MINE OWN FAMILIAR FRIEND.
THE house in which Mr. Culverhouse lodged was on the outskirts of
Little Yafford, a comfortable square cottage, with a long slip of
garden between the dusty high road and the shady green porch, a garden,
where in summer tall white lilies, bush roses, double stocks, and clove
carnations grew abundantly in long narrow borders, edged with a thick
fence of irreproachable box. Miss Coyle’s model cottage, with its green
venetians and verandah, shining window-panes, and general appearance of
having come out of a toy-shop, stood on the opposite side of the way,
and even the perfection of Miss Coyle’s miniature garden did not put
to shame the neatness of Mrs. Pomfret’s larger domain. Mrs. Pomfret
was pew opener, and had occupied that post of honour ever since her
marriage with Mr. Pomfret, the sexton. Mr. Pomfret was in his grave,
and the excellent management whereby Mrs. Pomfret contrived to make so
good a figure and wear such spotless caps, upon the profits of opening
pews and letting lodgings, was a wonder to the housekeepers of Little
Yafford. If Mrs. Pomfret had been disposed to impart the recipe by
which she had done these things, she could have told it in two words,
and those two words would have been, temperance and industry.
The first of the snowdrops had not yet pierced the dark mould, but the
shining leaves of bay and berberis, and holly and laurel brightened the
long slip of garden. Bella opened the little gate hesitatingly, as if
there were something awful in the act. She felt that she was making a
desperate plunge in calling upon Cyril Culverhouse; but Mrs. Piper’s
sad condition was her justification.
She had seen him very seldom since that evening at the Vicarage, when
Mrs. Dulcimer forced him to a revealment of his feelings. It was a
memory that had lost none of its bitterness with the passage of time;
and yet Bella yearned to see him, and was glad of an excuse for
approaching him.
Mrs. Pomfret opened the door, and saluted Miss Scratchell with a
surprised curtsey. She was a thin little woman, dressed in perpetual
black, and the stiffest of widow’s caps, which framed her small hard
face with a broad band of starched muslin that would have been trying
to the countenance of a Hebe, and which made Mrs. Pomfret’s complexion
look like unpolished mahogany. But Mrs. Pomfret did not wear a widow’s
cap because it was becoming, or comfortable. She wore it as a badge of
respectability.
Mr. Culverhouse was at home. He opened the parlour door at the sound of
Bella’s voice, and looked out.
‘Is it you, Miss Scratchell? How do you do?’ he said, with calm
friendliness. ‘Pray come in. Is Mary Smithers worse? Have you come to
fetch me to her? I am afraid she has not many days to live.’
Bella’s eyes were rapturously devouring the room. His room. It looked
like the room of a gentleman and a student. Those books, piled row
above row in the shabby old bookcase, were his, of course. There was
his open desk upon the table. His hat and cane were on a side table.
There was no disorder, nothing squalid or unsightly.
‘No, I have not come from Mary Smithers,’ said Bella. ‘I want to enlist
your sympathy for poor Mrs. Piper.’
And then Bella explained the sad condition into which Mrs. Piper had
fallen, how in the hour of sickness her soul hankered after the strong
meat of the Baptist chapel where she had worshipped in her youth, and
how she would assuredly seek for comfort from Mr. Mowler, unless the
Church of England came to her rescue.
‘I should have asked Mr. Dulcimer to see her’, said Bella, ‘only, dear
and good as he is, I do not think he is earnest enough to give hope and
comfort to a person in her situation. If you would be so kind as to
call upon her.’
‘I will go immediately.’
‘Oh, how good you are!’ cried Bella, her eyes shining with enthusiasm.
Mr. Culverhouse reddened. That little gush of flattery reminded him
uncomfortably of his conversation with Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘There is no goodness in a clergyman trying to do his duty, any more
than in a baker carrying round his loaves,’ he said, coolly.
He put on his overcoat, and took up his hat and cane, and he and Bella
went out together. That cool tone of his wounded her keenly.
‘Are you still with Miss Harefield?’ he said, at the garden gate.
Bella gave him an icy look. The mention of that name was a second stab.
‘No, I have left her some time.’
Cyril saw the look, and perceived the unfriendliness in the tone. He
put down both to a wrong cause. His face was full of care as he walked
to the Park.
‘Mine own familiar friend,’ he said to himself, sadly.
Bella found Mrs. Piper in better spirits on the following day.
‘Oh, my dear, Mr. Culverhouse is a saint!’ she exclaimed, when Bella
had seated herself by the invalid’s sofa. ‘He has given me great
comfort. He has not flattered me, you know, my dear. He does not deny
that I have misused my advantages. I have not done all that I might for
my fellow-creatures. I have taken too much thought of the letter, and
not followed the spirit. Oh, he is a good man.’
‘Is he not?’ cried Bella, delighted at this praise.
‘I shall ask Piper to subscribe double to all his charities. We have
subscribed ’andsome, but we have done it because it was in keeping with
this house to have our names stand out well in the subscription lists.
I should like to give Mr. Culverhouse a sum of money, unbeknown to
anybody, that he might lay it out to my advantage, where neither moth
nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. I don’t
think I shall ever worry myself about the butcher’s book any more,
Bella. Sickness has opened my eyes to the vanity of such petty cares.’
Bella sighed, thinking of the harassed housekeeper at home. For the
rich manufacturer’s wife such small cares were vanity, but for Mrs.
Scratchell they were the serious things of life. With her it was not so
much the question as to whether she had been cheated out of a pound or
two of meat, but whether she could honestly afford a Sunday joint for
her children.
‘Mr. Culverhouse said he would call again soon,’ said Mrs. Piper, and
this gave Bella the hope of meeting him at the Park some morning.
Before the week ended that hope was realized, and with its realization
came another turning-point in Bella’s life--a meeting of roads, as in
the choice of Hercules, when a man or woman goes to the right or left,
choosing the broad smooth highway of inclination, or the narrow thorny
path of duty, according as passion or conscience is ruler of fate.
Bella had stopped later than usual one afternoon, Horne Tooke
and Brougham having been stupid and rebellious to a degree that
necessitated an exemplary punishment in the shape of three Latin verbs,
and Elizabeth Fry having exhibited a deeper density than usual as to
the intervals of the minor scale. These difficulties had prolonged the
morning’s lessons until after the children’s dinner, and it was nearly
four o’clock when Bella, thoroughly wearied out, put on her neat little
black bonnet and bade her sullen pupils good-bye.
‘I hope you don’t bear malice, Elizabeth,’ she said at parting. ‘I am
obliged to be a little severe about those scales. It’s for your good,
you know. It can’t make any difference to me whether you know how to
change the major into minor.’
‘And I’m sure I don’t see that it can make any difference to me,’
protested the injured Elizabeth. ‘I am not going to be a governess.’
‘Very fortunate for you, my dear,’ answered Bella, lightly, ‘for if
you were obliged to get your living in that way, you would have to be
one of the poor things who don’t object to make themselves generally
useful; which means that they are to make all their pupils’ clothes,
and work a great deal harder than housemaids.’
And, with this arrow shot over Elizabeth Fry’s dull head, Bella pulled
on her gloves and departed, In the hall she met Cyril going away.
He greeted her with friendliness, and they went out into the wintry
twilight together.
‘I am glad you have been to see Mrs. Piper again,’ said Bella, ‘your
visits have done her so much good.’
‘I am very happy to hear that. She is a kindly, simple-hearted
creature, sorely tried by prosperity, which is for some natures a
harder ordeal than adversity.’
They walked on for some distance in silence, Bella looking thoughtfully
at her companion, every now and then, speculating upon the causes of
his absent manner and troubled face.
‘I am afraid you have been working too hard lately, Mr. Culverhouse,’
she said at last. ‘You are looking ill and wearied.’
‘I have been troubled in mind,’ he answered. ‘I am seldom any worse
for what you call hard work--but I have had bitter anxieties since
Christmas. Have you seen Miss Harefield lately?’
‘No,’ answered Bella, ‘she has plenty of friends without me.’
‘I do not think she has many friends--in Little Yafford.’
‘She has the Dulcimers, who are devoted to her.’
‘Mr. Dulcimer is her guardian, and executor to her father’s will. I am
sure he will do all that is right and kind.’
‘Do you mean that Mrs. Dulcimer is not kind to Beatrix?’ asked Bella,
her heart beating fast and fiercely.
From the moment he mentioned Beatrix Harefield’s name in the same
breath with his own anxieties he had in a manner admitted his love for
her.
‘It is not in Mrs. Dulcimer’s nature to be unkind,’ said Cyril, ‘but I
fear she is not so warmly attached to Miss Harefield as she was a short
time ago.’
‘You think perhaps she has been influenced by things that have been
said in Little Yafford,’ suggested Bella, eagerly.
‘I fear so.’
‘I am very sorry for that. I pity Beatrix with all my heart. But deeply
as I compassionate her wretched position, I hardly wonder that people
should feel differently about her since her father’s death.’
‘Do you--her own familiar friend--suspect her of the most awful crime
the mind of man can conceive?’ exclaimed Cyril. ‘She may well stand
condemned in the eyes of strangers if her bosom friend believes her
guilty.’
‘Oh, Mr. Culverhouse, how can you suggest anything so horrible?’ cried
Bella.
‘I looked to you for her defence,’ he went on without heeding this
ejaculation. ‘The outside world might suspect her. I, even, who have
seen much in her to admire--and love--but who have had no opportunity
of knowing her thoroughly, I might waver in my judgment--might be
weakly influenced by the evil thoughts of others; but you who have
lived with her like a sister, you must know the very depth of her
heart--surely you can rise up boldly and say that she could not do this
hideous thing. It is not in her nature to become--no, I will not utter
the loathsome word,’ he cried, passionately.
Bella answered nothing. Cyril looked at her searchingly in the grey
evening light. Her eyelids were lowered, her face was grave and
troubled.
‘What!’ he exclaimed; ‘not a word--not one word in defence of your
friend?’
‘What can I say?’ faltered Bella, with an embarrassed air. ‘Do you want
me to tell you what I saw in that gloomy house? No, I had rather not
say a word. Think me unkind, ungenerous if you like. I shall be silent
about all things concerning Miss Harefield and her father.’
Cyril looked at her for a moment, with a countenance of blank despair.
She saw the look, and it intensified her hatred of Beatrix.
‘How he must have loved her!’ she thought, ‘but will he go on loving
her in the face of a suspicion that is daily growing stronger?’
Outside the Park gates Cyril left her.
‘I am going the other way,’ he said, abruptly, and then he raised his
hat and walked quickly along the high road that led away from Little
Yafford.
‘Where can he be going?’ speculated Bella. ‘I believe he only went that
way to avoid me.’
It was not a promising commencement, but it seemed to Bella’s scheming
little mind that Cyril’s affection, once weaned from Beatrix, would
naturally turn to her. There was no one else in Little Yafford with
any great pretensions to beauty, and a great many people had praised
Bella’s delicate prettiness. So long as he was devoted to Beatrix, Mr.
Culverhouse would no doubt remain stone blind to the charms of Bella;
but Beatrix once banished from his heart, there would be plenty of room
there for a small person with smiling blue eyes and winning manners.
This was the hope that lured Bella onward upon the ugly road she had
chosen for herself, while jealousy impelled her to do harm to her
rival, even though that wrong might result in no gain to herself.