Neighbours on the Green

by Mrs. Oliphant

There was one house in our neighbourhood which was perfect and above criticism. I do not mean to say that it was a great house; but the very sight of it was enough to make you feel almost bitter if you were poor, and much pleased and approving if you were well-off. Naturally it was the very next house to Mrs. Merridew’s, who had heaps of children and a small income, and could not have things so very nice as might have been wished. Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella lived within sight of her, with but two holly-hedges between; the hedge on the side of the Merridews’ house was bristly and untidy, but on the other side it was trimmed and clipped till it looked like a barrier-wall of dark green Utrecht velvet; and inside that inclosure everything was in perfection; the lawn was mown every other day; there was never an obtrusive daisy on it, and no fallen leaf presumed to lie for half an hour. The flower-beds which surrounded it were more brilliant than any I ever saw—not mere vulgar geraniums and calceolarias, but a continual variety, and always such masses of colour. Inside everything was just as perfect. They had such good servants, always the best trained of their class; such soft carpets, upon which no step ever sounded harsh; and Mrs. Spencer’s ferns were the wonder of the neighbourhood; and the flowers in the two drawing-rooms were always just at the point of perfection, with never a yellow leaf or a faded blossom. We poorer people sometimes tried to console ourselves by telling each other that such luxury was monotonous. ‘Nothing ever grows and nothing ever fades,’ said Lottie Stoke, ‘but always one eternal beautifulness; I should not like it if it were I. I should like to watch them budding, and pick off the first faded leaves.’ This Lottie said with confidence, though she was notoriously indifferent to such cares, and declared, on other occasions, that she could not be troubled with flowers, they required so much looking after; but poor little Janet Merridew used to shake her head and groan with an innocent envy that would bring the tears to her eyes; not that she wished to take anything from her neighbours, but she loved beautiful things so much, and they were so far out of her reach.

Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella lived together in this beautiful house; they were two friends so intimately allied, that I was in the habit of saying they were more like man and wife than anything else. It was a wonder to us all at Dinglefield how they managed their money matters in respect to housekeeping. Many a little attempt I have seen to find this out, and heard many a speculation; whether the house was Mrs. Spencer’s, whether Lady Isabella only paid for her board, which of them was at the expense of the carriage, or whether they kept a rigid account of all their expenditure and divided it at the end of the year, as some thought—nobody could make out. When they first came to Dinglefield it was universally prophesied that it would not last. ‘Depend upon it, these arrangements never answer,’ was the opinion of old Mr. Lloyd, who was Mrs. Damerel’s father, and lived with them at the rectory. ‘They will quarrel in three months,’ the Admiral said, who was not very favourable to ladies. But when seven years had come and gone, Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella still lived together and had not quarrelled. By this time Lady Isabella, who was really quite young when they came, must have been nearly five-and-thirty, and people had made up their minds she would not marry now, so that the likelihood was, as it had lasted so long, it would last all their lives. They did not, at the first glance, look like people likely to suit each other. Mrs. Spencer was a woman overflowing with activity; she was thin, she could not have been anything else, so energetic was she, always in motion, setting everybody right. She was shortsighted, or said she was shortsighted, so far as the outer world was concerned, but in her own house, and in all that involved her own affairs, she had the eye of a lynx; nothing escaped her. It was she who kept everything in such beautiful order, and made the lawns and the flowers the wonder of the neighbourhood. Lady Isabella’s part was the passive one; she enjoyed it. She did not worry her friend by pretending to take any trouble. She was full ten years younger than Mrs. Spencer, inclining to be stout, pretty, but undeniably inactive. I am afraid she was a little indolent, or, perhaps, in such close and constant contact with her friend’s more active nature, Lady Isabella had found it expedient to seem more indolent than she was. She left all the burdens of life on Mrs. Spencer’s shoulders. Except the one habitual walk in the day, which it was said Mrs. Spencer compelled her to take, lest she should grow fat, we at Dinglefield only saw Lady Isabella in her favourite easy-chair in the drawing-room, or her favourite garden-bench on the lawn. Indolent—but not so perfectly good-tempered as indolent people usually are, and fond of saying sharp things without perhaps always considering the feelings of others. Indeed she seemed to live on such a pinnacle of ease and wealth and comfort, that she must have found it difficult to enter into the feelings of such as were harassed, or careworn, or poor. She had a way of begging everybody not to make a fuss when anything happened; and I am afraid most of us thought that a selfish regard for her own comfort lay at the bottom of this love of tranquillity. I don’t think now that we were quite right in our opinion of her. She had to go through a great deal of fuss whether she liked it or not; and I remember now that when she uttered her favourite sentiment she used to give a glance, half-comic, half-pathetic, to where Mrs. Spencer was. But she bore with Mrs. Spencer’s ‘ways’ as a wife bears with her husband. Mrs. Spencer had all the worry and trouble, such as it was. Plenty of money is a great sweetener of such cares; but still, to be sure, it was easy for Lady Isabella to sit and laugh and adjure everybody not to make a fuss, when she herself had no trouble about anything, never had even to scold a servant, or turn an unsatisfactory retainer away.

We were never very intimate, they and I; but it happened, one autumn evening, that I went in to call rather out of the regular order of calls which we exchanged punctiliously. When I say we were not intimate, I only mean that there was no personal and individual attraction between us. Of course we knew each other very well, and met twice or thrice every week, as people do at Dinglefield. I had been calling upon Mrs. Merridew, and I cannot tell what fascination one found—coming out of that full house, which was as tidy as she could make it, but not, alas! as tidy as it might have been—in the next house, which was so wonderful a contrast, where the regions of mere tidiness were overpast, and good order had grown into beauty and grace. I suppose it was the contrast. I found myself going in at the other gate almost before I knew it; and there I found Lady Isabella alone, seated in the twilight, for it was growing dark, in her favourite corner, not very far from the fire. She was not doing anything; and as I went in, I fancied, to my great surprise, that something like the ghost of a sigh came to greet me just half a moment in advance of Lady Isabella’s laugh. She had a way of laughing, which was not disagreeable when one came to know her, though at first people were apt to think that she was laughing at them.

‘Mrs. Spen is out,’ she said, ‘and I am quite fatigued, for I have been standing at my window watching the Merridew babies in their garden. They look like nice little fat puppies among the grass; but it must be damp for them at this time of the year.’

‘Poor little things! there are so many of them that they get hardy; they are not used to being looked after very much. Some people’s children would be killed by it,’ said I.

‘How lucky for the little Merridews that they are not those people’s children!’ said Lady Isabella; ‘and I think they must like it, for it is a great bore being looked after too much.’ As she spoke she leant back in her chair with something that sounded like another sigh. ‘I was rather fond of babies once,’ she added, with a laugh which quickly followed the sigh. ‘Absurd, was it not? but don’t say a word, or Mrs. Spen will turn me out.’

‘It would take more than that to part you two,’ said I.

‘Well, I suppose it would. I think sometimes it would take a great deal. Mrs. Mulgrave, do you know I have been turning it over in my mind whether I could ask you to do something for me or not? and I think I have decided that I will—that is not to say that you are to do it, you know, unless you please.’

‘I think most likely I shall please—unless it is something very unlike you,’ said I.

‘Well, it is unlike me,’ said Lady Isabella; and though I could not make out her face in the least, I felt sure, by the sound of her voice, and a certain movement she made, and an odd little laugh that accompanied her words, that she was blushing violently in the dark. ‘At least, it is very unlike anything you know of me. You might not think it, perhaps,’ she went on, with again that little constrained laugh, ‘but do you know I was young once?’