I soon learned to love the farm. I began to know the meaning of the word
"home." The beauty and lovableness of some persons and places takes you
by surprise; with others they steal upon you by degrees; but there was
that about Hillsbro' Farm which I loved much at once and more
afterwards. Looking at it in the most commonplace way, it had all the
peace and plenty of an English farmhouse, while for eyes that sought
more they would find enough that was picturesque in the orchard's ruddy
thickets, where the sun struck fire on frosty mornings; in the wide
pasture lands sloping to the sedgy river, where the cows cooled their
feet on sultry evenings. You know as well as I the curious bowery garden
beyond the lower window of the parlour, stocked with riches and sweets
of all kinds, rows of bee-hives standing in the sun, roses and
raspberries growing side by side. The breaths of thyme and balm,
lavender and myrtle, were always in that parlour. You know the
sheep-fold and the paddock, the old tree over the west gable where the
owl made his nest--the owl that used to come and sit on our school-room
windowsill and hoot at night. You know, the sun-dial where the screaming
peacock used to perch and spread his tail; the dove-cote, where the
silver-necks and fan-tails used to coo and ruffle their feathers. You
know, too, all the quaint plannings and accidents of the old house; how
the fiery creeper ran riot through the ivy on the dark walls, dangling
its burning wreaths over the windows; how the hall door lay open all day
with the dogs sleeping on the broad door-step. Also, within, that there
were long dark passages, rooms with low ceilings; a step up here, and a
step down there; fireplaces twisted into odd corners, narrow pointed
windows, and wide latticed ones. You know all the household recesses,
the dairies and pantries and store-rooms; but you cannot know how Mrs.
Hollingford toiled amongst them, filling them with her industry one day
that they might be emptied the next; hardening her delicate hands with
labour to the end that justice might be done, that some who had lost
might gain, that a portion of her husband's heavy debts might be paid,
and a portion of the curse of the impoverished lifted from his guilty
shoulders.
No luxury was ever permitted in that household. Old gowns were worn and
mended till they could be worn and mended no longer. The girls were of
an age to go abroad to school, but they must be contented with such
education as they could pick up at home, so long as one poor creature
suffered straits through their father's fault. The only indulgence
allowed was almsgiving. Mopsie might divide her dinner with a hungry
child, or Jane bestow her new petticoat on an aged woman; but they must,
in consequence, deny themselves and suffer inconvenience till such time
as it came to be again their turn to have their absolute wants relieved.
I did, indeed, feel like a drone in a hive when, on leaving my room in
the mornings, I met Mrs. Hollingford coming from her work in the dairy,
John Hollingford arriving from his early visit to a distant part of the
farm, Jane from her sewing closet where she made and mended the linen of
the household, and Mopsie from the kitchen with a piled dish of
breakfast-cakes, showing what her morning task had been. I could not eat
for envy. Why could I not be of use to somebody? I gave Mopsie some gay
ribbons, which were returned to me by her mother. Nothing might she wear
but her plain black frock and white frill. I gave Jane a book of poems
with woodcuts, and that was accepted with rapture. This encouraged me. I
picked up two little children on the road, and to one I gave a bright
silk girdle for a skipping-rope, and to the other a doll dressed from
the materials of a fine gauze hat, which I picked to pieces for the
purpose. I was not going to be a peony flaunting among thrifty modest
vetches. At first I was sorry for the destruction of my pretty things,
but soon I grew to admire the demureness of my gray gown and little
black apron. I learned to make pies and cakes, to sweep a room and set
it to rights, to wash and get up linen and laces, to churn, to make
butter. But as many hands were engaged in these matters, I was often
thrown out of employment. I made music for my friends in the evenings,
and, as they liked it, this was something; but it was not enough. A new
spirit had entered into me. I felt my old self lost in the admiration
which I had conceived for the new friends who had accepted me amongst
them.
By and by I found out a little niche of usefulness for myself. Jane and
Mopsie attended the village school. One day I went to the town to buy
some trifle and call for the girls. It was past the hour for breaking
up, and I found Mopsie romping with some rude-looking girls on the
green, while Jane, detained for some fault, sat alone in the
school-room, perched on a bench, her arms folded and her eyes gloomily
fixed on the wall. When I entered she blushed crimson. She was a proud
girl, and I knew she was hurt at my seeing her disgrace. I coaxed her to
speak out her trouble.
"I could teach the whole school," she said, fiercely--"master, mistress,
and all--and yet I am kept sitting over a, b, c, like a baby. I get so
sick of it that sometimes I answer wrong by way of novelty. Then I have
to hold out my hand for the rod. To-day I drew Portia and Shylock on my
slate, and forgot to finish my sum; therefore I am disgraced!"
I seized the happy moment and offered myself to the girls as a
governess. Mopsie stopped on the road and hugged me in delight. Jane
squeezed my hand and was silent during the rest of the walk, except when
she said,
"Mother will never consent. I am too proud, and she wants me to be
humbled. She thinks it is good for me to go to the village school."
That night, however, I laid my plan before Mrs. Hollingford, and, after
some trouble, I attained my point.
We chose for our school-room an unoccupied chamber at the end of a long
passage upstairs. It was furnished with a deal table and chairs, and a
small square of green carpet laid upon the sanded floor. It had three
latticed windows looking westward, and one of those odd grates I have
mentioned, large enough to cook a dinner. We kept it filled with logs,
and in the evenings, after we had drawn the curtains in the parlour, set
the tea-table, and made Mrs. Hollingford comfortable on the sofa for an
hour's rest, we three retreated to our school-room for a chat in the
firelight. Here John joined us when he happened to come home early, and
many a happy hour we passed, four of us sitting round the blazing logs,
talking and roasting apples. We told stories, tales of the outer world,
and legends of the country around us. We described places and people we
had seen, and our fancies about others we had not seen. John, who had
travelled, was the most frequent speaker; and as I was a wonder of
experience to his sisters, just so was he a wonder to me. We laughed,
cried, or listened in breathless silence, all as he willed, while the
purple and yellow lingered in the sky behind the lattice, and the
moaning of the wind through the forlorn fields, the hissing of the
roasting apples, and the crackling of the burning wood, kept up an
accompaniment to his voice.
There were other evenings, too, when John was late, and Mopsie, having
grown tired of serious talk, tripped off to hear the lasses singing Bold
Robin Hood in the kitchen. Then Jane used to open her heart to me, and
talk about the troubles of the family. Her heart was stern and bitter
against her father. Well had she said she was proud; well had her mother
wished to humble her, if that could be done. She had, I believe, a great
intellect, and she had much personal beauty of a grand character. I do
not think she thought much about the latter, but she felt her mental
powers. She knew she was fitted to move in a high sphere, and chafed
against her fate; still more against the fate of her brother.
I can see her now, on her low seat before the fire, her hands clasping
one knee, her dark head thrown back, and her eyes fixed on the dancing
shadows above the chimney.
"To think of John settling down as a farmer!" she said; "John, who for
cleverness might be prime minister. And there is no hope of his getting
away from it; none whatever."
I could not but agree to this, though the thought occurred to me that
the farm might not be so pleasant a home if John had to go away and be
prime minister. All I could say I said to combat her rebellious
despondency as to her own future.
"If you knew the emptiness and foolishness of the gay world," I said in
a sage manner, "you would be thankful for our quiet life at Hillsbro'."
"It is not the gay world I think of," she said. "It is the world of
thought, of genius."
"Well, Jane," said I, cheerfully, "you may pierce your way to that yet."
"No!" she said. "If I had a clean name I would try to do it. As it is, I
will not hold up my head only to be pointed at. But I will not spend my
life at Hillsbro', moping. I will go away and work, teach, or write, if
I can."
I saw her eyes beginning to flash, and I did not like these fierce moods
for Jane. I was turning over a book at the time, and, to divert her
attention, I read aloud the name written on the title-page.
"Mary Hollingford," I said. "Was not she your elder sister?"
Jane started. "Yes," she said. "Who mentioned her to you?"
"Your mother," I said, "used to tell me of her little Mary, who was at
school in France. I cannot recollect who told me of her death. Do you
remember her?"
"Oh yes," said Jane, "perfectly. We did not lose her till after--my
father went away."
"I suppose she took the trouble to heart," I said, reflectively; and
then was sorry I had said it. But Jane answered,
"Yes," readily; then dropped her face between her hands, and remained
plunged in one of her motionless fits of abstraction for half an hour.
I never alluded to this subject again to Jane, but one evening when
Mopsie and I were alone together, the child spoke of it herself.
"Margery," she said, "you are holding me now just as sister Mary used to
hold me with both her arms round my waist, when I was a tiny little
thing, and she used to play with me in our nursery in London."
"You remember her, then?" I said.
"Yes," said Mopsie. "I remember her like a dream. She used to come home
for the holidays, and a handsome French lady with her, who used to throw
up her hands if we had not ribbons in our sleeves and smart rosettes on
our shoes. I remember sister Mary in a pretty white frock trimmed with
lace, and her hair curled down to her waist. I used to think her like
one of the angels. But we never speak of her now, nor of papa, because
it pains mother and John. I used to speak of her to Jane sometimes in
the night, just to ask her did she think sister Mary was thinking of us
in heaven; but Jane used to get into such dreadful fits of crying that I
grew afraid. I wish some one would talk of her. I think it is cruel of
us all to forget her because she is dead."
And tears stood in Mopsie's blue eyes. But the next half hour she was
singing like a skylark over some household task.