Chapter Five.Gatty’s troubles.“And I come down no more to chilling praise,To sneers, to wearing out of empty days,But rest, rejoicing in the power I’ve won,To go on learning, though my crying’s done.”Isabella Fyvie Mayo.As the two girls turned into the little garden of Number Three, the latch of the door was lifted, and Mrs Jane came out.“Good evening!” said she. “Come to see my sister, are you? I and my Deb are doing for her to-day, for her Nell has got a holiday—gone to see her mother—lazy slut!”“Which is the lazy slut, Mrs Jane?” asked Rhoda, laughing.“Heyday! they’re all a parcel together,” answered Mrs Jane. “Nell and her mother, and her grandmother before them. And Marcella, too, she’s no better. Go in, if you want a string of complaints. You can come out when you’ve had plenty.”“How many complaints are plenty, Mrs Jane?”“One,” said Mrs Jane, marching off. “Plenty for me.”Rhoda lifted the latch, and walked in, Phoebe following her. She tapped at the inner door.“Oh, come in, whoever it is,” said a querulous, plaintive voice. “Well, Mrs Rhoda, I thought you would have been to see me before. A poor lonely creature, that nobody cares for, and never has any comfort nor pleasure! And who have you with you? I’m sure she’s in a deep consumption from the looks of her. Coltsfoot, my dear, and horehound, with plenty of sugar, boiled together; and a little mallow won’t hurt. But they’ll not do you much good, I should say; you’re too far gone: still, ’tis a duty to do all one can, and some strange things do happen: like Betty Collins—the doctors all gave her up, and there she is, walking about, as well as anybody. And so may you, my dear, though you don’t look like it. Still, you are young—there’s no telling: and coltsfoot is a very good thing, and makes wonderful cures. Oh, that careless Jane, to leave me all alone, just when I wanted my pillows shaking! And so inconsiderate of Nell to go home just to-day, of all days, when she knew I was sure to be worse; I always am after a fast-day. Fast-days don’t suit me at all; they are very bad for sick people. They make one’s spirits so low, and are sure to give me the vapours. Oh dear, that Jane!”“What’s the matter with that Jane?” demanded the bearer of the name, stalking in, as Phoebe was trying to brace up her courage to the point of offering to shake the pillows. “Want another dose of castor oil? I’ve got it.”A faint shriek of deprecation was the answer.“Oh dear! And you know how I hate it! Jane, do shake up my pillows. They feel as if there were stones instead of flocks in them, or—”“Nutmegs, no doubt,” suggested Mrs Jane. “Shake them up? Oh yes, and you too—do you both good.”“Oh, don’t, Jane! Have you an orange for me?”“Sit down, my dears,” said Mrs Jane, parenthetically. “Can’t afford them, Marcella. Plenty of black currant tea. Better for you.”“I don’t like it!” said Mrs Marcella, plaintively.“Oranges are eightpence a-piece, and currants may be had for the gathering,” observed Mrs Jane, sententiously.“They give me a pain in my side!” moaned the invalid.“Well, the oranges would give you a pain in your purse. I’d rather have one in my side, if I were you.”“You don’t know what it is to be ill!” said Mrs Marcella, closing her eyes.“Don’t I? I’ve had both small-pox and spotted fever.”“So long ago!”“Bless you, child! I’m not Methuselah!” said Mrs Jane.“Well, I think you might be, Jane, for really, the way in which you can sit up all night, and look as fresh as a daisy in the morning, when you have not had a wink of sleep, and I am perfectly worn-out with suffering—just skin and bone, and no more—”“There’s a little tongue left, I reckon!” said Mrs Jane.“The way she will get up and go to market, my dears, after such a night as that,” pursued Mrs Marcella, who always ran on her own line of rails, and never shunted to avoid collision; “you never saw anything like her—the amount she can bear! She’s as tough as a rhinoceros, and as strong as an elephant, and as wanting in feeling as—as—”“A sensitive plant,” popped in Mrs Jane. “Now, Marcella, open your mouth and shut your eyes, and take this.”“Is it castor oil?” faintly screamed the invalid, endeavouring to protect herself.“Stuff! ’Tis good Tent wine. Take it and be thankful.”“Where did you get it, Jane?”“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” said Mrs Jane. “It was honestly come by.”“Well, I think we must be going, Mrs Marcella,” said Rhoda, rising.“Oh, my dear! Must you, really? And so seldom as you come to see a poor thing like me, who hasn’t a living creature to care for her—except Jane, of course, and she doesn’t, not one bit! Dear! And to think that I was once a pretty young maid, with a little fortune of my own; and there was many a young gentleman, my dear, that would have given his right hand for no more than a smile from me—”“Heyday! how this world is given to lying!” interpolated Mrs Jane.“And we were a large family then—eight of us, my dear; and now they are all dead, and I am left quite alone, except Jane, you know. Oh dear, dear, but to think of it! But there is no thankfulness in the world, nor kindness neither. The people I have been good to! and now that I havecome downa little, to see how they treat me! Jane doesn’t mind it; she has no tender feelings at all; she can stand all things, and never say a word, I am sure I don’t know how she does it. I am all feeling! These things touch me so keenly. But Jane’s just like a stone. Well, good evening, my dear, if you must go. I think you might have come a little sooner, and you might come oftener, if you would. But that is always my lot, to be neglected and despised—a poor, lonely, ugly old maid, that nobody cares for. And it wasn’t my fault, I am sure; I never chose such a fate. I cannot think why such afflictions have been sent me. I am sure I am no worse than other people. Clarissa is a great deal vainer than I am; and Jane is ever so much harder; and as to Dorothy, why, ’tis misery to see her—she is so cheerful and full of mirth, and she has not a thing to be content with—it quite hurts me to see anyone like that. But people are so wanting in feeling! I am sure—”“Go, if you want,” said Mrs Jane, shortly, holding the door open.“Oh, yes, go! Of course you want to go!” lamented Mrs Marcella. “What pleasure can there be to a bright young maid like you, to sit with a poor, sick, miserable creature like me? Dear, dear! And only to think—”Rhoda escaped. Phoebe followed, more slowly. Mrs Jane came out after them, and shut the door behind them.“She’s in pain, this evening,” said the last-named person in her usual blunt style. “Some folks can bear pain, and some can’t. And those that can must beat with those that can’t. She’ll be better of letting it out a bit. Good evening.”“Oh, isn’t it dreadful!” said Rhoda, when they were out of the gate. “I just hate going to see Mrs Marcella, especially when she takes one of her complaining fits. If I were Mrs Jane, I should let her have it out by herself. But she is hard, rather—she doesn’t care as I should.”But Phoebe thought that a mistake. She had noticed the drawn brow of the silent sister, while the sufferer was detailing her string of troubles, and the sudden quiver of the under lip, when allusion was made to the eight of whom the family had once consisted: and Phoebe’s deduction was, not that Jane Talbot bore no burden, but that she kept it out of sight. Perhaps that very characteristic bluntness of her manner denoted a tight curb kept upon her spirit.Rhoda had noticed nothing of all this. Herself a surface character, she could not see below the surface in another.The Wednesday evening came, and with it Sir Richard Delawarr’s coach, conveying his two younger daughters. They were extremely unlike in person. Gatty was tall, calm, and deliberate; Molly was rather diminutive for her years, and exceedingly lively. While Gatty came forward in a stately, courteous manner, courtesying to Madam, and kindly answering her inquiries after Betty, Molly linked her arm in Rhoda’s, with—“How goes it, old jade?”And when Mr Onslow, who happened to be crossing the hall, stopped and inquired in a rather timid manner if Mrs Betty’s health were improving, Molly at once favoured him with a slap on the back, and the counter query,—“What’s that to you, you old thief?” Phoebe was horrified. If these were aristocratic manners, she preferred those of inferior quality. But noticing that Gatty’s manners were quiet and correct, Phoebe concluded that Molly must be an exceptional eccentricity. She contemplated the prospect of a month in that young lady’s company with unmitigated repugnance.“Well, Mrs Molly, my dear,—as smart as ever!” remarked Madam, turning to Molly with a smile. “All right, old witch!” said Molly. And to Phoebe’s astonishment, Madam smiled on, and did not resent the impertinence.“Well!—how do you like Gatty and Molly?” said Rhoda to Phoebe, when they were safe in their own room.“Pretty well, Mrs Gatty,” replied Phoebe, leaving the question of Molly undecided.“Don’t you like Molly?” demanded Rhoda, laughing. “Ah! I see. She’s rather too clever to please you.”“I ask your pardon, but I don’t see any cleverness in downright rudeness,” timidly suggested Phoebe.“Oh, nobody cares what Molly says,” answered Rhoda. “They put up with all that,—she’s so smart. You see, she’s very, very ingenious, and everybody thinks so, and she knows people think so. She’s a rep., you see, and she has to keep it up.”“I ask your pardon,” said Phoebe again; “awhat, if you please?”“A rep., child,” answered Rhoda, in her patronising style. “A reputation,—a character for smartness, you know. Don’t you see?”“Well, I would rather have a character for something better,” said Phoebe.“You may make yourself easy; you’ll never get a character for smartness,” responded her cousin with an unpleasant laugh. “Well, I say, Phoebe, while they are here I shall have Molly in my room, and you must sleep with Gatty. You can come in and dress me of a morning, you know, and help me into bed at night; but we can’t do with three in one room.”Phoebe was inwardly thankful for it. What little she had seen of Gatty was rather negative than positive; but at least it had not, as in the case of Molly revealed anything actively disagreeable. Rhoda was heartily welcome to Molly’s society so far as Phoebe was concerned. But it surprised and rather perplexed Phoebe to find that Rhoda actually liked this very objectionable maiden.“Panem?” asked Molly, the next morning at breakfast. Her Latin, such as it was, was entirely unburdened with cases and declensions. “Thank you, I will take kakos.”“Fiddle-de-dee! what’s that?” said Molly. Rhoda had completely forgotten what the word meant.“Oh, ’tis the Greek for biscuit,” said she, daringly.Phoebe contrived to hide a portion of her face in her teacup, but Gatty saw her eyes, and read their meaning.“The Greek!” cried Molly. “Who has taught you Greek, Ne’er-do-well?”“A very learned person,” said Rhoda, to whom it was delight to mystify Molly.“Old Onslow?” demanded irreverent Molly, quite undeterred by the consideration that the chaplain sat at the table with her.“You can ask him,” said Rhoda.“Did you, old cassock?” inquired Molly, who appeared to apply that adjective in a most impartial manner.“Indeed, Mrs Molly, I did not—I never knew—” stammered the startled chaplain, quite shaken out of his propriety.“Never knew any Greek? I thought so,” responded audacious Molly, thereby evoking laughter all round the table, in which even Madam joined.Phoebe, who had recovered herself, sat lost in wonder where the cleverness of all this was to be found. It simply disgusted her. Rhoda was not always pleasant to put up with, but Rhoda was sweetness and grace, compared with Molly. Gatty sat quietly, neither rebuking her sister’s sallies, nor apparently amused by them. And Rhodalikedthis girl! It was a mystery to Phoebe.When night came Phoebe found her belongings transferred to Gatty’s room. She assisted Rhoda to undress, herself silent, but a perpetual chatter being kept up between Rhoda and Molly on subjects not by any means interesting to Phoebe.The latter was at length dismissed, and, with a sense of relief, she went slowly along the passage to the room in which she and Gatty were to sleep.Though it was getting very late, the clock being on the stroke of ten, yet Gatty was not in bed. She seemed to have half undressed herself, and then to have thrown a scarf over her shoulders and sat down by the window. It was a beautiful night, and a flood of silvery moonlight threw the trees into deep shadow and lit up the open spaces almost like day. Phoebe came and stood at the window beside Gatty. Perhaps each was a little shy of the other; for some seconds passed in silence, and Phoebe was the first to speak.“You like it,” she said timidly.“Oh, yes. ’Tis so quiet,” was Gatty’s answer.Phoebe was thinking what she should say next, when Gatty rose, took off her scarf, which she folded neatly and put away in the wardrobe, finished her undressing, and got into bed, without another word beyond “Good-night.”For three weeks of the month which the visit was to last this proved to be the usual state of matters. Gatty and Phoebe regularly exchanged greetings, night and morning; but beyond this their conversation was limited to remarks upon the weather, and an occasional request that Phoebe would inspect the neat and proper condition of some part of Gatty’s dress which she could not conveniently see. And Phoebe began to come to the conclusion that Rhoda had judged rightly,—Gatty had nothing in her.But one evening, when Molly had been surpassingly “clever,” keeping Rhoda in peals of laughter, and Phoebe in a state of annoyed disgust,—on reaching their bedroom, Phoebe found Gatty, still dressed, and sitting by the bed, with her face bowed upon her hands.“I ask your pardon, but are you not well?” said Phoebe, in a sympathising tone.“Oh, yes. Quite well,” was Gatty’s reply, in a constrained voice; but as she rose and moved her hands from her face, Phoebe saw that she had been crying.“You are in trouble,” said Phoebe, gently. “Don’t tell me anything, unless you like; but I know what trouble is; and if I could help you—”“You can’t,” said Gatty, shortly.Phoebe was silent. Her sympathy had been repulsed—it was not wanted. The undressing was, as usual, without a word.But when the girls had lain down in bed, Phoebe was a little surprised to hear Gatty say suddenly,—“Phoebe Latrobe!—does anybody love you?”“God loves me,” said Phoebe, simply. “I am not sure that any one else does.”“I like you,” said Gatty. “You let me be. That’s what nobody ever does.”“I am not sure that I understand you,” responded Phoebe.“I’ll tell you,” replied Gatty, “for I think you can hold your tongue, and not be always chatter, chatter, chatter, like—like some people. You think there’s only one Gatty Delawarr; and I’ll be bound you think her a very dull, stupid creature. Well, you’re about right there. But there are two: there’s me, and there’s the thing people want to make me. Now, you haven’t seen me,—you’ve only seen the woman into whom I am being pinched and pulled. This is me that talks to you to-night, and perhaps you’ll never see me again,—only that other girl,—so you had better make the most of me now that you have me. I’m sure, if you dislike her as much as I do—! You see, Phoebe, there are three of us—Betty, and me, and Molly: and Mother’s set her heart on our all making a noise in the world. Well, perhaps we could have managed better if we might have made our own noise; but we have to make it to order, and we don’t do it well at all. Betty’s the best off, because Mother hit on something that went with her nature,—she’s the notable housewife. So she plays her play well. But when she set up Molly for a wit, and me for a beauty, she made a great blunder. Molly hasn’t a bit of wit, so she falls back on rude speeches, and they go through me just as if she ran a knife into me. You did not think so, did you?”“No,” said Phoebe, wonderingly; “I thought you did not seem to care.”“That’s the other Gatty. She does not care. She’s been told,—oh, a hundred times over!—to compose herself and keep her features calm, and not let her voice be ruffled; and move slowly, so that her elbows are not square, and all on in that way; and she has about learned it by this time. I know how to sit still and look unconcerned, if my heart be breaking. And it is breaking, Phoebe.”“Dear Mrs Gatty, what can I do for you?”“You can’t do anything but listen to me. Let me pour it out this once, and don’t scold me. I don’t mean anything wrong, Phoebe. I don’t wish to complain of Mother, or Molly, or any one. I only want to tell somebody what I have to bear, and then I’ll compose myself again to my part in the world’s big theatre, and go away and bear it, like other girls do. And you are the only person I have acquaintance with, that I feel as if I could tell.”“Pray go on, Mrs Gatty; I can feel sorry, if I can do nothing else.”“Well,—at home somebody is at me from morning to night. There’s a posture-master comes once a week; and Mother’s maid looks to my carriage at all times, ’tis an endless round of—‘Gatty, hold your head up,’—‘Gatty, put that plate down, and take it up with your arm rounded,’—‘Gatty, you must not laugh,’—‘Gatty, you must not sneeze,’—‘Gatty, walk slower,’—come, that’s enough. Then there’s Molly on the top of it. And there’s Betty on the top of Molly,—who can’t conceive why anybody should ruffle her mind about anything. And there’s Mother above all, for ever telling me she looks to have me cut a dash, and make a good match; and if I had played my cards rightly I ought to have caught a husband ere I was seventeen,—’tis disgraceful that I should thus throw away my advantages. And, Phoebe,Iwant nothing but to creep into some little, far-away corner, andbe me, and throw away my patches and love-locks, and powder and pomatum, and never see that other Gatty any more. That’s how it was up to last month.”Gatty paused a moment, and drew a long sigh.“And then, there came another on the scene, and I suppose the play grew more entertaining to Mother, and Betty, and Molly, in the boxes. People don’t think, you know, when they look down at the prima donna, painted, and smiling, and decked with flowers,—they don’t think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,—a man of sixty or seventy,—who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks ’tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he’s become respectable. And they say I shall marry him. Phoebe, they say I must,—there is to be no help for it. And I can’t bear him to look at me. If he touches my glove, I want to fling it into the fire when it comes off. And this one month, here, at White-Ladies, is my last quiet time. When I go home—if Betty be recovered of her distemper—I am to be married to this old man in a week’s time. I am tied hand and foot, like a captive or a slave; and I have not even the poor relief of tears. They make my eyes red, and I must not make, my eyes red, if it would save my life. But nothing will save me. The lambs that used to be led to the altar are not more helpless than I. The rope is round my neck; and I must trot on beside the executioner, and find what comfort I can in the garland of roses on my head.”There was a silence of a few seconds after Gatty finished her miserable tale. And then Phoebe’s voice asked softly,—“Dear Mrs Gatty, have you asked God to save you?”“What’s the use?” answered Gatty, in a hopeless tone.“Because He would do it,” said Phoebe. “I don’t know how. It might be by changing my Lady Delawarr’s mind, or the old lord’s, or yours; or many another way; I don’t know how. But I do know that He has promised to bring no temptation on those that fear Him, beyond what they shall be able to bear.”“Oh, I don’t know!” said Gatty, in that tone which makes the word sound like a cry of pain.“Have you tried entreating my Lady Delawarr?”“Tried! I should think so. And what do you think I get by it? ‘Gatty, my dear, ’tis so unmodish to be thus warm over anything! Compose yourself, and control your feelings. Love!—no, of course you do not love my Lord Polesworth, while you are yet a maid; ’twould be highly indecorous for you to do any such thing. But when you are his wife, you’ll be perfectly content; and that is all you can expect. My dear, do compose yourself, or your face will be quite wrinkled; and let me hear no more of this nonsense, I beg of you. Maids cannot look to choose for themselves, ’tis not reasonable.’ That is what I get, Phoebe.”“And your father, Mrs Gatty?”“My father? Oh! ‘Really, Gatty, I can’t interfere,—’tis your mother’s affair; you must make up your mind to it. We can’t have always what we like,’—and then he whistles to his hounds, and goes out a-hunting.”“Well, Mrs Gatty, suppose you try God?”“Suppose I have done, Phoebe, and got no answer at all?”“Forgive me, I cannot suppose it.”“Is He so good toyou, Phoebe?”The question was asked in a very, very mournful tone.“Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe, softly, “He has given me Himself. I do not think He has given me anything else of what my heart longs for. But that is enough. In Him I have all things.”“What do you mean?” came in accents of perplexity from the bed in the opposite corner.“I am afraid,” said Phoebe, “I cannot tell you. I mean, I could not make you understand it.”“‘Given you Himself!’” repeated Gatty. “I can fancy how He could reward you or make you happy; but, ‘give you Himself!’”“Well, I cannot explain it,” said Phoebe. “Yes, it means giving happiness; but it means a great deal more. I can feel it, but I cannot put it in words.”“I don’t understand you the least bit!”“Will you talk awhile with Mrs Dolly Jennings, and see if she can explain it to you? I do not think any one can, in words; but I guess she would come nearer to it than I could.”“I like Mrs Dolly,” said Gatty, thoughtfully; “she is very kind.”“Very,” assented Phoebe.“I think I should not mind talking to her,” said Gatty. “We will walk down there to-morrow, if we can get leave.”“And now, had we not better go to sleep?” suggested Phoebe.“Well, we can try,” sighed Gatty. “But, Phoebe, ’tis no good telling me to pray, because I have done it. I said over every collect in the Prayer-book—ten a day; and the very morning after I had finished them, that horrid man came, and Mother made—I had to go down and sit half an hour listening to him. Praying does no good.”“I am not sure that you have tried it,” said Phoebe.“Didn’t I tell you, this minute, I said every—”“I ask your pardon for interrupting you, but saying is not praying. Did you really pray them?”“Phoebe, I do not understand you! How could I pray them and not say them?”“Well, I did not quite mean that,” said Phoebe; “but please, Mrs Gatty, did you feel them? Did you really ask God all the collects say, or did you only repeat the words over? You see, if I felt cold in bed, I might ask Mrs Betty to give me leave to have another blanket; but if I only kept saying that I was cold, to myself, over and over, and did not tell Mrs Betty, I should be long enough before I got the blanket. Did you say the collects to yourself, Mrs Gatty, or did you say them to the Lord?”There was a pause before Gatty said, in rather an awed voice, “Phoebe, when you pray, is God there?”“Yes,” said Phoebe, readily.“He is not, with me,” replied Gatty. “He feels a long, long way off; and I feel as if my collects might drop and be lost before they can get up to Him. Don’t you?”“Never,” answered Phoebe. “But I don’t send my prayers up by themselves; I give them to Jesus Christ to carry. He never drops one, Mrs Gatty.”“’Tis all something I don’t understand one bit,” said Gatty, wearily. “Go to sleep, Phoebe; I won’t keep you awake. But we’ll go and see Mrs Dolly.”The next afternoon, when Rhoda and Molly had disappeared on their private affairs, Gatty dropped a courtesy to Madam, and requested her permission to visit Mrs Dolly Jennings.“By all means, my dear,” answered Madam, affably. “If Rhoda has no occasion for her, let Phoebe wait on you.”The second request which had been on Gatty’s lips being thus forestalled, the girls set forth—without consulting Rhoda, which Gatty was disinclined to do, and which Phoebe fancied that she had done—and reached the Maidens’ Lodge without falling in with any disturbing element, such as either Rhoda or Molly would unquestionably have been. Mrs Dorothy received them in her usual kindly manner, and gave them tea before they entered on the subject of which both the young minds were full. Then Gatty told her story, if very much the same terms as she had given it to Phoebe.“And I can’t understand Phoebe, Mrs Dolly,” she ended. “She says God has given her Himself; and I cannot make it out. And she says she gives her prayers to Jesus Christ to carry. I don’t know what she means. It sounds good. But I don’t understand it—not one bit.”Mrs Dorothy came up to where Gatty was sitting, and took the girl’s head between her small, thin hands. It was not a beautiful face; but it was pleasant enough to look on, and would have been more so, but for the discipline which had crushed out of it all natural interest and youthful anticipation, and had left that strange, strained look of care and forced calm upon the white brow.“Dear child,” she said, gently, “you want rest, don’t you?”Gatty’s grey eyes filled with tears.“That is just what I do want, Mrs Dolly,” she said, “somewhere where I could be quiet, and be let alone, and just be myself and not somebody else.”“Ah, my dear!” said Mrs Dorothy, shaking her head, “you never get let alone in this world. Satan won’t let you alone, if men do. But to be yourself—that is what God wants of you. At least ’tis one half of what He would have; the other half is that you should give yourself to Him.”“’Tis no good praying,” said Gatty, as before.“Did the Lord tell you that, my dear?”“No!” said Gatty, looking up in surprise.“Well, I would not say it till He does, child. But what did you pray for?”“I said all the collects over.”“Very good things, my dear; but were they what you wanted? I thought you had a special trouble at this time.”“But what could I do?” asked Gatty, apparently rather bewildered.“Dear child, thou couldst sure ask thy Father to help thee, without more ado. But ‘bide a wee,’ as my old friend, Scots Davie, was wont to say. There is a great deal about prayer in the Word of God. Let us look at a little of it.” Little Mrs Dorothy trotted to her small work-table, which generally stood at her side, and came back with a well-worn brown Bible. Gatty watched her with a rather frightened look, as if she thought that something was going to be done to her, and was not sure whether it might hurt her.“Now hearken: ‘Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.’ Again: ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do.’ These are grand words, my dear.”“But they can’t mean that Mrs Dorothy! Why, only think—if I were to ask for a fortune, should I get it?”“I must have two questions answered, my dear, ere I can tell that. Who are theyouin these verses?”“I thought it meant everybody.”“Not so. Listen again: ‘If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ ’Tis not everybody doth that.”“But I don’t know what that means, Mrs Dorothy.”“Then, my dear, you have answered my second question—Are you one of these? For if you know not even what the thing is, ’tis but reasonable to conclude you have never known it in your own person.”“I suppose not,” said Gatty, sorrowfully.“You see, my dear, ’tis to certain persons these words are said. If you are not one of these persons, then they are not said to you.”“I am not.” And Gatty shook her head sadly. “But, Mrs Dorothy, what does it mean?”“Dear,” said the old lady, “when we do truly abide in Christ, we desire first of all that His will be done. We wish for this or that; but we wish more than all that He choose all things for us—that He have His own way. Our wills are become His will. It follows as a certainty, that they shall be done. We must have what we wish, when it is what He wishes who rules all things. ‘Ye shall ask what ye will.’ He guides us what to ask, if we beg Him to do so.”“Is any one thus much perfect?” inquired Gatty, doubtfully.“Many are trying for it,” said Mrs Dolly. “There may be but few that have fully reached it.”“But that makes us like machines, Mrs Dolly, moved about at another’s will.”“What, my dear! Love makes us machines? Never! The very last thing that could be, child.”“I don’t know much about love,” said Gatty, drearily.“About love, or about being loved?” responded Mrs Dolly.“Both,” answered the girl, in the same tone.“Will you try it, my dear? ’Tis the sweetener of all human life.”Gatty looked up with a surprised expression.“Ican’t make people love me,” she said.“Nor can you make yourself love others,” added Mrs Dorothy. “But you can ask the Lord for that fairest of all His gifts, saving Jesus Christ.”“Ask God for a beau! O Mrs Dorothy!” exclaimed Gatty in a shocked tone.“My dear, I never so much as named one,” responded Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “Sure, you are not one of those foolish maids that think they must be loveless and forlorn without they have a husband?”Gatty had always been taught to think so; and she looked bewildered and mystified. A more eligible husband than old Lord Polesworth was the only idea that associated itself in her mind with the word love.“But what else did you mean?” she asked.“Ay me!” said Mrs Dorothy, as if to herself. “How do men misunderstand God! Child, wert thou never taught the first and great commandment? ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength?’”“Oh, of course,” said Gatty, as if she were listening to some scientific formula about a matter wherein she was not at all concerned.“Have you done that, my dear?”“Done what?” demanded Gatty in a startled tone.“Have you loved God with all your heart?”Gatty looked as if she had been suddenly roused from sleep, and was unable to take in the circumstances.“I don’t know! I—I suppose, so.”“You suppose so! Dear child, how can you love any, and not know it?”“But that is quite another sort of love!” cried Gatty.“There is no sort but one, my dear. Love is love.”“Oh, but we can’tloveGod!” said Gatty, as if the idea quite shocked her. “That means—it means reverence, you know, and duty, and so on. It can’t mean anything else, Mrs Dorothy.”Mrs Dorothy knitted very fast for a moment. Phoebe saw that her eyes were filled with tears.“Poor lost sheep!” she said, in a grieved voice. “Poor straying lamb, whom the wolf hath taught to be frightened of the Shepherd! You did not find that in the Bible, my dear.”“Oh, but words don’t mean the same in the Bible!” urged Gatty. “Surely, Mrs Dorothy, ’twould be quite unreverent to think so.”“Surely, my dear, it were more unreverent to think that God does not mean what He saith. When He saith, ‘I will punish you seven times for your sins,’ He means it, Mrs Gatty. And when He saith, ‘I will be a Father unto you,’ shall we say He doth not mean it? O my dear, don’t do Him such an injury as that!”“Do God an injury!” said Gatty in an awed whisper.“Ay, a cruel injury!” was the answer. “Men are always injuring God. Either they try to persuade themselves that He means not what He says when He threatens: or else they shut their hearts up close, and then fancy that His heart is shut up too. My dear, He did not tarry to offer to be your Father, until you came and asked Him for it. ‘Hefirstloved you.’ Child, what dost thou know of the Lord Jesus Christ?”Ah, what did she know? For Gatty lived in a dreary time, when religion was at one of its lowest ebb-tides, and had sunk almost to the level of heathen morality. If Gatty had been required to give definitions of the greatest words in the language, and had really done it from the bottom of her heart, according to her own honest belief, the list would have run much in this way:—“God.—The Great First Cause of all things, who has nothing to do with anything now, but will, at some remote period, punish murderers, thieves, and very wicked people.“Christ.—A supernaturally good man, who was crucified seventeen hundred years ago.“Heaven.—A delightful place, where everybody is happy, to which all respectable people will go, when they can’t help it any longer.“Bible.—A good book read in church; intensely dry, as good books always are no concern of mine.“Salvation, peace, holiness, and the like.—Words in the Prayer-Book.“Faith, hope, love, etcetera.—Duties, which of course we all perform, and therefore don’t need to trouble ourselves about them.“Prayer.—An incantation, to be repeated morning and evening, if you wish to avert ill luck during the day.”These were Gatty’s views—if she could be said to have any. How different from those of Mrs Dorothy Jennings! To her, God was the Creator, from whom, and by whom, and to whom, were all things: the Fountain of Mercy, who had so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son for its salvation: the Father who, having loved her before the world was, cared for everything, however insignificant, which concerned her welfare. Christ was the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother—the Lamb who had been slain for her, the High Priest who was touched with every feeling of human infirmity. Heaven was the home which her Father had prepared for her. The Bible was the means whereby her Father talked with her; and prayer the means whereby she talked with Him. Salvation was her condition; holiness, her aim; faith, love, peace, the very breath she drew. While, in Gatty’s eyes, all this was unknown and unreal, to Mrs Dorothy it was the most real thing in all the world.Gatty answered her friend’s query by a puzzled look.“It comes in church,” she said. “He is in the Creed, and at the end of the prayers. I don’t know!”“Child,” replied Mrs Dorothy, “you don’t know Him. And, Mrs Gatty, my dear, you must know Him, if you are ever to be a happy woman. O poor child, poor child! To think that the Man who loved you and gave His life for you is no more to you than one of a row of figures, a name set to the end of a prayer!”Gatty was taken by surprise. She looked up with both unwonted emotion and astonishment in her eyes.“Mrs Dolly,” she said, with feeling, “I cannot tell, but I think ’twould be pleasant to feel like you. It sounds all real, as if you had a live friend.”“That is just what it is, my dear Mrs Gatty. A Friend that loves me enough to count the very hairs of my head,—to whom nothing is a little matter that can concern me. And He is just as ready to be your Friend too.”“What makes you think so, Mrs Dolly?”“My dear, He died on purpose to save you.”“The world, not me!” said Gatty.“If there had been no world but you,” was the answer, “He would have thought it worth while.”Gatty’s answer was not immediate. When it came, it was—“What does He want me to do?”“He wants you to give Him your heart,” said the old lady. “Do that first, and you will very soon find out how to give Him your hands and your head.”“And will He keep away my Lord Polesworth?” asked the girl, earnestly.“He will keep away everything that can hurt you. Not, maybe, everything you don’t like. Sometimes ’tis just the contrary. The sweet cake that you like might harm you, and the physic you hate might heal you. If so, He will give you the physic. But, child, if you are His own, He will put the cup into your had with a smite which will make it easy to take.”“I should like that,” said Gatty, wistfully. “But could it be right to wed with my Lord Polesworth, when I could not love nor honour him in my heart at all?”“It can never be right to lie. Ask God to make you a way of escape, if so it be.”“What way?”“Leave that to Him.”Mrs Dorothy’s little clock struck four.“I think, if you please, Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe’s hitherto silent voice, “that Madam will be looking for us.”“Yes, I guess she will,” answered Gatty, rising, and courtesying. “I thank you, Mrs Dolly. You have given me a ray of hope—if ’twill not die away.”Mrs Dorothy drew the girl to her, and kissed her cheek.“Christ cannot die, my child,” she replied. “And Christ’s love is deathless as Himself. ‘Death hath no more dominion over Him.’ And He saith to His own, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’”“It should be a better life than this,” said Gatty, with a sigh.“This is not the Christian’s life, my dear. ‘His life is hid with Christ in God.’ ’Tis not left in his own hands to keep; he would soon lose it, if it were. Farewell, dear child; and may the Lord keep thee!”Gatty looked up suddenly. “Tell me what to say to Him.”Mrs Dorothy scarcely hesitated a moment.“‘Teach me to do Thy will,’” she answered. “That holds everything. You cannot do His will unless you are one of His redeemed. He must save you, and hold you up, and guide you to glory, if you do His will—not because you do it, for the salvation cometh first; but without the one, there cannot be the other. And he that doeth the will of God soon learns to love it, better than any mortal thing. ‘Oh, how love I Thy law!’ saith David. ‘There is nothing on earth that I desire in comparison of Thee.’”She kissed both the girls again, and they went away.
“And I come down no more to chilling praise,To sneers, to wearing out of empty days,But rest, rejoicing in the power I’ve won,To go on learning, though my crying’s done.”Isabella Fyvie Mayo.
“And I come down no more to chilling praise,To sneers, to wearing out of empty days,But rest, rejoicing in the power I’ve won,To go on learning, though my crying’s done.”Isabella Fyvie Mayo.
As the two girls turned into the little garden of Number Three, the latch of the door was lifted, and Mrs Jane came out.
“Good evening!” said she. “Come to see my sister, are you? I and my Deb are doing for her to-day, for her Nell has got a holiday—gone to see her mother—lazy slut!”
“Which is the lazy slut, Mrs Jane?” asked Rhoda, laughing.
“Heyday! they’re all a parcel together,” answered Mrs Jane. “Nell and her mother, and her grandmother before them. And Marcella, too, she’s no better. Go in, if you want a string of complaints. You can come out when you’ve had plenty.”
“How many complaints are plenty, Mrs Jane?”
“One,” said Mrs Jane, marching off. “Plenty for me.”
Rhoda lifted the latch, and walked in, Phoebe following her. She tapped at the inner door.
“Oh, come in, whoever it is,” said a querulous, plaintive voice. “Well, Mrs Rhoda, I thought you would have been to see me before. A poor lonely creature, that nobody cares for, and never has any comfort nor pleasure! And who have you with you? I’m sure she’s in a deep consumption from the looks of her. Coltsfoot, my dear, and horehound, with plenty of sugar, boiled together; and a little mallow won’t hurt. But they’ll not do you much good, I should say; you’re too far gone: still, ’tis a duty to do all one can, and some strange things do happen: like Betty Collins—the doctors all gave her up, and there she is, walking about, as well as anybody. And so may you, my dear, though you don’t look like it. Still, you are young—there’s no telling: and coltsfoot is a very good thing, and makes wonderful cures. Oh, that careless Jane, to leave me all alone, just when I wanted my pillows shaking! And so inconsiderate of Nell to go home just to-day, of all days, when she knew I was sure to be worse; I always am after a fast-day. Fast-days don’t suit me at all; they are very bad for sick people. They make one’s spirits so low, and are sure to give me the vapours. Oh dear, that Jane!”
“What’s the matter with that Jane?” demanded the bearer of the name, stalking in, as Phoebe was trying to brace up her courage to the point of offering to shake the pillows. “Want another dose of castor oil? I’ve got it.”
A faint shriek of deprecation was the answer.
“Oh dear! And you know how I hate it! Jane, do shake up my pillows. They feel as if there were stones instead of flocks in them, or—”
“Nutmegs, no doubt,” suggested Mrs Jane. “Shake them up? Oh yes, and you too—do you both good.”
“Oh, don’t, Jane! Have you an orange for me?”
“Sit down, my dears,” said Mrs Jane, parenthetically. “Can’t afford them, Marcella. Plenty of black currant tea. Better for you.”
“I don’t like it!” said Mrs Marcella, plaintively.
“Oranges are eightpence a-piece, and currants may be had for the gathering,” observed Mrs Jane, sententiously.
“They give me a pain in my side!” moaned the invalid.
“Well, the oranges would give you a pain in your purse. I’d rather have one in my side, if I were you.”
“You don’t know what it is to be ill!” said Mrs Marcella, closing her eyes.
“Don’t I? I’ve had both small-pox and spotted fever.”
“So long ago!”
“Bless you, child! I’m not Methuselah!” said Mrs Jane.
“Well, I think you might be, Jane, for really, the way in which you can sit up all night, and look as fresh as a daisy in the morning, when you have not had a wink of sleep, and I am perfectly worn-out with suffering—just skin and bone, and no more—”
“There’s a little tongue left, I reckon!” said Mrs Jane.
“The way she will get up and go to market, my dears, after such a night as that,” pursued Mrs Marcella, who always ran on her own line of rails, and never shunted to avoid collision; “you never saw anything like her—the amount she can bear! She’s as tough as a rhinoceros, and as strong as an elephant, and as wanting in feeling as—as—”
“A sensitive plant,” popped in Mrs Jane. “Now, Marcella, open your mouth and shut your eyes, and take this.”
“Is it castor oil?” faintly screamed the invalid, endeavouring to protect herself.
“Stuff! ’Tis good Tent wine. Take it and be thankful.”
“Where did you get it, Jane?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” said Mrs Jane. “It was honestly come by.”
“Well, I think we must be going, Mrs Marcella,” said Rhoda, rising.
“Oh, my dear! Must you, really? And so seldom as you come to see a poor thing like me, who hasn’t a living creature to care for her—except Jane, of course, and she doesn’t, not one bit! Dear! And to think that I was once a pretty young maid, with a little fortune of my own; and there was many a young gentleman, my dear, that would have given his right hand for no more than a smile from me—”
“Heyday! how this world is given to lying!” interpolated Mrs Jane.
“And we were a large family then—eight of us, my dear; and now they are all dead, and I am left quite alone, except Jane, you know. Oh dear, dear, but to think of it! But there is no thankfulness in the world, nor kindness neither. The people I have been good to! and now that I havecome downa little, to see how they treat me! Jane doesn’t mind it; she has no tender feelings at all; she can stand all things, and never say a word, I am sure I don’t know how she does it. I am all feeling! These things touch me so keenly. But Jane’s just like a stone. Well, good evening, my dear, if you must go. I think you might have come a little sooner, and you might come oftener, if you would. But that is always my lot, to be neglected and despised—a poor, lonely, ugly old maid, that nobody cares for. And it wasn’t my fault, I am sure; I never chose such a fate. I cannot think why such afflictions have been sent me. I am sure I am no worse than other people. Clarissa is a great deal vainer than I am; and Jane is ever so much harder; and as to Dorothy, why, ’tis misery to see her—she is so cheerful and full of mirth, and she has not a thing to be content with—it quite hurts me to see anyone like that. But people are so wanting in feeling! I am sure—”
“Go, if you want,” said Mrs Jane, shortly, holding the door open.
“Oh, yes, go! Of course you want to go!” lamented Mrs Marcella. “What pleasure can there be to a bright young maid like you, to sit with a poor, sick, miserable creature like me? Dear, dear! And only to think—”
Rhoda escaped. Phoebe followed, more slowly. Mrs Jane came out after them, and shut the door behind them.
“She’s in pain, this evening,” said the last-named person in her usual blunt style. “Some folks can bear pain, and some can’t. And those that can must beat with those that can’t. She’ll be better of letting it out a bit. Good evening.”
“Oh, isn’t it dreadful!” said Rhoda, when they were out of the gate. “I just hate going to see Mrs Marcella, especially when she takes one of her complaining fits. If I were Mrs Jane, I should let her have it out by herself. But she is hard, rather—she doesn’t care as I should.”
But Phoebe thought that a mistake. She had noticed the drawn brow of the silent sister, while the sufferer was detailing her string of troubles, and the sudden quiver of the under lip, when allusion was made to the eight of whom the family had once consisted: and Phoebe’s deduction was, not that Jane Talbot bore no burden, but that she kept it out of sight. Perhaps that very characteristic bluntness of her manner denoted a tight curb kept upon her spirit.
Rhoda had noticed nothing of all this. Herself a surface character, she could not see below the surface in another.
The Wednesday evening came, and with it Sir Richard Delawarr’s coach, conveying his two younger daughters. They were extremely unlike in person. Gatty was tall, calm, and deliberate; Molly was rather diminutive for her years, and exceedingly lively. While Gatty came forward in a stately, courteous manner, courtesying to Madam, and kindly answering her inquiries after Betty, Molly linked her arm in Rhoda’s, with—
“How goes it, old jade?”
And when Mr Onslow, who happened to be crossing the hall, stopped and inquired in a rather timid manner if Mrs Betty’s health were improving, Molly at once favoured him with a slap on the back, and the counter query,—
“What’s that to you, you old thief?” Phoebe was horrified. If these were aristocratic manners, she preferred those of inferior quality. But noticing that Gatty’s manners were quiet and correct, Phoebe concluded that Molly must be an exceptional eccentricity. She contemplated the prospect of a month in that young lady’s company with unmitigated repugnance.
“Well, Mrs Molly, my dear,—as smart as ever!” remarked Madam, turning to Molly with a smile. “All right, old witch!” said Molly. And to Phoebe’s astonishment, Madam smiled on, and did not resent the impertinence.
“Well!—how do you like Gatty and Molly?” said Rhoda to Phoebe, when they were safe in their own room.
“Pretty well, Mrs Gatty,” replied Phoebe, leaving the question of Molly undecided.
“Don’t you like Molly?” demanded Rhoda, laughing. “Ah! I see. She’s rather too clever to please you.”
“I ask your pardon, but I don’t see any cleverness in downright rudeness,” timidly suggested Phoebe.
“Oh, nobody cares what Molly says,” answered Rhoda. “They put up with all that,—she’s so smart. You see, she’s very, very ingenious, and everybody thinks so, and she knows people think so. She’s a rep., you see, and she has to keep it up.”
“I ask your pardon,” said Phoebe again; “awhat, if you please?”
“A rep., child,” answered Rhoda, in her patronising style. “A reputation,—a character for smartness, you know. Don’t you see?”
“Well, I would rather have a character for something better,” said Phoebe.
“You may make yourself easy; you’ll never get a character for smartness,” responded her cousin with an unpleasant laugh. “Well, I say, Phoebe, while they are here I shall have Molly in my room, and you must sleep with Gatty. You can come in and dress me of a morning, you know, and help me into bed at night; but we can’t do with three in one room.”
Phoebe was inwardly thankful for it. What little she had seen of Gatty was rather negative than positive; but at least it had not, as in the case of Molly revealed anything actively disagreeable. Rhoda was heartily welcome to Molly’s society so far as Phoebe was concerned. But it surprised and rather perplexed Phoebe to find that Rhoda actually liked this very objectionable maiden.
“Panem?” asked Molly, the next morning at breakfast. Her Latin, such as it was, was entirely unburdened with cases and declensions. “Thank you, I will take kakos.”
“Fiddle-de-dee! what’s that?” said Molly. Rhoda had completely forgotten what the word meant.
“Oh, ’tis the Greek for biscuit,” said she, daringly.
Phoebe contrived to hide a portion of her face in her teacup, but Gatty saw her eyes, and read their meaning.
“The Greek!” cried Molly. “Who has taught you Greek, Ne’er-do-well?”
“A very learned person,” said Rhoda, to whom it was delight to mystify Molly.
“Old Onslow?” demanded irreverent Molly, quite undeterred by the consideration that the chaplain sat at the table with her.
“You can ask him,” said Rhoda.
“Did you, old cassock?” inquired Molly, who appeared to apply that adjective in a most impartial manner.
“Indeed, Mrs Molly, I did not—I never knew—” stammered the startled chaplain, quite shaken out of his propriety.
“Never knew any Greek? I thought so,” responded audacious Molly, thereby evoking laughter all round the table, in which even Madam joined.
Phoebe, who had recovered herself, sat lost in wonder where the cleverness of all this was to be found. It simply disgusted her. Rhoda was not always pleasant to put up with, but Rhoda was sweetness and grace, compared with Molly. Gatty sat quietly, neither rebuking her sister’s sallies, nor apparently amused by them. And Rhodalikedthis girl! It was a mystery to Phoebe.
When night came Phoebe found her belongings transferred to Gatty’s room. She assisted Rhoda to undress, herself silent, but a perpetual chatter being kept up between Rhoda and Molly on subjects not by any means interesting to Phoebe.
The latter was at length dismissed, and, with a sense of relief, she went slowly along the passage to the room in which she and Gatty were to sleep.
Though it was getting very late, the clock being on the stroke of ten, yet Gatty was not in bed. She seemed to have half undressed herself, and then to have thrown a scarf over her shoulders and sat down by the window. It was a beautiful night, and a flood of silvery moonlight threw the trees into deep shadow and lit up the open spaces almost like day. Phoebe came and stood at the window beside Gatty. Perhaps each was a little shy of the other; for some seconds passed in silence, and Phoebe was the first to speak.
“You like it,” she said timidly.
“Oh, yes. ’Tis so quiet,” was Gatty’s answer.
Phoebe was thinking what she should say next, when Gatty rose, took off her scarf, which she folded neatly and put away in the wardrobe, finished her undressing, and got into bed, without another word beyond “Good-night.”
For three weeks of the month which the visit was to last this proved to be the usual state of matters. Gatty and Phoebe regularly exchanged greetings, night and morning; but beyond this their conversation was limited to remarks upon the weather, and an occasional request that Phoebe would inspect the neat and proper condition of some part of Gatty’s dress which she could not conveniently see. And Phoebe began to come to the conclusion that Rhoda had judged rightly,—Gatty had nothing in her.
But one evening, when Molly had been surpassingly “clever,” keeping Rhoda in peals of laughter, and Phoebe in a state of annoyed disgust,—on reaching their bedroom, Phoebe found Gatty, still dressed, and sitting by the bed, with her face bowed upon her hands.
“I ask your pardon, but are you not well?” said Phoebe, in a sympathising tone.
“Oh, yes. Quite well,” was Gatty’s reply, in a constrained voice; but as she rose and moved her hands from her face, Phoebe saw that she had been crying.
“You are in trouble,” said Phoebe, gently. “Don’t tell me anything, unless you like; but I know what trouble is; and if I could help you—”
“You can’t,” said Gatty, shortly.
Phoebe was silent. Her sympathy had been repulsed—it was not wanted. The undressing was, as usual, without a word.
But when the girls had lain down in bed, Phoebe was a little surprised to hear Gatty say suddenly,—
“Phoebe Latrobe!—does anybody love you?”
“God loves me,” said Phoebe, simply. “I am not sure that any one else does.”
“I like you,” said Gatty. “You let me be. That’s what nobody ever does.”
“I am not sure that I understand you,” responded Phoebe.
“I’ll tell you,” replied Gatty, “for I think you can hold your tongue, and not be always chatter, chatter, chatter, like—like some people. You think there’s only one Gatty Delawarr; and I’ll be bound you think her a very dull, stupid creature. Well, you’re about right there. But there are two: there’s me, and there’s the thing people want to make me. Now, you haven’t seen me,—you’ve only seen the woman into whom I am being pinched and pulled. This is me that talks to you to-night, and perhaps you’ll never see me again,—only that other girl,—so you had better make the most of me now that you have me. I’m sure, if you dislike her as much as I do—! You see, Phoebe, there are three of us—Betty, and me, and Molly: and Mother’s set her heart on our all making a noise in the world. Well, perhaps we could have managed better if we might have made our own noise; but we have to make it to order, and we don’t do it well at all. Betty’s the best off, because Mother hit on something that went with her nature,—she’s the notable housewife. So she plays her play well. But when she set up Molly for a wit, and me for a beauty, she made a great blunder. Molly hasn’t a bit of wit, so she falls back on rude speeches, and they go through me just as if she ran a knife into me. You did not think so, did you?”
“No,” said Phoebe, wonderingly; “I thought you did not seem to care.”
“That’s the other Gatty. She does not care. She’s been told,—oh, a hundred times over!—to compose herself and keep her features calm, and not let her voice be ruffled; and move slowly, so that her elbows are not square, and all on in that way; and she has about learned it by this time. I know how to sit still and look unconcerned, if my heart be breaking. And it is breaking, Phoebe.”
“Dear Mrs Gatty, what can I do for you?”
“You can’t do anything but listen to me. Let me pour it out this once, and don’t scold me. I don’t mean anything wrong, Phoebe. I don’t wish to complain of Mother, or Molly, or any one. I only want to tell somebody what I have to bear, and then I’ll compose myself again to my part in the world’s big theatre, and go away and bear it, like other girls do. And you are the only person I have acquaintance with, that I feel as if I could tell.”
“Pray go on, Mrs Gatty; I can feel sorry, if I can do nothing else.”
“Well,—at home somebody is at me from morning to night. There’s a posture-master comes once a week; and Mother’s maid looks to my carriage at all times, ’tis an endless round of—‘Gatty, hold your head up,’—‘Gatty, put that plate down, and take it up with your arm rounded,’—‘Gatty, you must not laugh,’—‘Gatty, you must not sneeze,’—‘Gatty, walk slower,’—come, that’s enough. Then there’s Molly on the top of it. And there’s Betty on the top of Molly,—who can’t conceive why anybody should ruffle her mind about anything. And there’s Mother above all, for ever telling me she looks to have me cut a dash, and make a good match; and if I had played my cards rightly I ought to have caught a husband ere I was seventeen,—’tis disgraceful that I should thus throw away my advantages. And, Phoebe,Iwant nothing but to creep into some little, far-away corner, andbe me, and throw away my patches and love-locks, and powder and pomatum, and never see that other Gatty any more. That’s how it was up to last month.”
Gatty paused a moment, and drew a long sigh.
“And then, there came another on the scene, and I suppose the play grew more entertaining to Mother, and Betty, and Molly, in the boxes. People don’t think, you know, when they look down at the prima donna, painted, and smiling, and decked with flowers,—they don’t think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,—a man of sixty or seventy,—who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks ’tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he’s become respectable. And they say I shall marry him. Phoebe, they say I must,—there is to be no help for it. And I can’t bear him to look at me. If he touches my glove, I want to fling it into the fire when it comes off. And this one month, here, at White-Ladies, is my last quiet time. When I go home—if Betty be recovered of her distemper—I am to be married to this old man in a week’s time. I am tied hand and foot, like a captive or a slave; and I have not even the poor relief of tears. They make my eyes red, and I must not make, my eyes red, if it would save my life. But nothing will save me. The lambs that used to be led to the altar are not more helpless than I. The rope is round my neck; and I must trot on beside the executioner, and find what comfort I can in the garland of roses on my head.”
There was a silence of a few seconds after Gatty finished her miserable tale. And then Phoebe’s voice asked softly,—
“Dear Mrs Gatty, have you asked God to save you?”
“What’s the use?” answered Gatty, in a hopeless tone.
“Because He would do it,” said Phoebe. “I don’t know how. It might be by changing my Lady Delawarr’s mind, or the old lord’s, or yours; or many another way; I don’t know how. But I do know that He has promised to bring no temptation on those that fear Him, beyond what they shall be able to bear.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Gatty, in that tone which makes the word sound like a cry of pain.
“Have you tried entreating my Lady Delawarr?”
“Tried! I should think so. And what do you think I get by it? ‘Gatty, my dear, ’tis so unmodish to be thus warm over anything! Compose yourself, and control your feelings. Love!—no, of course you do not love my Lord Polesworth, while you are yet a maid; ’twould be highly indecorous for you to do any such thing. But when you are his wife, you’ll be perfectly content; and that is all you can expect. My dear, do compose yourself, or your face will be quite wrinkled; and let me hear no more of this nonsense, I beg of you. Maids cannot look to choose for themselves, ’tis not reasonable.’ That is what I get, Phoebe.”
“And your father, Mrs Gatty?”
“My father? Oh! ‘Really, Gatty, I can’t interfere,—’tis your mother’s affair; you must make up your mind to it. We can’t have always what we like,’—and then he whistles to his hounds, and goes out a-hunting.”
“Well, Mrs Gatty, suppose you try God?”
“Suppose I have done, Phoebe, and got no answer at all?”
“Forgive me, I cannot suppose it.”
“Is He so good toyou, Phoebe?”
The question was asked in a very, very mournful tone.
“Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe, softly, “He has given me Himself. I do not think He has given me anything else of what my heart longs for. But that is enough. In Him I have all things.”
“What do you mean?” came in accents of perplexity from the bed in the opposite corner.
“I am afraid,” said Phoebe, “I cannot tell you. I mean, I could not make you understand it.”
“‘Given you Himself!’” repeated Gatty. “I can fancy how He could reward you or make you happy; but, ‘give you Himself!’”
“Well, I cannot explain it,” said Phoebe. “Yes, it means giving happiness; but it means a great deal more. I can feel it, but I cannot put it in words.”
“I don’t understand you the least bit!”
“Will you talk awhile with Mrs Dolly Jennings, and see if she can explain it to you? I do not think any one can, in words; but I guess she would come nearer to it than I could.”
“I like Mrs Dolly,” said Gatty, thoughtfully; “she is very kind.”
“Very,” assented Phoebe.
“I think I should not mind talking to her,” said Gatty. “We will walk down there to-morrow, if we can get leave.”
“And now, had we not better go to sleep?” suggested Phoebe.
“Well, we can try,” sighed Gatty. “But, Phoebe, ’tis no good telling me to pray, because I have done it. I said over every collect in the Prayer-book—ten a day; and the very morning after I had finished them, that horrid man came, and Mother made—I had to go down and sit half an hour listening to him. Praying does no good.”
“I am not sure that you have tried it,” said Phoebe.
“Didn’t I tell you, this minute, I said every—”
“I ask your pardon for interrupting you, but saying is not praying. Did you really pray them?”
“Phoebe, I do not understand you! How could I pray them and not say them?”
“Well, I did not quite mean that,” said Phoebe; “but please, Mrs Gatty, did you feel them? Did you really ask God all the collects say, or did you only repeat the words over? You see, if I felt cold in bed, I might ask Mrs Betty to give me leave to have another blanket; but if I only kept saying that I was cold, to myself, over and over, and did not tell Mrs Betty, I should be long enough before I got the blanket. Did you say the collects to yourself, Mrs Gatty, or did you say them to the Lord?”
There was a pause before Gatty said, in rather an awed voice, “Phoebe, when you pray, is God there?”
“Yes,” said Phoebe, readily.
“He is not, with me,” replied Gatty. “He feels a long, long way off; and I feel as if my collects might drop and be lost before they can get up to Him. Don’t you?”
“Never,” answered Phoebe. “But I don’t send my prayers up by themselves; I give them to Jesus Christ to carry. He never drops one, Mrs Gatty.”
“’Tis all something I don’t understand one bit,” said Gatty, wearily. “Go to sleep, Phoebe; I won’t keep you awake. But we’ll go and see Mrs Dolly.”
The next afternoon, when Rhoda and Molly had disappeared on their private affairs, Gatty dropped a courtesy to Madam, and requested her permission to visit Mrs Dolly Jennings.
“By all means, my dear,” answered Madam, affably. “If Rhoda has no occasion for her, let Phoebe wait on you.”
The second request which had been on Gatty’s lips being thus forestalled, the girls set forth—without consulting Rhoda, which Gatty was disinclined to do, and which Phoebe fancied that she had done—and reached the Maidens’ Lodge without falling in with any disturbing element, such as either Rhoda or Molly would unquestionably have been. Mrs Dorothy received them in her usual kindly manner, and gave them tea before they entered on the subject of which both the young minds were full. Then Gatty told her story, if very much the same terms as she had given it to Phoebe.
“And I can’t understand Phoebe, Mrs Dolly,” she ended. “She says God has given her Himself; and I cannot make it out. And she says she gives her prayers to Jesus Christ to carry. I don’t know what she means. It sounds good. But I don’t understand it—not one bit.”
Mrs Dorothy came up to where Gatty was sitting, and took the girl’s head between her small, thin hands. It was not a beautiful face; but it was pleasant enough to look on, and would have been more so, but for the discipline which had crushed out of it all natural interest and youthful anticipation, and had left that strange, strained look of care and forced calm upon the white brow.
“Dear child,” she said, gently, “you want rest, don’t you?”
Gatty’s grey eyes filled with tears.
“That is just what I do want, Mrs Dolly,” she said, “somewhere where I could be quiet, and be let alone, and just be myself and not somebody else.”
“Ah, my dear!” said Mrs Dorothy, shaking her head, “you never get let alone in this world. Satan won’t let you alone, if men do. But to be yourself—that is what God wants of you. At least ’tis one half of what He would have; the other half is that you should give yourself to Him.”
“’Tis no good praying,” said Gatty, as before.
“Did the Lord tell you that, my dear?”
“No!” said Gatty, looking up in surprise.
“Well, I would not say it till He does, child. But what did you pray for?”
“I said all the collects over.”
“Very good things, my dear; but were they what you wanted? I thought you had a special trouble at this time.”
“But what could I do?” asked Gatty, apparently rather bewildered.
“Dear child, thou couldst sure ask thy Father to help thee, without more ado. But ‘bide a wee,’ as my old friend, Scots Davie, was wont to say. There is a great deal about prayer in the Word of God. Let us look at a little of it.” Little Mrs Dorothy trotted to her small work-table, which generally stood at her side, and came back with a well-worn brown Bible. Gatty watched her with a rather frightened look, as if she thought that something was going to be done to her, and was not sure whether it might hurt her.
“Now hearken: ‘Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.’ Again: ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do.’ These are grand words, my dear.”
“But they can’t mean that Mrs Dorothy! Why, only think—if I were to ask for a fortune, should I get it?”
“I must have two questions answered, my dear, ere I can tell that. Who are theyouin these verses?”
“I thought it meant everybody.”
“Not so. Listen again: ‘If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ ’Tis not everybody doth that.”
“But I don’t know what that means, Mrs Dorothy.”
“Then, my dear, you have answered my second question—Are you one of these? For if you know not even what the thing is, ’tis but reasonable to conclude you have never known it in your own person.”
“I suppose not,” said Gatty, sorrowfully.
“You see, my dear, ’tis to certain persons these words are said. If you are not one of these persons, then they are not said to you.”
“I am not.” And Gatty shook her head sadly. “But, Mrs Dorothy, what does it mean?”
“Dear,” said the old lady, “when we do truly abide in Christ, we desire first of all that His will be done. We wish for this or that; but we wish more than all that He choose all things for us—that He have His own way. Our wills are become His will. It follows as a certainty, that they shall be done. We must have what we wish, when it is what He wishes who rules all things. ‘Ye shall ask what ye will.’ He guides us what to ask, if we beg Him to do so.”
“Is any one thus much perfect?” inquired Gatty, doubtfully.
“Many are trying for it,” said Mrs Dolly. “There may be but few that have fully reached it.”
“But that makes us like machines, Mrs Dolly, moved about at another’s will.”
“What, my dear! Love makes us machines? Never! The very last thing that could be, child.”
“I don’t know much about love,” said Gatty, drearily.
“About love, or about being loved?” responded Mrs Dolly.
“Both,” answered the girl, in the same tone.
“Will you try it, my dear? ’Tis the sweetener of all human life.”
Gatty looked up with a surprised expression.
“Ican’t make people love me,” she said.
“Nor can you make yourself love others,” added Mrs Dorothy. “But you can ask the Lord for that fairest of all His gifts, saving Jesus Christ.”
“Ask God for a beau! O Mrs Dorothy!” exclaimed Gatty in a shocked tone.
“My dear, I never so much as named one,” responded Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “Sure, you are not one of those foolish maids that think they must be loveless and forlorn without they have a husband?”
Gatty had always been taught to think so; and she looked bewildered and mystified. A more eligible husband than old Lord Polesworth was the only idea that associated itself in her mind with the word love.
“But what else did you mean?” she asked.
“Ay me!” said Mrs Dorothy, as if to herself. “How do men misunderstand God! Child, wert thou never taught the first and great commandment? ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength?’”
“Oh, of course,” said Gatty, as if she were listening to some scientific formula about a matter wherein she was not at all concerned.
“Have you done that, my dear?”
“Done what?” demanded Gatty in a startled tone.
“Have you loved God with all your heart?”
Gatty looked as if she had been suddenly roused from sleep, and was unable to take in the circumstances.
“I don’t know! I—I suppose, so.”
“You suppose so! Dear child, how can you love any, and not know it?”
“But that is quite another sort of love!” cried Gatty.
“There is no sort but one, my dear. Love is love.”
“Oh, but we can’tloveGod!” said Gatty, as if the idea quite shocked her. “That means—it means reverence, you know, and duty, and so on. It can’t mean anything else, Mrs Dorothy.”
Mrs Dorothy knitted very fast for a moment. Phoebe saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Poor lost sheep!” she said, in a grieved voice. “Poor straying lamb, whom the wolf hath taught to be frightened of the Shepherd! You did not find that in the Bible, my dear.”
“Oh, but words don’t mean the same in the Bible!” urged Gatty. “Surely, Mrs Dorothy, ’twould be quite unreverent to think so.”
“Surely, my dear, it were more unreverent to think that God does not mean what He saith. When He saith, ‘I will punish you seven times for your sins,’ He means it, Mrs Gatty. And when He saith, ‘I will be a Father unto you,’ shall we say He doth not mean it? O my dear, don’t do Him such an injury as that!”
“Do God an injury!” said Gatty in an awed whisper.
“Ay, a cruel injury!” was the answer. “Men are always injuring God. Either they try to persuade themselves that He means not what He says when He threatens: or else they shut their hearts up close, and then fancy that His heart is shut up too. My dear, He did not tarry to offer to be your Father, until you came and asked Him for it. ‘Hefirstloved you.’ Child, what dost thou know of the Lord Jesus Christ?”
Ah, what did she know? For Gatty lived in a dreary time, when religion was at one of its lowest ebb-tides, and had sunk almost to the level of heathen morality. If Gatty had been required to give definitions of the greatest words in the language, and had really done it from the bottom of her heart, according to her own honest belief, the list would have run much in this way:—
“God.—The Great First Cause of all things, who has nothing to do with anything now, but will, at some remote period, punish murderers, thieves, and very wicked people.
“Christ.—A supernaturally good man, who was crucified seventeen hundred years ago.
“Heaven.—A delightful place, where everybody is happy, to which all respectable people will go, when they can’t help it any longer.
“Bible.—A good book read in church; intensely dry, as good books always are no concern of mine.
“Salvation, peace, holiness, and the like.—Words in the Prayer-Book.
“Faith, hope, love, etcetera.—Duties, which of course we all perform, and therefore don’t need to trouble ourselves about them.
“Prayer.—An incantation, to be repeated morning and evening, if you wish to avert ill luck during the day.”
These were Gatty’s views—if she could be said to have any. How different from those of Mrs Dorothy Jennings! To her, God was the Creator, from whom, and by whom, and to whom, were all things: the Fountain of Mercy, who had so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son for its salvation: the Father who, having loved her before the world was, cared for everything, however insignificant, which concerned her welfare. Christ was the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother—the Lamb who had been slain for her, the High Priest who was touched with every feeling of human infirmity. Heaven was the home which her Father had prepared for her. The Bible was the means whereby her Father talked with her; and prayer the means whereby she talked with Him. Salvation was her condition; holiness, her aim; faith, love, peace, the very breath she drew. While, in Gatty’s eyes, all this was unknown and unreal, to Mrs Dorothy it was the most real thing in all the world.
Gatty answered her friend’s query by a puzzled look.
“It comes in church,” she said. “He is in the Creed, and at the end of the prayers. I don’t know!”
“Child,” replied Mrs Dorothy, “you don’t know Him. And, Mrs Gatty, my dear, you must know Him, if you are ever to be a happy woman. O poor child, poor child! To think that the Man who loved you and gave His life for you is no more to you than one of a row of figures, a name set to the end of a prayer!”
Gatty was taken by surprise. She looked up with both unwonted emotion and astonishment in her eyes.
“Mrs Dolly,” she said, with feeling, “I cannot tell, but I think ’twould be pleasant to feel like you. It sounds all real, as if you had a live friend.”
“That is just what it is, my dear Mrs Gatty. A Friend that loves me enough to count the very hairs of my head,—to whom nothing is a little matter that can concern me. And He is just as ready to be your Friend too.”
“What makes you think so, Mrs Dolly?”
“My dear, He died on purpose to save you.”
“The world, not me!” said Gatty.
“If there had been no world but you,” was the answer, “He would have thought it worth while.”
Gatty’s answer was not immediate. When it came, it was—
“What does He want me to do?”
“He wants you to give Him your heart,” said the old lady. “Do that first, and you will very soon find out how to give Him your hands and your head.”
“And will He keep away my Lord Polesworth?” asked the girl, earnestly.
“He will keep away everything that can hurt you. Not, maybe, everything you don’t like. Sometimes ’tis just the contrary. The sweet cake that you like might harm you, and the physic you hate might heal you. If so, He will give you the physic. But, child, if you are His own, He will put the cup into your had with a smite which will make it easy to take.”
“I should like that,” said Gatty, wistfully. “But could it be right to wed with my Lord Polesworth, when I could not love nor honour him in my heart at all?”
“It can never be right to lie. Ask God to make you a way of escape, if so it be.”
“What way?”
“Leave that to Him.”
Mrs Dorothy’s little clock struck four.
“I think, if you please, Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe’s hitherto silent voice, “that Madam will be looking for us.”
“Yes, I guess she will,” answered Gatty, rising, and courtesying. “I thank you, Mrs Dolly. You have given me a ray of hope—if ’twill not die away.”
Mrs Dorothy drew the girl to her, and kissed her cheek.
“Christ cannot die, my child,” she replied. “And Christ’s love is deathless as Himself. ‘Death hath no more dominion over Him.’ And He saith to His own, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’”
“It should be a better life than this,” said Gatty, with a sigh.
“This is not the Christian’s life, my dear. ‘His life is hid with Christ in God.’ ’Tis not left in his own hands to keep; he would soon lose it, if it were. Farewell, dear child; and may the Lord keep thee!”
Gatty looked up suddenly. “Tell me what to say to Him.”
Mrs Dorothy scarcely hesitated a moment.
“‘Teach me to do Thy will,’” she answered. “That holds everything. You cannot do His will unless you are one of His redeemed. He must save you, and hold you up, and guide you to glory, if you do His will—not because you do it, for the salvation cometh first; but without the one, there cannot be the other. And he that doeth the will of God soon learns to love it, better than any mortal thing. ‘Oh, how love I Thy law!’ saith David. ‘There is nothing on earth that I desire in comparison of Thee.’”
She kissed both the girls again, and they went away.
Chapter Six.Traps laid for Rhoda.“La souveraine habilité consiste à bien connoître le prix des choses.”La Rochefoucauld.There was an earnest, wistful, far-away look in Gatty’s eyes, as though some treasure-house had been opened to her, the existence of which she had never previously suspected; but neither she nor Phoebe said a word to each other as they crossed the Park, and went up the wide white steps of the Abbey.“Where on earth have you been, you gadabouts?” came in Rhoda’s voice from the interior of the hall. “Oh, but I’ve such a jolly piece of news for you! Molly and me heard it from Madam. Guess what it is.”Rhoda’s grammar was more free and easy than correct at all times; and Phoebe could not help thinking that in that respect, as in others, she had perceptibly deteriorated by contact with Molly.“I don’t care to hear it, thank you,” said Gatty, rather hastily, walking straight upstairs.“Oh, don’t you, Mrs Prim?” demanded Rhoda. “Well, it doesn’t concern you much. Now, Phoebe, guess!”Phoebe felt very little in tune for the sort of amusement usually patronised by Rhoda. But she set herself to gratify that rather exacting young lady.“I don’t guess things well,” she said. “Is one of your aunts coming?”“My aunts!” repeated Rhoda, in supreme scorn. “Not if I know it, thank you. I said it was jolly. Why, Phoebe! to guess such a thing as that!”“Well, I should be pleased enough if mine were coming to see me,” said Phoebe, good-temperedly. “I don’t know what else to guess. Has some one given you a present?”“Wish they had!” ejaculated Rhoda. “No, I’m sorry to say nobody’s had so much good sense. But there’s somebody—I shall have to tell you sooner or later, you stupid goose, so I may as well do it now—somebody’s coming to Number Four. Mrs Eleanor Darcy, a cousin of my Lord Polesworth—only think!—and (that’s best of all) she’s got a nephew.”“How is that best of all?” asked Phoebe.“Mr Marcus Welles—isn’t it a pretty name?—and he will come with her, to settle her in her new house. ‘Why?’ Oh, what a silly Phoebe you are! He has three thousand a year.”“Then I should think he might take better care of his aunt than let her be an indigent gentlewoman,” said Phoebe, rather warmly.“As if he would want to be pothered with an old aunt!” cried Rhoda. “But I’ll tell you what (you are so silly, you want telling everything!)—I mean to set my cap at him.”“Won’t you have some cleaner lace on it first?” suggested Phoebe, with the exceedingly quiet, dry fun which was one of her characteristics.“You stupid, literal thing!” said Rhoda. “I might as well talk to the cat. Oh, here you come, Molly! Now for tea, if ’tis ready, and then—”Madam was already at the tea-table, and Baxter was just bringing in the kettle.“I trust you have had a pleasant walk, my dears,” said she, kindly, as the four girls filed in—Molly first, Phoebe last.“Middling,” said Molly, taking the initiative as usual. “Robbed seventeen birds’ nests, climbed twenty-four trees, and jumped over a dozen five-barred gates.”“Oh, did you!” murmured Phoebe, in a shocked tone, too horrified for silence.Rhoda went into convulsions behind her handkerchief.“Innocent little darling!” exclaimed Molly; “she thinks we did!”“You said so,” answered Phoebe, reproachfully.“You are so smart, my dear Mrs Molly,” said Madam, smilingly. “Did you all walk together?”“No, I thank you!” responded Molly. “Gatty and the innocent little dear went to a Quakers’ meeting.”Had Madam taken the assertion literally, she would have been alarmed and horrified indeed; for at that time all Dissenters were considered dangerous characters, and Quakers the worst of all. But, recognising it as one of Molly’s flights of intellect, she smiled placidly, and said no more.“My dear, I think you will be acquainted with Mrs Eleanor Darcy?” asked Madam, addressing herself to Gatty.“She has visited my mother, but only once,” answered Gatty.“Oh, the pootsy-bootsy!” broke in Molly. “Isn’t she a sweet, charming, handsome creature?—the precious dear!”“I fear she doth not please you, Mrs Molly?” asked Madam, interpreting Molly’s exclamation by the rule of contrary.“She’s the ugliest old baboon that ever grinned!” was Molly’s complimentary reply.“What say you, Mrs Gatty?”“She is certainly not handsome,” answered Gatty, apparently with some reluctance; “but I have heard her well spoken of, as very kind and good.”“Have you met with Mr Welles, her nephew, my dear?”Molly had clasped her hands, leaned back, lifted her eyes with an expression of sentimental rapture, and was executing an effectivetableau vivant.“Yes, I have seen him two or three times,” said Gatty.“Is he a young man of an agreeable turn?” inquired Madam.“He is very handsome,” replied Gatty, rather doubtfully, as if she hardly knew what to say.“Pleasant as a companion?” pursued Madam.“People generally think so, I believe,” answered Gatty, with studied vagueness.“You dear old concatenation, you’ll get nothing out of my wretch of a sister,” impetuously cried Molly.“I’ll tell you all about Marcus. He’s the brightest eyes that ever shone, and the sweetest voice that praised your fine eyes, and the most delightful manners! White hands, and a capital leg, and never treads on your corns. Oh, there’s nobody like him. I mean to marry him.”“Molly!” said Gatty. It was the first time she had offered anything like a reproof to her sister.“Now, you hold your tongue, Mrs Prude!” responded Molly. “You’re not a bit better than I am.”Gatty made no reply.“Don’t you set up to be either a prig or a saint!” continued Molly, angrily. “Betty’s enough. She isn’t a saint; but she’s a prig. If ever you’re either, I’ll lead you a life!”And there could be little doubt of Molly’s fulfilling her threat.The next day, Gatty and Molly Delawarr went home. Betty had quite recovered, and was gone to stay with a friend near Bristol; the house had been thoroughly disinfected, and was pronounced free from all danger; and Lady Delawarr thought there was no longer need for the girls to remain away.“I wonder what will become of me without you, Molly!” said Rhoda, dolefully.“Oh, you’ll have plenty to do, old Gatepost,” observed Molly, apparently in allusion to Rhoda’s uneventful life. “You’ve got to fall in love with Marcus. I’ll cut you into slices if you do, and make buttered toast of you.”“Good-bye!” said Rhoda laughing.“Vale!” responded Molly.“Good-bye, dear little Phoebe!” was Gatty’s farewell. “I wonder what would have become of me if I had not met you and Mrs Dorothy. For I have asked Him to be my Friend,—you know,—and I think, IthinkHe will.”“I am sure of it. Good-bye.”And so Gatty and Molly passed out of the life at White-Ladies.On returning to the old order of things, Phoebe found Rhoda, as she expected, considerably changed for the worse. What had been a sort of good-humoured condescension was altered into absolute snappishness, and Phoebe was sorely tried. But the influence of Molly, bad as it had been, proved temporary. Rhoda sank by degrees—or shall I say rose?—into her old self, and Phoebe presently had no more to bear than before the visit from Delawarr Court.About a fortnight after the departure of Gatty and Molly, as Phoebe was sitting at the parlour window with her work, she perceived Mrs Jane Talbot, hooded, cloaked, and pattened,—for the afternoon was damp,—marching up to the side door. The fact was communicated to Madam, who rose and glanced at herself in the chimney-glass, and ringing her little hand-bell, desired Baxter to show Mrs Jane into the parlour.“Good afternoon, Mrs Jane; ’tis a pleasure I did not look for,” said Madam, as she rose.“Your servant, Madam,” returned Mrs Jane, who had divested herself of cloak and pattens in the hall.“Pray be seated, Mrs Jane. And what brings you hither?—for methinks some matter of import will have called you out on so rainy a day as this.”“Easy to guess,” answered Mrs Jane, taking a seat as requested, and delivering her communication in short, blunt sentences, like small shot. “A whim of Marcella’s. Got a fancy for Port O Port. Sent me to beg a sup of you, Madam. Fancies it will cure her. Fiftieth time she has thought so, of something. All nonsense. Can’t help it.”“Indeed, my dear Mrs Jane, I am happy to be capable of helping Mrs Marcella to her fancy, and trust it may be of the advantage she thinks.—Phoebe! tell Betty to bid Baxter bring hither a bottle of the best Port O Port—that from the little ark in the further cellar.—And how does Mrs Marcella this afternoon?”“As cross as two sticks,” said Mrs Jane.“She is a great sufferer,” observed Madam, in her kindest manner.Mrs Jane made no reply, unless her next remark could properly be called one.“Mrs Darcy came last night.”“Last night!” answered Madam, in accents of surprise. “Dear! I quite understood she was not to arrive before this evening. You have seen her, Mrs Jane?”“Seen her! Oh dear, yes; I’ve seen her. We were schoolfellows.”“Were you, indeed? That I did not know. ’Twill be a pleasure to you, Mrs Jane, to have an old schoolfellow so near.”“Depends,” said Mrs Jane sententiously.“No doubt,” answered Madam. “Were you and Mrs Eleanor friends at school, Mrs Jane?”“No, Madam.”“Not? Perhaps you were not near enough of an age.”“Only six months between. No; that wasn’t it. I was a silly scapegrace, and she was a decent, good maid. Too good for me. I haven’t got any better. And she hasn’t got any handsomer.”“Pray forgive me,” replied Madam, with a smile, “but I cannot think that name applies to you now, Mrs Jane. And was her nephew with Mrs Eleanor; as he engaged?”“Large as life,” said Mrs Jane.“And how large is that, in his case?” inquired Madam.“Asking him or me?” retorted Mrs Jane. “Ishould say, about as big as a field mouse. He thinks himself big enough to overtop all the elephants in creation. Marcus Welles! Oh, yes, I’ll mark him well,—you trust me.”It was tolerably evident that Mr Welles had not succeeded in fascinating Mrs Jane, whatever he might do to other people.“I was told he was extreme handsome?” remarked Madam, in a tone of inquiry.Mrs Jane’s exclamation in response sounded very like—“Pish!”“You think not, Mrs Jane?”“Folks’ eyes are so different, Madam,” answered Mrs Jane. “Chinamen’s beauties wouldn’t go for much in England, I guess. He’s a silly, whimsical, finnicking piece—that’s what he is! Pink velvet coat, laced with silver. Buff breeches. White silk stockings with silver clocks. No cloak. And raining cats and dogs and pitchforks. Reckon Eleanor got all the sense that was going in that family. None left for Mr Mark-me-well. Missed it, anyhow.”From that day forward, behind his back, Mark-me-well was the only name bestowed by Mrs Jane on the young man in question. To his face she gave him none,—an uncivil proceeding in 1714; but Mrs Jane being allowedly an eccentric character, no one expected her to conform to conventional rules on all occasions.It would seem that Mr Welles wished to lose no time in paying his court to Madam; for that very evening, as soon as calling-hours began, he put in an appearance at White-Ladies.Calling-hours and visiting-days were as common then as now; but the hours were not the same. From five to eight o’clock in the evening was the proper time for a visit of ceremony; candles were always lighted, there was a special form of knock, and the guests sat round the room in a prim circle.Perhaps the “cats, dogs, and pitchforks” alluded to before had spoiled the pink and buff suit which had roused the scorn of Mrs Jane. The colours in which Mr Welles chose to make hisdébutat White-Ladies were violet and white. A violet velvet coat, trimmed with silver lace, was fastened with little silver hasps; white satin breeches led downwards to violet silk stockings with silver clocks, girt below the knee with silver garters. A three-cornered hat, of violet silk and silver lace, was heavily adorned with white plumes, and buttoned up at one side with a diamond. He wore shoes with silver buckles and very high red heels, white-silver fringed gloves, a small muff of violet velvet; and carried in his hand a slender amber-headed cane. Being a London beau of fashion, he was afflicted with a slight limp, and also with intense short-sightedness, which caused him to wear a gold eye-glass, constantly in use—except when alone, on which occasions Mr Welles became suddenly restored to the full use of his faculties.He certainly was very handsome, and his taste was good. His wig was always suited to his complexion, and he rarely wore more than two colours, of which one was frequently black or white. Mr Welles was highly accomplished and highly fashionable; he played ombre and basset, the spinnet and the violin; he sang and danced well, composed anagrams and acrostics, was a good rider, hunted fearlessly and gamed high, interlarded his conversation with puns, and was a thorough adept at small talk. He was personally acquainted with every actor on the London stage, and by sight with every politician in the Cabinet. His manners were of the new school then just rising—which means, that they were very free and easy, removed from all the minute and often cumbersome ceremonies which had distinguished the old school. He generally rose about noon, dined at three p.m., spent the evening at the opera or theatre, and went to bed towards morning. Add to this, that he collected old china, took much snuff, combed his wig in public, and was unable to write legibly or spell correctly—and a finished portrait is presented of Mr Marcus Welles, and through him of a fashionable London gentleman of his day.The impression made by Mr Welles on the ladies at the Abbey was of varied character. Madam commended him, but with that faint praise which is nearly akin to censure. He was well favoured, she allowed, and seemed to be a man of parts; but in her young days it was considered courteous to lead a lady to a chair before a gentleman seated himself; and it was not considered courteous to omit the Madam in addressing her. Rhoda said very little in her grandmother’s presence, reserving her opinion for Phoebe’s private ear. But as soon as they were alone, the girls stated their ideas explicitly.“Isn’t he a love of a dear?” cried Rhoda, in ecstasy.“No, I don’t think he is,” responded Phoebe, in a tone of unmistakable disgust.“Why, Phoebe! Are you not sensible of the merit of such a man as that?”“No, I am sure I did not see any,” said Phoebe, as before.“Oh, Phoebe! Such taste as he has! And his discourse! I never saw so quick a wit. I am sure he is a man of great reach, and a man of figure too. I shall think the time long till I see him again.”“Dear me! I shan’t!” exclaimed Phoebe. “Taste? Well, I suppose you may dress a doll with taste. His clothes are well enough, only they are too fine for anything but visiting.”“Well, wasn’t he visiting, you silly Phoebe?”“And he may be a man of figure—I don’t know; but as to reach! I wonder what you saw in his discourse to admire; it seemed to me all about nothing.”“Why, that’s just his parts!” said Rhoda. “Any man can talk about something; but to be able to talk in a clever, sprightly way about nothing—that takes a man of reach.”“Well! he may take his reach out of my reach,” answered Phoebe, in a disgusted tone. “I shall think the time uncommonly short, I can promise you, till I see him again; for I never wish to do it.”“Phoebe, I do believe you haven’t one bit of discernment!”But Phoebe held her peace.Madam called in due form on her new guest at the Maidens’ Lodge, and Mrs Darcy returned the visit next day. She proved to be a short, stout, little woman, with a face which, while undeniably and excessively plain, was so beaming with good humour that it was difficult to remember her uncomeliness after the firstcoup d’oeil. Mr Welles accompanied her on the return visit. What had induced him to take up his quarters at the Bear, at Tewkesbury, was an enigma to the inhabitants of White-Ladies. Of course he could not live at the Maidens’ Lodge, Madam being rigidly particular with respect to the intrusion of what Betty called “he creeturs” into that enchanted valley, and not tolerating the habitual presence even of a servant of the obnoxious sex. According to the representations of Mr Welles himself, he was fascinated by the converse and character of Madam, and was also completely devoted to his dear Aunt Eleanor. But Mr Welles had not favoured the Bear with very much of his attention before it dawned upon one person at least that neither Madam nor Mrs Eleanor had much to do with his frequent visits to Cressingham. Mrs Dorothy Jennings quickly noticed that Mr Welles was quite clever enough to discover what pleased different persons, and to adapt himself accordingly with surprising facility; and she soon perceived that the attraction was Rhoda, or rather Rhoda’s prospects as the understood heiress of White-Ladies. Mr Welles accommodated himself skilfully to the prejudices of Madam; his manners assumed a graver and more courtly air, his conversation a calm and sensible tone; and Madam at length remarked to her grand-daughters, how very much that young man had improved since his first arrival at Cressingham.With Rhoda, in the absence of her grandmother, he was an entirely different being. A great deal of apparent interest in herself, and deference to her opinions; a very little skilful flattery, too delicately administered for its hollowness to be perceived; a quick apprehension of what pleased and amused her, and a ready adaptation to her mood of the moment—these were Mr Welles’ tactics with the heiress for whom he was angling. As to Phoebe, he simply let her alone. He soon saw that she was of no account in Rhoda’s eyes, and was not her chosenconfidante, but simply the person to whom she talked for want of any other listener. There was not, therefore, in his opinion, any reason why he should trouble himself to propitiate Phoebe.Ever since the visit of the Delawarrs, Rhoda had seemed disinclined for another call on Mrs Dorothy Jennings. Now and then she went to see Mrs Clarissa, when the conversation usually turned on the fashions and cognate topics; sometimes she drank tea with Lady Betty, whose discourse was of rather a more sensible character. Rarely, she looked in on Mrs Marcella. Mrs Jane had thoroughly estranged her by persisting in her sarcastic nickname for Rhoda’s chosen hero, and letting off little shafts against him, more smart than nattering. On Mrs Darcy she called perpetually, perhaps with a view to meet him at her house; but all Mr Welles’ alleged devotion to his dear Aunt Eleanor scarcely ever seemed to result in his going to see her at the Maidens’ Lodge. When Rhoda met him, which she very often did, it was either by his calling at the Abbey, or by an accidentalrencontre—if accidental it were—in some secluded glade of the Park.At length, one day, without any warning, a horse cantered up to the side door, and Molly Delawarr’s voice in its loudest tones (and very loud they were) demanded where all those stupid creatures were who ought to be there to take her horse. Then Miss Molly, having been helped off, came marching in, and greeted her friends with a recitative—“Lucy Locket lost her pocket; ‘Kitty Fisher found it!’”“My dear Mrs Molly, I am quite rejoiced to see you!”“No! you aren’t, are you?” facetiously responded Molly. “Rhoda—I vow, child, you’re uglier than ever!—mother wants you for a while. There’s that jade Betty going to come of age, and she means to make the biggest fuss over it ever was heard. She said she would send Wilson over, but I jumped on my tit, and came to tell you myself. You’ll come, won’t you, old hag?”Rhoda looked at her grandmother.“My dear, of course you will go!” responded Madam, “since my Lady Delawarr is so good. ’Tis so kind in Mrs Molly to take thus much trouble on herself.”“Fiddle-de-dee!” ejaculated Molly. “I’m no more kind than she’s good. She wants a fuss, and a lot of folks to make it; and I wanted a ride, and some fun with Rhoda. Where’s the goodness, eh?”“Shall I take Phoebe?” asked Rhoda, doubtfully.“You’d better,” returned Molly, before Madam could speak. “You’ll want somebody to curl your love-locks and stitch your fal-lals; and I’m not going to do it—don’t you fancy so. Oh, I say, Rhoda! you may have Marcus Welles, if you want him. There’s another fellow turned up, with a thousand a year more, that will suit me better.”“Indeed! I thank you!” said Rhoda, with a little toss of her head.“My dear Mrs Molly, you are so diverting,” smiled Madam.“You don’t say so!” rejoined that fascinating young person. “You’ll put on your Sunday bombazine, Rhoda. We’re all going to be as fine as fiddlers. As for you”—and Molly’s bold eyes surveyed Phoebe, seeming to take in the whole at a glance—“it won’t matter. You aren’t an heiress, so you can come in rags.”Phoebe said nothing.“I don’t think,” went on Molly, in a reflective tone, “that you can make a catch; but you can try. There is the chaplain—horrid old centipede! And there’s old Walford”—Molly never favoured any man with a Mr to his name—“an ugly, spiteful old bear that nobody’ll have: he’s rich enough; and he might look your way if you play your cards well. Any way, you’ll not have much chance else; so you’d better keep your eyes pretty well open. Now, Rhoda, come along, and we’ll have some fun.”And away went Molly and Rhoda, with a smiling assent from Madam.What a very repulsive, vulgar disagreeable girl this Molly Delawarr is! True, my gentle reader. And yet—does she do much more than say, in plain language, what a great number of Mollys are not ashamed to think?Phoebe’s sensations, in view of the coming visit to the Court, were far removed from pleasure. Must she go? She braced up her courage, and ventured to ask.“If you please, Madam—”“Well, child?” was the answer, in a sufficiently gracious tone to encourage Phoebe to proceed.“Must I go with Mrs Rhoda to Delawarr Court, if you please, Madam?”“Why, of course, child.” Madam’s tone expressed surprise, though not displeasure.Phoebe swallowed her regret with a sigh, and tried to comfort herself with the thought of meeting Gatty, which was the only bright spot in the darkness. But would Gatty be there?Rhoda and Molly came in to tea arm-in-arm.“And how has my Lady Delawarr her health, Mrs Molly?” inquired Madam, as she poured out the refreshing fluid.Molly had allowed no time for inquiries on her first appearance.“Oh,she’swell enough,” said Molly, carelessly.“And Mrs Betty is now fully recovered of her distemper?”“She’s come out of the small-pox, and tumbled into the vapours,” said Molly.“The vapours” was a most convenient term of that day. It covered everything which had no other name, from a pain in the toe to a pain in the temper, and was very frequently descriptive of the latter ailment. Betty’s condition, therefore, as subject to this malady, excited little regret.“And how goes it with Mrs Gatty? Is she now my Lady Polesworth?”“My Lady Fiddlestrings!” responded Molly. “Not she—never will. Old Polesworth wanted a pretty face, and after Gatty’s small-pox, why, you couldn’t—”“Small-pox!” cried Madam and Rhoda in concert.“What, didn’t you know?” answered Molly. “To be sure—took it the minute she got home. But that wasn’t all, neither. Old Polesworth told Mum”—which meant Lady Delawarr—“that he might have stood small-pox, but he couldn’t saintship; so Saint Gatty lost her chance, and much she’ll ever see of such another. Dad and Mum were as mad as hornets. Dad said he’d have horsewhipped her if she’d been out of bed. Couldn’t,inbed, you see—wouldn’t have looked well.”“But, my dear, she could not help taking the small-pox?”“Maybe not, but she might have helped taking the saint-pox,” said Molly. “I believe she caught it from you,” nodding at Phoebe. “But what vexed Mum most was that the grey goose actually made believe to be pleased when she lost her chance of the tinsel. Trust me, but Mum blew her up—a little! All leather and prunella, you know, of course. Pleased to be an old maid!—just think, what nonsense. She will be an old maid now, sure as eggs are eggs, unless she marries some conventicle preacher. That would be the best end of her, I should think.”Phoebe sat wondering why Molly paid so poor a compliment to her own denomination as to suppose that the natural gravitation of piety was towards Dissent. But Molly’s volatile nature passed to a different subject the next moment.“I say, old Roadside, bring a white gown. The Queen’s coming to the Bath, and a lot of folks are trying to make her come on to Berkeley; and if she do, a whole parcel of young gentlewomen are to be there to courtesy to her, and give her a posy, and all that sort of flummery. And Mum says she’ll send us down, if they do it.”“Who’s to give the posy?” eagerly asked Rhoda.“Don’t know. Not you. You won’t have a chance, old Fid-fad. No more shan’t I. It’ll be some thing of quality. I’ll tread on her tail, though,—see if I don’t.”“Whose?” whispered Rhoda; for Molly’s last remark had been confidential. “You don’t mean the Queen?”“Of course I do,—who better? Her grandmother was a baronet’s daughter; what else am I? I’ll have a snip of her gown, if I can.”“O Molly!” exclaimed Rhoda in unfeigned horror.“Why not? I’ve scissors in my pocket.”“Molly, you never could!”“Don’t you lay much on those odds, my red currant bush. I can do pretty near anything I’ve a mind—when Ihavea mind.”Rhoda was not pleased by Molly’s last vocative, which she took as an uncomplimentary allusion to the faint shade of red in her hair,—a subject on which she was peculiarly sensitive. This bit of confidence had been exchanged out of the hearing of Madam, who had gone to a cabinet at the other end of the long room, but within that of Phoebe, who grew more uncomfortable every moment.“Well, ’tis getting time to say ta-ta,” said Molly, rising shortly after tea was over. “Where’s that tit of mine?”“My dear, I will send to fetch your horse round,” said Madam, “Pray, make my compliments to my Lady Delawarr, and tell her that I cannot but be very sensible of her kindness in offering Rhoda so considerable a pleasure.”Madam was about to add more, but Molly broke in.“Come now! Can’t carry all that flummery. My horse would fall lame under the weight. I’ll say you did the pretty thing. Ta-ta! See you on Monday, old gentlewoman.” She turned to Rhoda; threw a nod, without words, to Phoebe, and five minutes afterwards was trotting across the Park on her way home to Delawarr Court.
“La souveraine habilité consiste à bien connoître le prix des choses.”La Rochefoucauld.
“La souveraine habilité consiste à bien connoître le prix des choses.”
La Rochefoucauld.
There was an earnest, wistful, far-away look in Gatty’s eyes, as though some treasure-house had been opened to her, the existence of which she had never previously suspected; but neither she nor Phoebe said a word to each other as they crossed the Park, and went up the wide white steps of the Abbey.
“Where on earth have you been, you gadabouts?” came in Rhoda’s voice from the interior of the hall. “Oh, but I’ve such a jolly piece of news for you! Molly and me heard it from Madam. Guess what it is.”
Rhoda’s grammar was more free and easy than correct at all times; and Phoebe could not help thinking that in that respect, as in others, she had perceptibly deteriorated by contact with Molly.
“I don’t care to hear it, thank you,” said Gatty, rather hastily, walking straight upstairs.
“Oh, don’t you, Mrs Prim?” demanded Rhoda. “Well, it doesn’t concern you much. Now, Phoebe, guess!”
Phoebe felt very little in tune for the sort of amusement usually patronised by Rhoda. But she set herself to gratify that rather exacting young lady.
“I don’t guess things well,” she said. “Is one of your aunts coming?”
“My aunts!” repeated Rhoda, in supreme scorn. “Not if I know it, thank you. I said it was jolly. Why, Phoebe! to guess such a thing as that!”
“Well, I should be pleased enough if mine were coming to see me,” said Phoebe, good-temperedly. “I don’t know what else to guess. Has some one given you a present?”
“Wish they had!” ejaculated Rhoda. “No, I’m sorry to say nobody’s had so much good sense. But there’s somebody—I shall have to tell you sooner or later, you stupid goose, so I may as well do it now—somebody’s coming to Number Four. Mrs Eleanor Darcy, a cousin of my Lord Polesworth—only think!—and (that’s best of all) she’s got a nephew.”
“How is that best of all?” asked Phoebe.
“Mr Marcus Welles—isn’t it a pretty name?—and he will come with her, to settle her in her new house. ‘Why?’ Oh, what a silly Phoebe you are! He has three thousand a year.”
“Then I should think he might take better care of his aunt than let her be an indigent gentlewoman,” said Phoebe, rather warmly.
“As if he would want to be pothered with an old aunt!” cried Rhoda. “But I’ll tell you what (you are so silly, you want telling everything!)—I mean to set my cap at him.”
“Won’t you have some cleaner lace on it first?” suggested Phoebe, with the exceedingly quiet, dry fun which was one of her characteristics.
“You stupid, literal thing!” said Rhoda. “I might as well talk to the cat. Oh, here you come, Molly! Now for tea, if ’tis ready, and then—”
Madam was already at the tea-table, and Baxter was just bringing in the kettle.
“I trust you have had a pleasant walk, my dears,” said she, kindly, as the four girls filed in—Molly first, Phoebe last.
“Middling,” said Molly, taking the initiative as usual. “Robbed seventeen birds’ nests, climbed twenty-four trees, and jumped over a dozen five-barred gates.”
“Oh, did you!” murmured Phoebe, in a shocked tone, too horrified for silence.
Rhoda went into convulsions behind her handkerchief.
“Innocent little darling!” exclaimed Molly; “she thinks we did!”
“You said so,” answered Phoebe, reproachfully.
“You are so smart, my dear Mrs Molly,” said Madam, smilingly. “Did you all walk together?”
“No, I thank you!” responded Molly. “Gatty and the innocent little dear went to a Quakers’ meeting.”
Had Madam taken the assertion literally, she would have been alarmed and horrified indeed; for at that time all Dissenters were considered dangerous characters, and Quakers the worst of all. But, recognising it as one of Molly’s flights of intellect, she smiled placidly, and said no more.
“My dear, I think you will be acquainted with Mrs Eleanor Darcy?” asked Madam, addressing herself to Gatty.
“She has visited my mother, but only once,” answered Gatty.
“Oh, the pootsy-bootsy!” broke in Molly. “Isn’t she a sweet, charming, handsome creature?—the precious dear!”
“I fear she doth not please you, Mrs Molly?” asked Madam, interpreting Molly’s exclamation by the rule of contrary.
“She’s the ugliest old baboon that ever grinned!” was Molly’s complimentary reply.
“What say you, Mrs Gatty?”
“She is certainly not handsome,” answered Gatty, apparently with some reluctance; “but I have heard her well spoken of, as very kind and good.”
“Have you met with Mr Welles, her nephew, my dear?”
Molly had clasped her hands, leaned back, lifted her eyes with an expression of sentimental rapture, and was executing an effectivetableau vivant.
“Yes, I have seen him two or three times,” said Gatty.
“Is he a young man of an agreeable turn?” inquired Madam.
“He is very handsome,” replied Gatty, rather doubtfully, as if she hardly knew what to say.
“Pleasant as a companion?” pursued Madam.
“People generally think so, I believe,” answered Gatty, with studied vagueness.
“You dear old concatenation, you’ll get nothing out of my wretch of a sister,” impetuously cried Molly.
“I’ll tell you all about Marcus. He’s the brightest eyes that ever shone, and the sweetest voice that praised your fine eyes, and the most delightful manners! White hands, and a capital leg, and never treads on your corns. Oh, there’s nobody like him. I mean to marry him.”
“Molly!” said Gatty. It was the first time she had offered anything like a reproof to her sister.
“Now, you hold your tongue, Mrs Prude!” responded Molly. “You’re not a bit better than I am.”
Gatty made no reply.
“Don’t you set up to be either a prig or a saint!” continued Molly, angrily. “Betty’s enough. She isn’t a saint; but she’s a prig. If ever you’re either, I’ll lead you a life!”
And there could be little doubt of Molly’s fulfilling her threat.
The next day, Gatty and Molly Delawarr went home. Betty had quite recovered, and was gone to stay with a friend near Bristol; the house had been thoroughly disinfected, and was pronounced free from all danger; and Lady Delawarr thought there was no longer need for the girls to remain away.
“I wonder what will become of me without you, Molly!” said Rhoda, dolefully.
“Oh, you’ll have plenty to do, old Gatepost,” observed Molly, apparently in allusion to Rhoda’s uneventful life. “You’ve got to fall in love with Marcus. I’ll cut you into slices if you do, and make buttered toast of you.”
“Good-bye!” said Rhoda laughing.
“Vale!” responded Molly.
“Good-bye, dear little Phoebe!” was Gatty’s farewell. “I wonder what would have become of me if I had not met you and Mrs Dorothy. For I have asked Him to be my Friend,—you know,—and I think, IthinkHe will.”
“I am sure of it. Good-bye.”
And so Gatty and Molly passed out of the life at White-Ladies.
On returning to the old order of things, Phoebe found Rhoda, as she expected, considerably changed for the worse. What had been a sort of good-humoured condescension was altered into absolute snappishness, and Phoebe was sorely tried. But the influence of Molly, bad as it had been, proved temporary. Rhoda sank by degrees—or shall I say rose?—into her old self, and Phoebe presently had no more to bear than before the visit from Delawarr Court.
About a fortnight after the departure of Gatty and Molly, as Phoebe was sitting at the parlour window with her work, she perceived Mrs Jane Talbot, hooded, cloaked, and pattened,—for the afternoon was damp,—marching up to the side door. The fact was communicated to Madam, who rose and glanced at herself in the chimney-glass, and ringing her little hand-bell, desired Baxter to show Mrs Jane into the parlour.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Jane; ’tis a pleasure I did not look for,” said Madam, as she rose.
“Your servant, Madam,” returned Mrs Jane, who had divested herself of cloak and pattens in the hall.
“Pray be seated, Mrs Jane. And what brings you hither?—for methinks some matter of import will have called you out on so rainy a day as this.”
“Easy to guess,” answered Mrs Jane, taking a seat as requested, and delivering her communication in short, blunt sentences, like small shot. “A whim of Marcella’s. Got a fancy for Port O Port. Sent me to beg a sup of you, Madam. Fancies it will cure her. Fiftieth time she has thought so, of something. All nonsense. Can’t help it.”
“Indeed, my dear Mrs Jane, I am happy to be capable of helping Mrs Marcella to her fancy, and trust it may be of the advantage she thinks.—Phoebe! tell Betty to bid Baxter bring hither a bottle of the best Port O Port—that from the little ark in the further cellar.—And how does Mrs Marcella this afternoon?”
“As cross as two sticks,” said Mrs Jane.
“She is a great sufferer,” observed Madam, in her kindest manner.
Mrs Jane made no reply, unless her next remark could properly be called one.
“Mrs Darcy came last night.”
“Last night!” answered Madam, in accents of surprise. “Dear! I quite understood she was not to arrive before this evening. You have seen her, Mrs Jane?”
“Seen her! Oh dear, yes; I’ve seen her. We were schoolfellows.”
“Were you, indeed? That I did not know. ’Twill be a pleasure to you, Mrs Jane, to have an old schoolfellow so near.”
“Depends,” said Mrs Jane sententiously.
“No doubt,” answered Madam. “Were you and Mrs Eleanor friends at school, Mrs Jane?”
“No, Madam.”
“Not? Perhaps you were not near enough of an age.”
“Only six months between. No; that wasn’t it. I was a silly scapegrace, and she was a decent, good maid. Too good for me. I haven’t got any better. And she hasn’t got any handsomer.”
“Pray forgive me,” replied Madam, with a smile, “but I cannot think that name applies to you now, Mrs Jane. And was her nephew with Mrs Eleanor; as he engaged?”
“Large as life,” said Mrs Jane.
“And how large is that, in his case?” inquired Madam.
“Asking him or me?” retorted Mrs Jane. “Ishould say, about as big as a field mouse. He thinks himself big enough to overtop all the elephants in creation. Marcus Welles! Oh, yes, I’ll mark him well,—you trust me.”
It was tolerably evident that Mr Welles had not succeeded in fascinating Mrs Jane, whatever he might do to other people.
“I was told he was extreme handsome?” remarked Madam, in a tone of inquiry.
Mrs Jane’s exclamation in response sounded very like—“Pish!”
“You think not, Mrs Jane?”
“Folks’ eyes are so different, Madam,” answered Mrs Jane. “Chinamen’s beauties wouldn’t go for much in England, I guess. He’s a silly, whimsical, finnicking piece—that’s what he is! Pink velvet coat, laced with silver. Buff breeches. White silk stockings with silver clocks. No cloak. And raining cats and dogs and pitchforks. Reckon Eleanor got all the sense that was going in that family. None left for Mr Mark-me-well. Missed it, anyhow.”
From that day forward, behind his back, Mark-me-well was the only name bestowed by Mrs Jane on the young man in question. To his face she gave him none,—an uncivil proceeding in 1714; but Mrs Jane being allowedly an eccentric character, no one expected her to conform to conventional rules on all occasions.
It would seem that Mr Welles wished to lose no time in paying his court to Madam; for that very evening, as soon as calling-hours began, he put in an appearance at White-Ladies.
Calling-hours and visiting-days were as common then as now; but the hours were not the same. From five to eight o’clock in the evening was the proper time for a visit of ceremony; candles were always lighted, there was a special form of knock, and the guests sat round the room in a prim circle.
Perhaps the “cats, dogs, and pitchforks” alluded to before had spoiled the pink and buff suit which had roused the scorn of Mrs Jane. The colours in which Mr Welles chose to make hisdébutat White-Ladies were violet and white. A violet velvet coat, trimmed with silver lace, was fastened with little silver hasps; white satin breeches led downwards to violet silk stockings with silver clocks, girt below the knee with silver garters. A three-cornered hat, of violet silk and silver lace, was heavily adorned with white plumes, and buttoned up at one side with a diamond. He wore shoes with silver buckles and very high red heels, white-silver fringed gloves, a small muff of violet velvet; and carried in his hand a slender amber-headed cane. Being a London beau of fashion, he was afflicted with a slight limp, and also with intense short-sightedness, which caused him to wear a gold eye-glass, constantly in use—except when alone, on which occasions Mr Welles became suddenly restored to the full use of his faculties.
He certainly was very handsome, and his taste was good. His wig was always suited to his complexion, and he rarely wore more than two colours, of which one was frequently black or white. Mr Welles was highly accomplished and highly fashionable; he played ombre and basset, the spinnet and the violin; he sang and danced well, composed anagrams and acrostics, was a good rider, hunted fearlessly and gamed high, interlarded his conversation with puns, and was a thorough adept at small talk. He was personally acquainted with every actor on the London stage, and by sight with every politician in the Cabinet. His manners were of the new school then just rising—which means, that they were very free and easy, removed from all the minute and often cumbersome ceremonies which had distinguished the old school. He generally rose about noon, dined at three p.m., spent the evening at the opera or theatre, and went to bed towards morning. Add to this, that he collected old china, took much snuff, combed his wig in public, and was unable to write legibly or spell correctly—and a finished portrait is presented of Mr Marcus Welles, and through him of a fashionable London gentleman of his day.
The impression made by Mr Welles on the ladies at the Abbey was of varied character. Madam commended him, but with that faint praise which is nearly akin to censure. He was well favoured, she allowed, and seemed to be a man of parts; but in her young days it was considered courteous to lead a lady to a chair before a gentleman seated himself; and it was not considered courteous to omit the Madam in addressing her. Rhoda said very little in her grandmother’s presence, reserving her opinion for Phoebe’s private ear. But as soon as they were alone, the girls stated their ideas explicitly.
“Isn’t he a love of a dear?” cried Rhoda, in ecstasy.
“No, I don’t think he is,” responded Phoebe, in a tone of unmistakable disgust.
“Why, Phoebe! Are you not sensible of the merit of such a man as that?”
“No, I am sure I did not see any,” said Phoebe, as before.
“Oh, Phoebe! Such taste as he has! And his discourse! I never saw so quick a wit. I am sure he is a man of great reach, and a man of figure too. I shall think the time long till I see him again.”
“Dear me! I shan’t!” exclaimed Phoebe. “Taste? Well, I suppose you may dress a doll with taste. His clothes are well enough, only they are too fine for anything but visiting.”
“Well, wasn’t he visiting, you silly Phoebe?”
“And he may be a man of figure—I don’t know; but as to reach! I wonder what you saw in his discourse to admire; it seemed to me all about nothing.”
“Why, that’s just his parts!” said Rhoda. “Any man can talk about something; but to be able to talk in a clever, sprightly way about nothing—that takes a man of reach.”
“Well! he may take his reach out of my reach,” answered Phoebe, in a disgusted tone. “I shall think the time uncommonly short, I can promise you, till I see him again; for I never wish to do it.”
“Phoebe, I do believe you haven’t one bit of discernment!”
But Phoebe held her peace.
Madam called in due form on her new guest at the Maidens’ Lodge, and Mrs Darcy returned the visit next day. She proved to be a short, stout, little woman, with a face which, while undeniably and excessively plain, was so beaming with good humour that it was difficult to remember her uncomeliness after the firstcoup d’oeil. Mr Welles accompanied her on the return visit. What had induced him to take up his quarters at the Bear, at Tewkesbury, was an enigma to the inhabitants of White-Ladies. Of course he could not live at the Maidens’ Lodge, Madam being rigidly particular with respect to the intrusion of what Betty called “he creeturs” into that enchanted valley, and not tolerating the habitual presence even of a servant of the obnoxious sex. According to the representations of Mr Welles himself, he was fascinated by the converse and character of Madam, and was also completely devoted to his dear Aunt Eleanor. But Mr Welles had not favoured the Bear with very much of his attention before it dawned upon one person at least that neither Madam nor Mrs Eleanor had much to do with his frequent visits to Cressingham. Mrs Dorothy Jennings quickly noticed that Mr Welles was quite clever enough to discover what pleased different persons, and to adapt himself accordingly with surprising facility; and she soon perceived that the attraction was Rhoda, or rather Rhoda’s prospects as the understood heiress of White-Ladies. Mr Welles accommodated himself skilfully to the prejudices of Madam; his manners assumed a graver and more courtly air, his conversation a calm and sensible tone; and Madam at length remarked to her grand-daughters, how very much that young man had improved since his first arrival at Cressingham.
With Rhoda, in the absence of her grandmother, he was an entirely different being. A great deal of apparent interest in herself, and deference to her opinions; a very little skilful flattery, too delicately administered for its hollowness to be perceived; a quick apprehension of what pleased and amused her, and a ready adaptation to her mood of the moment—these were Mr Welles’ tactics with the heiress for whom he was angling. As to Phoebe, he simply let her alone. He soon saw that she was of no account in Rhoda’s eyes, and was not her chosenconfidante, but simply the person to whom she talked for want of any other listener. There was not, therefore, in his opinion, any reason why he should trouble himself to propitiate Phoebe.
Ever since the visit of the Delawarrs, Rhoda had seemed disinclined for another call on Mrs Dorothy Jennings. Now and then she went to see Mrs Clarissa, when the conversation usually turned on the fashions and cognate topics; sometimes she drank tea with Lady Betty, whose discourse was of rather a more sensible character. Rarely, she looked in on Mrs Marcella. Mrs Jane had thoroughly estranged her by persisting in her sarcastic nickname for Rhoda’s chosen hero, and letting off little shafts against him, more smart than nattering. On Mrs Darcy she called perpetually, perhaps with a view to meet him at her house; but all Mr Welles’ alleged devotion to his dear Aunt Eleanor scarcely ever seemed to result in his going to see her at the Maidens’ Lodge. When Rhoda met him, which she very often did, it was either by his calling at the Abbey, or by an accidentalrencontre—if accidental it were—in some secluded glade of the Park.
At length, one day, without any warning, a horse cantered up to the side door, and Molly Delawarr’s voice in its loudest tones (and very loud they were) demanded where all those stupid creatures were who ought to be there to take her horse. Then Miss Molly, having been helped off, came marching in, and greeted her friends with a recitative—
“Lucy Locket lost her pocket; ‘Kitty Fisher found it!’”
“My dear Mrs Molly, I am quite rejoiced to see you!”
“No! you aren’t, are you?” facetiously responded Molly. “Rhoda—I vow, child, you’re uglier than ever!—mother wants you for a while. There’s that jade Betty going to come of age, and she means to make the biggest fuss over it ever was heard. She said she would send Wilson over, but I jumped on my tit, and came to tell you myself. You’ll come, won’t you, old hag?”
Rhoda looked at her grandmother.
“My dear, of course you will go!” responded Madam, “since my Lady Delawarr is so good. ’Tis so kind in Mrs Molly to take thus much trouble on herself.”
“Fiddle-de-dee!” ejaculated Molly. “I’m no more kind than she’s good. She wants a fuss, and a lot of folks to make it; and I wanted a ride, and some fun with Rhoda. Where’s the goodness, eh?”
“Shall I take Phoebe?” asked Rhoda, doubtfully.
“You’d better,” returned Molly, before Madam could speak. “You’ll want somebody to curl your love-locks and stitch your fal-lals; and I’m not going to do it—don’t you fancy so. Oh, I say, Rhoda! you may have Marcus Welles, if you want him. There’s another fellow turned up, with a thousand a year more, that will suit me better.”
“Indeed! I thank you!” said Rhoda, with a little toss of her head.
“My dear Mrs Molly, you are so diverting,” smiled Madam.
“You don’t say so!” rejoined that fascinating young person. “You’ll put on your Sunday bombazine, Rhoda. We’re all going to be as fine as fiddlers. As for you”—and Molly’s bold eyes surveyed Phoebe, seeming to take in the whole at a glance—“it won’t matter. You aren’t an heiress, so you can come in rags.”
Phoebe said nothing.
“I don’t think,” went on Molly, in a reflective tone, “that you can make a catch; but you can try. There is the chaplain—horrid old centipede! And there’s old Walford”—Molly never favoured any man with a Mr to his name—“an ugly, spiteful old bear that nobody’ll have: he’s rich enough; and he might look your way if you play your cards well. Any way, you’ll not have much chance else; so you’d better keep your eyes pretty well open. Now, Rhoda, come along, and we’ll have some fun.”
And away went Molly and Rhoda, with a smiling assent from Madam.
What a very repulsive, vulgar disagreeable girl this Molly Delawarr is! True, my gentle reader. And yet—does she do much more than say, in plain language, what a great number of Mollys are not ashamed to think?
Phoebe’s sensations, in view of the coming visit to the Court, were far removed from pleasure. Must she go? She braced up her courage, and ventured to ask.
“If you please, Madam—”
“Well, child?” was the answer, in a sufficiently gracious tone to encourage Phoebe to proceed.
“Must I go with Mrs Rhoda to Delawarr Court, if you please, Madam?”
“Why, of course, child.” Madam’s tone expressed surprise, though not displeasure.
Phoebe swallowed her regret with a sigh, and tried to comfort herself with the thought of meeting Gatty, which was the only bright spot in the darkness. But would Gatty be there?
Rhoda and Molly came in to tea arm-in-arm.
“And how has my Lady Delawarr her health, Mrs Molly?” inquired Madam, as she poured out the refreshing fluid.
Molly had allowed no time for inquiries on her first appearance.
“Oh,she’swell enough,” said Molly, carelessly.
“And Mrs Betty is now fully recovered of her distemper?”
“She’s come out of the small-pox, and tumbled into the vapours,” said Molly.
“The vapours” was a most convenient term of that day. It covered everything which had no other name, from a pain in the toe to a pain in the temper, and was very frequently descriptive of the latter ailment. Betty’s condition, therefore, as subject to this malady, excited little regret.
“And how goes it with Mrs Gatty? Is she now my Lady Polesworth?”
“My Lady Fiddlestrings!” responded Molly. “Not she—never will. Old Polesworth wanted a pretty face, and after Gatty’s small-pox, why, you couldn’t—”
“Small-pox!” cried Madam and Rhoda in concert.
“What, didn’t you know?” answered Molly. “To be sure—took it the minute she got home. But that wasn’t all, neither. Old Polesworth told Mum”—which meant Lady Delawarr—“that he might have stood small-pox, but he couldn’t saintship; so Saint Gatty lost her chance, and much she’ll ever see of such another. Dad and Mum were as mad as hornets. Dad said he’d have horsewhipped her if she’d been out of bed. Couldn’t,inbed, you see—wouldn’t have looked well.”
“But, my dear, she could not help taking the small-pox?”
“Maybe not, but she might have helped taking the saint-pox,” said Molly. “I believe she caught it from you,” nodding at Phoebe. “But what vexed Mum most was that the grey goose actually made believe to be pleased when she lost her chance of the tinsel. Trust me, but Mum blew her up—a little! All leather and prunella, you know, of course. Pleased to be an old maid!—just think, what nonsense. She will be an old maid now, sure as eggs are eggs, unless she marries some conventicle preacher. That would be the best end of her, I should think.”
Phoebe sat wondering why Molly paid so poor a compliment to her own denomination as to suppose that the natural gravitation of piety was towards Dissent. But Molly’s volatile nature passed to a different subject the next moment.
“I say, old Roadside, bring a white gown. The Queen’s coming to the Bath, and a lot of folks are trying to make her come on to Berkeley; and if she do, a whole parcel of young gentlewomen are to be there to courtesy to her, and give her a posy, and all that sort of flummery. And Mum says she’ll send us down, if they do it.”
“Who’s to give the posy?” eagerly asked Rhoda.
“Don’t know. Not you. You won’t have a chance, old Fid-fad. No more shan’t I. It’ll be some thing of quality. I’ll tread on her tail, though,—see if I don’t.”
“Whose?” whispered Rhoda; for Molly’s last remark had been confidential. “You don’t mean the Queen?”
“Of course I do,—who better? Her grandmother was a baronet’s daughter; what else am I? I’ll have a snip of her gown, if I can.”
“O Molly!” exclaimed Rhoda in unfeigned horror.
“Why not? I’ve scissors in my pocket.”
“Molly, you never could!”
“Don’t you lay much on those odds, my red currant bush. I can do pretty near anything I’ve a mind—when Ihavea mind.”
Rhoda was not pleased by Molly’s last vocative, which she took as an uncomplimentary allusion to the faint shade of red in her hair,—a subject on which she was peculiarly sensitive. This bit of confidence had been exchanged out of the hearing of Madam, who had gone to a cabinet at the other end of the long room, but within that of Phoebe, who grew more uncomfortable every moment.
“Well, ’tis getting time to say ta-ta,” said Molly, rising shortly after tea was over. “Where’s that tit of mine?”
“My dear, I will send to fetch your horse round,” said Madam, “Pray, make my compliments to my Lady Delawarr, and tell her that I cannot but be very sensible of her kindness in offering Rhoda so considerable a pleasure.”
Madam was about to add more, but Molly broke in.
“Come now! Can’t carry all that flummery. My horse would fall lame under the weight. I’ll say you did the pretty thing. Ta-ta! See you on Monday, old gentlewoman.” She turned to Rhoda; threw a nod, without words, to Phoebe, and five minutes afterwards was trotting across the Park on her way home to Delawarr Court.