MRS. THATCHER.
It had been Milly's habit to devote one day a week to visiting among
the poor, before she went to Albury Lodge; and she now resumed this
practice, I accompanying her upon her visits. I had been used to going
about among the cottagers at home, and I liked the work. It was very
pleasant to see Milly Darrell with these people--the perfect confidence
and sympathy between them and her, the delight they seemed to take in
her bright cheering presence. I was struck by their simple natural
manner, and the absence of anything like sycophancy to be observed in
them. One day, when we had been to several cottages about the village,
Milly asked me if I could manage rather a long walk; and on my telling
her that I could, we started upon a lonely road that wound across the
moor in a direction I had never walked in until that day. We went on
for about two miles without passing a human habitation, and then came
to one of the most desolate-looking cottages I ever remember seeing. It
was little better than a cabin, and consisted only of two rooms--a kind
of kitchen or dwelling-room, and a dark little bedchamber opening out
of it.
'I am not going to introduce you to a very agreeable person, Mary,'
Milly said, when we were within a few paces of this solitary dwelling;
'but old Rebecca is a character in her way, and I make a point of
coming to see her now and then, though she is not always very gracious
to me.'
It was a warm bright summer's day, but the door and the single window
of the cottage were firmly closed. Milly knocked with her hand, and a
thin feeble old voice called to her to 'come in.'
We went in: the atmosphere of the place was hot, and had an unpleasant
doctor's-shoppish kind of odour, which I found was caused by some herbs
in a jar that was simmering over a little stove in a corner. Bunches of
dried herbs hung from the low ceiling, and on an old-fashioned
lumbering chest of drawers that stood in the window there were more
herbs and roots laid out to dry.
'Mrs. Thatcher is a very clever doctor, Mary,' said Milly, as if by way
of introduction; 'all our servants come to her to be cured when they
have colds and coughs.--And how are you this lovely summer weather,
Mrs. Thatcher?'
'None too well, miss,' grumbled the old woman; 'I don't like the summer
time; it never suited me.'
'That's strange,' said Milly gaily; 'I thought everybody liked summer.'
'Not those that live as I do, Miss Darrell. There's no illness in
summer--no colds, nor coughs, nor sore-threats, nor suchlikes. I don't
know that I shouldn't starve outright, if it wasn't for the ague; and
even that is nothing now to what it used to be.'
I was quite horror-struck by this ghoulish speech; but Milly only
laughed gaily at the old woman's candour.
'If the doctors were as plain-spoken as you, I daresay they'd say
pretty much the same kind of thing, Mrs. Thatcher,' she said. 'How's
your grandson?'
'O, he's well enough, Miss Darrell. Naught's never in danger.--Peter,
come here, and see the young ladies.'
A poor, feeble, pale-faced, semi-idiotic-looking boy came slowly out of
the dark little bedroom, and stood grinning at us. He had the white
sickly aspect of a creature reared without the influence of air and
light; and I pitied him intensely as he stood there staring and
grinning in that dreadful hopeless manner.
'Poor Peter!' He's no better, I'm afraid,' said Milly gently.
'No, miss, nor never will be. He knows more than people think, and has
queer cunning ways of his own; but he'll never be any better or wiser
than he is now.'
'Not if you were to take as much pains with him as you do with the
patients who pay you, Mrs. Thatcher?' asked Milly.
'I've taken pains with him,' answered the woman, with a scowl. 'I took
to him kindly enough when he was a little fellow; but he's grown up to
be nothing but a plague and a burden to me.'
The boy left off grinning, and his poor weak chin sank lower on his
narrow chest. His attitude had been a stooping one from the first; but
he drooped visibly under the old woman's reproof.
'Can he employ himself in no way?'
'No, miss; except in picking the herbs and roots for me sometimes. He
can do that, and he knows one from t'other.'
'He's of some use to you, at any rate, then,' said Milly.
'Little enough,' the old woman answered sulkily. 'I don't want help;
I've plenty of time to gather them myself. But I've taught him to pick
them, and it's the only thing he ever could learn.'
'Poor fellow! He's your only grandchild, isn't he, Mrs. Thatcher?'
'Yes, he's the only one, miss, and he'd need be. I don't know how I
should keep another. You can't remember my daughter Ruth? She was as
pretty a girl as you'd care to see. She was housemaid at Cumber priory
in Mrs. Egerton's time, and she married the butler. They set up in
business in a little public-house in Thornleigh village, and he took to
drinking, till everything went to rack and ruin. My poor girl took the
trouble to heart more than her husband did, a great deal; and I believe
it was the trouble that killed her. She died three weeks after that boy
was born, and her husband ran away the day after the funeral, and has
never been heard of since. Some say he drowned himself in the Clem; but
he was a precious deal too fond of himself for that. He was up to his
eyes in debt, and didn't leave a sixpence behind him; that's how Peter
came to be thrown on my hands.'
'Come here, Peter,' said Milly softly; and the boy went to her
directly, and took the hand she offered him.
'You've not forgotten me, have you, Peter? Miss Darrell, who used to
talk to you sometimes a long time ago.'
The boy's vacant face brightened into something like intelligence.
'I know you, miss,' he said; 'you was always kind to Peter. It's not
many that I know; but I know you.'
She took out her purse and gave him half-a-crown.
'There, Peter, there's a big piece of silver for your own self, to buy
whatever you like--sugar-sticks, gingerbread, marbles--anything.'
His clumsy hand closed upon the coin, and I have no doubt he was
pleased by the donation; but he never took his eyes from Milly
Darrell's face. That bright lovely face seemed to exercise a kind of
fascination upon him.
'Don't you think Peter would be better if you were to give him a little
more air and sunshine, Mrs. Thatcher?' Milly asked presently; 'that
bedroom seems rather a dark close place.'
'He needn't be there unless he likes,' Mrs. Thatcher answered
indifferently. 'He sits out of doors whenever he chooses.'
'Then I should always sit out-of-doors on fine days, if I were you,
Peter,' said Milly.
After this she talked a little to Mrs. Thatcher, who was by no means a
sympathetic person, while I sat looking on, and contemplating the old
woman with a feeling that was the reverse of admiration.
She was of a short squat figure, with broad shoulders and no throat to
speak of, and her head seemed too big for her body. Her face was long
and thin, with large features, and a frame of scanty gray hair, among
which a sandy tinge still lingered here and there; her eyes were of an
ugly reddish-brown, and had, I thought, a most sinister expression. I
must have been very ill, and sorely at a loss for a doctor, before I
could have been induced to trust my health to the care of Mrs. Rebecca
Thatcher.
I told Milly as much while we were walking homewards, and she admitted
that Rebecca Thatcher was no favourite even among the country people,
who believed implicitly in her skill.
'I'm afraid she tells fortunes, and dabbles in all sorts of
superstitious tricks,' Milly added gravely; 'but she is so artful,
there is no way of finding her out in that kind of business. The
foolish country girls who consult her always keep her secret, and she
manages to put on a fair face before our rector and his curate, who
believe her to be a respectable woman.'
The days and weeks slipped by very pleasantly at Thornleigh, and the
end of those bright midsummer holidays came only too soon. It seemed a
bitter thing to say 'good-bye' to Milly Darrell, and to go back alone
to a place which must needs be doubly dull and dreary to me without
her. She had been my only friend at Albury Lodge; loving her as I did,
I had never cared to form any other friendship.
The dreaded day came at last--dreaded I know by both of us; and I said
'good-bye' to my darling so quietly, that I am sure none could have
guessed the grief I felt in this parting. Mrs. Darrell was very kind
and gracious on this occasion, begging that I would come back to
Thornleigh at Christmas--if they should happen to spend their Christmas
there.
Milly looked up at her wonderingly as she said this.
'Is there any chance of our spending it elsewhere, Augusta?' she asked.
Mrs. Darrell had persuaded her stepdaughter to use this familiar
Christian name, rather than the more formal mode of address.
'I don't know, my dear. Your papa has sometimes talked of a house in
town, or we might be abroad. I can only say that if we are at home
here, we shall be very much pleased to see Miss Crofton again.'
I thanked her, kissed Milly once more, and so departed--to be driven to
the station in state in the barouche, and to look sadly back at the
noble old house in which I had been so happy.
Once more I returned to the dryasdust routine of Albury Lodge, and rang
the changes upon history and geography, chronology and English grammar,
physical science and the elements of botany, until my weary head ached
and my heart grew sick. And when I came to be a governess, it would of
course be the same thing over and over again, on a smaller scale. And
this was to be my future, without hope of change or respite, until I
grew an old woman worn-out with the drudgery of tuition!