Lady Arden, about the same time, set out for her house in town,
accompanied by Madeline, her only remaining daughter. Mrs. Dorothea,
thus left alone, began to ponder on the prudential step of breaking up
an establishment, which she found much too expensive for her means--more
so, infinitely, than she had anticipated. For it so happened, that her
maid-of-all-work cook, whom she took with the house, was one of a set,
who not being sufficiently reputable to get places in private families,
are frequently employed by speculators in furnished houses, to take
charge of the same when vacant, living on their wits the while, and on
their lodgers when they can get them. Moreover she belonged to a club
for supplying servants out of place with broken meat. Poor Mrs.
Dorothea, therefore, was sadly puzzled about the consumption in her
kitchen. At last she ventured to consult her confidential abigail,
Sarah.
Servants, however, though they had been pulling caps five minutes
before, always stand by each other in the grand common cause--defence of
extravagance! Sarah, therefore, assuming an expression of countenance,
in which sauciness and sulkiness were combined, replied,
"You can't expect to be much of a judge, ma'am, not being used to
housekeeping; I'm sure I never see no waste; but people must have enough
to eat of something."
"I am far from wishing any person under _my_ roof not to have sufficient
to eat," replied Mrs. Dorothea, with offended dignity, "but I certainly
expected of you, Sarah, that you would not see me imposed upon by
lodging-house servants."
"I never seen you imposed upon, ma'am; but you seem to forget that
you've got a man now to feed. Where there is a man, there's no end to
the consumption; in particular butcher's meat, and they will have it.
It's no place of mine, however, to see the larder, and I am not a going
to get myself mobbed, meddling with other servants."
Sarah was ordered to leave the room, and send the cook. There had been a
shoulder of mutton at the table the day before, in which Mrs. Dorothea
had made the usual first gash with the carving-knife, intending to help
herself, but changed her mind; the meat had, of course, separated a
little, as in a shoulder it always does.
"You have the cold mutton for your own dinners," commenced Mrs.
Dorothea: the servants dined some hours before she did.
"The mutton, ma'am!" repeated Jones, such was the cook's name, "I
believe John picked the bone for his breakfast: but, really, the joint
was so severely cut in the parlour that I didn't think it worth looking
after."
Mrs. Dorothea explained; but jerks of the chin were all the satisfaction
she could obtain.
Jones's blotted account of the last sovereign she had had for small
expenses was given in.
Mrs. Jones would have made a good M. P., for her hand was as illegible
as it was large. The first item in the account certainly seemed to be a
bag of ground salt for the bird. The canary having been added to the
establishment only the beginning of the last week, Mrs. Dorothea was
obliged to enquire what this meant.
"Groundsel, ma'am, for the bird; I paid a boy for gathering some, you
can't get people to do things for nothing." This was not the only
expense the bird had occasioned--he was the alleged cause of a great
additional consumption in many things: eggs for boiling hard, bread for
crumbling into his tea, white sugar for sticking between the wires of
his cage, &c. &c. &c.; while there was a charge for bird-seed every
second day, half a pound each time. So much for the bird. The charge for
soap had always been enormous, but this week it was twice as much as
usual. Mrs. Dorothea remonstrated: "You told me," she said, "that the
reason you had used so much soap hitherto, was, that there were so few
glass towels, that you were obliged to wash them continually; I got a
dozen new ones accordingly, and here is more soap than ever charged."
"It stands to reason, ma'am, where there is more linen, it must take
more soap to wash it," answered Jones, with the coolest effrontery
possible; and having, of course, no change to return out of the
sovereign, she retired to the kitchen, to pronounce her mistress the
_most meanest_ lady she had ever met with--indeed no lady at all; to
grudge people the mouthfuls of meat they had earned, and the poor bird
its two or three seeds; but what was worse than all, she wouldn't have
them to wash their hands, for fear of using a bit of soap.
"Considering the difference a canary bird has made," thought Mrs.
Dorothea, "it is a fortunate circumstance that I was not persuaded to
add an errand-boy to my establishment, as Jones so much wished." Jones,
by some sort of accident, happened to have a son of eight or nine years
old, whom, of course, she wished to see provided for.
If one could but afford it, proceeded Mrs. Dorothea, I don't know a
greater luxury than the peace of allowing oneself to be plundered
without seeming to see it. Mrs. Dorothea had had so much experience of
the discomforts of lodgings, that she had entertained some thoughts of
trying a boarding-house; indeed she had dined at one, one day of the
last week, by way of seeing how she should like the kind of thing; but
the company had been so different from the refined society she had been
living among lately at Lady Arden's, that she had felt quite
uncomfortable. Her neighbour on one side had entertained the party in a
loud, almost angry voice, the whole time of dinner, with accounts of
accidents on rail-roads; she heard afterwards that he was a great holder
of canal shares. Her neighbour on her other hand had quite disgusted
her, by eating of every dish at table; at the same time that he had made
her laugh, by mentioning to her, in confidence, as a sort of apology for
his gluttony, that never having been much out of his own part of the
country before, he wished while in such a fine new fangled place to get
all the insight into the world he could. And after all, if eating a
certain number of dinners give a knowledge of the law, why should not
eating a certain number of dishes give a knowledge of the world.
After this essay Mrs. Dorothea had given up the idea of a
boarding-house. She had even began to turn her thoughts again towards
her old lodging with the good carpet. Winter was now coming on and the
heat of the oven would no longer be an objection. And she could stand
out for the sofa, and the key to the chiffonier, and the drops to the
chimney-lights, before she went into the lodging at all. To be sure the
new carpet, that had made the room look so respectable, might be getting
faded by this time; she would step in, however the next day and see how
it looked, and inquire what the set could be had for during the winter
months. As she formed this resolve a vague remembrance of past
annoyances came over her mind, producing a sense of the utmost
dreariness.
It was getting dusk, for she did not dine till six, and while she sat
looking at the fire the days of her youth returned. She dwelt on the
thoughts of Arden Park, then her home, and of her father's princely
establishment. Now all belonged to her nephew; while she was an outcast,
almost hated, because she could not afford to be cheated; and paying
more than the half of her small income for a single sitting room, not so
good as that in which at Arden her own maid used to sit at needle-work.
At this moment the train of her reflections was interrupted by a voice
of complaint under her window. She looked out. It was raining, but there
was still twilight sufficient to discern a poor creature sitting on the
ground, and looking through the iron railing in at the kitchen-window,
where the light for cooking made the preparations for dinner visible.
The poor woman, was miserably clad! and, from her accent, Irish. She was
eloquently appealing to the compassion of the cook, while she carried in
her hand, as a sort of shield against the vigilance of English
policemen, a bundle of matches to sell, worth perhaps one half-penny.
"Ye that's warm and well fed yonder, pity the poor crathur could and wet
and hasn't broke her fast this blessed day!"
The cook's shrill voice was heard in a key of reproof.
"Oh, mistress," proceeded the mendicant, "but it ill becomes the face
that the fire's shining upon and the mate roasting before, to look round
in anger on the desolate. Sure I wouldn't be troubling you here in the
could this night if I had a hearth or a home of my own to go to!"
Mrs. Dorothea was struck with compassion for the poor wanderer. She
opened the window, handed her money from it, and ringing the bell
ordered her to have some dinner. "What a cheerful thing fire-light is!"
she thought, as she resumed her seat, unconsciously made happy by the
performance of a good action. She now remembered her late murmuring
thoughts with shame, as she contrasted her own situation with that of
the really destitute and became conscious that the source of her
discontent was not any actual deprivation, but _pride_, a pride too,
fostered into supernatural growth by the constant contemplation of the
wealth and splendour belonging to the head of her own family, "If I
could but afford to retain such a home as this," she thought, "how truly
happy I might think myself. However, the poorest lodging I am at all
likely to get into is a better shelter than many of my fellow creatures
possess; let me not, therefore, murmur!"
A dapper double rap here startled her from her reverie. "Who could be
calling at so late an hour?"
A gentleman entered whom Mrs. Dorothea had never seen before. He
apologized for being so late. He had been detained by a client from the
country, and had a journey to perform at an early hour in the morning.
The writings had not been completed till that day, and he feared that
before his return Mrs. Arden might have had the unnecessary trouble of
moving from a house which was now her own freehold property. He then
explained, that by order of Sir Willoughby Arden he had effected the
purchase of the premises, with the fixtures, furniture, &c. &c., every
thing as it stood; and was instructed to present her with the deeds,
which accordingly he did.
This was, as may be well believed, welcome news to Mrs. Dorothea. She
was thus not only comfortably settled in the home she liked so much, but
rendered for her quite a rich woman; as her income, hitherto so
insufficient, would, now that she was relieved from her heaviest
expense--rent, be ample for all her other wants.
Willoughby, the most liberal and generous of mortals in money matters,
had frequently heard his sisters talk over Aunt Dorothea's adventures in
lodgings, and lament that she could not afford to keep her nice pretty
house which suited her so well. He had, in consequence given the orders
we have just seen executed, and from a feeling of delicacy had said
nothing of his kind intentions, which had thus invested the transaction
with the character of an agreeable surprise.