Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  “Name the day and hour yourself,” replied Mrs. Mathews, “and you may depend upon it that both Janet and I will be punctual.”

  “To-morrow be it then, my dear kind friend,” said the young man with a very perceptible augmentation of colour. “Tomorrow, about the same hour that I came to you to-day. Will that suit you?”

  “Perfectly,” was the reply, and so they parted, Sir Herbert perhaps a little disappointed at not having seen Janet, but well pleased and greatly comforted at having put their future intercourse so pleasantly en traîne.

  Poor Mr. Mathews, meanwhile, though he had heard of the dismal death of his old acquaintance with great fortitude, which was, to say the truth, pretty generally the case throughout the parish, was not without his own share in the disappointments to which the unexpected elopement of the beautiful Emily had given birth.

  It certainly was not quite so terrible a business to him as it had been to his neighbour Sir Charles, because a hundred pounds, though a great deal too much to be wantonly thrown away upon an unprofitable scheme, was not a loss likely to make him blow his brains out.

  Nevertheless Mr. Mathews was a good deal vexed, and greatly as he admired, and devotedly as he was attached to his grandson, he had very serious thoughts of telling him when he returned from London that he must be more careful for the future, and not count his chickens so very decidedly before they were hatched. Nor was he altogether without some slight hope that this beloved grandson might restore to him at least a portion of the hundred pounds advanced for the purpose of running away with the heiress.

  But all these hopes and intentions were at once knocked to atoms by the receipt of the following letter, signed with the name of Stephen Cornington, but written with so unsteady a hand as would have made it impossible to recognize the writing, if the document had not been signed —

  “MY BELOVED GRANDFATHER, — The tremendous shock I have received from hearing of the treacherous falsehood of my once adored Emily, has been too much for my fortitude — too much for my strength both of body and mind! I am now lying dangerously ill at a small lodging which I took to save expense on my arrival in London. Heaven only knows what may be the final result of my present illness! I suffer greatly, and I sometimes fear that I shall lose my reason. My poor head wanders so, that I could not, if my life depended upon it, recollect the name of the street where I am lodging; but, if I die, you will hear of it, for I have written your name and address very distinctly in my pocket-book, and the people of the house will be sure to find it. But if it should please Heaven to give me strength to recover from this great calamity, I shall use my returning health for the purpose of once more embracing my dearest, dearest parent!

  “One great source of suffering to me at this moment is the fear that the expenses of my illness may cat away the hundred pounds which you so generously bestowed upon me, alas! for a far different purpose. Adieu then, my beloved grandfather! If my life is spared, my only consolation for all I have suffered will be found in your tenderness. I think if I do live to return to you, that you will find me a good deal altered. I am looking much older than I did, and I could not help fancying as I got a glimpse at my own face in the glass yesterday, that my resemblance to you becomes more striking every day. God bless you, my beloved grandfather! It is impossible for me to tell you more at present; but the medical man who attends me says that in a very short time he shall be able to judge what the result of this illness may be. If an early death is indeed to be my fate, it would be a great and soothing consolation to me if I could die in your arms; and this idea has taken such hold upon me that I have told my doctor to send an express for you if he should think my end approaching. If you should receive this, I know that you will hasten to me; but if it should be otherwise, if my young life should not be thus prematurely cut short, be very sure that in that ease I shall hasten to you; for I am, and to my last sigh I ever shall be, your devotedly attached grandson, “STEPHEN CORNINGTON.”

  Poor Mr. Mathews was very strongly affected by the perusal of this letter, and his first impulse was to set off immediately for London, but a moment’s reflection convinced him that the attempt to find this beloved grandson with no more specific mode of describing him than by saying he was very like himself, was not likely to answer, or at least not without considerable delay; and the poor gentleman therefore, was obliged to submit to a very painful slate of suspense; nor could he resist the temptation of asking for the consolation of sympathy from his wife, although he neither did nor could expect that she should share, or even understand the intense anxiety from which he was suffering. “She has never known what it was to be a parent!” thought he; “yet nevertheless I am sure she must pity me!”

  And with this very natural hope he invited her, as soon as breakfast was over, to go with him for a few minutes into the drawing-room as he had some sad news that he wished to communicate. Mrs. Mathews instantly obeyed, and her husband confidentially put the melancholy letter he had received into her hands.

  She read it with great decorum, and said, as she returned it to him, “You must not suffer yourself to be too much alarmed by this, Mr. Mathews. Young people are often very ill one day, you know, and quite well the next.”

  But Mrs. Mathews did not content herself by reading the letter once; she began it again at the first line, and again read it through very deliberately to the last.

  “Poor young man!” she said, as she then returned it to her husband. “It really is very melancholy! Were you aware, Mr. Mathews, of his having been so strongly attached to Miss Steyton?”

  “Oh dear, yes! my dear love,” was the ready reply. “My poor Stephen has, I really believe, no secrets from his grandfather, and it is this sort of unbounded confidence on his part which has so much endeared him to me!”

  “That is very natural, certainly,” replied Mrs. Mathews. “I often thought he seemed to admire her very much, but I had no idea he was so deeply attached.”

  “You don’t know Stephen as well as I do,” replied Mr. Mathews, wiping his eyes. “His attachments are all deep; I have observed it from the very first, and this worthless girl had the wickedness to persuade him that she returned his affection. But it is now quite evident that she only did this as a means of concealing her real attachment. Her elopement with young Price shows plainly enough that she never really cared a farthing either for young Otterborne, or my poor Stephen. Take my word for it, she has fooled them both.”

  “But what does he mean about your giving him a hundred pounds, Mr. Mathews?” said she.

  “Dear me, I quite forgot that he mentioned that, poor fellow! It was quite a mistake of mine, showing you that, my dear, so you must never take any notice of it, if you please But the truth is, that she made him believe that she wanted to run away with him; and seeing how very much in love he was, my dear Mary, and knowing what a noble fortune she was to have, I could not bear that he should lose her for want of a hundred pounds. But I shall soon be able to save it again one way or another, so do not let us talk any more about that.”

  “You shall never hear of it again from me,” she replied, in a tone of good humour that greatly comforted him; and truly conscious that his wife was not only a liberal-minded but very clever woman, he wisely determined to rest his thoughts upon her comfortable assurance that young people did very often recover from severe illnesses.

  CHAPTER XLIX.

  THERE was certainly a considerable mixture of triumph in the tone of voice with which Mrs. Mathews addressed her friend the priest, when, in compliance with her special invitation, he paid her an early visit on the following morning — a visit so early as not to interfere with her promise of accompanying Janet to the Manor-house.

  “Let your hair grow, Sir Priest!” she said; “and let me submit to the tonsure. All that fine perspicuity of mind that you were so eloquently describing to me the other day, as part and parcel of your profession, belongs to me, but not to you.” And, in reply to his entreaty that she would be pleased to explain her m
eaning, she said:

  “I shall be exceedingly well pleased to explain it, though in doing so I too must make a confession; and whether you give me absolution or not, I shall at least have the satisfaction of proving to you that I am much better fitted than your reverence to receive confessions, or, at any rate, of comprehending them. Do you remember the very agitated state of mind in which you appeared before me, when you fancied you had made a discovery very important to our friend, Herbert Otterborne?

  “Yes, certainly, I remember it,” replied Mr. Cuthbridge; “and it is quite necessary that I should do so, in order to justify myself, cither in your opinion or my own, for having made to you such a disclosure as I did.”

  “And what shall you think of the sagacity of an old lady who, notwithstanding your agitation and your solemnity, ventured in her heart to disbelieve every syllable of the confession which you very nearly thought ought to be more sacred than the honour and happiness of such a man as Herbert Otterborne?”

  “You disbelieved it?” he exclaimed; “then, why did you not tell me so at the time?”

  “Because I thought, whatever your reverence might do, that NOTHING ought to be put in competition with the honour and happiness of Herbert. There was at least a possibility that the confession you had listened to, was a true confession; and as I was therefore bound to act as if I believed it, it would not have been wisdom to begin by declaring my conviction that it was false. I, therefore, obeyed your behest, in the only essential part of it, namely, in preventing the immediate marriage of our friend Herbert; my conviction becoming stronger with every passing moment, that your villainous penitent had confessed a sin that had never been committed, because he shrewdly guessed that you would deem it your duty in some way or other to prevent the marriage of Otterborne with the heiress, who he fully intended to marry himself.”

  “And you have summoned me for the purpose of announcing that your suspicion was correct?” said Mr Cuthbridge.

  “Exactly so,” was her reply.

  “Will you go further? Will you tell me how you have discovered this?” said he.

  “Most assuredly I will, and with very particular satisfaction, both to do honour to my own discernment, and to exonerate the bride of our worthy young neighbour, William Price, from the odium which this precious grandson has cast upon her.”

  Her narrative was a very short one; but so perfectly satisfactory, that, priest and Jesuit as he was, Mr. Cuthbridge declared he could find no flaw in it.

  Having performed this act of justice, and enjoyed the pleasant triumph which accompanied it, Mrs. Mathews confessed that nothing but her impatience to do herself honour had induced her to request his calling upon her just then, as she had promised to make her first visit to the widowed Lady Otterborne before the morning was over.

  On receiving this hint, the librarian of Proctor Castle took his leave, a good deal amused at perceiving how much more skilful a confessor his old Protestant friend was, than himself.

  The meeting between Lady Otterborne and Mrs. Mathews was a very happy one; and paradoxical as it may seem to say so, it would perhaps have been more unembarrassed in its enjoyment had the happiness of it been less sensibly felt on both sides. But the embarrassment soon went off’ and the happiness remained.

  That it was so, might be greatly attributed to the sort of resolute frankness with which Lady Otterborne at once alluded to her changed position.

  “My dear son has told you how things stand with us, Mrs. Mathews,” said she, as soon as they were fairly seated side by side upon the sofa. “It was my wish, as well as his, that he should do so. We shall certainly neither have the wish nor the power of concealing from any of our neighbours, the very notorious fact that we can no longer hold the station among them which we have been used to occupy But this fact docs not require any personal communication from us, in order to make it perfectly well known arid understood. But with you the case is different. From babyhood to manhood, you have been one of Herbert’s most dearly valued friends; and I have often thought that there was no one in the whole neighbourhood, either male or female, young or old, who understood and appreciated him as thoroughly as you have done.”

  “You pay me no light compliment in saying so,” replied Mrs. Mathews; “but, nevertheless, I accept it without ceremony, for—”

  “For you know you deserve it,” said Lady Otterborne, affectionately taking her hand.

  “Perhaps it is merely accident which has led an old woman and a young man to be such fast friends,” said Mrs. Mathews. “Had we not both been gardeners, or had we not both been bookworms, we might have gone on making bows and courtesies to each other as long as we both did live.”

  “Nor is your kindness to my dear son the only claim you have on my gratitude, my dear Mrs. Mathews. I owe you much, very much, for having so often indulged me with the society of your Janet. She has been a great comfort to me! — You have indeed, my dear child!” she added, taking the hand of Janet, who was seated close beside her, and pressing it fondly to her lips; “I never guessed how much I should owe to your good father, when I used to scold him for being too theoretical and visionary. Some of his theories, Janet, are decidedly realised in you. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Mathews?”

  If anything could at that moment have bound both Mrs. Mathews and her adopted daughter more closely to Lady Otterborne, it was this allusion to her lang-syne friendship to “John Anderson.” It made them feel, more than anything else could possibly have done, that they had something like a prescriptive right to draw nearer to her in her present altered condition than any one else among her neighbours. And that her condition was altered, she had taken no pains to conceal.

  All the servants in the house had been paid, and dismissed, — excepting Mrs. Morris, who had been Lady Otterborne’s personal attendant for the last fifteen years.

  Her wages were not extravagantly high, for Lady Otterborne had never been extravagant in any way; but nevertheless her stipend was about three times as much as she now intended to pay to any servant. The difficulties which must attend such a change in her establishment as Lady Otterborne contemplated, were wonderfully lessened by the manner in which she sat about achieving it. The machinery was very simple, and therefore the less likely to be deranged, and her first business-like conversation with Mrs. Morris may be quoted as a fair sample of it, The mistress and maid being tête-à-tête, the former said, —

  “I know you must be aware, dear Morris, that my situation is greatly changed, and that it will be therefore necessary for me to part with you?”

  “Necessary, my lady!” was the good woman’s almost terrified reply; and there she stopped.

  “My good Morris, I should think that by this time every servant in the house must be aware that it is necessary to part with them all: the doing so will be more painful, I assure you, than any of the other changes which we shall be obliged to make. Our embarrassments are, I believe, chiefly owing to the dangerous habit of letting accounts go running on without examination; and Sir Herbert is so much convinced of this, that the first thing he did upon succeeding to the property, was to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the real state of his affairs. The result of this, Morris, gives hope for the future; provided that we rigorously abstain from expense at present.

  And this, Morris, we are determined to do. I should wish you to state this to all the servants. When they all understand what we are about, they will feel that our parting with them is not a matter of choice, but of necessity.”

  On this occasion, Mrs. Morris had not answered a single word. It might be that she did not feel herself capable of speaking. But the lady’s bidding was done; and before sunset, every servant in the house knew that they were dismissed.

  When Morris attended her lady on the following morning, she displayed a striking instance of the force of example; for instead of shaking in every limb, with streaming eyes and a faltering tongue, she looked almost as quietly composed as Lady Otterborne herself.

  She began
by giving a very business-like account of the execution of her commission, and by stating the hopes of all the individuals about to depart, that her ladyship would be pleased to say a good word for them in the way of character.

  And then Mrs. Morris, with the same steady demeanour, asked if her ladyship would be kind enough to hear her speak one little word about her own concerns.

  “Sit down then, Morris,” said Lady Otterborne, “and let me hear if there is anything that I can do for you.”

  “Oh, yes, my lady!” she replied; “but it is so much that I am almost afraid to ask it, — for if you refuse I do not know what is to become of me.”

  “I am sure, my dear Morris, that you cannot really doubt my wish to serve you. What is it you have got in your head?”

  “Why first, my lady, I want you, if you please, to remember how the last fifteen years of my life have been spent.”

  “They have been spent, Morris, in most faithful and affectionate service to me,” was the reply.

  “No, my lady! that is not what I want at all. I want to remind your ladyship, if I might be so bold, that I have given up all the friends and relations that I had in the world, — because if I had not I must have left your ladyship, for my people all lived a great way off, in North Wales; and now my mother and father are both dead, and my only sister has got such a house-full of children that I could not stand it, my lady.”

  “But, my good Morris, you must not talk as if you were an old woman, for you are but a year or two older than I am; and you are quite as capable of being a valuable servant now as ever you were.”

  “No, Lady Otterborne, I am not!” replied poor Morris, very solemnly, “I am conscious that I can never again be a valuable servant to any lady but you.”

  “But, my dear good woman, I have no longer the power of paying your wages; and you have known too well what I have suffered from debts, Morris, to wish me to begin the system again?” said her mistress, gravely.