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_ I am ashamed to say what feeling became strongest in my mind about
this time; next to the sympathy we all of us felt for my dear lady in
her deep sorrow, I mean; for that was greater and stronger than
anything else, however contradictory you may think it, when you hear
all.
It might arise from my being so far from well at the time, which
produced a diseased mind in a diseased body; but I was absolutely
jealous for my father's memory, when I saw how many signs of grief
there were for my lord's death, he having done next to nothing for
the village and parish, which now changed, as it were, its daily
course of life, because his lordship died in a far-off city. My
father had spent the best years of his manhood in labouring hard,
body and soul, for the people amongst whom he lived. His family, of
course, claimed the first place in his heart; he would have been good
for little, even in the way of benevolence, if they had not. But
close after them he cared for his parishioners, and neighbours. And
yet, when he died, though the church-bells tolled, and smote upon our
hearts with hard, fresh pain at every beat, the sounds of every-day
life still went on, close pressing around us,--carts and carriages,
street-cries, distant barrel-organs (the kindly neighbours kept them
out of our street): life, active, noisy life, pressed on our acute
consciousness of Death, and jarred upon it as on a quick nerve.
And when we went to church,--my father's own church,--though the
pulpit cushions were black, and many of the congregation had put on
some humble sign of mourning, yet it did not alter the whole material
aspect of the place. And yet what was Lord Ludlow's relation to
Hanbury, compared to my father's work and place in--?
O! it was very wicked in me! I think if I had seen my lady,--if I
had dared to ask to go to her, I should not have felt so miserable,
so discontented. But she sat in her own room, hung with black, all,
even over the shutters. She saw no light but that which was
artificial--candles, lamps, and the like--for more than a month.
Only Adams went near her. Mr. Gray was not admitted, though he
called daily. Even Mrs. Medlicott did not see her for near a
fortnight. The sight of my lady's griefs, or rather the recollection
of it, made Mrs. Medlicott talk far more than was her wont. She told
us, with many tears, and much gesticulation, even speaking German at
times, when her English would not flow, that my lady sat there, a
white figure in the middle of the darkened room; a shaded lamp near
her, the light of which fell on an open Bible,--the great family
Bible. It was not open at any chapter or consoling verse; but at the
page whereon were registered the births of her nine children. Five
had died in infancy,--sacrificed to the cruel system which forbade
the mother to suckle her babies. Four had lived longer; Urian had
been the first to die, Ughtred-Mortimar, Earl Ludlow, the last.
My lady did not cry, Mrs. Medlicott said. She was quite composed;
very still, very silent. She put aside everything that savoured of
mere business: sent people to Mr. Horner for that. But she was
proudly alive to every possible form which might do honour to the
last of her race.
In those days, expresses were slow things, and forms still slower.
Before my lady's directions could reach Vienna, my lord was buried.
There was some talk (so Mrs. Medlicott said) about taking the body
up, and bringing him to Hanbury. But his executors,--connections on
the Ludlow side,--demurred to this. If he were removed to England,
he must be carried on to Scotland, and interred with his Monkshaven
forefathers. My lady, deeply hurt, withdrew from the discussion,
before it degenerated to an unseemly contest. But all the more, for
this understood mortification of my lady's, did the whole village and
estate of Hanbury assume every outward sign of mourning. The church
bells tolled morning and evening. The church itself was draped in
black inside. Hatchments were placed everywhere, where hatchments
could be put. All the tenantry spoke in hushed voices for more than
a week, scarcely daring to observe that all flesh, even that of an
Earl Ludlow, and the last of the Hanburys, was but grass after all.
The very Fighting Lion closed its front door, front shutters it had
none, and those who needed drink stole in at the back, and were
silent and maudlin over their cups, instead of riotous and noisy.
Miss Galindo's eyes were swollen up with crying, and she told me,
with a fresh burst of tears, that even hump-backed Sally had been
found sobbing over her Bible, and using a pocket-handkerchief for the
first time in her life; her aprons having hitherto stood her in the
necessary stead, but not being sufficiently in accordance with
etiquette to be used when mourning over an earl's premature decease.
If it was this way out of the Hall, "you might work it by the rule of
three," as Miss Galindo used to say, and judge what it was in the
Hall. We none of us spoke but in a whisper: we tried not to eat;
and indeed the shock had been so really great, and we did really care
so much for my lady, that for some days we had but little appetite.
But after that, I fear our sympathy grew weaker, while our flesh grew
stronger. But we still spoke low, and our hearts ached whenever we
thought of my lady sitting there alone in the darkened room, with the
light ever falling on that one solemn page.
We wished, O how I wished that she would see Mr. Gray! But Adams
said, she thought my lady ought to have a bishop come to see her.
Still no one had authority enough to send for one.
Mr. Horner all this time was suffering as much as any one. He was
too faithful a servant of the great Hanbury family, though now the
family had dwindled down to a fragile old lady, not to mourn acutely
over its probable extinction. He had, besides, a deeper sympathy and
reverence with, and for, my lady, in all things, than probably he
ever cared to show, for his manners were always measured and cold.
He suffered from sorrow. He also suffered from wrong. My lord's
executors kept writing to him continually. My lady refused to listen
to mere business, saying she intrusted all to him. But the "all" was
more complicated than I ever thoroughly understood. As far as I
comprehended the case, it was something of this kind:- There had been
a mortgage raised on my lady's property of Hanbury, to enable my
lord, her husband, to spend money in cultivating his Scotch estates,
after some new fashion that required capital. As long as my lord,
her son, lived, who was to succeed to both the estates after her
death, this did not signify; so she had said and felt; and she had
refused to take any steps to secure the repayment of capital, or even
the payment of the interest of the mortgage from the possible
representatives and possessors of the Scotch estates, to the possible
owner of the Hanbury property; saying it ill became her to calculate
on the contingency of her son's death.
But he had died childless, unmarried. The heir of the Monkshaven
property was an Edinburgh advocate, a far-away kinsman of my lord's:
the Hanbury property, at my lady's death, would go to the descendants
of a third son of the Squire Hanbury in the days of Queen Anne.
This complication of affairs was most grievous to Mr. Horner. He had
always been opposed to the mortgage; had hated the payment of the
interest, as obliging my lady to practise certain economies which,
though she took care to make them as personal as possible, he
disliked as derogatory to the family. Poor Mr. Horner! He was so
cold and hard in his manner, so curt and decisive in his speech, that
I don't think we any of us did him justice. Miss Galindo was almost
the first, at this time, to speak a kind word of him, or to take
thought of him at all, any farther than to get out of his way when we
saw him approaching.
"I don't think Mr. Horner is well," she said one day; about three
weeks after we had heard of my lord's death. "He sits resting his
head on his hand, and hardly hears me when I speak to him."
But I thought no more of it, as Miss Galindo did not name it again.
My lady came amongst us once more. From elderly she had become old;
a little, frail, old lady, in heavy black drapery, never speaking
about nor alluding to her great sorrow; quieter, gentler, paler than
ever before; and her eyes dim with much weeping, never witnessed by
mortal.
She had seen Mr. Gray at the expiration of the month of deep
retirement. But I do not think that even to him she had said one
word of her own particular individual sorrow. All mention of it
seemed buried deep for evermore. One day, Mr. Horner sent word that
he was too much indisposed to attend to his usual business at the
Hall; but he wrote down some directions and requests to Miss Galindo,
saying that he would be at his office early the next morning. The
next morning he was dead.
Miss Galindo told my lady. Miss Galindo herself cried plentifully,
but my lady, although very much distressed, could not cry. It seemed
a physical impossibility, as if she had shed all the tears in her
power. Moreover, I almost think her wonder was far greater that she
herself lived than that Mr. Horner died. It was almost natural that
so faithful a servant should break his heart, when the family he
belonged to lost their stay, their heir, and their last hope.
Yes! Mr. Horner was a faithful servant. I do not think there are
many so faithful now; but perhaps that is an old woman's fancy of
mine. When his will came to be examined, it was discovered that,
soon after Harry Gregson's accident, Mr. Horner had left the few
thousands (three, I think,) of which he was possessed, in trust for
Harry's benefit, desiring his executors to see that the lad was well
educated in certain things, for which Mr. Horner had thought that he
had shown especial aptitude; and there was a kind of implied apology
to my lady in one sentence where he stated that Harry's lameness
would prevent his being ever able to gain his living by the exercise
of any mere bodily faculties, "as had been wished by a lady whose
wishes" he, the testator, "was bound to regard."
But there was a codicil in the will, dated since Lord Ludlow's death-
-feebly written by Mr. Horner himself, as if in preparation only for
some more formal manner of bequest: or, perhaps, only as a mere
temporary arrangement till he could see a lawyer, and have a fresh
will made. In this he revoked his previous bequest to Harry Gregson.
He only left two hundred pounds to Mr Gray to be used, as that
gentleman thought best, for Henry Gregson's benefit. With this one
exception, he bequeathed all the rest of his savings to my lady, with
a hope that they might form a nest-egg, as it were, towards the
paying off of the mortgage which had been such a grief to him during
his life. I may not repeat all this in lawyer's phrase; I heard it
through Miss Galindo, and she might make mistakes. Though, indeed,
she was very clear-headed, and soon earned the respect of Mr.
Smithson, my lady's lawyer from Warwick. Mr. Smithson knew Miss
Galindo a little before, both personally and by reputation; but I
don't think he was prepared to find her installed as steward's clerk,
and, at first, he was inclined to treat her, in this capacity, with
polite contempt. But Miss Galindo was both a lady and a spirited,
sensible woman, and she could put aside her self-indulgence in
eccentricity of speech and manner whenever she chose. Nay more; she
was usually so talkative, that if she had not been amusing and warm-
hearted, one might have thought her wearisome occasionally. But to
meet Mr. Smithson she came out daily in her Sunday gown; she said no
more than was required in answer to his questions; her books and
papers were in thorough order, and methodically kept; her statements
of matters-of-fact accurate, and to be relied on. She was amusingly
conscious of her victory over his contempt of a woman-clerk and his
preconceived opinion of her unpractical eccentricity.
"Let me alone," said she, one day when she came in to sit awhile with
me. "That man is a good man--a sensible man--and I have no doubt he
is a good lawyer; but he can't fathom women yet. I make no doubt
he'll go back to Warwick, and never give credit again to those people
who made him think me half-cracked to begin with. O, my dear, he
did! He showed it twenty times worse than my poor dear master ever
did. It was a form to be gone through to please my lady, and, for
her sake, he would hear my statements and see my books. It was
keeping a woman out of harm's way, at any rate, to let her fancy
herself useful. I read the man. And, I am thankful to say, he
cannot read me. At least, only one side of me. When I see an end to
be gained, I can behave myself accordingly. Here was a man who
thought that a woman in a black silk gown was a respectable, orderly
kind of person; and I was a woman in a black silk gown. He believed
that a woman could not write straight lines, and required a man to
tell her that two and two made four. I was not above ruling my
books, and had Cocker a little more at my fingers' ends than he had.
But my greatest triumph has been holding my tongue. He would have
thought nothing of my books, or my sums, or my black silk gown, if I
had spoken unasked. So I have buried more sense in my bosom these
ten days than ever I have uttered in the whole course of my life
before. I have been so curt, so abrupt, so abominably dull, that
I'll answer for it he thinks me worthy to be a man. But I must go
back to him, my dear, so good-bye to conversation and you."
But though Mr. Smithson might be satisfied with Miss Galindo, I am
afraid she was the only part of the affair with which he was content.
Everything else went wrong. I could not say who told me so--but the
conviction of this seemed to pervade the house. I never knew how
much we had all looked up to the silent, gruff Mr. Horner for
decisions, until he was gone. My lady herself was a pretty good
woman of business, as women of business go. Her father, seeing that
she would be the heiress of the Hanbury property, had given her a
training which was thought unusual in those days, and she liked to
feel herself queen regnant, and to have to decide in all cases
between herself and her tenantry. But, perhaps, Mr. Horner would
have done it more wisely; not but what she always attended to him at
last. She would begin by saying, pretty clearly and promptly, what
she would have done, and what she would not have done. If Mr. Horner
approved of it, he bowed, and set about obeying her directly; if he
disapproved of it, he bowed, and lingered so long before he obeyed
her, that she forced his opinion out of him with her "Well, Mr.
Horner! and what have you to say against it?" For she always
understood his silence as well as if he had spoken. But the estate
was pressed for ready money, and Mr. Horner had grown gloomy and
languid since the death of his wife, and even his own personal
affairs were not in the order in which they had been a year or two
before, for his old clerk had gradually become superannuated, or, at
any rate, unable by the superfluity of his own energy and wit to
supply the spirit that was wanting in Mr. Horner.
Day after day Mr. Smithson seemed to grow more fidgety, more annoyed
at the state of affairs. Like every one else employed by Lady
Ludlow, as far as I could learn, he had an hereditary tie to the
Hanbury family. As long as the Smithsons had been lawyers, they had
been lawyers to the Hanburys; always coming in on all great family
occasions, and better able to understand the characters, and connect
the links of what had once been a large and scattered family, than
any individual thereof had ever been.
As long as a man was at the head of the Hanburys, the lawyers had
simply acted as servants, and had only given their advice when it was
required. But they had assumed a different position on the memorable
occasion of the mortgage: they had remonstrated against it. My lady
had resented this remonstrance, and a slight, unspoken coolness had
existed between her and the father of this Mr. Smithson ever since.
I was very sorry for my lady. Mr. Smithson was inclined to blame Mr.
Horner for the disorderly state in which he found some of the
outlying farms, and for the deficiencies in the annual payment of
rents. Mr. Smithson had too much good feeling to put this blame into
words; but my lady's quick instinct led her to reply to a thought,
the existence of which she perceived; and she quietly told the truth,
and explained how she had interfered repeatedly to prevent Mr. Horner
from taking certain desirable steps, which were discordant to her
hereditary sense of right and wrong between landlord and tenant. She
also spoke of the want of ready money as a misfortune that could be
remedied, by more economical personal expenditure on her own part; by
which individual saving, it was possible that a reduction of fifty
pounds a year might have been accomplished. But as soon as Mr.
Smithson touched on larger economies, such as either affected the
welfare of others, or the honour and standing of the great House of
Hanbury, she was inflexible. Her establishment consisted of
somewhere about forty servants, of whom nearly as many as twenty were
unable to perform their work properly, and yet would have been hurt
if they had been dismissed; so they had the credit of fulfilling
duties, while my lady paid and kept their substitutes. Mr. Smithson
made a calculation, and would have saved some hundreds a year by
pensioning off these old servants. But my lady would not hear of it.
Then, again, I know privately that he urged her to allow some of us
to return to our homes. Bitterly we should have regretted the
separation from Lady Ludlow; but we would have gone back gladly, had
we known at the time that her circumstances required it: but she
would not listen to the proposal for a moment.
"If I cannot act justly towards every one, I will give up a plan
which has been a source of much satisfaction; at least, I will not
carry it out to such an extent in future. But to these young ladies,
who do me the favour to live with me at present, I stand pledged. I
cannot go back from my word, Mr. Smithson. We had better talk no
more of this."
As she spoke, she entered the room where I lay. She and Mr. Smithson
were coming for some papers contained in the bureau. They did not
know I was there, and Mr. Smithson started a little when he saw me,
as he must have been aware that I had overheard something. But my
lady did not change a muscle of her face. All the world might
overhear her kind, just, pure sayings, and she had no fear of their
misconstruction. She came up to me, and kissed me on the forehead,
and then went to search for the required papers.
"I rode over the Connington farms yesterday, my lady. I must say I
was quite grieved to see the condition they are in; all the land that
is not waste is utterly exhausted with working successive white
crops. Not a pinch of manure laid on the ground for years. I must
say that a greater contrast could never have been presented than that
between Harding's farm and the next fields--fences in perfect order,
rotation crops, sheep eating down the turnips on the waste lands--
everything that could be desired."
"Whose farm is that?" asked my lady.
"Why, I am sorry to say, it was on none of your ladyship's that I saw
such good methods adopted. I hoped it was, I stopped my horse to
inquire. A queer-looking man, sitting on his horse like a tailor,
watching his men with a couple of the sharpest eyes I ever saw, and
dropping his h's at every word, answered my question, and told me it
was his. I could not go on asking him who he was; but I fell into
conversation with him, and I gathered that he had earned some money
in trade in Birmingham, and had bought the estate (five hundred
acres, I think he said,) on which he was born, and now was setting
himself to cultivate it in downright earnest, going to Holkham and
Woburn, and half the country over, to get himself up on the subject."
"It would be Brooke, that dissenting baker from Birmingham," said my
lady in her most icy tone. "Mr. Smithson, I am sorry I have been
detaining you so long, but I think these are the letters you wished
to see."
If her ladyship thought by this speech to quench Mr. Smithson she was
mistaken. Mr. Smithson just looked at the letters, and went on with
the old subject.
"Now, my lady, it struck me that if you had such a man to take poor
Horner's place, he would work the rents and the land round most
satisfactorily. I should not despair of inducing this very man to
undertake the work. I should not mind speaking to him myself on the
subject, for we got capital friends over a snack of luncheon that he
asked me to share with him."
Lady Ludlow fixed her eyes on Mr. Smithson as he spoke, and never
took them off his face until he had ended. She was silent a minute
before she answered.
"You are very good, Mr. Smithson, but I need not trouble you with any
such arrangements. I am going to write this afternoon to Captain
James, a friend of one of my sons, who has, I hear, been severely
wounded at Trafalgar, to request him to honour me by accepting Mr.
Horner's situation."
"A Captain James! A captain in the navy! going to manage your
ladyship's estate!"
"If he will be so kind. I shall esteem it a condescension on his
part; but I hear that he will have to resign his profession, his
state of health is so bad, and a country life is especially
prescribed for him. I am in some hopes of tempting him here, as I
learn he has but little to depend on if he gives up his profession."
"A Captain James! an invalid captain!"
"You think I am asking too great a favour," continued my lady. (I
never could tell how far it was simplicity, or how far a kind of
innocent malice, that made her misinterpret Mr. Smithson's words and
looks as she did.) "But he is not a post-captain, only a commander,
and his pension will be but small. I may be able, by offering him
country air and a healthy occupation, to restore him to health."
"Occupation! My lady, may I ask how a sailor is to manage land?
Why, your tenants will laugh him to scorn."
"My tenants, I trust, will not behave so ill as to laugh at any one I
choose to set over them. Captain James has had experience in
managing men. He has remarkable practical talents, and great common
sense, as I hear from every one. But, whatever he may be, the affair
rests between him and myself. I can only say I shall esteem myself
fortunate if he comes."
There was no more to be said, after my lady spoke in this manner. I
had heard her mention Captain James before, as a middy who had been
very kind to her son Urian. I thought I remembered then, that she
had mentioned that his family circumstances were not very prosperous.
But, I confess, that little as I knew of the management of land, I
quite sided with Mr. Smithson. He, silently prohibited from again
speaking to my lady on the subject, opened his mind to Miss Galindo,
from whom I was pretty sure to hear all the opinions and news of the
household and village. She had taken a great fancy to me, because
she said I talked so agreeably. I believe it was because I listened
so well.
"Well, have you heard the news," she began, "about this Captain
James? A sailor,--with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would
the poor, dear, deceased master have said to it, if he had known who
was to be his successor! My dear, I have often thought of the
postman's bringing me a letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss
in heaven. But, really, I think Mr. Horner may be thankful he has
got out of the reach of news; or else he would hear of Mr. Smithson's
having made up to the Birmingham baker, and of his one-legged
captain, coming to dot-and-go-one over the estate. I suppose he will
look after the labourers through a spy-glass. I only hope he won't
stick in the mud with his wooden leg; for I, for one, won't help him
out. Yes, I would," said she, correcting herself; "I would, for my
lady's sake."
"But are you sure he has a wooden leg?" asked I. "I heard Lady
Ludlow tell Mr. Smithson about him, and she only spoke of him as
wounded."
"Well, sailors are almost always wounded in the leg. Look at
Greenwich Hospital! I should say there were twenty one-legged
pensioners to one without an arm there. But say he has got half-a-
dozen legs: what has he to do with managing land? I shall think him
very impudent if he comes, taking advantage of my lady's kind heart."
However, come he did. In a month from that time, the carriage was
sent to meet Captain James; just as three years before it had been
sent to meet me. His coming had been so much talked about that we
were all as curious as possible to see him, and to know how so
unusual an experiment, as it seemed to us, would answer. But, before
I tell you anything about our new agent, I must speak of something
quite as interesting, and I really think quite as important. And
this was my lady's making friends with Harry Gregson. I do believe
she did it for Mr. Horner's sake; but, of course, I can only
conjecture why my lady did anything. But I heard one day, from Mary
Legard, that my lady had sent for Harry to come and see her, if he
was well enough to walk so far; and the next day he was shown into
the room he had been in once before under such unlucky circumstances.
The lad looked pale enough, as he stood propping himself up on his
crutch, and the instant my lady saw him, she bade John Footman place
a stool for him to sit down upon while she spoke to him. It might be
his paleness that gave his whole face a more refined and gentle look;
but I suspect it was that the boy was apt to take impressions, and
that Mr. Horner's grave, dignified ways, and Mr. Gray's tender and
quiet manners, had altered him; and then the thoughts of illness and
death seem to turn many of us into gentlemen, and gentlewomen, as
long as such thoughts are in our minds. We cannot speak loudly or
angrily at such times; we are not apt to be eager about mere worldly
things, for our very awe at our quickened sense of the nearness of
the invisible world, makes us calm and serene about the petty trifles
of to-day. At least, I know that was the explanation Mr. Gray once
gave me of what we all thought the great improvement in Harry
Gregson's way of behaving.
My lady hesitated so long about what she had best say, that Harry
grew a little frightened at her silence. A few months ago it would
have surprised me more than it did now; but since my lord her son's
death, she had seemed altered in many ways,--more uncertain and
distrustful of herself, as it were.
At last she said, and I think the tears were in her eyes: "My poor
little fellow, you have had a narrow escape with your life since I
saw you last."
To this there was nothing to be said but "Yes;" and again there was
silence.
"And you have lost a good, kind friend, in Mr. Horner."
The boy's lips worked, and I think he said, "Please, don't." But I
can't be sure; at any rate, my lady went on:
"And so have I,--a good, kind friend, he was to both of us; and to
you he wished to show his kindness in even a more generous way than
he has done. Mr. Gray has told you about his legacy to you, has he
not?"
There was no sign of eager joy on the lad's face, as if he realised
the power and pleasure of having what to him must have seemed like a
fortune.
"Mr. Gray said as how he had left me a matter of money."
"Yes, he has left you two hundred pounds."
"But I would rather have had him alive, my lady," he burst out,
sobbing as if his heart would break.
"My lad, I believe you. We would rather have had our dead alive,
would we not? and there is nothing in money that can comfort us for
their loss. But you know--Mr. Gray has told you--who has appointed
all our times to die. Mr. Horner was a good, just man; and has done
well and kindly, both by me and you. You perhaps do not know" (and
now I understood what my lady had been making up her mind to say to
Harry, all the time she was hesitating how to begin) "that Mr.
Horner, at one time, meant to leave you a great deal more; probably
all he had, with the exception of a legacy to his old clerk,
Morrison. But he knew that this estate--on which my forefathers had
lived for six hundred years--was in debt, and that I had no immediate
chance of paying off this debt; and yet he felt that it was a very
sad thing for an old property like this to belong in part to those
other men, who had lent the money. You understand me, I think, my
little man?" said she, questioning Harry's face.
He had left off crying, and was trying to understand, with all his
might and main; and I think he had got a pretty good general idea of
the state of affairs; though probably he was puzzled by the term "the
estate being in debt." But he was sufficiently interested to want my
lady to go on; and he nodded his head at her, to signify this to her.
"So Mr. Horner took the money which he once meant to be yours, and
has left the greater part of it to me, with the intention of helping
me to pay off this debt I have told you about. It will go a long
way, and I shall try hard to save the rest, and then I shall die
happy in leaving the land free from debt." She paused. "But I shall
not die happy in thinking of you. I do not know if having money, or
even having a great estate and much honour, is a good thing for any
of us. But God sees fit that some of us should be called to this
condition, and it is our duty then to stand by our posts, like brave
soldiers. Now, Mr. Horner intended you to have this money first. I
shall only call it borrowing from you, Harry Gregson, if I take it
and use it to pay off the debt. I shall pay Mr. Gray interest on
this money, because he is to stand as your guardian, as it were, till
you come of age; and he must fix what ought to be done with it, so as
to fit you for spending the principal rightly when the estate can
repay it you. I suppose, now, it will be right for you to be
educated. That will be another snare that will come with your money.
But have courage, Harry. Both education and money may be used
rightly, if we only pray against the temptations they bring with
them."
Harry could make no answer, though I am sure he understood it all.
My lady wanted to get him to talk to her a little, by way of becoming
acquainted with what was passing in his mind; and she asked him what
he would like to have done with his money, if he could have part of
it now? To such a simple question, involving no talk about feelings,
his answer came readily enough.
"Build a cottage for father, with stairs in it, and give Mr. Gray a
school-house. O, father does so want Mr. Gray for to have his wish!
Father saw all the stones lying quarried and hewn on Farmer Hale's
land; Mr. Gray had paid for them all himself. And father said he
would work night and day, and little Tommy should carry mortar, if
the parson would let him, sooner than that he should be fretted and
frabbed as he was, with no one giving him a helping hand or a kind
word."
Harry knew nothing of my lady's part in the affair; that was very
clear. My lady kept silence.
"If I might have a piece of my money, I would buy land from Mr.
Brooks; he has got a bit to sell just at the corner of Hendon Lane,
and I would give it to Mr. Gray; and, perhaps, if your ladyship
thinks I may be learned again, I might grow up into the
schoolmaster."
"You are a good boy," said my lady. "But there are more things to be
thought of, in carrying out such a plan, than you are aware of.
However, it shall be tried."
"The school, my lady?" I exclaimed, almost thinking she did not know
what she was saying.
"Yes, the school. For Mr. Horner's sake, for Mr. Gray's sake, and
last, not least, for this lad's sake, I will give the new plan a
trial. Ask Mr. Gray to come up to me this afternoon about the land
he wants. He need not go to a Dissenter for it. And tell your
father he shall have a good share in the building of it, and Tommy
shall carry the mortar."
"And I may be schoolmaster?" asked Harry, eagerly.
"We'll see about that," said my lady, amused. "It will be some time
before that plan comes to pass, my little fellow."
And now to return to Captain James. My first account of him was from
Miss Galindo.
"He's not above thirty; and I must just pack up my pens and my paper,
and be off; for it would be the height of impropriety for me to be
staying here as his clerk. It was all very well in the old master's
days. But here am I, not fifty till next May, and this young,
unmarried man, who is not even a widower! O, there would be no end
of gossip. Besides he looks as askance at me as I do at him. My
black silk gown had no effect. He's afraid I shall marry him. But I
won't; he may feel himself quite safe from that. And Mr. Smithson
has been recommending a clerk to my lady. She would far rather keep
me on; but I can't stop. I really could not think it proper."
"What sort of a looking man is he?"
"O, nothing particular. Short, and brown, and sunburnt. I did not
think it became me to look at him. Well, now for the nightcaps. I
should have grudged any one else doing them, for I have got such a
pretty pattern!"
But when it came to Miss Galindo's leaving, there was a great
misunderstanding between her and my lady. Miss Galindo had imagined
that my lady had asked her as a favour to copy the letters, and enter
the accounts, and had agreed to do the work without the notion of
being paid for so doing. She had, now and then, grieved over a very
profitable order for needlework passing out of her hands on account
of her not having time to do it, because of her occupation at the
Hall; but she had never hinted this to my lady, but gone on
cheerfully at her writing as long as her clerkship was required. My
lady was annoyed that she had not made her intention of paying Miss
Galindo more clear, in the first conversation she had had with her;
but I suppose that she had been too delicate to be very explicit with
regard to money matters; and now Miss Galindo was quite hurt at my
lady's wanting to pay her for what she had done in such right-down
good-will.
"No," Miss Galindo said; "my own dear lady, you may be as angry with
me as you like, but don't offer me money. Think of six-and-twenty
years ago, and poor Arthur, and as you were to me then! Besides, I
wanted money--I don't disguise it--for a particular purpose; and when
I found that (God bless you for asking me!) I could do you a service,
I turned it over in my mind, and I gave up one plan and took up
another, and it's all settled now. Bessy is to leave school and come
and live with me. Don't, please, offer me money again. You don't
know how glad I have been to do anything for you. Have not I,
Margaret Dawson? Did you not hear me say, one day, I would cut off
my hand for my lady; for am I a stock or a stone, that I should
forget kindness? O, I have been so glad to work for you. And now
Bessy is coming here; and no one knows anything about her--as if she
had done anything wrong, poor child!"
"Dear Miss Galindo," replied my lady, "I will never ask you to take
money again. Only I thought it was quite understood between us. And
you know you have taken money for a set of morning wrappers, before
now."
"Yes, my lady; but that was not confidential. Now I was so proud to
have something to do for you confidentially."
"But who is Bessy?" asked my lady. "I do not understand who she is,
or why she is to come and live with you. Dear Miss Galindo, you must
honour me by being confidential with me in your turn!" _
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