For Satan finds some mischief stillFor idle hands to do,
For Satan finds some mischief stillFor idle hands to do,
For Satan finds some mischief stillFor idle hands to do,
you know, my lady.”
There was no leading into the subject by delicate degrees, for Miss Galindo was evidently so fond of talking, that, if asked a question, she made her answer so long, that before she came to an end of it, she had wandered far away from the original starting point. So Lady Ludlow plunged at once into what she had to say.
“Miss Galindo, I have a great favour to ask of you.”
“My lady, I wish I could tell you what a pleasure it is to hear you say so,” replied Miss Galindo, almost with tears in her eyes; so glad were we all to do anything for her ladyship, which could be called a free service and not merely a duty.
“It is this. Mr. Horner tells me that the business-letters, relating to the estate, are multiplying so much that he finds it impossible to copy them all himself, and I therefore require the services of some confidential and discreet person to copy these letters, and occasionally to go through certain accounts. Now, there is a very pleasant little sitting-room very near to Mr. Horner’s office (you know Mr. Horner’s office? on the other side of the stone hall?) and if I could prevail upon you to come here to breakfast and afterwards sit there for three hours every morning, Mr. Horner should bring or send you the papers——”
Lady Ludlow stopped. Miss Galindo’s countenancehad fallen. There was some great obstacle in her mind to her wish for obliging Lady Ludlow.
“What would Sally do?” she asked at length. Lady Ludlow had not a notion who Sally was. Nor if she had had a notion, would she have had a conception of the perplexities that poured into Miss Galindo’s mind, at the idea of leaving her rough forgetful dwarf without the perpetual monitorship of her mistress. Lady Ludlow, accustomed to a household where everything went on noiselessly, perfectly, and by clock-work, conducted by a number of highly-paid, well-chosen, and accomplished servants, had not a conception of the nature of the rough material from which her servants came. Besides, in her establishment, so that the result was good, no one inquired if the small economies had been observed in the production. Whereas every penny—every halfpenny, was of consequence to Miss Galindo; and visions of squandered drops of milk and wasted crusts of bread filled her mind with dismay. But she swallowed all her apprehensions down, out of her regard for Lady Ludlow, and desire to be of service to her. No one knows how great a trial it was to her when she thought of Sally, unchecked and unscolded for three hours every morning. But all she said was,—
“‘Sally, go to the Deuce.’ I beg your pardon, mylady, if I was talking to myself; it’s a habit I have got into of keeping my tongue in practice, and I am not quite aware when I do it. Three hours every morning! I shall be only too proud to do what I can for your ladyship; and I hope Mr. Horner will not be too impatient with me at first. You know, perhaps, that I was nearly being an authoress once, and that seems as if I was destined to ‘employ my time in writing.’”
“No, indeed; we must return to the subject of the clerkship afterwards, if you please. An authoress, Miss Galindo! You surprise me!”
“But, indeed, I was. All was quite ready. Doctor Burney used to teach me music: not that I ever could learn, but it was a fancy of my poor father’s. And his daughter wrote a book, and they said she was but a very young lady, and nothing but a music-master’s daughter; so why should not I try?”
“Well?”
“Well! I got paper and half-a-hundred good pens, a bottle of ink, all ready——”
“And then——”
“O, it ended in my having nothing to say, when I sat down to write. But sometimes, when I get hold of a book, I wonder why I let such a poor reason stop me. It does not others.”
“But I think it was very well it did, Miss Galindo,” said her ladyship. “I am extremely against women usurping men’s employments, as they are very apt to do. But perhaps, after all, the notion of writing a book improved your hand. It is one of the most legible I ever saw.”
“I despise z’s without tails,” said Miss Galindo, with a good deal of gratified pride at my lady’s praise. Presently, my lady took her to look at a curious old cabinet, which Lord Ludlow had picked up at the Hague; and while they were out of the room on this errand, I suppose the question of remuneration was settled, for I heard no more of it.
When they came back, they were talking of Mr. Gray. Miss Galindo was unsparing in her expressions of opinion about him: going much farther than my lady—in her language, at least.
“A little blushing man like him, who can’t say boo to a goose without hesitating and colouring, to come to this village—which is as good a village as ever lived—and cry us down for a set of sinners, as if we had all committed murder and that other thing!—I have no patience with him, my lady. And then, how is he to help us to heaven, by teaching us our a b, ab—b a, ba? And yet, by all accounts, that’s to save poor children’s souls. O, I knew your ladyship would agree with me.I am sure my mother was as good a creature as ever breathed the blessed air; and if she’s not gone to heaven, I don’t want to go there; and she could not spell a letter decently. And does Mr. Gray think God took note of that?”
“I was sure you would agree with me, Miss Galindo,” said my lady. “You and I can remember how this talk about education—Rousseau, and his writings—stirred up the French people to their Reign of Terror, and all those bloody scenes.”
“I’m afraid that Rousseau and Mr. Gray are birds of a feather,” replied Miss Galindo, shaking her head. “And yet there is some good in the young man, too. He sat up all night with Billy Davis, when his wife was fairly worn out with nursing him.”
“Did he, indeed!” said my lady, her face lighting up, as it always did when she heard of any kind or generous action, no matter who performed it. “What a pity he is bitten with these new revolutionary ideas, and is so much for disturbing the established order of society!”
When Miss Galindo went, she left so favourable an impression of her visit on my lady, that she said to me with a pleased smile:
“I think I have provided Mr. Horner with a far better clerk than he would have made of that ladGregson in twenty years. And I will send the lad to my lord’s grieve, in Scotland, that he may be kept out of harm’s way.”
But something happened to the lad before this purpose could be accomplished.
Thenext morning, Miss Galindo made her appearance, and, by some mistake, unusual in my lady’s well-trained servants, was shown into the room where I was trying to walk; for a certain amount of exercise was prescribed for me, painful although the exertion had become.
She brought a little basket along with her; and while the footman was gone to inquire my lady’s wishes (for I don’t think that Lady Ludlow expected Miss Galindo so soon to assume her clerkship; nor, indeed, had Mr. Horner any work of any kind ready for his new assistant to do), she launched out into conversation with me.
“It was a sudden summons, my dear! However, as I have often said to myself, ever since an occasion long ago, if Lady Ludlow ever honours me by asking for my right hand, I’ll cut it off, and wrap the stump up so tidily she shall never find out it bleeds. But, if I had had a little more time, I could have mended my pens better.You see, I have had to sit up pretty late to get these sleeves made”—and she took out of her basket a pair of brown-holland over-sleeves, very much such as a grocer’s apprentice wears—“and I had only time to make seven or eight pens, out of some quills Farmer Thomson gave me last autumn. As for ink, I’m thankful to say, that’s always ready; an ounce of steel filings, an ounce of nut-gall, and a pint of water (tea, if you’re extravagant, which, thank Heaven! I’m not), put all in a bottle, and hang it up behind the house door, so that the whole gets a good shaking every time you slam it to—and even if you are in a passion and bang it, as Sally and I often do, it is all the better for it—and there’s my ink ready for use; ready to write my lady’s will with, if need be.”
“O, Miss Galindo!” said I, “don’t talk so; my lady’s will! and she not dead yet.”
“And if she were, what would be the use of talking of making her will! Now, if you were Sally, I should say, ‘Answer me that, you goose!’ But, as you’re a relation of my lady’s, I must be civil, and only say, ‘I can’t think how you can talk so like a fool!’ To be sure, poor thing, you’re lame!”
I do not know how long she would have gone on; but my lady came in, and I, released from my duty of entertaining Miss Galindo, made my limping way intothe next room. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid of Miss Galindo’s tongue, for I never knew what she would say next.
After a while my lady came, and began to look in the bureau for something; and as she looked she said:
“I think Mr. Horner must have made some mistake, when he said he had so much work that he almost required a clerk, for this morning he cannot find anything for Miss Galindo to do; and there she is, sitting with her pen behind her ear, waiting for something to write. I am come to find her my mother’s letters, for I should like to have a fair copy made of them. O, here they are! don’t trouble yourself, my dear child.”
When my lady returned again, she sat down and began to talk of Mr. Gray.
“Miss Galindo says she saw him going to hold a prayer-meeting in a cottage. Now, that really makes me unhappy, it is so like what Mr. Wesley used to do in my younger days; and since then we have had rebellion in the American colonies and the French revolution. You may depend upon it, my dear, making religion and education common—vulgarising them, as it were—is a bad thing for a nation. A man who hears prayers read in the cottage where he has just supped on bread and bacon, forgets the respect due to achurch: he begins to think that one place is as good as another, and, by-and-by, that one person is as good as another; and after that, I always find that people begin to talk of their rights, instead of thinking of their duties. I wish Mr. Gray had been more tractable, and had left well alone. What do you think I heard this morning? Why, that the Home Hill estate, which niches into the Hanbury property, was bought by a Baptist baker from Birmingham!”
“A Baptist baker!” I exclaimed. I had never seen a Dissenter, to my knowledge; but, having always heard them spoken of with horror, I looked upon them almost as if they were rhinoceroses. I wanted to see a live Dissenter, I believe, and yet I wished it were over. I was almost surprised when I heard that any of them were engaged in such peaceful occupations as baking.
“Yes! so Mr. Horner tells me. A Mr. Lambe, I believe. But, at any rate, he is a Baptist, and has been in trade. What with his schismatism and Mr. Gray’s methodism, I am afraid all the primitive character of this place will vanish.”
From what I could hear, Mr. Gray seemed to be taking his own way; at any rate, more than he had done when he first came to the village, when his natural timidity had made him defer to my lady, and seek her consent and sanction before embarking in any newplan. But newness was a quality Lady Ludlow especially disliked. Even in the fashions of dress and furniture, she clung to the old, to the modes which had prevailed when she was young; and, though she had a deep personal regard for Queen Charlotte (to whom, as I have already said, she had been maid-of-honour), yet there was a tinge of Jacobitism about her, such as made her extremely dislike to hear Prince Charles Edward called the Young Pretender, as many loyal people did in those days, and made her fond of telling of the thorn-tree in my lord’s park in Scotland, which had been planted by bonny Queen Mary herself, and before which every guest in the Castle of Monkshaven was expected to stand bare-headed, out of respect to the memory and misfortunes of the royal planter.
We might play at cards, if we so chose, on a Sunday; at least, I suppose we might, for my lady and Mr. Mountford used to do so often when I first went. But we must neither play cards, nor read, nor sew on the fifth of November and on the thirtieth of January, but must go to church, and meditate all the rest of the day—and very hard work meditating was. I would far rather have scoured a room. That was the reason, I suppose, why a passive life was seen to be better discipline for me than an active one.
But I am wandering away from my lady, and her dislike to all innovation. Now, it seemed to me, as far as I heard, that Mr. Gray was full of nothing but new things, and that what he first did was to attack all our established institutions, both in the village and the parish, and also in the nation. To be sure, I heard of his ways of going on principally from Miss Galindo, who was apt to speak more strongly than accurately.
“There he goes,” she said, “clucking up the children just like an old hen, and trying to teach them about their salvation and their souls, and I don’t know what—things that it is just blasphemy to speak about out of church. And he potters old people about reading their Bibles. I am sure I don’t want to speak disrespectfully about the Holy Scriptures, but I found old Job Horton busy reading his Bible yesterday. Says I, ‘What are you reading, and where did you get it, and who gave it you?’ So he made answer, ‘That he was reading Susannah and the Elders, for that he had read Bel and the Dragon till he could pretty near say it off by heart, and they were two as pretty stories as ever he had read, and that it was a caution to him what bad old chaps there were in the world.’ Now, as Job is bed-ridden, I don’t think he is likely to meet with the Elders, and I say that I think repeating his Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, and, maybe,throwing in a verse of the Psalms, if he wanted a bit of a change, would have done him far more good than his pretty stories, as he called them. And what’s the next thing our young parson does? Why he tries to make us all feel pitiful for the black slaves, and leaves little pictures of negroes about, with the question printed below, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ just as if I was to be hail-fellow-well-met with every negro footman. They do say he takes no sugar in his tea, because he thinks he sees spots of blood in it. Now I call that superstition.”
The next day it was a still worse story.
“Well, my dear! and how are you? My lady sent me in to sit a bit with you, while Mr. Horner looks out some papers for me to copy. Between ourselves, Mr. Steward Horner does not like having me for a clerk. It is all very well, he does not; for, if he were decently civil to me, I might want a chaperone, you know, now poor Mrs. Horner is dead.” This was one of Miss Galindo’s grim jokes. “As it is, I try to make him forget I’m a woman, I do everything as ship-shape as a masculine man-clerk. I see he can’t find a fault—writing good, spelling correct, sums all right. And then he squints up at me with the tail of his eye, and looks glummer than ever, just because I’m a woman—as if I could help that. I have gone good lengths toset his mind at ease. I have stuck my pen behind my ear, I have made him a bow instead of a curtsey, I have whistled—not a tune, I can’t pipe up that—nay, if you won’t tell my lady, I don’t mind telling you that I have said ‘Confound it!’ and ‘Zounds!’ I can’t get any farther. For all that, Mr. Horner won’t forget I am a lady, and so I am not half the use I might be, and if it were not to please my Lady Ludlow, Mr. Horner and his books might go hang (see how natural that came out!). And there is an order for a dozen nightcaps for a bride, and I am so afraid I shan’t have time to do them. Worst of all, there’s Mr. Gray taking advantage of my absence to seduce Sally!”
“To seduce Sally! Mr. Gray!”
“Pooh, pooh, child! There’s many a kind of seduction. Mr. Gray is seducing Sally to want to go to church. There has he been twice at my house, while I have been away in the mornings, talking to Sally about the state of her soul and that sort of thing. But when I found the meat all roasted to a cinder, I said, ‘Come, Sally, let’s have no more praying when beef is down at the fire. Pray at six o’clock in the morning and nine at night, and I won’t hinder you.’ So she sauced me, and said something about Martha and Mary, implying that, because she had let the beef get so overdone that I declare I could hardly find a bit fit forNancy Pole’s sick grandchild, she had chosen the better part. I was very much put about, I own, and perhaps you’ll be shocked at what I said—indeed, I don’t know if it was right myself—but I told her I had a soul as well as she, and if it was to be saved by my sitting still and thinking about salvation and never doing my duty, I thought I had as good a right as she had to be Mary, and save my soul. So, that afternoon I sat quite still, and it was really a comfort, for I am often too busy, I know, to pray as I ought. There is first one person wanting me, and then another, and the house and the food and the neighbours to see after. So, when tea-time comes, there enters my maid with her hump on her back, and her soul to be saved. ‘Please, ma’am, did you order the pound of butter?’—-‘No, Sally,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘this morning I did not go round by Hale’s farm, and this afternoon I have been employed in spiritual things.’
“Now, our Sally likes tea and bread-and-butter above everything, and dry bread was not to her taste.
“‘I’m thankful,’ said the impudent hussy, ‘that you have taken a turn towards godliness. It will be my prayers, I trust, that’s given it you.’
“I was determined not to give her an opening towards the carnal subject of butter, so she lingered still, longing to ask leave to run for it. But I gaveher none, and munched my dry bread myself, thinking what a famous cake I could make for little Ben Pole with the bit of butter we were saving; and when Sally had had her butterless tea, and was in none of the best of tempers because Martha had not bethought herself of the butter, I just quietly said:
“‘Now, Sally, to-morrow we’ll try to hash that beef well, and to remember the butter, and to work out our salvation all at the same time, for I don’t see why it can’t all be done, as God has set us to do it all.’ But I heard her at it again about Mary and Martha, and I have no doubt that Mr. Gray will teach her to consider me a lost sheep.”
I had heard so many little speeches about Mr. Gray from one person or another, all speaking against him, as a mischief-maker, a setter-up of new doctrines, and of a fanciful standard of life (and you may be sure that, where Lady Ludlow led, Mrs. Medlicott and Adams were certain to follow, each in their different ways showing the influence my lady had over them), that I believe I had grown to consider him as a very instrument of evil, and to expect to perceive in his face marks of his presumption, and arrogance, and impertinent interference. It was now many weeks since I had seen him, and when he was one morning shown into the blue drawing-room (into which I had beenremoved for a change), I was quite surprised to see how innocent and awkward a young man he appeared, confused even more than I was at our unexpected tête-à-tête. He looked thinner, his eyes more eager, his expression more anxious, and his colour came and went more than it had done when I had seen him last. I tried to make a little conversation, as I was, to my own surprise, more at my ease than he was; but his thoughts were evidently too much preoccupied for him to do more than answer me with monosyllables.
Presently my lady came in. Mr. Gray twitched and coloured more than ever; but plunged into the middle of his subject at once.
“My lady, I cannot answer it to my conscience, if I allow the children of this village to go on any longer the little heathens that they are. I must do something to alter their condition. I am quite aware that your ladyship disapproves of many of the plans which have suggested themselves to me; but nevertheless I must do something, and I am come now to your ladyship to ask respectfully, but firmly, what you would advise me to do.”
His eyes were dilated, and I could almost have said they were full of tears with his eagerness. But I am sure it is a bad plan to remind people of decided opinions which they have once expressed, if you wishthem to modify those opinions. Now, Mr. Gray had done this with my lady; and though I do not mean to say she was obstinate, yet she was not one to retract.
She was silent for a moment or two before she replied.
“You ask me to suggest a remedy for an evil of the existence of which I am not conscious,” was her answer—very coldly, very gently given. “In Mr. Mountford’s time I heard no such complaints: whenever I see the village children (and they are not unfrequent visitors at this house, on one pretext or another), they are well and decently behaved.”
“Oh, madam, you cannot judge,” he broke in. “They are trained to respect you in word and deed; you are the highest they ever look up to; they have no notion of a higher.”
“Nay, Mr. Gray,” said my lady, smiling, “they are as loyally disposed as any children can be. They come up here every fourth of June, and drink his Majesty’s health, and have buns, and (as Margaret Dawson can testify) they take a great and respectful interest in all the pictures I can show them of the Royal family.”
“But, madam, I think of something higher than any earthly dignities.”
My lady coloured at the mistake she had made; for she herself was truly pious. Yet when she resumedthe subject, it seemed to me as if her tone was a little sharper than before.
“Such want of reverence is, I should say, the clergyman’s fault. You must excuse me, Mr. Gray, if I speak plainly.”
“My lady, I want plain-speaking. I myself am not accustomed to those ceremonies and forms which are, I suppose, the etiquette in your ladyship’s rank of life, and which seem to hedge you in from any power of mine to touch you. Among those with whom I have passed my life hitherto, it has been the custom to speak plainly out what we have felt earnestly. So, instead of needing any apology from your ladyship for straightforward speaking, I will meet what you say at once, and admit that it is the clergyman’s fault, in a great measure, when the children of his parish swear, and curse, and are brutal, and ignorant of all saving grace; nay, some of them of the very name of God. And because this guilt of mine, as the clergyman of this parish, lies heavy on my soul, and every day leads but from bad to worse, till I am utterly bewildered how to do good to children who escape from me as if I were a monster, and who are growing up to be men fit for and capable of any crime, but those requiring wit or sense, I come to you, who seem to me all-powerful, as far as material power goes—for your ladyship only knowsthe surface of things, and barely that, that pass in your village—to help me with advice, and such outward help as you can give.”
Mr. Gray had stood up and sat down once or twice while he had been speaking, in an agitated, nervous kind of way, and now he was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, after which he trembled all over.
My lady rang for a glass of water, and looked much distressed.
“Mr. Gray,” said she, “I am sure you are not well; and that makes you exaggerate childish faults into positive evils. It is always the case with us when we are not strong in health. I hear of you exerting yourself in every direction: you over-work yourself, and the consequence is, that you imagine us all worse people than we are.”
And my lady smiled very kindly and pleasantly at him, as he sat, a little panting, a little flushed, trying to recover his breath. I am sure that now they were brought face to face, she had quite forgotten all the offence she had taken at his doings when she heard of them from others; and, indeed, it was enough to soften any one’s heart to see that young, almost boyish face, looking in such anxiety and distress.
“O, my lady, what shall I do?” he asked, as soon as he could recover breath, and with such an air ofhumility that I am sure no one who had seen it could have ever thought him conceited again. “The evil of this world is too strong for me. I can do so little. It is all in vain. It was only to-day——” And again the cough and agitation returned.
“My dear Mr. Gray,” said my lady (the day before, I could never have believed she could have called him My dear), “you must take the advice of an old woman about yourself. You are not fit to do anything just now but attend to your own health: rest, and see a doctor (but, indeed, I will take care of that), and when you are pretty strong again, you will find that you have been magnifying evils to yourself.”
“But, my lady, I cannot rest. The evils do exist, and the burden of their continuance lies on my shoulders. I have no place to gather the children together in, that I may teach them the things necessary to salvation. The rooms in my own house are too small; but I have tried them. I have money of my own; and, as your ladyship knows, I tried to get a piece of leasehold property on which to build a school-house at my own expense. Your ladyship’s lawyer comes forward, at your instructions, to enforce some old feudal right, by which no building is allowed on leasehold property without the sanction of the Lady of the Manor. It may be all very true; but it was a cruelthing to do,—that is, if your ladyship had known (which I am sure you do not) the real moral and spiritual state of my poor parishioners. And now I come to you to know what I am to do? Rest! I cannot rest, while children whom I could possibly save are being left in their ignorance, their blasphemy, their uncleanness, their cruelty. It is known through the village that your ladyship disapproves of my efforts, and opposes all my plans. If you think them wrong, foolish, ill-digested (I have been a student, living in a college, and eschewing all society but that of pious men, until now: I may not judge for the best, in my ignorance of this sinful human nature), tell me of better plans and wiser projects for accomplishing my end; but do not bid me rest, with Satan compassing me round, and stealing souls away.”
“Mr. Gray,” said my lady, “there may be some truth in what you have said. I do not deny it, though I think, in your present state of indisposition and excitement, you exaggerate it much. I believe—nay, the experience of a pretty long life has convinced me—that education is a bad thing, if given indiscriminately. It unfits the lower orders for their duties, the duties to which they are called by God, of submission to those placed in authority over them, of contentment with that state of life to which it has pleased God to callthem, and of ordering themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters. I have made this conviction of mine tolerably evident to you; and have expressed distinctly my disapprobation of some of your ideas. You may imagine, then, that I was not well pleased when I found that you had taken a rood or more of Farmer Hale’s land, and were laying the foundations of a school-house. You had done this without asking for my permission, which, as Farmer Hale’s liege lady, ought to have been obtained legally, as well as asked for out of courtesy. I put a stop to what I believed to be calculated to do harm to a village, to a population in which, to say the least of it, I may be supposed to take as much interest as you can do. How can reading and writing, and the multiplication-table (if you choose to go so far), prevent blasphemy, and uncleanness and cruelty? Really, Mr. Gray, I hardly like to express myself to strongly on the subject in your present state of health, as I should do at any other time. It seems to me that books do little; character much; and character is not formed from books.”
“I do not think of character: I think of souls. I must get some hold upon these children, or what will become of them in the next world? I must be found to have some power beyond what they have, and which they are rendered capable of appreciating, before theywill listen to me. At present, physical force is all they look up to; and I have none.”
“Nay, Mr. Gray, by your own admission, they look up to me.”
“They would not do anything your ladyship disliked if it was likely to come to your knowledge; but if they could conceal it from you, the knowledge of your dislike to a particular line of conduct would never make them cease from pursuing it.”
“Mr. Gray”—surprise in her air, and some little indignation—“they and their fathers have lived on the Hanbury lands for generations!”
“I cannot help it, madam. I am telling you the truth, whether you believe me or not.” There was a pause; my lady looking perplexed, and somewhat ruffled; Mr. Gray as though hopeless and wearied out. “Then, my lady,” said he, at last, rising as he spoke, “you can suggest nothing to ameliorate the state of things which, I do assure you, does exist on your lands, and among your tenants. Surely, you will not object to my using Farmer Hale’s great barn every Sabbath? He will allow me the use of it, if your ladyship will grant your permission.”
“You are not fit for any extra work at present,” (and indeed he had been coughing very much all through the conversation). “Give me time to considerof it. Tell me what you wish to teach. You will be able to take care of your health and grow stronger while I consider. It shall not be the worse for you, if you leave it in my hands for a time.”
My lady spoke very kindly; but he was in too excited a state to recognise the kindness, while the idea of delay was evidently a sore irritation. I heard him say: “And I have so little time in which to do my work. Lord! lay not this sin to my charge.”
But my lady was speaking to the old butler, for whom, at her sign, I had rung the bell some little time before. Now she turned round.
“Mr. Gray, I find I have some bottles of Malmsey, of the vintage of seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, yet left. Malmsey, as perhaps you know, used to be considered a specific for coughs arising from weakness. You must permit me to send you half-a-dozen bottles, and, depend upon it, you will take a more cheerful view of life and its duties before you have finished them, especially if you will be so kind as to see Doctor Trevor, who is coming to see me in the course of the week. By the time you are strong enough to work, I will try and find some means of preventing the children from using such bad language, and otherwise annoying you.”
“My lady, it is the sin, and not the annoyance. I wish I could make you understand.” He spoke withsome impatience; poor fellow, he was too weak, exhausted, and nervous. “I am perfectly well; I can set to work to-morrow; I will do anything not to be oppressed with the thought of how little I am doing. I do not want your wine. Liberty to act in the manner I think right, will do me far more good. But it is of no use. It is preordained that I am to be nothing but a cumberer of the ground. I beg your ladyship’s pardon for this call.”
He stood up, and then turned dizzy. My lady looked on, deeply hurt, and not a little offended. He held out his hand to her, and I could see that she had a little hesitation before she took it. He then saw me, I almost think, for the first time; and put out his hand once more, drew it back, as if undecided, put it out again, and finally took hold of mine for an instant in his damp, listless hand, and was gone.
Lady Ludlow was dissatisfied with both him and herself, I was sure. Indeed, I was dissatisfied with the result of the interview myself. But my lady was not one to speak out her feelings on the subject; nor was I one to forget myself, and begin on a topic which she did not begin. She came to me, and was very tender with me; so tender, that that, and the thoughts of Mr. Grays sick, hopeless, disappointed look, nearly made me cry.
“You are tired, little one,” said my lady. “Go and lie down in my room, and hear what Medlicott and I can decide upon in the way of strengthening dainties for that poor young man, who is killing himself with his over-sensitive conscientiousness.”
“O, my lady!” said I, and then I stopped.
“Well. What?” asked she.
“If you would but let him have Farmer Hale’s barn at once, it would do him more good than all.”
“Pooh, pooh, child!” though I don’t think she was displeased, “he is not fit for more work just now. I shall go and write for Doctor Trevor.”
And, for the next half-hour, we did nothing but arrange physical comforts and cures for poor Mr. Gray. At the end of the time, Mrs. Medlicott said:
“Has your ladyship heard that Harry Gregson has fallen from a tree, and broken his thigh-bone, and is like to be a cripple for life?”
“Harry Gregson! That black-eyed lad who read my letter? It all comes from over-education!”
ButI don’t see how my lady could think it was over education that made Harry Gregson break his thigh, for the manner in which he met with the accident was this:—
Mr. Horner, who had fallen sadly out of health since his wife’s death, had attached himself greatly to Harry Gregson. Now, Mr. Horner had a cold manner to every one, and never spoke more than was necessary, at the best of times. And, latterly, it had not been the best of times with him. I dare say, he had had some causes for anxiety (of which I knew nothing) about my lady’s affairs; and he was evidently annoyed by my lady’s whim (as he once inadvertently called it) of placing Miss Galindo under him in the position of a clerk. Yet he had always been friends, in his quiet way, with Miss Galindo, and she devoted herself to her new occupation with diligence and punctuality, although more than once she had moaned to me over the ordersfor needlework which had been sent to her, and which, owing to her occupation in the service of Lady Ludlow, she had been unable to fulfil.
The only living creature to whom the staid Mr. Horner could be said to be attached, was Harry Gregson. To my lady he was a faithful and devoted servant, looking keenly after her interests, and anxious to forward them at any cost of trouble to himself. But the more shrewd Mr. Horner was, the more probability was there of his being annoyed at certain peculiarities of opinion which my lady held with a quiet, gentle pertinacity; against which no arguments, based on mere worldly and business calculations, made any way. This frequent opposition to views which Mr. Horner entertained, although it did not interfere with the sincere respect which the lady and the steward felt for each other, yet prevented any warmer feeling of affection from coming in. It seems strange to say it, but I must repeat it—the only person for whom, since his wife’s death, Mr. Horner seemed to feel any love, was the little imp Harry Gregson, with his bright, watchful eyes, his tangled hair hanging right down to his eyebrows, for all the world like a Skye terrier. This lad, half gipsy and whole poacher, as many people esteemed him, hung about the silent, respectable, staid Mr. Horner, and followed his steps withsomething of the affectionate fidelity of the dog which he resembled. I suspect, this demonstration of attachment to his person on Harry Gregson’s part was what won Mr. Horner’s regard. In the first instance, the steward had only chosen the lad out as the cleverest instrument he could find for his purpose; and I don’t mean to say that, if Harry had not been almost as shrewd as Mr. Horner himself was, both by original disposition and subsequent experience, the steward would have taken to him as he did, let the lad have shown ever so much affection for him.
But even to Harry Mr. Horner was silent. Still, it was pleasant to find himself in many ways so readily understood; to perceive that the crumbs of knowledge he let fall were picked up by his little follower, and hoarded like gold; that here was one to hate the persons and things whom Mr. Horner coldly disliked, and to reverence and admire all those for whom he had any regard. Mr. Horner had never had a child, and unconsciously, I suppose, something of the paternal feeling had begun to develop itself in him towards Harry Gregson. I heard one or two things from different people, which have always made me fancy that Mr. Horner secretly and almost unconsciously hoped that Harry Gregson might be trained so as to be first his clerk, and next his assistant, and finally his successor in his stewardship to the Hanbury estates.
Harry’s disgrace with my lady, in consequence of his reading the letter, was a deeper blow to Mr. Horner than his quiet manner would ever have led any one to suppose, or than Lady Ludlow ever dreamed of inflicting, I am sure.
Probably Harry had a short, stern, rebuke from Mr. Horner at the time, for his manner was always hard even to those he cared for the most. But Harry’s love was not to be daunted or quelled by a few sharp words. I dare say, from what I heard of them afterwards, that Harry accompanied Mr. Horner in his walk over the farm the very day of the rebuke; his presence apparently unnoticed by the agent, by whom his absence would have been painfully felt nevertheless. That was the way of it, as I have been told. Mr. Horner never bade Harry go with him; never thanked him for going, or being at his heels ready to run on any errands, straight as the crows flies to his point, and back to heel in as short a time as possible. Yet, if Harry were away, Mr. Horner never inquired the reason from any of the men who might be supposed to know whether he was detained by his father, or otherwise engaged; he never asked Harry himself where he had been. But Miss Galindo said that those labourerswho knew Mr. Horner well, told her that he was always more quick-eyed to short-comings, more savage-like in fault-finding, on those days when the lad was absent.
Miss Galindo, indeed, was my great authority for most of the village news which I heard. She it was who gave me the particulars of poor Harry’s accident.
“You see, my dear,” she said, “the little poacher has taken some unaccountable fancy to my master.” (This was the name by which Miss Galindo always spoke of Mr. Horner to me, ever since she had been, as she called it, appointed his clerk.)
“Now, if I had twenty hearts to lose, I never could spare a bit of one of them for that good, grey, square severe man. But different people have different tastes, and here is that little imp of a gipsy-tinker ready to turn slave for my master; and, odd enough, my master,—who, I should have said before-hand, would have made short work of imp, and imp’s family, and have sent Hall, the Bang-beggar, after them in no time—my master, as they tell me, is in his way quite fond of the lad, and if he could, without vexing my lady too much, he would have made him what the folks here call a Latiner. However, last night, it seems that there was a letter of some importance forgotten (I can’t tell you what it was about, my dear, though Iknow perfectly well, but ‘service oblige,’ as well as ‘noblesse,’ and you must take my word for it that it was important, and one that I am surprised my master could forget), till too late for the post. (The poor, good, orderly man is not what he was before his wife’s death.) Well, it seems that he was sore annoyed by his forgetfulness, and well he might be. And it was all the more vexatious, as he had no one to blame but himself. As for that matter, I always scold somebody else when I’m in fault; but I suppose my master would never think of doing that, else it’s a mighty relief. However, he could eat no tea, and was altogether put out and gloomy. And the little faithful imp-lad, perceiving all this, I suppose, got up like a page in an old ballad, and said he would run for his life across country to Comberford, and see if he could not get there before the bags were made up. So my master gave him the letter, and nothing more was heard of the poor fellow till this morning, for the father thought his son was sleeping in Mr. Horner’s barn, as he does occasionally it seems, and my master, as was very natural, that he had gone to his father’s.”
“And he had fallen down the old stone quarry, had he not?”
“Yes, sure enough. Mr. Gray had been up here fretting my lady with some of his new-fangled schemes,and because the young man could not have it all his own way, from what I understand, he was put out, and thought he would go home by the back lane, instead of through the village, where the folks would notice if the parson looked glum. But, however, it was a mercy, and I don’t mind saying so, ay, and meaning it too, though it may be like methodism, for, as Mr. Gray walked by the quarry, he heard a groan, and at first he thought it was a lamb fallen down; and he stood still, and then he heard it again; and then, I suppose, he looked down and saw Harry. So he let himself down by the boughs of the trees to the ledge where Harry lay half-dead, and with his poor thigh broken. There he had lain ever since the night before: he had been returning to tell the master that he had safely posted the letter, and the first words he said, when they recovered him from the exhausted state he was in, were” (Miss Galindo tried hard not to whimper, as she said it), “‘It was in time, sir. I see’d it put in the bag with my own eyes.’”
“But where is he?” asked I. “How did Mr. Gray get him out?”
“Ay! there it is, you see. Why the old gentleman (I daren’t say Devil in Lady Ludlow’s house) is not so black as he is painted; and Mr. Gray must have a deal of good in him, as I say at times; and then atothers, when he has gone against me, I can’t bear him, and think hanging too good for him. But he lifted the poor lad, as if he had been a baby, I suppose, and carried him up the great ledges that were formerly used for steps; and laid him soft and easy on the wayside grass, and ran home and got help and a door, and had him carried to his house, and laid on his bed; and then somehow, for the first time either he or any one else perceived it, he himself was all over blood—his own blood—he had broken a blood-vessel; and there he lies in the little dressing-room, as white and as still as if he were dead; and the little imp in Mr. Gray’s own bed, sound asleep, now his leg is set, just as if linen sheets and a feather bed were his native element, as one may say. Really, now he is doing so well, I’ve no patience with him, lying there where Mr. Gray ought to be. It is just what my lady always prophesied would come to pass, if there was any confusion of ranks.”
“Poor Mr. Gray!” said I, thinking of his flushed face, and his feverish, restless ways, when he had been calling on my lady not an hour before his exertions on Harry’s behalf. And I told Miss Galindo how ill I had thought him.
“Yes,” said she. “And that was the reason my lady had sent for Doctor Trevor. Well, it has fallenout admirably, for he looked well after that old donkey of a Prince, and saw that he made no blunders.”
Now “that old donkey of a Prince” meant the village surgeon, Mr. Prince, between whom and Miss Galindo there was war to the knife, as they often met in the cottages, when there was illness, and she had her queer, odd recipes, which he, with his grand pharmacopœia, held in infinite contempt, and the consequence of their squabbling had been, not long before this very time, that he had established a kind of rule, that into whatever sick-room Miss Galindo was admitted, there he refused to visit. But Miss Galindo’s prescriptions and visits cost nothing, and were often backed by kitchen-physic; so, though it was true that she never came but she scolded about something or other, she was generally preferred as medical attendant to Mr. Prince.
“Yes, the old donkey is obliged to tolerate me, and be civil to me; for, you see, I got there first, and had possession, as it were, and yet my lord the donkey likes the credit of attending the parson, and being in consultation with so grand a county-town doctor as Doctor Trevor. And Doctor Trevor is an old friend of mine” (she sighed a little, some time I may tell you why), “and treats me with infinite bowing and respect; so the donkey, not to be out of medical fashion, bows too, though it is sadly against the grain: and he pulled aface as if he had heard a slate-pencil gritting against a slate, when I told Doctor Trevor I meant to sit up with the two lads, for I call Mr. Gray little more than a lad, and a pretty conceited one, too, at times.”
“But why should you sit up, Miss Galindo? It will tire you sadly.”
“Not it. You see, there is Gregson’s mother to keep quiet; for she sits by her lad, fretting and sobbing, so that I’m afraid of her disturbing Mr. Gray; and there’s Mr. Gray to keep quiet, for Doctor Trevor says his life depends on it; and there is medicine to be given to the one, and bandages to be attended to for the other; and the wild horde of gipsy brothers and sisters to be turned out, and the father to be held in from showing too much gratitude to Mr. Gray, who can’t bear it,—and who is to do it all but me? The only servant is old lame Betty, who once lived with me, andwouldleave me because she said I was always bothering—(there was a good deal of truth in what she said, I grant, but she need not have said it; a good deal of truth is best let alone at the bottom of the well), and what can she do,—deaf as ever she can be, too?”
So Miss Galindo went her ways; but not the less was she at her post in the morning; a little crosser and more silent than usual; but the first was not to be wondered at, and the last was rather a blessing.
Lady Ludlow had been extremely anxious both about Mr. Gray and Harry Gregson. Kind and thoughtful in any case of illness and accident, she always was; but somehow, in this, the feeling that she was not quite—what shall I call it?—“friends” seems hardly the right word to use, as to the possible feeling between the Countess Ludlow and the little vagabond messenger, who had only once been in her presence,—that she had hardly parted from either as she could have wished to do, had death been near, made her more than usually anxious. Doctor Trevor was not to spare obtaining the best medical advice the county could afford; whatever he ordered in the way of diet, was to be prepared under Mrs. Medlicott’s own eye, and sent down from the Hall to the Parsonage. As Mr. Horner had given somewhat similar directions, in the case of Harry Gregson at least, there was rather a multiplicity of counsellors and dainties, than any lack of them. And, the second night, Mr. Horner insisted on taking the superintendence of the nursing himself, and sat and snored by Harry’s bedside, while the poor, exhausted mother lay by her child,—thinking that she watched him, but in reality fast asleep, as Miss Galindo told us; for, distrusting any one’s powers of watching and nursing but her own, she had stolen across the quiet village street in cloak and dressing-gown, andfound Mr. Gray in vain trying to reach the cup of barley-water which Mr. Horner had placed just beyond his reach.
In consequence of Mr. Gray’s illness, we had to have a strange curate to do duty; a man who dropped his h’s, and hurried through the service, and yet had time enough to stand in my lady’s way, bowing to her as she came out of church, and so subservient in manner, that I believe that sooner than remain unnoticed by a countess, he would have preferred being scolded, or even cuffed. Now I found out, that great as was my lady’s liking and approval of respect, nay, even reverence, being paid to her as a person of quality,—a sort of tribute to her Order, which she had no individual right to remit, or, indeed, not to exact,—yet she, being personally simple, sincere, and holding herself in low esteem, could not endure anything like the servility of Mr. Crosse, the temporary curate. She grew absolutely to loathe his perpetual smiling and bowing; his instant agreement with the slightest opinion she uttered; his veering round as she blew the wind. I have often said that my lady did not talk much, as she might have done had she lived among her equals. But we all loved her so much, that we had learnt to interpret all her little ways pretty truly; and I knew what particular turns of her head, andcontractions of her delicate fingers meant, as well as if she had expressed herself in words. I began to suspect that my lady would be very thankful to have Mr. Gray about again, and doing his duty even with a conscientiousness that might amount to worrying himself, and fidgeting others; and although Mr. Gray might hold her opinions in as little esteem as those of any simple gentlewoman, she was too sensible not to feel how much flavour there was in his conversation, compared to that of Mr. Crosse, who was only her tasteless echo.
As for Miss Galindo, she was utterly and entirely a partisan of Mr. Gray’s, almost ever since she had begun to nurse him during his illness.
“You know, I never set up for reasonableness, my lady. So I don’t pretend to say, as I might do if I were a sensible woman and all that,—that I am convinced by Mr. Gray’s arguments of this thing or t’other. For one thing, you see, poor fellow! he has never been able to argue, or hardly indeed to speak, for Doctor Trevor has been very peremptory. So there’s been no scope for arguing! But what I mean is this:—When I see a sick man thinking always of others, and never of himself; patient, humble—a trifle too much at times, for I’ve caught him praying to be forgiven for having neglected his work as a parish priest,” (MissGalindo was making horrible faces, to keep back tears, squeezing up her eyes in a way which would have amused me at any other time, but when she was speaking of Mr. Gray); “when I see a downright good, religious man, I’m apt to think he’s got hold of the right clue, and that I can do no better than hold on by the tails of his coat and shut my eyes, if we’ve got to go over doubtful places on our road to Heaven. So, my lady, you must excuse me, if, when he gets about again, he is all agog about a Sunday-school, for if he is, I shall be agog too, and perhaps twice as bad as him, for, you see, I’ve a strong constitution compared to his, and strong ways of speaking and acting. And I tell your ladyship this now, because I think from your rank—and still more, if I may say so, for all your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you’ve a right to be first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can’t exactly call it, for I don’t see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I’m to shut my eyes, and leap over the ditch to the side of education. I’ve told Sally already, that if she does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, I’ll teach her her lessons; and I’ve never caught her with old Nelly since.”
I think Miss Galindo’s desertion to Mr. Gray’s opinions in this matter hurt my lady just a little bit; but she only said:
“Of course, if the parishioners wish for it, Mr. Gray must have his Sunday-school. I shall, in that case, withdraw my opposition. I am sorry I cannot change my opinions as easily as you.”
My lady made herself smile as she said this. Miss Galindo saw it was an effort to do so. She thought a minute before she spoke again.
“Your ladyship has not seen Mr. Gray as intimately as I have done. That’s one thing. But, as for the parishioners, they will follow your ladyship’s lead in everything; so there is no chance of their wishing for a Sunday-school.”
“I have never done anything to make them follow my lead, as you call it, Miss Galindo,” said my lady, gravely.
“Yes, you have,” replied Miss Galindo, bluntly. And then, correcting herself, she said, “Begging your ladyship’s pardon, you have. Your ancestors have lived here time out of mind, and have owned the land on which their forefathers have lived ever since there were forefathers. You yourself were born amongst them, and have been like a little queen to them ever since, I might say, and they’ve never known your ladyship do anything but what was kind and gentle;but I’ll leave fine speeches about your ladyship to Mr. Crosse. Only you, my lady, lead the thoughts of the parish; and save some of them a world of trouble, for they could never tell what was right if they had to think for themselves. It’s all quite right that they should be guided by you, my lady,—if only you would agree with Mr. Gray.”
“Well,” said my lady, “I told him only the last day that he was here, that I would think about it. I do believe I could make up my mind on certain subjects better if I were left alone, than while being constantly talked to about them.”
My lady said this in her usual soft tones; but the words had a tinge of impatience about them; indeed, she was more ruffled than I had often seen her; but, checking herself in an instant, she said:
“You don’t know how Mr. Horner drags in this subject of education apropos of everything. Not that he says much about it at any time: it is not his way. But he cannot let the thing alone.”
“I know why, my lady,” said Miss Galindo. “That poor lad, Harry Gregson, will never be able to earn his livelihood in any active way, but will be lame for life. Now, Mr. Horner thinks more of Harry than of any one else in the world,—except, perhaps, your ladyship.” Was it not a pretty companionship for mylady? “And he has schemes of his own for teaching Harry; and if Mr. Gray could but have his school, Mr. Horner and he think Harry might be schoolmaster, as your ladyship would not like to have him coming to you as steward’s clerk. I wish your ladyship would fall into this plan; Mr. Gray has it so at heart.”
Miss Galindo looked wistfully at my lady, as she said this. But my lady only said, drily, and rising at the same time, as if to end the conversation:
“So! Mr. Hornet and Mr. Gray seem to have gone a long way in advance of my consent to their plans.”
“There!” exclaimed Miss Galindo, as my lady left the room, with an apology for going away; “I have gone and done mischief with my long, stupid tongue. To be sure, people plan a long way ahead of to-day; more especially when one is a sick man, lying all through the weary day on a sofa.”
“My lady will soon get over her annoyance,” said I, as it were apologetically. I only stopped Miss Galindo’s self-reproaches to draw down her wrath upon myself.
“And has not she a right to be annoyed with me, if she likes, and to keep annoyed as long as she likes? Am I complaining of her, that you need tell me that? Let me tell you, I have known my lady these thirtyyears; and if she were to take me by the shoulders, and turn me out of the house, I should only love her the more. So don’t you think to come between us with any little mincing, peace-making speeches. I have been a mischief-making parrot, and I like her the better for being vexed with me. So good-bye to you, Miss; and wait till you know Lady Ludlow as well as I do, before you next think of telling me she will soon get over her annoyance!” And off Miss Galindo went.
I could not exactly tell what I had done wrong; but I took care never again to come in between my lady and her by any remark about the one to the other; for I saw that some most powerful bond of grateful affection made Miss Galindo almost worship my lady.
Meanwhile, Harry Gregson was limping a little about in the village, still finding his home in Mr. Gray’s house; for there he could most conveniently be kept under the doctor’s eye, and receive the requisite care, and enjoy the requisite nourishment. As soon as he was a little better, he was to go to Mr. Horner’s house; but, as the steward lived some distance out of the way, and was much from home, he had agreed to leave Harry at the house to which he had first been taken, until he was quite strong again; and the more willingly, I suspect, from what I heard afterwards, because Mr. Gray gave up all the little strength of speaking which he had, toeaching Harry in the very manner which Mr. Horner most desired.
As for Gregson the father—he—wild man of the woods, poacher, tinker, jack-of-all-trades—was getting tamed by this kindness to his child. Hitherto his hand had been against every man, as every man’s had been against him. That affair before the justice, which I told you about, when Mr. Gray and even my lady had interested themselves to get him released from unjust imprisonment, was the first bit of justice he had ever met with; it attracted him to the people, and attached him to the spot on which he had but squatted for a time. I am not sure if any of the villagers were grateful to him for remaining in their neighbourhood, instead of decamping as he had often done before, for good reasons, doubtless, of personal safely. Harry was only one out of a brood of ten or twelve children, some of whom had earned for themselves no good character in service: one, indeed, had been actually transported, for a robbery committed in a distant part of the county; and the tale was yet told in the village of how Gregson the father came back from the trial in a state of wild rage, striding through the place, and uttering oaths of vengeance to himself, his great black eyes gleaming out of his matted hair, and his arms working by his side, and now and then tossed up in hisimpotent despair. As I heard the account, his wife followed him, child-laden and weeping. After this, they had vanished from the country for a time, leaving their mud hovel locked up, and the door-key, as the neighbours said, buried in a hedge bank. The Gregsons had reappeared much about the same time that Mr. Gray came to Hanbury. He had either never heard of their evil character, or considered that it gave them all the more claims upon his Christian care, and the end of it was that this rough, untamed, strong giant of a heathen was loyal slave to the weak, hectic, nervous, self-distrustful parson. Gregson had also a kind of grumbling respect for Mr. Horner: he did not quite like the steward’s monopoly of his Harry: the mother submitted to that with a better grace, swallowing down her maternal jealousy in the prospect of her child’s advancement to a better and more respectable position than that in which his parents had struggled through life. But Mr. Horner, the steward, and Gregson, the poacher and squatter, had come into disagreeable contact too often in former days for them to be perfectly cordial at any future time. Even now, when there was no immediate cause for anything but gratitude for his child’s sake on Gregson’s part, he would skulk out of Mr. Horner’s way, if he saw him coming; and it took all Mr. Horner’s natural reserveand acquired self-restraint to keep him from occasionally holding up his father’s life as a warning to Harry. Now Gregson had nothing of this desire for avoidance with regard to Mr. Gray. The poacher had a feeling of physical protection towards the parson; while the latter had shown the moral courage, without which Gregson would never have respected him, in coming right down upon him more than once in the exercise of unlawful pursuits, and simply and boldly telling him he was doing wrong, with such a quiet reliance upon Gregson’s better feeling, at the same time, that the strong poacher could not have lifted a finger against Mr. Gray, though it had been to save himself from being apprehended and taken to the lockups the very next hour. He had rather listened to the parson’s bold words with an approving smile, much as Mr. Gulliver might have hearkened to a lecture from a Lilliputian. But when brave words passed into kind deeds, Gregson’s heart mutely acknowledged its master and keeper. And the beauty of it all was, that Mr. Gray knew nothing of the good work he had done, or recognised himself as the instrument which God had employed. He thanked God, it is true, fervently and often, that the work was done; and loved the wild man for his rough gratitude; but it never occurred to the poor young clergyman, lying on his sick-bed, andpraying, as Miss Galindo had told us he did, to be forgiven for his unprofitable life, to think of Gregson’s reclaimed soul as anything with which he had had to do. It was now more than three months since Mr. Gray had been at Hanbury Court. During all that time, he had been confined to his house, if not to his sick-bed, and he and my lady had never met since their last discussion and difference about Farmer Hale’s barn.
This was not my dear lady’s fault; no one could have been more attentive in every way to the slightest possible want of either of the invalids, especially of Mr. Gray. And he would have gone to see him at his own house, as she sent him word, but that her foot had slipped upon the polished oak staircase, and her ancle had been sprained.
So we had never seen Mr. Gray since his illness, when one November day he was announced as wishing to speak to my lady. She was sitting in her room—the room in which I lay now pretty constantly—and I remember she looked startled, when word was brought to her of Mr. Gray’s being at the Hall.
She could not go to him, she was too lame for that, so she bade him be shown into where she sat.
“Such a day for him to go out!” she exclaimed, looking at the fog which had crept up to the windows, and was sapping the little remaining life in the brilliantVirginian creeper leaves that draperied the house on the terrace side.
He came in white, trembling, his large eyes wild and dilated. He hastened up to Lady Ludlow’s chair, and, to my surprise, took one of her hands and kissed it, without speaking, yet shaking all over.
“Mr. Gray!” said she, quickly, with sharp, tremulous apprehension of some unknown evil. “What is it? There is something unusual about you.”
“Something unusual has occurred,” replied he, forcing his words to be calm, as with a great effort. “A gentleman came to my house, not half-an-hour ago—a Mr. Howard. He came straight from Vienna.”
“My son!” said my dear lady, stretching out her arms in dumb questioning attitude.
“The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
But my poor lady could not echo the words. He was the last remaining child. And once she had been the joyful mother of nine.
I amashamed to say what feeling become strongest in my mind about this time. Next to the sympathy we all of us felt for my dear lady in her deep sorrow, I mean. For that was greater and stronger than anything else, however contradictory you may think it, when you hear all.
It might arise from my being so far from well at the time, which produced a diseased mind in a diseased body; but I was absolutely jealous for my father’s memory, when I saw how many signs of grief there were for my lord’s death, he having done next to nothing for the village and parish, which now changed, as it were, its daily course of life, because his lordship died in a far-off city. My father had spent the best years of his manhood in labouring hard, body and soul, for the people amongst whom he lived. His family, of course, claimed the first place in his heart; he would have been good for little, even in the way of benevolence, if they had not. But close after them he caredfor his parishioners and neighbours. And yet, when he died, though the church-bells tolled, and smote upon our hearts with hard, fresh pain at every beat, the sounds of every-day life still went on, close pressing around us,—carts and carriages, street-cries, distant barrel-organs (the kindly neighbours kept them out of our street): life, active, noisy life, pressed on our acute consciousness of Death, and jarred upon it as on a quick nerve.
And when we went to church,—my father’s own church,—though the pulpit-cushions were black, and many of the congregation had put on some humble sign of mourning, yet it did not alter the whole material aspect of the place. And yet what was Lord Ludlow’s relation to Hanbury, compared to my father’s work and place in——?
O! it was very wicked in me! I think if I had seen my lady,—if I had dared to ask to go to her, I should not have felt so miserable, so discontented. But she sat in her own room, hung with black, all, even over the shutters. She saw no light but that which was artificial—candles, lamps, and the like, for more than a month. Only Adams went near her. Mr. Gray was not admitted, though he called daily. Even Mrs. Medlicott did not see her for near a fortnight. The sight of my lady’s griefs, or rather the recollection ofit, made Mrs. Medlicott talk far more than was her wont. She told us, with many tears, and much gesticulation, even speaking German at times, when her English would not flow, that my lady sat there, a white figure in the middle of the darkened room; a shaded lamp near her, the light of which fell on an open Bible,—the great family Bible. It was not opened at any chapter, or consoling verse; but at the page whereon were registered the births of her nine children. Five had died in infancy,—sacrificed to the cruel system which forbade the mother to suckle her babies. Four had lived longer; Urian had been the first to die, Ughtred-Mortimar, Earl Ludlow, the last.
My lady did not cry, Mrs. Medlicott said. She was quite composed; very still, very silent. She put aside everything that savoured of mere business; sent people to Mr. Horner for that. But she was proudly alive to every possible form which might do honour to the last of her race.
In those days, expresses were slow things, and forms still slower. Before my lady’s directions could reach Vienna, my lord was buried. There was some talk (so Mrs. Medlicott said) about taking the body up, and bringing him to Hanbury. But his executors,—connections on the Ludlow side,—demurred to this. If he were removed to England, he must be carried on toScotland, and interred with his Monkshaven forefathers. My lady, deeply hurt, withdrew from the discussion before it degenerated to an unseemly contest. But all the more, for this understood mortification of my lady’s, did the whole village and estate of Hanbury assume every outward sign of mourning. The church-bells tolled morning and evening. The church itself was draped in black inside. Hatchments were placed everywhere, where hatchments could be put. All the tenantry spoke in hushed voices for more than a week, scarcely daring to observe that all flesh, even that of an Earl Ludlow, and the last of the Hanburys, was but grass after all. The very Fighting Lion closed its front door, front shutters it had none, and those who needed drink stole in at the back, and were silent and maudlin over their cups, instead of riotous and noisy. Miss Galindo’s eyes were swollen up with crying, and she told me, with a fresh burst of tears, that even hump-backed Sally had been found sobbing over her Bible, and using a pocket-handkerchief for the first time in her life; her aprons having hitherto stood her in the necessary stead, but not being sufficiently in accordance with etiquette, to be used when mourning over an earl’s premature decease.
If it was in this way out of the Hall, “you might work it by the rule of three,” as Miss Galindo used tosay, and judge what it was in the Hall. We none of us spoke but in a whisper: we tried not to eat; and indeed the shock had been so really great, and we did really care so much for my lady, that for some days we had but little appetite. But after that, I fear our sympathy grew weaker, while our flesh grew stronger. But we still spoke low, and our hearts ached whenever we thought of my lady sitting there alone in the darkened room, with the light ever falling on that one solemn page.