Arthur imagined he did, at any rate; nevertheless, he left Mr. Stewart with a certain depression of spirit, which was, however, in due time chased away by Mr. Black.
“Come up again!” said that gentleman. “No, you need not; deuce a bit of necessity for anything of the kind. Leave all to me. I’ll see the house is ready for you; Mrs. Black will send in a charwoman, and all that sort of thing. I shouldn’t move even a table from Berrie Down; nothing but plate and linen. No use breaking up a home. You’ll want to run down there occasionally from Saturday till Monday. We’ll all run down. Should not go to the expense; you will furnish as cheaply as you could move your sticks. Leave all to me. I’ll not put you to unnecessary expense; but you know you must have decent furniture about you. Servants! Oh, better let Mrs. Dudley see to them—whatever messenger we have can be made useful as footman also, remember. You’ll charge him to the Company, as well as coals, gas, taxes, and so forth. By Jove! Dudley, it will be a first-rate thing for you. Living free, as one may say, and drawing a thousand a year. I’ll get the painters and paper-hangers in at once, and report progress. The place shall be ready for you in a fortnight. There, there, no thanks; tut, tut, man, don’t make a fuss over such a trifle. Good-bye! Remember me to Mrs. Dudley. Good-bye!” and, amid much waving of hands and excited adieux, the train steamed out of the station, and Arthur was off for Palinsbridge, while Mr. Black returned to the City.
All the way down Arthur thought how he should best break the news to Heather. It seemed to him now, that if he had only made a confidante of her all along, his way would have proved easier. He should now have to tell her the whole from the beginning, or at least as much of the whole as he ever meant to tell her. How he had listened to the voice of the charmer; how the charmer had given him shares in the Protector Bread Company, Limited; how he had been offered the secretaryship of that thriving company; how he thought a thousand a year much too good a chance to be refused; how he had promised Mr. Stewart to enter on his duties at once; how there was a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, rented by the Company, which they were to inhabit.
He would have to tell her all this, but he need tell her no more; he need not add how foolish and trustful he had been; he need make no mention of bills or money; there was no necessity for him to say anything about the house in Lincoln’s Inn, which he had purchased.
As for Berrie Down, to which some one must see, could not Mrs. Piggott take charge of it? Mrs. Piggott and Ned. Suppose Ned and Mrs. Piggott made a match of it.
Mrs. Piggott had, indeed, if all accounts were to be believed, led her deceased husband such a “devil of a life,” that he was glad, after three years’ patient endurance of her temper, to skulk under ground to get rid of it; but then those days lay very far back in the woman’s life; she had been forced to struggle with the world; she had buried two children; she had “supped sorrow with the spoon of grief,” and there are some natures to whom sorrow taken in any form proves a very wholesome medicine.
It had done so in Mrs. Piggott’s case; the years had softened her, tamed her spirit, subdued her temper. She would have made a very good wife to any one wanting an elderly managing woman to cook his dinner and keep his house tidy; a very good wife indeed for Ned, who had worshipped his lost and lamented Polly—a “fine woman,” large, well-developed, and handsome, whose only fault was mildly represented by Ned to have been, that her delicate health obliged her to take more gin than was always good for her.
Like Mr. Piggott, Polly had long been slumbering where gin is not procurable; and thus Squire Dudley’s idea concerning a match being got up between the pair was perfectly feasible, and likely, so he thought, to meet the views of all parties interested in the matter.
Mrs. Piggott was faithful and trustworthy. So also was Mr. Edward Byrne, a gentleman of Irish extraction on his father’s side—a soft, willing, hardworking fellow, full of odd sayings, and possessed of unfailing spirits, which kept him continually at high pressure, and ready at all times for anything, “from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter.”
Byrne could saddle a horse, and ride it afterwards; harness one or a pair, and drive it or them likewise; he could churn and he would pump; he darned his own stockings, and he cobbled his own shoes. He was always up betimes in the morning, and could be depended on to see to the feeding of the sheep and the foddering of the cattle. To Ned was intrusted the key of the oat-bin, and he always presided over the brewing of the ale. It was he who had the mowers at work by four o’clock in the summer’s mornings, whilst the grass was still wet and heavy with dew; he who stacked the oats and went to market for Squire Dudley. And yet, Ned was not proud. Mrs. Piggott objected to young men and boys about the house, so he did not disdain cleaning the knives and polishing the boots, singing to himself all the while like a perfect nightingale, or else talking to Mrs. Piggott or the servants, and recounting to them tales of a far remote period in his life when he was “devil” in a printing-office, and had to “cut about” with proof.