middle-aged eccentric, a Xantipical Croesus--no less a
personage, in fact, than the "Sussex Dowager."
Far and wide throughout this county--over a considerable portion of
which she owned manorial rights of vassalage, and ruled with sovereign
sway in the matter of leases and titheholds and rackrents--amongst the
lesser farmers and villagers she was known by this title; although, it
must be confessed, her more intimate dependents and rustic neighbours
dubbed her by far less elegant sobriquets.
Any one meeting her about the country lanes, where she was to be found
at all hours, would have taken Mrs Hartshorne to be a shabby little
dried-up, poor old woman. She always dressed in dark grey garments of
antediluvian cut, somewhat brown and rusty from age and wear. Her
bonnet was a marvellous specimen of the hideous old coal-scuttle form
used by our grandmothers. She always carried a reticule of similar
date, which, by her demeanour when emporting it, might have contained a
hundred death-warrants, or keys of dungeons--if she had lived some three
centuries or so ago: a bulgy umbrella in all weathers, wet or fine:
thick shoes of rough country make: dark woollen gloves; and no veil to
disguise the thin sharp features and piercing bead-like black eyes,
overhung with bushy grey eyebrows, and the wrinkled forehead above,
covered with scanty white locks, braided puritanically on each side, and
there you have Mrs Hartshorne.
She was not a handsome old woman, nor a prepossessing old woman, nor
would her face impress you as being either benevolent or pious; but
shrewdness, cleverness, and hardness of set purpose, were ingrained in
every line of its expression; and in truth--she was a hard, shrewd,
clever old woman.
A quarter of a century seems a somewhat long time to look back, but
twenty-five years ago Mrs Hartshorne was a young and handsome woman.
Time had not dealt kindly with her as he does to some: none would dream
of calling hers a graceful or a winning old age. She seemed to wrestle
with the Destroyer, instead of ignoring his approach as most of us do,
and quietly and placidly submitting to his encroachments. The result
was not to her advantage. Every line on her face, every crow's-foot in
the corners of her twinkling little eyes, every wrinkle on her careworn
brow, every silvery hair on her head, marked the issue of some
unsuccessful struggle; and the strong passions of her nature, even as
they had embittered her life, seemed now, when her youth was passed, to
war with death.
She had a quick way of speaking, running her words and sentences into
one another, so that they resembled one of those compound, Dutch
jaw-breaking words that occupy several lines in extent, and almost fill
up a paragraph. Her temper was not a sweet one. It might suit "namby
pamby," milk-and-water, bread-and-butter girls--"hussies," she would
have called them--to mince their words and moderate their utterances;
but she, "thank God, was none of those!" She said what she meant, sharp
and straight to the point, and did not care what any one thought about
it. Her voice, mode of speech, and general manner, resembled the
barking of a wiry little Scotch terrier, and terrified most with whom
she had any dealings. "Good Lord!" as old Doctor Jolly, the most
hearty, jovial, loud and cheery-voiced of country surgeons--the only
visitor who had entrance within her gates, and who used at fixed
intervals to beard the lioness in her den--used to say; "but she has a
temper. I would not be her husband, or her son, or her daughter for
something! God bless my soul! sir, but she could hold a candle to the
devil himself." And so she could, and hold her own, too!
Old Roger Hartshorne--the "squire"--had married her late in life some
twenty-five years ago, and brought her home to the Poplars in all state
and ceremony as befitted the lady of so great a landowner. The old
squire was a very good-natured, liberal sort of man, whose only
amusement was in following the harriers--there were no hounds and
scarlet-coated foxhunters in those parts--and he was generally liked
throughout the county, for he kept a sort of open house, and was
hail-fellow-well-met with everyone; but when he married--and no one knew
where he picked up his wife, people said that _she_ married him--all
this was changed. A new _regime_ was instituted, and the sporting
breakfasts, and hunting dinners, and open-house festivities at the
Poplars became as a thing of the past. Mrs Hartshorne said she would
not have any such "scandalous goings on" in her house: she wasn't going
to be "eaten out of house and home." Every expense of the _menage_ was
cut down. Instead of some seven or eight grooms and gardeners and
domestic servants, only three were retained--an old woman to mind the
house, an old butler, whom the squire insisted on keeping, and a groom
and gardener, who combined both situations in one. When the children
came--a girl and a boy--the squire thought things would be altered; but
they were not. Mrs Hartshorne said they must save, and pinch and pinch
more now for them--although goodness knows the estate was rich enough;
and shortly after the birth of Tom, the old squire died, worn out it was
said by the temper and treatment of his wife. It was, perhaps, a happy
release to Roger of that Ilk, for the poor old gentleman had been sadly
changed since his marriage, and used to look a piteous spectacle when he
took his solitary rides around the village lanes on his old cob, the
sole relict of his handsome stud which he had been proudly fond of
displaying across country.
With the death of the squire, Mrs Hartshorne became more saving and
pinching, and miserly than ever. The first thing she did was to dismiss
the old butler, who had been in the family for some forty years, saying
she "could not afford to support a lazy, useless pauper;" the next was
to tell the bailiff and estate agent that their services were no longer
required, for "she would have no curious eyes prying into her property,
and telling everyone how much she was worth." The house was almost shut
up and buried in seclusion, and no one but Doctor Jolly ever went there.
_He_ said he "would not be denied by any woman in creation," and
although the "dowager," as she now came to be termed, used to put on her
most vinegar-like expression for him, and address him in the snappiest
and most provoking and insulting manner, he would call at the Poplars at
least once a month in obedience to the promise he had given to the old
squire on his death-bed to "look after his poor children." It must be
said that Mrs Hartshorne tolerated the doctor in a sort of way--her
way; and if she liked anyone, liked him who was a favourite with the
whole county round. She had said to him when he first used to come,
that she supposed he "came there because he might charge for his visits,
and get something by it;" but when she found this was not the case, and
that Doctor Jolly had no base intentions towards her money bags, she
tolerated him, and allowed him to come and go as he pleased, without
bestowing on him more than her customary amount of sweet temper.
When Tom grew old enough he was sent to school, only coming home for one
week every year by express stipulation with the proprietor of the
school! and when he became eighteen, at his earnest wish, and after
continual wranglings with the old lady--who was passionately fond of
him, although at the same time possessing an inordinate affection for
money--he was allowed to go into the army. His mother said that he
would "ruin her" when she gave an order on her banker to the doctor, who
was Tom's guardian, for the sum required for his commission and outfit,
but she did not behave illiberally, and gave master Tom a very fair
allowance, satisfying her conscience by raising all the rents of her
poorer tenants, and grinding down the household expenses more than ever.
Of Tom she was not only fond but proud: it was the only one womanly
trait in her character; and although she was not a very motherly kind of
woman, and did not display her affection in the manner customary to the
feminine sex--ruling her household, even Tom, with a rod of iron and a
stern sense of duty--yet her son was very much attached to her,
notwithstanding he did not exhibit any strong partiality for visiting
her. He knew that the less he saw of her the better: they both
understood each other well.
The daughter, however, Mrs Hartshorne hated and disliked in the
strongest manner possible. She grew up uncared for, except as regarded
frequent and summary corrections for childish misdemeanours; and if it
had not been for the boy Tom she would have been altogether neglected.
Little Susan was an eyesore to her mother in consequence of her being
the only one provided for in Roger Hartshorne's will independently of
the mother, to whom all the rest of the property, excepting of course
the entail, was bequeathed without reservation. Mrs Hartshorne
considered her own child as a species of interloper or invader of her
rights, and treated her accordingly with neglect and almost cruelty when
the squire was no longer able to look after and protect her. The very
fondness of the old man for his little girl had been even an additional
incentive for her ill-treatment. When Susan had reached her fifteenth
year--she was little more than a year older than Tom--the dislike of her
mother culminated in an accident, which indeed might be characterised in
worse terms, that somewhat checked the ill-treatment and harshness she
had previously suffered. She had done some trifling thing or other one
day which had offended her mother to fury, and she consequently, after
beating her most unmercifully, had locked her up all one night in a
solitary part of the house by herself. The little thing was of a very
nervous, tender organisation; and the fright she suffered in the lonely
darkness throughout the long hours of the night drove away her poor
little wits. When the child was let out the next day she was in a
raging fever, and when she recovered from that, thanks to old Doctor
Jolly (who was unremitting in his care, after frightening the mother by
declaring her to be almost a murderess), she was never herself again.
She remained quietly passive under any or every treatment of the mother
"half-silly," as the poor folks say, and half-silly she was now still,
although she was almost one-and-twenty. Her mental disorder was of a
pathetic description--a sort of melancholia, and although her mother had
procured governesses for her, and she knew, like a parrot, as much as
most girls of her age in the matter of education, she never exhibited
any likes or dislikes, or preferences, except for music, of which she
was passionately fond: everything else that was taught her she learnt in
a machine-like way. Susan would spend hours each day, particularly in
the evening, playing on an old chamber-organ, which occupied one of the
disused rooms of the house, wild, weird, melancholy melodies which
appeared to soothe her, and give her the only sense of enjoyment she
seemed to possess. Tom and Doctor Jolly were the only people she cared
to see; her mother she disliked greatly, and had a sort of trembling fit
whenever she came across her or passed her in the passages of the house;
and the old female domestics she barely tolerated, although she liked
old George, a simple, uneducated Sussex countryman (the county is great
for its "chawbacons"), who now did all the odd jobs and outdoor work
about the house since the establishment had been reduced.
Mrs Hartshorne always had a governess or special person to look after
Susan, and she was careful to put down all the expenses of the said
individual to be charged against and deducted from the portion which her
daughter was to inherit in accordance with the terms of the squire's
will.
These governesses were always being changed, for few persons, even those
who have taught themselves to submit, as governesses have to teach
themselves, could long bear with the temper of the dowager. A new face
was consequently ever coming and going within the narrow range of Susan
Hartshorne's horizon.
Doctor Jolly used to say that perhaps some sudden shock of grief or joy
might restore the poor girl to the full possession of her senses.
"But then," he would remark, "I don't know how that is going to happen,
unless the old lady kicks the bucket."
Thus was Mrs Hartshorne placed, and it must be owned that a skeleton
such as she had in her closet would not tend to sweeten her disposition.
Hard and stern she was with all around her. She was her own farm
agent, her own bailiff, her own man of business. If she had been
entirely alone she would probably have had not a soul in the house with
her, not even a domestic. She collected her own rents, and was never
forgetful of a farthing owed to her. When the leases granted by the
squire expired she would not let them be renewed, but kept her tenants
under fear and trembling, with only a year's certainty of possession of
their homes; and she waxed rich, did the dowager, and had by this time a
goodly pile of ready money at her bankers'. This was all for Tom, and,
faith! the young sir would have a splendid inheritance when the dowager
departed for the happy hunting grounds. The squire's property, before
the advent of Mrs Hartshorne, had been worth some ten thousand a year.
It was now worth nearly half as much again, and the savings of the
yearly income amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds. "A very
comfortable little sum of ready money, sir!" as the doctor would say.
The residence of the dowager was situated about a mile from the
picturesque little village of Hartwood, which boasted not only of a
special little station to itself on the S.C. Rail, but also of its own
little church, quite independent of the sacred episcopal edifice general
to the parish under whose jurisdiction it came. The dowager owned the
church as well as the village, and the right of presentation being in
her gift, she had recently inducted the most extreme Ritualistic divine
she could procure into the pulpit of Hartwood, just purely out of
opposition to the rector of the district, whom she disliked, and who was
supposed to be of strong evangelical principles.
The Poplars--there can be no mistake in saying it--was an extremely ugly
house. Its architecture was neither Gothic nor Norman, Elizabethan or
Tudor; it was an heterogeneous pile of stones and brickwork, scrambled
together without any style or design. Inside it was comfortable enough,
and roomy and rambling; without it seemed nothing but a collection of
eaves and chimneys, and its sole redeeming point consisted in the lofty
and spreading poplar trees which surrounded it on all sides, as well as
gave it its name, and concealed its native ugliness from strangers and
passers-by.
There you have "The Poplars" and its mistress.
Volume 1, Chapter III.