‘You niver spoke a truer word than that, my dear,’ said Mrs. Linnet, who accepted all religious phrases, but was extremely rationalistic in her interpretation; ‘for if iver Old Harry appeared in a human form, it’s that Dempster. It was all through him as we got cheated out o’ Pye’s Croft, making out as the title wasn’t good. Such lawyer’s villany! As if paying good money wasn’t title enough to anything. If your father as is dead and gone had been worthy to know it! But he’ll have a fall some day, Dempster will. Mark my words.’
‘Ah, out of his carriage, you mean,’ said Miss Pratt, who, in the movement occasioned by the clearing of the table, had lost the first part of Mrs. Linnet’s speech. ‘It certainly is alarming to see him driving home from Rotherby, flogging his galloping horse like a madman. My brother has often said he expected every Thursday evening to be called in to set some of Dempster’s bones; but I suppose he may drop that expectation now, for we are given to understand from good authority that he has forbidden his wife to call my brother in again either to herself or her mother. He swears no Tryanite doctor shall attend his family. I have reason to believe that Pilgrim was called in to Mrs. Dempster’s mother the other day.’
‘Poor Mrs. Raynor! she’s glad to do anything for the sake of peace and quietness,’ said Mrs. Pettifer; ‘but it’s no trifle at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution.’
‘What trouble that poor woman has to bear in her old age!’ said Mary Linnet, ‘to see her daughter leading such a life!—an only daughter, too, that she doats on.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Pratt. ‘We, of course, know more about it than most people, my brother having attended the family so many years. For my part, I never thought well of the marriage; and I endeavoured to dissuade my brother when Mrs. Raynor asked him to give Janet away at the wedding. ‘If you will take my advice, Richard,’ I said, ‘you will have nothing to do with that marriage.’ And he has seen the justice of my opinion since. Mrs. Raynor herself was against the connection at first; but she always spoiled Janet, and I fear, too, she was won over by a foolish pride in having her daughter marry a professional man. I fear it was so. No one but myself, I think, foresaw the extent of the evil.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Pettifer, ‘Janet had nothing to look forward to but being a governess; and it was hard for Mrs. Raynor to have to work at millinering—a woman well brought up, and her husband a man who held his head as high as any man in Thurston. And it isn’t everybody that sees everything fifteen years beforehand. Robert Dempster was the cleverest man in Milby; and there weren’t many young men fit to talk to Janet.’
‘It is a thousand pities,’ said Miss Pratt, choosing to ignore Mrs. Pettifer’s slight sarcasm, ‘for I certainly did consider Janet Raynor the most promising young woman of my acquaintance;—a little too much lifted up, perhaps, by her superior education, and too much given to satire, but able to express herself very well indeed about any book I recommended to her perusal. There is no young woman in Milby now who can be compared with what Janet was when she was married, either in mind or person. I consider Miss Landor far, far below her. Indeed, I cannot say much for the mental superiority of the young ladies in our first families. They are superficial—very superficial.’
‘She made the handsomest bride that ever came out of Milby church, too,’ said Mrs. Pettifer. ‘Such a very fine figure! And it showed off her white poplin so well. And what a pretty smile Janet always had! Poor thing, she keeps that now for all her old friends. I never see her but she has something pretty to say to me—living in the same street, you know, I can’t help seeing her often, though I’ve never been to the house since Dempster broke out on me in one of his drunken fits. She comes to me sometimes, poor thing, looking so strange, anybody passing her in the street may see plain enough what’s the matter; but she’s always got some little good-natured plan in her head for all that. Only last night I met her, I saw five yards off she wasn’t fit to be out; but she had a basin in her hand, full of something she was carrying to Sally Martin, the deformed girl that’s in a consumption.’
‘But she is just as bitter against Mr. Tryan as her husband is, I understand,’ said Rebecca. ‘Her heart is very much set against the truth, for I understand she bought Mr. Tryan’s sermons on purpose to ridicule them to Mrs. Crewe.’
‘Well, poor thing,’ said Mrs. Pettifer, ‘you know she stands up for everything her husband says and does. She never will admit to anybody that he is not a good husband.’