Recollections of a chaperon

CHAPTER I.

“Well, nurse, a wedding is not a merry thing, after all. I could not help crying bitterly to-day when my sisters were married, and yet it is what we have all been wishing for so much. I am sure papa and mamma were in the greatest of frights when they thought Captain Langley would sail without proposing to Lizzy; and when Sir Charles spoke out to papa, after we were all gone to bed, I never shall forget what a banging of doors there was, mamma popping into all our rooms to tell us the good news!”

“Ah, poor young ladies!” said nurse Roberts, as she was undressing the blooming Lucy, the evening of the day on which two of her sisters had been safely disposed of to two gentlemen, the connection with whom gave great satisfaction to Colonel and Mrs. Heckfield.

“Poor young ladies!” repeated Lucy in a tone of surprise: “why do you pity my sisters, nurse?”

“La, Miss, I don’t justly know; but somehow ’tisn’t the sort of wedding as I likes.”

“Why, what sort of wedding do you like?”

“Ah, Miss Lucy, I am an old woman, and I have old-fashioned notions; but I likes to see young people marry as has a respect for one another.”

“Why, nurse, I am sure Captain Langley and Sir Charles were quite respectful. What can you mean?”

“There wasn’t no time, Miss, no time for them to get to have a respect for one another. I have heard talk of love at first sight, to be sure, but to my mind there wasn’t no love at all; and that’s the truth of it. ’Tis my belief the Captain he wanted to take a wife to India, because, as I’ve heard say, ladies are scarce there, and here there’s more of a choice; and Sir Charles he wanted a lady to sit at t’other end of the table, and be civil and genteel to the gentlefolks when they comes a visiting to him; and as for poor Miss Sophy and Miss Lizzy, I don’t see that they liked these two gentlemen a bit better than twenty other gentlemen as have been here at one time or another.”

“Well! I never should have guessed you were so romantic, nurse. Do you know this is really the true spirit of romance?”

“No! no! ’Tan’t romance, nor book-nonsense, as I’m talking about. But when a woman’s once married, she may have many trials and troubles. There’s Miss Lizzy going into foreign parts, and there’s no knowing what a wife may have to go through for her husband, first or last, whether at home or abroad; and if she has not a spirit in her that she does not care where she goes, nor what she does, as long as it’s for his sake, why, sometimes ’tis hard to bear.”

“But when people marry, they marry to be happy, not to go through trials and troubles.”

“And do you think, Miss, unless Miss Lizzy loves Captain Langley dearly, she will be happy when she is a thousand and a thousand miles away from her friends, and in a strange country? No! no! I knows what ’tis to be alone among strangers, and I knows ’twould have been hard to bear, if it had not been for poor John’s sake!”

“Were you very much in love, then, nurse?” and Lucy’s eye twinkled with an arch glance of amusement as she asked the question, for at the moment she saw reflected in the glass her own blooming cheeks, rounded chin, rosy lips, and flowing locks, and the withered face, thin lips, grey hair, and close-crimped cap of the old woman. “Were you very much in love?” she repeated, in rather a drawling sentimental tone.

“I don’t know about that, Miss; but he was true to me, from the time I was quite a slip of a girl, and it would have been hard if I had been the one to change. I told him I never would; and I kept my word.”

“And did he keep his?”

“That he did, poor soul! There was not a better nor a truer-hearted man anywhere, than my poor John was. And though I had known some trouble before, I never knew what ’twas really to grieve till I lost him!” The poor old woman gave a deep sigh; and Lucy said, in a kind and feeling tone of voice,—

“Was it in America you lost your poor husband? I know you once were there.”

“Ah! sure enough was it, my dear young lady; and not a friend nor a relation (besides my two fatherless babes) had I that side of the water, when I saw my poor John put into the ground. ’Tis that makes me think so much about Miss Lizzy. I am old, Miss, and I have known troubles and crosses; and I can’t help looking forward to what may happen.”

“But Captain Langley, you know, has friends and relations in India; and every body says Lizzy will have so many people to wait on her, and beautiful jewels, and all kinds of things! How could you, dear nurse, go into a foreign land, if you had no friends and relations there?”

“Oh, Miss Lucy! ’tis a long story; and you had better go to bed, and go to sleep.”

“Now do tell me to-night, nurse? I can’t go to sleep, I am sure; and I do feel so interested about you and your poor John.”

The old woman’s heart warmed at hearing her husband’s name spoken so kindly; and she was nothing loth to begin her story.

“Why, you see, Miss, John and I, we were neighbours’ children, and we used to come home from school by the same path; and we often went nutting and gathering blackberries together, and he was always a civil, good-tempered boy, and the folks used to call us the little sweethearts; and so, when we grew bigger, we wished to get married: but father he said, ‘No, by no means! he would not hear of it!’”

“But why did your father object to such a respectable young man?”

“Why, you see, Miss, he was a ropemaker, and was in a good way of business, and had got above the world; and John, he was only under-gardener at the Squire’s. He was a handy, sharp young man; but he had not any thing but just what he earned from week to week; and father said, he would not hear of no such nonsense, and we must leave off courting. We both saw that father was right not to agree to our marrying then; but we thought it hard that we were not to speak to each other any more. My own mother was dead; and my father’s second wife she aggravated him against us, and said, if we saw each other as usual, we should be sure to marry; and then he would have to keep us off the parish; and that I was a likely, fresh-coloured girl, and might do better for myself, and might get somebody who would be a help instead of a hindrance to the family. So I told John I would not marry without father’s leave, for I knew that would be wrong; but that I would never have any body but him, if it was ever so.

”My stepmother, she never let me out of her sight, and always kept me to my work at home; and I never saw John to speak to him. Of a Sunday, when we came out of church, he always stood near the hand-gate, and sometimes, if there was only father, he opened it for us: and as long as he did that, I was sure he was true to me.

“One morning, about a year after my father had said he would not hear no more of John Roberts, and that his girl should marry somebody as had a house to take her to, and enough to keep her when he had got her there; ’twas a Monday-morning, and I had washed up the tea-things, and swept up the hearth, and was just holding a bit of wood-embers in the tongs for father to light his pipe by, before he went to his work, when what should I see but John’s face as he went by the window to the door. I was like to let the tongs fall, it came upon me so sudden! John knocked at the door, and I shook all over, as if I had got the ague; for I thought, to be sure, father would be in a towering passion. Father, he never turned round; but he kept drawing in his breath to make the pipe light, and he said, ‘Why don’t you go and open the door, girl?’ So I went to the door, and opened it, and in stepped John; and he said never a word to me, he only just gave me a look, and he went straight up to father, and said:—

“‘Mr. Ansell, don’t take it amiss if I am come to say a few plain words to you. You won’t let me have your daughter—you think we shall come into trouble, and be a burthen upon you; and you think Milly can do better for herself?’

“‘Yes!’ said my father; ‘you speak right enough.’

“‘But Milly has told me, she’ll never have nobody but me; and you know, Mr. Ansell, she’s a girl of her word; and you know you could not get her to marry Mr. Simpkins, the tailor; no, nor you won’t be able to get her to marry no other lover, if she should have a dozen—I know you won’t; and I won’t have no other girl! But that’s neither here nor there—what I’ve got to say is this:—I have just had sent me a letter from my brother as is in Canada; and he tells me, if I want to make my fortune, I have only to take ship at Liverpool, and come to him at Halifax; and there, he says, any man as knows a little of gardening, and such like, has no more to do, but to get as much land as he likes, to set to work, and he will have a good market for his vegetables, and he can be made a man of in no time. He sends me money enough to pay my expenses out, and he says he will see that I want for nothing, till I get into a regular way of business. And now, Mr. Ansell, if Milly an’t afraid to venture over the seas with me, I think we shall be able to shift for ourselves; and we need never be no burthen to you, nor none of our friends; and if she won’t go,—why, I’ll go by myself; and I’ll try to make my fortune alone, and come back and marry her some day or another, please God to spare me.’”

“What did your father say to this, nurse?”

“Why, father seemed very angry when first John began to speak. I looked at him, and my heart sank within me; then I looked at John, and his face was flushed like, and his eyes seemed quite bright, he was so full of hope, and I thought I could never bear to disappoint him. My stepmother had come in when she heard John’s voice, and so father turned to her, and said,—

“‘Well, Sarah, what do you think of this young chap’s notion? I don’t much like to have my Milly go away from me altogether, and beyond seas too; though she has been a little testy, or so, about John—I don’t half like it!’

“I felt so, I did not know what to do; and I began to cry and to sob; and John said to me then,—

“‘Milly,’ said he, ‘speak your mind. Do you think you could venture across the water, all the way to America, with me? You know I’ll work hard for you, and I’ll be as tender of you as if you were a babe; and whichever way it is, I’ll be true to you, if so be I live.’

“Then father said,—‘Milly, if you an’t willing to go along with him, why there’s an end of it at once, and so speak out.’

“I looked at John again, and the longest day I have to live I never shall forget his face that minute. He was as pale as ashes, and his two eyes were fixed on me with such a beseeching look! I thought I could do any thing, and bear any thing, sooner than have him go quite away by himself, and so I said,—

“‘Father, I am ready to go anywhere that John takes me to; I know he will always be kind to me. I an’t afraid with him.’

“Poor John! To be sure, how his face did change! his colour came again, and he looked up so proud and so kind like! I thought nothing would be a trouble to me for his sake then.

“Father did not half like what I answered; but his wife was very good-natured, and said, that perhaps we should do very well in America; she had a cousin once that made a great fortune somewhere beyond seas, and that it was very true what John said, we should be no burthen to our friends when we were so far off.”

“She was evidently very glad to get rid of you,” interrupted Lucy.

“Maybe ’twas so, for sometimes father and she had words about me. Father never could bear to see me put upon; however that was, she was very kind now, and by degrees we brought father to think about it. And then John, he had to tell him we must get married out of hand, for the ship was to sail in a week, and we had to go to Liverpool, and to buy the things as were wanted on board ship.”

“Only a week! That was very short notice indeed!”

“Yes, Miss, and father flew out sadly at first. But there was no help for it, if I went at all. So John went to the minister, and talked to him about it, and the minister helped him how to get a licence; and on the Tuesday, John walked to the town, seven miles off, and he bought a licence, and a deal of money he paid for it; but his sister gave him something towards it, and he bought the wedding-ring, and he came to me Tuesday evening, and showed them both to me, and I thought to be sure it was a dream. Next morning I was to be married, and I dressed myself as neat as I could.’

“Ah, by the by, what did you do for wedding clothes?”

“Why, I had a light-coloured gown as good as new, and the minister’s daughter gave me a new straw bonnet, and my stepmother gave me her second-best shawl, and we went to church, and my little sister was bridesmaid, and all the girls round about, as I knew, came to the wedding. Poor father, how he did cry! and the minister, he was obliged to stop once, and put down the book to wipe his eyes. He said it was awful to see two such young things going out into the wide world, so left to themselves like—but he was not against it, for all that; and John, he cried too. The rector told father he had never seen so many people crying at a wedding in all his ministry. Well, it was a sad day to us all; now that I was married to John, and was sure I was not going to lose him, it almost broke my heart to see father take on so, and to look round at the chairs and tables, and the dresser I had cleaned so many times, and the plates and jugs and cups I took such pride to set in order, and the strings of birds’ eggs as I had hung over the chimney-piece, with two peacock’s feathers John and I had picked up in the Squire’s park, and the sweet-brier we had planted when we were children, and which grew up quite tall by the house. Ah, sure, it seems all as plain before me as if it was yesterday. Father sat with his hands on the top of his stick, and his chin resting on his hands, looking at the fire, and he took little notice of any of us. My stepmother, she was bustling about, and seemed to wish to do all she could for us the last day.

“Next morning, Thursday, we parted from father, and brothers, and sisters, and all, and we got on the top of the coach, and we went off so fast, it made me quite dizzy as it were. We got to Liverpool, Friday evening; I seemed as though I was lost in that great busy place, but, whenever John saw me begin to look sad or frightened, he thanked me so for coming along with him, that I felt I cared for nothing as long as he was contented.

“On the Saturday we got all the things they said we must take in the ship with us, for there are shops as sell every thing ready to hand. And Sunday we went to church for the first time together as man and wife, and for the last time together in our own country. As we came out of the church-door, John said to me, ‘Milly, I am glad we have been able to go to church together once more in Old England; we don’t know what places of worship there may be in this new country. But we can read our Bible wherever we go.’

“The vessel was to sail Monday, just one week from the day John surprised us so as I was making our own little kitchen tidy at home. We were all on board ship early in the morning. To be sure, how frightened I was! but I had made up my mind not to be down-hearted, and I bore up against it all. We had a good passage, and, as soon as we had got our little matters safe on shore, we set out to look for John’s brother, who kept a shop for seeds and such like; we soon found the shop, but it was a sad time for us when we got there. But la, Miss,—there’s the clock striking twelve, and you not in bed! What will your mamma say to me for keeping you awake with my old woman’s tales? but it is not often I talk of by-gone days, and when once I begin I hardly know how to stop.”

CHAPTER II.

Lucy would not hear of going to bed till she had heard the rest of Milly’s adventures.

“You must go on, nurse. I cannot let you stop—you know I love any story, and you know I love you, and so you may guess how much I must be interested.”

“You are very good, Miss, to say so. Mine’s a very plain homely tale, but you always was a kind young lady, and somehow, when I have got over the first talking about my poor husband, and all our troubles, I can’t say but there is a kind of pleasure, like, in going over it all again.”

“Now there’s a good nurse, mind you tell me every thing. What had happened when you got to your brother-in-law’s?”

“Ah! poor man! he was dead—dead and buried. He died just three weeks after he wrote to John; and, though the widow kept on the shop, she could not do for us as he would have done. Poor soul! she was left with five young children, and she was almost beside herself with care and trouble. However, she took us in, and told us we should not have to pay for lodging while we stayed there, but she could not afford to keep us. She told John who was the proper person to apply to, to get what they call a grant of land, and he went next day to see about it, for he was loth to be a burthen to the poor widow.

“He found he could not get any garden nor any land near the town, but he must go a great way off to the back woods, where there were new settlers, and where he must cut down the trees and dig up the soil fresh for himself. This was a great disappointment, and he lost a deal of time trying if he could not get something that would suit better. But you see, ma’am, every thing goes by interest in one country just like another; and now his brother was gone he had nobody to put in a good word for him, and he found there was no use in haggling on any longer. So he set about buying the goods and the tools which they said were quite necessary for a new settler, and by the time he had got his grant of land, and had bought his things, all our money was pretty well gone, and I was not in a way to be much of a help to him. Poor John! He said he would not have me begin a long journey in this condition, and when I got to the end of it have no roof over my head, and be in a lonesome place with nobody to do for me when the time of my trouble came. My sister-in-law was very good, and she promised to take care of me. She got me needlework, and I could earn enough for my own keep; and so John set off all alone to this land that was to be his. He was to get the trees felled, and a log-house built, and some ground trenched, and every thing quite comfortable in a manner; and he was to come back for me in the spring. I did not half like this. As long as I was with him I felt as if I could do any thing; but when he was gone, I don’t know how it was, but I had no spirit to any thing. But he would not let me go. He said, ‘No! he had told father I should be treated tenderly, and he would never let me be worse off than the very gipsies in Old England.’

“The autumn seemed very long to me; but I worked hard, and earned enough to get every thing nice for my baby, and to have a few household things ready to take with me when the spring came. After my child was born, I began to grow quite happy with thinking how pleased John would be to see it. I had got together all my little goods, and had packed them up, and I was waiting every day for him to come. I thought every step I heard at the door might be him; for there was no post in those outlandish parts, and I had only heard from him twice by a private hand since he went. One day I was startled by hearing a strange voice ask for me. It was not John, I knew well enough; and there came such a fright over me I could not answer, nor I could not go to the door. Though I was always wishing John would come, and wondering he did not, yet it never before came into my head to be frightened, I felt so sure he would come at last; but I don’t know how it was, I thought now there was something bad in store for me.

“My sister-in-law went to the door, and she brought me up a letter. It was in his own hand-writing. But when I had got it, I could hardly read it, I was in such a hurry, and all over in such a tremble. However, it told me he had been very ill; he had had a bad rheumatic fever, and was not able to come for me yet; but he was getting better, and hoped to be able to set off before summer came. I made up my mind directly what I would do—to set off the next day as ever came, and go to him. So I went down stairs to the man as brought me the letter, and I asked him which was the road, and what were the names of the places I had to go through, and how I was to find out his settlement. I was a pretty middling scholar, so I wrote it all down from his mouth. That night I packed up my bundle, and I sold the linen and things I had bought, for I could not carry them, and I knew I should want the money. My sister-in-law lent me a little she was able to spare, and next morning I set out. I reckoned I could walk fifteen miles a-day, and that, as it was three hundred miles up the country, it would take me about three weeks to get to him. I was very tired the first day, for I had to carry my bundle on my back, and my child in my arms; but I did not care. I thought so of getting to John, I hardly knew that I was tired. I found a decent little inn, and a civil woman, who made me pretty comfortable that night, and I had nothing to complain of for several days more; but after a week or thereabouts, the country was very bare, and there were but few houses to be seen. One day I had to walk better than twenty miles before I could get taken in, and, after all, the place was a miserable hovel, and the woman as kept it was so old, and dirty, and smoky, and she spoke so short to me, and looked at me so sharp, that I felt frightened, and almost sorry, when, after a little haggling, she let me into the hut. It seemed to belong to her; but some men who came in after me, ordered her about as if they were masters of her and all she had; and she did not think of refusing them any thing, and they swore at her terribly, and made themselves quite at home. I had got away into the inner room when I saw them coming, and I never went back into the kitchen. The old woman seemed no ways anxious that I should. I begged her to let me lie down, and she said I might do as I would; so I tried to get some rest; but I could see these men through the chinks of the logs, and I could hear most of what they said. They drank, and they sang, and, by their way of talking, I think they led a rough sort of robber-like life; but I could not half understand what they said. At last they rolled themselves up on the floor, and went to sleep, and I went to sleep too. All my little stock of money, which was getting very low, but which was my only dependence for reaching my poor husband, was under my pillow, and I resolved I would not part with it if I could help it. In the middle of the night my child began to cry; I felt sure these strange men would wake and rob me, and perhaps murder me too. I heard one move, and I could see him sit up, rub his eyes, stretch himself, and he wondered what the noise could be; but I managed to pacify the child, and he settled himself again. To be sure, I was glad when I heard him breathe quite hard! I did not sleep any more that night, and by day-break the hunters (for they had guns, and powder-pouches, and bags—so I suppose they were hunters) were astir, and left the hut. I asked the old woman who they were, and which way they were likely to take; but she did not like being questioned, and so, when I thought they had been gone about an hour, I set out again on my lonesome journey.

“That day the road lay through a great forest of very tall trees, taller than any trees we have here. I never did feel so lonesome before; there was not a creature to be seen anywhere, and the tall trees made the road so dreary, and it was all dark and hollow each side; for in those great woods the trees stand clear of each other, and there is no underwood, nor bushes, nor briers, but the boles go up straight, and the branches meet at top, and one may go miles and miles and never see the blue sky over one’s head. There was no telling what might come out from those dismal hollows, and I kept looking round every minute, and trying to see into them, but ’twas impossible: I could see the trunks of the trees for a little way, and then ’twas all as black as night. It made one feel so alone, and yet one did not know what might be near one; and I thought what would become of me if I was benighted in this dreary place; and I thought of the wild Indians, and of the bears, and of my poor innocent babe; but then I thought again of my husband on his sick-bed, and I took courage.

“It was past the middle of the day, and the sun had sunk some way below those tall dark trees, when I sat down to rest myself, and to drink from a clear stream by the roadside. I was wondering how much farther it could be to the end of the forest, where I had been told I should find something of a decent hut, when I was startled at hearing voices and the report of a gun; and presently three of the men who had passed the night in the old woman’s hovel came out from among the gloomy trees on the other side.

“They looked surprised to see me, and came straight up to me. I don’t know how it was, but when the time came I did not seem so timid as I thought I should. I remembered how poor I was, and it could not be no object to any body to rob me; and I knew I was doing my duty in going to my husband, and I thought God would protect me. I sat quite still, and did not tremble nor shake. One of them asked me how I came there? So I told him the truth, and spoke quite civil, and yet, as it were, bold and steady, that I was walking from Halifax to my husband at the far settlement. So another of the men said, quite sharp—‘If you have got a husband, he had better keep a sharper look-out after such a tight lass as you are.’

“The first man said—‘You have got a long journey before you, my girl.’

“And I answered, ‘Yes, sir; but I have got safe through more than half of it, and I hope, with the blessing of God, to get safe through the rest of it to my husband, to nurse him in his illness.’

“‘Oh! he’s ill, that’s it,’ said the second.

“‘Well, you can’t be travelling all this way without money,’ says the third, who had not spoken yet.

“‘Come, come, poor girl,’ interrupted the first, and gave a wink to the last speaker, ‘we won’t hinder your journey any longer: you had better push on, or you’ll be in the dark.’ And he took the other by the arm, and he seemed to persuade them both to go away; and when I saw them go off into the woods again, I thanked God for his goodness, and thought he was indeed a Father to the fatherless, and that he never did desert them as put their trust in him in the time of their need.

“I hugged my baby close, and quite forgot how tired I had been a little while before, and walked and ran till it was nearly dark, when the trees grew thinner, and I thought I could see lights glimmer in the distance. I made all the haste I could, and at last I got to a small settlement of half a dozen log-houses. I stopped at the first door, and I never felt so happy as when I saw a light, and a fire, and a woman’s face again. She had a child in her arms too, and I felt quite safe.

“Next day I was very tired, and the woman at the little inn wished me to stay all day, and rest myself; but when I was walking and toiling, I did not feel so much about John: the moment I was still, I thought how ill he might be, and I could not bear to keep quiet. Besides, the woman’s husband was going part of the same road, to make a bargain about some furs; so he kept me company through the rest of the forest, and he begged the fur-merchants, as he came to speak to, that they would see me safe to the village where I was to stop that night. This day my baby began to grow fretful, and no wonder; for, though I did the best I could for it, ’twas next to impossible to get any thing fit for a baby at the places I stopped at, and I lived so hard myself that I made but a poor nurse.

“My shoes were quite worn out, and my feet were so sore, I thought I must afford myself a pair of shoes, as I should not have another opportunity. They were very dear, for every thing was brought from Halifax. I was sorry afterwards I did not make shift without them. Next morning my baby was so ill I went to the doctor, for there was a doctor there, and they said he was the only real doctor anywhere for miles and miles. He gave me something as quieted the child; but, when I had paid for this too, my purse was so low, I began to fear I should not have enough to buy me any thing to eat after the two next days; and as for begging, I had never been brought up to think of such a thing. I touched nothing but the coarsest and cheapest food I could get, and drank nothing but cold water, and I walked farther each day to get sooner to the end of my journey. I was almost worn out, and (as I reckoned) I had still three days’ travelling between me and my husband when I paid away my last farthing. I scarcely hoped ever to reach him, but I walked on till I got to a small settlement, and then I sat down by the way-side, and thought what should I do?

“I could not help crying, and thinking what would father say if he could see me then; and it hurt me so! for I knew he would feel angry with John, and fancy it was through him his child was brought into such trouble, and forced to beg her bread; for there was no help for it, if I wished to see my husband, and not to let my baby die, I must that night ask charity of strangers. So I knocked at the nearest door, and I told my story, and asked for food and lodging. I have often thought, a mother with her infant in her arms has something which goes to the hearts of their fellow-creatures, if they have any kindness left in them. I’m sure I never see a poor beggar-woman with a baby at the door but I think of myself that weary night, and I never have the heart to send them away without some little trifle, though, maybe, I’m often imposed upon.

“Well! the man as opened the door took pity upon us directly, and bade me come in and sit by the fire. His daughter, a nice girl of fourteen, brought us some potatoes and some milk, and let me share her bed. They would have given me enough to pay my way for the next two days if they had had it to give; but I was forced to ask charity again that night, but it did not seem to give me such a choking in the throat as it did the first time; and I thought how soon we lose our spirit when we get low in the world, and how easy it is to go on from bad to worse! The next night I hoped to get to my husband. They told me to keep along the banks of a great river on my left, where there was something of a path, but ’twas so overgrown with the long rank grass, ’twas not easy to find. The new settlement was near the river-side, for the trees, which the settlers cut some way higher up, drifted down the river till they came to this place, where the ground was particular rich, and then they pulled them ashore, and built themselves log-houses. There were about seven families together, as they told me, and my husband’s house was the farthest but one. How my poor heart did beat all the way I went! I longed so to get there, and I dreaded it so too. I walked on and on, and still I saw no people, nor no huts, nor no fields, and I began to think I must have come wrong; for, though it was all open and flat, I could not see very far before me, for the grass was long, and the rushes very tall, sometimes, by the river-side. Of all the day’s journeys I had come, this did seem to me the longest; but I suppose ’twas only because I was so impatient to get to the end of it. I looked at the sun, and it was not above half-way down. Just then there was a rise in the road, and I could see some smoke, and the roofs of some low huts, and some little patches of ground that were cultivated, and I strained my eyes to try and make out the last but one. I don’t know how I got over the ground, but I soon did reach the first house, and I saw a child at play, and I asked him which was John Roberts’s. I could hardly breathe while he answered, ‘He lives out yonder.’ He lives! and when I heard him say that, I first knew I had been afraid of never seeing John again.

“I ran as well as I could to the hut. It looked wretched and half finished; the door was ajar—I pushed it open—there was nobody in the kitchen—I heard no noise—I listened—I did not dare step on. Just then my child cried, and a voice from within said, in a hollow tone, ‘Who’s there?’ I ran into the bed-room, and there lay my husband, sick, pale, and weak, but it was my husband alive, and all seemed well.”

“Oh, nurse,” exclaimed Lucy, “I never heard any thing half so interesting in my life. Poor souls! and how was your husband? He got well?”

“Yes, Miss, he did get well after a time. He fretted so much to think he could not go for me, that it had kept him back, and he had nobody to make him any thing nice, nor to do for him; leastways not to do for him as I could, though the neighbours looked in now and then and made his bed, and boiled his potatoes for him, and such like. Sure! how overjoyed he was to see me, and how pleased he was to see the babe. He soon began to mend, and then he was so vexed to think he had not been able to get the place to rights a bit before I came.

“The fence outside was all broken down, and the garden was only half-planted; but I had not been there a fortnight before I got it all to look quite different. I cleaned up the house, and settled the few things he had got in it, and I helped him to mend the fence, and he was soon able to dig again, and the things grow very quick in that rich soil, and our house and garden were quite decent, and we were so glad to be together again, that we did not see no faults in any thing.

“In the winter-time John had been lucky in shooting, and had sold some furs for enough to buy him a cow, and some chickens; and then, being a pretty middling gardener, he had helped his neighbours, and put them in the way to crop their gardens as they should be; and most of them gave him a trifle, some one thing and some another, so that now he was pretty well, and I was there to keep matters tidy, we were very comfortable. The winter was cold and long, and in the spring he had another touch of that nasty fever, as was so common in them low swampy grounds. In the summer I had my Betsy—you know my Betsy, as is married to Farmer Crofts?—some of the neighbours were very kind to me, and I got over it pretty well. Of a Sunday we used to read our Bible together, and think how true John’s saying was, when we came out of church at Liverpool, that there was no knowing what places of worship we might find where we were going to. But John often said all places might be made places of worship if one had but the mind to it, whether it was a real church, or the tall, dark, still woods, or the damp wide savannah, or our own log-hut; and so, I hope, when we read our prayers there, it did us as much good as if there had been a minister and a pulpit, and all as it should be.

“I believe I was too happy then for it to last. With the spring came the rheumatic fever again, and my poor husband was quite laid up. He could not do any thing, and he fretted so to think his land was not trenched, nor any thing seen to! and, what with the children, and the house, and the cow, and the things out of doors, and poor John to nurse, I had more than one pair of hands could well do. This would not have signified if John had but mended when the summer came, but he got worse and worse. He was so weak, and he suffered a deal of pain, and there was no doctor. Then I did wish we had never left England, and I thought it would have been better we should both have worked and laboured in our own country, till we had got old, and earned enough to marry upon. But we did for the best; and if John was so set upon coming, even without me, why, then, it was best I came too, for he had some one to do for him. It was all written, I suppose; and perhaps ’twas for our good—but this was hard, very hard to bear.

“One evening I had got the children off to sleep, and I had taken my bit of work, and was sitting by John’s bedside, when he said to me—

“‘Milly, you must not stay here when I am gone. If you sell all the little matters we have got together here, you’ll have enough to pay your journey to Halifax, and your passage home too, as I reckon. Your father will be good to you, I think—I hope. Tell him I meant for the best when I persuaded you to come.’

“Oh, Miss Lucy, I never thought to see that day: I had always hoped I should have been the first to go. But it pleased God otherwise.”

The poor old woman sat with her apron to her eyes, in quiet, silent tears. Lucy took one of her withered hands, and pressing it between her own, told her, with tears in her eyes, how much she felt for her, and how much she admired her husband’s kind and manly character. She found this was the chord to which, after so many years, the old nurse’s heart still vibrated.

“Yes, Miss Lucy,” and her faded eyes flashed with almost youthful brightness; “he was the kindest-hearted, the truest-hearted, and the bravest-hearted man as ever lived. He feared nothing, but to do wrong, and to part with me. His thoughts were always on me; and when he was taken, the last words he ever spoke were, ‘my own Milly,’ and the last look he ever gave was for me, and my hand felt the last pressure his ever gave.”

Lucy’s tears flowed fast. She had read many novels, but the fictitious woes of their heroines did not seem to her half so touching as her old nurse’s plain story.

“Well, Miss Lucy, I buried him there; he lies by the banks of that great river, and there’s the roaring sea, and miles and miles of dreary land between me and my poor John; and, what’s more, when I die, we shan’t lie near each other; that frets me sadly sometimes; but he told me to come home, and so, Miss, I could not do no other. I thought when I turned my back on the log-hut, where we had passed some such happy days together, and when I passed by the place where he was buried, at the other end of the settlement, I thought my heart must have broke; and, if it had not been for the children, I should have thought it a mercy if it had.

“There was some people going to Halifax, and I travelled with them. I fancied myself in trouble when I went that road before, but now I thought how happy I was then, for I was going to see my husband’s face again. But God is very merciful, he never gives us more than we can bear. I bore it all, and I got to Halifax, and I went to my sister-in-law. She was a kind woman, and she was sorry for me, for she knew what it was to be a widow. I took my passage on board a vessel for England, and I and my two children left America. Though my husband’s grave was so far up the country, I felt when I left the land, as if I was more parted from him than ever. But ’twas on board ship that I learned to be thankful to God for what was left, and not to grieve too much for any of his creatures. My little boy sickened and died, and he was not buried, decently buried in the earth, but my poor child was thrown into the sea. I could not get over that for a long time. It did seem so unnatural like. But I learned then never to think myself so low, but what God might afflict me more, and I learned to be grateful for my Betsy. And she has been a blessing to me—a kind and a dutiful girl—and one as will never let her old mother come to want, as she gets in years.”

“My poor, dear nurse,” exclaimed Lucy, “I can’t bear to think I should ever have been a naughty pettish child, and have plagued and worried you when I was little, and you with all these heavy afflictions on your mind.”

“Lord bless your sweet heart! you never plagued me; and, as for your little vagaries, I believe they made me love you all the better.”

CHAPTER III.

This simple history of such interesting feelings made Lucy reflect a good deal. She looked back on her sisters’ courtships and weddings, and could not persuade herself they had either felt or inspired sentiments half so noble, or so disinterested, as John’s and Milly’s; and she resolved, in her own mind, she would never marry unless she was really in love—very much in love.

It seldom happens that people, on the subject of matrimony, act according to the plan they have proposed to themselves. The girl who settles she will marry a tall dark man, is sure to marry a little fair man; the man who resolves he will have a meek and gentle wife, is caught by some wild coquette, to whom he tamely submits for the sake of a quiet life. So the young lady, who has made up her mind that love is folly, and that, if she repents, it shall be in a coach and six, runs away with a pennyless captain; and Lucy, though extremely anxious to emulate Milly, never found the object to which she could thus devote herself, and ended by repenting in a coach and six.

In the empty dandies and lounging officers who frequented L——, the watering-place near which Colonel Heckfield’s small property was situated, she saw nothing superior to Captain Langley, or to Sir Charles Selcourt; and Nurse Roberts had decidedly not thought Sophy or Lizzy in love with either. But she was very young, and she had plenty of time to look about her. Her three elder sisters were married; her two younger ones had not yet emerged from the school-room; her numerous brothers looked on her as the pet and the beauty of the family, and they all reckoned she was to captivate something brilliant in the way of a parti. There was a floating wish in her mind to be heroically devoted, as, through her homely language, she perceived Milly Roberts had been; and yet a desire not to disappoint the expectations of father, mother, brothers, sisters, and governess.

All their acquaintances exclaimed at the good fortune of the Heckfields.

“They did not know how Mrs. Heckfield managed it, but her daughters no sooner appeared than they were snapped up—they were pretty, certainly. Harriet, the eldest, was a fine rosy girl, but she never had an air of fashion. Lizzy had pretty eyes and fine teeth, but her features were decidedly bad. Sophy had a beautiful figure, but she was so pale!” (Sir Charles Selcourt thought that a little rouge would make her look exceedingly well at the head of his table.) Lucy was the beauty, so they supposed she looked very high.

About this time Lord Montreville came to the watering-place of L——. He had but lately succeeded to the title of his elder brother; having passed through the career of a gallant gay Lothario, with the reputation of having been the most irresistible, and the most discreet, but the most general of lovers.

As the charming, but half-ruined Lord Arthur Stansfeld, he had been safe from the machinations of mammas; but the hearts of the daughters had not been safe from his. Secure in the impossibility of his being considered as an eligible parti for the very lovely and high-born beauties who alone could attract his notice, he had not feared to pay such attentions as generally excited a preference on the part of the young ladies. As to the married women, whose names had been coupled with his, in a manner more gratifying to his vanity than to their honour, the list would be painfully long. Still he had avoided any éclat, and no one could accuse him of betraying, by a word or a look, any consciousness of his own powers of attraction. On the contrary, he preserved enough of the tone of the vieille cour to make his manner respectful and devoted, and he had acquired enough of the ease of the present day to prevent its being the least formal. He had arrived at that age when, if he had not been so good-looking, so attentive to his dress, so lively in society, he would have been called by the young an old man; but, as it was, he was only called an agreeable man, without any reference being made to the number of years that had passed over his head. Having now succeeded to the family title and estates, he began for the first time to think seriously of marriage. But every charm which had formerly proved attractive to him now filled him with alarm. He had had every opportunity of becoming acquainted with the foibles and the faults of ladies of fashion, and none of estimating their good qualities. He regarded with suspicion style, manner, vivacity, talents, grace; and he resolved to choose some young, unsophisticated creature whom he could mould according to his own views, and who should be as unlike as possible to all those with whom he had had any former connexion.

He was accidentally introduced to Lucy, and she appeared to him precisely the thing of which he was in search. She was decidedly very pretty, and lacked nothing but what a week’s tuition would give, to have un air distingué. Her head was small—it was naturally well put on. Her figure was slender, her foot was not large; and, though her hands were a little red, they were well-shaped. Some almond-paste, the best shoemaker, and Mademoiselle Hyacinthe, would set all quite right. He thought he should not alter the style of her coeffure. The back of her head was so Grecian in its contour, she might venture upon her own simple twist and long ringlets.

Having thus made up his mind, he proceeded to ingratiate himself with the family. There was a public ball at the concert-rooms, and thither he went.

He never danced: he knew he was too old, and he never affected youth. But, when Lucy was dancing, she often found his large, intelligent, expressive eyes fixed on her from beneath the very dark eyebrows which shaded them, without giving them any look of harshness. She felt flattered, without being distressed, for the expression was that of kindly pleasure in seeing a lovely young woman innocently gay. The gaze expressed that he did think her lovely, though it contained nothing that could alarm the most shrinking modesty.

In the course of the evening he conversed a good deal with Mrs. Heckfield, in whose common-place remarks he seemed to find much pith and substance.

Between the dances, when Lucy returned to her mother, he rose to give her his seat, not as if he was merely doing an act of common courtesy, but as if it afforded him real heart-felt pleasure to be of any possible use to her, and it was with kindliness, rather than gallantry, that he flew to fetch her some tea, or some lemonade.

He handed Mrs. Heckfield to supper, and sat between her and Lucy, who found her partner quite dull and stupid, in comparison with this very agreeable new acquaintance. He did not talk much; he said nothing which she could afterwards remember as being either clever or amusing. But he had a manner of listening with a deferential air, his eyes fixed with attention on the speaker, while his countenance seemed to say, the remark made was new and luminous, something which had never struck him before, so that people believed themselves delighted with him, while, in truth, they were delighted with themselves.

In a cabinet-council, Colonel and Mrs. Heckfield agreed that, as he appeared to find so much pleasure in their society, they might venture to ask Lord Montreville to dinner. But who to invite to meet him? That was a question of much consideration. The Bexleighs were agreeable, but they were so numerous, that it would make the party dull to have so many of one family. It is dreadful if members of the same household get near each other; they cannot seize that moment for talking of family affairs, neither can they make conversation like strangers.

“Let us have the Thompsons, my dear,” said the Colonel.

“La! Colonel Heckfield! Mrs. Thompson! so fat and vulgar, and Mr. Thompson, so silent, unless you talk of stocks or consols.”

“Well, then, Colonel Danby and his daughter.”

“They will do pretty well; but I was thinking of Mrs. Haughtville, who, you know, has always lived in the first circles.”

“What! that deaf old woman? I can’t see of what use she can be.”

“Why, my dear, it won’t do to ask just common-place country neighbours. We must get somebody Lord Montreville is likely to know.”

“Very true! And then my friend Dolby, he knows every body, and can talk thirteen to the dozen.”

“He knows every body who has been in India, but I very much suspect he does not know any body that Lord Montreville would think any body,” answered the lady, who never could endure her husband’s jolly friend, who certainly did eat, drink, talk, and laugh thirteen to the dozen, but who, she not unwisely thought, would be a very bad ingredient in this refined party; “Surely Sir James Ashgrove, the member for the county, would be a better person; we can give him a bed, you know.”

“Very well—Ashgrove is a good fellow, and a sensible fellow, but he never gives you much of his conversation, unless you talk of the last division in Parliament, and then he will tell you which way every member voted, and the reasons of his vote into the bargain.”

“But he is a man of good birth and good connexions, and quite a friend of the family besides; James’s godfather and all.”

“Then, if we ask our good parson and his two daughters, we shall have quite enough. I don’t like a great let-off; it is much best to take matters quietly.”

“Good heavens, Colonel Heckfield! you cannot be in earnest. What! that old proser, who makes a comma between every word, and a full stop nowhere! and those two Misses, one as old as the hills, and the other as giggling a girl as ever I saw. Besides. Lucy and she will get laughing and gossiping together, and Lucy never appears to advantage when Bell Stopford is with her.”

“Whom had we best have then, my love?” responded the Colonel, who began to be weary of the discussion.

“Why, first of all, Mrs. Haughtville,” answered Mrs. Heckfield, who had long ago prepared her list in her mind, “and Sir James Ashgrove (as you wish), and young Mr. Lyon, Lord Petersfield’s nephew, and Sir Alan Byway, the great traveller, and Miss Pennefeather, who wrote those sweet novels; she is quite the lion of these parts, and people of fashion like to meet a genius; and then, my dear, I thought of asking Lord and Lady Bodlington.”

“Mercy upon us, wife! why I don’t know them by sight.”

“But I do, Colonel Heckfield, and a sweet woman she is. I was introduced to her at the ball the other night, and it would be but civil to ask them to dinner.”

“I think it would be much better to have Mr. Denby and his nice daughter. But it is all the same to me; I don’t like running after fine folks, who care not a rush for us, that’s all.”

“Well, if Lord and Lady Bodlington cannot come, then we will ask the Denbys. But I really am half pledged to ask them, for Lady Bodlington said the other night she heard I had the prettiest green-house in the world: and I said I hoped to have the pleasure of showing it to her.”

“But we do not dine in the green-house?”

“I assure you, my love, I understand these little matters better than you do, and it would seem quite marked if we did not ask the Bodlingtons.”

Colonel Heckfield did not quite understand what would seem marked, but he acquiesced.

The distinguished personages mentioned by Mrs. Heckfield proved propitious, with the exception of Sir Alan Byway, whose place was filled, though most inadequately filled, by a young shy lordling, who was at a private tutor’s in the neighbourhood. Mrs. Heckfield preferred him, on account of his name, to the Indian friend Dolby, whom Colonel Heckfield, on the secession of the loquacious traveller, made another attempt to insert.

The eventful day arrived. Mrs. Heckfield, in her secret soul, was in a great fuss, though she maintained a tolerably placid exterior; she was so afraid, after all her pains to exclude any unworthy guests, that the party might prove dull, or not bien assorti. Colonel Heckfield was really composed and easy: he did not like seeking great people, but, if they fell in his way, they did not annoy him. The place, though small, was pretty; the house was bien montée; there was nothing to be ashamed of, and he did not see how it could much signify whether one, out of the many pleasant, cheerful dinners, which had taken place under his hospitable roof, proved, or did not prove, the quintessence of perfection.

Not so Mrs. Heckfield. She had settled that, on the impression made that day, depended the future fate of Lucy. When she let herself alone, she was a pleasing, popular woman; but on this occasion, she wished to be more elegant and well-bred than usual. Mrs. Haughtville being rather deaf, could not hear a word she said; and, as Mrs. Heckfield would not commit the vulgarity of speaking loud, every word they addressed to each other, might have figured very well in the game of cross questions and crooked answers. Lady Bodlington was a good-humoured very insipid little woman! Lord Bodlington the most common-place man imaginable. Mr. Lyon was an empty dandy, and he was unfortunately seated next to Miss Pennefeather, whom he regarded with horror, fear, detestation, and contempt, as a blue—and, worse than all, a country blue! Miss Pennefeather, in a yellow toque and red gown, sate up, waiting to be drawn out—but—she waited in vain. The fashionably low tone of voice in which the mistress of the mansion spoke, and her studied desire to be perfectly well-bred, communicated a gêne and formality to the whole party, which, re-acting upon the suffering hostess, would have made the evening one of unmitigated pain to herself, and of unmitigated bore to her company, if Lord Montreville’s tact and good breeding had not come to the relief of all parties.

He asked Miss Pennefeather some questions upon modern literature, which gave her an opportunity of pouring forth her stores of information into the ears of the loathing dandy. He made a remark concerning the number of members who had paired off upon the last important division in the last session of Parliament, and Sir James Ashgrove was in his element. He informed Lady Bodlington what was the proper name for that species of sable of which her boa was composed, and she became eloquent to prove that, whatever its name, it was of the most approved sort—in Paris at least—whatever it might be in Russia. He told young Lord Slenderdale he ought to look at Captain Charles Heckfield’s brown mare, for she was the cleverest hack he had seen for a long time, and the two young men soon found themselves able to speak. He complimented Colonel Heckfield on his wines, and Mrs. Heckfield on the beautiful china of which the dinner service was composed; and he told her in a friendly, confidential manner, the only place where such rare china could be matched. By degrees the conversation became general, and then he listened to each, so as to make each person—each lady at least, believe herself an object of interest and attention to him.

Mrs. Heckfield felt quite at her ease concerning the fate of her dinner, and perfectly intimate with Lord Montreville, but not quite happy about Lucy, who, since the first awful silence, had given way to a comfortable universal clatter, had grown so merry with her brother and Lord Slenderdale, that Mrs. Heckfield felt convinced Lord Montreville would set her down in his mind as a missish hoyden, and entirely dismiss her from his thoughts. In vain were sundry maternal glances levelled at poor Lucy—knittings of the eyebrows (suddenly smoothed and converted into sweet smiles if any one looked her way), all were wasted on the unconscious girl, who, in the gaiety of her heart, continued to laugh and to talk till she was on the verge of laughing a little too loud, and, as Mrs. Heckfield thought, of losing a marquisate.

But she was mistaken. Lord Montreville knew the sex well, and he saw that it was an innocent, gay, natural laugh—that there was neither freedom nor coquetry in her merriment; he knew how quickly women catch the tone of good society, and he still thought she would do.

Mrs. Heckfield hastened the signal for the departure of the ladies, in consequence of Lucy’s ill-timed mirth, and they all sailed out, Lady Bodlington first, the Honourable Mrs. Haughtville next, Miss Pennefeather followed after, and Mrs. Heckfield was able quietly, but angrily, to whisper to Lucy, “that she giggled just as if Bell Stopford had been with her.”

CHAPTER IV.