“It seems less desolate,” she said, “for I do not expect much of a welcome from Aunt Tremlett.” Which expectation, for all his wish to cheer her, Mr. Baldwin could not find it in his conscience to disagree with.
So in silence he put her and Evans into the fly he had stopped to order at the King’s Arms, on his way through Mallingford, he himself following in his dog-cart, “just to shake hands with Miss Tremlett,” he said to himself, though in reality to make sure that his charge should have what little additional comfort and support his presence might give her, on her first arrival at the not very cheerful dwelling, which, for some time to come, at least, was to be her home.
There was no mystery about Miss Tremlett. She was simply a narrow-minded hypochondriac, who, never having been accustomed in youth to live for any other object than her precious self, had in old age, naturally enough increased in devotion to this all-engrossing idol. She was what is called a woman of high principles and excellent judgement, meaning, I suppose that when she was young, pretty, and poor, she had refused to marry the only man she cared for because he was a struggling curate, and had done her best to secure a rich husband; failing which she had for years “devoted herself” to an odious old woman, her god-mother, in hopes of succeeding to her fortune, in which, strange to say, she had not been disappointed. And now that she was old (for the fortune did not come to her till she was fifty) she had not been guilty of any enormity, robbing a church, for instance, in consequence of which and her large fortune, she was “greatly respected” in Mallingford, and at the various tea-tables always alluded to by the rector in the terms above mentioned.
It was a great feather in her cap, this taking her orphan grand-niece to live with her. Many of her acquaintances, in their secret hearts, wondered at it, especially when it oozed out, as such things always do, that the great Mr. Vere had not left his children “overly well provided for,” as Mrs. Jones, of the King’s Arms, expressed it to her crony, Miss Green, the milliner. Miss Green was better informed than Mrs. Jones, however, a few days later, for she had been working at “The Cross House,” Miss Tremlett’s residence, and had it from Mrs. Thomas, the housekeeper that Master and Miss Vere had been left “quite destitoot.”
“Not one brass farthing between them, Mrs. Jones, I do assure you,” she said, “and his debts, they do say, something awful.”
To which communication Mrs. Jones replied by an impressive “In-deed.”
Miss Tremlett had been influenced by various motives, when on hearing of her nephew’s death, she had authorized Geoffrey Baldwin to offer her house as a temporary home for Marion. For one thing, in her heart, as in most others, there was a soft spot, and in her way, she had loved and been proud of Hartford Vere. Then again, though to some extent grasping and money-loving, she was not on the whole ungenerous or stingy. There was one thing she loved better than money and that was herself and her own comfort, and it occurred to her that even if Marion should be left very scantily provided for, she would cause but little additional expense in her household, and would be all the more ready to repay her aunt’s kindness by making herself a useful and agreeable companion. The effect on her nerves of a cheerful young person about the house would, her medical man informed her, be decidedly beneficial. Any way, it would do no harm to try. She had been rather disagreeably well lately, and felt in want of a little excitement. And if Marion failed in all else, there was one point on which it was quite impossible she should disappoint her. The girl’s presence in her house would, at all events, give her something new to grumble about!
So much as to Aunt Tremlett. As to Mallingford itself there is not very much to say. It was (in those days at least, possibly the last few years may have improved it) an intensely stupid little town. Dull, with a dullness that to those fortunate people who have had no personal experience of small provincial town life, altogether baffles description. And worse than dull—spiteful, ill-naturedly gossiping, and conceited, with the utterly hopeless conceit, only seen to perfection in the stupidest or people and societies. Conservative of course, to the back-bone, in everything—the more objectionable and undesirable the object of its conservatism, the more stolidly, bull-doggishly tenacious grew Mallingford. Instance the long resistance to the introduction of gas lamps in the streets and public buildings, the still prevailing cobble stones in the market-place, the stiflingly high pews in the peculiarly hideous church, and, last not least, the universally signed petition against that most noisy and blustering of innovators—the railway.
The only liberals in Mallingford were its numerous young ladies, who, on the subject of the fashions, became positively rabid. Though their admirers of the opposite sex were few, for the census reported but one single gentleman to every eight or ten equally marriageable damsels, there were really few things a Mallingford girl would have hesitated to do, for the sake of being the first to be seen in the High Street with the latest fashion, whatever it might be, coal-scuttle bonnets or pork-pie hat, high-heeled hoots or Paris crinoline!
There were good gentle souls in Mallingford, too, of course, as, Heaven be praised, there are in most places in this wicked world; but the prevailing spirit of the little town, the placid stupidity, unrelieved, save by occasional snappish outbursts of party-spirit, the ludicrous pretension and would-be exclusiveness of its reigning families, the airs of the half-educated daughters of the same—these things and many other of a similar nature would need a keener pen than mine to do justice to them! Very laughable, very contemptible no doubt, were it not that from so surely passing away, is giving place, not merely to another, but to a better state of things.