AT SUPPER.
Although Mrs. Ormson, being in her own estimation a great lady, followed
the fashions and affected London hours, still, to do her justice, supper
was one of those ancient customs it delighted her to see kept up in her
nephew’s house.
“I only wish, my dear,” she said to Heather, “we could do as we liked in
town, and I would have supper every night of my life instead of that
late dinner, which is neither, as Mr. Ormson says, fish, flesh, nor
fowl. Now, what can be more cosy and comfortable than this?” and the
lady complacently surveyed the supper-table, whereon was spread a meal
that might indeed have caused one of Mr. Ormson’s late dinners to hide
its diminished head with a sense of grievous humiliation.
Thanks to the girls, the arrangement of the table was tasteful also;
there were freshly-gathered flowers peeping out from baskets filled with
moss; there were cool lettuces and crisp radishes, and little banks of
mustard and cress, all placed and grouped with a certain artistic
effect; there was home-made bread, not brown and sodden as home-made
bread usually is, but white and light as Mrs. Piggott’s hands could make
it; there were delicious pats of yellow butter, brought straight from
the dairy; there were late cherries and strawberries, and early
raspberries, gooseberries, and currants on the table; all daintily set
out with green leaves; all looking, to quote Bessie, “as though somebody
cared for them.” There was cream so rich that Mrs. Ormson declared it
made her feel inclined to forswear London for ever; while, for those who
desired substantial refreshment, Mrs. Piggott had sent up her usual
_pièce de resistance_—a round of spiced beef, together with fowls, a
ham, and a couple of veal pies, which latter were, she knew, considered
her speciality. Tarts also were there, and various “shapes;” for the
good lady declared Mrs. Ormson should not go back to town and say “she
never saw a meal fit for a Christian to sit down to in the house,
leastways she sha’n’t say it with truth,” finished Mrs. Piggott, as she
arranged a paper frill like a shroud round the knuckle end of the ham,
and garnished her beef with parsley.
Through the open windows the scent of many flowers came floating on the
night air into the room, and the light of the lamp fell on the quiet
faces of the young people gathered round the table.
“Where is Bessie?” inquired Mrs. Ormson, as Mrs. Dudley re-entered the
apartment.
“She will be here presently,” Heather answered, taking her seat; but
many minutes passed before Bessie made her appearance, and, shrinking
away from the light, drew a chair towards one of the windows, declaring
she did not want any supper, that she was tired and lazy, and thought
eating destructive to the romance of life.
“Don’t be absurd, Bessie,” said Mrs. Ormson.
“Nothing can be further from my intention,” was the reply.
“How did you come from the station, Heather?” asked Laura, the youngest
of the second generation of Dudleys. “I never heard the fly drive up to
the door.”
“We came back with Mr. Raidsford,” said Heather.
“You came with whom?” demanded Arthur Dudley, from the other end of the
table.
“With Mr. Raidsford. He travelled down in the same compartment, and
kindly offered to drive us home; but our luggage, at least a box of Mrs.
Ormson’s, we left at Palinsbridge. I suppose the pony-cart can go over
for it to-morrow?”
“Good heavens! mamma is going to take up her residence here,” whispered
Bessie to Alick, who was seated within earshot.
“Well, Heather, I really wonder at you,” said Squire Dudley, laying down
his knife and fork; “I did think you had more sense of what was due to
yourself and to me than to accept a favour at the hands of such an
arrant snob as Compton Raidsford, a man who looks down upon us all, who
thinks more of his hundreds of thousands than of having come of an
ancient family, of having good blood in one’s veins.”
“That’s right, Arthur; that’s what brings down the galleries,” remarked
Bessie. “Go on. In this money-loving age——”
“Oh! of course you stand up for trade,” retorted Arthur.
“Of course, I think so I ought, when every morsel I put in my lips,
every article of clothing I put on my back, is paid for by trade.”
“Bessie,” interposed Mrs. Ormson, “how often am I to tell you it is not
polite to speak of personal matters in general society?”
“If this be general society, I sit rebuked,” said Bessie, while Heather
pleaded—
“Without downright rudeness I could not have refused Mr. Raidsford’s
offer, Arthur. I could not, indeed. He was so very kind and pressing, so
cordial, in fact, that I felt it would be ungracious to decline. Would
it have been possible to refuse? Mrs. Ormson, do you think it would?”
“On the contrary, I consider it would have been the height, as you say,
of rudeness,” replied that lady, for once deciding against the Squire.
“And, for my part, I think Mr. Raidsford a most gentlemanly person,
quite above his origin. I can assure you, I never enjoyed a journey more
in my life, and the drive from Palinsbridge was delightful. And to see
how every one touched their hats to him,” finished Mrs. Ormson,
forgetting in her enthusiasm that such a person as Lindley Murray had
ever existed.
“Touch their hats, indeed!” repeated Arthur, with a muttered oath.
“Don’t be profane, sir,” said Bessie, tapping him on the arm. “A
Conservative ought never to object to see a great man respected by the
masses. When all is said and done, it is riches make the man, you know.
It is not birth, or virtue, or learning, but money, for money is power;
and what is the meaning of the word aristocracy, but the powerful
classes, I should like to know? Consider how many blankets, how many
soup tickets, how many donations to hospitals, how much employment Mr.
Compton Raidsford’s income represents, and be dumb. We are all
worshippers of some golden calf, so let his worshippers kneel down
before him, and rest content.”
“I wish to Heaven, Bessie, you were not so infernally clever,” remarked
the Squire.
“And I wish to gracious, Arthur, that in some respects you were not so
intolerably stupid,” returned the young lady, which observation elicited
a statement from Mrs. Ormson, that “she should be glad indeed when
Bessie was married, and had a husband to take care of her.”
“Ah! mamma, it is very well for you to talk,” replied Bessie; “but you
will be sorry when I am married.”
“I only wish you would give me the chance of being sorry,” observed Mrs.
Ormson, pretending not to notice that Arthur was helping her to a second
supply of spiced beef. Suddenly, however, becoming aware of the fact,
she exclaimed, “My dear boy, when do you think I ate last? You have
given me enough to dine a whole family.”
“Never mind, mamma, eat it for me,” said Bessie, from the open window;
whereupon Mrs. Ormson bridled, and wondered “what had come to Bessie,”
thought “she had been made too much of,” and remarked “she did not envy
Gilbert Harcourt.”
“Neither do I, mamma, so for once we are of the same opinion,” said
Bessie shortly, at which point Heather deemed it wise to turn the
conversation, not sorry on the whole, perhaps, that it had glided off
Mr. Raidsford, and Mr. Raidsford’s carriage, and Mr. Raidsford’s
considerate attentions to herself.
After a time, also, other tongues began to be heard: Alick had to tell
of the offer Lord Kemms had made for “Nellie,” their two-year-old colt.
“I was breaking her yesterday,” he said, “on that piece of ground beyond
the Hollow, when his Lordship, riding past, pulled up his horse, and
asked me if she was for sale. I told him I did not know, but could ask
my brother; and seeing he had taken a fancy to her, I added I did not
think he would part with her excepting for a long price.”
“And what do you call a long price, young gentleman?” he inquired,
laughing; “so I thought I might as well value her high enough. A hundred
guineas, my lord,” I answered.
“Make it pounds, and you shall have a cheque whenever you like to send
her over,” he said.
“Oh! what good fortune,” exclaimed Heather, “of course you sent her,
Alick;” but the lad’s countenance fell. “Arthur——” he began, at which
point Arthur took up his parable for himself.
“The filly will be worth three hundred next year,” he said; “Lord Kemms
shall not coin money out of me.”
For a minute there ensued a dead silence, then Heather, turning to
Agnes, said, “And how are the chickens going on, dear?”
“Oh! we have got five sets more out since you left,” was the reply;
“there are fifty of the sweetest little chucks you ever saw, just
pecking——”
“And two fresh calves, mother,” broke in Lucy Dudley.
“And pigeons without end,” added Cuthbert; “and I found in the pea-hen’s
nest four young ones; and, mother, the long meadow is all mowed, and we
shall have the grandest crop, Ridley says, ever came off it; and we have
painted the gates in honour of your coming back, and the garden is as
neat as neat, not a weed; and Alick and I rolled the grass and the drive
this morning, and nailed up the clematis that the wind tore down the
other night, and Aggy and Alick have covered your sofa, and Lucy has——”
“Hush, Cuthbert, don’t tell tales,” interposed Lucy, laughing; whereupon
Heather, with a smile to both, stretched her hand over towards the boy,
who took it in both of his.
“May I add my mite to the family news?” interposed Bessie at this
juncture. “I have trained Beauty to beg, and taught Muff to stand in a
corner; I have nearly broken my neck trying to learn to ride; I was
tumbled completely over attempting to milk Cowslip, an ill-conditioned
beast, who did not in the least appreciate my delicate attentions.”
“Oh, mother! it was such fun,” said Laura; “you should have seen Bessie
sprawling on the grass, and Cowslip looking at her; Alick held her
horns, and Cuthbert her tail, and Agnes showed Bessie how to milk, but
it was all of no use.”
“The quadruped was wiser than the biped,” remarked Bessie, “and declined
experiments. For the future, I intend to learn wisdom from a cow.”
“I wish you could learn wisdom from anything,” observed Mrs. Ormson.
“My beloved mother, that, I fear, is impossible, since I have failed to
acquire it from you,” said Bessie.
“You remember those letters you forwarded to me, Arthur,” broke in
Heather at this point; “one was from Miss Hope, to say she had returned
from Munich, and would like to come to us; and the other from Mrs.
Black, who had not heard I was in London, and wanted to know whether it
would be convenient for her and Mr. Black to pay us a visit now, instead
of later on in the year. Mr. Black has been ill, and it is his most
leisure time at present; so I called in Stanley Crescent and arranged
that they should bring Harry Marsden down with them next week. It really
is pitiable to see poor Mrs. Marsden with all those young children about
her, ill as she is.”
“Was there no one else, Heather, you could have asked while you were
about it?” he inquired. “We have a tolerably large barn, and plenty of
hay and straw, so that a score or two more would make little
difference.”
Heather bit her lip, but otherwise took no notice of her husband’s
remark. Heaven knew she had not gone out of her way to ask any of these
people, who were neither kith nor kin of hers, and whom, truth to say,
it would scarcely have grieved her had she never beheld in the flesh
again.
If the house were full of visitors during the summer season, as it
usually was, those visitors were none of her seeking, although on her
fell the burden of amusing and catering for them.
With one and another Arthur walked through the fields, or down the lane,
or across the meadows, towards the Hollow. To Mrs. Ormson he would
discourse concerning his grievances; he would quarrel with Mrs. Black
about the relative merits of town and country; while from Mr. Black he
culled such information anent the “way in which a man with push and a
few hundreds might get on in London,” that for months subsequently
Squire Dudley thought of nothing excepting how he might best contrive to
emigrate to this wonderful El Dorado, to those metropolitan gold-fields,
where nuggets were discovered, not in pits and creeks, but in dingy city
offices, or in great board-rooms, all shining with polished mahogany and
bright morocco leather.
As for Miss Hope, she was to Heather, saving by correspondence, an utter
stranger. Never in her life had the present mistress of Berrie Down
Hollow set eyes on the sister of the lady who had once reigned there
supreme. For more than seven years Miss Hope had wandered to and fro on
the earth. She had wintered here; she had summered there. She had been
returning every season to London; and every season she heard of some
fresh plan, or met with some fresh person, that induced her to defer her
intention of coming back to England.
Bohemianism is not confined to one sex or class in the community, and
there are numbers of forlorn spinsters and lonely widows, running loose
about the Continent, frequenting British watering-places and foreign
spas, picking up acquaintances in railway carriages and at table
d’hôtes, who would be greatly disgusted if they were assured that the
lives of the men they call Bohemians in London are infinitely more
useful, and quite as respectable, as theirs;—wandering women, who have
no care for the Lares and Penates of the ordinary English home, whose
talk is of art and of far-away cathedrals, of foreign cookery and Rhine
wines, who have got up to see the sun rise in every country except their
own, who go in for passports instead of Sunday-schools, who sit next
“our own correspondent” at dinner-parties on their return to London, and
converse with him concerning Rome and Vienna, when they mutually agree
that the Continent is the place to live, that the man, woman, or child,
who is content to reside in England, should be sent to the Asylum for
Idiots at once.
These are the people who ask young girls whether they have been abroad,
and, on receiving an answer in the negative, remark that they envy them.
If any one have the temerity to inquire why, they reply, “Because she
has never seen Paris, and the first sight of Paris is something worth
living for.” Beyond climate and cheapness, and being able to do as one
likes, these Bohemians never can give a reason for the faith that is in
them; but that they hold such faith sincerely is certain.
“Everything is so different,” they declare, if pressed on the subject;
“the cooking, for instance.”
“It is, and I detest messes,” says some plain-spoken John Bull;
whereupon the elderly Bohemian inquires, “whether the speaker has ever
dined at Zapoli’s?” implying thereby that he is utterly ignorant of the
subject about which he has been talking.
Such a woman was Miss Hope—a woman who went poking about foreign
galleries, and visiting artists’ studios; who had, if her own account
were to be believed, seen every modern statue in process of chiselling,
who had been to every opera which ever was performed, who
conscientiously believed she had exhausted Europe, who wrote home reams
of letters about the Carnival and the Pope, about festivals and
bull-fights, about Mont Blanc and German gaming-tables, and who, in
common with most English travellers, believing the Lord had made
mountains and lakes, kings, queens, popes, cardinals, musicians, actors,
actresses, and painters, on purpose to amuse and improve the people of
Great Britain, considered it only an act of common courtesy towards the
Almighty on the part of that nation to see as much of the great
Continental entertainment He had provided for the pleasure and
edification of his chosen race as possible.
All this and much more had Bessie Ormson heard concerning Miss Hope.
Many and various were the comments that had fallen upon her ear
concerning “that funny old woman,” as she mentally called Arthur
Dudley’s respected aunt. From Mrs. Piggott, who declared she hated Miss
Hope as she hated “pison,” to other persons higher in the social
scale—the name of one of whom, at all events, Bessie would not have
cared to mention, even to herself, in her bedchamber, lest a bird of the
air might carry it away—from Mrs. Piggott up, I repeat, the girl had
heard stories of Miss Hope, and her heart burned within her at the sound
of her name.
“I do trust I shall be at Berrie Down when your aunt arrives, Arthur,”
she said; and the speech was an opportune diversion at the moment. “It
has been a dream of my life to meet Miss Hope.”
“I do not imagine you would agree particularly well, if you did meet,”
answered Arthur, sulkily.
“We might for a little time,” said Bessie, laughing. “Heather, do be
polite, and ask me to remain until after Miss Hope’s arrival. I have
heard so much of her, she seems quite like an old acquaintance.”
“From whom have you heard much of her, Bessie?” inquired Mr. Ormson;
“not from me, I am confident.”
“My dearest mamma, other human beings besides yourself have been endowed
by Providence with the gift of speech,” replied Bessie; but she bent as
she spoke to stroke Muff—bent in order to conceal her face, though she
was sitting in the shade with the cool night air blowing right in upon
her.
“Don’t be pert, miss,” retorted Mrs. Ormson; “from whom have you heard
so much of Miss Hope?”
“From one and another,” answered Bessie, carelessly; “I am the rolling
stone which gathers moss, contrary to the words of the proverb; and,
wherever I go, I hear something to the advantage or disadvantage of
somebody. Concerning Miss Hope, the moss I have gathered is to the
effect that she dresses peculiarly badly abroad, and peculiarly well in
England; that foreigners regard her with awe and wonder, as an average
specimen of the British female; that she praises everything English in
foreign countries, and everything English when abroad; that she is to be
met with on the stairs leading to attic studios, and dines in the most
wonderful manner for threepence per diem; that she is considered mad by
the Parisians, and a great and good lady by the Germans; that she was
requested to leave Vienna; and that at Rome she is regarded with
distrust, because of the audible comments she is in the habit of making
during mass, concerning the mummery of the Catholic religion. For the
rest, I am told that, since her nephew has come of age and married, she
has vowed a vow never to set foot in Copt Hall, but will, when she
returns to England, take up her abode in a London boarding-house, where
she can discourse to her fellow-sufferers concerning French cookery and
George Sand, the gondolas of Venice, and the terrible designs and
wonderful genius of Napoleon the Third.”
“Who told you all this, Bessie?” demanded Squire Dudley, turning round
in his chair as he asked the question.
“What can it matter who told me?” she replied. “Is the record not true?”
“True or false, I should like to know the name of your informant,” he
said; “for I never knew but one person who talked in that way of my
aunt. Was it a man or a woman?” he persisted.
“You might be more polite, Arthur,” she replied; “a lady.”
“Was it Mrs. Aymescourt?” he asked.
“I did not know there was such a person upon earth,” she replied.
“Don’t tell stories, Bessie,” interposed Mrs. Ormson; “you must have
heard of her over and over again.”
“If I ever did, I have forgotten all about her,” answered Bessie; “at
any rate, it was not from any one of the name of Aymescourt I ever heard
a sentence concerning Miss Hope’s peculiarities.”
“And who is Mrs. Aymescourt?” inquired Heather.
“Oh! a friend of Miss Hope’s; at least, she used to be,” answered Mrs.
Ormson, vaguely; and then she looked at Arthur, who, pulling cherries
out of a basket lined with green leaves, refused either to meet her
glance, or to vouchsafe any further information on the subject.
“Did you know Mrs. Aymescourt, Arthur?” asked Heather, whose curiosity
was a little piqued.
“I—yes, to be sure; she used to be staying with my aunt at Copt Hall,
but I have not seen her these ten years.”
“Was not there something about Mr. Aymescourt having come into another
fine property?” inquired Mrs. Ormson.
“Marsden said he had,” returned the Squire; “likely enough, for we know
who takes care of his own; and certainly Aymescourt had luck beyond what
falls to the share of any honest man. He had a large income to begin
with, or else madam never would have married him; but I dare say they
were quite able to spend it all, so probably this other property fell in
none too soon.”
“Where do they live?” asked Heather.
“I have not the slightest idea,” Arthur answered; “my aunt keeps up some
kind of acquaintanceship, I understand, with them, as she does with
everybody, but I have seen nothing of them for years;” and as he spoke
Squire Dudley made another dive among the cherries, and pulled a fresh
handful from amidst the green leaves.
“Give me some, Arthur, before you eat them all,” entreated Bessie; “or,
stay, the moon must be up by this time; I can go into the garden and
gather some for myself. Will you come with me, Alick?”
And Bessie, who was not above flirting, even with a lad of eighteen,
when it suited her purpose to do so, drew Alick from the dining-room
across the hall, into the drawing-room, and so out on to the long
terrace-like walk which overlooked the Hollow, and all the pleasant
country stretching away towards the west.
“I did not want the cherries in the least,” she began, putting her hand
within Alick’s arm, and speaking in her usual don’t-careish tone; “I did
not want the cherries, but I wanted to get away from mamma—she does so
worry me, that I say things to her I feel sorry for afterwards. What a
pity it is we cannot choose our own mothers, or that we are not allowed
to exchange them after we come to years of discretion! Only to think,
that out of three sisters my mamma should be my mamma. Even Mrs. Black,
or your own mother, I think I could have got on with; but, as papa
wisely observes, these things are arranged for us.”
“But don’t you love your mother, Bessie?” asked the boy, with a vague
sense on him that the girl’s talk was wicked.
“Don’t I what?” she demanded.
“Don’t you love your mother?” he repeated, with the feeling growing
stronger upon him, that his view of the matter was correct, and Bessie’s
wrong; “of course, I know you disagree with her, and quarrel, and
contradict her, but still, for all that, don’t you love her in the
bottom of your heart?”
“Shall I tell you a secret?” she inquired, as they turned the end of the
house—the garden end.
“If you will be so kind,” Alick replied, thinking at the same time how
exceedingly beautiful Bessie looked in the moonlight. Perhaps she
guessed at his thought, for she sighed, wishing that some person whom
she liked much better than Alick Dudley were standing beside her at the
moment, and then she forgot what she had been going to say, and went a
long mental journey, while the youth waited patiently for her to speak.
“Will you be so kind?” he asked at last.
“So kind as what?” she repeated. “Oh! to tell you a secret. From the
bottom of my heart, Alick, I never loved but one woman on earth, and
that woman is your brother’s wife. If I had a mother like her now, or a
sister, or anything—” she went on, hurriedly, only to stop short and
leave her sentence unfinished.
“Heather would be a mother to you,” said the lad, softly.
“No, she wouldn’t,” was the reply; “she couldn’t, and it is not fit she
should. There is nobody like Heather could be mother, or sister, or
friend, or anything to me now. Heather does not like me, I know she does
not, and I cannot blame her for it, for I am cross and hateful.”
“Oh, Bessie! you are delightful, and _so_ pretty!”
“I wish I were not pretty, flatterer,” she said. “I should like to be as
ugly as Joan Harcourt, and as good. It must be nice to honour one’s
parents, let them be as disagreeable as they will, and to love one’s
neighbour, even though she keep a parrot, and lets her girls hammer at a
piano placed against the party-wall, and is altogether as great a
nuisance as Mrs. Riccarde, who lives next door to us. Oh, Alick, how
lovely and peaceful the country looks in the moonlight! Is not that the
house at Kemms Park I see, shining white among the trees? What a
delicious place! Do you know Lord Kemms’ family name?”
“Baldwin,” he replied.
“Baldwin!” repeated Miss Bessie, and there was just a shade of
disappointment in her voice. “Is he a good-looking man, Alick? I wish I
had been with you yesterday in the Croft when he passed. That is the
only taste which I have inherited from my mother; I do dearly love a
lord.”
“Bessie!” exclaimed Alick.
“It is a fact,” she persisted; “I do not in the least believe they are
made of the same flesh and blood as the commonalty. I delight in men who
have had ancestors; that is one reason why I like all of you, because on
one side of the house, at least, you come of good people.”
“I am not ashamed of my mother’s family,” answered the lad, a little
hastily.
“No, but you are not proud of it; Maddox Cuthbert, alderman, no doubt,
was a most charming-old institution, and highly respected in the City
but still, that is not like being in the peerage, is it, Alick, or
amongst the country gentry?”
“I do not think it matters much what one is, if one have no money,” he
replied. “Did you not yourself say at supper, riches make the man?”
“If there is one thing I object to more than another,” interrupted
Bessie, “it is to have my own conversational sins brought up as
witnesses against me. I was only jesting about lords, Alick. Don’t I
know the ancestors of Lord Kemms were something or other in the city,
not nearly so respectable as our grandfather? But, seriously, I should
like to see his lordship. I have a curiosity about him; was he alone, or
had he a groom?”
“He was quite alone,” said Alick Dudley, laughing, almost in spite of
himself, at her persistency, “and he spoke to me very much as anybody
else might have done. Do you not think it would be a good thing if there
were a kind of ‘Court Circular’ published at Kemms Park, telling us all
about the great folks there—what visitors they had, what time they ate
and drank?”
“Yes, and we might be the editors, and walk over every day to learn
particulars of their doings. I wish Lord Kemms would ask me to go and
stay there.”
“Perhaps he may, when Mr. Harcourt has made his fortune, and is created
an earl.”
“Then I shall be grey-haired,” she said, “and have rheumatism so bad,
that even Kemms Park will seem disagreeable. How beautiful those trees
do look, Alick! Is there not a village somewhere near Mr. Raidsford’s
place?”
“North Kemms you mean, I suppose,” replied her companion; “it is two
miles, I should say, beyond Mr. Raidsford’s, that is, two miles by the
road, but there is a path across the fields, which cuts off a great
corner. It is a pretty walk to North Kemms, and there is such an old,
old church there.”
“Where?” asked Heather, joining them at the moment.
“At North Kemms,” answered Bessie, promptly. “Alick is going to take me
to see it next Sunday afternoon, are you not, Alick?”
“If you do not think the walk too much,” he said; and then the rest of
the party came out to “see the moonlight,” and there was no more talk,
either about Lord Kemms or Kemms Park.
That same night, Bessie having shaken down her hair, Heather came into
her room, hoping Bessie would not be vexed if she asked her one little
favour.
“A hundred, if you like,” answered the girl.
“I should be glad if you would speak to your mamma with more, more——”
“Politeness,” suggested Bessie, finding Mrs. Dudley pause for want of a
suitable word.
“Not exactly politeness, but respect,” said Heather; “you know, dear,
she _is_ your mother, and you ought to——”
“Please, stop,” entreated Bessie. “I will strive to do what you ask for
_your_ sake; if I cannot be good for that, nothing can make me good. You
were very fond of your mother, I suppose—very tender towards her—very
dutiful, no doubt?”
“I hope I was,” Heather answered, in that low tone in which women talk
of the dead whom they have loved.
“And she was very fond of you?”
“My dear child, what a question! of course she was.”
“Well, supposing she had not been fond of you, nor you of her, perhaps
even you might not have found it in the least degree easier to be
dutiful and tender than I do?”
“But you must be fond of her,” Heather asserted.
“I do not see any _must_ in the matter; I never asked her to bring me
into the world. If she had consulted me, I should decidedly have
preferred being left out of it. Well, then, since to please herself she
did bring me into the world, what has she done for me? My brothers have
had all her care and attention; she married young, as you know, and to
some women it does not seem a very agreeable thing to have a great girl
treading on their heels, and calling them mother. She dressed me as a
child long after I was a girl;—when she could not help herself, and had
to acknowledge that I was growing up, she sent me from the nursery to
school, and kept me there till the state of the domestic finances
compelled my return; since which time, the one object, aim, and end of
her life has been to drive me to marry somebody—to get rid of a child
she never liked.”
“Bessie!” remonstrated Heather.
“It is true,” the girl persisted, passionately; “she never liked me—she
never wanted to have a daughter—she has told me so over and over again.
Suppose you acted towards Lally as she has acted towards me. Suppose you
kept the child shut up in a London nursery, and never spoke to her,
unless it was to find fault with or punish her. Suppose you were out
from morning till night, following your own pleasure (my father was rich
in those days, and she could visit, and dress, and spend as much as she
chose), and left Lally to the mercy of strangers, to the kindness and
attention of a cheap nurse. Suppose you grudged your child the money
necessary to give her a good education, and sent her to a school where
there was not enough to eat, nor sufficient clothing to keep her warm at
night. Suppose Arthur gave you money to pay for an expensive school, and
that you pocketed the difference——”
“Ah! stop—stop, Bessie! I won’t believe it—I cannot believe any woman,
any mother, capable of such wickedness!” entreated Heather; but Bessie
relentlessly continued:
“Then when Lally grew to woman’s estate, should you expect her to honour
a mother who had acted such a part by her? and what I have told you is
not the worst, Heather, is not the worst!”
“And what is worst—dear?”
“That I must keep to myself,” replied the girl, rising as she spoke, and
flinging her hair back from her face. “I have often thought, since I
came down here this time, that such people as we are have neither right
nor title to mix among such as you; and yet I do not know—whatever of
good I have learned, whatever faith in virtue and honesty I possess, I
have learned and I have acquired from you. Oh, Heather!—oh, Heather!——”
and she clasped her hands high above her head. Then, in a moment, the
fit was over, and the speaker fell into her usual tone. “I will try to
do what you ask,” she said, “and treat my respected parent with the
deference you desire. Kiss me for that—kiss me once, kiss me twice—kiss
me as though you meant it. If I had been a man, I should have married
you, Heather; if I had been a duke, I should have laid my rank and
wealth at your feet, and prayed you take them—take everything, if you
would only take me as well. If you tell me to do it this minute, I will
stay with you all my life, and never marry any one.”
“What a strange girl you are!” said Heather, tossing over the soft hair,
twining and curling it round her hand.
“Ay! all puzzles seem strange till you hold the key,” answered Bessie.
“Let me light you along the passage, and do not lie awake thinking of
me.”