GREAT SUCCESSES.
While the events I have related were influencing, more or less, the
Dudley family history, the “Protector Flour and Bread Company” was
succeeding to an extent which it is given to few companies in our time
to equal.
If a person be sufficiently interested in the prices of miscellaneous
companies’ shares, to run his eye down a list of, say, a hundred and
fifty of the new Limited Liabilities, he will be surprised to find how
few out of the number are quoted as being at par, to say nothing of at a
premium. Dis., dis., dis., is the encouraging legend attached to one
after another; but it was not thus with the Protector—steadily its
shares went up. It grew to be considered a good investment. The ten
pound shares (two pounds paid) were eagerly sought after; and, had an
intending investor gone, about that period, to any broker, and expressed
his desire of purchasing into the Protector Bread Company, he would have
been advised he was acting wisely—that the shares were very good
property indeed.
And so every one believed. In all directions the Company’s vans were to
be encountered conveying bread to the far-away depôts, or else returning
empty from the extremest ends of London. The bread was good; the
directors—greatly to the disgust of their housekeepers and cooks, who
were thus cheated out of a legitimate perquisite in the shape of
commission—ate of the staff of life kneaded at their own bakeries, and
were satisfied.
If an inferior batch were produced, woe to the master baker, on whom,
straight away, General Sinclair poured his vials of wrath. If the flour
were sour, as servants frequently declared it to be, Mr. Bailey
Crossenham’s ears tingled for a week.
Never was a company better managed; never a staff more rigidly
superintended.
Did Linnor, at the most easterly point of London, running short of
bread, borrow a few loaves from his neighbour, Mr. Bickley, and supply
them as the genuine product of the Protector, Limited, down came a note
from the Secretary’s office, informing Mr. Linnor, by “order of the
board,” that if such dereliction from the paths of duty occurred again,
he, Mr. Linnor, would forthwith be dismissed from the responsible
position which he held.
Neither for those brilliant creatures, dressed in orange and green, who
conveyed the bread from Stangate to all parts of the metropolis, was
there such a thing as liberty. Their carts were numbered, and if, on the
hottest day in summer, they stopped at the “Spotted Stag,” in Mile End
Road, or the “White Hart,” in Newington, or the “Greyhound,” in Fulham,
or any other favourite house of call, for a pot of beer, 16, or 48, or
33, or 27, was had up the same evening before the yard superintendent,
and “cautioned” for all the world—so the men themselves said—as if the
“governor was a beak.”
If, after this caution, any one still preferred ale to employment, he
was paid his wages and discharged on the spot.
Altogether, it was a very perfectly-managed Company, and quite a credit
to its directors.
Great people, when the periodical philanthropic fit attacked their
ranks, were not above driving over to Stangate, and inspecting the
works; and, on the occasion of such visits, the _Times_ would come out
with a leader, concerning pure bread and the adulteration of food, which
always sent the shares up on the Stock Exchange, and made the
aristocracy feel that they had conferred vast benefits on the labouring
classes.
It was nice to be associated with so excellent a Company. Good people
felt that the blessing of the Almighty must rest upon an enterprise,
undertaken in so Christian a spirit (there was much mention of the poor
in the prospectus), and that He, who had fed the Israelites with manna
in the wilderness, would likewise satisfactorily regulate the
Protector’s dividends; for which reason, and others too numerous and
varied to mention, both great people and good people, and good and great
combined in the same people, bought shares in the Company, sincerely
believing that, since time began, there had never been any creature born
so deserving of universal support and encouragement as Mr. Black’s baby,
which was now a great child able to run alone, and earn something for
itself, and even repay its benefactors a portion of the money advanced
to start it fairly in the world.
When the first half-yearly meeting was held, the directors not merely
announced a dividend at the rate of fifteen per cent. per annum, but
also stated their conviction, that the close of another half year would
exhibit a much larger proportion of profit, since the expenses of
conducting such a business in the first instance were necessarily
greater than would subsequently prove the case.
Moreover, it was resolved that no further call should be made on the
shareholders, except in the event of larger mills and more extensive
premises being required, when, as a natural consequence, higher
dividends might confidently be expected.
The directors had pleasure in communicating the existence of a large
reserve fund; and in stating that the mills at Stangate had been greatly
increased in size, that the machinery was the very best known for the
purposes required, that every modern improvement in the grinding of
wheat and manufacture of flour was to be found on the premises, and
that, as regarded the bakehouse, it was decidedly the most spacious,
convenient, and best ventilated in the kingdom.
All this, and a vast amount more, being duly reported in the daily and
weekly papers, shares (money at the time chancing to be cheap) went up
again.
Then, the magazine-writers got hold of the Protector as a nucleus on
which might be constructed a few light and entertaining papers
concerning breadmaking from the beginning of time, tracing the progress
of the staff of life from the kneading-troughs of the Israelites down to
the works of the new Company at Stangate.
There was no difficulty about inspecting the Protector’s premises. A
man, salaried on purpose, received ordinary visitors at the gates, and
escorted them through the whole process from grinding to kneading, that
is, if they came at an hour when kneading was in progress—as literary
gentlemen always did.
“Wheat, from the Ear to the Breakfast Table,” was the exhaustive title
of one paper. Another, supposed to be written by the same author,
appeared as “Hot Rolls!” “Our Daily Bread” graced the columns of one of
the religious periodicals; while, “Adulteration Considered Morally and
Socially,” was universally attributed by the critics to the pen of one
of the most gifted and thoughtful authoresses of the day.
With all these helps, was it any wonder that the shares of the Protector
should soon be at a premium? that every one connected with the Company
felt himself to be to some extent a person of consequence; that Arthur
Dudley forgot his fears, and only remembered his interest in the great
concern; that even the mortgaging of Berrie Down grew in time to be a
mere bagatelle—a trifle not worth fretting about?
What might the shares not ultimately touch! Supposing the ten pound
share, paid up, came in time to be worth a hundred pounds, why, his
income would be enormous; and there was nothing to prevent the shares
going on rising, rising in value. If they reached fifty, would he sell?
Arthur could not decide this point to his own satisfaction. If he sold,
he should then have no anxiety about loss; but, on the other hand, would
it be wise to sell before they reached their maximum? Then, who ever
could tell when the maximum was reached?
These were the questions which perplexed the Squire, building his
castles in the air, while pacing on the calm summer evenings round and
round Lincoln’s Inn Fields, smoking the while such cigars as never fall
to the lot of any one, save secretaries and others of the same ilk, who
get all sorts of good things given to them by all kinds of singular
people.
Arthur, in the days of which I am now writing, never bought a cigar by
any chance. He had boxes of the best Havannas sent him, which he was now
not too proud to accept.
The world had gone round since he strolled a poor man through the fields
at Berrie Down. Accepting a favour did not, according to the new code,
mean placing himself under an obligation. No; it rather meant conferring
an obligation on the donor.
What those donors expected Arthur Dudley would be able to do for them,
it is impossible even to conjecture. Arthur himself never knew; and so,
with an untroubled conscience, he smoked his cigars and dreamed his
dreams.
At this time, Heather was away from home—away at the sea-side with her
children, whom she took down to Hastings, for a month, in the hope that
sea-air might do Lally more good than all Dr. Chickton’s prescriptions.
Quite as tenderly as he had treated Master Charles Hope, that renowned
practitioner inquired into Lally’s symptoms, and devoted himself to the
restoration of her health; but for all this care the child proved
ungrateful.
She did not get much better. All the tonics Doctor Chickton could
prescribe, and Heather with difficulty persuade her to take, failed to
restore her health, to make the little feet patter, patter over the
floor as of old.
She could walk a short distance, certainly, without much fatigue, and
drive for an hour or so at a time, but still she was not the Lally of a
twelvemonth previously.
“What’s the use of cramming the child with all that physic?” Doctor
Marsden inquired one day when he called in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
“Chickton ordered it, did he? of course he did. When you go and pay a
man a guinea, he must order you something; but now, without a guinea at
all, I will give you my advice, which is none the worse for being
gratuitous. Take her to the sea-side; let her be out all day long; if
she will bear bathing, bathe her; if that don’t set her up, nothing
will.”
Very heartily Heather wished she could have told Doctor Marsden, that,
considering his son was the cause of Lally’s illness, she thought the
least he could do was to proffer his advice civilly; but advice in any
shape was not to be despised, and accordingly she adopted his
suggestion, and bore Lally off.
At Hastings, she met not merely Mr. and Mrs. Compton Raidsford and
family, but also Mr. Allan Stewart; who, after a time, took rather
kindly to Lally, and became interested in her recovery.
Like all the rest of the world, he too had his favourite medical man,
whom he not merely counselled Heather to consult, but to whom also he
wrote a letter of introduction, in which he described her as his friend,
Mrs. Dudley.
They had been the merest acquaintances in town; but intimacy is of quick
growth when people meet every day, and fifty times a day, on the sands,
on the Parade, in the lodgings of mutual friends, standing listening to
the bands, and to the solitary murmur of the sea as it flows in on the
shore.
From Mrs. Raidsford, Heather heard how admirably Agnes was managing
Berrie Down.
“What a wonderful creature she must be!” continued the lady; and yet,
Heather fancied there was a tone of disparagement in Mrs. Raidsford’s
remark, for which she was at a loss to account, until informed that
“Miss Baldwin was never out of the house;” “has taken to your sisters
quite as if they were her own.”
This was not exactly news to Heather, for she had understood from Agnes
that Miss Baldwin continued very kind indeed; but why the fact should
irritate Mrs. Raidsford puzzled her, until one of the Misses Raidsford,
observing, “Yes, we are entirely forgotten now—Miss Baldwin is fond of
new faces,” threw some light upon the subject.
That Miss Baldwin should ever have been fond of the Misses Raidsford’s
faces, surprised Heather not a little; but still she knew that Kemms
Park had at one time patronized Moorlands, and was able to comprehend
now where the sting of the Berrie Down acquaintanceship lay.
With all her heart she wished Miss Baldwin would leave the girls alone.
Beyond all things she dreaded their being exposed to jealous and envious
remarks. The blessed seclusion, the utter privacy in which they had
hitherto lived, must, she knew, have quite unfitted them to bear unkind
speeches, or ill-natured inuendoes with equanimity.
Had she acted rightly in leaving them alone at Berrie Down—alone to
receive many visitors, and to bear the brunt of such gossip as that in
which she perceived Mrs. Raidsford was not above indulging? The new
acquaintances, whom Heather in her innocence had imagined would make the
country a pleasanter residence for the girls, might only expose their
conduct to misconstruction. She had no fear of anything Agnes and Laura
might say or do, but she felt afraid of what might be said of them. Lord
Kemms, she knew, was now at the Park, having at length returned from
Austria; and in one of her letters Agnes mentioned his having called at
Berrie Down with his aunt.
Could this be another thorn in Mrs. Raidsford’s side? Small as was the
amount of tittle-tattle which reached Heather’s ears, still she had
heard some talk of an attachment between Lord Kemms and one of the young
ladies at Moorlands. And, although it never entered into her mind to
imagine her husband’s portionless sisters could prove rivals to the
great contractor’s daughters, she yet gradually came to understand that
Mrs. Raidsford was of a different opinion, and felt Berrie Down to be a
stumbling-block in her path.
“There is some distinction come between Mr. R. and his Lordship,” Mrs.
Raidsford was kind enough to explain to Mrs. Dudley; “we are not on the
same terms of equality with him that we used to be. I must say, I think
the coolness began on our side, for Mr. R., as you, no doubt, have
heard, has a perfect maniac against companies of all kinds, just as
though people had not a right to make themselves into companies if they
like, and it seems his Lordship told him he would have nothing to do
with that ‘Protective’ affair of yours—no offence, Mrs. Dudley—after
which he went away and becomes one of the fundamental proprietors of it.
So, when his Lordship came home, Mr. R. put on his high and mighty, and
would not call at the Park—as if the ‘Protective’ was any business of
his—and so, when we meet, we only bow; and I am as satisfied as I can be
of anything that his Lordship knows no more than the babe unborn what
the reason of our distance is. Indeed, he was beginning to ask me at the
station, when we met him, only the train moved off before he could
complete his inquiry. I think I shall write to his Lordship, and detail
the matter. If Mr. R. likes to disseparate himself from old friends,
that is no reason why we should—is it, Mrs. Dudley?”
In answer to which appeal, Heather said she did not know. She thought,
however, she should not like to be on friendly terms with any one to
whose acquaintance her husband objected.
“But, then, you are like nobody else,” retorted Mrs. Raidsford.
This remark, intended to be both hurtful and depreciating, failed of its
effect, because Heather mentally hoped she was not much like Mrs.
Raidsford. “A woman whom Raidsford ought to have been pilloried for
marrying,” observed Mr. Stewart; “apparently, he is a very worthy fellow
himself, but I am quite satisfied there must be some terrible want in
the character of any person who could make such a creature his wife.
There ought to be a law against those kind of marriages.”
“Perhaps——,” began Heather, and then she stopped, colouring a little.
“Pray, complete your sentence, Mrs. Dudley,” said Mr. Stewart; “you have
roused my curiosity, and it is not fair to have it unsatisfied.”
“I only hesitated lest what rose to my mind might sound ill-natured. I
do not mean, however, any sneer when I say, that perhaps Mrs. Raidsford
may have been very suitable to her husband when he married her. It is so
difficult to express an opinion like that without appearing to reflect
on a man’s origin,” she added, getting into unutterable depths of
confusion; “but I often think about a speech, a very dear girl I once
knew made, concerning Mrs. Raidsford. She said, ‘it was such a pity a
man could not choose again when he came to years of social discretion.’”
“She used to say also,” remarked Lucy Dudley, “that if Mr. Raidsford
could only have foreseen how high he was to rise in the world, Mrs.
Raidsford would probably now have been wife to some mechanic—cooking
steaks for his one o’clock dinner, instead of being mistress of
Moorlands, and having servants much more ladylike than herself under
her. Bessie never was weary of mimicking Mrs. Raidsford.”
“Who was this clever young lady?” asked Mr. Stewart, for whom the very
bitterness of such a speech had its peculiar charm.
“A cousin of ours,” Lucy answered.
“Married, or still eligible?” inquired the old bachelor.
Lucy did not reply; she looked at Heather, who, after a moment’s
embarrassed pause, replied,—
“She was engaged to be married, when with us, last winter; but we have
not heard from her since she left Berrie Down.”
“Some feminine quarrel,” thought Mr. Stewart; and, looking out over the
sea, he laughed softly to himself at the idea that all women were
alike,—that no two women could agree; that, let them be young or old,
pretty or ugly, sweet or sour, they could still jangle and dispute like
the veriest viragoes.
And yet, this Mrs. Dudley puzzled him: if she had a temper, she must, he
thought, have it under wonderful control; if there were any evil in her,
she must have an astonishing power of concealing its existence. To
sisters and children, to friends and servants, she was alike, gentle and
forbearing. Never but once did Mr. Stewart see her eyes darken, and her
face flush under the influence of any strong emotion; and then it was a
slight thing which caused the tell-tale blood to rush to brow, and
cheek, and neck.
“I expect my niece, Mrs. Croft, to-morrow,” he said; “I am happy to
think she will be able to make your acquaintance.”
Then there came that look, which was not quite pleasant, over Heather’s
face,—that look which set Mr. Stewart marvelling as to “what could be
up” between the two women? Not an early jealousy, he decided; for Mrs.
Croft was many a year older than Mrs. Dudley. What could it be? He was
an especially inquisitive old gentleman, as sharp and keen concerning
matters of feeling, as he was about matters of business, and so he went
on,—
“You have never met her, I think?”
“Never,” Heather answered; “but my husband knew Mrs. Croft very well
indeed at one time, and quite recently they renewed their former
acquaintance at Copt Hall.”
“Copt Hall—is not that Mr. Hope’s place? I recollect now, Douglas and
his wife were staying there last autumn. Your husband is some relation
of the Essex Hopes, is he not?”
“His mother was a Miss Hope,” Heather explained; and shortly afterwards
Mr. Stewart took his leave, trying to remember something he had heard
about Miss Laxton having jilted a former suitor when she married his
nephew. “Was Dudley the lucky fellow’s name?” he asked himself. “I’ll
find out all about it when madam comes.”
In due time, madam came, and her husband with her; and from the hour of
their arrival, Heather commenced longing to return to town. Had it not
been, indeed, that Lally was decidedly gaining strength, she would
forthwith have packed up and departed; but the child was better; she
could run about a little, and at times there was a colour in her face
which made the poor mother trust the health and the gaiety of old was
about to be restored to her.
How Mrs. Croft ridiculed Heather’s anxiety about the little girl; how
scornfully she would listen to Lally’s prattle; with what open contempt
she watched the child sometimes struggling into Mr. Stewart’s arms, and
beheld him fondling and caressing her, were things to be seen, not
described.
A stately woman, who looked born to rule a nation of slaves, and seemed
to regard every one with whom she came in contact, her husband included,
as so much dirt under feet; a woman who would have been beautiful but
for the expression of habitual bad temper on her face; a woman who made
every creature she met uncomfortable; who treated Heather with
supercilious insolence, and at length told her without the slightest
reserve she had instructed her child well. “She is playing her cards
quite as cleverly as you,” finished Mrs. Croft, in a tone of suppressed
fury, one day when she saw Lally throw down her wooden spade, and run
with outstretched arms to meet Mr. Stewart. “Commend me to a meek, quiet
woman when underhand means are to be employed, and a legacy is in
question.”
“Do you imagine I am expecting a legacy from any one?” asked Heather.
“Of course I do,” was the reply, spoken while Mrs. Croft swept along the
Marina with her dress trailing about two yards on the ground behind her;
“of course I do,” and her dark eyes looked over Heather scornfully;
“people generally expect their godfathers to leave them something, do
they not? and your godfather’s money is well worth finessing for. I
commend your prudence; some persons might not think such conduct quite
honourable, but that never seems to have occurred to you. Mr. Stewart
has hitherto treated Mr. Croft as his heir. Now, however——”
“Mr. Stewart’s affairs have not the slightest interest for me,”
interrupted Heather, hastily. “Good morning!” and, without giving her
companion time to utter another word, Mrs. Dudley turned and walked back
along the Parade to the point where Lally was still engaged in animated
conversation with her two gentlemen friends.
“It is time for you to come in, my pet,” she said, descending one of the
flights of wooden steps, and making her way with difficulty over the
shingle to the sands. “If you see my sister, Mr. Stewart, would you
kindly ask her to bring Leonard back? I do not like him to be out in the
heat of the day. I do not think it is good for children to be on the
shore when the sun has so much power.”
“Now, they have had a quarrel,” decided Mr. Stewart, glancing along the
Parade, where he descried Mrs. Aymescourt Croft wending her way
homewards, solitary and stately, haughty and defiant. “I should like
immensely to know what it is all about. There is something very
decidedly amiss between my amiable niece and Mrs. Dudley.”
“Your wife and our pretty friend do not seem able to stable their horses
comfortably together,” he said to Mr. Croft, when Heather, who declined
all offers both of companionship and of assistance, had borne
Lally—bitterly protesting against such injustice—away. “How is it, do
you think?”
“My wife is jealous,” was the prompt reply.
“Does she fancy you are smitten?”
“No; but she thinks you are,” Mr. Croft answered. “She considers that
Mrs. Dudley stands too good a chance of being favourably remembered in
your will, for much cordial feeling to exist amongst us.”
“And why the devil should I leave Mrs. Dudley sixpence?” asked Mr.
Stewart. “What is she to me that I should bequeath anything to her, more
than to the first stranger I meet on the Marina?”
“My charming wife,” replied Mr. Croft, in that daring tone of off-hand
recklessness which, as Mr. Black had remarked, was one of his
peculiarities, “my charming wife, giving you credit for a vein of
romance, and a depth of sensibility which, I confess, I never noticed in
your character, imagines that the revival of old associations, the
thoughts of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ in fact, which the sight of Mrs. Dudley
must naturally have awakened, may produce an undesirable effect upon the
ultimate disposal of your property. For my part, I am delighted at the
opportunity now afforded of assuring you I would much rather you left
your money to Mrs. Dudley than to my wife.”
“What are you talking about, Douglas?” asked his uncle. From the
drawing-room window of the house they occupied Mrs. Croft could, with
the aid of an opera-glass, see, not merely that Mr. Stewart stopped as
he put this question, but that he looked excited and perplexed. “What is
Mrs. Douglas to me, I ask again, that I should leave her sixpence? She
is a sweet woman, and pretty, and devoted to her blockhead of a husband,
but I should not care if I never saw her again. Does your wife think I
am in love with her? Does she imagine I am so nearly doting as all that
comes to?”
Douglas Croft looked steadily in his uncle’s face for a moment, and then
burst out laughing.
“It really is too amusing,” he said. “Do you mean to tell me you do not
know who Mrs. Dudley was?”
“No; who the deuce _was_ Mrs. Dudley?” inquired the other, testily.
“And she never has enlightened you?” persisted Mr. Croft.
“If she had enlightened me I should have known, I suppose, and I do not
know who or what she was, excepting a simpleton to marry Dudley. As you
seem so well informed, tell me this wonderful secret. Who was Mrs.
Dudley?”
“Heather Bell,” answered Mr. Croft.
“You do not mean that?”
“I do, upon my honour. Miss Hope told me and my wife, and explained that
it was you who selected the name which seems to suit her so admirably.”
Mr. Stewart did not take any direct notice of this information; he only
resumed his walk over the sands, saying to himself,—
“And so that is Heather Bell—so that is Heather Bell!”
“You understand now why my wife regards her with but small favour,”
continued Mr. Croft; “indeed, there is another reason why, perhaps,
mutually the two ladies dislike and distrust each other. Years ago,
Dudley and Miss Laxton were engaged. I knew nothing of it when I met
her—when I proposed to her—when she accepted me; but the engagement was
a fact, nevertheless. I am so devotedly attached to her now, that there
can be no indiscretion in merely alluding to her one fault—a love of
money. I am confident that she liked Dudley better than she ever liked
me; but I, being the richer of the two, gained the prize. Of course, it
is not in a woman’s nature, at least it is not in Arabella’s nature, to
look kindly on the wife whom the man she jilted afterwards married. On
the other hand, all the world knows Dudley does not appreciate quite so
highly the blessing he has gained, as the blessing he has lost; and for
that reason I fancy poor Mrs. Dudley does not feel particularly
comfortable in my Arabella’s society. Further, there may be a little
mutual jealousy, both being above the average in appearance. Now, you
have the exact state of the case, so far as I know it.”
Still Mr. Stewart made no reply; he only walked on more swiftly over the
sands, which were at this point wet and disagreeable, while the waves
came lapping in—lapping in; and the burden of his reverie was, “So that
is Heather Bell—that is Heather Bell!”
There was a story in the man’s life, though no one of his kith or kin
suspected it. He had loved once—once in his middle age, when the disease
always leaves traces behind—passionately! and the woman he loved was
Heather’s mother; but the secret of his unrequited attachment had lain
between the two; and now she was dead, and here was her child, and the
child of the man who took the best hope of his life away, thrown across
his path once more.
Heather Bell—Heather Bell, the waves seemed to murmur the name as they
stole upon the sands; and the old man grew young again as the years
faded away; and he saw, reflected as in a mirror, the bright glad face
of the long, and long ago, when he first, at Sir Wingrave Bell’s, met
Lilian Gladwin, who was even in those days engaged to the baronet’s
cousin, William, then a poor curate in London, and afterwards the poor
rector of Layford, Derbyshire.