MORE VISITORS.
And still the summer days ran on. They rippled by, scarcely murmuring as
they passed; and life at Berrie Down flowed smoothly along, leaving no
mark or trace behind.
The flowers faded, and fresh flowers bloomed; the cherries were all
shaken down; the haymaking was over; the blackberries in the Hollow were
forming so rapidly that Lally’s little fingers had to be forbidden
plucking the unripe fruit; the noontides were hot and sultry; every
blossom was gone from the chestnuts; the shade in Berrie Down Lane was
sweet and pleasant, and both pedestrians and equestrians loved to linger
there under the trees, on the soft grass by the roadside. There was the
purple haze on the distant woods, and in the nearer valleys; the leaves
had lost their fresh greenness, and looked in want of rain; the Kemm was
reduced to a mere thread of a stream; and the rivulet which meandered
through the fields beyond the Hollow was utterly dried up.
Arthur Dudley was beginning to complain loudly of the drought. He spoke
of impending loss of cattle; of the probability of the after-grass being
all scorched up; of failure in the turnips; but no one paid much
attention to his forebodings excepting Heather and Mrs. Ormson.
There was this difference, however, between the two women, that, while
the latter condoled with him, the former endeavoured to make him believe
matters would not turn out so badly as he feared.
Comforters are not generally so much liked as sympathizers, and it was
therefore with Mrs. Ormson Arthur walked around the fields, bemoaning
his usual ill-luck as they paced along.
“It was like my fortune to have so many cattle in such a season,” he
grumbled. “Any other year it would not have mattered; but this”—and so
the Squire wandered on, while Mrs. Ormson said it was “dreadful,” and
gently hinted that the arrangement of the weather, like the arrangement
of many other things, was not so perfect as it might be.
“Now, what do we want with rain in London?” she inquired; “and yet you
know it is always pouring there. How much better it would be if you
could have the rain instead! I dare say, if the truth were known, it is
coming down there in torrents at this very moment.”
But in this supposition Mrs. Ormson chanced to be wrong, as successive
visitors from London arrived in due time to testify.
“How delightful to get into the country out of those suffocating
streets!” remarked Mrs. Black, a woman of the utterly feeble, limp,
languid, and mildly pretty school. “Oh, Arthur, how I _envy_ you this
sweet spot!”
In answer to which speech Arthur declared that, if she knew all, perhaps
she would find less cause for envy than she imagined. Whereupon Mr.
Black, a stout, middle-aged, light-haired, florid, good-looking,
self-satisfied individual, observed:
“Yes, that is what I always say, Dudley—my very words, almost. Nobody
knows where the shoe pinches but the man who has to walk through life in
it. And, after all, though the country is very nice, and Berrie Down a
refreshing change from the city in such melting weather, still we all
know it is not London. No,” repeated Mr. Black, striking the sod with
the heel of his boot, and looking over the landscape as though daring
the fields and the trees to contradict him, “it is not London.”
“And a very good thing too it is not,” added Bessie; in answer to which
addendum Mr. Black stated his belief that she was just the same as ever,
and inquired how, if she disliked town so much, she expected to be able
to spend her life in it.
“As I have done hitherto,” she replied, “under protest.”
“Persuade Gilbert when he comes down to turn farmer,” suggested Mrs.
Black, sentimentally. “I only wish my lot had been cast among these
peaceful scenes.”
The only comment this remark elicited being a muttered sentence from Mr.
Black, in which Bessie thought she heard something about “peaceful
devils,” the conversation might have been considered ended, but for a
voluntary statement from Master Marsden, a young gentleman in
knickerbockers, to the effect that he hated London, but that the country
was jolly. He had been down in Surrey in the spring, he went on to
inform the assembled company in a shrill alto, where he robbed fifty—oh!
a hundred—birds’ nests, and wasn’t it prime!
“Then you were wicked boy,” said Miss Lally, with that charming
promptitude of judgment which is a peculiarity of her sex.
“Why? don’t you rob nests?” asked the new arrival, in answer to which
question Lally shook her comical little head gravely.
“Well, you must be a muff; but then, to be sure, you are a girl,” said
Master Marsden, in a tone which was at once contemptuous and
explanatory.
“She is not a great ill-mannered boy like you, Harry, at any rate,”
observed Bessie, whose fault certainly was not reticence in expressing
her sentiments.
“I don’t want you to talk to me, I don’t,” said the boy, turning upon
her in a manner which spoke of former passages of arms between them.
“Well, it is not every one who gets more than he wants,” she replied; at
which juncture Mr. Black called the young lady to order, declaring the
way she talked to the boy too bad—“just like breaking a thingumderry
upon a whatever’s its name.”
“If you mean a butterfly upon a wheel, I beg to remark that Harry is as
unlike a butterfly as anything I can imagine,” answered Miss Bessie.
“We don’t expect little boys to be butterflies,” said that general
peace-maker, Mrs. Black.
“No, it is great girls who are that,” struck in Mr. Black; and he
laughed at his own wit so long and loudly, that Lally stood looking at
him in astonishment.
“Well, little one, and what are you staring at?” inquired Mr. Black, at
length noticing that Lally had opened not merely her eyes but also her
mouth as wide as possible.
“Oo,” was the immediate reply.
“Oh! indeed; and what do you think of me now you have stared?” he asked.
“I think ’oo like Doe Cole,” replied Lally, nothing abashed at public
attention being directed to her.
“And who may Joe Cole be?” persisted Mr. Black; but no one seemed
disposed to afford him the information he desired.
“Who is this Joe Cole that I resemble?” repeated Mr. Black, looking
round the circle, and especially at Bessie, who had her face buried in
her pocket-handkerchief.
Round the circle, too, looked Lally. “He’s a fool,” she explained,
evidently desirous of enlightening Mr. Black’s ignorance. Alick had
raised a warning finger too late; out came the sentence in the middle of
a dead silence; and then Bessie burst into a perfect scream of laughter;
while Arthur, in angry tones, exclaimed, “Take that child away,
somebody. She’s not fit to be among civilised people.”
“Ought to be whipped, and sent to bed,” volunteered Mrs. Ormson.
“Poor little thing traced some fancied resemblance,” urged Mrs. Black,
as an extenuating circumstance.
“She is completely ruined,” said her father; and as the child passed
him, led off the field by Bessie, he struck her, for the first time in
his life, a smart blow, which caused Lally to break forth into a perfect
paroxysm of grief.
In one moment Bessie had her in her arms, and faced round on the Squire.
“I never had a greater mind to do anything than box your ears, Arthur,”
she remarked. “I shall say you are like Joe Cole next;” and with that
Miss Ormson swept away from the group, followed by some of the younger
Dudleys, who were unanimously of opinion the matter was to be kept from
Heather.
“I am so sorry, Bessie—oh! I am so sorry,” said Agnes Dudley.
“And so am I that all these people are here,” Bessie answered. “They
will spoil Arthur among them, not that, goodness knows, there is much to
spoil about him.”
“It is always the same whenever Mr. Black comes,” continued Agnes. “I
can remember how we used to dread the very sight of him or your mother
entering the gates. I suppose I ought not to say it, Bessie, as she is
your mother; but she always made things worse for us here, at least we
thought she did.”
“Don’t let the fact of her being my mother prevent your expressing your
opinions,” said Bessie, who, seated on the floor in the nursery, was
engaged in striving to comfort Lally. Most sincerely she hoped and
believed Heather was, at that moment, closeted with Mrs. Piggott; but
Heather happened to be in an adjoining room, and, hearing the sound of
Lally’s exceeding bitter grief, came in to see what could be the cause
of it.
“Why, what is the matter with my pet?” she asked.
Agnes looked at Bessie, who promptly answered, “Lally has been very
naughty.”
“No, Lally not been naughty,” broke in the child, stretching out her
arms towards her mother. “Lally only said that fat man was like Doe
Cole—and pa hit her—pa did;” and Lally buried her head in her mother’s
breast, and wept abundantly.
“Arthur did not mean to hurt her,” Agnes explained.
“And Lally was very naughty, for she said Joe Cole was a fool,” added
Bessie; but, unheeding both the girls’ statements, Heather passed from
the room, carrying Lally with her, and appeared no more until supper
time, when Bessie noticed that she had been crying.
“I wish you would keep that child of yours out of the way of strangers
till she has learnt how to behave herself,” Arthur remarked from the
foot of the table, with his customary tact and consideration.
“She shall not annoy any one again,” said Heather, who had intended to
take a private opportunity of apologising to Mr. Black for Lally’s
seeming rudeness.
“Oh! she did not annoy me, ma’am,” returned that gentleman. “Considered
it rather a compliment than otherwise, I assure you. You know the
saying, I dare say, that it takes a wise man to act the fool; and I
rather think any one who tried to get the better of me would find he had
no fool to deal with, Mrs. Dudley.”
“When I was at school, uncle, we had a copy text to the effect that
‘Self-praise was no recommendation,’” remarked Bessie; at which speech
some of the younger Dudleys tittered audibly—a proceeding that caused
Arthur to declare he did not know what the house was coming to.
“It is a very charming house,” interposed Mrs. Black, who really,
Heather felt, was a perfect blessing to society. “I do not know a house
like it anywhere. Every one amongst my friends has heard of Berrie Down
Hollow. I always say it seems to me the very abode of peace,—the true
cottage of contentment.”
“I would very gladly exchange it for your house in town,” answered
Arthur.
“Or for the same acreage in town,” added Mr. Black. “By Jove, if a man
had only one of your fields anywhere about Threadneedle Street or
Cornhill, he might snap his fingers at the world.”
“Yes; because in that case he would be so rich he could afford to live
anywhere,” ventured Heather, to whom such remarks were by no means new;
“but, as the land is not in London, why need we think about
impossibilities? It is a choice with us between a small income in town
and a small income in the country; and you know, Mr. Black, how much
farther a small income goes in the country than in town.”
“Now that is just the point on which you are so much deceived,” replied
Mr. Black. “There is no place on earth where a small income can be made
go so far as in London. Do you want meat? You can have what you want,
cut as you like, sent home on the instant. Now here, I suppose, your
butcher lives five miles off; everything is at least five miles off in
the country. For rich and poor alike, London is the place. What is there
a man can’t get there?”
“Green fields,” answered Mrs. Black.
“Green fields! nonsense,” returned her husband. “Have not you the parks?
What can a human being desire better than St. James’s Park, or Regent’s
Park, or even Victoria? Is not there grass enough in them to content
you? Is Hampstead Heath not big enough for you to walk over? Have not
you the squares? Have not you trees? Even in the City there is not a
street but you may see a tree in it. Do you want amusement? There is not
a night but you may go to a dozen places of amusement, if you like. Do
you want society? You can have as much as you please. Do you want books?
They lie ready to your hand. Everything is next door in London. We have
not to send a dozen miles for a lemon there, ma’am, as Mr.
What-ever-you-may-call-him, that parson fellow, said he had to do. From
grapes at thirty shillings a pound to a farthing’s worth of tea-dust,
you can be accommodated in London. There is no place like it on earth,
Mrs. Dudley, take my word.”
Poor Mrs. Dudley sighed, and answered “that, for her part, she liked the
pure country air.”
“There never was a more mistaken idea than that,” said Mr. Black.
“Country air is not pure. How should it be, with its decomposing
vegetation, with its damp fields, with its ditches filled with grass and
dead leaves, with its arable land covered with natural and artificial
manures, with its imperfect drainage, with its impure water? Read the
Registrar-General’s returns, and you will soon change your opinion about
the healthfulness of the country.”
“That is what I often say,” remarked Mrs. Ormson.
“But still there are some most unpleasant smells in London,” observed
Mrs. Black, feebly.
“In Bermondsey, for instance,” added Bessie.
“All healthy,” persisted Mr. Black. “Now, in the country, people breathe
poison without knowing what they are swallowing. What is called pure air
is very like sparkling water; it seems so because it is full of the
seeds of disease, because it is literally laden with decomposition
and——”
“The eight o’clock express stops at Palinsbridge, uncle,” suggested
Bessie at this point. “You might catch it if you were to sit up all
night, and start away from here, say, at five o’clock in the morning. I
should not stay another day in the country, if I were you.”
“Well put in, Bessie; but I won’t take your advice for all that,” said
Mr. Black, good humouredly. “I have come down here meaning to enjoy
myself, and to make a complete holiday of it.”
“I should have thought you might have compassed both ends, by spending a
day at the British Museum,” remarked Miss Ormson.
“How sharp you have got, Bessie, my dear,” ventured Mrs. Black. “Is it
anything in the air, I wonder?”
“If it be, it is to be hoped you will take it,” observed her husband. At
which speech Mr. Black laughed and Mrs. Ormson laughed, while Heather
looked at her guests, blankly wondering how she was to preserve peace
amongst them.
“Gilbert will soon be down to keep Bessie in order,” remarked Mrs.
Ormson.
“I am glad to hear it—he is a very nice young fellow,” affirmed Mr.
Black.
“I have never seen him,” said Arthur Dudley.
“Then you will be pleased when you do see him,” answered the oracle; “a
very intelligent, modest, well-mannered, pushing young man as any I
know.”
“And handsome too,” added Mrs. Black, glad to find some smooth water
where she could safely launch her little conversational boat again
without fear of breakers. “And handsome too; and oh! so good to his
mother and sisters.”
“I liked him greatly,” said Heather, from her end of the table; and, as
she spoke, almost involuntarily she glanced at Bessie, who, with her
head turned aside, was looking out into the semidarkness of the summer’s
night.
Alick had his eyes fixed on Bessie also. Perhaps he was trying to
reconcile the fact of Gilbert Harcourt with the existence of the
stranger they had met in North Kemms church. Anyhow, he felt curious,
and, though Heather knew nothing about the North Kemms stranger, she had
grown curious also.
In due time Mr. Harcourt arrived, as did also Miss Hope, and then,
indeed, the house was full—so full that Bessie privately likened it to a
Noah’s Ark, and wondered how the patriarch managed to keep his animals
in order.
“It is more than poor Heather can do,” sighed Alick.
“What makes her have them?” asked Bessie.
“Do you think Arthur would be satisfied if she had not?” inquired the
lad. “It is just the same every year, only, unhappily, this year they
have all elected to come together.”
“I am one of the ‘all’ Alick, remember,” she said, laughing.
There had been a time when Alick would indignantly have denied this
assertion; but he remembered North Kemms church, and held his peace.
“You are angry with me,” she went on, noticing his hesitation. “Perhaps,
if you knew everything, you would be sorry.” And, with that, Bessie
turned and walked into the house, leaving Alick, who certainly did not
know everything, in a state of wonderment.
Why should he be sorry for Bessie? For himself he might feel sorry that
two men stood between him and the prize he had vaguely began to covet;
but where was the need of pitying her? If she did not like Gilbert, why
had she accepted him? If she did like him, why had she gone to North
Kemms to meet another lover?
But was he a lover? Alick had read a sufficient number of old romances
obtained from Miss Carfort, who kept a very small circulating library in
South Kemms, to be well aware that the walk across the fields, the
evidently pre-arranged meeting, the note secreted between the leaves of
Bessie’s prayer-book, did not of themselves justify him in the
conclusion that Miss Ormson was carrying on a clandestine love affair.
The man might have some hold on her. He might have known her before her
engagement to Gilbert; he might have some power over her father; he
might be in possession of some secret of the family: so the lad argued;
but still the conviction remained strong within him that Bessie was
playing a double game; though how she contrived to do so puzzled him
beyond measure.
No more walks across the fields; no lonely excursions to Fifield
post-office; no solitary rambles, even within the limits of the farm.
It might not perhaps be generous on his part to do so, but he watched
the young lady as a cat might watch a mouse, and the more he watched the
more mystified he grew.
If she were carrying on a secret correspondence with any one, it was
impossible she could treat Gilbert Harcourt as she did. From morning
till night the pair were together “like a pair of dear turtle-doves,” as
Mrs. Black sentimentally declared. Never a cross word did Bessie bestow
on her betrothed; never a saucy speech did she address to him. Let who
else would, feel the sharpness of her tongue—and it was sharp at times,
as a serpent’s tooth, according to Mrs. Ormson; and a wasp’s sting, to
quote Mr. Black—Mr. Harcourt always escaped scot-free.
Not even to Heather was Bessie so uniformly agreeable as to Mr.
Harcourt; and another strange thing Alick noticed came to pass about the
same time—Bessie ceased in her conversation to be either sententious or
melancholy.
In Mr. Harcourt’s presence she never spoke about desiring to ripple by,
like the Kemm; she never talked concerning the world’s barrenness; about
the dreariness of human life.
The lover had come, and Mariana no longer cried, “I am a-weary.” The
lover had come, and she discoursed before him much after the fashion of
other people. If the later fashion seemed to Alick less attractive than
that formerly adopted by her, who can say the fashion was not a better
one—more fitted for every-day wear?
But Alick was young, and liked sentiment. As our mothers, when girls,
used to luxuriate in Mrs. Hemans’ poetry, so Alick had revelled in
Bessie’s talk, concerning the world and life, and the arid dreariness of
both.
To Mr. Harcourt, however, who hoped for some small share of happiness in
existence, whose career had not been a smooth one, who loved rather to
hear of the bright sunshine than of winter’s clouds, Bessie’s poetical
reveries would have been utterly distasteful; and as the young lady
anxiously laid herself out to please him in other matters, so she
anxiously selected her talk to suit his tastes. No one on earth could
have proved a more submissive mistress than Bessie Ormson; to those who
were learned in the ways of women she might have seemed a trifle too
submissive for everything in the engagement to be right.
As for Heather, she delighted in seeing matters progress so smoothly.
With a half-jealous feeling gnawing at her heart, she watched, during
her rare moments of leisure, Gilbert’s devotion to the lady of his
choice. What a lover he appeared in Heather’s eyes! with what an
ever-increasing pain she saw him follow Bessie about; fearful lest the
very winds of heaven should touch her too roughly. How tender he was;
how thoughtful; how mindful of her lightest wish; how his face
brightened when she entered the room; with what looks of pride and
affection he followed her about!
It was all a wonderful revelation to the woman who had never experienced
such devotion; who was becoming conscious that in the book of her own
existence some of the sweetest pages of most lives had never been
penned; who had never known, till she beheld love showered upon another,
that such love had never been proffered to her. It was so wonderful a
revelation, in fact, that she could not help remarking one day to Miss
Hope:—
“How very fond Mr. Harcourt must be of Bessie!”
“Yes,” answered that lady, who was surveying the pair through her
eye-glass,—“he seems to like her well enough; more than she is worth, in
my opinion. He is fonder of her than she is of him. She is only marrying
him for a home, my dear.”
“For a home!” repeated Heather, in amazement.
“Yes—or to get away from home, if you prefer that way of putting it. The
match will not turn out well. Remember, I said so;” and Miss Hope took
another look at the engaged couple, while Heather’s thoughts flew back
to the words Bessie had spoken as they stood together side by side on
the grassy slope with their backs turned towards the west: “I wish I
were more worthy his devotion;” and of that other more vehement sentence
spoken later on during the course of the same evening, when the girl
said: “If you tell me to do it this minute, I will stay with you all my
life and never marry any one.”
At this juncture Miss Hope dropped her eye-glass once again, and,
turning to Heather, said: “Yes, my dear, it is clear as noonday (noonday
anywhere out of England), that on the young lady’s part it is a marriage
of convenience. How shocked you look! Where have your eyes been not to
find out the real state of matters for yourself? I suspected it at the
first glance; but then, you and I are two very different people; you are
the stupidest, simplest goose I ever had the happiness of meeting.”
And the old lady laid her hand on her niece’s shoulder with a not
unkindly gesture.
Wise old ladies occasionally take fancies to such stupid, simple young
geese as Heather Dudley; and Miss Hope, who knew Arthur better, perhaps,
than anybody in the world, felt sorry for the wife, whose lot, it was
impossible for her to avoid seeing, had not been cast in pleasant
places.
But what, you may ask, did that matter, if Heather herself were
unconscious of the fact?
My reader, do you think the blind man, born blind, can yet remain
ignorant for ever that others are able to look on the blue heavens and
the green earth? Do you think the mute comes in due time to have no
comprehension that his fellows enjoy a gift withheld from him? Do you
imagine the deaf have no understanding of all which has been denied to
them? Do you suppose the childless never listen for the sound of little
feet that God has decreed shall patter across no floor towards their
arms outstretched to greet them? Do you believe the spinster never
considers what her lot might have been, when she looks around and sees
other women happily married, and sitting by no lonely fires, as she is
doomed to do, through the years, the long, solitary, uneventful years?
Do you not understand that in due time the eye must behold, and the
heart long—that the fruit eaten so many thousand years ago by our common
mother, _must_ be tasted sooner or later in its bitterness by all who
are born of woman, and who would attain to the full stature of man?
On the branches of the tree still hangs that which gives knowledge of
good and evil; and till the hand have grasped, and the mind received, no
life can be called perfect, no human being become as a god,
comprehending, not merely the mystery of good and evil, but also all the
joy and all the sorrow which that mystery involves.