Nell slept only by snatches through that night, and waked the next morning with a heart of lead in her bosom. She had been so long unused to country sights and sounds, that she opened her eyes with the first gleam of sunshine that streamed through her window. The air was so pure, and the surroundings so peaceful, that she could hear the gardeners whetting their scythes in Sir Archibald Bowmant’s grounds, and the milkers whistling, or talking to each other, as they took their way to the cowsheds. A lark was executing his wonderful, untaught trills far up somewhere in the blue heavens, and the farmyard chorus had commenced to tune up—hens clucking, ducks quacking, pigs grunting, and cows lowing, as they asked to be delivered of their burden of milk. The honeysuckle and roses, which clambered outside her window and tapped against the panes, were filling the morning air with their fragrance; the dew-laden grass sent forth a sweet, faint odour; the smell of ripening fruit and ripened vegetables permeated the air. These were the things of which Nell had dreamed in her town life with intense longing; which she had sickened to see and hear again; the re-enjoyment of which, she had believed would prove the panacea for every pain, the cure for every trouble. And now they were all before her in their fullest beauty, and she turned her face from them and hid it on her pillows. The innocent sights and sounds made her tremble and turn faint with despair. They were no longer for her; she had outgrown them. The simple tastes of her childhood mocked her as she lay there—a deceiver, a pretender, an acting lie in her father’s household. Nell had kept back the truth for years, but she had never perverted it before—stooped to falsehoods to hide her shame, deceived her father and her mother, and come back to take her place amongst them as a pure woman, when she knew herself to be no longer pure. The very things which she had believed would be her balm had proved her bane. The very daisies and buttercups rose up in judgment against her, until she felt herself unworthy even to pluck the flowers of the field. These thoughts so depressed her, that she rose in a melancholy mood, that quite precluded her keeping up the farce of gaiety which she had played the night before. She appeared at the breakfast-table so pale and heavy-eyed and languid, that her father gazed at her with surprise, and her mother, in pity for her looks, tried to divert her husband’s attention from them as much as possible by talking of Hetty and their acquaintances in Usk. The conversation came round in time to their landlord, Sir Archibald Bowmant.
‘Are the family at home, mother?’ asked Nell. ‘I could hear the men mowing the lawn distinctly from my window this morning, and I fancied I could smell the scent from those huge mounds of heliotrope they used to have in front of the dining-room windows. I have never seen heliotrope grow in such profusion anywhere else.’
‘No, my girl, there’s nobody there, nor likely to be till the summer is well over. Sir Archibald is our landlord, and a liberal one, so we’ve no call to say anything against him, and perhaps it’s no business of ours, but he is a very different gentleman since he married again. The first Lady Bowmant was a good woman, and though I suppose Sir Archibald was always inclined to be wild, she kept him straight as you may say. But since his second marriage, well, Usk Hall is not the same place.’
‘How is it altered?’ said Nell, trying to take a languid interest in her mother’s conversation.
‘Oh, in everything, my dear. In my lady’s time (I always call her my lady, you know, Nell, on account of my having been her maid before her marriage) the family used to go to church regularly every Sunday; he and she in their carriage, and as many servants as could be spared following them up the aisle. But now their pew’s empty from week’s end to week’s end. Of course, if the master and mistress don’t attend church, the servants can’t be expected to do so. And I doubt if they’d have the time, for they seem to be kept working more on Sundays than on any other day in the week.’
‘How is that, mother?’
‘They keep such a heap of company, my dear, and when they’re not tearing over the country on horseback, they’re playing cards all day. James Powell, the under footman, says it’s something awful—like hell opened, was his words. They begin the first thing after breakfast, and then it’s gambling and swearing, and brandies and sodas, till night. My lady seems to think nothing of it. She has a lot of brothers, and I suppose she was brought up amongst it all. She drives a tandem, and has nearly killed several people by her fast driving—she did run over Betsy Rigden’s little girl one day; but it wasn’t much hurt, and Sir Archibald sent Betsy a ten-pound note, so nothing more was said about it; but, to my mind, it isn’t decent that just as sober people are on their way to church, my lady should come tearing down the road in her tandem, with some young gentleman by her side, and both laughing so loud you might hear them half a mile off. Ah, it’s a very different house to what it used to be.’
‘But they’re not at home now, you say.’
‘No, my lass, nor won’t be till October or thereabouts, and then they will keep it up till it’s time to go back to London, or off to some of those foreign places Sir Archibald is so fond of, and where, I hear, they do nothing but gamble. It’s a dreadful habit for them to have got into. I never thought at one time that I should have lived to see Sir Archibald the worse for liquor, but I’m sorry to say I have, more than once. However, as I said before, he’s been a good landlord to father there, so we’re the last as should speak against him. He fills my two rooms every autumn, and far into spring; and if I had six I could let them to him. Last year he came to ask me to let him have the whole farmhouse, and find beds for ourselves elsewhere, and he would have made it worth our while to, but I told him it couldn’t be. I couldn’t sleep away from my dairy and bakehouse; nothing would go right if I wasn’t on the spot.’
‘Do you go to church still, mother, or to chapel?’ asked her daughter.