“Yes—yes!” said Elizabeth, “we will go. We may still find Dr. Leroy at Castleborough!” She rushed out, and gave Tom Boddily orders to make ready for an instant start, to order a carriage and post-horses for Ryde, whilst she ran and intrusted her aunt with all matters of payment for the house for their short term. Tom seemed to disappear as on wings.
A single hour saw them on their way to Ryde. In those times, however, there were not the numerous steam-packets crossing. There was no railway to receive them at Portsmouth. With all possible speed, however, they continued their journey, and on the third day reached Fair Manor, only to learn that Dr. Leroy had sailed from London in an Indiaman, in which he had taken the office of surgeon for the voyage the day after he left the Isle of Wight.
All Castleborough was full of wonder and speculation over this, to it, strange event. Some desperate cause, every one felt, must have produced such a catastrophe. Dr. Leroy was so noted for the calmness and equanimity of his disposition. At Fair Manor a profound sorrow reigned, and a deep and brooding silence lay over it. Sylvanus Crook opened the gates for the fly bringing the two young ladies from Castleborough, in silence. Sukey Priddo, when she came to the door, looked as if she had seen an apparition, and ran to tell Mrs. Heritage. Mrs. Heritage came hastily from her room. There were signs of much weeping on her fair, but solemn, and now pale face. She clasped her daughter, who sunk into her arms in tears, and without a word, and carried her, as it were, into the sitting room, and thence into a small private room beyond. Elizabeth Drury left mother and daughter some time to themselves, and then, gently knocking at the door, said she would go on home, and come to inquire after Millicent in the morning. Mrs. Heritage seized Elizabeth almost convulsively, and kissed her passionately again and again, and then turned and sat down by her daughter. And what a sight was it of that lately so happy daughter! She sat motionless, pale as a corpse, and with a face of such intense wretchedness as the young usually glad spirits of Elizabeth had formed no conception of. She fell on her knees before the unhappy girl, clasped her fondly, and looking into her ghostlike face with streaming eyes, said, “Dearest Millicent! don’t! don’t be so cast down! Things may be better yet. They may!—they will!—they must! God will not afflict us all so cruelly.”
Millicent kissed her friend gratefully, and said, with a wondering look, “But how can that be?—But I am very faint; I will go to bed.”
Elizabeth and Mrs. Heritage assisted her up-stairs. The servants, as they passed through the hall, stood aghast and in tears. When Elizabeth had seen Millicent in bed, and again promised to return early in the morning, she embraced her affectionately, and, kissing Mrs. Heritage, hastened down-stairs and away home. There she found the departure of Dr. Leroy the absorbing subject. Her father commented very severely on Miss Heritage for jilting him, as he bluntly called it, for a richer man in London. That was his plain version of the story. That she found was the universal opinion amongst their mutual acquaintance. The true cause of Dr. Leroy’s departure, her mother said, had oozed out to the public, which was greatly excited by this sudden abandonment of his practice by a young man so greatly honoured and esteemed. The blame of Miss Heritage was universal and intense. “She so wealthy,” they said, “to let wealth and worldly distinction obliterate the feelings and the friendship of years.”
The shadows that Mrs. Heritage had foreseen in the hayfield, had thus fallen on her own house and heart in an Egyptian density, wherever else they might yet extend themselves. No hayfield fête had been held since that memorable day; and causes more closely touching the Woodburns than the darkness lying upon Fair Manor seemed to herald a long cessation of such halcyon times.
CHAPTER VII.
THORSBY’S FALL AND CONVERSION.
The early married days of Letty Woodburn seemed perfect in their felicity. Often she used to drive over in the handsome open carriage which Thorsby kept chiefly for her use, and whenever she came it was with all the flush of happy life and gaiety about her. She seemed to like her town life, and the new circle of friends that her marriage had introduced her to, yet she always appeared to inhale a fresh draught of joy as she sat in the old rooms, rambled round the old garden, and saw the accustomed objects and people about her as formerly. “Oh!” she would say, “how charming are these dear old scenes—how glad am I that I can so readily come back to them!” She and Thorsby generally spent their Sundays there, and he was ever in the best of spirits, and even Betty Trapps had somewhat relented towards him—It was observed that he scarcely ever had a jibe at Methodists, evidently out of care not to hurt Betty’s feelings, though, as he expressed it, he often trod on her corns by laughing at her friends, Sylvanus Crook and David Qualm. He had bought somewhere, and brought one day, a highly coloured engraving, all bright blue, red, and yellow, of Shon-ap-Morgan-ap-Shenkin-ap-Gwillim, a shentleman of Wales—as the inscription under it expressed it—going to take possession of his father’s estate, riding on a goat. This he said he was going to present to Howell Crusoe, the village schoolmaster, as a pleasing memento of his native country. All the Woodburn family begged of him not to do it, saying it would hurt the worthy schoolmaster’s feelings, and Betty Trapps said she saw that Mr. Thorsby had some of th’ owd aggravating spirit in him. But Thorsby would take it to Crusoe: and to the astonishment of all the Woodburns the schoolmaster accepted it, and hung it up in his house, as a pleasant joke of Mister Thorsby’s. He seemed to think it an honour to have so much notice from him. He presented Thorsby with the little book, already mentioned, that he had printed in Castleborough, of all things and subjects—on etiquette! It was meant for the help of country schoolmasters like himself in forming the manners of village children. It was founded on his practice, and certainly was a curiosity in its way. Copies of it, I believe, are yet to be procured in the midland counties. Thorsby was convulsed with laughter at its rules, and read them with infinite gusto, not only at the Grange, but among his friends in Castleborough.
Besides the fun Thorsby found in Howell Crusoe’s “Book of Etiquette,” he often brought amusing anecdotes from Fair Manor, where he and Letty frequently took tea. Sylvanus, he said, told him seriously that he was very much concerned to find an utter want of conscience in dogs. They are called, he said, very faithful and affectionate animals, but it was, he added, a lamentable fact, that, like too many of their masters, they had no conscience whatever; they were really nothing but time-servers. This he discovered by watching a number of puppies that he had been training. He had tutored them to avoid going on the garden beds, and they knew their duty so well, that as long as any one was in sight they never set a foot on the beds. Yet somehow he observed that there were prints of their feet all over the newly-dug ground. How could this be? He resolved to watch. He walked about the garden with these young dogs, now half grown. Not one ever offered to wander from the walks, but no sooner did he enter his house, and look cautiously out of the window, than he saw them all deliberately walk on to the beds and behave very badly there. A very slight rap at the window, and they all ran off, and looked very much taken in. Yet, time after time, as he tried the experiment, he found them still ready to run on the beds whenever they thought nobody saw them. “They know their duty,” said Sylvanus, “as well as I do—but the fact is, they have no conscience.”