CHAPTER XI.
LEAVING BERRIE DOWN.
The programme of domestic arrangements which Arthur Dudley had so ingeniously sketched out, as he travelled from London to Palinsbridge, was, like many other programmes, destined to undergo much revision before being presented to the public.
In the first place, Mrs. Piggott’s prudence, or possibly, even her morality, objected to being left alone with Ned at Berrie Down in charge of that establishment. A house without a mistress had always been Mrs. Piggott’s special abhorrence,—a house where things, as she said, “ran wild.”
Further, Mrs. Dudley most earnestly desired that if her lot were to be cast in town, it should not be cast there in company with strange servants; and, after much anxious discussion, it was accordingly agreed that Susan should take Mrs. Piggott’s position, and a new housemaid be engaged to fill Jane’s place, while Prissy and Jane and Mrs. Piggott accompanied the family to London. As an almost necessary consequence of this arrangement, it was decided that Agnes and Laura should remain at the Hollow; Agnes willingly undertaking to “see to things” as much as possible, and write Heather an account of the farm proceedings every week.
Ned, of course, was to take charge of out-door matters, as hitherto; and Lucy and Cuthbert were to proceed to town.
It seemed to Mr. Black, when he heard these various decisions, that the whole family must suddenly have taken leave of their senses.
“Why the deuce you could not have put in a care-taker, and sold the cows, and got rid of all the poultry, and let that Ned fellow see to the ploughing and sowing, passes my comprehension. The girls will never get married down there; why, I don’t suppose they see a man from one year’s end to another!”
“There is one of them coming up, remember,” said Arthur Dudley, in a tone of apology, as though some excuse were necessary for not putting his sisters in the way of matrimonial chances; “and Heather and they settled it, somehow, amongst them. It appeared to me rather a good arrangement.”
“Well, it may be, if you wish to have them on your hands for ever,” answered Mr. Black; at which remark Arthur bit his lip.
He did not like being interfered with, or advised overmuch. If he wished his sisters to stay at Berrie Down, what business was it of Mr. Black’s whether they remained there or not? He had maintained them when no other member of the family could or would have done so, and he did not see that any person had a right to make comments on what he did or left undone.
“You need not look crusty, Squire,” proceeded Mr. Black; “what I said is merely my opinion, and you may take it for what it is worth; only I consider it to be a confoundedly bad plan to have two establishments, and so I tell you. I would shut up Berrie Down, and move the whole party, bag and baggage, to town. That is what I should do; but, of course, you can do as you like.”
“Yes; and that is what I intend to do: much obliged, at the same time, for your kind permission.”
“Hoity-toity!” said Mr. Black, taking off his hat, and bowing low as he spoke;—it was in one of the empty rooms of Arthur’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields that this conversation occurred,—“hoity-toity! your most obedient, sir, and humbly beg pardon for the liberty.”
In a pet, Arthur turned away, and walking to one of the windows, looked out over the Square, while Mr. Black regarded him with a smile, in which there lurked not merely amusement, but also triumph and contempt.
“You’re a nice chicken, you are,” thus ran the promoter’s secret thought; “and you have a sweet temper, Mister Squire Dudley; and you think you are able to manage your affairs, though anybody, willing to take the trouble, might put a ring through your nose, and lead you from here to Jericho. And so you intend to do as you like! It will be as I like before we have done with one another, I fancy; a conceited, upsetting ass!”
But Mr. Black was much too wise a man to allow even a word of all this to pass his lips. He had his game still to play; and he would not mar the chances of success by any irritated or indiscreet remark.
“Come, Dudley,” he said, “we are not going to quarrel over trifles, are we? I meant no offence, and am sorry if you have taken any. I have knocked about the world too much to be as mealy-mouthed as most of your acquaintances, but I should be as sorry to vex you, perhaps, as any of them. I am glad you like the papers I have chosen; you will find everything in apple-pie order when you bring up Mrs. Dudley and the children. So your wife is going to try moving Miss Lally? I am glad of it; I believe she will get well in half the time in town.”
That was what Heather trusted also; she hoped that some of the great doctors in London would be able to do more for her little girl in a month than the general practitioner at Fifield had effected in five. Every one told her she was doing the wisest thing possible in taking Lally to town! every one was so kind and good!
Mrs. Poole Seymour sent her carriage to convey mother and child to the station, and Mr. Plimpton was at Palinsbridge, ready to conduct Lally across the bridge, and deposit her safely in the compartment he had secured for the travellers.
Miss Baldwin promised to call upon the girls “very often,” and said she should not “forget to find her way to Lincoln’s Inn when in town;” while Mrs. Raidsford came lumbering over in the great family chariot, and, not to be outdone in neighbourly thoughtfulness and delicate consideration, brought Heather a basket of the worst grapes growing in the Moorlands conservatory, and offered to lend her “one of the footmen,” if he could be of any service in seeing to her luggage.
It was fortunate for Heather she had, towards the last, so many people to see, so many things to occupy and distract her mind, or else that parting from Berrie Down, when the spring flowers were budding, when the fresh leaves were clothing all the trees, when the birds were singing on every branch and bough, must almost have broken her heart.
She loved the spring-time—that time which always seems more full of hope, and joy, and life, and promise than any other period in the year. It had been her delight, ever since she came to Berrie Down, to watch the buds gradually forming, to peep with the children at the nests, where eggs, speckled, and blue, and white, and green, were covered by birds that rarely took fright at sight, of the familiar faces; to her, the lambing season was the pleasantest of the four—the long, long summer stretched away beyond the spring, and the rich, glowing autumn beyond that, and all these good things were to be had and enjoyed before the winter, with its leafless trees, with its snows and frosts, with its rain and storms, came again to Berrie Down.
To any person passionately fond of the country, of its sights, and sounds, and pleasures, the coming of spring is as the beginning of a feast, as the sunrise on the morning of a bright glad holiday. To Heather, this had always been the happiest, most delicious time at Berrie Down—these months when the lambs commenced to dot the fields, when the daisies perked up their faces among the green grass, when the hyacinths began to bud in the dells, when the “sunny celandine” opened on the hedge-bank, when the children gathered branches of the crab-apple, when the first broods of chickens chipped their shells and went chirruping and scratching about the warmest corners of the farm-yard—when the sun really had some power, when the fruit-trees were in blossom and the lilacs showed for flower, when the tiger-lily reared its head in the garden, when every hedge-row was clad in its fresh robe of green, and there was that nameless scent of spring pervading that air—that scent with which the summer odours vainly strive to compete.
With a new sense of happiness upon her, with a sensuous delight in the soft balmy air, in the fragrance which pervaded the atmosphere, in the sunny smile which shone on the face of Nature, in the sudden stir which there seemed on every bough, in every blade of grass—Heather, I say, when all the things I have mentioned came to pass, would stand at the open window of the drawing-room, looking down over the Hollow, and away to the woods surrounding Kemms’ Park, repeating to herself the while—
“The winter is past—the rain is over and gone—the flowers appear on the earth—the time for the singing-birds is come—and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.”
And now this time was come, and she had to leave it behind.
Just when the hawthorn-buds were forming—when the chestnut-trees were clothing themselves in great masses of foliage, to be relieved presently and lighted up with cone after cone of pure white flowers—when the laburnums were about loosening their golden curls, and the lilacs bethought themselves of filling the air with a delicious fragrance—when the westeria was hanging out its purple clusters, and the pyracanthas at the gate were a perfect sheet of bloom—when the white anemone and the starry stitchwort dotted the woods—when everything was looking its loveliest, and brightest, and purest, Heather was compelled to leave the place her heart had grown to during the years of her married life.
For some time previously, Arthur had been resident in town; but Mrs. Dudley, having many preparations to make, many arrangements to complete, remained at Berrie Down, not merely until the spring blossoms were come, but also until Lally was sufficiently recovered to travel.
The child still kept weakly and delicate; her once tireless, limbs now refused to carry her for any long period. If she started to run along one of the garden walks, she soon returned to her mother with, “Carry me, pease—legs ache.” The colour did not return to her cheeks, nor strength to her body, neither did she get plump and soft again, as Heather hoped would have been the case.
The poor wasted arms, and little white face, and thin slight figure, had a pleading pitifulness about them, which the child’s eager desire for exercise, her unquenched vivacity, made more pathetic still.
Whatever Lally saw any other creature doing, that she desired to essay also. She wanted to run after the lambs, and scamper like the dogs, and be out over the fields with Cuthbert, and trotting behind Agnes and Mrs. Piggott, to dairy, and poultry-yard, and paddock; but it was not to be! The spirit was there—strong, restless, excitable as ever; but the body was changed. No more gallops for Lally on any one’s shoulder—no more charming excursions in Ned’s wheelbarrow—no more clambering up ladders, and lofty thrones on the top of haystacks and corn-ricks—no more playing at hide-and-seek in the hollow—no more running after the ducks, and shrill laughter at seeing them take to the water in order to escape the pursuit of their tiny persecutor—no more searchings after hens that had stolen away to lay—no more of these old happinesses for Lally. Sickness had caught her one day, when his advent was least looked for—caught and put her in a cage, which would not permit her to move far in any direction, against the bars of which the little restless heart fluttered and beat only to its own hurt—a cage from which no human hand could release her, though loving friends were all around, and kindly eyes, often with tears in them, regarded the impatient child.
Tired—tired—always tired! Many and many a time, when Heather, hearing this plaint, lifted her child in her arms, she had to turn aside lest Lally should see she was weeping; but one day Lally, peeping round, beheld the tears on her mother’s face, and said—
“’Oo crying, ma?—is it about Lally? Big, fat lady told Lally she’ll get some-sing when she goes to London, that will make her better as well. When are we going, ma—when?”
And because her own hopes were identical with Lally’s words, Mrs. Dudley did not grieve so much concerning leaving Berrie Down as might otherwise have been the case. As regarded the increase of income, the prospect of greater pecuniary comfort, Heather felt no elation whatever.
If Arthur were satisfied, she could easily make herself satisfied also; but she had little faith that anything in which Mr. Black figured as prime mover would ultimately prove advantageous to her husband.
Besides, if a person have half a million a year, he can but be happy; and Heather knew perfectly well that the secret of being happy, even on two hundred a year, is to be satisfied therewith.
Arthur had never been contented, and she was quite aware that the increase to his income could not make him so. She understood her husband’s peculiarities sufficiently by this time to know that his wants would only grow with what they fed on.
If Mr. Black’s cry were always more capital, Arthur’s had always been a larger revenue.
Looking back over her married life with eyes from which the glamour of early love was now completely cleared away, Heather saw that money matters might have been better with them for years past, had Arthur only been energetic, and strong, and determined, like other men—had he finished his draining instead of leaving it half completed—had he turned up his land and laid out money by degrees, as he could spare it, on that which never proves ungrateful for capital wisely expended, for care judiciously bestowed.
She could not be blind to the fact that, as a rule, they had bought stock dear and sold it cheap—that what Alick had often said, “Arthur is neither master nor man: neither master to give orders and see them carried out, nor man to obey orders if given by anybody else,” was true.
There was no fairy mist hanging before her mental vision now. Like Mr. Stewart, she feared the person who could not make money at Berrie Down, plainly and economically as they had lived for years, would not be likely to make or to keep much money elsewhere. Certainly the thousand a year was something tangible—a peg on which to hang her faith, had any faith been left; but, like most women who have passed all the most important years of their lives in the country, Heather entertained a perfect horror of the expenses of living in town.
She did not believe one sentence of what Mr. Black said about an income going as far there as in the country. She knew, no one better, how very small a money outlay had sufficed to maintain the family at Berrie Down comfortably and respectably.
Those only who have eaten of the fat of their own lands, and beheld the wheat growing which is afterwards to be ground into flour—who have scarcely missed from amongst the rough abundance of all farm produce, the poultry and milk, the butter, eggs, hams, vegetables, and meat necessary for the consumption even of a large family—can tell what a very difficult thing it is to cater for an establishment in town, where everything, to the country imagination, seems sold according to its weight in gold—where a housekeeper’s hand is never out of her pocket from one week’s end to another—where it is either bills or cash, but, in any case, ultimately money—where even a few sprigs of parsley, even a bunch of savoury herbs, cannot be procured without purchase, without going through the ceremony of buying that which, at the old home, grew wild, almost, along the sunniest borders—wild, to be had for the mere trouble of gathering.
Of that mongrel country life which exists in the suburbs of great towns, and which has given rise to various sayings concerning home-laid eggs at a shilling a-piece, carrots at half-a-guinea the bunch, butter half-a-crown a pound, and milk eighteen-pence a quart, Heather had no experience. She only knew that her father’s glebe lands and Arthur’s farm had enabled their respective families to make both ends meet, without pinching in the parlour, or an over-strict and painful economy in the kitchen; and she dreaded entering on what was to her an utterly untried career—that of managing a town establishment, and entering every item, from cream to laundry work, in her formerly easily-kept housekeeping book.
All these matters she had discussed, after a woman’s diffuse fashion, with Agnes and Mrs. Piggott; and Agnes and Mrs. Piggott had both agreed that much might still be forwarded from Berrie Down; that it would only be Ned’s time and the pony’s to run over to Palinsbridge with a weekly hamper for town; “and besides, you will be often down yourself, I hope, Heather,” added Agnes; but Heather shook her head.
“The expense,” she said, “will be more than I should like to incur frequently. I am afraid, although a thousand a year sounds a great deal, it will not go very far in London, more especially in the style Arthur talks of living.”
“But his shares, you know, Heather?” suggested Agnes, hopefully.
“Yes, I had forgotten them,” was the reply, evidently intended to be affirmative of the girl’s cheerful views, but failing of its purpose, because Mrs. Dudley’s tone implied that, now she did remember the shares, her spirits were not unduly raised.
She had heard too many revelations from Mrs. Black to be mightily exalted at the idea of being even indirectly connected with a company. That lady had favoured her with too many descriptions of how they had “up and down,” “seeing and sawing,” for Mrs. Dudley’s heart to flutter at the prospect of wealth suddenly spread out before them.
“If it was here to-day, it was gone to-morrow,” Mrs. Black had sadly lamented; “and, while it was here, we had nothing but anxiety; and when it was there, we had a trouble to keep the wolf from the door. I am sure, my dear, what I have gone through would make a history.”
Heather Dudley not having the slightest desire to go through experiences sufficiently varied and unpleasant to justify any one compiling a history concerning her, would, had the choice been offered, decidedly have preferred remaining where there was no chance of such ups and downs as Mrs. Black mentioned occurring in her life.
The choice, however, not being offered, she had at last no alternative left but to bid adieu to Berrie Down; and, accompanied by Miss Hope, who kindly came up from Tunbridge Wells to “see the last” of her old favourite drive over to Palinsbridge, whence she travelled by one of the afternoon trains to London.
“I told you how it would be,” said that Job’s comforter, Alithea Hope, spinster, as she and Mrs. Dudley drove along the pleasant country roads to the station—Heather crouched up into one corner of Mrs. Seymour’s carriage, so that her child might lie on the seat with her head resting on her mother’s lap—“I told you how it would be, if you refused to take my advice; and now I hope you are satisfied at the result of your non-interference principle. Sweetness, and amiability, and submission, and all that kind of thing, are delightful traits, no doubt, in a wife, but they are qualities thrown away on Arthur Dudley—and so you will find out some day. The kindest thing you could have done to your husband would have been to say:
“‘Now, look here, Arthur: if you are resolved to make a fool of yourself, I won’t make a fool of myself with you. Go to town if you like, but I stay at Berrie Down. If you are determined to take the bread out of your children’s mouths, I am equally resolved we shall not all be left paupers, if I can prevent it; therefore, I mean to remain and manage the farm, and whenever you are tired of your shares and your companies, and your Blacks and your town life, you can come home again.’”
Heather laughed; she was a little hysterical about leaving Berrie Down and all the kind friends she had recently found there, and so even while she laughed the tears came into her eyes again.
The idea of her making such a speech to Arthur; of her taking such a stand and setting her will up in open defiance of his; of her twitting her husband with his decision, and prophesying failure for him! Heather could not choose but laugh, and then she cried; and then Miss Hope told her she was a soft, silly, stupid creature, who had no more business to marry Arthur Dudley than Mr. Raidsford had to marry that great vulgar illiterate dowdy, who “came over in her caravan to see you this morning; you don’t want me to speak about Mrs. Raidsford before Lally,—is that the meaning of all those signs? The sooner Lally is taught to repeat nothing she hears, the better; the sooner little girls learn their mouths and ears were given them to be kept tight shut, the more sugar-plums will be bought and popped in between their little red lips. Are you attending to me, Lally?”
“Iss; but how’s me to eat sugar-plums if I keeps mows shut?” inquired Miss Hope’s pupil.
“You are to open it at proper times,” answered her teacher; “but not to repeat what older people say before you.”
“Lally don’t ’peat,” replied the child, wearily. “Ma, is it far to London now? will it be long before we are there? me so tired—me so tired!”
Whereupon mother and aunt looked at each other, and Miss Hope said,—
“You will send for a doctor soon, Heather; and do try that delightful man I was speaking to you about. His manner with children is quite charming: wins their little hearts, and makes them feel at home with him directly. I am sure, when I went to him with Mrs. Walter Hope about her Charlie’s legs, if he had been the boy’s father he could not have taken more interest in his case; said he must see him at least once a week, for six months; took the child on his knee, and made himself so pleasant. There was only one stupid remark he made, which surprised me in so clever a man, namely, that he could tell in a moment whose child Charlie was, his likeness to his mother being remarkable. I longed to ask him where his eyes were, for the boy is a Hope, every inch of him, and very like me,—even his own father admits that.”
Heather laughed again; she was evidently in a laughing mood, for the slightest thing provoked her merriment. Perhaps it was a comfort to this “silly goose” to discover that even Miss Hope had her weak points, and could be touched through them like her neighbours; perhaps the description of Charlie’s model doctor tickled her fancy; any way she laughed; and Lally, putting up her little hand, patted her mother’s cheek, and smiled a weak, faint smile in sympathy, while she asked,—
“Ma, was that ’tild as ill as me?”
“Now I wonder,” broke out Miss Hope, “if it be a consequence of ‘original sin’ that children always speak bad grammar. Is it the depravity of our human nature which always confounds the parts of speech, and makes a jumble of the personal pronouns? She never heard bad grammar spoken by any one belonging to her, and only listen to her English; if you can call such a language as she speaks English. You want to know if Charlie was as ill as ‘me,’” added the spinster, directly addressing Lally; “yes; and a great deal-worse; his legs were like a bow, bent out like that;” and Miss Hope would have practically demonstrated what Charlie’s legs were like on Lally’s person, but that the child resisted any such experiments being attempted with her limbs. “Positively, Heather, you never saw such a sight as the child was,” she continued; “but Doctor Chickton assured Fanny he could make a perfect cure.”
“Will he cure me?” asked Lally, egotistical as most sick people are. Months of undivided maternal solicitude, the devotion of a whole household, the visits of ladies vieing one with another who should bring Lally most toys and dainties, had spoiled the child a little, perhaps; or it may be that long illness and a close and undivided consideration of her own ailments, had produced a certain self-consciousness and absorption. In either case, there can be no question but that Lally was exceedingly sorry for herself, that she felt her case to be a very hard one; and that she was precisely in that state of mind and body which might well tire out any love except a mother’s, any patience save that which seems well-nigh inexhaustible.
On the previous day Leonard and Lucy, and Cuthbert, together with Mrs. Piggott and Priscilla Dobbin, had journeyed to town, and now Heather and her first-born were bringing up the rear of the Dudley domestic army. It was a great point that Heather should have nothing to attend to excepting Lally, that she should not be troubled with luggage or parcels, or anything besides the sick child; and all the others being gone before, was a relief to her, so as to obviate the necessity for conversation or movement, or stir or sound, likely to disturb the little girl.
Mr. Plimpton, one of the most good-natured men who ever existed, saw Mrs. Dudley into her compartment, and impressed the guard with the importance of permitting no other passengers to intrude into it.
“The child is very ill indeed,” he explained; which explanation he perhaps made clearer by slipping half-a-crown into the man’s hand.
“I declare, if it were not that Lady Emily might wonder what had become of me, I would run up to town with you myself, Mrs. Dudley, and see you safe; but I think the guard will take care that no other passengers get in. Good-bye—good-bye, Miss Lally; don’t quite forget me, though you are going to live in London. Have you any message for my wife? she will be certain to inquire whether you sent her one.”
“Lally’s love give her,” said the child, who was now all excitement at the bustle, and the noise, and the steam, and the number of the people, and the general variety,—“Lally’s love—and a tiss;” and she kissed the tall gentleman, spite of his bushy whiskers and bristling moustache, both articles which ordinarily tried her equanimity and temper not a little.
“That child will never be better,” was Mr. Plimpton’s summary of Lally’s state on his return home. “They may take her where they like, and send for whom they like, but she will never be strong again. Poor Mrs. Dudley believes it to be a question of treatment, but I am confident no treatment will ever put the little creature to rights.”
As for Miss Hope, she drove back to Berrie Down “crying like an idiot,” so she informed Agnes all the way. “Dear me, I wish people would not have children,” she said; “that Lally is enough to break a person’s heart. Why cannot she get strong as any other child would? I declare I am out of patience with her, month after month, and like a bag of bones at the end. And of all things on earth she must set up a lamentation for that Bessie, whom she ought to have forgotten long ago; asking her mother if they should see her in London, and whether she would not be with them always, and sing to her at night. As if Heather were not vexed enough and sad enough without that;” and Miss Hope tossed aside her bonnet, which Laura carried upstairs, for the spinster was going to stay with the girls for a time, to see how they went on and managed by themselves.
Then came a millennium of “Christian cookery,” and of “coffee fit to be swallowed;” then Miss Hope was in her element,—a mistress over two young mistresses, who obeyed her implicitly, and allowed her to order Susan about as much as she pleased.
But having one’s own way is not always conducive to perfect happiness; being monarch of all one’s surveys does not invariably produce perfect contentment. Even a contest with Mrs. Piggott would occasionally have served to break the monotony of being able to do as she pleased, which Miss Hope at length felt to be insupportable; and every day, and a score of times during the course of every day, she repeated that Berrie Down was not Berrie Down without Heather, who, the guard proving faithful to the trust reposed in him, travelled alone to London with Lally, and was met at King’s Cross by Alick and Lucy, the former of whom could only say, “Well, mother, this is a happy change for me,” as he helped her out of the carriage, and walked beside her along the platform, carrying Lally in his arms.
There was no loneliness about that arrival in the great Babylon, even although Arthur could not meet his wife;—for the strong hands which had smoothed her way, and helped her through many a difficulty at Berrie Down, were stretched forth now to guide and guard her through the midst of the human wilderness whither she had come.