CHAPTER V.
AT SUPPER.
Although Mrs. Ormson, being in her own estimation a great lady, followed the fashions and affected London hours, still, to do her justice, supper was one of those ancient customs it delighted her to see kept up in her nephew’s house.
“I only wish, my dear,” she said to Heather, “we could do as we liked in town, and I would have supper every night of my life instead of that late dinner, which is neither, as Mr. Ormson says, fish, flesh, nor fowl. Now, what can be more cosy and comfortable than this?” and the lady complacently surveyed the supper-table, whereon was spread a meal that might indeed have caused one of Mr. Ormson’s late dinners to hide its diminished head with a sense of grievous humiliation.
Thanks to the girls, the arrangement of the table was tasteful also; there were freshly-gathered flowers peeping out from baskets filled with moss; there were cool lettuces and crisp radishes, and little banks of mustard and cress, all placed and grouped with a certain artistic effect; there was home-made bread, not brown and sodden as home-made bread usually is, but white and light as Mrs. Piggott’s hands could make it; there were delicious pats of yellow butter, brought straight from the dairy; there were late cherries and strawberries, and early raspberries, gooseberries, and currants on the table; all daintily set out with green leaves; all looking, to quote Bessie, “as though somebody cared for them.” There was cream so rich that Mrs. Ormson declared it made her feel inclined to forswear London for ever; while, for those who desired substantial refreshment, Mrs. Piggott had sent up her usual pièce de resistance—a round of spiced beef, together with fowls, a ham, and a couple of veal pies, which latter were, she knew, considered her speciality. Tarts also were there, and various “shapes;” for the good lady declared Mrs. Ormson should not go back to town and say “she never saw a meal fit for a Christian to sit down to in the house, leastways she sha’n’t say it with truth,” finished Mrs. Piggott, as she arranged a paper frill like a shroud round the knuckle end of the ham, and garnished her beef with parsley.
Through the open windows the scent of many flowers came floating on the night air into the room, and the light of the lamp fell on the quiet faces of the young people gathered round the table.
“Where is Bessie?” inquired Mrs. Ormson, as Mrs. Dudley re-entered the apartment.
“She will be here presently,” Heather answered, taking her seat; but many minutes passed before Bessie made her appearance, and, shrinking away from the light, drew a chair towards one of the windows, declaring she did not want any supper, that she was tired and lazy, and thought eating destructive to the romance of life.
“Don’t be absurd, Bessie,” said Mrs. Ormson.
“Nothing can be further from my intention,” was the reply.
“How did you come from the station, Heather?” asked Laura, the youngest of the second generation of Dudleys. “I never heard the fly drive up to the door.”
“We came back with Mr. Raidsford,” said Heather.
“You came with whom?” demanded Arthur Dudley, from the other end of the table.
“With Mr. Raidsford. He travelled down in the same compartment, and kindly offered to drive us home; but our luggage, at least a box of Mrs. Ormson’s, we left at Palinsbridge. I suppose the pony-cart can go over for it to-morrow?”
“Good heavens! mamma is going to take up her residence here,” whispered Bessie to Alick, who was seated within earshot.
“Well, Heather, I really wonder at you,” said Squire Dudley, laying down his knife and fork; “I did think you had more sense of what was due to yourself and to me than to accept a favour at the hands of such an arrant snob as Compton Raidsford, a man who looks down upon us all, who thinks more of his hundreds of thousands than of having come of an ancient family, of having good blood in one’s veins.”
“That’s right, Arthur; that’s what brings down the galleries,” remarked Bessie. “Go on. In this money-loving age——”
“Oh! of course you stand up for trade,” retorted Arthur.
“Of course, I think so I ought, when every morsel I put in my lips, every article of clothing I put on my back, is paid for by trade.”
“Bessie,” interposed Mrs. Ormson, “how often am I to tell you it is not polite to speak of personal matters in general society?”
“If this be general society, I sit rebuked,” said Bessie, while Heather pleaded—
“Without downright rudeness I could not have refused Mr. Raidsford’s offer, Arthur. I could not, indeed. He was so very kind and pressing, so cordial, in fact, that I felt it would be ungracious to decline. Would it have been possible to refuse? Mrs. Ormson, do you think it would?”
“On the contrary, I consider it would have been the height, as you say, of rudeness,” replied that lady, for once deciding against the Squire. “And, for my part, I think Mr. Raidsford a most gentlemanly person, quite above his origin. I can assure you, I never enjoyed a journey more in my life, and the drive from Palinsbridge was delightful. And to see how every one touched their hats to him,” finished Mrs. Ormson, forgetting in her enthusiasm that such a person as Lindley Murray had ever existed.
“Touch their hats, indeed!” repeated Arthur, with a muttered oath.
“Don’t be profane, sir,” said Bessie, tapping him on the arm. “A Conservative ought never to object to see a great man respected by the masses. When all is said and done, it is riches make the man, you know. It is not birth, or virtue, or learning, but money, for money is power; and what is the meaning of the word aristocracy, but the powerful classes, I should like to know? Consider how many blankets, how many soup tickets, how many donations to hospitals, how much employment Mr. Compton Raidsford’s income represents, and be dumb. We are all worshippers of some golden calf, so let his worshippers kneel down before him, and rest content.”
“I wish to Heaven, Bessie, you were not so infernally clever,” remarked the Squire.
“And I wish to gracious, Arthur, that in some respects you were not so intolerably stupid,” returned the young lady, which observation elicited a statement from Mrs. Ormson, that “she should be glad indeed when Bessie was married, and had a husband to take care of her.”
“Ah! mamma, it is very well for you to talk,” replied Bessie; “but you will be sorry when I am married.”
“I only wish you would give me the chance of being sorry,” observed Mrs. Ormson, pretending not to notice that Arthur was helping her to a second supply of spiced beef. Suddenly, however, becoming aware of the fact, she exclaimed, “My dear boy, when do you think I ate last? You have given me enough to dine a whole family.”
“Never mind, mamma, eat it for me,” said Bessie, from the open window; whereupon Mrs. Ormson bridled, and wondered “what had come to Bessie,” thought “she had been made too much of,” and remarked “she did not envy Gilbert Harcourt.”
“Neither do I, mamma, so for once we are of the same opinion,” said Bessie shortly, at which point Heather deemed it wise to turn the conversation, not sorry on the whole, perhaps, that it had glided off Mr. Raidsford, and Mr. Raidsford’s carriage, and Mr. Raidsford’s considerate attentions to herself.
After a time, also, other tongues began to be heard: Alick had to tell of the offer Lord Kemms had made for “Nellie,” their two-year-old colt.
“I was breaking her yesterday,” he said, “on that piece of ground beyond the Hollow, when his Lordship, riding past, pulled up his horse, and asked me if she was for sale. I told him I did not know, but could ask my brother; and seeing he had taken a fancy to her, I added I did not think he would part with her excepting for a long price.”
“And what do you call a long price, young gentleman?” he inquired, laughing; “so I thought I might as well value her high enough. A hundred guineas, my lord,” I answered.
“Make it pounds, and you shall have a cheque whenever you like to send her over,” he said.
“Oh! what good fortune,” exclaimed Heather, “of course you sent her, Alick;” but the lad’s countenance fell. “Arthur——” he began, at which point Arthur took up his parable for himself.
“The filly will be worth three hundred next year,” he said; “Lord Kemms shall not coin money out of me.”
For a minute there ensued a dead silence, then Heather, turning to Agnes, said, “And how are the chickens going on, dear?”
“Oh! we have got five sets more out since you left,” was the reply; “there are fifty of the sweetest little chucks you ever saw, just pecking——”
“And two fresh calves, mother,” broke in Lucy Dudley.
“And pigeons without end,” added Cuthbert; “and I found in the pea-hen’s nest four young ones; and, mother, the long meadow is all mowed, and we shall have the grandest crop, Ridley says, ever came off it; and we have painted the gates in honour of your coming back, and the garden is as neat as neat, not a weed; and Alick and I rolled the grass and the drive this morning, and nailed up the clematis that the wind tore down the other night, and Aggy and Alick have covered your sofa, and Lucy has——”
“Hush, Cuthbert, don’t tell tales,” interposed Lucy, laughing; whereupon Heather, with a smile to both, stretched her hand over towards the boy, who took it in both of his.
“May I add my mite to the family news?” interposed Bessie at this juncture. “I have trained Beauty to beg, and taught Muff to stand in a corner; I have nearly broken my neck trying to learn to ride; I was tumbled completely over attempting to milk Cowslip, an ill-conditioned beast, who did not in the least appreciate my delicate attentions.”
“Oh, mother! it was such fun,” said Laura; “you should have seen Bessie sprawling on the grass, and Cowslip looking at her; Alick held her horns, and Cuthbert her tail, and Agnes showed Bessie how to milk, but it was all of no use.”
“The quadruped was wiser than the biped,” remarked Bessie, “and declined experiments. For the future, I intend to learn wisdom from a cow.”
“I wish you could learn wisdom from anything,” observed Mrs. Ormson.
“My beloved mother, that, I fear, is impossible, since I have failed to acquire it from you,” said Bessie.
“You remember those letters you forwarded to me, Arthur,” broke in Heather at this point; “one was from Miss Hope, to say she had returned from Munich, and would like to come to us; and the other from Mrs. Black, who had not heard I was in London, and wanted to know whether it would be convenient for her and Mr. Black to pay us a visit now, instead of later on in the year. Mr. Black has been ill, and it is his most leisure time at present; so I called in Stanley Crescent and arranged that they should bring Harry Marsden down with them next week. It really is pitiable to see poor Mrs. Marsden with all those young children about her, ill as she is.”
“Was there no one else, Heather, you could have asked while you were about it?” he inquired. “We have a tolerably large barn, and plenty of hay and straw, so that a score or two more would make little difference.”
Heather bit her lip, but otherwise took no notice of her husband’s remark. Heaven knew she had not gone out of her way to ask any of these people, who were neither kith nor kin of hers, and whom, truth to say, it would scarcely have grieved her had she never beheld in the flesh again.
If the house were full of visitors during the summer season, as it usually was, those visitors were none of her seeking, although on her fell the burden of amusing and catering for them.
With one and another Arthur walked through the fields, or down the lane, or across the meadows, towards the Hollow. To Mrs. Ormson he would discourse concerning his grievances; he would quarrel with Mrs. Black about the relative merits of town and country; while from Mr. Black he culled such information anent the “way in which a man with push and a few hundreds might get on in London,” that for months subsequently Squire Dudley thought of nothing excepting how he might best contrive to emigrate to this wonderful El Dorado, to those metropolitan gold-fields, where nuggets were discovered, not in pits and creeks, but in dingy city offices, or in great board-rooms, all shining with polished mahogany and bright morocco leather.
As for Miss Hope, she was to Heather, saving by correspondence, an utter stranger. Never in her life had the present mistress of Berrie Down Hollow set eyes on the sister of the lady who had once reigned there supreme. For more than seven years Miss Hope had wandered to and fro on the earth. She had wintered here; she had summered there. She had been returning every season to London; and every season she heard of some fresh plan, or met with some fresh person, that induced her to defer her intention of coming back to England.
Bohemianism is not confined to one sex or class in the community, and there are numbers of forlorn spinsters and lonely widows, running loose about the Continent, frequenting British watering-places and foreign spas, picking up acquaintances in railway carriages and at table d’hôtes, who would be greatly disgusted if they were assured that the lives of the men they call Bohemians in London are infinitely more useful, and quite as respectable, as theirs;—wandering women, who have no care for the Lares and Penates of the ordinary English home, whose talk is of art and of far-away cathedrals, of foreign cookery and Rhine wines, who have got up to see the sun rise in every country except their own, who go in for passports instead of Sunday-schools, who sit next “our own correspondent” at dinner-parties on their return to London, and converse with him concerning Rome and Vienna, when they mutually agree that the Continent is the place to live, that the man, woman, or child, who is content to reside in England, should be sent to the Asylum for Idiots at once.
These are the people who ask young girls whether they have been abroad, and, on receiving an answer in the negative, remark that they envy them. If any one have the temerity to inquire why, they reply, “Because she has never seen Paris, and the first sight of Paris is something worth living for.” Beyond climate and cheapness, and being able to do as one likes, these Bohemians never can give a reason for the faith that is in them; but that they hold such faith sincerely is certain.
“Everything is so different,” they declare, if pressed on the subject; “the cooking, for instance.”
“It is, and I detest messes,” says some plain-spoken John Bull; whereupon the elderly Bohemian inquires, “whether the speaker has ever dined at Zapoli’s?” implying thereby that he is utterly ignorant of the subject about which he has been talking.
Such a woman was Miss Hope—a woman who went poking about foreign galleries, and visiting artists’ studios; who had, if her own account were to be believed, seen every modern statue in process of chiselling, who had been to every opera which ever was performed, who conscientiously believed she had exhausted Europe, who wrote home reams of letters about the Carnival and the Pope, about festivals and bull-fights, about Mont Blanc and German gaming-tables, and who, in common with most English travellers, believing the Lord had made mountains and lakes, kings, queens, popes, cardinals, musicians, actors, actresses, and painters, on purpose to amuse and improve the people of Great Britain, considered it only an act of common courtesy towards the Almighty on the part of that nation to see as much of the great Continental entertainment He had provided for the pleasure and edification of his chosen race as possible.
All this and much more had Bessie Ormson heard concerning Miss Hope. Many and various were the comments that had fallen upon her ear concerning “that funny old woman,” as she mentally called Arthur Dudley’s respected aunt. From Mrs. Piggott, who declared she hated Miss Hope as she hated “pison,” to other persons higher in the social scale—the name of one of whom, at all events, Bessie would not have cared to mention, even to herself, in her bedchamber, lest a bird of the air might carry it away—from Mrs. Piggott up, I repeat, the girl had heard stories of Miss Hope, and her heart burned within her at the sound of her name.
“I do trust I shall be at Berrie Down when your aunt arrives, Arthur,” she said; and the speech was an opportune diversion at the moment. “It has been a dream of my life to meet Miss Hope.”
“I do not imagine you would agree particularly well, if you did meet,” answered Arthur, sulkily.
“We might for a little time,” said Bessie, laughing. “Heather, do be polite, and ask me to remain until after Miss Hope’s arrival. I have heard so much of her, she seems quite like an old acquaintance.”
“From whom have you heard much of her, Bessie?” inquired Mr. Ormson; “not from me, I am confident.”
“My dearest mamma, other human beings besides yourself have been endowed by Providence with the gift of speech,” replied Bessie; but she bent as she spoke to stroke Muff—bent in order to conceal her face, though she was sitting in the shade with the cool night air blowing right in upon her.
“Don’t be pert, miss,” retorted Mrs. Ormson; “from whom have you heard so much of Miss Hope?”
“From one and another,” answered Bessie, carelessly; “I am the rolling stone which gathers moss, contrary to the words of the proverb; and, wherever I go, I hear something to the advantage or disadvantage of somebody. Concerning Miss Hope, the moss I have gathered is to the effect that she dresses peculiarly badly abroad, and peculiarly well in England; that foreigners regard her with awe and wonder, as an average specimen of the British female; that she praises everything English in foreign countries, and everything English when abroad; that she is to be met with on the stairs leading to attic studios, and dines in the most wonderful manner for threepence per diem; that she is considered mad by the Parisians, and a great and good lady by the Germans; that she was requested to leave Vienna; and that at Rome she is regarded with distrust, because of the audible comments she is in the habit of making during mass, concerning the mummery of the Catholic religion. For the rest, I am told that, since her nephew has come of age and married, she has vowed a vow never to set foot in Copt Hall, but will, when she returns to England, take up her abode in a London boarding-house, where she can discourse to her fellow-sufferers concerning French cookery and George Sand, the gondolas of Venice, and the terrible designs and wonderful genius of Napoleon the Third.”
“Who told you all this, Bessie?” demanded Squire Dudley, turning round in his chair as he asked the question.
“What can it matter who told me?” she replied. “Is the record not true?”
“True or false, I should like to know the name of your informant,” he said; “for I never knew but one person who talked in that way of my aunt. Was it a man or a woman?” he persisted.
“You might be more polite, Arthur,” she replied; “a lady.”
“Was it Mrs. Aymescourt?” he asked.
“I did not know there was such a person upon earth,” she replied.
“Don’t tell stories, Bessie,” interposed Mrs. Ormson; “you must have heard of her over and over again.”
“If I ever did, I have forgotten all about her,” answered Bessie; “at any rate, it was not from any one of the name of Aymescourt I ever heard a sentence concerning Miss Hope’s peculiarities.”
“And who is Mrs. Aymescourt?” inquired Heather.
“Oh! a friend of Miss Hope’s; at least, she used to be,” answered Mrs. Ormson, vaguely; and then she looked at Arthur, who, pulling cherries out of a basket lined with green leaves, refused either to meet her glance, or to vouchsafe any further information on the subject.
“Did you know Mrs. Aymescourt, Arthur?” asked Heather, whose curiosity was a little piqued.
“I—yes, to be sure; she used to be staying with my aunt at Copt Hall, but I have not seen her these ten years.”
“Was not there something about Mr. Aymescourt having come into another fine property?” inquired Mrs. Ormson.
“Marsden said he had,” returned the Squire; “likely enough, for we know who takes care of his own; and certainly Aymescourt had luck beyond what falls to the share of any honest man. He had a large income to begin with, or else madam never would have married him; but I dare say they were quite able to spend it all, so probably this other property fell in none too soon.”
“Where do they live?” asked Heather.
“I have not the slightest idea,” Arthur answered; “my aunt keeps up some kind of acquaintanceship, I understand, with them, as she does with everybody, but I have seen nothing of them for years;” and as he spoke Squire Dudley made another dive among the cherries, and pulled a fresh handful from amidst the green leaves.
“Give me some, Arthur, before you eat them all,” entreated Bessie; “or, stay, the moon must be up by this time; I can go into the garden and gather some for myself. Will you come with me, Alick?”
And Bessie, who was not above flirting, even with a lad of eighteen, when it suited her purpose to do so, drew Alick from the dining-room across the hall, into the drawing-room, and so out on to the long terrace-like walk which overlooked the Hollow, and all the pleasant country stretching away towards the west.
“I did not want the cherries in the least,” she began, putting her hand within Alick’s arm, and speaking in her usual don’t-careish tone; “I did not want the cherries, but I wanted to get away from mamma—she does so worry me, that I say things to her I feel sorry for afterwards. What a pity it is we cannot choose our own mothers, or that we are not allowed to exchange them after we come to years of discretion! Only to think, that out of three sisters my mamma should be my mamma. Even Mrs. Black, or your own mother, I think I could have got on with; but, as papa wisely observes, these things are arranged for us.”
“But don’t you love your mother, Bessie?” asked the boy, with a vague sense on him that the girl’s talk was wicked.
“Don’t I what?” she demanded.
“Don’t you love your mother?” he repeated, with the feeling growing stronger upon him, that his view of the matter was correct, and Bessie’s wrong; “of course, I know you disagree with her, and quarrel, and contradict her, but still, for all that, don’t you love her in the bottom of your heart?”
“Shall I tell you a secret?” she inquired, as they turned the end of the house—the garden end.
“If you will be so kind,” Alick replied, thinking at the same time how exceedingly beautiful Bessie looked in the moonlight. Perhaps she guessed at his thought, for she sighed, wishing that some person whom she liked much better than Alick Dudley were standing beside her at the moment, and then she forgot what she had been going to say, and went a long mental journey, while the youth waited patiently for her to speak.
“Will you be so kind?” he asked at last.
“So kind as what?” she repeated. “Oh! to tell you a secret. From the bottom of my heart, Alick, I never loved but one woman on earth, and that woman is your brother’s wife. If I had a mother like her now, or a sister, or anything—” she went on, hurriedly, only to stop short and leave her sentence unfinished.
“Heather would be a mother to you,” said the lad, softly.
“No, she wouldn’t,” was the reply; “she couldn’t, and it is not fit she should. There is nobody like Heather could be mother, or sister, or friend, or anything to me now. Heather does not like me, I know she does not, and I cannot blame her for it, for I am cross and hateful.”
“Oh, Bessie! you are delightful, and so pretty!”
“I wish I were not pretty, flatterer,” she said. “I should like to be as ugly as Joan Harcourt, and as good. It must be nice to honour one’s parents, let them be as disagreeable as they will, and to love one’s neighbour, even though she keep a parrot, and lets her girls hammer at a piano placed against the party-wall, and is altogether as great a nuisance as Mrs. Riccarde, who lives next door to us. Oh, Alick, how lovely and peaceful the country looks in the moonlight! Is not that the house at Kemms Park I see, shining white among the trees? What a delicious place! Do you know Lord Kemms’ family name?”
“Baldwin,” he replied.
“Baldwin!” repeated Miss Bessie, and there was just a shade of disappointment in her voice. “Is he a good-looking man, Alick? I wish I had been with you yesterday in the Croft when he passed. That is the only taste which I have inherited from my mother; I do dearly love a lord.”
“Bessie!” exclaimed Alick.
“It is a fact,” she persisted; “I do not in the least believe they are made of the same flesh and blood as the commonalty. I delight in men who have had ancestors; that is one reason why I like all of you, because on one side of the house, at least, you come of good people.”
“I am not ashamed of my mother’s family,” answered the lad, a little hastily.
“No, but you are not proud of it; Maddox Cuthbert, alderman, no doubt, was a most charming-old institution, and highly respected in the City but still, that is not like being in the peerage, is it, Alick, or amongst the country gentry?”
“I do not think it matters much what one is, if one have no money,” he replied. “Did you not yourself say at supper, riches make the man?”
“If there is one thing I object to more than another,” interrupted Bessie, “it is to have my own conversational sins brought up as witnesses against me. I was only jesting about lords, Alick. Don’t I know the ancestors of Lord Kemms were something or other in the city, not nearly so respectable as our grandfather? But, seriously, I should like to see his lordship. I have a curiosity about him; was he alone, or had he a groom?”
“He was quite alone,” said Alick Dudley, laughing, almost in spite of himself, at her persistency, “and he spoke to me very much as anybody else might have done. Do you not think it would be a good thing if there were a kind of ‘Court Circular’ published at Kemms Park, telling us all about the great folks there—what visitors they had, what time they ate and drank?”
“Yes, and we might be the editors, and walk over every day to learn particulars of their doings. I wish Lord Kemms would ask me to go and stay there.”
“Perhaps he may, when Mr. Harcourt has made his fortune, and is created an earl.”
“Then I shall be grey-haired,” she said, “and have rheumatism so bad, that even Kemms Park will seem disagreeable. How beautiful those trees do look, Alick! Is there not a village somewhere near Mr. Raidsford’s place?”
“North Kemms you mean, I suppose,” replied her companion; “it is two miles, I should say, beyond Mr. Raidsford’s, that is, two miles by the road, but there is a path across the fields, which cuts off a great corner. It is a pretty walk to North Kemms, and there is such an old, old church there.”
“Where?” asked Heather, joining them at the moment.
“At North Kemms,” answered Bessie, promptly. “Alick is going to take me to see it next Sunday afternoon, are you not, Alick?”
“If you do not think the walk too much,” he said; and then the rest of the party came out to “see the moonlight,” and there was no more talk, either about Lord Kemms or Kemms Park.
That same night, Bessie having shaken down her hair, Heather came into her room, hoping Bessie would not be vexed if she asked her one little favour.
“A hundred, if you like,” answered the girl.
“I should be glad if you would speak to your mamma with more, more——”
“Politeness,” suggested Bessie, finding Mrs. Dudley pause for want of a suitable word.
“Not exactly politeness, but respect,” said Heather; “you know, dear, she is your mother, and you ought to——”
“Please, stop,” entreated Bessie. “I will strive to do what you ask for your sake; if I cannot be good for that, nothing can make me good. You were very fond of your mother, I suppose—very tender towards her—very dutiful, no doubt?”
“I hope I was,” Heather answered, in that low tone in which women talk of the dead whom they have loved.
“And she was very fond of you?”
“My dear child, what a question! of course she was.”
“Well, supposing she had not been fond of you, nor you of her, perhaps even you might not have found it in the least degree easier to be dutiful and tender than I do?”
“But you must be fond of her,” Heather asserted.
“I do not see any must in the matter; I never asked her to bring me into the world. If she had consulted me, I should decidedly have preferred being left out of it. Well, then, since to please herself she did bring me into the world, what has she done for me? My brothers have had all her care and attention; she married young, as you know, and to some women it does not seem a very agreeable thing to have a great girl treading on their heels, and calling them mother. She dressed me as a child long after I was a girl;—when she could not help herself, and had to acknowledge that I was growing up, she sent me from the nursery to school, and kept me there till the state of the domestic finances compelled my return; since which time, the one object, aim, and end of her life has been to drive me to marry somebody—to get rid of a child she never liked.”
“Bessie!” remonstrated Heather.
“It is true,” the girl persisted, passionately; “she never liked me—she never wanted to have a daughter—she has told me so over and over again. Suppose you acted towards Lally as she has acted towards me. Suppose you kept the child shut up in a London nursery, and never spoke to her, unless it was to find fault with or punish her. Suppose you were out from morning till night, following your own pleasure (my father was rich in those days, and she could visit, and dress, and spend as much as she chose), and left Lally to the mercy of strangers, to the kindness and attention of a cheap nurse. Suppose you grudged your child the money necessary to give her a good education, and sent her to a school where there was not enough to eat, nor sufficient clothing to keep her warm at night. Suppose Arthur gave you money to pay for an expensive school, and that you pocketed the difference——”
“Ah! stop—stop, Bessie! I won’t believe it—I cannot believe any woman, any mother, capable of such wickedness!” entreated Heather; but Bessie relentlessly continued:
“Then when Lally grew to woman’s estate, should you expect her to honour a mother who had acted such a part by her? and what I have told you is not the worst, Heather, is not the worst!”
“And what is worst—dear?”
“That I must keep to myself,” replied the girl, rising as she spoke, and flinging her hair back from her face. “I have often thought, since I came down here this time, that such people as we are have neither right nor title to mix among such as you; and yet I do not know—whatever of good I have learned, whatever faith in virtue and honesty I possess, I have learned and I have acquired from you. Oh, Heather!—oh, Heather!——” and she clasped her hands high above her head. Then, in a moment, the fit was over, and the speaker fell into her usual tone. “I will try to do what you ask,” she said, “and treat my respected parent with the deference you desire. Kiss me for that—kiss me once, kiss me twice—kiss me as though you meant it. If I had been a man, I should have married you, Heather; if I had been a duke, I should have laid my rank and wealth at your feet, and prayed you take them—take everything, if you would only take me as well. If you tell me to do it this minute, I will stay with you all my life, and never marry any one.”
“What a strange girl you are!” said Heather, tossing over the soft hair, twining and curling it round her hand.
“Ay! all puzzles seem strange till you hold the key,” answered Bessie. “Let me light you along the passage, and do not lie awake thinking of me.”