My Lady Ludlow
by
Elizabeth Gaskell
Part 1 out of 4
MY LADY LUDLOW
CHAPTER I.
I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they
were in my youth. Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches,
carrying six inside, and making a two days' journey out of what
people now go over in a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and
a screaming whistle, enough to deafen one. Then letters came in but
three times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have
stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month;--but
letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read
them and studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in
twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or
end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well-bred folks would
think too abrupt to be spoken. Well, well! they may all be
improvements,--I dare say they are; but you will never meet with a
Lady Ludlow in these days.
I will try and tell you about her. It is no story: it has, as I
said, neither beginning, middle, nor end.
My father was a poor clergyman with a large family. My mother was
always said to have good blood in her veins; and when she wanted to
maintain her position with the people she was thrown among,--
principally rich democratic manufacturers, all for liberty and the
French Revolution,--she would put on a pair of ruffles, trimmed with
real old English point, very much darned to be sure,--but which could
not be bought new for love or money, as the art of making it was lost
years before. These ruffles showed, as she said, that her ancestors
had been Somebodies, when the grandfathers of the rich folk, who now
looked down upon her, had been Nobodies,--if, indeed, they had any
grandfathers at all. I don't know whether any one out of our own
family ever noticed these ruffles,--but we were all taught as
children to feel rather proud when my mother put them on, and to hold
up our heads as became the descendants of the lady who had first
possessed the lace. Not but what my dear father often told us that
pride was a great sin; we were never allowed to be proud of anything
but my mother's ruffles: and she was so innocently happy when she
put them on,--often, poor dear creature, to a very worn and
threadbare gown,--that I still think, even after all my experience of
life, they were a blessing to the family. You will think that I am
wandering away from my Lady Ludlow. Not at all. The Lady who had
owned the lace, Ursula Hanbury, was a common ancestress of both my
mother and my Lady Ludlow. And so it fell out, that when my poor
father died, and my mother was sorely pressed to know what to do with
her nine children, and looked far and wide for signs of willingness
to help, Lady Ludlow sent her a letter, proffering aid and
assistance. I see that letter now: a large sheet of thick yellow
paper, with a straight broad margin left on the left-hand side of the
delicate Italian writing,--writing which contained far more in the
same space of paper than all the sloping, or masculine hand-writings
of the present day. It was sealed with a coat of arms,--a lozenge,--
for Lady Ludlow was a widow. My mother made us notice the motto,
"Foy et Loy," and told us where to look for the quarterings of the
Hanbury arms before she opened the letter. Indeed, I think she was
rather afraid of what the contents might be; for, as I have said, in
her anxious love for her fatherless children, she had written to many
people upon whom, to tell truly, she had but little claim; and their
cold, hard answers had many a time made her cry, when she thought
none of us were looking. I do not even know if she had ever seen
Lady Ludlow: all I knew of her was that she was a very grand lady,
whose grandmother had been half-sister to my mother's great-
grandmother; but of her character and circumstances I had heard
nothing, and I doubt if my mother was acquainted with them.
I looked over my mother's shoulder to read the letter; it began,
"Dear Cousin Margaret Dawson," and I think I felt hopeful from the
moment I saw those words. She went on to say,--stay, I think I can
remember the very words:
'DEAR COUSIN MARGARET DAWSON,--I have been much grieved to hear of
the loss you have sustained in the death of so good a husband, and so
excellent a clergyman as I have always heard that my late cousin
Richard was esteemed to be.'
"There!" said my mother, laying her finger on the passage, "read that
aloud to the little ones. Let them hear how their father's good
report travelled far and wide, and how well he is spoken of by one
whom he never saw. COUSIN Richard, how prettily her ladyship writes!
Go on, Margaret!" She wiped her eyes as she spoke: and laid her
fingers on her lips, to still my little sister, Cecily, who, not
understanding anything about the important letter, was beginning to
talk and make a noise.
'You say you are left with nine children. I too should have had
nine, if mine had all lived. I have none left but Rudolph, the
present Lord Ludlow. He is married, and lives, for the most part, in
London. But I entertain six young gentlewomen at my house at
Connington, who are to me as daughters--save that, perhaps, I
restrict them in certain indulgences in dress and diet that might be
befitting in young ladies of a higher rank, and of more probable
wealth. These young persons--all of condition, though out of means--
are my constant companions, and I strive to do my duty as a Christian
lady towards them. One of these young gentlewomen died (at her own
home, whither she had gone upon a visit) last May. Will you do me
the favour to allow your eldest daughter to supply her place in my
household? She is, as I make out, about sixteen years of age. She
will find companions here who are but a little older than herself. I
dress my young friends myself, and make each of them a small
allowance for pocket-money. They have but few opportunities for
matrimony, as Connington is far removed from any town. The clergyman
is a deaf old widower; my agent is married; and as for the
neighbouring farmers, they are, of course, below the notice of the
young gentlewomen under my protection. Still, if any young woman
wishes to marry, and has conducted herself to my satisfaction, I give
her a wedding dinner, her clothes, and her house-linen. And such as
remain with me to my death, will find a small competency provided for
them in my will. I reserve to myself the option of paying their
travelling expenses,--disliking gadding women, on the one hand; on
the other, not wishing by too long absence from the family home to
weaken natural ties.
'If my proposal pleases you and your daughter--or rather, if it
pleases you, for I trust your daughter has been too well brought up
to have a will in opposition to yours--let me know, dear cousin
Margaret Dawson, and I will make arrangements for meeting the young
gentlewoman at Cavistock, which is the nearest point to which the
coach will bring her.'
My mother dropped the letter, and sat silent.
"I shall not know what to do without you, Margaret."
A moment before, like a young untried girl as I was, I had been
pleased at the notion of seeing a new place, and leading a new life.
But now,--my mother's look of sorrow, and the children's cry of
remonstrance: "Mother; I won't go," I said.
"Nay! but you had better," replied she, shaking her head. "Lady
Ludlow has much power. She can help your brothers. It will not do
to slight her offer."
So we accepted it, after much consultation. We were rewarded,--or so
we thought,--for, afterwards, when I came to know Lady Ludlow, I saw
that she would have done her duty by us, as helpless relations,
however we might have rejected her kindness,--by a presentation to
Christ's Hospital for one of my brothers.
And this was how I came to know my Lady Ludlow.
I remember well the afternoon of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her
ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the
mail-coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the
ostler said, if my name was Dawson--from Hanbury Court, he believed.
I felt it rather formidable; and first began to understand what was
meant by going among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to
whom my mother had intrusted me. I was perched up in a high gig with
a hood to it, such as in those days was called a chair, and my
companion was driving deliberately through the most pastoral country
I had ever yet seen. By-and-by we ascended a long hill, and the man
got out and walked at the horse's head. I should have liked to walk,
too, very much indeed; but I did pot know how far I might do it; and,
in fact, I dared not speak to ask to be helped down the deep steps of
the gig. We were at last at the top,--on a long, breezy, sweeping,
unenclosed piece of ground, called, as I afterwards learnt, a Chase.
The groom stopped, breathed, patted his horse, and then mounted again
to my side.
"Are we near Hanbury Court?" I asked.
"Near! Why, Miss! we've a matter of ten mile yet to go."
Once launched into conversation, we went on pretty glibly. I fancy
he had been afraid of beginning to speak to me, just as I was to him;
but he got over his shyness with me sooner than I did mine with him.
I let him choose the subjects of conversation, although very often I
could not understand the points of interest in them: for instance,
he talked for more than a quarter of an hour of a famous race which a
certain dog-fox had given him, above thirty years before; and spoke
of all the covers and turns just as if I knew them as well as he did;
and all the time I was wondering what kind of an animal a dog-fox
might be.
After we loft the Chase, the road grew worse. No one in these days,
who has not seen the byroads of fifty years ago, can imagine what
they were. We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the
way along the deep-rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I
occasionally met with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I
could not look about me at all, I was so much occupied in holding on.
The road was too muddy for me to walk without dirtying myself more
than I liked to do, just before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow.
But by-and-by, when we came to the fields in which the lane ended, I
begged Randal to help me down, as I saw that I could pick my steps
among the pasture grass without making myself unfit to be seen; and
Randal, out of pity for his steaming horse, wearied with the hard
struggle through the mud, thanked me kindly, and helped me down with
a springing jump.
The pastures fell gradually down to the lower land, shut in on either
side by rows of high elms, as if there had been a wide grand avenue
here in former times. Down the grassy gorge we went, seeing the
sunset sky at the end of the shadowed descent. Suddenly we came to a
long flight of steps.
"If you'll run down there, Miss, I'll go round and meet you, and then
you'd better mount again, for my lady will like to see you drive up
to the house."
"Are we near the house?" said I, suddenly checked by the idea.
"Down there, Miss," replied he, pointing with his whip to certain
stacks of twisted chimneys rising out of a group of trees, in deep
shadow against the crimson light, and which lay just beyond a great
square lawn at the base of the steep slope of a hundred yards, on the
edge of which we stood.
I went down the steps quietly enough. I met Randal and the gig at
the bottom; and, falling into a side road to the left, we drove
sedately round, through the gateway, and into the great court in
front of the house.
The road by which we had come lay right at the back.
Hanbury Court is a vast red-trick house--at least, it is cased in
part with red bricks; and the gate-house and walls about the place
are of brick,--with stone facings at every corner, and door, and
window, such as you see at Hampton Court. At the back are the
gables, and arched doorways, and stone mullions, which show (so Lady
Ludlow used to tell us) that it was once a priory. There was a
prior's parlour, I know--only we called it Mrs. Medlicott's room; and
there was a tithe-barn as big as a church, and rows of fish-ponds,
all got ready for the monks' fasting-days in old time. But all this
I did not see till afterwards. I hardly noticed, this first night,
the great Virginian Creeper (said to have been the first planted in
England by one of my lady's ancestors) that half covered the front of
the house. As I had been unwilling to leave the guard of the coach,
so did I now feel unwilling to leave Randal, a known friend of three
hours. But there was no help for it; in I must go; past the grand-
looking old gentleman holding the door open for me, on into the great
hall on the right hand, into which the sun's last rays were sending
in glorious red light,--the gentleman was now walking before me,--up
a step on to the dais, as I afterwards learned that it was called,--
then again to the left, through a series of sitting-rooms, opening
one out of another, and all of them looking into a stately garden,
glowing, even in the twilight, with the bloom of flowers. We went up
four steps out of the last of these rooms, and then my guide lifted
up a heavy silk curtain and I was in the presence of my Lady Ludlow.
She was very small of stature, and very upright. She wore a great
lace cap, nearly half her own height, I should think, that went round
her head (caps which tied under the chin, and which we called "mobs,"
came in later, and my lady held them in great contempt, saying people
might as well come down in their nightcaps). In front of my lady's
cap was a great bow of white satin ribbon; and a broad band of the
same ribbon was tied tight round her head, and served to keep the cap
straight. She had a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her
shoulders and across her chest, and an apron of the same; a black
silk mode gown, made with short sleeves and ruffles, and with the
tail thereof pulled through the pocket-hole, so as to shorten it to a
useful length: beneath it she wore, as I could plainly see, a
quilted lavender satin petticoat. Her hair was snowy white, but I
hardly saw it, it was so covered with her cap: her skin, even at her
age, was waxen in texture and tint; her eyes were large and dark
blue, and must have been her great beauty when she was young, for
there was nothing particular, as far as I can remember, either in
mouth or nose. She had a great gold-headed stick by her chair; but I
think it was more as a mark of state and dignity than for use; for
she had as light and brisk a step when she chose as any girl of
fifteen, and, in her private early walk of meditation in the
mornings, would go as swiftly from garden alley to garden alley as
any one of us.
She was standing up when I went in. I dropped my curtsey at the
door, which my mother had always taught me as a part of good manners,
and went up instinctively to my lady. She did not put out her hand,
but raised herself a little on tiptoe, and kissed me on both cheeks.
"You are cold, my child. You shall have a dish of tea with me." She
rang a little hand-bell on the table by her, and her waiting-maid
came in from a small anteroom; and, as if all had been prepared, and
was awaiting my arrival, brought with her a small china service with
tea ready made, and a plate of delicately-cut bread and butter, every
morsel of which I could have eaten, and been none the better for it,
so hungry was I after my long ride. The waiting-maid took off my
cloak, and I sat down, sorely alarmed at the silence, the hushed
foot-falls of the subdued maiden over the thick carpet, and the soft
voice and clear pronunciation of my Lady Ludlow. My teaspoon fell
against my cup with a sharp noise, that seemed so out of place and
season that I blushed deeply. My lady caught my eye with hers,--both
keen and sweet were those dark-blue eyes of her ladyship's:-
"Your hands are very cold, my dear; take off those gloves" (I wore
thick serviceable doeskin, and had been too shy to take them off
unbidden), "and let me try and warm them--the evenings are very
chilly." And she held my great red hands in hers,--soft, warm,
white, ring-laden. Looking at last a little wistfully into my face,
she said--"Poor child! And you're the eldest of nine! I had a
daughter who would have been just your age; but I cannot fancy her
the eldest of nine." Then came a pause of silence; and then she rang
her bell, and desired her waiting-maid, Adams, to show me to my room.
It was so small that I think it must have been a cell. The walls
were whitewashed stone; the bed was of white dimity. There was a
small piece of red staircarpet on each side of the bed, and two
chairs. In a closet adjoining were my washstand and toilet-table.
There was a text of Scripture painted on the wall right opposite to
my bed; and below hung a print, common enough in those days, of King
George and Queen Charlotte, with all their numerous children, down to
the little Princess Amelia in a go-cart. On each side hung a small
portrait, also engraved: on the left, it was Louis the Sixteenth; on
the other, Marie-Antoinette. On the chimney-piece there was a
tinder-box and a Prayer-book. I do not remember anything else in the
room. Indeed, in those days people did not dream of writing-tables,
and inkstands, and portfolios, and easy chairs, and what not. We
were taught to go into our bedrooms for the purposes of dressing, and
sleeping, and praying.
Presently I was summoned to supper. I followed the young lady who
had been sent to call me, down the wide shallow stairs, into the
great hall, through which I had first passed on my way to my Lady
Ludlow's room. There were four other young gentlewomen, all
standing, and all silent, who curtsied to me when I first came in.
They were dressed in a kind of uniform: muslin caps bound round
their heads with blue ribbons, plain muslin handkerchiefs, lawn
aprons, and drab-coloured stuff gowns. They were all gathered
together at a little distance from the table, on which were placed a
couple of cold chickens, a salad, and a fruit tart. On the dais
there was a smaller round table, on which stood a silver jug filled
with milk, and a small roll. Near that was set a carved chair, with
a countess's coronet surmounting the back of it. I thought that some
one might have spoken to me; but they were shy, and I was shy; or
else there was some other reason; but, indeed, almost the minute
after I had come into the hall by the door at the lower hand, her
ladyship entered by the door opening upon the dais; whereupon we all
curtsied very low; I because I saw the others do it. She stood, and
looked at us for a moment.
"Young gentlewomen," said she, "make Margaret Dawson welcome among
you;" and they treated me with the kind politeness due to a stranger,
but still without any talking beyond what was required for the
purposes of the meal. After it was over, and grace was said by one
of our party, my lady rang her hand-bell, and the servants came in
and cleared away the supper things: then they brought in a portable
reading-desk, which was placed on the dais, and, the whole household
trooping in, my lady called to one of my companions to come up and
read the Psalms and Lessons for the day. I remember thinking how
afraid I should have been had I been in her place. There were no
prayers. My lady thought it schismatic to have any prayers excepting
those in the Prayer-book; and would as soon have preached a sermon
herself in the parish church, as have allowed any one not a deacon at
the least to read prayers in a private dwelling-house. I am not sure
that even then she would have approved of his reading them in an
unconsecrated place.
She had been maid of honour to Queen Charlotte: a Hanbury of that
old stock that flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, and
heiress of all the land that remained to the family, of the great
estates which had once stretched into four separate counties.
Hanbury Court was hers by right. She had married Lord Ludlow, and
had lived for many years at his various seats, and away from her
ancestral home. She had lost all her children but one, and most of
them had died at these houses of Lord Ludlow's; and, I dare say, that
gave my lady a distaste to the places, and a longing to come back to
Hanbury Court, where she had been so happy as a girl. I imagine her
girlhood had been the happiest time of her life; for, now I think of
it, most of her opinions, when I knew her in later life, were
singular enough then, but had been universally prevalent fifty years
before. For instance, while I lived at Hanbury Court, the cry for
education was beginning to come up: Mr. Raikes had set up his Sunday
Schools; and some clergymen were all for teaching writing and
arithmetic, as well as reading. My lady would have none of this; it
was levelling and revolutionary, she said. When a young woman came
to be hired, my lady would have her in, and see if she liked her
looks and her dress, and question her about her family. Her ladyship
laid great stress upon this latter point, saying that a girl who did
not warm up when any interest or curiosity was expressed about her
mother, or the "baby" (if there was one), was not likely to make a
good servant. Then she would make her put out her feet, to see if
they were well and neatly shod. Then she would bid her say the
Lord's Prayer and the Creed. Then she inquired if she could write.
If she could, and she had liked all that had gone before, her face
sank--it was a great disappointment, for it was an all but inviolable
rule with her never to engage a servant who could write. But I have
known her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in which
she did so she put the girl's principles to a further and unusual
test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert young
woman--and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a
rich draper in Shrewsbury--who had got through her trials pretty
tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt all, by saying glibly,
at the end of the last Commandment, "An't please your ladyship, I can
cast accounts."
"Go away, wench," said my lady in a hurry, "you're only fit for
trade; you will not suit me for a servant." The girl went away
crestfallen: in a minute, however, my lady sent me after her to see
that she had something to eat before leaving the house; and, indeed,
she sent for her once again, but it was only to give her a Bible, and
to bid her beware of French principles, which had led the French to
cut off their king's and queen's heads.
The poor, blubbering girl said, "Indeed, my lady, I wouldn't hurt a
fly, much less a king, and I cannot abide the French, nor frogs
neither, for that matter."
But my lady was inexorable, and took a girl who could neither read
nor write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education
towards addition and subtraction; and afterwards, when the clergyman
who was at Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop
had appointed another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one
of the points on which he and my lady did not agree. While good old
deaf Mr. Mountford lived, it was my lady's custom, when indisposed
for a sermon, to stand up at the door of her large square pew,--just
opposite to the reading-desk,--and to say (at that part of the
morning service where it is decreed that, in quires and places where
they sing, here followeth the anthem): "Mr. Mountford, I will not
trouble you for a discourse this morning." And we all knelt down to
the Litany with great satisfaction; for Mr. Mountford, though he
could not hear, had always his eyes open about this part of the
service, for any of my lady's movements. But the new clergyman, Mr.
Gray, was of a different stamp. He was very zealous in all his
parish work; and my lady, who was just as good as she could be to the
poor, was often crying him up as a godsend to the parish, and he
never could send amiss to the Court when he wanted broth, or wine, or
jelly, or sago for a sick person. But he needs must take up the new
hobby of education; and I could see that this put my lady sadly about
one Sunday, when she suspected, I know not how, that there was
something to be said in his sermon about a Sunday-school which he was
planning. She stood up, as she had not done since Mr. Mountford's
death, two years and better before this time, and said -
"Mr. Gray, I will not trouble you for a discourse this morning."
But her voice was not well-assured and steady; and we knelt down with
more of curiosity than satisfaction in our minds. Mr. Gray preached
a very rousing sermon, on the necessity of establishing a Sabbath-
school in the village. My lady shut her eyes, and seemed to go to
sleep; but I don't believe she lost a word of it, though she said
nothing about it that I heard until the next Saturday, when two of
us, as was the custom, were riding out with her in her carriage, and
we went to see a poor bedridden woman, who lived some miles away at
the other end of the estate and of the parish: and as we came out of
the cottage we met Mr. Gray walking up to it, in a great heat, and
looking very tired. My lady beckoned him to her, and told him she
should wait and take him home with her, adding that she wondered to
see him there, so far from his home, for that it was beyond a
Sabbath-day's journey, and, from what she had gathered from his
sermon the last Sunday, he was all for Judaism against Christianity.
He looked as if he did not understand what she meant; but the truth
was that, besides the way in which he had spoken up for schools and
schooling, he had kept calling Sunday the Sabbath: and, as her
ladyship said, "The Sabbath is the Sabbath, and that's one thing--it
is Saturday; and if I keep it, I'm a Jew, which I'm not. And Sunday
is Sunday; and that's another thing; and if I keep it, I'm a
Christian, which I humbly trust I am."
But when Mr. Gray got an inkling of her meaning in talking about a
Sabbath-day's journey, he only took notice of a part of it: he
smiled and bowed, and said no one knew better than her ladyship what
were the duties that abrogated all inferior laws regarding the
Sabbath; and that he must go in and read to old Betty Brown, so that
he would not detain her ladyship.
"But I shall wait for you, Mr. Gray," said she. "Or I will take a
drive round by Oakfield, and be back in an hour's time." For, you
see, she would not have him feel hurried or troubled with a thought
that he was keeping her waiting, while he ought to be comforting and
praying with old Betty.
"A very pretty young man, my dears," said she, as we drove away.
"But I shall have my pew glazed all the same."
We did not know what she meant at the time; but the next Sunday but
one we did. She had the curtains all round the grand old Hanbury
family seat taken down, and, instead of them, there was glass up to
the height of six or seven feet. We entered by a door, with a window
in it that drew up or down just like what you see in carriages. This
window was generally down, and then we could hear perfectly; but if
Mr. Gray used the word "Sabbath," or spoke in favour of schooling and
education, my lady stepped out of her corner, and drew up the window
with a decided clang and clash.
I must tell you something more about Mr. Gray. The presentation to
the living of Hanbury was vested in two trustees, of whom Lady Ludlow
was one: Lord Ludlow had exercised this right in the appointment of
Mr. Mountford, who had won his lordship's favour by his excellent
horsemanship. Nor was Mr. Mountford a bad clergyman, as clergymen
went in those days. He did not drink, though he liked good eating as
much as any one. And if any poor person was ill, and he heard of it,
he would send them plates from his own dinner of what he himself
liked best; sometimes of dishes which were almost as bad as poison to
sick people. He meant kindly to everybody except dissenters, whom
Lady Ludlow and he united in trying to drive out of the parish; and
among dissenters he particularly abhorred Methodists--some one said,
because John Wesley had objected to his hunting. But that must have
been long ago for when I knew him he was far too stout and too heavy
to hunt; besides, the bishop of the diocese disapproved of hunting,
and had intimated his disapprobation to the clergy. For my own part,
I think a good run would not have come amiss, even in a moral point
of view, to Mr. Mountford. He ate so much, and took so little
exercise, that we young women often heard of his being in terrible
passions with his servants, and the sexton and clerk. But they none
of them minded him much, for he soon came to himself, and was sure to
make them some present or other--some said in proportion to his
anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons
are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you,"
was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby
sixpenny speech, only fit for a curate.
There was a great deal of good in Mr. Mountford, too. He could not
bear to see pain, or sorrow, or misery of any kind; and, if it came
under his notice, he was never easy till he had relieved it, for the
time, at any rate. But he was afraid of being made uncomfortable;
so, if he possibly could, he would avoid seeing any one who was ill
or unhappy; and he did not thank any one for telling him about them.
"What would your ladyship have me to do?" he once said to my Lady
Ludlow, when she wished him to go and see a poor man who had broken
his leg. "I cannot piece the leg as the doctor can; I cannot nurse
him as well as his wife does; I may talk to him, but he no more
understands me than I do the language of the alchemists. My coming
puts him out; he stiffens himself into an uncomfortable posture, out
of respect to the cloth, and dare not take the comfort of kicking,
and swearing, and scolding his wife, while I am there. I hear him,
with my figurative ears, my lady, heave a sigh of relief when my back
is turned, and the sermon that he thinks I ought to have kept for the
pulpit, and have delivered to his neighbours (whose case, as he
fancies, it would just have fitted, as it seemed to him to be
addressed to the sinful), is all ended, and done, for the day. I
judge others as myself; I do to them as I would be done to. That's
Christianity, at any rate. I should hate--saving your ladyship's
presence--to have my Lord Ludlow coming and seeing me, if I were ill.
'Twould be a great honour, no doubt; but I should have to put on a
clean nightcap for the occasion; and sham patience, in order to be
polite, and not weary his lordship with my complaints. I should be
twice as thankful to him if he would send me game, or a good fat
haunch, to bring me up to that pitch of health and strength one ought
to be in, to appreciate the honour of a visit from a nobleman. So I
shall send Jerry Butler a good dinner every day till he is strong
again; and spare the poor old fellow my presence and advice."
My lady would be puzzled by this, and by many other of Mr.
Mountford's speeches. But he had been appointed by my lord, and she
could not question her dead husband's wisdom; and she knew that the
dinners were always sent, and often a guinea or two to help to pay
the doctor's bills; and Mr. Mountford was true blue, as we call it,
to the back-bone; hated the dissenters and the French; and could
hardly drink a dish of tea without giving out the toast of "Church
and King, and down with the Rump." Moreover, he had once had the
honour of preaching before the King and Queen, and two of the
Princesses, at Weymouth; and the King had applauded his sermon
audibly with,--"Very good; very good;" and that was a seal put upon
his merit in my lady's eyes.
Besides, in the long winter Sunday evenings, he would come up to the
Court, and read a sermon to us girls, and play a game of picquet with
my lady afterwards; which served to shorten the tedium of the time.
My lady would, on those occasions, invite him to sup with her on the
dais; but as her meal was invariably bread and milk only, Mr.
Mountford preferred sitting down amongst us, and made a joke about
its being wicked and heterodox to eat meagre on Sunday, a festival of
the Church. We smiled at this joke just as much the twentieth time
we heard it as we did at the first; for we knew it was coming,
because he always coughed a little nervously before he made a joke,
for fear my lady should not approve: and neither she nor he seemed
to remember that he had ever hit upon the idea before.
Mr. Mountford died quite suddenly at last. We were all very sorry to
lose him. He left some of his property (for he had a private estate)
to the poor of the parish, to furnish them with an annual Christmas
dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, for which he wrote out a very
good receipt in the codicil to his will.
Moreover, he desired his executors to see that the vault, in which
the vicars of Hanbury were interred, was well aired, before his
coffin was taken in; for, all his life long, he had had a dread of
damp, and latterly he kept his rooms to such a pitch of warmth that
some thought it hastened his end.
Then the other trustee, as I have said, presented the living to Mr.
Gray, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. It was quite natural for us
all, as belonging in some sort to the Hanbury family, to disapprove
of the other trustee's choice. But when some ill-natured person
circulated the report that Mr. Gray was a Moravian Methodist, I
remember my lady said, "She could not believe anything so bad,
without a great deal of evidence."
CHAPTER II.
Before I tell you about Mr. Gray, I think I ought to make you
understand something more of what we did all day long at Hanbury
Court. There were five of us at the time of which I am speaking, all
young women of good descent, and allied (however distantly) to people
of rank. When we were not with my lady, Mrs. Medlicott looked after
us; a gentle little woman, who had been companion to my lady for many
years, and was indeed, I have been told, some kind of relation to
her. Mrs. Medlicott's parents had lived in Germany, and the
consequence was, she spoke English with a very foreign accent.
Another consequence was, that she excelled in all manner of
needlework, such as is not known even by name in these days. She
could darn either lace, table-linen, India muslin, or stockings, so
that no one could tell where the hole or rent had been. Though a
good Protestant, and never missing Guy Faux day at church, she was as
skilful at fine work as any nun in a Papist convent. She would take
a piece of French cambric, and by drawing out some threads, and
working in others, it became delicate lace in a very few hours. She
did the same by Hollands cloth, and made coarse strong lace, with
which all my lady's napkins and table-linen were trimmed. We worked
under her during a great part of the day, either in the still-room,
or at our sewing in a chamber that opened out of the great hall. My
lady despised every kind of work that would now be called Fancy-work.
She considered that the use of coloured threads or worsted was only
fit to amuse children; but that grown women ought not to be taken
with mere blues and reds, but to restrict their pleasure in sewing to
making small and delicate stitches. She would speak of the old
tapestry in the hall as the work of her ancestresses, who lived
before the Reformation, and were consequently unacquainted with pure
and simple tastes in work, as well as in religion. Nor would my lady
sanction the fashion of the day, which, at the beginning of this
century, made all the fine ladies take to making shoes. She said
that such work was a consequence of the French Revolution, which had
done much to annihilate all distinctions of rank and class, and hence
it was, that she saw young ladies of birth and breeding handling
lasts, and awls, and dirty cobblers'-wax, like shoe'-makers'
daughters.
Very frequently one of us would be summoned to my lady to read aloud
to her, as she sat in her small withdrawing-room, some improving
book. It was generally Mr. Addison's "Spectator;" but one year, I
remember, we had to read "Sturm's Reflections" translated from a
German book Mrs. Medlicott recommended. Mr. Sturm told us what to
think about for every day in the year; and very dull it was; but I
believe Queen Charlotte had liked the book very much, and the thought
of her royal approbation kept my lady awake during the reading.
"Mrs. Chapone's Letters" and "Dr. Gregory's Advice to Young Ladies"
composed the rest of our library for week-day reading. I, for one,
was glad to leave my fine sewing, and even my reading aloud (though
this last did keep me with my dear lady) to go to the still-room and
potter about among the preserves and the medicated waters. There was
no doctor for many miles round, and with Mrs. Medlicott to direct us,
and Dr. Buchan to go by for recipes, we sent out many a bottle of
physic, which, I dare say, was as good as what comes out of the
druggist's shop. At any rate, I do not think we did much harm; for
if any of our physics tasted stronger than usual, Mrs. Medlicott
would bid us let it down with cochineal and water, to make all safe,
as she said. So our bottles of medicine had very little real physic
in them at last; but we were careful in putting labels on them, which
looked very mysterious to those who could not read, and helped the
medicine to do its work. I have sent off many a bottle of salt and
water coloured red; and whenever we had nothing else to do in the
still-room, Mrs. Medlicott would set us to making bread-pills, by way
of practice; and, as far as I can say, they were very efficacious, as
before we gave out a box Mrs. Medlicott always told the patient what
symptoms to expect; and I hardly ever inquired without hearing that
they had produced their effect. There was one old man, who took six
pills a-night, of any kind we liked to give him, to make him sleep;
and if, by any chance, his daughter had forgotten to let us know that
he was out of his medicine, he was so restless and miserable that, as
he said, he thought he was like to die. I think ours was what would
be called homoeopathic practice now-a-days. Then we learnt to make
all the cakes and dishes of the season in the still-room. We had
plum-porridge and mince-pies at Christmas, fritters and pancakes on
Shrove Tuesday, furmenty on Mothering Sunday, violet-cakes in Passion
Week, tansy-pudding on Easter Sunday, three-cornered cakes on Trinity
Sunday, and so on through the year: all made from good old Church
receipts, handed down from one of my lady's earliest Protestant
ancestresses. Every one of us passed a portion of the day with Lady
Ludlow; and now and then we rode out with her in her coach and four.
She did not like to go out with a pair of horses, considering this
rather beneath her rank; and, indeed, four horses were very often
needed to pull her heavy coach through the stiff mud. But it was
rather a cumbersome equipage through the narrow Warwickshire lanes;
and I used often to think it was well that countesses were not
plentiful, or else we might have met another lady of quality in
another coach and four, where there would have been no possibility of
turning, or passing each other, and very little chance of backing.
Once when the idea of this danger of meeting another countess in a
narrow, deep-rutted lane was very prominent in my mind I ventured to
ask Mrs. Medlicott what would have to be done on such an occasion;
and she told me that "de latest creation must back, for sure," which
puzzled me a good deal at the time, although I understand it now. I
began to find out the use of the "Peerage," a book which had seemed
to me rather dull before; but, as I was always a coward in a coach, I
made myself well acquainted with the dates of creation of our three
Warwickshire earls, and was happy to find that Earl Ludlow ranked
second, the oldest earl being a hunting widower, and not likely to
drive out in a carriage.
All this time I have wandered from Mr. Gray. Of course, we first saw
him in church when he read himself in. He was very red-faced, the
kind of redness which goes with light hair and a blushing complexion;
he looked slight and short, and his bright light frizzy hair had
hardly a dash of powder in it. I remember my lady making this
observation, and sighing over it; for, though since the famine in
seventeen hundred and ninety-nine and eighteen hundred there had been
a tax on hair-powder, yet it was reckoned very revolutionary and
Jacobin not to wear a good deal of it. My lady hardly liked the
opinions of any man who wore his own hair; but this she would say was
rather a prejudice: only in her youth none but the mob had gone
wigless, and she could not get over the association of wigs with
birth and breeding; a man's own hair with that class of people who
had formed the rioters in seventeen hundred and eighty, when Lord
George Gordon had been one of the bugbears of my lady's life. Her
husband and his brothers, she told us, had been put into breeches,
and had their heads shaved on their seventh birthday, each of them; a
handsome little wig of the newest fashion forming the old Lady
Ludlow's invariable birthday present to her sons as they each arrived
at that age; and afterwards, to the day of their death, they never
saw their own hair. To be without powder, as some underbred people
were talking of being now, was in fact to insult the proprieties of
life, by being undressed. It was English sans-culottism. But Mr.
Gray did wear a little powder, enough to save him in my lady's good
opinion; but not enough to make her approve of him decidedly.
The next time I saw him was in the great hall. Mary Mason and I were
going to drive out with my lady in her coach, and when we went down
stairs with our best hats and cloaks on, we found Mr. Gray awaiting
my lady's coming. I believe he had paid his respects to her before,
but we had never seen him; and he had declined her invitation to
spend Sunday evening at the Court (as Mr. Mountford used to do pretty
regularly--and play a game at picquet too--), which, Mrs. Medlicott
told us, had caused my lady to be not over well pleased with him.
He blushed redder than ever at the sight of us, as we entered the
hall and dropped him our curtsies. He coughed two or three times, as
if he would have liked to speak to us, if he could but have found
something to say; and every time he coughed he became hotter-looking
than ever. I am ashamed to say, we were nearly laughing at him; half
because we, too, were so shy that we understood what his awkwardness
meant.
My lady came in, with her quick active step--she always walked
quickly when she did not bethink herself of her cane--as if she was
sorry to have us kept waiting--and, as she entered, she gave us all
round one of those graceful sweeping curtsies, of which I think the
art must have died out with her,--it implied so much courtesy;--this
time it said, as well as words could do, "I am sorry to have kept you
all waiting,--forgive me."
She went up to the mantelpiece, near which Mr. Gray had been standing
until her entrance, and curtseying afresh to him, and pretty deeply
this time, because of his cloth, and her being hostess, and he, a new
guest. She asked him if he would not prefer speaking to her in her
own private parlour, and looked as though she would have conducted
him there. But he burst out with his errand, of which he was full
even to choking, and which sent the glistening tears into his large
blue eyes, which stood farther and farther out with his excitement.
"My lady, I want to speak to you, and to persuade you to exert your
kind interest with Mr. Lathom--Justice Lathom, of Hathaway Manor--"
"Harry Lathom?" inquired my lady,--as Mr. Gray stopped to take the
breath he had lost in his hurry,--"I did not know he was in the
commission."
"He is only just appointed; he took the oaths not a month ago,--
more's the pity!"
"I do not understand why you should regret it. The Lathoms have held
Hathaway since Edward the First, and Mr. Lathom bears a good
character, although his temper is hasty--"
"My lady! he has committed Job Gregson for stealing--a fault of which
he is as innocent as I--and all the evidence goes to prove it, now
that the case is brought before the Bench; only the Squires hang so
together that they can't be brought to see justice, and are all for
sending Job to gaol, out of compliment to Mr. Lathom, saying it his
first committal, and it won't be civil to tell him there is no
evidence against his man. For God's sake, my lady, speak to the
gentlemen; they will attend to you, while they only tell me to mind
my own business."
Now my lady was always inclined to stand by her order, and the
Lathoms of Hathaway Court were cousins to the Hanbury's. Besides, it
was rather a point of honour in those days to encourage a young
magistrate, by passing a pretty sharp sentence on his first
committals; and Job Gregson was the father of a girl who had been
lately turned away from her place as scullery-maid for sauciness to
Mrs. Adams, her ladyship's own maid; and Mr. Gray had not said a word
of the reasons why he believed the man innocent,--for he was in such
a hurry, I believe he would have had my lady drive off to the Henley
Court-house then and there;--so there seemed a good deal against the
man, and nothing but Mr. Gray's bare word for him; and my lady drew
herself a little up, and said -
"Mr. Gray! I do not see what reason either you or I have to
interfere. Mr. Harry Lathom is a sensible kind of young man, well
capable of ascertaining the truth without our help--"
"But more evidence has come out since," broke in Mr. Gray. My lady
went a little stiffer, and spoke a little more coldly:-
"I suppose this additional evidence is before the justices: men of
good family, and of honour and credit, well known in the county.
They naturally feel that the opinion of one of themselves must have
more weight than the words of a man like Job Gregson, who bears a
very indifferent character,--has been strongly suspected of poaching,
coming from no one knows where, squatting on Hareman's Common--which,
by the way, is extra-parochial, I believe; consequently you, as a
clergyman, are not responsible for what goes on there; and, although
impolitic, there might be some truth in what the magistrates said, in
advising you to mind your own business,"--said her ladyship,
smiling,--"and they might be tempted to bid me mind mine, if I
interfered, Mr. Gray: might they not?"
He looked extremely uncomfortable; half angry. Once or twice he
began to speak, but checked himself, as if his words would not have
been wise or prudent. At last he said--"It may seem presumptuous in
me,--a stranger of only a few weeks' standing--to set up my judgment
as to men's character against that of residents--" Lady Ludlow gave
a little bow of acquiescence, which was, I think, involuntary on her
part, and which I don't think he perceived,--"but I am convinced that
the man is innocent of this offence,--and besides, the justices
themselves allege this ridiculous custom of paying a compliment to a
newly-appointed magistrate as their only reason."
That unlucky word "ridiculous!" It undid all the good his modest
beginning had done him with my lady. I knew as well as words could
have told me, that she was affronted at the expression being used by
a man inferior in rank to those whose actions he applied it to,--and
truly, it was a great want of tact, considering to whom he was
speaking.
Lady Ludlow spoke very gently and slowly; she always did so when she
was annoyed; it was a certain sign, the meaning of which we had all
learnt.
"I think, Mr. Gray, we will drop the subject. It is one on which we
are not likely to agree."
Mr. Gray's ruddy colour grew purple and then faded away, and his face
became pale. I think both my lady and he had forgotten our presence;
and we were beginning to feel too awkward to wish to remind them of
it. And yet we could not help watching and listening with the
greatest interest.
Mr. Gray drew himself up to his full height, with an unconscious
feeling of dignity. Little as was his stature, and awkward and
embarrassed as he had been only a few minutes before, I remember
thinking he looked almost as grand as my lady when he spoke.
"Your ladyship must remember that it may be my duty to speak to my
parishioners on many subjects on which they do not agree with me. I
am not at liberty to be silent, because they differ in opinion from
me."
Lady Ludlow's great blue eyes dilated with surprise, and--I do think-
-anger, at being thus spoken to. I am not sure whether it was very
wise in Mr. Gray. He himself looked afraid of the consequences but
as if he was determined to bear them without flinching. For a minute
there was silence. Then my lady replied--"Mr. Gray, I respect your
plain speaking, although I may wonder whether a young man of your age
and position has any right to assume that he is a better judge than
one with the experience which I have naturally gained at my time of
life, and in the station I hold."
"If I, madam, as the clergyman of this parish, am not to shrink from
telling what I believe to be the truth to the poor and lowly, no more
am I to hold my peace in the presence of the rich and titled." Mr.
Gray's face showed that he was in that state of excitement which in a
child would have ended in a good fit of crying. He looked as if he
had nerved himself up to doing and saying things, which he disliked
above everything, and which nothing short of serious duty could have
compelled him to do and say. And at such times every minute
circumstance which could add to pain comes vividly before one. I saw
that he became aware of our presence, and that it added to his
discomfiture.
My lady flushed up. "Are you aware, sir," asked she, "that you have
gone far astray from the original subject of conversation? But as
you talk of your parish, allow me to remind you that Hareman's Common
is beyond the bounds, and that you are really not responsible for the
characters and lives of the squatters on that unlucky piece of
ground."
"Madam, I see I have only done harm in speaking to you about the
affair at all. I beg your pardon and take my leave."
He bowed, and looked very sad. Lady Ludlow caught the expression of
his face.
"Good morning!" she cried, in rather a louder and quicker way than
that in which she had been speaking. "Remember, Job Gregson is a
notorious poacher and evildoer, and you really are not responsible
for what goes on at Hareman's Common."
He was near the hall door, and said something--half to himself, which
we heard (being nearer to him), but my lady did not; although she saw
that he spoke. "What did he say?" she asked in a somewhat hurried
manner, as soon as the door was closed--"I did not hear." We looked
at each other, and then I spoke:
"He said, my lady, that 'God help him! he was responsible for all the
evil he did not strive to overcome.'"
My lady turned sharp round away from us, and Mary Mason said
afterwards she thought her ladyship was much vexed with both of us,
for having been present, and with me for having repeated what Mr.
Gray had said. But it was not our fault that we were in the hall,
and when my lady asked what Mr. Gray had said, I thought it right to
tell her.
In a few minutes she bade us accompany her in her ride in the coach.
Lady Ludlow always sat forwards by herself, and we girls backwards.
Somehow this was a rule, which we never thought of questioning. It
was true that riding backwards made some of us feel very
uncomfortable and faint; and to remedy this my lady always drove with
both windows open, which occasionally gave her the rheumatism; but we
always went on in the old way. This day she did not pay any great
attention to the road by which we were going, and Coachman took his
own way. We were very silent, as my lady did not speak, and looked
very serious. Or else, in general, she made these rides very
pleasant (to those who were not qualmish with riding backwards), by
talking to us in a very agreeable manner, and telling us of the
different things which had happened to her at various places,--at
Paris and Versailles, where she had been in her youth,--at Windsor
and Kew and Weymouth, where she had been with the Queen, when maid-
of-honour--and so on. But this day she did not talk at all. All at
once she put her head out of the window.
"John Footman," said she, "where are we? Surely this is Hareman's
Common."
"Yes, an't please my lady," said John Footman, and waited for further
speech or orders. My lady thought a while, and then said she would
have the steps put down and get out.
As soon as she was gone, we looked at each other, and then without a
word began to gaze after her. We saw her pick her dainty way in the
little high-heeled shoes she always wore (because they had been in
fashion in her youth), among the yellow pools of stagnant water that
had gathered in the clayey soil. John Footman followed, stately,
after; afraid too, for all his stateliness, of splashing his pure
white stockings. Suddenly my lady turned round and said something to
him, and he returned to the carriage with a half-pleased, half-
puzzled air.
My lady went on to a cluster of rude mud houses at the higher end of
the Common; cottages built, as they were occasionally at that day, of
wattles and clay, and thatched with sods. As far as we could make
out from dumb show, Lady Ludlow saw enough of the interiors of these
places to make her hesitate before entering, or even speaking to any
of the children who were playing about in the puddles. After a
pause, she disappeared into one of the cottages. It seemed to us a
long time before she came out; but I dare say it was not more than
eight or ten minutes. She came back with her head hanging down, as
if to choose her way,--but we saw it was more in thought and
bewilderment than for any such purpose.
She had not made up her mind where we should drive to when she got
into the carriage again. John Footman stood, bare-headed, waiting
for orders.
"To Hathaway. My dears, if you are tired, or if you have anything to
do for Mrs. Medlicott, I can drop you at Barford Corner, and it is
but a quarter of an hour's brisk walk home."
But luckily we could safely say that Mrs. Medlicott did not want us;
and as we had whispered to each other, as we sat alone in the coach,
that surely my lady must have gone to Job Gregson's, we were far too
anxious to know the end of it all to say that we were tired. So we
all set off to Hathaway. Mr. Harry Lathom was a bachelor squire,
thirty or thirty-five years of age, more at home in the field than in
the drawing-room, and with sporting men than with ladies.
My lady did not alight, of course; it was Mr. Lathom's place to wait
upon her, and she bade the butler,--who had a smack of the gamekeeper
in him, very unlike our own powdered venerable fine gentleman at
Hanbury,--tell his master, with her compliments, that she wished to
speak to him. You may think how pleased we were to find that we
should hear all that was said; though, I think, afterwards we were
half sorry when we saw how our presence confused the squire, who
would have found it bad enough to answer my lady's questions, even
without two eager girls for audience.
"Pray, Mr. Lathom," began my lady, something abruptly for her,--but
she was very full of her subject,--"what is this I hear about Job
Gregson?"
Mr. Lathom looked annoyed and vexed, but dared not show it in his
words.
"I gave out a warrant against him, my lady, for theft,--that is all.
You are doubtless aware of his character; a man who sets nets and
springes in long cover, and fishes wherever he takes a fancy. It is
but a short step from poaching to thieving."
"That is quite true," replied Lady Ludlow (who had a horror of
poaching for this very reason): "but I imagine you do not send a man
to gaol on account of his bad character."
"Rogues and vagabonds," said Mr. Lathom. "A man may be sent to
prison for being a vagabond; for no specific act, but for his general
mode of life."
He had the better of her ladyship for one moment; but then she
answered -
"But in this case, the charge on which you committed him is for
theft; now his wife tells me he can prove he was some miles distant
from Holmwood, where the robbery took place, all that afternoon; she
says you had the evidence before you."
Mr. Lathom here interrupted my lady, by saying, in a somewhat sulky
manner--"No such evidence was brought before me when I gave the
warrant. I am not answerable for the other magistrates' decision,
when they had more evidence before them. It was they who committed
him to gaol. I am not responsible for that."
My lady did not often show signs of impatience; but we knew she was
feeling irritated, by the little perpetual tapping of her high-heeled
shoe against the bottom of the carriage. About the same time we,
sitting backwards, caught a glimpse of Mr. Gray through the open
door, standing in the shadow of the hall. Doubtless Lady Ludlow's
arrival had interrupted a conversation between Mr. Lathom and Mr.
Gray. The latter must have heard every word of what she was saying;
but of this she was not aware, and caught at Mr. Lathom's disclaimer
of responsibility with pretty much the same argument which she had
heard (through our repetition) that Mr. Gray had used not two hours
before.
"And do you mean to say, Mr. Lathom, that you don't consider yourself
responsible for all injustice or wrong-doing that you might have
prevented, and have not? Nay, in this case the first germ of
injustice was your own mistake. I wish you had been with me a little
while ago, and seen the misery in that poor fellow's cottage." She
spoke lower, and Mr. Gray drew near, in a sort of involuntary manner;
as if to hear all she was saying. We saw him, and doubtless Mr.
Lathom heard his footstep, and knew who it was that was listening
behind him, and approving of every word that was said. He grew yet
more sullen in manner; but still my lady was my lady, and he dared
not speak out before her, as he would have done to Mr. Gray. Lady
Ludlow, however, caught the look of stubborness in his face, and it
roused her as I had never seen her roused.
"I am sure you will not refuse, sir, to accept my bail. I offer to
bail the fellow out, and to be responsible for his appearance at the
sessions. What say you to that, Mr. Lathom?"
"The offence of theft is not bailable, my lady."
"Not in ordinary cases, I dare say. But I imagine this is an
extraordinary case. The man is sent to prison out of compliment to
you, and against all evidence, as far as I can learn. He will have
to rot in gaol for two months, and his wife and children to starve.
I, Lady Ludlow, offer to bail him out, and pledge myself for his
appearance at next quarter-sessions."
"It is against the law, my lady."
"Bah! Bah! Bah! Who makes laws? Such as I, in the House of Lords--
such as you, in the House of Commons. We, who make the laws in St.
Stephen's, may break the mere forms of them, when we have right on
our sides, on our own land, and amongst our own people."
"The lord-lieutenant may take away my commission, if he heard of it."
"And a very good thing for the county, Harry Lathom; and for you too,
if he did,--if you don't go on more wisely than you have begun. A
pretty set you and your brother magistrates are to administer justice
through the land! I always said a good despotism was the best form
of government; and I am twice as much in favour of it now I see what
a quorum is! My dears!" suddenly turning round to us, "if it would
not tire you to walk home, I would beg Mr. Lathom to take a seat in
my coach, and we would drive to Henley Gaol, and have the poor man
out at once."
"A walk over the fields at this time of day is hardly fitting for
young ladies to take alone," said Mr. Lathom, anxious no doubt to
escape from his tete-a-tete drive with my lady, and possibly not
quite prepared to go to the illegal length of prompt measures, which
she had in contemplation.
But Mr. Gray now stepped forward, too anxious for the release of the
prisoner to allow any obstacle to intervene which he could do away
with. To see Lady Ludlow's face when she first perceived whom she
had had for auditor and spectator of her interview with Mr. Lathom,
was as good as a play. She had been doing and saying the very things
she had been so much annoyed at Mr. Gray's saying and proposing only
an hour or two ago. She had been setting down Mr. Lathom pretty
smartly, in the presence of the very man to whom she had spoken of
that gentleman as so sensible, and of such a standing in the county,
that it was presumption to question his doings. But before Mr. Gray
had finished his offer of escorting us back to Hanbury Court, my lady
had recovered herself. There was neither surprise nor displeasure in
her manner, as she answered--"I thank you, Mr. Gray. I was not aware
that you were here, but I think I can understand on what errand you
came. And seeing you here, recalls me to a duty I owe Mr. Lathom.
Mr. Lathom, I have spoken to you pretty plainly,--forgetting, until I
saw Mr. Gray, that only this very afternoon I differed from him on
this very question; taking completely, at that time, the same view of
the whole subject which you have done; thinking that the county would
be well rid of such a man as Job Gregson, whether he had committed
this theft or not. Mr. Gray and I did not part quite friends," she
continued, bowing towards him; "but it so happened that I saw Job
Gregson's wife and home,--I felt that Mr. Gray had been right and I
had been wrong, so, with the famous inconsistency of my sex, I came
hither to scold you," smiling towards Mr. Lathom, who looked half-
sulky yet, and did not relax a bit of his gravity at her smile, "for
holding the same opinions that I had done an hour before. Mr. Gray,"
(again bowing towards him) "these young ladies will be very much
obliged to you for your escort, and so shall I. Mr. Lathom, may I
beg of you to accompany me to Henley?"
Mr. Gray bowed very low, and went very red; Mr. Lathom said something
which we none of us heard, but which was, I think, some remonstrance
against the course he was, as it were, compelled to take. Lady
Ludlow, however, took no notice of his murmur, but sat in an attitude
of polite expectancy; and as we turned off on our walk, I saw Mr.
Lathom getting into the coach with the air of a whipped hound. I
must say, considering my lady's feeling, I did not envy him his ride-
-though, I believe, he was quite in the right as to the object of the
ride being illegal.
Our walk home was very dull. We had no fears; and would far rather
have been without the awkward, blushing young man, into which Mr.
Gray had sunk. At every stile he hesitated,--sometimes he half got
over it, thinking that he could assist us better in that way; then he
would turn back unwilling to go before ladies. He had no ease of
manner, as my lady once said of him, though on any occasion of duty,
he had an immense deal of dignity.
CHAPTER III.
As far as I can remember, it was very soon after this that I first
began to have the pain in my hip, which has ended in making me a
cripple for life. I hardly recollect more than one walk after our
return under Mr. Gray's escort from Mr. Lathom's. Indeed, at the
time, I was not without suspicions (which I never named) that the
beginning of all the mischief was a great jump I had taken from the
top of one of the stiles on that very occasion.
Well, it is a long while ago, and God disposes of us all, and I am
not going to tire you out with telling you how I thought and felt,
and how, when I saw what my life was to be, I could hardly bring
myself to be patient, but rather wished to die at once. You can
every one of you think for yourselves what becoming all at once
useless and unable to move, and by-and-by growing hopeless of cure,
and feeling that one must be a burden to some one all one's life
long, would be to an active, wilful, strong girl of seventeen,
anxious to get on in the world, so as, if possible, to help her
brothers and sisters. So I shall only say, that one among the
blessings which arose out of what seemed at the time a great, black
sorrow was, that Lady Ludlow for many years took me, as it were, into
her own especial charge; and now, as I lie still and alone in my old
age, it is such a pleasure to think of her!
Mrs. Medlicott was great as a nurse, and I am sure I can never be
grateful enough to her memory for all her kindness. But she was
puzzled to know how to manage me in other ways. I used to have long,
hard fits of crying; and, thinking that I ought to go home--and yet
what could they do with me there?--and a hundred and fifty other
anxious thoughts, some of which I could tell to Mrs. Medlicott, and
others I could not. Her way of comforting me was hurrying away for
some kind of tempting or strengthening food--a basin of melted
calves-foot jelly was, I am sure she thought, a cure for every woe.
"There take it, dear, take it!" she would say; "and don't go on
fretting for what can't be helped."
But, I think, she got puzzled at length at the non-efficacy of good
things to eat; and one day, after I had limped down to see the
doctor, in Mrs. Medlicott's sitting-room--a room lined with
cupboards, containing preserves and dainties of all kinds, which she
perpetually made, and never touched herself--when I was returning to
my bed-room to cry away the afternoon, under pretence of arranging my
clothes, John Footman brought me a message from my lady (with whom
the doctor had been having a conversation) to bid me go to her in
that private sitting-room at the end of the suite of apartments,
about which I spoke in describing the day of my first arrival at
Hanbury. I had hardly been in it since; as, when we read to my lady,
she generally sat in the small withdrawing-room out of which this
private room of hers opened. I suppose great people do not require
what we smaller people value so much,--I mean privacy. I do not
think that there was a room which my lady occupied that had not two
doors, and some of them had three or four. Then my lady had always
Adams waiting upon her in her bed-chamber; and it was Mrs.
Medlicott's duty to sit within call, as it were, in a sort of
anteroom that led out of my lady's own sitting-room, on the opposite
side to the drawing-room door. To fancy the house, you must take a
great square and halve it by a line: at one end of this line was the
hall-door, or public entrance; at the opposite the private entrance
from a terrace, which was terminated at one end by a sort of postern
door in an old gray stone wall, beyond which lay the farm buildings
and offices; so that people could come in this way to my lady on
business, while, if she were going into the garden from her own room,
she had nothing to do but to pass through Mrs. Medlicott's apartment,
out into the lesser hall, and then turning to the right as she passed
on to the terrace, she could go down the flight of broad, shallow
steps at the corner of the house into the lovely garden, with
stretching, sweeping lawns, and gay flower-beds, and beautiful, bossy
laurels, and other blooming or massy shrubs, with full-grown beeches,
or larches feathering down to the ground a little farther off. The
whole was set in a frame, as it were, by the more distant woodlands.
The house had been modernized in the days of Queen Anne, I think; but
the money had fallen short that was requisite to carry out all the
improvements, so it was only the suite of withdrawing-rooms and the
terrace-rooms, as far as the private entrance, that had the new,
long, high windows put in, and these were old enough by this time to
be draped with roses, and honeysuckles, and pyracanthus, winter and
summer long.
Well, to go back to that day when I limped into my lady's sitting-
room, trying hard to look as if I had not been crying, and not to
walk as if I was in much pain. I do not know whether my lady saw how
near my tears were to my eyes, but she told me she had sent for me,
because she wanted some help in arranging the drawers of her bureau,
and asked me--just as if it was a favour I was to do her--if I could
sit down in the easy-chair near the window--(all quietly arranged
before I came in, with a footstool, and a table quite near)--and
assist her. You will wonder, perhaps, why I was not bidden to sit or
lie on the sofa; but (although I found one there a morning or two
afterwards, when I came down) the fact was, that there was none in
the room at this time. I have even fancied that the easy-chair was
brought in on purpose for me; for it was not the chair in which I
remembered my lady sitting the first time I saw her. That chair was
very much carved and gilded, with a countess' coronet at the top. I
tried it one day, some time afterwards, when my lady was out of the
room, and I had a fancy for seeing how I could move about, and very
uncomfortable it was. Now my chair (as I learnt to call it, and to
think it) was soft and luxurious, and seemed somehow to give one's
body rest just in that part where one most needed it.
I was not at my ease that first day, nor indeed for many days
afterwards, notwithstanding my chair was so comfortable. Yet I
forgot my sad pain in silently wondering over the meaning of many of
the things we turned out of those curious old drawers. I was puzzled
to know why some were kept at all; a scrap of writing maybe, with
only half a dozen common-place words written on it, or a bit of
broken riding-whip, and here and there a stone, of which I thought I
could have picked up twenty just as good in the first walk I took.
But it seems that was just my ignorance; for my lady told me they
were pieces of valuable marble, used to make the floors of the great
Roman emperors palaces long ago; and that when she had been a girl,
and made the grand tour long ago, her cousin Sir Horace Mann, the
Ambassador or Envoy at Florence, had told her to be sure to go into
the fields inside the walls of ancient Rome, when the farmers were
preparing the ground for the onion-sowing, and had to make the soil
fine, and pick up what bits of marble she could find. She had done
so, and meant to have had them made into a table; but somehow that
plan fell through, and there they were with all the dirt out of the
onion-field upon them; but once when I thought of cleaning them with
soap and water, at any rate, she bade me not to do so, for it was
Roman dirt--earth, I think, she called it--but it was dirt all the
same.
Then, in this bureau, were many other things, the value of which I
could understand--locks of hair carefully ticketed, which my lady
looked at very sadly; and lockets and bracelets with miniatures in
them,--very small pictures to what they make now-a-days, and called
miniatures: some of them had even to be looked at through a
microscope before you could see the individual expression of the
faces, or how beautifully they were painted. I don't think that
looking at these made may lady seem so melancholy, as the seeing and
touching of the hair did. But, to be sure, the hair was, as it were,
a part of some beloved body which she might never touch and caress
again, but which lay beneath the turf, all faded and disfigured,
except perhaps the very hair, from which the lock she held had been
dissevered; whereas the pictures were but pictures after all--
likenesses, but not the very things themselves. This is only my own
conjecture, mind. My lady rarely spoke out her feelings. For, to
begin with, she was of rank: and I have heard her say that people of
rank do not talk about their feelings except to their equals, and
even to them they conceal them, except upon rare occasions.
Secondly,--and this is my own reflection,--she was an only child and
an heiress; and as such was more apt to think than to talk, as all
well-brought-up heiresses must be. I think. Thirdly, she had long
been a widow, without any companion of her own age with whom it would
have been natural for her to refer to old associations, past
pleasures, or mutual sorrows. Mrs. Medlicott came nearest to her as
a companion of this sort; and her ladyship talked more to Mrs.
Medlicott, in a kind of familiar way, than she did to all the rest of
the household put together. But Mrs. Medlicott was silent by nature,
and did not reply at any great length. Adams, indeed, was the only
one who spoke much to Lady Ludlow.
After we had worked away about an hour at the bureau, her ladyship
said we had done enough for one day; and as the time was come for her
afternoon ride, she left me, with a volume of engravings from Mr.
Hogarth's pictures on one side of me (I don't like to write down the
names of them, though my lady thought nothing of it, I am sure), and
upon a stand her great prayer-book open at the evening psalms for the
day, on the other. But as soon as she was gone, I troubled myself
little with either, but amused myself with looking round the room at
my leisure. The side on which the fire-place stood was all
panelled,--part of the old ornaments of the house, for there was an
Indian paper with birds and beasts and insects on it, on all the
other sides. There were coats of arms, of the various families with
whom the Hanburys had intermarried, all over these panels, and up and
down the ceiling as well. There was very little looking-glass in the
room, though one of the great drawing-rooms was called the "Mirror
Room," because it was lined with glass, which my lady's great-
grandfather had brought from Venice when he was ambassador there.
There were china jars of all shapes and sizes round and about the
room, and some china monsters, or idols, of which I could never bear
the sight, they were so ugly, though I think my lady valued them more
than all. There was a thick carpet on the middle of the floor, which
was made of small pieces of rare wood fitted into a pattern; the
doors were opposite to each other, and were composed of two heavy
tall wings, and opened in the middle, moving on brass grooves
inserted into the floor--they would not have opened over a carpet.
There were two windows reaching up nearly to the ceiling, but very
narrow and with deep window-seats in the thickness of the wall. The
room was full of scent, partly from the flowers outside, and partly
from the great jars of pot-pourri inside. The choice of odours was
what my lady piqued herself upon, saying nothing showed birth like a
keen susceptibility of smell. We never named musk in her presence,
her antipathy to it was so well understood through the household:
her opinion on the subject was believed to be, that no scent derived
from an animal could ever be of a sufficiently pure nature to give
pleasure to any person of good family, where, of course, the delicate
perception of the senses had been cultivated for generations. She
would instance the way in which sportsmen preserve the breed of dogs
who have shown keen scent; and how such gifts descend for generations
amongst animals, who cannot be supposed to have anything of ancestral
pride, or hereditary fancies about them. Musk, then, was never
mentioned at Hanbury Court. No more were bergamot or southern-wood,
although vegetable in their nature. She considered these two latter
as betraying a vulgar taste in the person who chose to gather or wear
them. She was sorry to notice sprigs of them in the button-hole of
any young man in whom she took an interest, either because he was
engaged to a servant of hers or otherwise, as he came out of church
on a Sunday afternoon. She was afraid that he liked coarse
pleasures; and I am not sure if she did not think that his preference
for these coarse sweetnesses did not imply a probability that he
would take to drinking. But she distinguished between vulgar and
common. Violets, pinks, and sweetbriar were common enough; roses and
mignionette, for those who had gardens, honeysuckle for those who
walked along the bowery lanes; but wearing them betrayed no vulgarity
of taste: the queen upon her throne might be glad to smell at a
nosegay of the flowers. A beau-pot (as we called it) of pinks and
roses freshly gathered was placed every morning that they were in
bloom on my lady's own particular table. For lasting vegetable
odours she preferred lavender and sweet-woodroof to any extract
whatever. Lavender reminded her of old customs, she said, and of
homely cottage-gardens, and many a cottager made his offering to her
of a bundle of lavender. Sweet woodroof, again, grew in wild,
woodland places where the soil was fine and the air delicate: the
poor children used to go and gather it for her up in the woods on the
higher lands; and for this service she always rewarded them with
bright new pennies, of which my lord, her son, used to send her down
a bagful fresh from the Mint in London every February.
Attar of roses, again, she disliked. She said it reminded her of the
city and of merchants' wives, over-rich, over-heavy in its perfume.
And lilies-of-the-valley somehow fell under the same condemnation.
They were most graceful and elegant to look at (my lady was quite
candid about this), flower, leaf, colour--everything was refined
about them but the smell. That was too strong. But the great
hereditary faculty on which my lady piqued herself, and with reason,
for I never met with any person who possessed it, was the power she
had of perceiving the delicious odour arising from a bed of
strawberries in the late autumn, when the leaves were all fading and
dying. "Bacon's Essays" was one of the few books that lay about in
my lady's room; and if you took it up and opened it carelessly, it
was sure to fall apart at his "Essay on Gardens." "Listen," her
ladyship would say, "to what that great philosopher and statesman
says. 'Next to that,'--he is speaking of violets, my dear,--'is the
musk-rose,'--of which you remember the great bush, at the corner of
the south wall just by the Blue Drawing-room windows; that is the old
musk-rose, Shakespeare's musk-rose, which is dying out through the
kingdom now. But to return to my Lord Bacon: 'Then the strawberry
leaves, dying with a most excellent cordial smell.' Now the Hanburys
can always smell this excellent cordial odour, and very delicious and
refreshing it is. You see, in Lord Bacon's time, there had not been
so many intermarriages between the court and the city as there have
been since the needy days of his Majesty Charles the Second; and
altogether in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the great, old families of
England were a distinct race, just as a cart-horse is one creature,
and very useful in its place, and Childers or Eclipse is another
creature, though both are of the same species. So the old families
have gifts and powers of a different and higher class to what the
other orders have. My dear, remember that you try if you can smell
the scent of dying strawberry-leaves in this next autumn. You have
some of Ursula Hanbury's blood in you, and that gives you a chance."
But when October came, I sniffed and sniffed, and all to no purpose;
and my lady--who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously--
had to give me up as a hybrid. I was mortified, I confess, and
thought that it was in some ostentation of her own powers that she
ordered the gardener to plant a border of strawberries on that side
of the terrace that lay under her windows.
I have wandered away from time and place. I tell you all the
remembrances I have of those years just as they come up, and I hope
that, in my old age, I am not getting too like a certain Mrs.
Nickleby, whose speeches were once read out aloud to me.
I came by degrees to be all day long in this room which I have been
describing; sometimes sitting in the easy-chair, doing some little
piece of dainty work for my lady, or sometimes arranging flowers, or
sorting letters according to their handwriting, so that she could
arrange them afterwards, and destroy or keep, as she planned, looking
ever onward to her death. Then, after the sofa was brought in, she
would watch my face, and if she saw my colour change, she would bid
me lie down and rest. And I used to try to walk upon the terrace
every day for a short time: it hurt me very much, it is true, but
the doctor had ordered it, and I knew her ladyship wished me to obey.
Before I had seen the background of a great lady's life, I had
thought it all play and fine doings. But whatever other grand people
are, my lady was never idle. For one thing, she had to superintend
the agent for the large Hanbury estate. I believe it was mortgaged
for a sum of money which had gone to improve the late lord's Scotch
lands; but she was anxious to pay off this before her death, and so
to leave her own inheritance free of incumbrance to her son, the
present Earl; whom, I secretly think, she considered a greater
person, as being the heir of the Hanburys (though through a female
line), than as being my Lord Ludlow with half a dozen other minor
titles.
With this wish of releasing her property from the mortgage, skilful
care was much needed in the management of it; and as far as my lady
could go, she took every pains. She had a great book, in which every
page was ruled into three divisions; on the first column was written
the date and the name of the tenant who addressed any letter on
business to her; on the second was briefly stated the subject of the
letter, which generally contained a request of some kind. This
request would be surrounded and enveloped in so many words, and often
inserted amidst so many odd reasons and excuses, that Mr. Horner (the
steward) would sometimes say it was like hunting through a bushel of
chaff to find a grain of wheat. Now, in the second column of this
book, the grain of meaning was placed, clean and dry, before her
ladyship every morning. She sometimes would ask to see the original
letter; sometimes she simply answered the request by a "Yes," or a
"No;" and often she would send for lenses and papers, and examine
them well, with Mr. Horner at her elbow, to see if such petitions, as
to be allowed to plough up pasture fields, were provided for in the
terms of the original agreement. On every Thursday she made herself
at liberty to see her tenants, from four to six in the afternoon.
Mornings would have suited my lady better, as far as convenience
went, and I believe the old custom had been to have these levees (as
her ladyship used to call them) held before twelve. But, as she said
to Mr. Horner, when he urged returning to the former hours, it spoilt
a whole day for a farmer, if he had to dress himself in his best and
leave his work in the forenoon (and my lady liked to see her tenants
come in their Sunday clothes; she would not say a word, maybe, but
she would take her spectacles slowly out, and put them on with silent
gravity, and look at a dirty or raggedly-dressed man so solemnly and
earnestly, that his nerves must have been pretty strong if he did not
wince, and resolve that, however poor he might be, soap and water,
and needle and thread, should be used before he again appeared in her
ladyship's anteroom). The out-lying tenants had always a supper
provided for them in the servants'-hall on Thursdays, to which,
indeed all comers were welcome to sit down. For my lady said, though
there were not many hours left of a working man's day when their
business with her was ended, yet that they needed food and rest, and
that she should be ashamed if they sought either at the Fighting Lion
(called at this day the Hanbury Arms). They had as much beer as they
could drink while they were eating; and when the food was cleared
away, they had a cup a-piece of good ale, in which the oldest tenant
present, standing up, gave Madam's health; and after that was drunk,
they were expected to set off homewards; at any rate, no more liquor
was given them. The tenants one and all called her "Madam;" for they
recognized in her the married heiress of the Hanburys, not the widow
of a Lord Ludlow, of whom they and their forefathers knew nothing;
and against whose memory, indeed, there rankled a dim unspoken
grudge, the cause of which was accurately known to the very few who
understood the nature of a mortgage, and were therefore aware that
Madam's money had been taken to enrich my lord's poor land in
Scotland. I am sure--for you can understand I was behind the scenes,
as it were, and had many an opportunity of seeing and hearing, as I
lay or sat motionless in my lady's room with the double doors open
between it and the anteroom beyond, where Lady Ludlow saw her
steward, and gave audience to her tenants,--I am certain, I say, that
Mr. Horner was silently as much annoyed at the money that was
swallowed up by this mortgage as any one; and, some time or other, he
had probably spoken his mind out to my lady; for there was a sort of
offended reference on her part, and respectful submission to blame on
his, while every now and then there was an implied protest--whenever
the payments of the interest became due, or whenever my lady stinted
herself of any personal expense, such as Mr. Horner thought was only
decorous and becoming in the heiress of the Hanburys. Her carriages
were old and cumbrous, wanting all the improvements which had been
adopted by those of her rank throughout the county. Mr. Horner would
fain have had the ordering of a new coach. The carriage-horses, too,
were getting past their work; yet all the promising colts bred on the
estate were sold for ready money; and so on. My lord, her son, was
ambassador at some foreign place; and very proud we all were of his
glory and dignity; but I fancy it cost money, and my lady would have
lived on bread and water sooner than have called upon him to help her
in paying off the mortgage, although he was the one who was to
benefit by it in the end.
Mr. Horner was a very faithful steward, and very respectful to my
lady; although sometimes, I thought she was sharper to him than to
any one else; perhaps because she knew that, although he never said
anything, he disapproved of the Hanburys being made to pay for the
Earl Ludlow's estates and state.
The late lord had been a sailor, and had been as extravagant in his
habits as most sailors are, I am told,--for I never saw the sea; and
yet he had a long sight to his own interests; but whatever he was, my
lady loved him and his memory, with about as fond and proud a love as
ever wife gave husband, I should think.
For a part of his life Mr. Horner, who was born on the Hanbury
property, had been a clerk to an attorney in Birmingham; and these
few years had given him a kind of worldly wisdom, which, though
always exerted for her benefit, was antipathetic to her ladyship, who
thought that some of her steward's maxims savoured of trade and
commerce. I fancy that if it had been possible, she would have
preferred a return to the primitive system, of living on the produce
of the land, and exchanging the surplus for such articles as were
needed, without the intervention of money.
But Mr. Horner was bitten with new-fangled notions, as she would say,
though his new-fangled notions were what folk at the present day
would think sadly behindhand; and some of Mr. Gray's ideas fell on
Mr. Horner's mind like sparks on tow, though they started from two
different points. Mr. Horner wanted to make every man useful and
active in this world, and to direct as much activity and usefulness
as possible to the improvement of the Hanbury estates, and the
aggrandisement of the Hanbury family, and therefore he fell into the
new cry for education.
Mr. Gray did not care much,--Mr. Horner thought not enough,--for this
world, and where any man or family stood in their earthly position;
but he would have every one prepared for the world to come, and
capable of understanding and receiving certain doctrines, for which
latter purpose, it stands to reason, he must have heard of these
doctrines; and therefore Mr. Gray wanted education. The answer in
the Catechism that Mr. Horner was most fond of calling upon a child
to repeat, was that to, "What is thy duty towards thy neighbour?"
The answer Mr. Gray liked best to hear repeated with unction, was
that to the question, "What is the inward and spiritual grace?" The
reply to which Lady Ludlow bent her head the lowest, as we said our
Catechism to her on Sundays, was to, "What is thy duty towards God?"
But neither Mr. Horner nor Mr. Gray had heard many answers to the
Catechism as yet.
Up to this time there was no Sunday-school in Hanbury. Mr. Gray's
desires were bounded by that object. Mr. Horner looked farther on:
he hoped for a day-school at some future time, to train up
intelligent labourers for working on the estate. My lady would hear
of neither one nor the other: indeed, not the boldest man whom she
ever saw would have dared to name the project of a day-school within
her hearing.
So Mr. Horner contented himself with quietly teaching a sharp, clever
lad to read and write, with a view to making use of him as a kind of
foreman in process of time. He had his pick of the farm-lads for
this purpose; and, as the brightest and sharpest, although by far the
raggedest and dirtiest, singled out Job Gregson's son. But all this-
-as my lady never listened to gossip, or indeed, was spoken to unless
she spoke first--was quite unknown to her, until the unlucky incident
took place which I am going to relate.
CHAPTER IV.
I think my lady was not aware of Mr. Horner's views on education (as
making men into more useful members of society), or the practice to
which he was putting his precepts in taking Harry Gregson as pupil
and protege; if, indeed, she were aware of Harry's distinct existence
at all, until the following unfortunate occasion. The ante-room,
which was a kind of business-place for my lady to receive her steward
and tenants in, was surrounded by shelves. I cannot call them book-
shelves, though there were many books on them; but the contents of
the volumes were principally manuscript, and relating to details
connected with the Hanbury property. There were also one or two
dictionaries, gazetteers, works of reference on the management of
property; all of a very old date (the dictionary was Bailey's, I
remember; we had a great Johnson in my lady's room, but where
lexicographers differed, she generally preferred Bailey).
In this antechamber a footman generally sat, awaiting orders from my
lady; for she clung to the grand old customs, and despised any bells,
except her own little hand-bell, as modern inventions; she would have
her people always within summons of this silvery bell, or her scarce
less silvery voice. This man had not the sinecure you might imagine.
He had to reply to the private entrance; what we should call the back
door in a smaller house. As none came to the front door but my lady,
and those of the county whom she honoured by visiting, and her
nearest acquaintance of this kind lived eight miles (of bad road)
off, the majority of comers knocked at the nail-studded terrace-door;
not to have it opened (for open it stood, by my lady's orders, winter
and summer, so that the snow often drifted into the back hall, and
lay there in heaps when the weather was severe), but to summon some
one to receive their message, or carry their request to be allowed to
speak to my lady. I remember it was long before Mr. Gray could be
made to understand that the great door was only open on state
occasions, and even to the last he would as soon come in by that as
the terrace entrance. I had been received there on my first setting
foot over my lady's threshold; every stranger was led in by that way
the first time they came; but after that (with the exceptions I have
named) they went round by the terrace, as it were by instinct. It
was an assistance to this instinct to be aware that from time
immemorial, the magnificent and fierce Hanbury wolf-hounds, which
were extinct in every other part of the island, had been and still
were kept chained in the front quadrangle, where they bayed through a
great part of the day and night and were always ready with their
deep, savage growl at the sight of every person and thing, excepting
the man who fed them, my lady's carriage and four, and my lady
herself. It was pretty to see her small figure go up to the great,
crouching brutes thumping the flags with their heavy, wagging tails,
and slobbering in an ecstacy of delight, at her light approach and
soft caress. She had no fear of them; but she was a Hanbury born,
and the tale went, that they and their kind knew all Hanburys
instantly, and acknowledged their supremacy, ever since the ancestors
of the breed had been brought from the East by the great Sir Urian
Hanbury, who lay with his legs crossed on the altar-tomb in the
church. Moreover, it was reported that, not fifty years before, one
of these dogs had eaten up a child, which had inadvertently strayed
within reach of its chain. So you may imagine how most people
preferred the terrace-door. Mr. Gray did not seem to care for the
dogs. It might be absence of mind, for I have heard of his starting
away from their sudden spring when he had unwittingly walked within
reach of their chains: but it could hardly have been absence of
mind, when one day he went right up to one of them, and patted him in
the most friendly manner, the dog meanwhile looking pleased, and
affably wagging his tail, just as if Mr. Gray had been a Hanbury. We
were all very much puzzled by this, and to this day I have not been
able to account for it.
But now let us go back to the terrace-door, and the footman sitting
in the antechamber.
One morning we heard a parleying, which rose to such a vehemence, and
lasted for so long, that my lady had to ring her hand-bell twice
before the footman heard it.
"What is the matter, John?" asked she, when he entered,
"A little boy, my lady, who says he comes from Mr. Horner, and must
see your ladyship. Impudent little lad!" (This last to himself.)
"What does he want?"
"That's just what I have asked him, my lady, but he won't tell me,
please your ladyship."
"It is, probably, some message from Mr. Horner," said Lady Ludlow,
with just a shade of annoyance in her manner; for it was against all
etiquette to send a message to her, and by such a messenger too!
"No! please your ladyship, I asked him if he had any message, and he
said no, he had none; but he must see your ladyship for all that."
"You had better show him in then, without more words," said her
ladyship, quietly, but still, as I have said, rather annoyed.
As if in mockery of the humble visitor, the footman threw open both
battants of the door, and in the opening there stood a lithe, wiry
lad, with a thick head of hair, standing out in every direction, as
if stirred by some electrical current, a short, brown face, red now
from affright and excitement, wide, resolute mouth, and bright, deep-
set eyes, which glanced keenly and rapidly round the room, as if
taking in everything (and all was new and strange), to be thought and
puzzled over at some future time. He knew enough of manners not to
speak first to one above him in rank, or else he was afraid.
"What do you want with me?" asked my lady; in so gentle a tone that
it seemed to surprise and stun him.
"An't please your ladyship?" said he, as if he had been deaf.
"You come from Mr. Horner's: why do you want to see me?" again asked
she, a little more loudly.
"An't please your ladyship, Mr. Horner was sent for all on a sudden
to Warwick this morning."
His face began to work; but he felt it, and closed his lips into a
resolute form.
"Well?"
"And he went off all on a sudden like."
"Well?"
"And he left a note for your ladyship with me, your ladyship."
"Is that all? You might have given it to the footman."
"Please your ladyship, I've clean gone and lost it."
He never took his eyes off her face. If he had not kept his look
fixed, he would have burst out crying.
"That was very careless," said my lady gently. "But I am sure you
are very sorry for it. You had better try and find it; it may have
been of consequence.
"Please, mum--please your ladyship--I can say it off by heart."
"You! What do you mean?" I was really afraid now. My lady's blue
eyes absolutely gave out light, she was so much displeased, and,
moreover, perplexed. The more reason he had for affright, the more
his courage rose. He must have seen,--so sharp a lad must have
perceived her displeasure; but he went on quickly and steadily.
"Mr. Horner, my lady, has taught me to read, write, and cast
accounts, my lady. And he was in a hurry, and he folded his paper
up, but he did not seal it; and I read it, my lady; and now, my lady,
it seems like as if I had got it off by heart;" and he went on with a
high pitched voice, saying out very loud what, I have no doubt, were
the identical words of the letter, date, signature and all: it was
merely something about a deed, which required my lady's signature.
When he had done, he stood almost as if he expected commendation for
his accurate memory.
My lady's eyes contracted till the pupils were as needle-points; it
was a way she had when much disturbed. She looked at me and said -
"Margaret Dawson, what will this world come to?" And then she was
silent.
The lad, beginning to perceive he had given deep offence, stood stock
still--as if his brave will had brought him into this presence, and
impelled him to confession, and the best amends he could make, but
had now deserted him, or was extinct, and left his body motionless,
until some one else with word or deed made him quit the room. My
lady looked again at him, and saw the frowning, dumb-foundering
terror at his misdeed, and the manner in which his confession had
been received.
"My poor lad!" said she, the angry look leaving her face, "into whose
hands have you fallen?"
The boy's lips began to quiver.
"Don't you know what tree we read of in Genesis?--No! I hope you
have not got to read so easily as that." A pause. "Who has taught
you to read and write?"
"Please, my lady, I meant no harm, my lady." He was fairly
blubbering, overcome by her evident feeling of dismay and regret, the
soft repression of which was more frightening to him than any strong
or violent words would have been.
"Who taught you, I ask?"
"It were Mr. Horner's clerk who learned me, my lady."
"And did Mr. Horner know of it?"
"Yes, my lady. And I am sure I thought for to please him."
"Well! perhaps you were not to blame for that. But I wonder at Mr.
Horner. However, my boy, as you have got possession of edge-tools,
you must have some rules how to use them. Did you never hear that
you were not to open letters?"
"Please, my lady, it were open. Mr. Horner forgot for to seal it, in
his hurry to be off."
"But you must not read letters that are not intended for you. You
must never try to read any letters that are not directed to you, even
if they be open before you."
"Please, may lady, I thought it were good for practice, all as one as
a book."
My lady looked bewildered as to what way she could farther explain to
him the laws of honour as regarded letters.
"You would not listen, I am sure," said she, "to anything you were
not intended to hear?"
He hesitated for a moment, partly because he did not fully comprehend
the question. My lady repeated it. The light of intelligence came
into his eager eyes, and I could see that he was not certain if he
could tell the truth.
"Please, my lady, I always hearken when I hear folk talking secrets;
but I mean no harm."
My poor lady sighed: she was not prepared to begin a long way off in
morals. Honour was, to her, second nature, and she had never tried
to find out on what principle its laws were based. So, telling the
lad that she wished to see Mr. Horner when he returned from Warwick,
she dismissed him with a despondent look; he, meanwhile, right glad
to be out of the awful gentleness of her presence.
"What is to be done?" said she, half to herself and half to me. I
could not answer, for I was puzzled myself.
"It was a right word," she continued, "that I used, when I called
reading and writing 'edge-tools.' If our lower orders have these
edge-tools given to them, we shall have the terrible scenes of the
French Revolution acted over again in England. When I was a girl,
one never heard of the rights of men, one only heard of the duties.
Now, here was Mr. Gray, only last night, talking of the right every
child had to instruction. I could hardly keep my patience with him,
and at length we fairly came to words; and I told him I would have no
such thing as a Sunday-school (or a Sabbath-school, as he calls it,
just like a Jew) in my village."
"And what did he say, my lady?" I asked; for the struggle that seemed
now to have come to a crisis, had been going on for some time in a
quiet way.
"Why, he gave way to temper, and said he was bound to remember, he
was under the bishop's authority, not under mine; and implied that he
should persevere in his designs, notwithstanding my expressed
opinion."
"And your ladyship--" I half inquired.
"I could only rise and curtsey, and civilly dismiss him. When two
persons have arrived at a certain point of expression on a subject,
about which they differ as materially as I do from Mr. Gray, the
wisest course, if they wish to remain friends, is to drop the
conversation entirely and suddenly. It is one of the few cases where
abruptness is desirable."
I was sorry for Mr. Gray. He had been to see me several times, and
had helped me to bear my illness in a better spirit than I should
have done without his good advice and prayers. And I had gathered
from little things he said, how much his heart was set upon this new
scheme. I liked him so much, and I loved and respected my lady so
well, that I could not bear them to be on the cool terms to which
they were constantly getting. Yet I could do nothing but keep
silence.
I suppose my lady understood something of what was passing in my
mind; for, after a minute or two, she went on:-
"If Mr. Gray knew all I know,--if he had my experience, he would not
be so ready to speak of setting up his new plans in opposition to my
judgment. Indeed," she continued, lashing herself up with her own
recollections, "times are changed when the parson of a village comes
to beard the liege lady in her own house. Why, in my grandfather's
days, the parson was family chaplain too, and dined at the Hall every
Sunday. He was helped last, and expected to have done first. I
remember seeing him take up his plate and knife and fork, and say
with his mouth full all the time he was speaking: 'If you please,
Sir Urian, and my lady, I'll follow the beef into the housekeeper's
room;' for you see, unless he did so, he stood no chance of a second
helping. A greedy man, that parson was, to be sure! I recollect his
once eating up the whole of some little bird at dinner, and by way of
diverting attention from his greediness, he told how he had heard
that a rook soaked in vinegar and then dressed in a particular way,
could not be distinguished from the bird he was then eating. I saw
by the grim look of my grandfather's face that the parson's doing and
saying displeased him; and, child as I was, I had some notion of what
was coming, when, as I was riding out on my little, white pony, by my
grandfather's side, the next Friday, he stopped one of the
gamekeepers, and bade him shoot one of the oldest rooks he could
find. I knew no more about it till Sunday, when a dish was set right
before the parson, and Sir Urian said: 'Now, Parson Hemming, I have
had a rook shot, and soaked in vinegar, and dressed as you described
last Sunday. Fall to, man, and eat it with as good an appetite as
you had last Sunday. Pick the bones clean, or by--, no more Sunday
dinners shall you eat at my table!' I gave one look at poor Mr.
Hemming's face, as he tried to swallow the first morsel, and make
believe as though he thought it very good; but I could not look
again, for shame, although my grandfather laughed, and kept asking us
all round if we knew what could have become of the parson's
appetite."
"And did he finish it?" I asked.
"O yes, my dear. What my grandfather said was to be done, was done
always. He was a terrible man in his anger! But to think of the
difference between Parson Hemming and Mr. Gray! or even of poor dear
Mr. Mountford and Mr. Gray. Mr. Mountford would never have withstood
me as Mr. Gray did!"
"And your ladyship really thinks that it would not be right to have a
Sunday-school?" I asked, feeling very timid as I put time question.
"Certainly not. As I told Mr. Gray. I consider a knowledge of the
Creed, and of the Lord's Prayer, as essential to salvation; and that
any child may have, whose parents bring it regularly to church. Then
there are the Ten Commandments, which teach simple duties in the
plainest language. Of course, if a lad is taught to read and write
(as that unfortunate boy has been who was here this morning) his
duties become complicated, and his temptations much greater, while,
at the same time, he has no hereditary principles and honourable
training to serve as safeguards. I might take up my old simile of
the race-horse and cart-horse. I am distressed," continued she, with
a break in her ideas, "about that boy. The whole thing reminds me so
much of a story of what happened to a friend of mine--Clement de
Crequy. Did I ever tell you about him?"
"No, your ladyship," I replied.
"Poor Clement! More than twenty years ago, Lord Ludlow and I spent a
winter in Paris. He had many friends there; perhaps not very good or
very wise men, but he was so kind that he liked every one, and every
one liked him. We had an apartment, as they call it there, in the
Rue de Lille; we had the first-floor of a grand hotel, with the
basement for our servants. On the floor above us the owner of the
house lived, a Marquise de Crequy, a widow. They tell me that the
Crequy coat-of-arms is still emblazoned, after all these terrible
years, on a shield above the arched porte-cochere, just as it was
then, though the family is quite extinct. Madame de Crequy had only
one son, Clement, who was just the same age as my Urian--you may see
his portrait in the great hall--Urian's, I mean." I knew that Master
Urian had been drowned at sea; and often had I looked at the
presentment of his bonny hopeful face, in his sailor's dress, with
right hand outstretched to a ship on the sea in the distance, as if
he had just said, "Look at her! all her sails are set, and I'm just
off." Poor Master Urian! he went down in this very ship not a year
after the picture was taken! But now I will go back to my lady's
story. "I can see those two boys playing now," continued she,
softly, shutting her eyes, as if the better to call up the vision,
"as they used to do five-and-twenty years ago in those old-fashioned
French gardens behind our hotel. Many a time have I watched them
from my windows. It was, perhaps, a better play-place than an
English garden would have been, for there were but few flower-beds,
and no lawn at all to speak about; but, instead, terraces and
balustrades and vases and flights of stone steps more in the Italian
style; and there were jets-d'eau, and little fountains that could be
set playing by turning water-cocks that were hidden here and there.
How Clement delighted in turning the water on to surprise Urian, and
how gracefully he did the honours, as it were, to my dear, rough,
sailor lad! Urian was as dark as a gipsy boy, and cared little for
his appearance, and resisted all my efforts at setting off his black
eyes and tangled curls; but Clement, without ever showing that he
thought about himself and his dress, was always dainty and elegant,
even though his clothes were sometimes but threadbare. He used to be
dressed in a kind of hunter's green suit, open at the neck and half-
way down the chest to beautiful old lace frills; his long golden
curls fell behind just like a girl's, and his hair in front was cut
over his straight dark eyebrows in a line almost as straight. Urian
learnt more of a gentleman's carefulness and propriety of appearance
from that lad in two months than he had done in years from all my
lectures. I recollect one day, when the two boys were in full romp--
and, my window being open, I could hear them perfectly--and Urian was
daring Clement to some scrambling or climbing, which Clement refused
to undertake, but in a hesitating way, as though he longed to do it
if some reason had not stood in the way; and at times, Urian, who was
hasty and thoughtless, poor fellow, told Clement that he was afraid.
'Fear!' said the French boy, drawing himself up; 'you do not know
what you say. If you will be here at six to-morrow morning, when it
is only just light, I will take that starling's nest on the top of
yonder chimney.' 'But why not now, Clement?' said Urian, putting his
arm round Clement's neck. 'Why then, and not now, just when we are
in the humour for it?' 'Because we De Crequys are poor, and my
mother cannot afford me another suit of clothes this year, and yonder
stone carving is all jagged, and would tear my coat and breeches.
Now, to-morrow morning I could go up with nothing on but an old
shirt.'
"'But you would tear your legs.'
"'My race do not care for pain,' said the boy, drawing himself from
Urian's arm, and walking a few steps away, with a becoming pride and
reserve; for he was hurt at being spoken to as if he were afraid, and
annoyed at having to confess the true reason for declining the feat.
But Urian was not to be thus baffled. He went up to Clement, and put
his arm once more about his neck, and I could see the two lads as
they walked down the terrace away from the hotel windows: first
Urian spoke eagerly, looking with imploring fondness into Clement's
face, which sought the ground, till at last the French boy spoke, and
by-and-by his arm was round Urian too, and they paced backwards and
forwards in deep talk, but gravely, as became men, rather than boys.
"All at once, from the little chapel at the corner of the large
garden belonging to the Missions Etrangeres, I heard the tinkle of
the little bell, announcing the elevation of the host. Down on his
knees went Clement, hands crossed, eyes bent down: while Urian stood
looking on in respectful thought.
"What a friendship that might have been! I never dream of Urian
without seeing Clement too--Urian speaks to me, or does something,--
but Clement only flits round Urian, and never seems to see any one
else!"
"But I must not forget to tell you, that the next morning, before he
was out of his room, a footman of Madame de Crequy's brought Urian
the starling's nest."
"Well! we came back to England, and the boys were to correspond; and
Madame de Crequy and I exchanged civilities; and Urian went to sea."
"After that, all seemed to drop away. I cannot tell you all.
However, to confine myself to the De Crequys. I had a letter from
Clement; I knew he felt his friend's death deeply; but I should never
have learnt it from the letter he sent. It was formal, and seemed
like chaff to my hungering heart. Poor fellow! I dare say he had
found it hard to write. What could he--or any one--say to a mother
who has lost her child? The world does not think so, and, in
general, one must conform to the customs of the world; but, judging
from my own experience, I should say that reverent silence at such
times is the tenderest balm. Madame de Crequy wrote too. But I knew
she could not feel my loss so much as Clement, and therefore her
letter was not such a disappointment. She and I went on being civil
and polite in the way of commissions, and occasionally introducing
friends to each other, for a year or two, and then we ceased to have
any intercourse. Then the terrible Revolution came. No one who did
not live at those times can imagine the daily expectation of news--
the hourly terror of rumours affecting the fortunes and lives of
those whom most of us had known as pleasant hosts, receiving us with
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