THE FAMILY HISTORY.
If Berrie Down “had enough people in it without Miss Ormson,” Squire
Dudley could scarcely in common justice lay the blame at any other door
than his own, considering that of his own free will he had at a
comparatively early period of his and their lives encumbered himself
with the maintenance of five half-brothers and sisters, which fact it
was impossible either for him or them to forget, seeing never a day
passed that he did not rehearse to some one how this charge had crippled
and kept him back in life.
“Other men,” he declared, “found it hard enough to maintain wife and
family of their own; but here was he, provided by his own father with a
family large enough to drag down any man.”
“It is a comfort your step-mother married, at all events, Arthur,”
observed Miss Ormson, “or you would have been in the workhouse long ago.
The last straw, is it not so? you dear grumbling old camel.”
And that was all the sympathy _he_ got. Can it be wondered at,
therefore, if Squire Dudley thought every man’s hand was raised against
him?
To explain Miss Ormson’s speech, it is, however, necessary to enter into
a slight history of the Dudley family, who had really owned Berrie Down
for more years than any person believed, and were stated by tradition to
have been great people at an indefinitely remote period, when the father
of the first Lord Kemms was a goldsmith in the City, lending money to
grateful princes, who, contrary to all Solomon’s experience, proved
themselves worthy of the trust.
From that time until the day when this story commences, the Dudleys had
been Dudleys of Berrie Down; but, unhappily, while the trading Baldwins
were making, the aristocratic Dudleys were spending, and thus it came to
pass that each successive owner of Berrie Down left not merely that
place, but also less money, to the man who came after him than his
predecessor had done.
Accordingly, in the course of many deceases and successions, the money
dwindled down to nothing.
When there was not a shilling left beyond whatever amount the land might
produce to keep up the family dignity, Berrie Down descended to Major
Dudley, Arthur’s father, who, on the strength of his landed property,
half-pay, handsome face, and good address, married first, Janet, third
daughter of Arthur Hope, Esquire, of Copt Hall, Essex, who was possessed
of a moderate fortune, and a still more moderate show of good looks, and
who brought one son, the Arthur of my story, into the world; and
secondly, when Arthur had attained the age of seventeen, Laura, daughter
of Maddox Cuthbert, silk merchant, Manchester warehouseman and alderman
in the city of London.
Miss Cuthbert, it was supposed, would have money on her father’s death;
but that supposition proved so utterly incorrect, that the only dowry
the second Mrs. Dudley brought her husband resolved itself into a pretty
face and five children.
How many more arrows, male and female, might have been thrust into the
Dudley quiver, had Major Dudley not opportunely retired into the family
vault, situate in Fifield churchyard, was a question Arthur Dudley
declared only the Lord above could answer. As things fell out, however,
no more sons or daughters came to the Hollow, while to Arthur descended
the family estate and his mother’s small fortune, which latter barely
sufficed to pay the debts Major Dudley left behind him. On the other
hand, Mrs. Dudley No. 2 found, when her husband died, that she had
nothing to begin the world again upon excepting the dowry, afore
honourably mentioned, of good looks—somewhat the worse for wear—and five
children, whose ages ranged from nine years old downwards.
At this period Arthur Dudley was seven-and-twenty, and master of the
position.
He could have turned his step-mother and her family adrift on the world;
but, instead of doing so, he adopted his brothers and sisters and his
father’s widow, who, three years after old Squire Dudley’s death, made a
second very poor investment of her good looks, and married, greatly to
Arthur’s chagrin, a Doctor Marsden, possessed of a very small practice
in one of the London suburbs. This gentleman fancied Mrs. Dudley would
make him a good managing wife, and was also under the delusion that her
family—people known and respected within sound of Bow bells—might prove
useful to him and advance his prospects.
Those were the days in which the young Squire was spending much time at
Copt Hall, wooing his heiress. Those were the days in which he thought
“The Hollow” might be converted into a great place; in which he looked
at life through rose-tinted glass; in which he believed he could afford
to be both proud and generous—for all of which reasons, and also because
he did not choose that his father’s children should be beholden for
anything to a “trumpery apothecary,” he took upon himself the burden of
feeding, boarding, and educating five sturdy and rebellious juvenile
Dudleys.
For this act of liberality, society generally patted him on the back,
and said he was a fine fellow. Had he turned the children of his
father’s second marriage out of the gates of Berrie Down Hollow,
society, on the other hand, would have remembered that _he_ had got the
property, while the younger children were left penniless, and rated him
for his inhumanity accordingly; but, as matters stood, everyone in the
first blush of the affair forgot this fact, and pronounced Arthur to be
the most generous fellow in the universe.
And so, theoretically, perhaps he was; just one of those men who will
give an old horse the run of his paddock, but refuse to pay five
shillings a week for his run in the paddock of any other person.
Nevertheless, he shared with his brothers and sisters the produce of his
fields, the fat of his pastures, and for two years more they roamed wild
about Berrie Down—a troop of hardy young colts, unbroken, untrained,
uneducated, uncared-for.
The most enthusiastic American could have desired no more complete
democracy than the household at “The Hollow,” where, as is usual in all
democracies, the classes governed in other communities, were rulers of
the place.
At their own sweet wills, the servants went and came; by fits and starts
the labourers hedged and ditched, and ploughed and sowed. When it
pleased them to do so, the younger Dudleys assembled at the presumed
meal hours; when the fancy took them to do otherwise, they carried their
luncheon and dinner away to remote parts of the farm, or feasted in
kitchen and dairy on their return.
In vain, friends and even acquaintances entered remonstrances concerning
the manners, habits, and appearance, of the unkempt, untaught,
uncared-for, romping, impudent, mischievous young gipsies at “The
Hollow.” Even the two smallest of the band, a boy and girl, twins, only
seven years of age, were, so the Rector of Fifield assured Arthur, going
headlong to destruction. Robbing birds’-nests, pelting ducks, stealing
fruit, trampling down the ripe grain, climbing trees, wading in the
brook, setting terriers on cats, chasing sheep, jeering at the
passers-by, these children, the good man declared, in all such
occupations were not alone. Wherever they went, Satan accompanied them;
and having arrived at this pleasant conclusion, it was only natural he
should, even with tears in his eyes, entreat Arthur to stretch forth his
hand and save the little ones from being lost, body and soul.
The opinion of the Rector, modified to a certain extent, was the opinion
of the neighbourhood generally.
Since time began, such a lot of bright-eyed, fearless, active,
unmanageable young “limbs” had never, so the country-people declared,
been seen in Hertfordshire. They were at once the terror and admiration
of all who frequented the roads and lanes round Berrie Down. Keen of
tongue, swift of foot, careless of danger, the children roamed o’er
common and lea and field. They were to be met with in the woods that lay
westward of the Hollow, watching the squirrels, and almost emulating
their agility. As for the miller, he declared his heart was always in
his mouth, thinking some of them would be drowned. When the mowers were
at work, at the risk of their legs the children followed close, hoping
to rifle the corncrake’s nest; when the wheat-stacks were moved, the
five were always at hand to hiss on the terriers, to prevent either rat
or mouse effecting its escape. They stayed with the threshers in the
barn; they were here, there, everywhere; they chased the calves, they
milked the cows, they rode the horses; they were a herd of sunburnt,
freckled, hold, romping, cruel and yet tenderhearted boys and girls, who
made bitter lamentation over the death of a favourite rabbit, although
they robbed nests, and carried off young birds, and tormented cats, and
utterly detested vermin and all creeping reptiles; and scandalized at
the fact of five such natures “running to waste,”—so society phrased
it,—people urged upon their brother the desirability of some alteration
being effected in his establishment.
All in vain. Squire Dudley, the heiress’ hope having vanished, cursed
his luck audibly, but refused to attempt to mend it.
“Send them to school, indeed,” he said to Mrs. Ormson, the second Mrs.
Dudley’s eldest sister—“send them to school! I have trouble enough now
to make both ends meet, without, increasing my expenses.”
“Why do you not marry, then?” she asked; in reply to which inquiry
Arthur Dudley only shook his head. He had been disappointed in his
matrimonial schemes, and the world just then looked very black to him.
“Unless a wife brought something in her hand towards keeping herself,”
he observed at length, “I am afraid that remedy would prove worse than
the disease.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Mrs. Ormson, decidedly. “A wife would very soon set
things to rights, prevent waste, see that the people you employ did
their duty, and keep the children in order. You want a managing woman at
the head of your establishment. If my hands were not so tied, I would
remain and look after matters for you myself.”
“I wish you would,” sighed Arthur; and he was in earnest; for there were
two people on earth in whom he believed—one, Mrs. Ormson, “a most
superior woman,” and the other an old housekeeper who had lived at
Berrie Down Hollow in the better days, when Mrs. Dudley No. 1 was alive,
who had packed up and departed when the advent of Mrs. Dudley No. 2 was
announced, but who still came occasionally to see him, and lament over
“Master Arthur’s evil fortune in having all those owdacious boys and
girls cast like mites into the family treasury.”
“You are quite right, Piggott,” said Mrs. Ormson, to whom, in a moment
of forgetfulness, the woman once confided this opinion; “for the
children are indeed a widow’s mites. Your remark does credit alike to
your wit and to your scriptural knowledge.”
“I reads my Bible, mum,” observed Piggott, who had a secret distrust of
Mrs. Ormson.
“A very proper thing for a person in your station,” returned the lady.
“I always like servants who read their Bible. It teaches them honesty,
and prevents their striving to be equal with their masters and
mistresses. Reading the Scriptures has made you the invaluable woman you
are, Piggott. I only wish poor Mr. Arthur had some one like you to
manage his house for him. Do you think he could not make it worth your
while to——?”
“Thank you, mum,” interrupted Mrs. Piggott, hastily; “but I would rather
be excused. Master Arthur, mum, was good enough to wish me to come and
take the management, after his step-mamma’s marriage; but a parcel of
young children is a thing as I never was accustomed to.” And although
Mrs. Piggott was too polite to add anything in disparagement of Mrs.
Ormson’s nephews and nieces, still there was a look in her face which
that lady rightly interpreted to mean, “More especially such a set of
romping, mischievous, riotous, ill-conditioned young imps as there are
in this house.”
After that, Mrs. Ormson abandoned all idea of a housekeeper for Arthur.
“Your case is a hard one, Arthur, I fear,” she said, “when even Piggott
will not help you out of your scrape. Clearly you must marry—let me look
out a wife for you. I know so many nice girls, suitable in every
respect, and several with money too. You know you ought to marry a rich
woman, that is, if you can get one to marry you.”
“There’s the difficulty,” remarked Arthur, thinking of the faithless
heiress.
“Well, let me see what I can do,” implored Mrs. Ormson, who devoutly
believed the Almighty had sent her into the world to set right the
things He had unintentionally left wrong at the creation. “When are you
coming to London?”
“Next month; to stay a day or two with Dick Travers.”
“Then give me a few days at the same time, and, before the summer is
over, there will be a mistress at Berrie Down. Mark my words.”
Whether Squire Dudley marked her words may be doubted; but he verified
them, in a manner Mrs. Ormson little anticipated, by going to Dick
Travers’, by being persuaded to accompany that gentleman to visit his
aunt Mrs. Travers, “who has three pretty daughters, and a niece staying
with her; the finest girl I ever saw,” finished Mr. Richard Travers. “No
nonsense about her; up to everything—ready for anything. Can make a
dress, and dance in it afterwards; sit up all night with the old lady,
and come down to breakfast next morning fresh as a daisy. Just the girl
I’d marry, if I could scrape together money enough to buy the license;
but she is too poor for me, Dudley, or for you either, for that matter.
A wife with only a few hundreds is a luxury only to be indulged in by a
very rich man.”
“She comes of good people,” he went on,—“the Bells of Layford. They have
money among them, though, I am sorry to say, but little of it has fallen
to her share. More’s the pity! Daughter of the late Rector of
Layford—mother dead also—two sisters in heaven with father and
mother—not an incumbrance of any kind. Well, it is of no use; you cannot
afford it, I suppose, any more than I can.”
“I cannot,” agreed Arthur Dudley, as gravely as though Mr. Travers had
made some serious proposition to him; and then straight away he went and
did the very thing he had said in all earnestness he could not afford.
She struck his fancy—that pretty girl with the quaint name; sweet
Heather Bell, as Mr. Travers always called her.
“The name was a fancy of her godfather, an eccentric bachelor,” the lady
explained. “She was the youngest of three daughters, and the other two
were christened, respectively, ‘Lily’ and ‘Rose.’ ‘Call this one
“Heather,”’ said Mr. Stewart, who loved Scotland and her purple
mountains; ‘she will grow up like the heather, perhaps—strong, hardy, a
wild flower, worth a hundred of your garden rarities. Call her Heather,
and I will remember her name to her advantage.’ So she was christened
Heather,” went on Mrs. Travers, “and she lived and grew up as you see,
while the two other daughters drooped and died. Unhappily, soon after
her birth, Mr. Bell quarrelled with her godfather, who has since utterly
ignored Heather’s existence. It is a pretty name for a girl; don’t you
think so, Mr. Dudley?”
Mr. Dudley did, and thought, moreover, that Heather was considerably
prettier than her name, influenced by which opinion he went again and
again to London, and betook himself day after day to Mrs. Travers’
pleasant house, where he found order and competence, bright faces, and
always a cordial welcome.
After the riot and confusion at the Hollow, that well-arranged house
seemed to Arthur a sort of earthly heaven.
In comparison with the Travers’, Mrs. Ormson’s nice young ladies seemed
a little affected and self-conscious; and, therefore, during the course
of his frequent visits to London, he proved rather negligent of his
relative.
The Misses Travers were all engaged: one to a north country baronet,
another to a barrister, the third to a reverend gentleman, who was
subsequently appointed bishop somewhere at the world’s end. Miss Bell,
however, was heart-whole, and Mrs. Travers, who laboured in common with
many other people under a delusion with regard to Arthur Dudley’s
worldly means, never wearied of singing her niece’s praises in the ears
of the young Squire. What a daughter she had been—what a wife she would
make—what a treasure she had proved during the whole of her (Mrs.
Travers’) illness!
“When the dear girls were married,” Mrs. Travers went on to hope, “she
trusted Heather would be thrown into society where she would meet with a
husband worthy of her.”
All of which made the man to whom she spoke eager to win the girl for
himself; and accordingly, to cut a long story short, before the summer
was over Mrs. Ormson’s prediction was verified by Miss Bell and her poor
little fortune of six hundred pounds becoming the property of Arthur
Dudley, Esquire, of Berrie Down Hollow, to have and to hold for ever.
By degrees that gentleman had worked himself up into the belief that the
day of his wedding would prove the turning-point in his luck. What
benefits he expected fate would present him with on the occasion of his
marriage, it would be difficult to say; but certainly he thought there
were long arrears of forgotten gifts owing to him that might be
gracefully paid by Providence on so auspicious an occasion.
For some inscrutable reason, however, Providence decided on still
remaining Arthur Dudley’s debtor. His lands yielded no double crops; he
found it unnecessary to build larger barns for the produce of his
fields; his oxen were not stronger to labour, and his sheep did not
bring forth thousands and tens of thousands on the green slopes of
Berrie Down.
His life continued to be still a “miss,” money grew no more plentiful,
his stock failed to increase; indoors, indeed, there was comfort and
regularity; but what signified indoor comfort to a man who had hoped to
represent the county, and to stand on an equal footing with Lord Kemms?
No longer, certainly, were the younger Dudleys a terror to the
neighbourhood, a vision of very horror to cat, and bird, and beast; but
while they had to be clothed and maintained, where was there cause for
gratulation? Worst of all, no one, except Mrs. Ormson, sympathized with
him save Heather; and even Heather laboured under the delusion that she
was bound to sympathize with other people besides her husband.
After seven years of marriage, Squire Dudley gratefully decided, in his
inmost heart, that he ought to have remained single, and, leaving Berrie
Down, gone forth into the world to push his fortune.
What, perhaps, established him in this opinion was the contemplation of
Compton Raidsford’s great house on the road to South Kemms.
From the drawing-room windows of Berrie Down Hollow he could see that
bran new mansion staring him in the face. It stood on a slight hill,
beyond the mill, over the fields, across the road, and then over more
fields; but still he could see it, and, when the wind was from the west,
hear the sound of the gong which announced to all whom the intelligence
might interest that the Raidsfords were about to sit down to luncheon or
dinner, as the case might be.
If a man like Compton Raidsford, who had risen from the ranks, could
make money enough in London to build such a palace, and to keep it up
when built, what might not Arthur Dudley have achieved?
With all the veins of his heart the Squire hated the merchant who drove
off to Palinsbridge in his carriage and pair, and rode out with his
daughters, who sat their horses, so Arthur affirmed, with as much grace
and elegance as sacks of sand.
It was well known that Mr. Raidsford had started in life as boy in the
workshop of Messrs. Fairland and Wright, engineers, Stangate, at the
moderate salary of five shillings per week; and perhaps the only speech
Bessie Ormson ever made, which thoroughly met with Squire Dudley’s
approval, was the rather ill-natured one, that “most probably Mr.
Raidsford preferred a gong to a bell, on account of early associations
connected with the latter.”
“It would have been a fine thing for me, Bessie, if _I_ had sprung from
the gutter, with no absurd social conventionalities keeping _me_ back,”
he sighed; in answer to which remark, Bessie Ormson only shrugged her
shoulders and pulled a little grimace.
The man who could not achieve success at Berrie Down Hollow was not
likely, in Miss Ormson’s opinion, to have ever reared Mr. Raidsford’s
palace out of five shillings a week; and, as a rule, she was in no way
backward about expressing this conviction. For which reason—although she
was extremely pretty, and had higher spirits and more life about her
than any other guest who ever came to stay at Berrie Down—Mr. Dudley
could very well have dispensed with her presence.
More especially at the juncture when you, reader, are invited to walk
across the lawn, sloping away from the drawing-room windows to the
Hollow—for Heather had then been absent from home for nearly a
fortnight, staying with Mrs. Marsden, whose health was anything but
satisfactory—and during the whole of that time the house had been, in
Arthur’s opinion, at sixes and sevens, and Mr. Dudley’s personal
comforts somewhat neglected.
All of which formed a text from which Bessie preached a sermon—always
beginning, never-ending—on the difference of Berrie Down with and
without a mistress.
“I never believed the woman lived who could make me agree with Solomon,
till I met your wife, Arthur,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“That I am certain now of the truth of that which he never could have
known from his own experience, that a woman may be to her husband, ‘Far
Above Rubies.’”
“Humph!” ejaculated Squire Dudley; and he went out, disgusted with
Bessie, the wisest of men, and the world in general.