I had nothing to say to this. Nor could I have expected that she would understand me. We were walking quickly, for it required no small exertion to keep up with Miss Saville, who strode along in her thick boots with a manly disregard of every obstacle—along the lane which led to the village. Just before we reached Cottisbourne, we passed the Rectory. Miss Saville looked up at it as she passed, and so did I. I was startled to see a face looking out from the window, which I recognised, or fancied I recognised. It was a weather-beaten face, unshaven and slovenly, and stooped forward with an inquisitive, sidelong glance. I tried to recollect where I had seen it. Could this be Saville—the Saville—the man who brought Edgar Southcote to Cottiswoode? I was disposed to think so. My companion gazed at him a moment, and then waved her hand impatiently, as if to bid the man go from the window. Yet I had been now three weeks at Cottiswoode, had frequently seen the clergyman and his sister, but had never heard of another. I wondered why they concealed him—I wondered if it was he; but Miss Saville never spoke.
We were close upon the village now. The first group of two or three houses stood by themselves upon the brown grass of the meadow-land around. They seemed to have no gardens, no trees, nothing to protect or shelter them; but stood apart among the grass, which pressed round their very walls and doorsteps, as if it grudged the little bit of ground they occupied. There were some plants in the window of almost every house, poor, shabby plants, crushed against the green gauze curtain suspended across the three lower panes, darkening the light; but doing little else by way of compensation. The want of gardens seemed to disconnect them strangely from the soil on which they stood. There was no beauty or sentiment about them; but only very poor, meagre, hungry poverty. Beyond them, a very small stream, which made no sound in the heavy, deadened atmosphere, wound through a field, with some low willows standing by, like a class of unkempt boys at school. A little further on, withdrawn into a grassy mass, was the village well, with its bucket and windlass; and then came Cottisbourne proper, a cluster of houses oddly placed, with strange little narrow lanes winding among them, as intricate as a child’s puzzle: some brown and dingy, with the thatched roof clinging upon them like a growth of nature—some brilliantly whitewashed, with great patches of damp, from the rain, upon their walls. One or two carts tilted up, stood in a corner of the bit of common which belonged to the village. About them, and in them, were a number of children, whose voices scarcely woke the sullen air to cheerfulness. The houses stood about in genuine independence, every one faring as it pleased him, and the wealthy cottager’s pig sniffed the same air as his master, and placidly meditated upon the doings of his master’s next neighbor, whose open cottage door was opposite the piggery. There surely was no want of work to do, for any one who cared to take in hand the reformation of the little commonwealth of Cottisbourne.
Miss Saville proceeded to business, while I looked on. She went forward to the children in the cart, and lugged down the reckless urchins who came clambering into it, just in time to prevent an accident, as the heavy body of the cart, high in the air, where they had been climbing, was suddenly thrown off its balance, and came down heavily, doing no harm, thanks to her exertion. “You little foolish things,” said the excited lady, “how often have I told you, you were not to go near these shocking things? you might all have been killed. I can’t be always looking after you, and if Jemmie Mutton had been killed when that cart fell, what do you think you would have done then?”
Not one of the little culprits was able to reply to this solemn question, and the lady continued, as they gaped at her, clustering together, stealing their hands underneath their pinafores, or putting finger in mouth, with awe and astonishment: “Depend upon it I shall make examples,” said Miss Saville, with solemnity. “Christmas is not so far off that I should forget what you are about now; and if I should hear of such a thing again, beware!”
Saying this in the tone of a Lord Chief-Justice, with an awful vagueness of expression, and penalties implied which only the threatened offenders knew the weight and import of, Miss Saville turned to enter a cottage. “I am obliged to keep them in awe of me, my dear,” she said, turning to me with complacent satisfaction, “and even to threaten them about their Christmas things. Some of them get quite an outfit of things when they attend school well, and say their catechisms; but children are a deal of trouble—the little good-for-nothings, they’re at it again!”
I was amused at Miss Saville’s contest with the children, yet somewhat disgusted withal. Like other visionaries, I was horrified when I descended to practise, or to see practised, what I had been dreaming. Your sweet docile children would have been out of my way, and unwelcome substitutes for the harder labors on which I had set my heart. But stupid children—children who gaped and curtsied—who folded their hands under their pinafores, and played in carts, and were held in terror of losing their annual dole at Christmas! this was quite a different martyrdom from what I had dreamed of. I had no vocation at all for this.
However, we had now entered the cottage. It was very poor, and had a sort of sofa or settle near the fire, on which was laid an old paralytic woman, whose shaking head and hand proclaimed at once how she was afflicted. A stout tall woman, the mistress of the cottage, went and came about the poor room, preparing the dinner, I suppose, but taking no notice of the invalid, that I could see, though her feeble half-articulate voice seemed to run on nevertheless in an unfailing stream, and there was an eagerness in her gray bleared eye, which testified that this old woman, at least, though she had lost everything else, had not lost her interest in the world. She assailed us with a flood of imperfect words, which I could scarcely make out, but which seemed easy to Miss Saville, and a craving for news, and restless curiosity, which seemed very dreadful to me in this old, old woman. “So, she’s com’d home!” she said, and I knew she referred to me, “does she know her own mind by this time? Ah, ah, ah! it do make poor folks laugh to see the ways of the quality, that never know when they’re well.”
“Hold your peace, Sally,” said Miss Saville, imperatively, “the lady herself has taken the trouble to come from Cottiswoode to see you, you ungrateful old woman; and to see what she can do for you to make you comfortable; do you hear? You ought to thank her and show some feeling; but I am sure you poor folks in Cambridgeshire are the most ungrateful in the world.”
“The old folks you mean, Miss,” said the younger woman.
“You will call her Miss, ye unmannerly wench,” said the mother-in-law, chuckling; “Madam Saville, I know you—I know naught of the young one. Make me comfortable! I’m an old poor crittur, past my work, and I’ve had a stroke; and I want rest to my old bones. But these young uns, that’s able to stir about and help themselves, they think aught’s good eno’ for me.”