CHAPTER II.
GREAT SUCCESSES.
While the events I have related were influencing, more or less, the Dudley family history, the “Protector Flour and Bread Company” was succeeding to an extent which it is given to few companies in our time to equal.
If a person be sufficiently interested in the prices of miscellaneous companies’ shares, to run his eye down a list of, say, a hundred and fifty of the new Limited Liabilities, he will be surprised to find how few out of the number are quoted as being at par, to say nothing of at a premium. Dis., dis., dis., is the encouraging legend attached to one after another; but it was not thus with the Protector—steadily its shares went up. It grew to be considered a good investment. The ten pound shares (two pounds paid) were eagerly sought after; and, had an intending investor gone, about that period, to any broker, and expressed his desire of purchasing into the Protector Bread Company, he would have been advised he was acting wisely—that the shares were very good property indeed.
And so every one believed. In all directions the Company’s vans were to be encountered conveying bread to the far-away depôts, or else returning empty from the extremest ends of London. The bread was good; the directors—greatly to the disgust of their housekeepers and cooks, who were thus cheated out of a legitimate perquisite in the shape of commission—ate of the staff of life kneaded at their own bakeries, and were satisfied.
If an inferior batch were produced, woe to the master baker, on whom, straight away, General Sinclair poured his vials of wrath. If the flour were sour, as servants frequently declared it to be, Mr. Bailey Crossenham’s ears tingled for a week.
Never was a company better managed; never a staff more rigidly superintended.
Did Linnor, at the most easterly point of London, running short of bread, borrow a few loaves from his neighbour, Mr. Bickley, and supply them as the genuine product of the Protector, Limited, down came a note from the Secretary’s office, informing Mr. Linnor, by “order of the board,” that if such dereliction from the paths of duty occurred again, he, Mr. Linnor, would forthwith be dismissed from the responsible position which he held.
Neither for those brilliant creatures, dressed in orange and green, who conveyed the bread from Stangate to all parts of the metropolis, was there such a thing as liberty. Their carts were numbered, and if, on the hottest day in summer, they stopped at the “Spotted Stag,” in Mile End Road, or the “White Hart,” in Newington, or the “Greyhound,” in Fulham, or any other favourite house of call, for a pot of beer, 16, or 48, or 33, or 27, was had up the same evening before the yard superintendent, and “cautioned” for all the world—so the men themselves said—as if the “governor was a beak.”
If, after this caution, any one still preferred ale to employment, he was paid his wages and discharged on the spot.
Altogether, it was a very perfectly-managed Company, and quite a credit to its directors.
Great people, when the periodical philanthropic fit attacked their ranks, were not above driving over to Stangate, and inspecting the works; and, on the occasion of such visits, the Times would come out with a leader, concerning pure bread and the adulteration of food, which always sent the shares up on the Stock Exchange, and made the aristocracy feel that they had conferred vast benefits on the labouring classes.
It was nice to be associated with so excellent a Company. Good people felt that the blessing of the Almighty must rest upon an enterprise, undertaken in so Christian a spirit (there was much mention of the poor in the prospectus), and that He, who had fed the Israelites with manna in the wilderness, would likewise satisfactorily regulate the Protector’s dividends; for which reason, and others too numerous and varied to mention, both great people and good people, and good and great combined in the same people, bought shares in the Company, sincerely believing that, since time began, there had never been any creature born so deserving of universal support and encouragement as Mr. Black’s baby, which was now a great child able to run alone, and earn something for itself, and even repay its benefactors a portion of the money advanced to start it fairly in the world.
When the first half-yearly meeting was held, the directors not merely announced a dividend at the rate of fifteen per cent. per annum, but also stated their conviction, that the close of another half year would exhibit a much larger proportion of profit, since the expenses of conducting such a business in the first instance were necessarily greater than would subsequently prove the case.
Moreover, it was resolved that no further call should be made on the shareholders, except in the event of larger mills and more extensive premises being required, when, as a natural consequence, higher dividends might confidently be expected.
The directors had pleasure in communicating the existence of a large reserve fund; and in stating that the mills at Stangate had been greatly increased in size, that the machinery was the very best known for the purposes required, that every modern improvement in the grinding of wheat and manufacture of flour was to be found on the premises, and that, as regarded the bakehouse, it was decidedly the most spacious, convenient, and best ventilated in the kingdom.
All this, and a vast amount more, being duly reported in the daily and weekly papers, shares (money at the time chancing to be cheap) went up again.
Then, the magazine-writers got hold of the Protector as a nucleus on which might be constructed a few light and entertaining papers concerning breadmaking from the beginning of time, tracing the progress of the staff of life from the kneading-troughs of the Israelites down to the works of the new Company at Stangate.
There was no difficulty about inspecting the Protector’s premises. A man, salaried on purpose, received ordinary visitors at the gates, and escorted them through the whole process from grinding to kneading, that is, if they came at an hour when kneading was in progress—as literary gentlemen always did.
“Wheat, from the Ear to the Breakfast Table,” was the exhaustive title of one paper. Another, supposed to be written by the same author, appeared as “Hot Rolls!” “Our Daily Bread” graced the columns of one of the religious periodicals; while, “Adulteration Considered Morally and Socially,” was universally attributed by the critics to the pen of one of the most gifted and thoughtful authoresses of the day.
With all these helps, was it any wonder that the shares of the Protector should soon be at a premium? that every one connected with the Company felt himself to be to some extent a person of consequence; that Arthur Dudley forgot his fears, and only remembered his interest in the great concern; that even the mortgaging of Berrie Down grew in time to be a mere bagatelle—a trifle not worth fretting about?
What might the shares not ultimately touch! Supposing the ten pound share, paid up, came in time to be worth a hundred pounds, why, his income would be enormous; and there was nothing to prevent the shares going on rising, rising in value. If they reached fifty, would he sell? Arthur could not decide this point to his own satisfaction. If he sold, he should then have no anxiety about loss; but, on the other hand, would it be wise to sell before they reached their maximum? Then, who ever could tell when the maximum was reached?
These were the questions which perplexed the Squire, building his castles in the air, while pacing on the calm summer evenings round and round Lincoln’s Inn Fields, smoking the while such cigars as never fall to the lot of any one, save secretaries and others of the same ilk, who get all sorts of good things given to them by all kinds of singular people.
Arthur, in the days of which I am now writing, never bought a cigar by any chance. He had boxes of the best Havannas sent him, which he was now not too proud to accept.
The world had gone round since he strolled a poor man through the fields at Berrie Down. Accepting a favour did not, according to the new code, mean placing himself under an obligation. No; it rather meant conferring an obligation on the donor.
What those donors expected Arthur Dudley would be able to do for them, it is impossible even to conjecture. Arthur himself never knew; and so, with an untroubled conscience, he smoked his cigars and dreamed his dreams.
At this time, Heather was away from home—away at the sea-side with her children, whom she took down to Hastings, for a month, in the hope that sea-air might do Lally more good than all Dr. Chickton’s prescriptions.
Quite as tenderly as he had treated Master Charles Hope, that renowned practitioner inquired into Lally’s symptoms, and devoted himself to the restoration of her health; but for all this care the child proved ungrateful.
She did not get much better. All the tonics Doctor Chickton could prescribe, and Heather with difficulty persuade her to take, failed to restore her health, to make the little feet patter, patter over the floor as of old.
She could walk a short distance, certainly, without much fatigue, and drive for an hour or so at a time, but still she was not the Lally of a twelvemonth previously.
“What’s the use of cramming the child with all that physic?” Doctor Marsden inquired one day when he called in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “Chickton ordered it, did he? of course he did. When you go and pay a man a guinea, he must order you something; but now, without a guinea at all, I will give you my advice, which is none the worse for being gratuitous. Take her to the sea-side; let her be out all day long; if she will bear bathing, bathe her; if that don’t set her up, nothing will.”
Very heartily Heather wished she could have told Doctor Marsden, that, considering his son was the cause of Lally’s illness, she thought the least he could do was to proffer his advice civilly; but advice in any shape was not to be despised, and accordingly she adopted his suggestion, and bore Lally off.
At Hastings, she met not merely Mr. and Mrs. Compton Raidsford and family, but also Mr. Allan Stewart; who, after a time, took rather kindly to Lally, and became interested in her recovery.
Like all the rest of the world, he too had his favourite medical man, whom he not merely counselled Heather to consult, but to whom also he wrote a letter of introduction, in which he described her as his friend, Mrs. Dudley.
They had been the merest acquaintances in town; but intimacy is of quick growth when people meet every day, and fifty times a day, on the sands, on the Parade, in the lodgings of mutual friends, standing listening to the bands, and to the solitary murmur of the sea as it flows in on the shore.
From Mrs. Raidsford, Heather heard how admirably Agnes was managing Berrie Down.
“What a wonderful creature she must be!” continued the lady; and yet, Heather fancied there was a tone of disparagement in Mrs. Raidsford’s remark, for which she was at a loss to account, until informed that “Miss Baldwin was never out of the house;” “has taken to your sisters quite as if they were her own.”
This was not exactly news to Heather, for she had understood from Agnes that Miss Baldwin continued very kind indeed; but why the fact should irritate Mrs. Raidsford puzzled her, until one of the Misses Raidsford, observing, “Yes, we are entirely forgotten now—Miss Baldwin is fond of new faces,” threw some light upon the subject.
That Miss Baldwin should ever have been fond of the Misses Raidsford’s faces, surprised Heather not a little; but still she knew that Kemms Park had at one time patronized Moorlands, and was able to comprehend now where the sting of the Berrie Down acquaintanceship lay.
With all her heart she wished Miss Baldwin would leave the girls alone. Beyond all things she dreaded their being exposed to jealous and envious remarks. The blessed seclusion, the utter privacy in which they had hitherto lived, must, she knew, have quite unfitted them to bear unkind speeches, or ill-natured inuendoes with equanimity.
Had she acted rightly in leaving them alone at Berrie Down—alone to receive many visitors, and to bear the brunt of such gossip as that in which she perceived Mrs. Raidsford was not above indulging? The new acquaintances, whom Heather in her innocence had imagined would make the country a pleasanter residence for the girls, might only expose their conduct to misconstruction. She had no fear of anything Agnes and Laura might say or do, but she felt afraid of what might be said of them. Lord Kemms, she knew, was now at the Park, having at length returned from Austria; and in one of her letters Agnes mentioned his having called at Berrie Down with his aunt.
Could this be another thorn in Mrs. Raidsford’s side? Small as was the amount of tittle-tattle which reached Heather’s ears, still she had heard some talk of an attachment between Lord Kemms and one of the young ladies at Moorlands. And, although it never entered into her mind to imagine her husband’s portionless sisters could prove rivals to the great contractor’s daughters, she yet gradually came to understand that Mrs. Raidsford was of a different opinion, and felt Berrie Down to be a stumbling-block in her path.
“There is some distinction come between Mr. R. and his Lordship,” Mrs. Raidsford was kind enough to explain to Mrs. Dudley; “we are not on the same terms of equality with him that we used to be. I must say, I think the coolness began on our side, for Mr. R., as you, no doubt, have heard, has a perfect maniac against companies of all kinds, just as though people had not a right to make themselves into companies if they like, and it seems his Lordship told him he would have nothing to do with that ‘Protective’ affair of yours—no offence, Mrs. Dudley—after which he went away and becomes one of the fundamental proprietors of it. So, when his Lordship came home, Mr. R. put on his high and mighty, and would not call at the Park—as if the ‘Protective’ was any business of his—and so, when we meet, we only bow; and I am as satisfied as I can be of anything that his Lordship knows no more than the babe unborn what the reason of our distance is. Indeed, he was beginning to ask me at the station, when we met him, only the train moved off before he could complete his inquiry. I think I shall write to his Lordship, and detail the matter. If Mr. R. likes to disseparate himself from old friends, that is no reason why we should—is it, Mrs. Dudley?”
In answer to which appeal, Heather said she did not know. She thought, however, she should not like to be on friendly terms with any one to whose acquaintance her husband objected.
“But, then, you are like nobody else,” retorted Mrs. Raidsford.
This remark, intended to be both hurtful and depreciating, failed of its effect, because Heather mentally hoped she was not much like Mrs. Raidsford. “A woman whom Raidsford ought to have been pilloried for marrying,” observed Mr. Stewart; “apparently, he is a very worthy fellow himself, but I am quite satisfied there must be some terrible want in the character of any person who could make such a creature his wife. There ought to be a law against those kind of marriages.”
“Perhaps——,” began Heather, and then she stopped, colouring a little.
“Pray, complete your sentence, Mrs. Dudley,” said Mr. Stewart; “you have roused my curiosity, and it is not fair to have it unsatisfied.”
“I only hesitated lest what rose to my mind might sound ill-natured. I do not mean, however, any sneer when I say, that perhaps Mrs. Raidsford may have been very suitable to her husband when he married her. It is so difficult to express an opinion like that without appearing to reflect on a man’s origin,” she added, getting into unutterable depths of confusion; “but I often think about a speech, a very dear girl I once knew made, concerning Mrs. Raidsford. She said, ‘it was such a pity a man could not choose again when he came to years of social discretion.’”
“She used to say also,” remarked Lucy Dudley, “that if Mr. Raidsford could only have foreseen how high he was to rise in the world, Mrs. Raidsford would probably now have been wife to some mechanic—cooking steaks for his one o’clock dinner, instead of being mistress of Moorlands, and having servants much more ladylike than herself under her. Bessie never was weary of mimicking Mrs. Raidsford.”
“Who was this clever young lady?” asked Mr. Stewart, for whom the very bitterness of such a speech had its peculiar charm.
“A cousin of ours,” Lucy answered.
“Married, or still eligible?” inquired the old bachelor.
Lucy did not reply; she looked at Heather, who, after a moment’s embarrassed pause, replied,—
“She was engaged to be married, when with us, last winter; but we have not heard from her since she left Berrie Down.”
“Some feminine quarrel,” thought Mr. Stewart; and, looking out over the sea, he laughed softly to himself at the idea that all women were alike,—that no two women could agree; that, let them be young or old, pretty or ugly, sweet or sour, they could still jangle and dispute like the veriest viragoes.
And yet, this Mrs. Dudley puzzled him: if she had a temper, she must, he thought, have it under wonderful control; if there were any evil in her, she must have an astonishing power of concealing its existence. To sisters and children, to friends and servants, she was alike, gentle and forbearing. Never but once did Mr. Stewart see her eyes darken, and her face flush under the influence of any strong emotion; and then it was a slight thing which caused the tell-tale blood to rush to brow, and cheek, and neck.
“I expect my niece, Mrs. Croft, to-morrow,” he said; “I am happy to think she will be able to make your acquaintance.”
Then there came that look, which was not quite pleasant, over Heather’s face,—that look which set Mr. Stewart marvelling as to “what could be up” between the two women? Not an early jealousy, he decided; for Mrs. Croft was many a year older than Mrs. Dudley. What could it be? He was an especially inquisitive old gentleman, as sharp and keen concerning matters of feeling, as he was about matters of business, and so he went on,—
“You have never met her, I think?”
“Never,” Heather answered; “but my husband knew Mrs. Croft very well indeed at one time, and quite recently they renewed their former acquaintance at Copt Hall.”
“Copt Hall—is not that Mr. Hope’s place? I recollect now, Douglas and his wife were staying there last autumn. Your husband is some relation of the Essex Hopes, is he not?”
“His mother was a Miss Hope,” Heather explained; and shortly afterwards Mr. Stewart took his leave, trying to remember something he had heard about Miss Laxton having jilted a former suitor when she married his nephew. “Was Dudley the lucky fellow’s name?” he asked himself. “I’ll find out all about it when madam comes.”
In due time, madam came, and her husband with her; and from the hour of their arrival, Heather commenced longing to return to town. Had it not been, indeed, that Lally was decidedly gaining strength, she would forthwith have packed up and departed; but the child was better; she could run about a little, and at times there was a colour in her face which made the poor mother trust the health and the gaiety of old was about to be restored to her.
How Mrs. Croft ridiculed Heather’s anxiety about the little girl; how scornfully she would listen to Lally’s prattle; with what open contempt she watched the child sometimes struggling into Mr. Stewart’s arms, and beheld him fondling and caressing her, were things to be seen, not described.
A stately woman, who looked born to rule a nation of slaves, and seemed to regard every one with whom she came in contact, her husband included, as so much dirt under feet; a woman who would have been beautiful but for the expression of habitual bad temper on her face; a woman who made every creature she met uncomfortable; who treated Heather with supercilious insolence, and at length told her without the slightest reserve she had instructed her child well. “She is playing her cards quite as cleverly as you,” finished Mrs. Croft, in a tone of suppressed fury, one day when she saw Lally throw down her wooden spade, and run with outstretched arms to meet Mr. Stewart. “Commend me to a meek, quiet woman when underhand means are to be employed, and a legacy is in question.”
“Do you imagine I am expecting a legacy from any one?” asked Heather.
“Of course I do,” was the reply, spoken while Mrs. Croft swept along the Marina with her dress trailing about two yards on the ground behind her; “of course I do,” and her dark eyes looked over Heather scornfully; “people generally expect their godfathers to leave them something, do they not? and your godfather’s money is well worth finessing for. I commend your prudence; some persons might not think such conduct quite honourable, but that never seems to have occurred to you. Mr. Stewart has hitherto treated Mr. Croft as his heir. Now, however——”
“Mr. Stewart’s affairs have not the slightest interest for me,” interrupted Heather, hastily. “Good morning!” and, without giving her companion time to utter another word, Mrs. Dudley turned and walked back along the Parade to the point where Lally was still engaged in animated conversation with her two gentlemen friends.
“It is time for you to come in, my pet,” she said, descending one of the flights of wooden steps, and making her way with difficulty over the shingle to the sands. “If you see my sister, Mr. Stewart, would you kindly ask her to bring Leonard back? I do not like him to be out in the heat of the day. I do not think it is good for children to be on the shore when the sun has so much power.”
“Now, they have had a quarrel,” decided Mr. Stewart, glancing along the Parade, where he descried Mrs. Aymescourt Croft wending her way homewards, solitary and stately, haughty and defiant. “I should like immensely to know what it is all about. There is something very decidedly amiss between my amiable niece and Mrs. Dudley.”
“Your wife and our pretty friend do not seem able to stable their horses comfortably together,” he said to Mr. Croft, when Heather, who declined all offers both of companionship and of assistance, had borne Lally—bitterly protesting against such injustice—away. “How is it, do you think?”
“My wife is jealous,” was the prompt reply.
“Does she fancy you are smitten?”
“No; but she thinks you are,” Mr. Croft answered. “She considers that Mrs. Dudley stands too good a chance of being favourably remembered in your will, for much cordial feeling to exist amongst us.”
“And why the devil should I leave Mrs. Dudley sixpence?” asked Mr. Stewart. “What is she to me that I should bequeath anything to her, more than to the first stranger I meet on the Marina?”
“My charming wife,” replied Mr. Croft, in that daring tone of off-hand recklessness which, as Mr. Black had remarked, was one of his peculiarities, “my charming wife, giving you credit for a vein of romance, and a depth of sensibility which, I confess, I never noticed in your character, imagines that the revival of old associations, the thoughts of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ in fact, which the sight of Mrs. Dudley must naturally have awakened, may produce an undesirable effect upon the ultimate disposal of your property. For my part, I am delighted at the opportunity now afforded of assuring you I would much rather you left your money to Mrs. Dudley than to my wife.”
“What are you talking about, Douglas?” asked his uncle. From the drawing-room window of the house they occupied Mrs. Croft could, with the aid of an opera-glass, see, not merely that Mr. Stewart stopped as he put this question, but that he looked excited and perplexed. “What is Mrs. Douglas to me, I ask again, that I should leave her sixpence? She is a sweet woman, and pretty, and devoted to her blockhead of a husband, but I should not care if I never saw her again. Does your wife think I am in love with her? Does she imagine I am so nearly doting as all that comes to?”
Douglas Croft looked steadily in his uncle’s face for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“It really is too amusing,” he said. “Do you mean to tell me you do not know who Mrs. Dudley was?”
“No; who the deuce was Mrs. Dudley?” inquired the other, testily.
“And she never has enlightened you?” persisted Mr. Croft.
“If she had enlightened me I should have known, I suppose, and I do not know who or what she was, excepting a simpleton to marry Dudley. As you seem so well informed, tell me this wonderful secret. Who was Mrs. Dudley?”
“Heather Bell,” answered Mr. Croft.
“You do not mean that?”
“I do, upon my honour. Miss Hope told me and my wife, and explained that it was you who selected the name which seems to suit her so admirably.”
Mr. Stewart did not take any direct notice of this information; he only resumed his walk over the sands, saying to himself,—
“And so that is Heather Bell—so that is Heather Bell!”
“You understand now why my wife regards her with but small favour,” continued Mr. Croft; “indeed, there is another reason why, perhaps, mutually the two ladies dislike and distrust each other. Years ago, Dudley and Miss Laxton were engaged. I knew nothing of it when I met her—when I proposed to her—when she accepted me; but the engagement was a fact, nevertheless. I am so devotedly attached to her now, that there can be no indiscretion in merely alluding to her one fault—a love of money. I am confident that she liked Dudley better than she ever liked me; but I, being the richer of the two, gained the prize. Of course, it is not in a woman’s nature, at least it is not in Arabella’s nature, to look kindly on the wife whom the man she jilted afterwards married. On the other hand, all the world knows Dudley does not appreciate quite so highly the blessing he has gained, as the blessing he has lost; and for that reason I fancy poor Mrs. Dudley does not feel particularly comfortable in my Arabella’s society. Further, there may be a little mutual jealousy, both being above the average in appearance. Now, you have the exact state of the case, so far as I know it.”
Still Mr. Stewart made no reply; he only walked on more swiftly over the sands, which were at this point wet and disagreeable, while the waves came lapping in—lapping in; and the burden of his reverie was, “So that is Heather Bell—that is Heather Bell!”
There was a story in the man’s life, though no one of his kith or kin suspected it. He had loved once—once in his middle age, when the disease always leaves traces behind—passionately! and the woman he loved was Heather’s mother; but the secret of his unrequited attachment had lain between the two; and now she was dead, and here was her child, and the child of the man who took the best hope of his life away, thrown across his path once more.
Heather Bell—Heather Bell, the waves seemed to murmur the name as they stole upon the sands; and the old man grew young again as the years faded away; and he saw, reflected as in a mirror, the bright glad face of the long, and long ago, when he first, at Sir Wingrave Bell’s, met Lilian Gladwin, who was even in those days engaged to the baronet’s cousin, William, then a poor curate in London, and afterwards the poor rector of Layford, Derbyshire.