Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  July 5th. — Mary Layne is going to the Grange as companion to Lady Chavasse. “Humble companion,” as my lady takes care to put it. It has been brought about in this way. Wilkins is slightly improving: but it will be months before she can resume her duties about Lady Chavasse: and my lady has at length got this opinion out of me. “Five or six months!” she exclaimed in dismay. “But it is only what I have lately suspected. Mr. Duffham, I have been thinking that I must take a companion; and now this has confirmed it. A humble companion, who will not object to do my hair on state occasions, and superintend Picker in trimming my dresses, especially the lace; and who will write notes for me when I desire it, and read to me when Sir Geoffry’s not here; and sit with me if I wish it. She wouldn’t dine with us, of course; but I might sometimes let her sit down to luncheon. In short, what I want is a well-educated, lady-like young woman, who will make herself useful. Do you happen to know of one?”

  I mentioned Mary Layne. She has been wishing not to return to the heavy work and confinement of a school, where she had to sit up late, night after night, correcting exercises, and touching up drawings by gas-light. My lady caught at it at once. “Mary Layne! the very thing. I like the look of the girl much, Mr. Duffham; and of course she won’t be above doing anything required of her: Layne, the apothecary’s daughter, cannot be called a gentlewoman in position, you know.”

  She forgot I was an apothecary also; I’ll give her that credit. But this is a specimen of the way my lady’s exclusive spirit peeps out.

  And so it is settled. And if Miss Mary had been suddenly offered a position in the Royal household, she could not have thought more of it. “Mr. Duffham, I will try my very best to satisfy Lady Chavasse,” says she to me, in an ecstasy; “I will do anything and everything required of me: who am I, that I should be above it?” And by the glistening of her sweet brown eyes, and the rose-blush on her cheeks, it would seem that she fancies she is going into fairy-land. Well, the Grange is a nice place: and she is to have thirty guineas a-year. At the last school she had twenty pounds: at the first ten.

  [End of the Diary for the present.]

  Miss Layne entered the Grange with trepidation. She had never been inside the house, and at first thought it was fairy-land realized and that she was out of place in it. A broad flight of three or four steps led up to the wide entrance-door; the brilliant colours from the painted windows shone on the mosaic pavement of the hall; on the right were the grand drawing-rooms; on the left the dining-room and Sir Geoffry’s library. Behind the library, going down a step or two was a low, shady apartment, its glass doors opening to a small grass plat, round which flowers were planted; and beyond it lay the fragrant herbary. This little room was called the garden-room; and on the morning of Miss Layne’s arrival, after she had taken off her things, Hester Picker (who thought almost as much of the old surgeon’s daughter as she did of my lady) curtsyed her into it, and said it was to be Miss Layne’s sitting-room, when she was not with my lady.

  Mary Layne looked around. She thought it charming. It had an old Turkey carpet, and faded red chairs, and a shabby checked cloth on the table, with other ancient furniture; but the subdued light was grateful after the garish July sun, and a sweetness came in from the herbs and flowers. Mary stood, wondering what she had to do first, and not quite daring to sit down even on one of the old red chairs. The Grange was the Grange, and my lady was my lady; and they were altogether above the sphere in which she had been brought up. She had a new lilac muslin dress on, fresh and simple; her smooth brown hair had a bit of lilac ribbon in it; and she looked as pretty and ladylike as a girl can look. Standing at the back, there beyond the able, was she, when Sir Geoffry walked in at the glass doors, his light summer coat thrown back, and a heap of small paper packets in his hands, containing seeds. At first he looked astonished: not remembering her.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up, as he took off his straw hat. “Miss Mary Layne, I think. I did not know you at the moment. My mother said she expected you to-day.”

  He came round to her with outstretched hand, and then put a chair for her, just as though she had been a duchess — or Lady Rachel Derreston. Mary did not take the chair: she felt strange in her new home, and as yet very timid.

  “I am not sure what Lady Chavasse would wish me to do,” she ventured to say, believing it might be looked upon as next door to a crime to be seen idle, in a place where she was to receive thirty guineas a-year. “There appears to be no work here.”

  “Get a book, and read!” cried Sir Geoffry. “I’ll find you one as soon as I have put up these seeds. A box of new novels has just come from town. I hope you will make yourself at home with us, and be happy,” he added, in his kindness.

  “Thank you, sir; I am sure I shall.”

  He was putting up the seeds, when Lady Chavasse entered. She had a way of taking likes and dislikes, and she never scrupled to show either. On this first day, it seemed that she did not know how to make enough of Mary. She chose to forget that she was only to be the humble companion, and treated her as a guest. She carried her in to take luncheon with herself and Sir Geoffry; she made her play and sing; she showed her the drawing-rooms and the flower-gardens, and finally took her out in the barouche. She certainly did not ask her in to dinner, but said she should expect her to come to the drawing-room afterwards, and spend the evening. And Miss Layne, not ignorant of the customs obtaining in great houses, dressed herself for it in her one evening dress of white spotted muslin, and changed the lilac ribbon in her hair for blue.

  So that, you perceive, the girl was inaugurated at the Grange as a young lady, almost as an equal, and not as a servant — as Lady Chavasse’s true opinion would have classed her. That was mistake the first. For it led Sir Geoffry to make a companion of Miss Layne; that is, to treat her as though she belonged to their order; which otherwise he certainly would not have done. Had Miss Layne been assigned her true place at first — the place that Lady Chavasse meant her to fill, that of an inferior and humble dependent — Sir Geoffry, out of simple respect to the girl and to his mother, would have kept his distance.

  As the time passed on they grew great friends. Lady Chavasse retained her liking for Mary, and saw no harm in the growing intimacy with Sir Geoffry. That was mistake the second. Both of them were drifting into love; but Lady Chavasse dreamt it not. The social gulf that spread itself between Sir Geoffry Chavasse, of Chavasse Grange, and Mary Layne, daughter of the late hard-worked village apothecary, was one that Lady Chavasse would have said (had she been asked to think about it) could never be bridged over: and for this very reason she saw no danger in the intercourse. She regarded Mary Layne as of a totally different caste from themselves, and never supposed but Sir Geoffry did so too.

  And so time went on, on the wings of love. There were garden walks together and moonlight saunterings; meetings in my lady’s presence, meetings without it. Sir Geoffry, going in and out of the garden-parlour at will, as he had been accustomed to do — for it was where all kinds of things belonging to him were kept: choice seeds, his fishing-rods, his collection of butterflies — would linger there by the hour together, talking to Mary at her work. And, before either of them was conscious of the danger, they had each passed into a dream that changed everything about them to Paradise.

  Of course, Sir Geoffry, when he awoke to the truth — that it was love — ought to have gone away, or have contrived to get his mother to dismiss Miss Layne. He did nothing of the sort. And for this, some people — Duffham for one — held him even more to blame than for anything that happened afterwards. But how could he voluntarily blight his new happiness, and hers? It was so intense as to absorb every other feeling; it took his common sense away from him. And thus they went dreaming on together in that one spring-time (of the heart, not of the weather), and never thought about drifting into shoals and pitfalls.

  In the autumn my lady went to the seaside in Cornwall, taking Mary as her maid, and escorted by her son. “Will
you do for me what I want while I am away? I do not care to be troubled with Picker,” she had said; and Mary replied, as in duty bound, that she would. It is inconvenient to treat a maid as a lady, especially in a strange place, and Mary found that during this sojourn Lady Chavasse did not attempt it. To all intents and purposes Mary was the maid now; she did not sit with her lady, she took her meals apart; she was, in fact, regarded as the lady’s-maid by all, and nothing else. Lady Chavasse even took to calling her “Layne.” This, the sudden dethroning of her social status, was the third mistake; and this one, as the first, was my lady’s. Sir Geoffry had been led to regard her as a companion; now he saw her but as a servant. But, servant or no servant, you cannot put love out of the heart, once it has possession of it.

  At the month’s end they returned home: and there Mary found that she was to retain this lower station: never again would she be exalted as she had been. Lady Chavasse had tired of the new toy, and just carelessly allowed her to find her own level. Except that Miss Layne sat in the garden-parlour, and her meals were served there, she was not very much distinguished from Hester Picker and the other servants; indeed, Picker sometimes sat in the parlour too, when they had lace, or what not, to mend for my lady. Geoffry in his heart was grieved at the changed treatment of Miss Layne; he thought it wrong and unjust; and to make up for the mistake, was with her a great deal himself.

  Things were in this position when Lady Chavasse was summoned to Bath: her sister, Lady Derreston, was taken ill. Sir Geoffry escorted her thither. Picker was taken, not Miss Layne. In the countess’s small household, Mary, in her anomalous position — for she could not be altogether put with the servants — would have been an inconvenience; and my lady bade her make herself happy at the Grange, and left her a lot of fine needlework to get through.

  Leaving his mother in Bath, Sir Geoffry went to London, stayed a week or so, and then came back to the Grange. Another week or two, and he returned to Bath to bring his mother home. And so the winter set in, and wore on. And now all that has to be told to the paper’s end is taken from diaries, Duffham’s and others. But for convenience’ sake, I put it as though the words were my own, instead of copying them literally.

  Spring came in early. February was not quite at an end, and the trees were beginning to show their green. All the month it had been warm weather; but people said it was too relaxing for the season, and they and the trees should suffer for it later. A good deal of sickness was going about; and, amongst others who had to give in for a time, was Duffham himself. He had inflammation of the lungs. His brother Luke, who was partner in a medical firm elsewhere, came to Church Dykely for a week or two, to take the patients. Luke was a plain-speaking man of forty, with rough hair and a good heart.

  The afternoon after he arrived, an applicant came into the surgery with her daughter. It was Mrs. Layne, but the temporary doctor did not know her. Mrs. Layne never did look like a lady, and he did not mistake her for one: he thought it some respectable countrywoman: she had flung a very ancient cloak over her worn morning gown. She expressed herself disappointed at not seeing Mr. Duffham, but opened the consultation with the brother instead. Mrs. Layne took it for granted she was known, and talked accordingly.

  Her daughter, whom she kept calling Mary, and nothing else, had been ailing lately; she, Mrs. Layne, could not think what was the matter with her, unless it was the unusually warm spring. She grew thinner and weaker daily; her cheeks were pale, her eyes seemed to have no life in them: she was very low in spirits; yet, in spite of all this, Mary had kept on saying it was “nothing.” My Lady Chavasse — returning home from London yesterday, whither she had accompanied her son a week or two ago, and whom she had left there — was so much struck with the change she saw in Mary, who lived with her as humble companion, Mrs. Layne added, in a parenthesis, that she insisted on her seeing Dr. Duffham, that he might prescribe some tonics. And accordingly Mary had walked to her mother’s this afternoon.

  Mr. Luke Duffham listened to all this with one ear, as it were. He supposed it might be the warm spring, as suggested. However, he took Mary into the patients’ room, and examined her; felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, sounded her chest, with all the rest of it that doctors treat their clients to; and asked her this, that, and the other — about five-and-twenty questions, when perhaps five might have done. The upshot of it all was that Mary Layne went off in a dead faint.

  “What on earth can be the matter with her?” cried the alarmed mother, when they had brought her round.

  Mr. Luke Duffham, going back to the surgery with Mrs. Layne, shut the doors, and told her what he thought it was. It so startled the old lady that she backed against the counter and upset the scales.

  “How dare you say so, sir!”

  “But I am sure of it,” returned Mr. Luke.

  “Lord be good to me!” gasped Mrs. Layne, looking like one terrified out of her seven senses. “The worst I feared was that it might be consumption. A sister of mine died of it.”

  “Where shall I send the medicine to?” inquired the doctor.

  “Anywhere. Over the way, if you like,” continued Mrs. Layne, in her perturbation.

  “Certainly. Where to, over the way?”

  “To my house. Don’t you know me? I am the widow of your brother’s late partner. This unhappy child is the one he was fondest of; she is only nineteen, much younger than the rest.”

  “Mrs. Layne!” thought Luke Duffham, in surprise, “I wish I had known; I might have hesitated before speaking plainly. But where would have been the good?”

  The first thing Mrs. Layne did, was to shut her own door against Mary, and send her back to the Grange in a shower of anger. She was an honest old lady, of most irreproachable character; never needing, as she phrased it, to have had a blush on her cheek, for herself or any one belonging to her. In her indignation, she could have crushed Mary to the earth. Whatever it might be that the poor girl had done, robbed a church, or shot its parson, her mother deemed that she deserved hanging.

  Mary Layne walked back to the Grange: where else had she to go? Broken-hearted, humiliated, weak almost unto death, she was as a reed in her mother’s hands, yielding herself to any command given; and only wishing she might die. Lady Chavasse, compassionating her evident suffering, brought her a glass of wine with her own hand, and inquired what Mr. Duffham said, and whether he was going to give her tonics. Instead of answering, Mary went into another faint: and my lady thought she had overwalked herself. “I wish I had sent her in the carriage,” said she kindly. And while the wish was yet upon her lips, Mrs. Layne arrived at the Grange, to request an audience of her ladyship.

  Then was commotion. My lady talked and stormed, Mrs. Layne talked and cried. Both were united in one thing — heaping reproaches on Mary. They were in the grand drawing-room — where my lady had been sitting when Mrs. Layne was shown in. Lady Chavasse sat back, furious and scornful, in her pink velvet chair; Mrs. Layne stood; Mary had sunk on the carpet kneeling, her face bent, her clasped hands raised as if imploring mercy. This group was suddenly broken in upon by Sir Geoffry — who had but then reached the Grange from town. They were too noisy to notice him. Halting in dismay he had the pleasure of catching a sentence or two addressed to the unhappy Mary.

  “The best thing you can do is to find refuge in the workhouse,” stormed Lady Chavasse. “Out of my house you turn this hour.”

  “The best thing you can do is to go on the tramp, where you won’t be known,” amended Mrs. Layne, who was nearly beside herself with conflicting emotions. “Never again shall you enter the home that was your poor dead father’s. You wicked girl! — and you hardly twenty years old yet! But, my lady, I can but think — though I know we are humble people, as compared with you, and perhaps I’ve no right to say it — that Sir Geoffry has not behaved like a gentleman.”

  “Hold your tongue, woman,” said her ladyship. “Sir Geoffry — —”

  “Sir Geoffry is at least enough of a gentleman to take his evil deeds on
himself, and not shift them on to others,” spoke the baronet, stepping forward — and the unexpected interruption was startling to them all. My lady pointed imperatively to the door, but he stood his ground.

  It was no doubt a bitter moment for him; bringing home to him an awful amount of self-humiliation: for throughout his life he had striven to do right instead of wrong. And when these better men yield to temptation instead of fleeing from it, the reacting sting is of the sharpest. The wisest and strongest sometimes fall: and find too late that, though the fall was so easy, the picking-up is of all things most difficult. Sir Geoffry’s face was white as death.

  “Get up, Mary,” he said gently, taking her hand to help her in all respect. “Mrs. Layne,” he added, turning to face the others; “my dear mother — if I may dare still to call you so — suffer me to say a word. For all that has taken place, I am alone to blame; on me only must it rest, The fault — —”

  “Sin, sir,” interrupted Mrs. Layne.

  “Yes. Thank you. Sin. The sin lies with me, not with Mary. In my presence reproach shall not be visited on her. She has enough trouble to bear without that. I wish to Heaven that I had never — Mrs. Layne, believe me,” he resumed, after the pause, “no one can feel this more keenly than I. And, if circumstances permit me to make reparation, I will make it!”

  Sir Geoffry wanted (circumstances permitting, as he shortly put it) to marry Mary Layne; he wished to do it. Taking his mother into another room he told her this. Lady Chavasse simply thought him mad. She grew a little afraid of him, lest he should set her and all high rules of propriety at nought, and do it.

  But trouble like this cannot be settled in an hour. Lady Chavasse, in her great fear, conciliated just a little: she did not turn Miss Layne out at once, as threatened, but suffered her to remain at the Grange for the night.