And then we made our way back to the station; but she said nothing more till we got into the railway-carriage, which was not quite so noisy as our cab.
‘It would have been such a thing for us,’ she said then, half to herself. ‘Poor Charles! Oh, if I could but have said to him, “Don’t be so anxious; here is so much a year for the children.” And Jack should have gone to the University. And there would have been Will’s premium at once’ (i.e., to Mr. Willoughby, the engineer). ‘The only thing that I am glad of is that they don’t know. And then Janet; she breaks my heart when she talks. It is so bad for her, knowing the Fortises and all those girls who have everything that heart can desire. I never had that to worry me when I was young. I was only the governess. Janet’s talk will be the worst of all. I could have made the house so nice too, and everything. Well!—but then I never should have had a moment’s peace.’
‘You don’t regret?’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Merridew with a long sigh. And then, ‘Do you think I have been a traitor to the children?’ she cried suddenly, ‘taking away their money from them in the dark? Would Charles think me a traitor, astheydo? Is it always to be my part?—always to be my part?’
‘No, no,’ I said, soothing her as best I could; but I was very glad to find my pony-carriage at the station, and to drive her home to my house and give her some tea, and strengthen her for her duties. Thus poor John Babington’s fortune was disposed of, and no one was the wiser, except, indeed, the old lady and her daughter, who were not likely to talk much on the subject. And Mrs. Merridew walked calmly across to her house in the dusk as if this strange episode of agitation and passion had been nothing more solid than a dream.
Wedid not meet again for some days after this, and next time I saw her, which was on Sunday at church with her children, it seemed impossible to me to believe in the reality of the strange scene we had so recently passed through together. The calm curtain of ordinary decorums and ordinary friendliness had risen for a moment from Mrs. Merridew’s unexcited existence, revealing a woman distracted by a primitive sense of justice,rending her own soul, as it were, in sunder, and doing, in spite of herself and all her best instincts, what she felt was right. That she should have any existence separate from her children had never occurred to anybody before. Yet, for one day, I had seen her resist and ignore the claims of her children, and act like an independent being. When I saw her again she was once more the mother and nothing more, casting her eyes over her little flock, cognizant, one could see, of the perfection or imperfection of every fold and line in their dresses, keeping her attention upon each, from little Matty, who was restless and could not be kept quiet, up to Janet, who sat demure, and already caught the eye of visitors as one of the prettiest girls of Dinglefield. Mrs. Merridew remarked all with a vigilant mother’s eye, and as I gazed across at her in her pew, it was all but impossible for me to believe that this was the same woman who had clung so convulsively to my arm, whose face had been so worn and hollowed out with suffering. How could it be the same woman? She who had suffered poor John Babington to love her—and then had cast him off, and married her friend’s lover instead; who had established so firm an empire over a man’s heart, that, after twenty years, he had remembered her still with such intensity of feeling. How Janet would have opened her big eyes had it been suggested to her that her mother could have any power over men’s hearts; or, indeed, could be occupied with anything more touching or important than her children’s frocks or her butcher’s bills! I fear I did not pay much attention to the service that morning. I could not but gaze at them, and wonder whether, for instance, Mr. Merridew himself, who had come back from circuit, and was seated respectably with his family in church, yawning discreetly over Mr. Damerel’s sermon, remembered anything at all, for his part, of Matilda Babington or her brother. Probably he preferred to ignore the subject altogether—or, perhaps, would laugh with a sense of gratified vanity that there had been ‘a row,’ when the transference of his affections was discovered. And there she sat by his side, who had—had she betrayed his confidence? was she untrue to him in being this time true to her friends? The question bewildered me so that my mind went groping about it and about it. Once, I fear, she had been false to those whose bread she ate, and chosen love instead of friendship. Now was she false to the nearest of ties, the closest of all relationships, sitting calmly there beside him with a secret in her mind of which he knew nothing? ‘Falsely true!’—was that what the woman was who looked to the outside world a mere pattern of all domestic virtues, without any special interest about her, a wife devoted to her husband’s interest, a mother wrapped up, as people say, in her children? I could not make up my mind what to think.
‘I hope you got through your business comfortably,’ Mrs. Spencer said to me as we walked home from church.
‘With Mrs. Merridew’s assistance,’ said Lady Isabella, who was rather satirical. And the Merridews heard their own name, and stopped to join in the conversation.
‘What is that about my wife?’ he said. ‘Did Mrs. Mulgrave have Mrs. Merridew’s assistance about something? I hope it was only shopping. When you have business you should consult me. She is a goose, and knows nothing about it.’
‘I don’t think she is a goose,’ said I.
‘No, perhaps not in her own way,’ said the serene husband, laughing; ‘but every woman is a goose about business—I beg your pardon, ladies, but I assure you I mean it as a compliment. I hate a woman of business. Shopping is quite a different matter,’ he added, and laughed. Good heavens! if he had only known what a fool he looked, beside the silent woman, who gave me a little warning glance and coloured a little, and turned away her head to speak to little Matty, who was clinging to her skirts. A perfect mother! thinking more (you would have said) of Matty’s little frills and Janet’s bonnet-strings than of anything else in life.
And that was all about it. The summer went on and turned to autumn and to winter and to spring again, with that serene progression of nature which nothing obstructs; and the children grew, and the Merridews were as poor as ever, managing more or less to make both ends meet, but always just a little short somewhere, with their servants chosen on the same principle of supplementing each other’s imperfect service as that which Janet had announced to me. For one thing, they kept their servants a long time, which I have noticed is characteristic of households not very rich nor very ‘particular.’ When you allow such pleas to tell in favour of an imperfect housemaid as that she is good to the children, or does not mind helping the cook, there is no reason why Mary, if she does not marry in the meantime, should not stay with you a hundred years. And the Merridews’ servants accordingly stayed, and looked very friendly at you when you went to call, and did their work not very well, with much supervision and exasperation (respectively) on the part of the mother and daughter. But the family was no poorer, though it was no richer. The only evidence of our expedition to town which I could note was, that it had produced a new pucker on Mrs. Merridew’s brow. She had looked sufficiently anxious by times before, but the new pucker had something more than anxiety in it. There was a sense of something better that might have been; a sense of something lost—a suspicion of bitterness. How all this could be expressed by one line on a smooth white forehead I cannot explain; but to me it was so.
Now and then, too, a chance allusion would be made which recalled what had happened still more plainly. For instance, I chanced to be calling one afternoon, when Mr. Merridew came home earlier than usual from town. We were sitting over our five-o’clock tea, with a few of the children scrambling about thefloor and Janet working in the corner. He took up the ordinary position of a man who has just come home, with his back to the fire, and regarded us with that benevolent contempt which men generally think it right to exhibit for women over their tea; and everything was so ordinary and pleasant, that I for one was taken entirely by surprise, and nearly let fall the cup in my hand when he spoke.
‘I don’t know whether you saw John Babington’s death in theTimesthree or four months ago, Janet,’ he said, ‘did you? Why did you never mention it? It is odd that I should not have heard. I met Ellen to-day coming out of the Amyotts, where I lunched, in such prodigious mourning that I was quite startled. All the world might have been dead to look at her. And do you know she gave me a look as if she would have spoken. All that is so long past that it’s ridiculous keeping up malice. I wish you would call next time you are in town to ask for the old lady. Poor John’s death must have been a sad loss to them. I hear there was some fear that he had left his property away from his mother and sister. But it turned out a false report.’
I did not dare to look at Mrs. Merridew to see how she bore it; but her voice replied quite calmly without any break, as if the conversation was on the most ordinary subject—
‘Where did you manage to get so much news?’
‘Oh, from the Amyotts,’ he said, ‘who knew all about it. Matilda, you know, poor girl’ (with that half laugh of odious masculine vanity which I knew in my heart he would be guilty of), ‘married a cousin of Amyott’s, and is getting on very well, they say. But think over my suggestion, Janet. I think at this distance of time it would be graceful on your part to go and call.’
‘I cannot think they would like to see me now,’ she said in a low voice. Then I ventured to look at her. She was seated in an angular, rigid way, with her shoulders and elbows squared to her work, and the corners of her mouth pursed up, which would have given to any cursory observer the same impression it did to her husband.
‘How hard you women are!’ he said. ‘Trust you for never forgiving or forgetting. Poor old lady, I should have thought anybody would have pitied her. But however it is none of my business. As for Ellen, she is a very handsome woman, though she is not so young as she once was. I should not wonder if she were to make a good marriage even now. Is it possible, Janet, after being so fond of her—or pretending to be, how can I tell?—that you would not like to say a kind word to Ellen now?’
‘She would not think it kind from me,’ said Mrs. Merridew, still rigid, never raising her eyes from her work.
‘I think she would: but at all events you might try,’ he said. All her answer was to shake her head, and he went away to hisdressing-room shrugging his shoulders and nodding his head in bewildered comments to himself on what he considered the hard-heartedness of woman. As for me, I kept looking at her with sympathetic eyes, thinking that at least she would give herself the comfort of a confidential glance. But she did not. It seemed that she was determined to ignore the whole matter, even to me.
‘I wish papa would take as much interest in us poor girls at home as he does in people that don’t belong to him,’ said Janet. ‘Mamma, I never can piece this to make it long enough. It may do for Marian’ (who was her next sister), ‘but it will never do for me.’
‘You are so easily discouraged,’ said Mrs. Merridew. ‘Let me look at it. You girls are always making difficulties. Under the flounce your piecing, as you call it, will never be seen. Those flounces,’ she added, with a little laugh, which I knew was hysterical, ‘are blessings to poor folks.’
‘I am sure I don’t think there is anything to laugh at,’ said poor Janet, almost crying: ‘when you think of Nelly Fortis and all the other girls, with their nice dresses all new and fresh from the dressmaker’s, and no trouble; while I have only mamma’s old gown, that she wore when she was twenty, to turn, and patch, and piece—and not long enough after all!’
‘Then you should not grow so,’ said her mother, ‘and you ought to be thankful that the old fashion has come in again, and my old gown can be of use.’ But as she spoke she turned round and gave me a look. The tears were in her eyes, and that pucker, oh, so deeply marked, in her forehead. I felt she would have sobbed had she dared. And then before my eyes, as, I am sure, before hers, there glided a vision of Ellen Babington in her profound mourning, rustling past Mr. Merridew on the stairs, with heaps of costly crape, no doubt, and that rich black silk with which people console themselves in their first mourning. How could they take it all without a word? The after-pang that comes almost inevitably at the back of a sacrifice, was tearing Mrs. Merridew’s heart. I felt it go through my own, and so I knew. She had done it nobly, but she could not forget that she had done it. Does one ever forget?
And then as I went home I fell into a maze again. Had she a right to do it? To sit at table with that unsuspicious man, and put her arm in his, and be at his side continually, and all the time be false to him? Falsely true! I could not get the words out of my mind.
I donot now remember how long it was before I saw in theTimesthe intimation of old Mrs. Babington’s death. I think it must have been about two years: for Janet was eighteen, and less discontented with things in general, besides being a great deal more contented than either her friends or his desired, with the civilities of young Bischam from the Priory, who was always coming over to see his aunt, and always throwing himself in the girl’s way. He had nothing except his commission and a hundred and fifty a year which his father allowed him, and she had nothing at all; and, naturally, they took to each other. It is this that makes me recollect what year it was. We had never referred to the matter in our frequent talks, Mrs. Merridew and I. But after the intimation in theTimes, she herself broke the silence. She came to me the very next day. ‘Did you see it in the papers?’ she asked, plunging without preface into the heart of the subject: and I could not pretend not to understand.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I saw it;’ and then stopped short, not knowing what to say.
She had got a worn-out look in these two years, such as all the previous years in which I had known her had not given. The pucker was more developed on her forehead; she was less patient and more easily fretted. She had grown thin, and something of a sharp tone had come into her soft, motherly voice. By times she would be almost querulous; and nobody but myself knew in the least whence the drop of gall came that had so suddenly shown itself in her nature. She had fretted under her secret, and over her sacrifice—the sacrifice which had never been taken any notice of, but had been calmly accepted as a right. Now she came to me half wild, with the look of a creature driven to bay.
‘It was for her I did it,’ she said; ‘she had always been so petted and cared for all her life. She did not know how to deny herself; I did it for her, not for Ellen. Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave, I cannot tell you how fond I was of that girl! And you saw how she looked at me. Never one word, never even a glance of response: and I suppose now——’
‘My dear,’ I said, ‘you cannot tell yet; let us wait and see; now that her mother is gone her heart may be softened. Do not take any steps just yet.’
‘Steps!’ she cried. ‘What steps can I take now? I have thrown altogether away from me what might have been of such use to the children. I have been false to my own children. Poor John meant it to be of use to us——’
And then she turned away, wrought to such a point that nothing but tears could relieve her. When she had cried she was better; and went home to all her little monotonous caresagain, to think and think, and mingle that drop of gall more and more in the family cup. Mr. Merridew was again absent on circuit at this time, which was at once a relief and a trouble to his wife. And everybody remarked the change in her.
‘She is going to have a bad illness,’ Mrs. Spencer said. ‘Poor thing, I don’t wonder, with all those children, and inferior servants, and so much to do. I have seen it coming on for a long time. A serious illness is a dangerous thing at her age. All her strength has been drained out of her; and whether she will be able to resist——’
‘Don’t be so funereal,’ said Lady Isabella; ‘she has something on her mind.’
‘I think it is her health’ said Mrs. Spencer; and we all shook our heads over her altered looks.
I had a further fright, too, some days after, when Janet came to me, looking very pale. She crept in with an air of secrecy which was very strange to the girl. She looked scared, and her hair was pushed up wildly from her forehead, and her light summer dress all dusty and dragging, which was unlike Janet, for she had begun by this time to be tidy, and feel herself a woman. She came in by the window as usual, but closed it after her, though it was very hot. ‘May I come and speak to you?’ she said in a whisper, creeping quite close to my side.
‘Of course, my dear; but why do you shut the window?’ said I; ‘we shall be suffocated if you shut out the air.’
‘It is because it is a secret,’ she said. ‘Mrs. Mulgrave, tell me, is there anything wrong with mamma?’
‘Wrong?’ I said, turning upon her in dismay.
‘I can’t help it,’ cried Janet, bursting into tears. ‘I don’t believe mamma ever did anything wrong. I can’t believe it: but there has been a woman questioning me so, I don’t know what to think.’
‘A woman questioning you?’
‘Listen,’ said Janet hastily. ‘This is how it was: I was walking down to the Dingle across the fields—oh! Mrs. Mulgrave, dear, don’t say anything; it was only poor Willie Bischam, who wanted to say good-bye to me—and all at once I saw a tall lady in mourning looking at us as we passed. She came up to us just at the stile at Goodman’s farm, and I thought she wanted to ask the way; but instead of that, she stopped me and looked at me. “I heard you called Janet,” she said; “I had once a friend who was called Janet, and it is not a common name. Do you live here? is your mother living? and well? and how many children are there? I should like to know if you belong to my old friend.”’
‘And what did you say?’
‘What could I say, Mrs. Mulgrave? She did not look cross or disagreeable, and she was a lady. I said who I was, and that mamma was not quite well, and that there were ten of us; and then she began to question me about mamma. Did she go outa great deal? and was she tall or short? and had she pretty eyes “like mine?” she said; and was her name Janet like mine? and then, when I had answered her as well as I could, she said, I was not to say a word to mamma; “perhaps it is not the Janet I once knew,” she said; “don’t say anything to her;” and then she went away. I was so frightened, I ran home directly all the way. I knew I might tell you, Mrs. Mulgrave; it is like something in a book, is it not, when people are trying to find out—— oh, you don’t think I can have done any harm to mamma?’
Janet was so much agitated that it was all I could do to quiet her down. ‘And I never said good-bye to poor Willie, after all,’ she said, with more tears when she had rallied a little. I thought it better she should not tell her mother, though one is very reluctant to say so to a girl; for Willie Bischam was a secret too. But he was going away, poor fellow, and probably nothing would ever come of it. I made a little compromise with my own sense of right.
‘Forget it, Janet, and say nothing about it; perhaps it was some one else after all; and if you will promise not to meet Mr. Bischam again——’
‘He goes to-night,’ said Janet, with a rueful look; and thus it was evident that on that point there was nothing more to be said.
This was in the middle of the week, and on Saturday Mr. Merridew was expected home. His wife was ill, though she never had been ill before in her life; she had headaches, which were things unknown to her; she was out of temper, and irritable, and wretched. I think she had made certain that Ellen would write, and make some proposal to her; and as the days went on one by one, and no letter came—— Besides, it was just the moment when they had decided against sending Jack to Oxford. To pay Willie’s premium and do that at the same time was impossible. Mrs. Merridew had struggled long, but at last she was obliged to give in; and Jack was going to his father’s chambers to read law with a heavy heart, poor boy; and his mother was half distracted. All might have been so different; and she had sacrificed her boys’ interests, and her girls’ interests, and her own happiness, all for the selfish comfort of Ellen Babington, who took no notice of her: I began to think she would have a brain fever if this went on.
She was not at church on Sunday morning, and I went with the children, as soon as service was over, to ask for her. She was lying on the sofa when I went in, and Mr. Merridew, who had arrived late on Saturday, was in his dressing-gown, walking about the room. He was tired and irritable with his journey, and his work, and perennial cares. And she, with her sacrifice, and her secret, and perennial cares, was like tinder, ready in a moment to catch fire. I know nothing more disagreeable than to go in upon married people when they are in this state of mind, which can neither be ignored nor concealed.
‘I don’t understand you, Janet,’ he was saying, as I entered;‘women are vindictive, I know; but at least you may be sorry, as I am, that the poor old lady has died without a word of kindness passing between us: after all, we might be to blame. One changes one’s opinions as one gets on in life. With our children growing up round us, I don’t feel quite so sure that we were not to blame.’
‘Ihave not been to blame,’ she said, with an emphasis which sounded sullen, and which only I could understand.
‘Oh no, of course; you never are,’ he said, with masculine disdain. ‘Catch a woman acknowledging herself to be in fault! The sun may go wrong in his course sooner than she. Mrs. Mulgrave, pray don’t go away; you have seen my wife in an unreasonable mood before.’
‘I am in no unreasonable mood,’ she cried. ‘Mrs. Mulgrave, stay. You know—oh, how am I to go on bearing this, and never answer a word?’
‘My dear, don’t deceive yourself,’ he said, with a man’s provoking calm, ‘you answer a great many words. I don’t call you at all a meek sufferer. Fortunately the children are out of the way. Confound it, Janet, what do you mean by talking of what you have to bear? I have not been such a harsh husband to you as all that; and when all I asked was that you should make the most innocent advances to a poor old woman who was once very kind to us both——’
‘Charles!’ said Mrs. Merridew, rising suddenly from her sofa, I can’t bear it any longer. You think me hard, and vindictive, and I don’t know what. You, who ought to know me. Look here! I got that letter, you will see by the date, more than two years ago; you were absent, and I went and saw her: there—there! now I have confessed it; Mrs. Mulgrave knows—— I have had a secret from you for two years.’
It was not a moment for me to interfere. She sat, holding herself hysterically rigid and upright on the sofa. Whether she had intended to betray herself or not, I cannot tell. She had taken the letter out of her writing-desk, which stood close by; but I don’t know whether she had resolved on this step or whether it was the impulse of the moment. Now that she had done it a dreadful calm of expectation took possession of her. She was afraid. He might turn upon her furious. He might upbraid her with despoiling her family, deceiving himself, being false, as she had been before. Such a thing was possible. Two souls may live side by side for years, and be as one, and yet have no notion how each will act in any sudden or unusual emergency. He was her husband, and they had no interest, scarcely any thought, that one did not share with the other; and yet she sat gazing at him rigid with terror, not knowing what he might do or say.
He read the letter without a word; then he tossed it upon the table; then he walked all the length of the room, up and down, with his hands thrust very deeply into his pockets; thenhe took up the letter again. He had a struggle with himself. If he was angry, if he was touched, I cannot tell. His first emotions, whatever they were, he gulped down without a word. Of all sounds to strike into the silence of such a moment, the first thing we heard in our intense listening was the abrupt ring of a short excited laugh.
‘How did you venture to take any steps in it without consulting me?’ he said.
‘I thought—I thought——’ she stammered under her breath.
‘You thought I might have been tempted by the money,’ he said, taking another walk through the room, while she sat erect in her terror, afraid of him. It was some time before he spoke again. No doubt he was vexed by her want of trust, and wounded by the long silence. But I have no clue to the thoughts that were passing through his mind. At last he came to a sudden pause before her. ‘And perhaps you were right, Janet,’ he said, drawing a long breath. ‘I am glad now to have been free of the temptation. It was wrong not to tell me—and yet I think you did well.’
Mrs. Merridew gave a little choked cry, and then she fell back on the sofa—fell into my arms. I had felt she might do it, so strange was her look, and had placed myself there on purpose. But she had not fainted, as I expected. She lay silent for a moment, with her eyes closed, and then she burst into tears.
I had no right to be there; but they both detained me, both the husband and wife, and I could not get away until she had recovered herself, and it was evident that what had been a tragical barrier between them was now become a matter of business, to be discussed as affecting them both.
‘It was quite right the old lady should have it,’ Mr. Merridew said, as he went with me to the door, ‘quite right. Janet did only what was right; but now I must take it into my own hands.’
‘And annul what she has done?’ I asked.
‘We must consult over that,’ he said. ‘Ellen Babington, who has been so ungrateful to my wife, is quite a different person from her mother. But I will do nothing against Mrs. Merridew’s will.’
And so I left them to consult over their own affairs. I had been thrust into it against my own will; but still it was entirely their affair, and no business of mine.
Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella called to me from their lawn as I went out to ask how Mrs. Merridew was, and shook their heads over her.
‘She should have the doctor,’ said Mrs. Spencer.
‘But the doctor would not pay her bills for her,’ said Lady Isabella.
And I had to answer meekly, as if I knew nothing about it, ‘I don’t think it is her bills.’
This conversation detained me some time from my own house; and when I reached my cottage, my maid stood by the gate, looking out for me, shading her eyes with her hands. It was to tell me there was a lady waiting for me in the drawing-room: ‘A tall lady in mourning.’ And in a moment my heart smote me for some hard thoughts, and I knew who my visitor was.
I found her seated by my table, very pale, but quite self-possessed. She rose when I went in, and began to explain.
‘You don’t know me,’ she said. ‘I have no right to come to you; but once you came to—us—with Mrs. Merridew. Perhaps you remember me now? I am Ellen Babington. I want to speak to you about—my brother’s will. You may have heard that I have just lost——’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am very sorry. If there is anything I can do——’
‘You can do all that I want from any one,’ she said. ‘Janet will never believe that I wanted to keep the money—now. I have seen all her children to-day at church; and I think, if she had been there, I should perhaps have been able—but never mind. Tell her I should like—if she would give her daughter Janet something out of the money—from me. She is a little like what her mother was. I am sure you are kind to them. I don’t even know your name.’
‘Mrs. Mulgrave,’ I said; and she gave a little bow. She was very composed, very well-bred, terribly sad; with a look of a woman who had no more to do in the world, and who yet was, Heaven help her! in the middle of her life, full of vigour, and capability, and strength.
‘Will you tell Janet, please, that it is all settled?’ she said. ‘I mean, not the girl Janet, but her mother. Tell her I have settled everything. I believe she will hear from the lawyers to-morrow; but I could not let it come only from the lawyers. I cannot forgive her, even now. She thinks it is Matilda she has wronged; but it is me she has wronged, taking my brother from me, my only brother, after all these years. But never mind. I kissed the little child instead to-day—the quiet little one, with the gold hair. I suppose she is the youngest. Tell her I came on purpose to see them before I went away.’
‘But why send this message through me?’ I said; ‘come and seeher. I will take you; it is close by. And the sight of you will do her more good—than the money. Come, and let her explain.’
I thought she hesitated for a moment, but her only answer was a shake of her head.
‘What could she explain?’ she cried, with strange impetuosity. ‘He and I had been together all our lives, and yet all the while he cared nothing for his sister and everything for her. Do you think I can ever forgive her? but I never forgot her. I don’t think I ever loved any one so well in my life.’
‘Oh, come and tell her so,’ said I.
Again she shook her head. ‘I loved her as well as I loved him; and yet I hate her,’ she said. ‘But tell her I spoke to her Janet, and I kissed her baby; and that I have arranged everything with the lawyers about poor John’s will. I am sure you are a good woman. Will you shake hands with me for the children’s sake before I go?’
Her voice went to my heart. I had only seen her once in my life before, but I could not help it. I went up to her and took her two hands, and kissed her; and then she, the stranger, broke down, and put her head on my shoulder and wept. It was only for a moment, but it bound us as if for our lives.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, when she went away.
‘I am going abroad with some friends,’ she said hurriedly.
‘But you will come to us, my dear, when you come back?’
‘Most likely I shall never come back,’ she said hastily; and then went away alone out of my door, alone across the Green, with her veil over her face, and her black dress repulsing the sunshine. One’s sympathies move and change about like the winds. I had been so sorry for Mrs. Merridew an hour ago; but it was not for her I was most sorry now.
And this was how it all ended. I was always glad that Mrs. Merridew had told her husband before the letter came next morning. And they got the money; and John went to the University, and Janet had new dresses and new pleasures, and a ring, of which she was intensely proud, according to Ellen’s desire. I dare say Ellen’s intention was that something much more important should have been given to the child in her name; but then Ellen Babington, being an unmarried woman, did not know how much a large family costs, nor what urgent occasion there is for every farthing, even with an addition so great as five hundred a year.
I am afraid it did not make Mrs. Merridew much happier just at first. She wrote letters wildly, far and near, to everybody who could be supposed to know anything about Ellen; and wanted to have her to live with them, and to share the money with her, and I don’t know how many other wild fancies. But all that could be found out was that Ellen had gone abroad. And by degrees the signs of this strange tempest began to disappear—smoothed out and filled up as Nature smooths all traces of combat. The scars heal, new verdure covers the sudden precipice—the old gets assimilated with the new. By degrees an air of superior comfort stole over the house, which was very consolatory. Selina, the housemaid, married, and Richards retired to the inevitable greengrocery. And with a new man and new maids, and so much less difficulty about the bills, it is astonishing how the puckers died away from Mrs. Merridew’s forehead—first one line went, and then another, and she grew younger in spite of herself. And with everything thus conspiring in her favour, and habit calmly settling to confirm all, is it wonderful if by and by she forgot that any accident had everhappened, and that all had not come in the most natural way, and with the most pleasant consequences in the world?
The other day I saw in a chance copy ofGalignani, which came to me in a parcel from Paris, the marriage of Ellen Babington to a Frenchman there; but that is all we have ever heard of her. Whether it is a good marriage or a bad one I don’t know; but I hope, at least, it is better for her than being all alone, as she was when she left my house that day in June, having made her sacrifice in her turn. If things had but taken their natural course, how much unnecessary suffering would have been spared: Mrs. Merridew is, perhaps, happier now than she would have been without that five hundred a year—but for two years she was wretched, sacrificing and grudging the sacrifice, and making herself very unhappy. And though I don’t believe Ellen Babington cared for the money, her heart will never be healed of that pang of bitterness which her brother’s desertion gave her. His companion for twenty years! and to think his best thoughts should have been given all that time to a woman who had only slighted him, and refused his love. Mrs. Merridew does not see the sting of this herself—she thinks it natural. And so I dare say would half the world beside.
Therewas but one little harmless house of public entertainment at Dinglefield, a place not without its importance among us, with its little farm, and the fly with the old white horse which was an institution on the Green, and very serviceable when there was luggage to be carried to the railway, or any party going on in bad weather when our pony carriages could not be used.
This was the Barley Mow, a favourite and picturesque little village public-house, the most inoffensive article of the kind, perhaps, which was to be found for miles and miles around. The Green itself was not like the trim and daintily-kept greensward, with orderly posts and railings, which is to be seen in many suburban hamlets. It was long, irregular, and just wild enough to be thoroughly natural. The lower end, near the Barley Mow, was smooth and neat, the best cricket ground that you could find in the neighbourhood. But the upper part was still wild with gorse bushes, and bordered by a little thicket of rhododendrons, which had strayed thither from the adjacent park. Many a cricket match was played upon the lower Green, and on the bright summer Saturdays, when the cricket parties came, there was often quite a pretty little company from the surrounding houses to watch them, and a great traffic went on at the Barley Mow. It was an irregular old house, partly red brick, partly whitewashed, with a luxuriant old garden warm and sunny, opening through a green wicket set in a great hedge on the right hand. A signpost stood in the open space in front, where the road widened out, and by the open door you could see through a clean, red-tiled passage into the garden at the back, where the turf was like velvet, and the borders full of all kinds of bright and sweet old-fashioned flowers. There were neither standard rose-bushes nor red geraniums to be seen there, not that Widow Aikin, good woman, had any whim of taste that prompted her to despise these conventional inmates of the modern garden, but that the pinks and gilliflowers, the rockets and larkspurs, and great straggling rose-bushes were cheaperand gave less trouble, having established themselves there, and requiring no bedding out. The room which looked out upon this garden was where the strangers and gentlefolks who came from far were entertained, and there was a parlour, with a bow window in front, for humbler persons. But the favourite place in summer for that kind of ‘company’ was the bench outside the door, looking out upon the Green. There was little traffic of any kind in winter, but the summer aspect of the Barley Mow was a pleasant one. It had no air of stale dissipation about it, no heavy odour of spilt beer or coarse tobacco, but looked wholesome and sweet-smelling, a place of refreshment, not of indulgence. Anyhow, it was the fashion about the Green to think and say this of Widow Aikin’s clean, honest, respectable house. She was a favourite with all the ‘families.’ She served them with milk as well as beer, and fresh eggs, and sometimes fruit. She had all sorts of little agencies in hand, found servants for the ladies on the Green, and executed little commissions of many kinds. She was a personage, privileged and petted: everybody had a smile and a kind word for her, and she for everybody. She was always about, never standing still, glancing in and out of the red-tiled passage, the bow-windowed parlour, the sunny garden, the noisy stable-yard. You saw her everywhere—now this side, now that—an ubiquitous being, so quick-footed that she was almost capable of being in two places at once.
It was a favourite subject with Mrs. Aikin to talk of her own loneliness, and incapacity to manage ‘such a house as this.’ She liked to dwell upon the responsibilities of the position and the likelihood that a lone woman would be imposed upon; and the Green generally considered this a very proper strain of observation, and felt it to be respectable that a widow should so feel and so express herself. But it was very well known that things had gone much better at the Barley Mow since Will Aikin managed very opportunely to be carried off by that vulgar gout which springs from beer, and has all the disadvantages with none of the distinctions belonging to its kindred ailment. There was no saying what might not have happened had he lived a year longer, for the creditors were urgent and the business paralyzed. It was this which made his death opportune, for the brewers were merciful to the widow, and gave her time to redeem herself; and when she was relieved from the necessity of nursing him and studying his ‘ways,’ which were as difficult as if the landlord of the Barley Mow had been a prince of the blood, the widow blossomed out into another woman. It is but a poor compliment to the lamented husband, but widows continually do this, it must be allowed, giving the lie practically to their own tears. Happily however Mrs. Aikin, like many others in her position, took her own desolation for granted, and attributed her increase of prosperity to luck or the blessing of God, which is the better way of stating it. ‘Oh! that poorWill had but lived to see it!’ she would say with kindly tears in her eyes, and never whispered even to herself that had poor Will lived it would never have been. She never missed an opportunity, good soul, of bringing him into her conversation, telling stories of his excellence, his good looks (he was one of the plainest men in the county), his good jokes (he was as dull as ditch-water) and his readiness in all encounters. She would stand in the doorway, with her apron lifted in her hand, ready to dry the tear which out of grief for his loss, or tremulous traditionary laughter over one of his pleasantries, was always ready to spring up in the corner of her eye. What did it matter to her that the poor old jokes were pointless? She never inquired into their claims, but accepted them as laughter-worthy by divine right.
Mrs. Aikin had but one child, Jane, a modest, dark-eyed girl, with pretty fair curling hair, which gave her a certain distinction among the rustic prettinesses about. Her mother professed to be annoyed by the mingling of two complexions, protesting that Jane was always ‘contrairy,’ that such light hair should have gone with blue eyes, and that she was neither one sort nor another; but in her heart she was proud enough of her daughter’s uncommon looks—and Jane was an uncommon girl. Next to the Barley Mow stood the smallest house on the Green, a little place half wooden, half brick, which would have been tumbledown and disreputable had it not been so exquisitely neat and well cared for. This was the poorest little place of all the gentry’s houses, but it was not by any means the humblest of the inhabitants of the Green who lived at the Thatched Cottage. Old Mrs. Mowbray was a very great person, though she was a very small person. She was the tiniest woman on the Green, and she had the tiniest income, but she was related to half the peerage, and considered herself as great a lady as if she had been a grand duchess. Nor did any one dispute her claim. The greatest people in the county yielded thepasto old Mrs. Mowbray, partly no doubt because she was very old and her magnificent pretensions were amusing, but partly also because they were well founded. There was not one house on the Green that had such visitors as she had. She was grand-aunt to a duke, and nobody would have been surprised to hear that in her own person she had a far-away right to the Crown—a right, let us say, coming by some side-wind from the Plantagenets, leaping over the other families who are of yesterday. Many people at Dinglefield called her the fairy queen. She had the easy familiarity of royalty with all her surroundings. What could it matter to her what were the small gradations of social importance among her neighbours and friends? She could afford to be indifferent to such trifling distinctions of society. Widow Aikin was not appreciably further out of the reach of this splendid little old poor patrician than Lady Denzil. Education was in favour of the latter, it is true, but there wasthis against her, that it was possible for her to entertain some delusive idea of equality, of which Mrs. Aikin was guiltless. Mrs. Mowbray accordingly made no secret of the fact that she entertained a great friendship for the landlady of the Barley Mow, and was very fond of Jane. She had the girl with her a great deal, and taught her those pretty manners which were so unlike others of her class. When Jane was a growing girl of twelve or thirteen she used to wait upon the old lady’s guests at tea as a maid of honour might have waited. It was done for love for one thing, which always confers a certain grace; and it was not possible to move awkwardly or act ungracefully under the eye of such a keen critic.
It was the general opinion of the ladies on the Green that this patronage might not be an advantage to Jane as she grew older, and it became necessary to choose what was to be her occupation in the world; but in this respect Mrs. Mowbray behaved with great wisdom. It was, indeed, against not only all her traditions, but all the habits of her mind to ‘put nonsense in the girl’s head,’ and disgust her with her natural position, which was what the other ladies feared. It mattered nothing to Mrs. Mowbray whether the girl became a pupil-teacher; or pushed upward in the small scale of rank, as understood at the Barley Mow, to be a nursery governess and call herself a lady; or remained what she was by nature, her mother’s right hand and chief assistant? Parties ran very high on the Green on this subject. It was fought over in many a drawing-room as hotly as if it had been a branch of the Eastern Question. Ought Jane Aikin to stay at the parish school with Mrs. Peters, whose favourite pupil she was, and become her aid and probable successor? Ought she, being so refined in her manners, and altogether such a nice-looking girl, to learn a little music and French, and become a governess? The ladies who were liberal, who believed in education, and that everybody should do their best to improve their position and better themselves, upheld the latter idea; but the strongest party was in favour of the pupil-teacher notion, which was considered a means of utilizing Jane’s good manners and excellent qualities, without moving her out of ‘her own sphere of life’—and this set was headed, by the Rector, who was very hot and decided on the subject. A third party, to which nobody paid much attention, and which consisted chiefly of Mrs. Aikin herself, the only real authority, intended Jane to remain where she was, head-waiter and superintendent at the Barley Mow. The question between the two first projects had already been warmly discussed in the drawing-rooms before it occurred to anybody that it could be Mrs. Aikin’s intention to do such injustice to her daughter, or indeed that the good landlady had any particular say in the matter. What! make a barmaid of Jane! The Rector was, it is to be feared, very injudicious in his treatment of the question. He attempted to carry matters with a very high hand, and went sofar as to say that no modest girl could be brought up in ‘an alehouse,’ as he was so foolish as to call it, an opprobrious epithet which Mrs. Aikin did not forgive for years. She was so desperately offended, indeed, that she went to chapel for four Sundays after she heard of it, walking straight past the church doors, and proclaiming her defection to the whole world. Mrs. Mowbray was the person who was employed to set this matter right. She was waited upon by representatives of the two different parties, both of them feeling secure of her sympathy, but both anxious at all events to bring that foolish woman, Jane’s mother, to her senses. Mrs. Stoke was at the head of the governess set, and good Mr. Wigmore, our excellent church-warden, represented the Rector’s views. They met at the gate of the Thatched Cottage upon this mission. ‘I have not spoken to dear Mrs. Mowbray on the subject, because I feel so sure that she will be on our side—so fond as she is of Jane,’ said Mrs. Stoke. ‘Mrs. Mowbray is not the person to advocate any breaking up of the divisions which mark society,’ said Mr. Wigmore. ‘Sheknows the evil of all such revolutionary measures.’ And thus they went in, each confident in his and her own cause.
Mrs. Mowbray sat by the fire in the big old carved ebony chair, which made her look more than ever a fairy queen. She had a handsome old ivory face, with a tinge of colour on the cheeks, which looked as if it might once have been rouge. Strangers considered that this peculiarity of complexion gave an artificial and even improper look to the old lady, but on the Green it was considered one of the evidences of that supreme aristocratism which would not take the trouble to disguise anything it pleased to do, but would rouge, if rouge was necessary, in a masterful and magnificent way, making no secret of it. However, as a matter of fact it was not rouge, but perfectly real, as was the fine ivory yellow of her old nose, a stately and prominent feature, evidently belonging to the highest rank. She would not have budged from her ebony chair to receive any one less than the Queen; but she permitted Mrs. Stoke to kiss her, and Mr. Wigmore to shake her hand, with serene graciousness. When they had both seated themselves she looked at them across her knitting with a smile. ‘This looks likes a deputation,’ she said. ‘What do you want, good people? If it is to settle about my funeral there is no hurry—for my cold is much better, and I have a good many things to see after before I can think of such luxuries.’ This distressed both her visitors, who did not like to hear an old lady speak of such serious matters in this light-minded way.
‘Indeed, indeed, dear Mrs. Mowbray, it was nothing of the kind. When such a dreadful event occurs there will be weeping and wailing on the Green; and we all know very well that though you always talk so cheerfully, and so amusingly——’
‘You regard such subjects with the melancholy which becomesright-thinking people,’ said Mr. Wigmore; ‘but we came—or to speak for myself, I came——’
‘To speak of Jane Aikin,’ cried Mrs. Stoke, feeling the importance of having the first word, ‘and her mother’s inconceivable foolishness in keeping her at home; and the still more foolish step she has taken in separating herself from all her true friends.’
‘Frequenting the Dissenters’ services,’ said Mr. Wigmore. ‘Few things more sad have come under my observation in this very distressing parish—which is really such a mixture of everything that is unsatisfactory——’
‘The parish is just like other parishes,’ said Mrs. Stoke, ‘only much better, I should say—so many educated people in it, and so few poor comparatively. But I am sure our dear old friend will agree with me that Jane is quite out of place——’
‘Now, my good people,’ said the old lady, ‘think a moment—what do you mean by out of place?—Everybody is out of place now-a-days. I see people in this room calmly sitting down by me whose fathers and mothers would have come to the kitchen door fifty years ago; but if I made a fuss what would any one say?’
This made Mr. Wigmore very uncomfortable, whose father had been a cheesemonger in a good way of business; but as for Mrs. Stoke she did not care, being very well born, as she supposed. Mrs. Mowbray, however, took them both in quite impartially. ‘Unless people really belong to the old nobility,’ she continued, ‘I don’t see that it matters about their place. It does not mean anything. Even in what we call the old nobility, you know, there’s not above half-a-dozen families that are anything likepur sang. I know dukes that are just as much out of place as Jane Aikin would be at Windsor Castle. The only place any one has a right to is where their ancestors are born and bred—if they have any. And when you have not rank,’ said the old lady, looking keenly at Mr. Wigmore, ‘you had much better bepeuple, as the French say. We haven’t got an English word for it. No, it doesn’t mean lower classes—it meanspeuple, neither less nor more. And Jane Aikin is purepeuple. She can’t be out of place where she is.’
‘But you forget her education, dear Mrs. Mowbray—and you yourself that have given her such a taste for beautiful manners, and spoiled her for her own common class.’
Mrs. Mowbray did not say anything, but she put on her spectacles and stared at her reprover. ‘I never spoil any one,’ she said; ‘out of my own condition—I make no secret of it—one girl is very much like another to me. They should all be pretty-mannered—I never knewthatto spoil any one, small or great.’
‘Dear Mrs. Mowbray, no; but if we could raise her to a position in which she would be appreciated. She has taken such a step out of her own class in associating with you.’
‘Associating—with me!’ Mrs. Mowbray took off her spectaclesagain after she had gazed mildly with a wonder beyond speech in the speaker’s face. Then she shrugged her shoulders slightly and shook her head. ‘I can’t recall at this moment any one in this neighbourhood who does that. I have a great many friends, if that is what you mean, and I am not so particular as most people about the little subdivisions—but associates! I don’t know any. Yes, Mr. Wigmore? you were going to speak.’
‘I am one of those who agree with you that the poor should be kept in their own place,’ said Mr. Wigmore. As he spoke the old lady took up her spectacles again, and deliberately put them on, looking at him as if (Mrs. Stoke said) he was a natural curiosity, which somewhat discomfited the excellent man—‘but, as our friend says, her manners and breeding are quite above her station.’
‘Jane Aikin has no station,’ said Mrs. Mowbray promptly. ‘She ispeuple, as I told you. I know nothing of your aboves and belows. Let her stay where she is, in her natural place, and do her duty. Do your duty in that condition to which God has called you: that’s what the Catechism says. There’s nothing about being above or below. Very lucky for her she’s got a natural place and her duty plain before her. If one had not one’s own rank, which of course one does not choose, that’s what I should prefer for myself: a distinct place and a clear duty—and that’s what Jane Aikin has.’
‘In a public-house!’ cried Mr. Wigmore, aghast.
‘In her mother’s house, sir,’ said old Mrs. Mowbray.
Thus the Green was routed horse and foot; but the old lady on further talk accepted the position of mediatrix to bring back the Widow Aikin to her allegiance, and to show her her duty as a churchwoman. She sallied forth for that purpose the very next morning in her old quilted white satin bonnet and great furred cloak. She never changed the fashion of her garments, having had abundant time to discover what was most becoming to her, as she frankly said. Mrs. Aikin was standing at her front door, looking out upon the bright morning, when the old lady appeared. There was very little doing at the Barley Mow. The parlour with the bow window was full of a dazzling stock of household linen, which Jane and a maid were looking over, and putting in order. Jane herself had the task of darning the thin places, which she did so as to make darning into a fine art. This had been taught her by Mrs. Peters at the parish school. Perhaps it was not, after all, such a valuable accomplishment as it looked, but certainly Jane’s darning had a beautiful appearance on the tablecloths, after they had passed their first perfection of being, at the Barley Mow.
‘The sunshine’s a pleasure,’ said Mrs. Aikin, making her best curtsey, ‘and I hope I see you well, ma’am, this bright morning. It shows us as how spring’s coming. Might I be so bold as to ask you to step in and take a chair?’
‘Not this morning,’ said Mrs. Mowbray in her frank voice, not unduly subdued in tone, ‘though I’ve come to scold you. They tell me you’ve gone off from your church, you that were born and bred in it, and Jane, though I taught her her Catechism myself. Do you mean to tell me you’ve got opinions—you?—with a nice child like Jane to thank God for, and everything going well——’
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Aikin, growing red and smoothing her apron, ‘I don’t say as I’m one for opinions—more than doing your duty, and getting a bit of good out of a sermon when you can.’
‘That’s very pious and right,’ said the old lady, ‘but your church that you were christened in is more than a sermon. I don’t pretend to get much good of them myself: but you’ll not tell me that you have left your church for that.’
‘Well, ma’am!’ said Mrs. Aikin, reluctant to commit herself. She put out her foot, and began to trace patterns with her shoe in the sand on the doorstep, and fixed her eyes upon the process. She could not meet the little old lady’s decided gaze. ‘Mr. Short at the chapel do preach beautiful, he do. You should just hear him for yourself. He’ll make you come all over in a tremble, when you’re sitting quite quiet like, thinking of nothing; and then he’s real comforting to poor folks and them as is put upon. It’s almost a pleasure to feel as you’ve had your troubles with the quality too.’
‘Quality! Where do you find any quality to have troubles with?’ said Mrs. Mowbray. ‘You and I have always been good friends. You don’t consider that you’re put upon, as you call it, because the Duke sent me my Christmas turkey. That was no offence to you.’
‘No, ma’am, never—not you. There is them that shall be nameless—not but whattheycall names a plenty.’
‘The woman’s thinking of the Rector, I declare. Quality!’ said Mrs. Mowbray with an accent of mingled amazement and amusement. ‘No, my dear woman, he’s not quality. But he meant no harm. He was thinking of the girl and her good. They think they know, these men; and we must submit, you know, to our clergy. It was because of his interest in Jane.’
‘Interest in Jane!’ said Widow Aikin (she pronounced the name something likeJeyeyn; but the peculiarities of Berkshire are too much for even phonetic spelling), ‘if that shows an interest! telling her mother to her face as she wasn’t fit to bring her up decent and respectable, and showing no more confidence than that in the girl herself.’
‘It was his mistake,’ said Mrs. Mowbray, ‘he wants tact, that is what it is. He hasn’t the right way of doing a thing, my dear woman. That is how these middling sort of people always break down. My nephew, the Duke, if he had to send you to prison, would do it as if it were the greatest kindness in the world. But the middling classes have no grace about them. That’s not to say that you’re to give up your church that youwere christened in and married in. Who’s to bury you, woman? Do you never think of that? Not your Mr. Short at the chapel, I hope. At least I know he would never do for me. There ought to be more in your church than a sermon, or even than a pleasant word.’
‘Well, ma’am, I don’t say but what that’s true; and I never thought of the burying,’ said the widow, hanging her head. She was subdued and awe-stricken at the turn which the discussion had taken, and, indeed, had never intended to forsake ‘her church,’ but only to make a demonstration of her independence. Jane had come out from the parlour, leaving her work to listen to this argument, with great anxiety and interest, for her heart was in it. She was hovering in the passage behind her mother, now and then giving her a little touch or pull to enforce something the old lady said. During the pause that followed she came forward very anxiously, and put forward a plea of her own, in which there did not seem much point or applicability.
‘Oh, mother,’ she said softly, pulling her sleeve, ‘and Johnny in the choir!’
‘Oh, go along with your Johnnys,’ said the landlady of the Barley Mow. But it was clear enough that the victory was won.
Itis full time that John should be spoken of, who was the other member of the family, and a very important one. He was Mrs. Aikin’s nephew, the son of a brother who was very poorly off and had been taken in by his good aunt as a miserable stunted child when he was but six or seven. The brother was a soldier, who had been discharged, and whose character it is to be supposed did not recommend him sufficiently to get any interest made for him, or to establish him anywhere in one of the occupations which seem made for old soldiers. Instead of this he had fallen into a kind of vagabondism, wandering from place to place, and as his wife was dead this only child had been miserably neglected, and was in a bad way when Mrs. Aikin took him to her kindly care. He had never been a prepossessing boy, and he did not at all share with Jane in the interest of the Green. He was heavy and lowering in his looks, quiet to outward appearance, though tales were told of him which were not consistent with this subdued aspect. Both the women however were devoted to John, either because they had no one else to be fond of, or because he possessed some qualities at bottom which made up for his faults of exterior. He certainly did not seem at any time to give himself much trouble to secure their affections. All that he did seemed to be done unwillingly—the very sound of his voice was churlish—and except Mrs. Aikin and her daughter nobody cared for the boy. From hisvery first coming he had showed himself in an unfavourable light. He was then a boy of about eight years old, and little Jane, a delightful child, everybody’s favourite, was a year younger. One summer evening he was standing with his hands in his pockets staring at the waggons with their big horses, when she came running up to him.
‘Come and play, Johnny,’ she said in her soft little voice.
‘I won’t,’ he said, pushing her out of his way with his shoulder.
‘Oh, Johnny, come and have tea in the garden,’ said little Jane, ‘mother says we may. I’ve got some cake and some gooseberries, and my own little tea-things, and all the best shall be for you. Oh, Johnny, come!’
‘I won’t,’ he said again, though he faltered when he heard of the cake.
‘Oh, Johnny, come to please me,’ cried the poor little woman, already as foolish in her expectations as if she had been twenty years older.
‘To please you! I’d a deal rather please myself,’ cried the boy, once more thrusting her aside with a push of his shoulder. Little Jane was ready to cry, but the mother coming out full of business called to the children in her hasty way to go at once to the garden, and get out of her road. Upon which the boy shrugged his shoulders, and obeyed with brutish unwillingness and display of yielding to superior force. This was how he had been ever since. The little girl would coax and entreat, the kind mother give cheerful orders, never so much as seeing the lowering looks of rebellion.
‘Poor boy!’ Mrs. Aikin would say, ‘he ain’t got no mother, and I can see by his solemn face many a day as he’s thinking and thinking of his poor father, which was never one as would settle down to anything. We has to do all we can to keep him cheerful, Jane and me.’
Thus from the very first they made up their minds to spoil the loutish, unpleasant boy. The widow was continually praising him, and holding him up to the admiration of her neighbours. When it was found that he had a good voice, this gave them as much delight and triumph as if they had inherited a fortune, and when he made his appearance for the first time with the choir in his white surplice, the faces of the two were a sight to see, so glowing were they with satisfaction and delight. In this way the two cousins had grown up—the boy always sullen and downlooking, resisting rather than responding to the kindnesses heaped upon him, the girl always ready to smooth away every cloud, to say the best for him, to explain his moodiness and backwardness.
‘It is only his way,’ Jane would say in her soft voice, andherway was so ingratiating and conciliatory that no one could stand against it. His aunt, too, was foolish in her affection for this unattractive hero. He was the son of the house, the young master, though he had not a penny. His opinion was alwaysasked about everything, and his judgment constantly relied upon. It was true that the advice he gave was not always taken, for Mrs. Aikin was very active, and liked to manage everything her own way; but when it happened that he agreed with her, she would trumpet forth his praises and give him all the credit.
‘I should never have thought of that but for Johnny. There’s no telling the sense of him,’ the good woman would say admiringly. All this special pleading however could not give the Green any interest in John. Nobody cared for him except the two who cared so much for him, and nobody believed in him, notwithstanding his imposing appearance in the choir and his beautiful voice. As he grew up this voice changed from its angelical soprano to a big melodious baritone. He was the chief singer at Dinglefield, and kept up the character of the place, which had always been noted for its choir, and indeed he was the only man in it to whom a solo could be entrusted. This made the Rector and Mr. Wigmore tolerant of the alehouse so far as he was concerned.
Thus the little family at the Barley Mow were happy enough when the difficulty was got over about Jane. Of course Mrs. Aikin had the best right to settle what her daughter was to do, and whatever they might advise, neither the clergy nor the ladies could interfere on their own account in the matter. So that when Mrs. Aikin gave up chapel and came back to her own pew all was forgiven and forgotten, and Jane, though the maid of the inn, became a greater favourite than ever. She was liked as much as her cousin was disliked. Even the contact which she could not be altogether saved from, in her position, with the roughest and coarsest class did not seem to affect her. She went about and served the beer, and waited on the summer visitors as softly and as neatly as she used to serve the ladies at tea in old Mrs. Mowbray’s tiny drawing-room. She never took any notice of foolish things that might be said to her, and did not even seem to hear or see the squabbles and noisy talk that must always go on more or less about such places. In the cricketing time they were always very busy, and Jane no doubt had the additional temptation of the gentlemen who would have talked and flirted had she allowed them to do so: but she passed through everything like a humble Una, with a smile for everybody, but not a word that could have been objected to, had all the ladies in the Green sat in committee on her. Perhaps however her lout of a cousin did more for Jane than the ladies could have done. She was very modest and shy, and did not betray herself except to the keenest observation; but it was apparent enough to those who were chiefly interested that all her thoughts were for John. She was constantly doing his work for him in her quiet way, undertaking this and that to let him have a holiday, or go to a choral meeting, or have his innings at cricket.
‘Girls don’t want so much play as boys,’ she would say with a smile. And he took her at her word, and accepted everything she did for him as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. Strangely enough, her mother did not object to this. She spoiled and petted the clumsy fellow just as much as Jane did, and took it for granted that he should have all kinds of indulgences as if he had been a favourite son. The great terror of both of them was his vagabond father, who appeared now and then, a scandal to their respectability, and a standing danger to John. The two women were always in a fright lest this undesirable relative should lead their darling astray.
‘He is such a good boy now—he has always been such a good boy,’ Mrs. Aikin said, with an uncomfortable sense that nobody accepted this statement as gospel, which made her more and more hot in giving it forth. And when old Mrs. Mowbray stopped in her walk to inquire after Jane and the poultry, the widow fairly wept over this one danger which threatened the family peace.
‘Why do you let him come at all?’ the old lady asked peremptorily. ‘If I were in your place, I would order him off the premises. You have done too much for him already, my dear woman. When a man becomes a vagabond he has no more claim on his friends.’
This did not at all please the landlady of the Barley Mow. Her honest face flushed, and she dried her eyes indignantly.
‘Nature is nature, ma’am,’ she said; ‘good or bad, you can’t deny your own flesh and blood.’
‘But I could keep my own flesh and blood at a distance,’ said the old lady, ‘especially if it has got more harm in it, and could do me an injury still.’
‘That is all that troubles me,’ said Mrs. Aikin. ‘I’d be as happy a woman as steps the Green, but for that. Nature is nature, and a father’s a father. And if so be as he was to put wild thoughts in our Johnny’s head—what would me and Jane do? La, bless you, it would break that girl’s heart.’
‘And that is just what I am thinking of,’ said Mrs. Mowbray briskly. ‘You are a silly woman. What has Jane’s heart got to do with it? You keep this boy by her side year after year. And now they’re growing man and woman, and what’s to come of it? What do you mean by it? That’s what I say!’
‘La, ma’am, what could come of it? They’ve been brought up like brother and sister,’ the widow said with a laugh, and she went about with a smile on her face for the rest of the day. The other ladies made remonstrances of the same kind with equally little use. Of course it was very clear that this was what she had made up her mind to—that the two should marry and succeed her when she grew old, and carry on the business. It was all suitable enough and natural enough. And, of course, the fact that Jane was above her position made no difference. When a woman is above her position the best thing for her to do is toconceal it carefully, and make the best of the circumstances. And she herself was not conscious of the fact of her superiority. Whether Mrs. Aikin had been so foolish as to communicate her ideas to Jane no one knew, but there could be little doubt that the poor girl took the arrangement for granted as much as her mother did. It was so natural! She had been fond of her cousin all her life, loving him with that most powerful of all kinds of love, the close tie of tender habit, the affection one has for the being whom one has protected, excused, and been good to all one’s life. If she had not pushed him softly through his work, coaxed him through his lessons, made the best of him to everybody, how could poor Johnny ever have got on at all? He wanted her backing up so perpetually, that it might be permitted to Jane to believe that he could not have got on without her. It is common to say that the love of a woman for a man has often a great deal that is motherly in it, and certainly this was the case here. It had been her duty to be kind to him, to make him feel himself at home, he who had no other home. All her own little pleasures, almost ever since she could remember, had been made secondary to Johnny—and what so natural as that this should go on? She took it for granted, poor girl. She scarcely expected to be courted as other girls were who ‘fall in love’ with strangers. It had not been necessary for her to fall in love. She had always been fond of her cousin. She had never thought of any other man.
And poor Jane was as delicate in her love as any lady of romance. She had none of the romping ways of country girls of her class. Neither was she sentimentally disposed. Her modest look dwelt upon him now and then with a tender pleasure, especially when he was singing, which was the only thing about him which seemed to justify that delusion. But even this look was so modest and so momentary that only careful observation surprised it now and then. She held her somewhat embarrassing position with a serious grace which was almost dignity—making no advances on her part, though she was the crown princess, and had everything to bestow, yet never doubting, I think, poor girl, what the course of affairs was to be. Was it not natural that he should love her best as she loved him best? and that their life should go on as it had always done, with something added but nothing taken away? Such was the simple, happy tenor of Jane’s maiden thoughts.
Whether John divined what the women took for granted it would be difficult to say. Perhaps he saw the advantages of being master at the Barley Mow, and the homage he received no doubt increased his natural loutish self-complacency—that stolid vanity which so often dwells in the minds of those who have nothing in the world to be vain of. He took it for granted on his side that he was the sun of this little world, and accepted everything as a natural homage to his fine deservings. He thought the more of himself for all they did for him, not ofthem. As for Jane, her pretty looks, her superiority, her grace and good breeding were nothing to the lout. He would have liked her a great deal better had she been a noisy, laughing, romping girl. He accepted all the little sacrifices she made, and allowed her to do his work, with that satisfied consciousness that she liked it, which gave him the feeling of doing rather than receiving a favour. And very likely he might go on, and carry out the programme, and marry her in the same lordly way. For there could be no doubt that it was very much to his advantage, and that his position as Jane’s husband would be much more assured than that of Mrs. Aikin’s nephew. So things went on, day gliding into day, and summer into winter. They were both young—there was no hurry; and to quicken the settlement or alter anything from the pleasant footing on which it at present stood was not at all the widow’s wish.