CHAPTER IV—LONDON AND AUNT JOSEPHA
“Still in Immortal Youth we dream of Love.”
London—“Together let us beat this ample field
Try what the open and the covert yield.”
KATHERINE’S letters bore little fruit. Lady Brierley sent fifty pounds to buy food, but said “she was going to Bourmouth for the spring months, being unable to bear the winds of the Yorkshire wolds at that time.” Mrs. Craven and Mrs. Courtney were on their way to London, and Mrs. Benson said her own large family required every hour of her time, especially as she was now only able to keep one servant. So the village troubles were confided to the charge of Faith Foster and her father. The squire put a liberal sum of money with the preacher, and its application was left entirely to his judgment.
Nor did Annis now feel himself able to delay his journey until April. He was urged constantly by the leaders of the Reform Bill to hasten his visit to the House. Letters from Lord Russell, Sir James Grahame and Lord Grey told him that among the landlords of the West Riding his example would have a great influence, and that at this “important crisis they looked with anxiety, yet certainty, for his support.”
He could not withhold it. After his enlightenment by Mr. Foster, he hardly needed any further appeal. His heart and his conscience gave him no rest, and in ten days he had made suitable arrangements, both for the care of his estate, and the relief of the village. In this business he had been greatly hurried and pressed, and the Hall was also full of unrest and confusion, for all Madam’s domestic treasures were to pack away and to put in strict and competent care. For, then, there really were women who enjoyed household rackets and homes turned up and over from top to bottom. It was their relief from the hysteria of monotony and the temper that usually attends monotony. They knew nothing of the constant changes and pleasures of the women of today—of little chatty lunches and theater parties; of their endless societies and games, and clubs of every description; of fantastic dressing and undressing from every age and nation; beside the appropriation of all the habits and pursuits and pleasures of men that seemed good in their eyes, or their imaginations.
So to the woman of one hundred years ago—and of much less time—a thorough house-cleaning, or a putting away of things for a visit or a journey was an exciting event. There was even a kind of pleasure in the discomfort and disorder it caused. The unhappy looks of the men of the house were rather agreeable to them. For a few days they had legitimate authority to make everyone miserable, and in doing so experienced a very actual nervous relief.
Madam Annis was in some measure influenced by similar conditions, for it takes a strong and powerfully constituted woman to resist the spirit and influence of the time and locality in which she lives. So the Hall was full of unrest, and the peaceful routine of life was all broken up. Ladies’ hide-covered trunks—such little baby trunks to those of the present day—and leather bags and portmanteaus littered the halls; and the very furniture had the neglected plaintive look of whatever is to be left behind.
At length, however, on the twenty-third of March, all was ready for the journey, and the squire was impatient to begin it. He was also continually worrying about his son. “Whereiver is Dick, I wonder? He ought to be here helping us, ought he not, mother?” he asked Madam reproachfully, as if he held her responsible for Dick’s absence and Madam answered sharply—“Indeed, Antony, thou ought to know best. Thou told Dick to stay in London and watch the ways of that wearisome Reform Bill and send thee daily word about its carryings on. The lad can’t be in two places at once, can he?”