Chapter Thirteen.
Sophia in the Village.
Deerbrook was not a place where practical affairs could be long kept secret, even where the best reasons for secrecy existed. About Hester’s engagement there was no reason whatever for concealment; and it was accordingly made known to every one in Deerbrook in the course of the next day.—Margaret shut herself up with Maria before breakfast, and enjoyed an hour of hearty sympathy from her, in the first place. As they were both aware that this communication was a little out of order,—Mr and Mrs Grey having a clear title to the earliest information,—Maria had to be discreet for nearly three hours—till she heard the news from another quarter.
Immediately after breakfast, Mr Hope called on Mr Grey at the office, and informed him. Mr Grey stepped home, and found Margaret enlightening his wife. Sophia was next called in, while Morris was closeted with her young ladies. Sophia burst breathless into the summer-house to tell Miss Young, which she did in whispers so loud as to be overheard by the children. Matilda immediately found she had left her slate-pencil behind her, and ran into the house to give her mamma the news, just at the moment that Mr Grey was relating it to his partner in the office. On returning, Sophia found her mother putting on her bonnet, having remembered that it was quite time she should be stepping across the way to hear how poor Mrs Enderby was, after the thunder-storm of three days ago. This reminded Sophia that she ought to be inquiring about the worsteds which Mrs Howell must have got down from London by this time, to finish Mrs Grey’s rug. Mrs Grey could not trust her eyes to match shades of worsteds; and Sophia now set out with great alacrity to oblige her mother by doing it for her. On the way she met Dr Levitt, about to enter the house of a sick parishioner. Dr Levitt hoped all at home were well. All very well, indeed, Sophia was obliged to him. Her only fear was that the excitement of present circumstances might be too much for mamma. Mamma was so very much attached to cousin Hester, and it would be such a delightful thing to have her settled beside them! Perhaps Dr Levitt had not heard that Hester and Mr Hope were going to be married. No, indeed, he had not. He wondered his friend Hope had not told him of his good fortune, of which he heartily wished him joy. How long had this happy affair been settled? Not long, he fancied? Not very long; and perhaps Mr Hope did not consider that it was quite made public yet: but Sophia thought that Dr Levitt ought to know. Dr Levitt thanked her, and said he would try and find Hope in the course of the morning, to congratulate him; and he and Mrs Levitt would give themselves the pleasure of calling on the ladies, very shortly.
“Ritson, how is your wife?” said Sophia, crossing over to speak to a labourer who was on his way up the street.
“A deal better, Miss. She’s coming about right nicely!”
“Ah! that is Mr Hope’s doing. He attends her, of course.”
“Oh, yes, Miss; he’s done her a sight o’ good.”
“Ah! so he always does: but Ritson, if he should not be able to attend to her quite so closely as usual, just now, you will excuse it, when you hear how it is.”
“Lord, Miss! the wonder is that he has come at all, so ill as he has been hisself.”
“I don’t mean that: you will soon see him very well now. He is going to be married, Ritson—”
“What, is he? Well—”
“To my cousin, Miss Ibbotson. He will be more at our house, you know, than anywhere else.” And with a wink which was a very good miniature of her mother’s Sophia passed on, leaving Ritson to bless Mr Hope and the pretty young lady.
She cast a glance into the butcher’s shop as she arrived opposite to it; and her heart leaped up when she saw Mrs James, the lawyer’s wife, watching the weighing of a loin of veal.
“You will excuse my interrupting you, Mrs James,” said she, from the threshold of the shop: “but we are anxious to know whether Mr James thinks Mrs Enderby really altered of late. We saw him go in last week, and we heard it was to make an alteration in her will.”
“I often wonder how things get abroad,” said Mrs James, “My husband makes such a particular point of never speaking of such affairs; and I am sure no one ever hears them from me.”
“I believe Mrs Enderby told mamma that about the will herself.”
“Well, that is as she pleases, of course,” said Mrs James, smiling. “What is the weight with the kidney, Mr Jones?”
“We should like so to know,” resumed Sophia, “whether Mr James considers Mrs Enderby much altered of late.”
“I should think you would be better able to judge than he, Miss Grey; I believe you see her ten times to his once.”
“That is the very reason: we see her so often, that a gradual change would be less likely to strike us.”
“Mr Hope will give you satisfaction: he must be a better judge than any of us.”
“Oh, yes; but we cannot expect him to have eyes for any person but one, at present, you know.”
“Oh, so he is going to marry Deborah Giles, after all?”
“Deborah Giles!”
“Yes; was he not said to be engaged to her, some time ago?”
“Deborah Giles! the boatman’s daughter! I declare I never heard of such a place as this for gossip! Why, Deborah Giles can barely read and write; and she is beneath Mr Hope in every way. I do not believe he ever spoke to her in his life.”
“Oh, well; I do not pretend to know. I heard something about it. Eleven and threepence. Can you change a sovereign, Mr Jones? And, pray, send home the chops immediately.”
“It is my cousin, Miss Ibbotson, that Mr Hope is engaged to,” said Sophia, unable to refrain from disclosures which she yet saw were not cared for:— “the beautiful Miss Ibbotson, you know.”
“Indeed: I am sure somebody said it was Deborah Giles. Then you think, Mr Jones, we may depend upon you for game when the season begins?”
Mr Jones seemed more interested in the news than his customer; he wished Mr Hope all good luck with his pretty lady.
Sophia thought herself fortunate when she saw Mr Enderby turn out of the toy-shop with his youngest nephew, a round-faced boy, still in petticoats, perched upon his shoulder. Mr Enderby bowed, but did not seem to heed her call: he jumped through the turnstile, and proceeded to canter along the church lane amidst the glee of the child so rapidly, that Sophia was obliged to give up the hope of being the first to tell him the news. It was very provoking: she should have liked to see how he would look.
She was sure of a delighted listener in Mrs Howell, to whom no communication ever came amiss: but there was a condition to Mrs Howell’s listening—that she should be allowed to tell her own news first. When she found that Sophia wanted to match some worsteds, she and her shop-woman exchanged sympathetic glances—Mrs Howell sighing, with her head on the right side, and Miss Miskin groaning, with her head on the left side.
“Are you ill, Mrs Howell?” asked Sophia.
“It shook me a little, I confess, ma’am, hearing that you wanted worsteds. We have no relief, ma’am, from ladies wanting worsteds.”
“No relief, day or night,” added Miss Miskin.
“Day or night! Surely you do not sell worsteds in the night-time?” said Sophia.
“Not sell them, ma’am; only match them. The matching them is the trial, I assure you. If you could only hear my agent, ma’am—the things he has to tell about people in my situation—how they are going mad, all over the country, with incessantly matching of worsteds, now that that kind of work is all the fashion. And nothing more likely, ma’am, for there is no getting one’s natural rest. I am for ever matching of worsteds in my dreams; and when I wake, I seem to have had no rest: and, as you see, directly after breakfast, ladies come for worsteds.”
“And Miss Anderson’s messenger left a whole bundle of skeins to be matched for her young ladies, as early as eight this morning,” declared Miss Miskin: “and so we go on.”
“It will not be for long, I dare say, Mrs Howell. It is a fashionable kind of work, that we may soon grow tired of.”
“Dear me, ma’am, think how long former generations went on with it! Think of our grandmothers’ work, ma’am, and how we are treading in their steps. We have the beautifulest patterns now, I assure you. Miss Miskin will confirm that we sold one, last week, the very day we had it—the interior of Abbotsford, with Sir Walter, and the furniture, and the dogs, just like life, I assure you.”
“That was beautiful,” said Miss Miskin, “but not to compare—”
“Oh, dear, no! not to compare, Miss Grey, with one that we were just allowed the sight of—not a mere pattern, but a finished specimen—and I never saw anything so pathetic.—I declare I was quite affected, and so was Miss Miskin. It was ‘By the Rivers of Babylon,’ most sweetly done! There were the harps all in cross-stitch, ma’am, and the willows all in tent-stitch—I never saw anything so touching.”
“I don’t think mamma will trouble you for many more worsteds for some time to come, Mrs Howell. When there is going to be a wedding in the family, there is not much time for fancy-work, you know.”
“Dear me, a wedding!” smiled Mrs Howell.
“A wedding! Only think!” simpered Miss Miskin.
“Yes: Mr Hope and my cousin Hester are going to be married. I am sure they will have your best wishes, Mrs Howell?”
“That they will, ma’am, as I shall make a point of telling Mr Hope. But Miss Grey, I should think it probable that your mamma may think of working a drawing-room screen, or perhaps a set of rugs, for the young folks; and I assure you, she will see no such patterns anywhere as my agent sends down to me; as I have no doubt you will tell her. And pray, ma’am, where are Mr Hope and his lady to live? I hope they have pleased their fancy with a house?”
“That point is not settled yet. It is a thing which requires some consideration, you know.”
“Oh, dear, ma’am! to be sure it does: but I did not mean to be impertinent in asking, I am sure. Only you mentioned making wedding-clothes, Miss Grey.”
“I did not mean that we have exactly set about all that yet. I was only looking forward to it.”
“And very right too, ma’am. My poor dear Howell used to say so to me, every time he found so much difficulty in inducing me to listen to future projects—about the happy day, you know, ma’am. He was always for looking forward upon principle, dear soul! as you say, ma’am. That is the very brown, ma’am—no doubt of it. Only two skeins, ma’am?”
Here ended Sophia’s pleasures in this kind. She could not summon courage to face Mrs Plumstead, without knowing what was the mood of the day; and the half-door of the little stationery shop was closed, and no face was visible within. All her father’s household, and all whom she had told, were as busy as herself; so that by the time she walked down the street again, nobody remained to be informed. She could only go home, put off her bonnet, and sit with her mother, watching who would call, and planning the external arrangements which constitute the whole interest of a wedding to narrow minds and apathetic hearts.
No one in Deerbrook enjoyed the news more than Mr Enderby. When he evaded Sophia in the street, he little knew what pleasure she had it in her power to afford him. It was only deferred for a few minutes, however; for, on his returning his little nephew to mamma’s side, he found his mother and sister talking the matter over. Mrs Grey’s visit to Mrs Enderby had been unusually short, as she could not, on so busy a day, spare much time to one person. The moment she was gone, the old lady rang for her calash and shawl, and prepared to cross the way, telling the news meanwhile to her maid Phoebe. It was a disappointment to find Mrs Rowland already informed: but then came Philip, ignorant and unconscious as could be desired.
The extreme graciousness of his sister guided him in his guess when he was desired to say who was going to be married; but there was a trembling heart beneath his light speech. It was more difficult to disguise his joy when he heard the truth. He carried it off by romping with the child, who owed several rides from corner to corner of the room to the fact that Mr Hope was going to be married to Hester.
“I am delighted to see Philip take it in this way,” observed Mrs Rowland.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” cried Mrs Enderby; “but I believe I should not have said so if you had not. I was afraid it might be a sad disappointment to poor Philip; and this prevented my saying quite so much as I should have done to Mrs Grey. Now I find it is all right, I shall just call in, and express myself more warmly on my way home.”
“I beg Philip’s pardon, I am sure,” said Mrs Rowland, “for supposing for a moment that he would think of marrying into the Grey connexion. I did him great injustice, I own.”
“By no means,” said Philip. “Because I did not happen to wish to marry Miss Ibbotson, it does not follow that I should have been wrong if I had. It was feeling this, and a sense of justice to her and myself, which made me refuse to answer your questions, some weeks ago, or to make any promises.”
“Well, well: let us keep clear of Mrs Grey’s connexions, and then you may talk of them as you please,” said the sister, in the complaisance of the hour.
Philip remembered his pledge to himself to uphold Mrs Grey as long as he lived, if she should prove right about Mr Hope and Hester. He began immediately to discharge his obligations to her, avowing that he did not see why her connexion was not as good as his own; that Mrs Grey had many excellent points; that she was a woman of a good deal of sagacity; that she had shown herself capable of strong family attachments; that she had been gracious and kind to himself of late in a degree which he felt he had not deserved; and that he considered that all his family were obliged to her for her neighbourly attentions to his mother. Mrs Enderby seized the occasion of her son’s support to say some kind thing of the Greys. It gave her frequent pain to hear them spoken of after Mrs Rowland’s usual fashion; but when she was alone with her daughter, she dared not object. Under cover of Mr Rowland’s presence occasionally, and to-day of Philip’s, she ventured to say that she thought the Greys a very fine family, and kind neighbours to her.
“And much looked up to in Deerbrook,” added Philip.
“And a great blessing to their poor neighbours,” said his mother.
“Dr Levitt respects them for their conscientious dissent,” observed Philip.
“And Mr Hope, who knows them best, says they are a very united family among themselves,” declared Mrs Enderby.
Mrs Rowland looked from one to the other as each spoke, and asked whether they were both out of their senses.
“By no means,” said Philip; “I never was more in earnest in my life.”
“I have always thought just what I now say,” protested Mrs Enderby.
“Yes, my dear ma’am,” said the daughter, scornfully, “we are all aware of your ways of thinking on some points—of your—”
“Of my mother’s love of justice and neighbourly temper,” said Philip, giving his little nephew a glorious somerset from his shoulder. “I believe, if we could find my mother’s match, the two would be an excellent pair to put into Eddystone lighthouse. They would chat away for a twelvemonth together without ever quarrelling.”
“Philip, do let that poor boy alone,” said mamma. “You are shaking him to pieces.”
“We have both had enough for the present, eh, Ned? Mother, I am at your service, if you are going to call at the Greys.”
Mrs Enderby rose with great alacrity.
“Come to me, my pet,” cried mamma. “Poor Ned shall rest his head in mamma’s lap. There, there, my pet!”
Mamma’s pet was not the most agreeable companion to her when they were left alone: he was crying lustily after uncle Philip, for all mamma could say about uncle Philip always tiring him to death.