“I wonder what we ought to do next,”[next,”] said Fanny.
“I will tell you,” replied Melea, “all I know about the affairs, and then you will be better able to judge. Nay, Henry, stay and listen. If all this was a secret, I should not have known it. You must not go till you have heard from us what anybody in Haleham could tell you before night.”
And she gave a brief and clear account of the general aspect of the affairs, as viewed by Horace. It was certainly very encouraging as to the prospect of every creditor being ultimately paid.
“If that can but be accomplished!” said Fanny. “Now, Melea, now the time is come that we have talked of so often. Now is the time for you and me to try to achieve a truer independence than that we have lost. I have a strong confidence, Melea, that energy, with such other qualifications as our parents have secured to us, will always find scope, and the kind of reward that we must now seek. We will try.”
Henry Craig started up, feeling that he was more likely to need comfort than to give it. He bestowed his blessing, and hurried away.
There was little for the sisters to do previous to Mr. and Mrs. Berkeley’s return. Melea had already taken measures to prevent a situation as governess—in which she believed her services would be acceptable, and which offered many advantages—from being filled up: though without mentioning the name, or committing herself till she should have consulted her family. She had been at a loss about what to say to the servants, one of whom seemed, through her long service, to be entitled to confidence, while the others could not, she thought, be trusted to behave well upon it. Fanny had no doubt that they knew all by this time; not only from the affair being generally talked of in the town, but through the messenger who had brought Mr. Berkeley’s letter. It proved not to be so, however. The servant who had been to D—— had had no heart to tell the tidings; and the astonishment of the domestics was as complete as their dismay, when they were at length made to understand the fact. Melea blamed herself for injustice to some of them when she found neither threats nor murmurs, nor even questionings about what was to become of them.
The next day was Sunday; anything but a day of rest to those of the Berkeleys who remained at D——. Of the Haleham people, some were touched, and others (especially the Cavendishes) were shocked to see Fanny and Melea at church, and filling their places in the Sunday-school as usual. While, in the eyes of some people, it was unfeeling, unnatural, altogether too like defiance, the young ladies did not perceive why their own anxieties should make them neglect an office of benevolence, or exclude them from those privileges of worship which they needed more instead of less than usual.
Chapter VIII.
MARKET-DAY.
The Cavendishes were not long at leisure to wonder at the Berkeleys. It would have been wiser to prepare to imitate them. But Mr. Cavendish, who had no hope of long maintaining an apparent superiority over them, determined not to sink so quietly and simply as they had done, but to cause a sensation before his catastrophe, as well as by means of it, and thus to finish with a kind of éclat.
The introduction of foreign corn on the conclusion of the war had been for some little time hastening his ruin; and, knowing that it must be accomplished by the shock given to commercial credit, through the stoppage of the D—— bank, he thought he would forestall the conclusion, and, by attributing his failure to an accident, keep as much as he could of his little remaining credit.