Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  “Not to save my life, my lady! — No! I do not think I would be the means of your doing it, if it was to save my life!” replied Morris, fervently. “It is not that which I would ask, if I dared to do it.”

  “Dared!” returned Lady Otterborne, smiling; “you did not use to be so very much afraid of me. What is it you would have me do, Morris?”

  “It is no trifle, my lady, I -won’t say it is,” returned Morris; “I want both you and my young master to give me a writing, promising that you will never turn me out of your house to work for my bread as long as you have got bread to feed me, without hurting yourselves. As to wages, that is no object to me whatever; I have got three hundred pounds upon good security, at four per cent., — and if you will pay me eight pounds a year (which is what you would give a maid-of-all-work), that would make twenty; and that is more than I ever spend in clothes, my lady.”

  “Maid-of-all-work, Morris! Are you fit for a maid-of-all-work?” said Lady Otterborne, shaking her head.

  “Yes, my lady, more fit than almost anybody I know; for, in the first place, I don’t remember that I ever had a day’s illness in my life, and in the next, I am proud to say that I think I know a little of everything.”

  Lady Otterborne longed to say yes; but she still fancied that it was her duty to say no, till it suddenly occurred to Morris that her young master should be called in to give his opinion on the subject, — and the question was then very speedily settled in the most rational manner possible; for he did give her exactly such a promise as she had asked for, which it was very clearly evident satisfied every wish of her affectionate heart; while Lady Otterborne, on her side, was equally satisfied by Herbert’s very clear statement of his affairs as they actually stood, and which statement assuredly was sad enough; yet nevertheless it showed clearly that if the scheme he had laid down were adhered to, the seven years of Morris’s services might be remunerated at the end of it, without any danger of again involving the estate.

  So Mrs. Morris was immediately installed as maid-of-all-work, at a salary of eight pounds per annum; and had she been installed as empress of the whole earth she could not have been a happier or more triumphant woman.

  When Mrs. Mathews and Janet reached the Manor-house they found the hall door open, but no human being was visible. The old house-dog lay stretched, as usual, upon a mat before the billiard-room door; but Janet having become his intimate acquaintance, he suffered her and her friend to pass up the great staircase unchallenged. Fortunately Janet was not only well acquainted with the dog, but with the house also, and she therefore led the way without difficulty to Lady Otterborne’s dressing-room, — which was more than Mrs. Mathews could have done, for she had never been in it before.

  There was, however, something’ not only sad, but very strange in the stillness of a mansion which heretofore had been rather remarkable for a profusion of domestics. But all this was speedily forgotten; and before the two ladies had to retrace their steps through the silent mansion, they had both absolutely forgotten that anything like misfortune had befallen the family.

  CHAPTER L.

  HERBERT was not with his mother when the expected guests entered her dressing-room; for Herbert had, to say truth, a good deal of business to attend to; and at the moment Mrs. Mathews and Janet crossed the hall, he was shut into the great drawing-room, at the upper end of it, engaged in a most interesting tête-à-tête with Mrs. Morris, concerning the best, the easiest, and the safest way of shutting up all the largest and most splendid apartments.

  Herbert himself was of opinion that the best way would be to fasten all the windows completely, and plaster them up on the outside. But to this Mrs. Morris objected, — assuring him that nothing was so likely to do the house permanent injury as the total exclusion of air; and so eloquently and so reasonably did she descant upon this theme, that the young man gave way; but it was only upon condition that the doors were never to be left open.

  “The rooms we are to live in, Morris,” said he, “must be made very comfortable; but don’t let my mother ever look into any of the others.”

  And this arrangement was very fully understood and agreed to.

  And truly poor Herbert found it was a very pleasant thing to have a Mrs. Morris to consult; for her practical little notions were of immense utility in bringing his grand general design into execution; and she made him perfectly well understand how the carpets were to be managed, and how the curtains were to be disposed of, and how, with her own hands, she meant to cover up everything that was gilt, so that at the end of seven years “my lady” should find everything looking a deal better than it did now.

  It certainly would have been a very different thing if Sir Herbert had been left to his own devices on all such subjects; but as the new maid-of-all-work managed it, a bright gleam of hope, distant as it was, seemed more or less to rest upon every careful contrivance that she pointed out to him; and the three hours which followed his tête-à-tête breakfast with his mother were very far from being painful hours.

  But when these three hours were past, he began rather frequently to look at his watch. But this had not continued long before Morris perceived it, and very naturally mistaking the cause of his evident impatience, she said. “Oh! Master Herbert, I am quite sure that I am tiring you out with my long histories about carpets and curtains! What an old fool I must be to go on so, to be sure!”

  “But you have not tired me, Morris!” exclaimed Sir Herbert, very earnestly; “on the contrary, all you have been saying has interested me so much as to make me almost forget that Mrs. Mathews promised to call on my mother this morning, and the time she named has been passed this half hour.”

  “Company coming to call on my lady this morning?” cried poor Morris, looking greatly dismayed; “and, oh dear Sir Herbert! who was there to let them in?”

  “Nobody, Morris, that is quite certain. But surely if they had come, we must have heard them?”

  “And the dog, and all! Oh! for certain, if they had come, we must have heard them,” repeated Morris,. — hurrying out, however, with a look of great alarm, to ascertain whether any stray guests were seeking admittance.

  And Sir Herbert hurried out, too; but recollecting that one at least of the expected ladies knew how to find her way to his mother’s dressing-room, he hastened hither himself, and made the three he found there laugh heartily by his description of Mrs. Morris’s dismay at the idea that “company” had to find their way to “my lady” without being announced.

  Considering the situation of his affairs, the statement may appear rather difficult to believe, yet nevertheless it is perfectly true, that Sir Herbert Otterborne had never in his life passed an hour of such perfect and such conscious enjoyment as that which now followed his entrance to his mother’s dressing room.

  A multitude of painful feelings from a multitude of inevitable sources had been so constantly wont to assail him during by far the greater portion of his past life, that the suddenly feeling himself free from them all gave a sensation of Men être to his existence that he was himself at a loss to understand.

  For he knew he was very poor, and, what was worse still, he knew that his dear delicate mother was very poor likewise. Moreover he knew, that though he had himself rarely spent a needless shilling, he was, at the head of the Otterborne family, deeply in debt, and that the only possible way by which he could ever hope to be free from it, was to be found in such rigid economy as must perforce involve the necessity of very great privation to that dearly-loved and long-suffering mother.

  And how could he ever dare to feel pleasure from looking in the sweet, innocent, happy young face of Janet?

  It does seem strange that he could dare to do so; yet here it was that lay the great secret of this unspeakable happiness. From the hour he had first seen her to the present he had not only never dared to look at her, but most truly and literally he had never dared to think of her — for, did not every look and every thought tend to convince him that “he of womankind could
love but her alone?” And could he confess this deep conviction to himself, without confessing at the same time that he was a hypocrite and a deceiver? And yet if there was a man in the world who would readily have had his right-hand cut off than be either, it was Herbert Otterborne.

  But the web that entangled him was one from which there was no escape, save by plunging into deeper misery still; for deep, desperately deep, and desperately strong, as was his love of the innocent, unconscious Janet Anderson, his watchful care of his admirable mother seemed to be something deeper and Stronger still.

  In telling himself, at early morn and dewy eve (as he had been constantly doing for several months past), that he must live and die Without ever letting Janet know that he loved her, he only doomed himself to a miserable and heartless existence, and this he thought he could bear. But did he refuse to accept the offered hand of Emily Steyton, his punishment would be the seeing his mother exposed to such difficulties and anxiety as he truly believed might shorten her precious life. And this he could not bear.

  But NOW, though there was no more chance of his marrying Janet for many, many years to come than of his becoming owner of a diamond mine, he still felt himself to be the happiest of men.

  And, in a modified degree, the sensations of the three ladies he found in his mother’s dressing-room were very like his own. They were, in short, all relieved from that heaviest of all afflictions — the consciousness that, if they did exactly what they thought right, they were sure to be unhappy; and that if they yielded for a moment to any feeling of their hearts, they were sure to be wrong.

  Had it not been for this blessed relief, it is certainly possible that Sir Herbert Otterborne and his mother, and their sympathising friends likewise, might not have found so much more of amusement than of woe in discussing all the details of the economical projects by the aid of which they hoped to achieve so much.

  But Mrs. Matthews, as she scrutinised the countenance of Sir Herbert, saw nothing in the newly-awakened energy which she read there which looked in any degree like an intention of amusing himself by idle experiments. During this first strangely happy meeting, and during many others which followed, he explained to her both his objects and the means by which he hoped to attain them; and she very soon felt certain that, if it was possible under the circumstances to redeem the estate, the estate would be redeemed.

  That there was a recent, and a still unacknowledged, tie between the Manor-house and the Grange, was made very evident by the constant intercourse which was now established between them. The “Den” seemed almost forsaken; for Mrs. Matthews soon perceived so clearly that she was most particularly useful at the Manor-house, that it would have rested like a sin on her conscience had she failed to go there daily. It might be that part of this usefulness consisted in her chaperoning Janet thither; for Sir Herbert being no longer an engaged man, Janet’s passing a considerable portion of every day at his house might have been considered objectionable, had not the daily visit of Mrs. Mathews to the widow explained it.

  But excepting these most kind and welcome visits from these her nearest neighbours, Lady Otterborne saw no one.

  The terrible manner of her husband’s death, and the perfectly well-known confusion in which he had left his affairs, rendered it perfectly natural that one whose delicate health had so long kept her out of general society, should now be leading very nearly the life of a hermit; and no one guessed, no, not one, that now, for the first time since her marriage, Lady Otterborne was leading a very happy and a very cheerful life.

  Herbert had found means of convincing their maid-of-all-work, that if she insisted upon performing the duties of a cook, in addition to those of lady’s maid, housekeeper, and housemaid, it was just possible that she might not find time for all — though she was extremely well inclined to “add the night unto the day;” and therefore she had at length consented, though very reluctantly, to admit this very necessary auxiliary.

  When this was done, and Herbert’s man-of-all-work established in his somewhat heterogeneous functions, a more snugly comfortable domestic arrangement has been seldom seen than that which was established in the half-dozen rooms which Mrs. Morris had consented to leave open for use in the noble old Manor-house.

  But while these minor regulations were deliberately arranged and strictly acted upon within the mansion, the weightier matters without were equally well attended to.

  It is a vastly true saying, that no man knows what he can do till he has been tried.

  Neither himself or the mother who bore him had the least idea that Herbert was blest with a sort of innate financial capacity of the most active and accurate kind; and without this he certainly never would have achieved what he did achieve.

  He soon found that, although his tenants would many of them have been well pleased to accommodate him in the same style that they had accommodated his father, they were willing enough to agree to some improved terms, without any such ruinous conditions; and this in a way that convinced him, in more eases than one, that some of the best farms were underlet — and as the leases were all short, this was rather an important discovery But on the other hand he found that many tradesmen who had long standing bills against the family, were not to be so easily dealt with as he had expected.

  In no case, however, did the spendthrift’s heir ever plead that the credit had been given to his father and not to him. Upon one or two occasions, when he had been politely reminded of gambling debts which his “good father had forgotten to provide for,” he very distinctly answered that he recognised in such debts no claim upon himself; and all such claims therefore speedily died a natural death. But to every tradesman who had furnished his father’s family during his life, he gave an immediate written assurance that his death would be no impediment to their being paid.

  Among the most troublesome of these was Minny’s father, — who, within a week after he had received Sir Herbert’s written acknowledgment of the debt, declared that if he was not paid immediately, he would, upon the strength of that acknowledgment, treat him exactly as he had treated his father.

  Had a reasonable portion of time been allowed him, Sir Herbert could have easily found the funds necessary by the sale of timber. But it was evident that his creditor was not a man to be trifled with; and the sale of some of the old family plate, instead, was the only resource which suggested itself.

  Neither on this subject nor on any other had he any concealments from his mother, and he scrupled not to tell her immediately of the claim, of the threats which accompanied it, and of the means which he had thought of as the best way of getting rid of it.

  Lady Otterborne’s delicate cheek flushed a little, as she listened to him.

  “Your old plate, dearest Herbert?” said she. “Is this, indeed, necessary?”

  “I fear it is, mother! But what matters it?” he added, cheerfully; “there are so many of the heaviest articles which we have never been in the habit of using, or even of seeing, that we shall never miss them. And I really know not where else to look for the money.”

  “Have you been paid, dearest, for the two carriages? — and for all the horses, and harness, and all the rest of it?”

  “Alas! yes,” he replied; “the paying off all the servants took a much larger sum than I expected, — for they were nearly all in arrears. And all that remained was all too little, dear mother, to pay the interest due upon that last mortgage.”

  “It is that last mortgage which has crippled us, dear Herbert!” said his mother, shaking her head rather disconsolately. He held up his finger to her in a threatening attitude, —

  “Remember, mother, I have told you already, that if you ever look grave about money-matters I shall set off instantly and endeavour to find another heiress, — and it may be that she will not turn out such a nice run-away girl as my beauteous Emily!”

  “Spare me the heiress, Herbert!” she replied, “and I will give you up the soup-tureens, the tankards, the hunting-cups, the venison-dishes, and all the r
est of it, without a murmur.”

  “There’s a good mother,” said Herbert, gaily. “Our gentle neighbour, Mr. Stokes, shall not long have the honour of being one of our creditors. I will lose no time about it, I promise you. Morris has got the keys, I suppose?”

  “Yes, that is part of her business, you know, as maid-of-all-work. But stay Herbert! — stay one minute. I know it will half break her heart to take out the old things to be sold. Don’t you think that you and I could do it? I know perfectly well where the chests are kept.”

  “And so do I too, mother, and we will ransack them together. Shall I ring?”

  “No, Herbert! I think you had better not ring,” said his mother, laughing, “for I know she is exceedingly busy in sweeping and dusting, and I know also that she hates to appear before my ladyship in her all-work costume. I daresay she has got all the keys in her pocket; and I am almost sure you will find her on the stairs.”

  Herbert vanished, — and re-appeared again in a moment, with a very magnificent bunch of many-sized keys in his hand.

  “Give them to me, Herbert! I do not imagine that I know them all, but I know several,” said Lady Otterborne, receiving the keys from the hand of her son.

  She looked at them for a moment, and then suddenly rising, she said, —

  “Wait for me one moment, Herbert, and I will return to you,” — and she glided rapidly out of the room as she spoke, closing the door after her.

  Her absence had been just long enough to make her son wonder a little as to the cause of it, when she re-appeared with an open casket in her hand.

  “How dull have we both been never to think of this resource before!” said she, presenting the glittering treasure to him.

  “Your diamonds! my dearest mother! Oh, no! I cannot consent to sell your jewels!”

  “Then I am very happy to tell you that I can, you silly boy,” she replied, “and moreover, young gentleman, I WILL! I do not know, dear Herbert, that it is by any means likely we should soon want our tureens and our venison dishes, but I certainly do please myself sometimes by thinking that it is possible we may see them in use again some day or other. But of these diamonds, no! — There is neither hope nor wish in my heart that they ever should be useful to me again.”