SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.
BEFORE Sir Kenrick’s leave came to an end Mrs. Piper had gone to the
land where there are no sordid cares, no gnawing doubts as to the
honesty of servants, no heart-corroding regrets at the wastefulness
and expenditure of a large household. Mrs. Piper had gone to that
undiscovered country where we may fairly hope that for those who have
lived harmlessly upon earth all is peace. Mr. Piper drove his smart
little pony cart about the country roads and through the village street
as usual, but he wore an altered countenance and crape to the top of
his tall hat. He no longer had a noisy greeting for every one, no
longer quoted Jeremy Bentham or William Cobbett. Never was widower more
disconsolate than Ebenezer Piper. Honestly and truly he mourned the
careful partner of his youth and maturity.
‘There wasn’t a finer girl in Great Yafford when me and she was
married,’ he said dolefully, after a brief eulogium of his faithful
Moggie’s domestic virtues.
Mrs. Piper’s monument was to be the glory of the village churchyard.
Mr. Dulcimer was too indulgent and easy to insist upon a rigid
æstheticism in the memorials which the living erected in honour of
the dead. There was a good deal of bad taste in God’s Acre at Little
Yafford, but Mr. Piper was destined to put the cap on the edifice
by the gaudiest and most expensive mausoleum that ever the chief
stonemason of Great Yafford had devised or executed.
It was to be a sarcophagus of the jewel casket shape, with four twisted
columns, like candlesticks, at the corners, and a tall urn surmounting
the lid. Each of the columns was of a different coloured marble, the
urn was dark red serpentine, with a malachite serpent coiled round
it. The urn was supposed to contain Mrs. Piper’s dust, the serpent
indicated that physicians and doctors’ stuff had not been wanting in
the effort to keep Mrs. Piper longer upon earth. Scattered over the
fluted lid of the sarcophagus were to be flowers sculptured out of
coloured marble, and cemented on to the white groundwork. The sides of
the sarcophagus were to be decorated with shields, richly emblazoned
with the Piper arms. Mr. Piper’s arms were his own composition; his
crest a ladder; his motto, _Ex sese_.
Altogether the monument was to be a wonderful thing, and Mr. Piper felt
a pride in contemplating the sketches which the mason had caused to be
made, and in picturing to himself the effect of the whole when this
great work of art should be finished.
The Piper children, in black frocks, and in a state of semi-orphanage,
were a little more troublesome than they had been in coloured frocks,
and with an invalid mamma as a court of appeal. They brought the ghost
of their lost parent into every argument.
‘I’m sure ma wouldn’t have wished me to learn three verbs in one
morning,’ said Elizabeth Fry.
‘I think ma would have let me off my lessons if I had a sick headache,’
remonstrated Mary Wolstencroft.
‘I shall do my duty to you whether you like it or no,’ said Bella,
resolutely.
‘Ah, you’d better take care!’ cried Brougham. ‘Ma’s in heaven, where
she can see everything you’re up to, and won’t she make it disagreeable
for you when you get there! If you ever do,’ added the boy, in a
doubtful tone; ‘but I don’t think you stand much chance if you go on
making our lives a misery with Latin grammar.’
Now that poor Mrs. Piper had laid down her load of earthly care, Miss
Scratchell restricted her visits to the Park to purely professional
limits. She entered the schoolroom punctually at nine, and she left
it as punctually at half-past one. She no longer assisted at the
children’s early dinner, a meal which Mr. Piper, when at home, shared
under the name of luncheon. Bella had a keen sense of the proprieties,
and did not care to sit down to luncheon with a disconsolate widower,
or to give Mr. Piper any opportunity to pour his griefs into her ear,
as he would fain have done very often. Mr. Piper was of a soft and
affectionate nature, and when he told his griefs to a young woman he
could not refrain from taking her hand, and even occasionally squeezing
it. This Bella could not possibly permit. She therefore carefully
avoided all conversations about the late Mrs. Piper, and, as far as was
practicable, she avoided Mr. Piper himself.
‘It seems very ’ard,’ complained the widower, ‘that the time when a man
feels lonesomest is a time for everybody to avide him. You might as
well stop, Miss Scratchell, and eat your bit of dinner with me and the
children. You won’t get lamb and sparrowgrass at home.’
‘I know I shall not,’ replied Bella; ‘but I would rather not stay,
thank you, Mr. Piper.’
‘Why not?’
‘My mother wants me at home.’
‘She can’t want you more now than she did when pore Mrs. P---- was
alive. You never refused to stop then.’
‘I did not like to refuse dear Mrs. Piper, when she was an invalid, and
wanted every one’s sympathy.’
‘You’re a good-’earted girl,’ said Piper, approvingly. ‘I know what
your motive is. You think it ain’t proper to eat your bit of dinner
with me, now I’m a widower, though there’s all the children to keep
you in countenance. You think it might set the old tabbies up street
talking.’
‘It certainly does not require much to do that,’ replied Bella,
smiling. ‘But I really am wanted at home, Mr. Piper, and I mustn’t stop
talking here. I am going to drink tea at the Vicarage this evening.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Air. Piper, ‘you’re a rum girl. It seems to me that
everybody wants you. I shall send you round a bundle of my early
sparrowgrass.’
‘Pray don’t take the trouble.’
‘Yes, I shall. It costs me about eighteen-pence a stick, so somebody
may as well have the enjoyment of it. But ’orticulture is my ’obby.’
It must be observed that although Mr. Piper was a student of Cobbett,
and had taught himself a little Latin, he had never been able to
conquer the mysteries of his own tongue. He still spoke as bad English
as in the days when he was a factory hand, and had never read a passage
of Cobbett’s strong racy prose, or pondered over a thesis of Bentham’s.
Bella and Beatrix were good friends still, but not such friends as
they had been a year or even six months ago. There was a restraint on
both sides. Beatrix could not have told why it was, but it seemed to
her that there was a change in herself, and a still greater change in
Bella. Bella knew very well what it was that made her uncomfortable in
Miss Harefield’s society. It was the sealed letter in its hiding-place
in Bella’s shabby old bedroom. That sealed letter weighed like a load
of iron upon Bella’s conscience when she found herself in Beatrix’s
company; and yet she was glad that she had done this thing, if it had
been the means of parting Cyril and Beatrix.
She would like to have seen them parted even more irrevocably, so that
under no circumstances could time or chance bring them together again.
She was in this temper of mind when she went to spend the evening at
the Vicarage, after her little talk with Mr. Piper in the stone portico
at the Park.
It was about a week since Sir Kenrick had made his offer and had been
rejected. He had taken a wonderful fancy to fishing for pike after that
catastrophe, and had brought home some very handsome specimens of that
ravenous tribe, for the Vicarage cook to stuff and bake, and serve with
savoury sauces for the three o’clock dinner.
‘I think I shall have to protest, like the highland gillies when they
got too much salmon, if Kenrick goes on bringing home pike in this
way,’ said Mr. Dulcimer, when the cover was lifted and the hungry-jawed
scaly monster appeared before him.
Kenrick was off in the early gray to his fishing grounds, so he
and Beatrix only met of an evening. He was very polite to her, and
evidently bore no malice. Hope was not altogether extinguished in his
breast. He had much confidence in Mrs. Dulcimer, who had said that
something must be done. Kenrick had not the faintest idea what this
inveterate match-maker meant to do, but he felt that her friendship
would stick at nothing which a clergyman’s wife might do without peril
to her soul.
‘Bella,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer after tea, ‘I want to show you the things
I’ve made for the missionary basket. You might be able to help me a
little, perhaps.’
‘I shall be delighted, dear Mrs. Dulcimer,’ answered Bella, inwardly
lamenting that it had pleased God to call her to that station of life
in which her friends always felt themselves justified in asking her to
work for them.
A young woman of fortune like Miss Harefield might be as idle or as
selfish as she pleased. Nobody ever thought of asking for payment in
kind for any favour they showed her; but everybody who did any kindness
to penniless Bella Scratchell wanted to extort recompense for his or
her civility in needlework or some sort of drudgery.
‘Come up to my room and look at the things, dear,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer;
and then it occurred to Bella that her hostess had something particular
to say to her. She had heard from Cyril that day, perhaps, or had got
news of him by a side wind. Bella’s heart beat ever so fast at the idea.
They went up to Mrs. Dulcimer’s bedroom, a large old-fashioned chamber,
with an immense four-post bedstead and flowery chintz curtains, a
muslin-draped dressing-table, adorned with a great many china pots, and
a pin-cushion that was a noteworthy feature. Mrs. Dulcimer’s devotional
books--with a great many markers in them, looking as if they were read
immensely--were arranged on either side of the looking-glass. She used
to read Taylor’s ‘Holy Living’ while Rebecca put her hair in papers of
an evening. She did not read the ‘Holy Dying.’ It seemed a great deal
too soon for that.
There was a bright fire, and the chintz-covered sofa was wheeled
in front of it. Between the fire and the sofa was Mrs. Dulcimer’s
work-table, and on the table the missionary basket full of ingenious
trifles, useful or useless. Babies’ socks, muffatees, pincushions of
every shape and design, and a variety of the aggravating family of mats.
‘Bella,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, when they were seated on the sofa, ‘I have
something particular to say to you.’
And then the Vicar’s wife told Bella her plan for marrying Kenrick
and Beatrix, and how Beatrix had refused Kenrick on account of her
attachment to his cousin.
‘Isn’t it a pity, Bella?’ she asked, after lengthily expounding all
this.
‘Yes,’ answered Bella, looking thoughtful, ‘they would have suited each
other very well, I should think.’
‘Think!’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘There’s no thinking about it. They were
made for each other.’
Mrs. Dulcimer’s couples always were made for each other. It is odd how
many of them turned out misfits.
Bella was reflecting that if Beatrix were happily married to Sir
Kenrick Culverhouse, her sin about the sealed letter would weigh less
heavily on her conscience--or, indeed, need not weigh at all. What can
any one ask more than happiness? And, in the eye of the world, Kenrick
was a much more suitable husband for a young woman of fortune than
Cyril could possibly be.
‘Now I have been thinking,’ continued Mrs. Dulcimer, sinking to a
mysterious undertone, ‘that perhaps if Beatrix could be made to think
that Cyril was fickle and inconstant, and that before he left Little
Yafford he had got to care for someone else--you, for instance,’
whispered Mrs. Dulcimer, making a little stab at Bella with her
forefinger, ‘it might cure her of her foolish attachment to him. It is
ridiculous that she should go on caring for a man who doesn’t love her,
when there is a noble young fellow who does love her passionately, and
can make her Lady Culverhouse. If she could only be made to think that
Cyril was fond of you, Bella, without actual falsehood,’ concluded Mrs.
Dulcimer, with a strong emphasis upon the qualifying adjective, as much
as to say that in so good a cause she would not mind sailing rather
near the wind.
‘I’m sure I don’t know how it is to be done,’ said Bella, with a
meditative air. ‘Beatrix is so self-opinionated. It is not as if she
were a weak-minded pliable girl. She is as hard as rock.’
‘But you are so clever, Bella. You could manage anything. If I were to
say now that I always thought Cyril was very fond of you--and I did
think so for a long time, as you know, dear--and if you were to say
something that would sustain that idea. We need neither of us tell an
actual story.’
‘Of course not,’ answered Bella, piously. ‘Do you suppose I would tell
a story, dear Mrs. Dulcimer?’
‘Indeed no, my love. I know how truthful you are.’
Thus it was agreed between the Vicar’s wife and her ductile _protégée_
that, somehow or other, Beatrix was to be persuaded that her lover had
been doubly false to her; false in abandoning her because evil tongues
maligned her, false in preferring another woman.