Far above rubies (Vol. 1 of 3)

If Berrie Down “had enough people in it without Miss Ormson,” Squire Dudley could scarcely in common justice lay the blame at any other door than his own, considering that of his own free will he had at a comparatively early period of his and their lives encumbered himself with the maintenance of five half-brothers and sisters, which fact it was impossible either for him or them to forget, seeing never a day passed that he did not rehearse to some one how this charge had crippled and kept him back in life.

“Other men,” he declared, “found it hard enough to maintain wife and family of their own; but here was he, provided by his own father with a family large enough to drag down any man.”

“It is a comfort your step-mother married, at all events, Arthur,” observed Miss Ormson, “or you would have been in the workhouse long ago. The last straw, is it not so? you dear grumbling old camel.”

And that was all the sympathy he got. Can it be wondered at, therefore, if Squire Dudley thought every man’s hand was raised against him?

To explain Miss Ormson’s speech, it is, however, necessary to enter into a slight history of the Dudley family, who had really owned Berrie Down for more years than any person believed, and were stated by tradition to have been great people at an indefinitely remote period, when the father of the first Lord Kemms was a goldsmith in the City, lending money to grateful princes, who, contrary to all Solomon’s experience, proved themselves worthy of the trust.

From that time until the day when this story commences, the Dudleys had been Dudleys of Berrie Down; but, unhappily, while the trading Baldwins were making, the aristocratic Dudleys were spending, and thus it came to pass that each successive owner of Berrie Down left not merely that place, but also less money, to the man who came after him than his predecessor had done.

Accordingly, in the course of many deceases and successions, the money dwindled down to nothing.

When there was not a shilling left beyond whatever amount the land might produce to keep up the family dignity, Berrie Down descended to Major Dudley, Arthur’s father, who, on the strength of his landed property, half-pay, handsome face, and good address, married first, Janet, third daughter of Arthur Hope, Esquire, of Copt Hall, Essex, who was possessed of a moderate fortune, and a still more moderate show of good looks, and who brought one son, the Arthur of my story, into the world; and secondly, when Arthur had attained the age of seventeen, Laura, daughter of Maddox Cuthbert, silk merchant, Manchester warehouseman and alderman in the city of London.

Miss Cuthbert, it was supposed, would have money on her father’s death; but that supposition proved so utterly incorrect, that the only dowry the second Mrs. Dudley brought her husband resolved itself into a pretty face and five children.

How many more arrows, male and female, might have been thrust into the Dudley quiver, had Major Dudley not opportunely retired into the family vault, situate in Fifield churchyard, was a question Arthur Dudley declared only the Lord above could answer. As things fell out, however, no more sons or daughters came to the Hollow, while to Arthur descended the family estate and his mother’s small fortune, which latter barely sufficed to pay the debts Major Dudley left behind him. On the other hand, Mrs. Dudley No. 2 found, when her husband died, that she had nothing to begin the world again upon excepting the dowry, afore honourably mentioned, of good looks—somewhat the worse for wear—and five children, whose ages ranged from nine years old downwards.

At this period Arthur Dudley was seven-and-twenty, and master of the position.

He could have turned his step-mother and her family adrift on the world; but, instead of doing so, he adopted his brothers and sisters and his father’s widow, who, three years after old Squire Dudley’s death, made a second very poor investment of her good looks, and married, greatly to Arthur’s chagrin, a Doctor Marsden, possessed of a very small practice in one of the London suburbs. This gentleman fancied Mrs. Dudley would make him a good managing wife, and was also under the delusion that her family—people known and respected within sound of Bow bells—might prove useful to him and advance his prospects.

Those were the days in which the young Squire was spending much time at Copt Hall, wooing his heiress. Those were the days in which he thought “The Hollow” might be converted into a great place; in which he looked at life through rose-tinted glass; in which he believed he could afford to be both proud and generous—for all of which reasons, and also because he did not choose that his father’s children should be beholden for anything to a “trumpery apothecary,” he took upon himself the burden of feeding, boarding, and educating five sturdy and rebellious juvenile Dudleys.

For this act of liberality, society generally patted him on the back, and said he was a fine fellow. Had he turned the children of his father’s second marriage out of the gates of Berrie Down Hollow, society, on the other hand, would have remembered that he had got the property, while the younger children were left penniless, and rated him for his inhumanity accordingly; but, as matters stood, everyone in the first blush of the affair forgot this fact, and pronounced Arthur to be the most generous fellow in the universe.

And so, theoretically, perhaps he was; just one of those men who will give an old horse the run of his paddock, but refuse to pay five shillings a week for his run in the paddock of any other person.

Nevertheless, he shared with his brothers and sisters the produce of his fields, the fat of his pastures, and for two years more they roamed wild about Berrie Down—a troop of hardy young colts, unbroken, untrained, uneducated, uncared-for.

The most enthusiastic American could have desired no more complete democracy than the household at “The Hollow,” where, as is usual in all democracies, the classes governed in other communities, were rulers of the place.

At their own sweet wills, the servants went and came; by fits and starts the labourers hedged and ditched, and ploughed and sowed. When it pleased them to do so, the younger Dudleys assembled at the presumed meal hours; when the fancy took them to do otherwise, they carried their luncheon and dinner away to remote parts of the farm, or feasted in kitchen and dairy on their return.

In vain, friends and even acquaintances entered remonstrances concerning the manners, habits, and appearance, of the unkempt, untaught, uncared-for, romping, impudent, mischievous young gipsies at “The Hollow.” Even the two smallest of the band, a boy and girl, twins, only seven years of age, were, so the Rector of Fifield assured Arthur, going headlong to destruction. Robbing birds’-nests, pelting ducks, stealing fruit, trampling down the ripe grain, climbing trees, wading in the brook, setting terriers on cats, chasing sheep, jeering at the passers-by, these children, the good man declared, in all such occupations were not alone. Wherever they went, Satan accompanied them; and having arrived at this pleasant conclusion, it was only natural he should, even with tears in his eyes, entreat Arthur to stretch forth his hand and save the little ones from being lost, body and soul.

The opinion of the Rector, modified to a certain extent, was the opinion of the neighbourhood generally.

Since time began, such a lot of bright-eyed, fearless, active, unmanageable young “limbs” had never, so the country-people declared, been seen in Hertfordshire. They were at once the terror and admiration of all who frequented the roads and lanes round Berrie Down. Keen of tongue, swift of foot, careless of danger, the children roamed o’er common and lea and field. They were to be met with in the woods that lay westward of the Hollow, watching the squirrels, and almost emulating their agility. As for the miller, he declared his heart was always in his mouth, thinking some of them would be drowned. When the mowers were at work, at the risk of their legs the children followed close, hoping to rifle the corncrake’s nest; when the wheat-stacks were moved, the five were always at hand to hiss on the terriers, to prevent either rat or mouse effecting its escape. They stayed with the threshers in the barn; they were here, there, everywhere; they chased the calves, they milked the cows, they rode the horses; they were a herd of sunburnt, freckled, hold, romping, cruel and yet tenderhearted boys and girls, who made bitter lamentation over the death of a favourite rabbit, although they robbed nests, and carried off young birds, and tormented cats, and utterly detested vermin and all creeping reptiles; and scandalized at the fact of five such natures “running to waste,”—so society phrased it,—people urged upon their brother the desirability of some alteration being effected in his establishment.

All in vain. Squire Dudley, the heiress’ hope having vanished, cursed his luck audibly, but refused to attempt to mend it.

“Send them to school, indeed,” he said to Mrs. Ormson, the second Mrs. Dudley’s eldest sister—“send them to school! I have trouble enough now to make both ends meet, without, increasing my expenses.”

“Why do you not marry, then?” she asked; in reply to which inquiry Arthur Dudley only shook his head. He had been disappointed in his matrimonial schemes, and the world just then looked very black to him.

“Unless a wife brought something in her hand towards keeping herself,” he observed at length, “I am afraid that remedy would prove worse than the disease.”

“Nonsense!” retorted Mrs. Ormson, decidedly. “A wife would very soon set things to rights, prevent waste, see that the people you employ did their duty, and keep the children in order. You want a managing woman at the head of your establishment. If my hands were not so tied, I would remain and look after matters for you myself.”

“I wish you would,” sighed Arthur; and he was in earnest; for there were two people on earth in whom he believed—one, Mrs. Ormson, “a most superior woman,” and the other an old housekeeper who had lived at Berrie Down Hollow in the better days, when Mrs. Dudley No. 1 was alive, who had packed up and departed when the advent of Mrs. Dudley No. 2 was announced, but who still came occasionally to see him, and lament over “Master Arthur’s evil fortune in having all those owdacious boys and girls cast like mites into the family treasury.”

“You are quite right, Piggott,” said Mrs. Ormson, to whom, in a moment of forgetfulness, the woman once confided this opinion; “for the children are indeed a widow’s mites. Your remark does credit alike to your wit and to your scriptural knowledge.”

“I reads my Bible, mum,” observed Piggott, who had a secret distrust of Mrs. Ormson.

“A very proper thing for a person in your station,” returned the lady. “I always like servants who read their Bible. It teaches them honesty, and prevents their striving to be equal with their masters and mistresses. Reading the Scriptures has made you the invaluable woman you are, Piggott. I only wish poor Mr. Arthur had some one like you to manage his house for him. Do you think he could not make it worth your while to——?”

“Thank you, mum,” interrupted Mrs. Piggott, hastily; “but I would rather be excused. Master Arthur, mum, was good enough to wish me to come and take the management, after his step-mamma’s marriage; but a parcel of young children is a thing as I never was accustomed to.” And although Mrs. Piggott was too polite to add anything in disparagement of Mrs. Ormson’s nephews and nieces, still there was a look in her face which that lady rightly interpreted to mean, “More especially such a set of romping, mischievous, riotous, ill-conditioned young imps as there are in this house.”

After that, Mrs. Ormson abandoned all idea of a housekeeper for Arthur.

“Your case is a hard one, Arthur, I fear,” she said, “when even Piggott will not help you out of your scrape. Clearly you must marry—let me look out a wife for you. I know so many nice girls, suitable in every respect, and several with money too. You know you ought to marry a rich woman, that is, if you can get one to marry you.”

“There’s the difficulty,” remarked Arthur, thinking of the faithless heiress.

“Well, let me see what I can do,” implored Mrs. Ormson, who devoutly believed the Almighty had sent her into the world to set right the things He had unintentionally left wrong at the creation. “When are you coming to London?”

“Next month; to stay a day or two with Dick Travers.”

“Then give me a few days at the same time, and, before the summer is over, there will be a mistress at Berrie Down. Mark my words.”

Whether Squire Dudley marked her words may be doubted; but he verified them, in a manner Mrs. Ormson little anticipated, by going to Dick Travers’, by being persuaded to accompany that gentleman to visit his aunt Mrs. Travers, “who has three pretty daughters, and a niece staying with her; the finest girl I ever saw,” finished Mr. Richard Travers. “No nonsense about her; up to everything—ready for anything. Can make a dress, and dance in it afterwards; sit up all night with the old lady, and come down to breakfast next morning fresh as a daisy. Just the girl I’d marry, if I could scrape together money enough to buy the license; but she is too poor for me, Dudley, or for you either, for that matter. A wife with only a few hundreds is a luxury only to be indulged in by a very rich man.”

“She comes of good people,” he went on,—“the Bells of Layford. They have money among them, though, I am sorry to say, but little of it has fallen to her share. More’s the pity! Daughter of the late Rector of Layford—mother dead also—two sisters in heaven with father and mother—not an incumbrance of any kind. Well, it is of no use; you cannot afford it, I suppose, any more than I can.”

“I cannot,” agreed Arthur Dudley, as gravely as though Mr. Travers had made some serious proposition to him; and then straight away he went and did the very thing he had said in all earnestness he could not afford.

She struck his fancy—that pretty girl with the quaint name; sweet Heather Bell, as Mr. Travers always called her.

“The name was a fancy of her godfather, an eccentric bachelor,” the lady explained. “She was the youngest of three daughters, and the other two were christened, respectively, ‘Lily’ and ‘Rose.’ ‘Call this one “Heather,”’ said Mr. Stewart, who loved Scotland and her purple mountains; ‘she will grow up like the heather, perhaps—strong, hardy, a wild flower, worth a hundred of your garden rarities. Call her Heather, and I will remember her name to her advantage.’ So she was christened Heather,” went on Mrs. Travers, “and she lived and grew up as you see, while the two other daughters drooped and died. Unhappily, soon after her birth, Mr. Bell quarrelled with her godfather, who has since utterly ignored Heather’s existence. It is a pretty name for a girl; don’t you think so, Mr. Dudley?”

Mr. Dudley did, and thought, moreover, that Heather was considerably prettier than her name, influenced by which opinion he went again and again to London, and betook himself day after day to Mrs. Travers’ pleasant house, where he found order and competence, bright faces, and always a cordial welcome.

After the riot and confusion at the Hollow, that well-arranged house seemed to Arthur a sort of earthly heaven.

In comparison with the Travers’, Mrs. Ormson’s nice young ladies seemed a little affected and self-conscious; and, therefore, during the course of his frequent visits to London, he proved rather negligent of his relative.

The Misses Travers were all engaged: one to a north country baronet, another to a barrister, the third to a reverend gentleman, who was subsequently appointed bishop somewhere at the world’s end. Miss Bell, however, was heart-whole, and Mrs. Travers, who laboured in common with many other people under a delusion with regard to Arthur Dudley’s worldly means, never wearied of singing her niece’s praises in the ears of the young Squire. What a daughter she had been—what a wife she would make—what a treasure she had proved during the whole of her (Mrs. Travers’) illness!

“When the dear girls were married,” Mrs. Travers went on to hope, “she trusted Heather would be thrown into society where she would meet with a husband worthy of her.”

All of which made the man to whom she spoke eager to win the girl for himself; and accordingly, to cut a long story short, before the summer was over Mrs. Ormson’s prediction was verified by Miss Bell and her poor little fortune of six hundred pounds becoming the property of Arthur Dudley, Esquire, of Berrie Down Hollow, to have and to hold for ever.

By degrees that gentleman had worked himself up into the belief that the day of his wedding would prove the turning-point in his luck. What benefits he expected fate would present him with on the occasion of his marriage, it would be difficult to say; but certainly he thought there were long arrears of forgotten gifts owing to him that might be gracefully paid by Providence on so auspicious an occasion.

For some inscrutable reason, however, Providence decided on still remaining Arthur Dudley’s debtor. His lands yielded no double crops; he found it unnecessary to build larger barns for the produce of his fields; his oxen were not stronger to labour, and his sheep did not bring forth thousands and tens of thousands on the green slopes of Berrie Down.

His life continued to be still a “miss,” money grew no more plentiful, his stock failed to increase; indoors, indeed, there was comfort and regularity; but what signified indoor comfort to a man who had hoped to represent the county, and to stand on an equal footing with Lord Kemms?

No longer, certainly, were the younger Dudleys a terror to the neighbourhood, a vision of very horror to cat, and bird, and beast; but while they had to be clothed and maintained, where was there cause for gratulation? Worst of all, no one, except Mrs. Ormson, sympathized with him save Heather; and even Heather laboured under the delusion that she was bound to sympathize with other people besides her husband.

After seven years of marriage, Squire Dudley gratefully decided, in his inmost heart, that he ought to have remained single, and, leaving Berrie Down, gone forth into the world to push his fortune.

What, perhaps, established him in this opinion was the contemplation of Compton Raidsford’s great house on the road to South Kemms.

From the drawing-room windows of Berrie Down Hollow he could see that bran new mansion staring him in the face. It stood on a slight hill, beyond the mill, over the fields, across the road, and then over more fields; but still he could see it, and, when the wind was from the west, hear the sound of the gong which announced to all whom the intelligence might interest that the Raidsfords were about to sit down to luncheon or dinner, as the case might be.

If a man like Compton Raidsford, who had risen from the ranks, could make money enough in London to build such a palace, and to keep it up when built, what might not Arthur Dudley have achieved?

With all the veins of his heart the Squire hated the merchant who drove off to Palinsbridge in his carriage and pair, and rode out with his daughters, who sat their horses, so Arthur affirmed, with as much grace and elegance as sacks of sand.

It was well known that Mr. Raidsford had started in life as boy in the workshop of Messrs. Fairland and Wright, engineers, Stangate, at the moderate salary of five shillings per week; and perhaps the only speech Bessie Ormson ever made, which thoroughly met with Squire Dudley’s approval, was the rather ill-natured one, that “most probably Mr. Raidsford preferred a gong to a bell, on account of early associations connected with the latter.”

“It would have been a fine thing for me, Bessie, if I had sprung from the gutter, with no absurd social conventionalities keeping me back,” he sighed; in answer to which remark, Bessie Ormson only shrugged her shoulders and pulled a little grimace.

The man who could not achieve success at Berrie Down Hollow was not likely, in Miss Ormson’s opinion, to have ever reared Mr. Raidsford’s palace out of five shillings a week; and, as a rule, she was in no way backward about expressing this conviction. For which reason—although she was extremely pretty, and had higher spirits and more life about her than any other guest who ever came to stay at Berrie Down—Mr. Dudley could very well have dispensed with her presence.

More especially at the juncture when you, reader, are invited to walk across the lawn, sloping away from the drawing-room windows to the Hollow—for Heather had then been absent from home for nearly a fortnight, staying with Mrs. Marsden, whose health was anything but satisfactory—and during the whole of that time the house had been, in Arthur’s opinion, at sixes and sevens, and Mr. Dudley’s personal comforts somewhat neglected.

All of which formed a text from which Bessie preached a sermon—always beginning, never-ending—on the difference of Berrie Down with and without a mistress.

“I never believed the woman lived who could make me agree with Solomon, till I met your wife, Arthur,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“That I am certain now of the truth of that which he never could have known from his own experience, that a woman may be to her husband, ‘Far Above Rubies.’”

“Humph!” ejaculated Squire Dudley; and he went out, disgusted with Bessie, the wisest of men, and the world in general.