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FAR ABOVE RUBIES.
A Novel.

BY

Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL,

AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” “CITY AND SUBURB,” “TOO MUCH ALONE,” “THE RACE FOR WEALTH,” ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

TINSLEY BROTHERS, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.

1867.

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction reserved.]

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

FAR ABOVE RUBIES.

CHAPTER I.
QUITE IN THE COUNTRY.

The way to Berrie Down Hollow lay along a lane, winding and narrow: not a prosaic lane, bounded to right and left by low-cropped, unromantic hedges, and scanty banks covered with coarse wiry grass, where never a wild flower would dream of blooming, but a delicious lane, bordered by old elms and beech trees; where were smooth bits of turf, pleasantly suggestive of a gallop over the sward; a lane by the sides whereof trailed brambles and the dark-leaved ivy; a lane where the hawthorn in the sweet May-time, when it opened its earliest buds, stretched its white arms out across the grass, striving to touch the passer-by who idly paused to inhale its fragrance; a lane where twined in picturesque disorder wild bryony and traveller’s joy, dog-roses and honeysuckles, the woody nightshade and the greater bindweed (old man’s nightcap as the children irreverently call it); where the eye was refreshed by looking on soft cushions of moss and ferns, graceful, and drooping, and cool; where blossomed in their due season primroses and violets, the wild hyacinth, the blue speedwell, delicious clumps of birds-foot trefoil, the pink cranesbill, the wood strawberry and anemone, ground ivy, the “hindering” knot grass, “everywhere humble and everywhere green;” St. John’s Wort, that balm of the warrior wound; tufted vetch, the creeping cinquefoil, with many another wild flower, which in the early days little hands love to gather; which boyhood, and manhood, and middle age pass by unnoticed, but which come back fresh and bright as ever to the memory of the old man too feeble to totter away to the shady lane, to the warm sunny bank where the buds are springing, and the flowers blooming, and the lights and shadows flitting backwards and forwards, coming and going, coming and going just as they did half a century previously, when he was young and strong, and active like the best.

We all know such a lane: it may be in one county or it may be in another; in the far-away shire where the happiest years of our lives were spent, or within a walk of the great Babylon.

To the north of London there is still a perfect tangle of narrow country lanes, in some of which Lamb assured Barton he “made most of his tragicomedy.”

There are several not far from the churchyard where he sleeps so well. Close to his old home they wander away from Chace Side, up hill and down dale; they strike out of the Southgate Road; they wind in and out from Angel Lane to Bury Street, and thence by devious routes to Winchmore Hill and Enfield.

Some of the loveliest lanes on earth, perhaps, are those on the opposite side of the Lea, leading from Higham Hill to Chingford and Woodford.

Utterly still! utterly quiet! There the bee hums and the wild roses bloom, and there is heard no din or sound of that great city which lies so near at hand.

But Berrie Down Lane, as the road leading to Berrie Down Hollow was styled, wound on its pleasant way many and many a mile distant from London; so completely in the country, so entirely out of the way of strangers, or even ordinary traffic, that very few persons, excepting the family resident at the Hollow, and their visitors (who, save of their own kin), were far and few between, knew anything of the beauty of that quiet walk, of that lonely approach, to a still more lonely house.

Do you mind sauntering along it with me—sauntering slowly and lingeringly? It is in the bright summer noon-tide we follow its windings for the first time; but you can fancy how it looks in the spring and the autumn likewise; and the beauty of the lane grows upon you like the face of a woman who is more lovely than handsome, till you come to understand that even in mid-winter it will not look desolate; that even when the buds of spring, and the flowers of summer, and the last leaves of autumn have departed, there will still be something left for the snows and frosts of winter to deck and crown right royally with diadems and jewels that sparkle and glitter in the cold gleams of the December sun.

There are the banks where the earliest primrose is to be found; over which the full luxuriance of the summer greenery spreads and twines in lavish profusion of tendril, and branch, and drooping bough, and slender spray; against which the brown leaves pile themselves when the storm king rides abroad, and the October winds begin to strip the foliage off the trees.

You can imagine now how the place looks in every season; when the holly berries shine red and warm and glossy in the hedgerow; when their branches, clad with polished green leaves, are torn down to welcome Christmas in hall, and church, and cottage; when the birds begin to build; when children part the boughs of the privet and the hawthorn in order to look for the thrush and the linnet’s nest; when the hyacinths come with the sweet mid-spring; when the dog-roses, perishable as beautiful, open to the sun; when the May bursts into flower, and the honeysuckle perfumes the air; when you can pass over the brook dry-shod; when the August sun is pouring his beams on fields where the reapers are at work; when the leaves first change their colour, and then commence to fall; when autumn’s blasts whistle amongst the topmost branches of the elms, and winter’s hail and snow descend upon the earth. You can fancy how Berrie Down Lane must look under all these aspects; you know hereafter you could sketch the place from memory, when you come to recall its sweet tranquillity amidst the din and bustle of that great Babylon where your lot is cast.

The nearest railway-station, Palinsbridge, is eight miles distant; the nearest town, South Kemms, four; the nearest village, Fifield, more than two; so that, although, as the crow flies, Berrie Down Hollow is not actually above thirty miles from London, it might be a hundred or two in point of accessibility.

“Quite in the country, Mr. Dudley,” enchanted towns-people were wont to remark; whereupon, if the speaker chanced to be a man or one of his own kin, Mr. Dudley would answer, “Confoundedly in the country;” from which speech it will rightly be inferred that the owner of Berrie Down Hollow did not appreciate the advantages of his rural residence quite so highly as strangers had a way of doing.

And it was a pity, for a more picturesque spot could not have been found had you searched the home counties through. It was a place which took every one’s fancy. The great men, who came down from London to stay with Lord Kemms when the season was over and the Row deserted, were wont to draw rein and turn a little round in their saddles as they passed The Hollow; after which they would ride slowly on, looking back often at the dear old house planted on the side of a sloping hill.

But you shall not jump to the house in a minute after this fashion. You shall walk with me under the elm-trees; you shall go gently down the declivity whence you catch the first view of Arthur Dudley’s home; you shall look over the fields lying on the south side of Berrie Down Lane, where the corn, his corn, is ripening for the harvest; you shall pause and see in the distance, meadows where the haymakers, his haymakers, are at work; you shall watch the men, and the women, and the children mowing and tossing that which in due time will be converted into money, to buy bread for him and his; you shall descend the hill and cross the ford by means of a narrow foot-bridge, and, as you do so, you shall see his cows lying in the pasture lands chewing the cud, reflectively; you shall ascend more leisurely, if possible, the steeper hill beyond the brook; and, still pursuing your way onward, become conscious of hedges less picturesque, only because kept trim and closely cropped; of banks where the grass is smooth and even, by reason of constant cutting; where no brambles are allowed to trail their length along the ground; where even the honeysuckle has to submit to pruning and clipping; where the road is free from ruts; and now you know that to right as well as left lies Squire Dudley’s land, and that you are drawing close to his house, which is to be reached through those gates not more than half-a-dozen paces distant from where we stand.

One moment, however, ere entering. Do you notice how the grey pillars on which the gates are hinged scarcely show through the branches of the two trees of pyracantha that have grown around them?

Those shrubs are considered one of the great beauties of Berrie Down House. They are all white in the early spring. They are covered with green berries during the summer, which change into great masses of bright scarlet during the pleasant autumn weather, retaining their rich colour when the frost pinches the leaves of the evergreens, and the ice is thick on the mill-pond, and the snow lying on the ground.

They have taken years and years to grow, and the Dudleys are as proud of them as they are of their quaint home, of their broad acres, of their rich pasture lands, of the Hollow (whence their place takes its name), where the blackberries still grow, as they once grew over all the fields around; where there is quite a tangled thicket of underwood and broom and brambles, in which the children hide themselves, and tear their frocks, and pass the long summer days; whence they emerge, when the blackberrying season comes, with faces and hands dyed purple with the rich, luscious juice.

As the great men from London are wont to admire Berrie Down Hollow, so with all the strength of their souls the younger Dudleys love its every tree, and shrub, and stick, and stone.

The domestic chronicles contain no record as to whether Arthur Dudley, owner of the Hollow, had ever similarly cherished any such attachment. Of one thing, however, the reader may be certain, which is, that in his manhood he did not entertain the slightest affection for the place.

What was the old house, with its many gables—what were the fields, the trees, the tangle of brambles, the bloom of the broom, the scent of the hawthorn, the ripple of the brook to him?

Let us pass through the gates, and approach by means of a drive, hedged almost with laurestina and laurel, Arthur Dudley’s home.

The house is built of brick with curious dark stone facings, and over the doorway, carved in the same material, is the Dudley coat of arms; for before Lord Kemms, or Kemms’ Park, was so much as thought of, the Dudleys were great people in the county.

Their day had gone by, however, and their fortunes, when we make their acquaintance, are like their coat of arms—a good deal the worse for wear; for which reason, although the Hollow is a pretty place, it is not a grand one. It is a sweet home, but not a great mansion; and the front, which shows towards the road, is unpretentious in the extreme.

But there is another side—that which catches the last rays of the setting sun—that which reveals itself to Lord Kemms’ visitors when they have passed the gates flanked by pyracantha, and taken the turn leading away towards Kemms’ Park.

The north front of the house is nothing: it is red brick and grey stone, with two windows on each side the hall door, and five on the first floor, and three dormant windows looking out from the roof like heads thrust forth from among the slates to survey the world. It is masked a good deal from the road by evergreens and great trees of arbor-vitæ; and the dwelling-rooms in that part of the house are dark, and somewhat dull in consequence.

To the west all is different; there the ground sweeps down from the house to the Hollow, and the drawing-room windows look out on the rich champaign country lying beyond, which is steeped and bathed every evening in the golden beams of the setting sun. Over this west front climb roses, and clematis, and honeysuckle. Here is a westeria, which puts forth its purple blossoms long before the laburnums think of blooming. Pleasanter bedchambers there are none in England than those on the first floor, into the windows of which the earliest roses peep blushingly.

The lawn is shaded by many a grand old tree; beyond the Hollow trickles a stream, which runs through Mr. Dudley’s property, after supplying a mill on the road leading to South Kemms. There are sheep browsing in the fields beyond. There is a great peace in the quiet landscape; there is a stillness which strikes Londoners as almost oppressive. No hermitage could be more retired, no spot more perfect in its utterly homelike repose.

In such a place as this Time glides by, leaving few marks upon the road to show that his chariot has passed over it. Here the philosopher thinks he could meditate in peace, and eliminate truths which the world would not willingly let die. Here the clergyman deludes himself with the belief that he could compose sermons which might stir the hearts of thousands. Here, where the pace of life is slow, and the mental pulse languid, the author fancies that alone with himself and nature he could discourse eloquently about man. Here the musician imagines he might discover that roc’s egg—a melody resembling no other melody; but no! here indeed might the statesman rest, and the weary physician recruit his own exhausted energies; here the great engineer might forget his thousand schemes, and the speculator almost withdraw his mind from the price of shares and the rise and fall of debentures;—here is Nature’s temple, if you will, where men may come and hold communion with her; here is her infirmary likewise, where she visits with sleep the heavy eyelids, and recruits with wine and oil the body which has been worsted in the world’s fight; here she lays her cool hand on burning foreheads, and compels the overtaxed mind to lie fallow; here is the place for rest, if you will; but it is not the place for work.

Out in the battle-field, where the city streets are full of eager soldiers; out where the fray is fiercest, the fire strongest; out where life is not a tranquil dream, but a mad struggle; where men go to their long rest not rusted, but worn; where the night’s slumber is short, and the day’s labour long; out where as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the face of a man his friend;—there is the only place for energies to be aroused and genius developed, for profitable work to be accomplished, for life’s best lessons to be learned.

Thus, at least a dozen times a day, Arthur Dudley, owner of “The Hollow,” is in the habit of expressing himself; and yet you know, as you look in his face, that he is a man whose energy is not to be depended on, whose genius even to a stranger seems problematical; who has never practically conjugated the word “work;” who could not be an apt pupil in any of life’s many schools, no matter who were his teachers, no matter what his opportunities.

A handsome man if you will, with his thick brown hair, with his soft, silky moustache, with his kindly-blue eyes, with his regular delicately-cut features, and yet many a plainer face might better, I should imagine, win and retain a woman’s love.

His body, like his mind, lacks thews and sinews. He is not one of whom you dare prophecy that God, giving him health and ordinary success, he would climb high. Rather he is one of those of whom you might safely predict, that if he attempted to climb at all, he would fall back grievously worsted.

There are some people who seem to be mentally surefooted; and there are others who find every step to fortune so slippery, that giving them time enough, they are certain ultimately to get their necks broken in attempting the ascent.

But, under the shelter of his own trees, what can Squire Dudley need with strength beyond that wherewith nature has provided him? It is for men to have their way to make that bone and muscle, an iron will, a ready wit are needful; and all the fields you have surveyed, all the broad meadows, all the rich pastures came to him, not because of the strength of his own right hand, or because of the capacity of his own brain, but simply because his father had owned Berrie Down Hollow before him, and left it to his eldest son.

“What could any human being desire more?” friend and stranger, looking over the property, were wont mentally to ask themselves; for the world knew that Squire Dudley was a dissatisfied and discontented man.

He had youth, strength, health, a happy home, a devoted wife—what more could any rational being ask of Heaven? What could the skeleton be which walked with Arthur Dudley under the elms, and across the meadows, or beside the brook? This was the question every person, who met the Squire even for the first time, put to those who knew him best. His manifest discontent inspired a certain curiosity in the mind of each individual who looked in his handsome, effeminate face. He had a certain grace of manner and lazy elegance of movement which attracted attention to him, and caused many eyeglasses to be directed towards the good-looking stranger in various assemblies in London to which he had the entrée. He was not a bad man in any relation of life. He was a gentleman by birth, education, and taste; and yet in his own neighbourhood Squire Dudley was not popular. His skeleton was too apparent, and people rather disliked one who had not mental strength enough to shake off the depressing influence of such a companion.

“Have your closets full of bones and bodies at home, if you will,” says society; “but for Heaven’s sake do not carry them about in the sunlight on your back. Weep your tears an’ you like to do so; but get through the ceremony in private. We have, every one of us, our troubles, yet we do not proclaim them aloud from the house-tops. We demand that if, either from choice or necessity, a man fast, he shall not appear in public with a sad countenance, but that he shall ‘anoint his head and wash his face,’ and bear his trouble bravely and with good courage.”

Virtually those were the words his neighbours addressed to Squire Dudley. Not for his skeleton did the world forsake him, but only because he had not courage to turn and grapple with it, and either lay the ghost, or shut it up in one chamber at home.

And, after all, it was such a commonplace ghost! If your curiosity be at all excited about the matter, in the next chapter you shall see its face.

CHAPTER II.
SQUIRE DUDLEY.

Arthur Dudley, Esquire, of Berrie Down Hollow, in the parish of Fifield, Hertfordshire, was in the habit of informing all those whom the intelligence might, and a great number whom it might not concern, that he had, to borrow his own expression, “missed his life.” And, as is usual with men who employ such a phrase, he imagined the miss had been in fortune, not in himself.

He had lost, he felt satisfied, not for want of skill in playing his game, but because the game of life was an unfair one, in which the cards were packed, and all the trumps dealt to one man, while all the low, poor, insignificant, valueless bits of pasteboard were left for another, in which from birth all the odds were against one player, while the stakes were thrust, nolens volens, into his opponent’s hand.

It is a nice, contented, comforting, reassuring creed this for any human being to hold. It makes a man utterly dissatisfied with his lot, while it leaves him only too well satisfied with himself. He is, so he thinks, as competent to take his leaps as the best in the land; and when in succession he misses every one, he still believes it was only the fault of the steed he rode, of the groom who did not girth his horse tight enough, of the saddler who sent him in reins which broke in his fingers, of the nature of the ground, of the labourer who staked the hedge, of the proprietor who wire-fenced the field.

Other men go flying over every obstacle, and gallop past him to the goal all are striving to reach, while he labours wearily after, or lies maimed and shattered beside the first gate. Yet, mark you, this is never his fault; it is his “cursed luck,” to quote Arthur Dudley over again.

Providence, in his inmost heart the Squire considered, had a spite against him from his mother’s womb, and consequently, and by reason only of this injustice on the part of Providence, he failed where others succeeded.

In the world’s great workshop he was a very bad workman, and, accordingly, he was eternally complaining of his tools. His fellows moved up in the social scale, but he never rose a step higher. With a rusty nail one picked the lock of Fortune’s treasure casket; but then, as Arthur Dudley truly observed, that rusty nail never came into his hands. With sledge and hammer, and file and chisel, common drudges, as they seemed to him, bought their estates and took rank in the country.

His schoolfellows—mere idiots he had thought some of them then—mere idiots, indeed, he thought them still, had climbed great parts of the steep hill of worldly success, and were talked of as rising men in the pulpit, at the bar, in the hospitals, in literature, science, and art.

There was Holland, for instance, who went with him to Oxford. Well, Holland had no brains, any more than most of the people Squire Dudley knew, and yet he had somehow obtained a capital post under Government, lived at the West End, and had married a beautiful young widow with, rumour said, many thousands a year.

There was Morris, also, a man without a sixpence, without appearance, connection, manner, friends, or father or mother to speak of, and yet he, even he——. But it is useless to continue the catalogue.

Fate had helped every one, except Squire Dudley, on in the world, and Squire Dudley did not in the least believe that every man’s Nemesis is himself.

Berrie Down Hollow, however, bore no traces of belonging to a person who held this peculiar doctrine regarding his own life. There was no disorder, no neglect. When once the gates swung back, friend and stranger alike beheld a place which was kept as well as Kemms’ Park:—where no weeds grew on the walks; where the grass was like a bowling-green; where crocuses and snowdrops filled the flower-beds in the early part of the year; where there was a blaze of scarlet geraniums, and a brilliant decking of white, and red, and purple verbena, of petunias and gladioli, lobelias, and all other plants that make our beautiful English summer more beautiful still.

Never a litter of dead leaves was there about those walks; never a gate hung loose for want of hinge or screw; never a thing was left undone that willing hands could speedily put to rights; and yet there was an indescribable look of shortness of money, both within and without the dwelling, which those who were in the secrets of the family knew was attributable to absolute pecuniary poverty; for, although Arthur Dudley owned house and lands, stock and well-filled barns, he was poor as a gentleman with such possessions could be.

And that was where the shoe pinched Squire Dudley. He had money’s worth, but not money. He paid no rent; he killed his fatted calves and his prime Southdowns; he brewed his own ale; his fowls were duly trussed for his table; he ate of the produce of his own lands, and drank of the only vintages English fields will yield; he had his goodly orchard, and his fair flower-gardens; he had his horses in the stable, and his colts running loose in the paddock; he had his broad meadows, and his rich pastures; he had still a young wife, and two children; he had sinned no grievous sin; he had no secret he feared being brought to light, yet he had “missed his life.” So he said, so his friends said, and the reason for this unusual unanimity of opinion chanced to be that he had no money.

“Arthur was born to be a rich man,” said the elders among his kith and kin; but, if Nature had intended any such beneficial arrangement in his behalf, she frustrated her own design by permitting him to be born in the wrong house, and amongst the wrong people, and with the wrong temperament for much good fortune to befall him.

After all, Nature does make these little mistakes occasionally, and each man and woman amongst the unsuccessful thinks he or she could have managed matters infinitely better for himself or herself, if only the disposition of affairs had been left in the hands of the person interested.

Squire Dudley thought so, at any rate. He bore a grudge against Nature for having spoiled his worldly chances, which grudge he paid with interest to Nature’s representatives on earth—his fellow-creatures.

Had he been born at Kemms’ Park, with the typical silver spoon in his mouth, he would, doubtless, have proved a very charming member of society. As it was, he had fallen into the habit of quarrelling with the bread and butter fate had provided for him, to such a degree that there was not a labourer on his farm, a servant in his house, a friend he possessed in the world, who would have borne with Arthur Dudley’s dissatisfied temper, his discontent, and his complainings, had it not been for the sake of his wife, who was the only person on earth who thoroughly and devotedly, and believingly and disinterestedly, loved the young Squire.

Matrimonially, luck had not been against him. If the chances of marriage be but as one eel to a bagful of snakes, many a man, who thrust his hands into that lottery after Arthur Dudley, must have had cause to lament his evil fortune.

Matrimonially the Squire, who had otherwise “missed his life,” had done well, so the world thought at least; but then this was one of the many questions of which Arthur Dudley secretly joined issue with the world.

In the experiences of his earlier manhood there had been certain love passages between himself and a handsome young heiress, whom it was the wish of his aunt, Miss Alethea Hope, that he should marry.

Then visions of a life worth living, of a position worth having, beatified the dreariness of the Squire’s prosaic existence. Like all men who are utterly dissatisfied with their position, he permitted hope to tell him many a flattering tale, which had not the slightest shadow of a foundation in truth. Indeed, in the management of his farm, Arthur Dudley was but as a reed shaken by the wind of whatever fancy whispered to him over night; and it was natural enough that, when wandering about the grounds of Copt Hall, with his first real love—worth five thousand a year, and expectations—he should dream of a social position unenjoyed by the Dudleys for many a year; of a town house; of Berrie Down Hollow filled with grand company; of taking rank in the county; of, perhaps, tacking M.P. to the end of his name.

The future, then, seemed as full of promise to him as the old gardens at Copt Hall of roses. Can you wonder? Youth was at the helm and Pleasure at the prow, and an heiress about to become a passenger for the voyage of life; a handsome heiress too—graceful and accomplished, and much sought after, by reason not merely of her wealth, but of her beauty.

Among the roses at Copt Hall she promised to marry Squire Dudley, and yet before the roses were in bloom again she had consented to make another “happy.”

That was the first serious accident which befell the young man’s life-boat; and he retired to Berrie Down Hollow, feeling he had been jilted, not merely by his lady-love, but by the jade Fortune.

It is true, I suppose, that, if the cause of the mental death or paralysis of any man’s life be closely inquired into, a woman will prove to have been at the bottom of the apparent mystery.

Directly or indirectly, white soft hands fill the cup, either with strengthening wine, or pure water, or the drugged liquor, that steals the strength away, and impairs the finest genius.

Those from whom we expected the greatest results go to their long sleep, and leave no mark behind by which their fellows shall remember them; and why? because, although they had the power to achieve much, some woman prevented their doing anything.

The obstacle, which at one point or other threw them off the rails, wore petticoats, be certain. Either they did not get the right women, or they married the wrong ones. Somewhere there was a story in their lives; ay, and it may be a tragedy too. Adam, one might have thought, considering the circumstances of his marriage, had a fair chance of happiness; and yet, see what a mess Eve made of his prospects. Since which time to the present it may fairly be questioned whether any man has ever chosen the proper helpmeet; whether in effect even the Adams of the nineteenth century are not originally placed in a paradise, out of which, in due time, some woman contrives to lead them. Whether or not his matrimonial disappointment really was the cause of Squire Dudley’s ill success, one thing is undeniable, viz., that he, in his heart, attributed much of his subsequent bad fortune to it. Such natures are not, perhaps, capable of any great degree of passionate attachment; and, however unromantic the statement may sound, I am bound to confess it was never the woman he regretted so much as the heiress.

Arabella’s raven tresses never appeared before his mental vision with one-half the same frequency as did her gold. When he failed to dig nuggets out of Berrie Down Hollow, he reflected sorrowfully on the faithless fair’s five thousand a year.

Had he married another woman with money, there can be little doubt but that then he would have thought disconsolately about Miss Laxton’s face, Miss Laxton’s perfections; as it was, want of money being the one most pressing evil in his life, Cupid folded his wings and perched on one of the elm-trees, laughing to himself, no doubt, while Mammon walked with Squire Dudley up and down the meadows and across the lea.

Passionately, perhaps, as he ever loved any woman, Arthur loved the stately fair whom he had wooed in the old-fashioned gardens at Copt Hall. She was his style of beauty; his ideal of feminine perfection; haughty and queenlike; capricious and fanciful; strong-willed and domineering; a woman to rule slaves—to govern so feeble and purposeless a nature as his, despotically. Had all things gone well, she would, as Miss Hope declared, have “ruled the roast” at Berrie Down; she would have been mistress and master too; she would have led him a pleasant life of it in the old Hertfordshire home; she would have taught him meekness and submission, and it may be contentment also, for some men are like children, better satisfied when a strong hand guides their course. As it was, the years had gone by, leaving Squire Dudley intensely dissatisfied with all mundane arrangements, particularly with those arrangements which affected himself.

And yet any other person might have made a good thing out of his life. There was the rub! The owner of Berrie Down Hollow wanted not to make good things, but to have good things made for him; and it was for this the world quarrelled with Arthur Dudley.

“Hang the man,” said Compton Raidsford, who was worth half a million of money, and had worked for every sixpence of it. “A dissatisfied idiot. Has not he got Berrie Down, the sweetest place in the county, and, confound him, has he not got the sweetest wife, too?”

Which statements might be perfectly true, and yet hold no comfort for the possessor of place or wife. What was the use of Berrie Down without money to keep the estate properly; and what to such a man was the good of having a wife with whom even he could find no fault, unless, indeed, it might be, that she was a trifle too sweet—too perfect?

After all, it is scarcely pleasant to discover, when you have thought to make a woman supremely happy, that the world will persist in thinking it is the woman who is making you happy.

This was an idea hurtful to Arthur Dudley in the extreme, and those who loved his wife best discovered in due time that the greatest kindness any friend could do her was to refrain from speaking to her husband of the blessing he possessed.

And yet Arthur Dudley was by no means either unamiable or ungenerous. He was not a bad man; he was only that which oftentimes produces infinitely worse results, a weak one; he was not cruel, nor wicked, nor wanton, nor wasteful. He had no sins, but he had many grievous faults. He was a man going to the dogs, as fast as bad management could take him, when he married his wife; and when we enter the gates of Berrie Down Hollow he is a man going to the dogs more slowly, but not less surely still.

Every one knew that his wife was the drag on the wheels of his descent. Every person was fully aware that whatever of comfort and happiness, and real respectability, his life had held, was due to her beneficent influence; and under this knowledge Squire Dudley himself chafed secretly. Had she been an ill-tempered shrew; had she been an idle, flaunting, extravagant, wasteful woman; had she drank; had she been a confirmed invalid; had she been a loud-talking, boastful, hard, managing semi-man; had she been anything, indeed, but what she was, her husband would have had a grievance and rested satisfied. As it was, he himself could not have told what his feeling was towards her. He did not love her much, and yet she loved him exceedingly. He did not consider her at all, and yet, from sunrise to sunset, her first thought was how to benefit and pleasure him.

She had set up an idol for herself, and fell down and worshipped it; and, as is not unusual in such cases, the idol half despised her for her pains.

At the bottom of his heart, his idea about her was the same as his idea about Berrie Down Hollow.

No doubt the thing was very good; but let a thing be ever so good, if it be not the thing you want—what then? Why, then you are apt to look with a little disfavour and petulance upon it, even though it be perfect of its kind—a diamond without speck or flaw.

And besides, his marriage had not quite answered his expectations; that match, indeed, had needed to be made in a dozen heavens which would have satisfied the expectations of Squire Dudley.

A good wife, a clever manager, a home-loving woman, she was to put all crooked things straight, and to put all straight things straighter! The Dudley millennium, a reign of utter order and of utter peace, was to come to Berrie Down with the young wife. He told her all his difficulties, and she promised hopefully to help him through them. He announced to all his friends that, “once he was married,” he should get on; and his friends, to a certain extent, believed him, for they knew a mistress to be sorely needed at Berrie Down House, “where everything is going to wreck and ruin,” he stated to his fiancée, who, in due time, verified the truth of his assertion, and bravely put her shoulder to the wheel, to prevent such a consummation.

“I have to clothe, educate, and maintain five brothers and sisters,” he declared with that frankness concerning his grievances which was a distinguishing feature of his character, and, although his future wife looked a little horror-stricken at this revelation, yet she adventured amongst those brothers and sisters cheerfully, and, without a murmur, cast in her lot with theirs.

How much of her happiness, during the early years of her married experience, she owed to that young life, Mrs. Dudley never stopped to analyze; but there were those who knew that Berrie Down would have been a terrible home for Arthur’s wife, had bright faces not grown brighter at her approach, had strong willing hands not been stretched out to smooth her way, to make her difficult path easy.

She would have found out all her husband’s faults in six months, had she been thrown solely on his society during that period; as it was, she had always something else to think about—something to step between her and knowledge. She was sorry for him, and she was sorry for the “children,” as she called them. It was hard for him, and it was hard for them; and the dear hands were always laid entreatingly on some half-turned pettish shoulder, and the dear voice was ever engaged in soothing the effect of sharp and hasty words; for Heather Dudley was essentially a peace-maker, a woman whose mission it seemed to turn away wrath, to bind up bleeding wounds, to assuage with ointment the irritation of long-standing sores.

With Heather no man quarrelled, and no woman either. She was not a good hater; she had never sounded the depths of a great sorrow, nor of a great passion. Like many women who marry very young, even love had come to her mildly. The disease taken in youth, is never so fierce as that which attacks the patient in maturity; as is the strength, so is the day; as are the years, so is the joy and the agony. She was wooed and married! Smoother never ran the course of true love. On neither side was there one to interpose an obstacle, or to prevent either following the road inclination pointed out. She was a woman “without a story,” without any previous attachment—without a wrong, a grief, a remorse, a regret. Crime was to her an awful and abstract mystery, which existed only in the police-reports, and as a secret, low-whispered in some unhappy families. Of the world, she knew nothing: of its wickedness, of its temptations, of its pleasures, of its sorrows, she was innocent as her own children. She had plumbed the depth of no human joy or grief. Through the meadows the rivulet of her life had flowed peacefully and monotonously. Vaguely she understood that there were different existences, that there were other lands, through which swept rivers, broad and deep and dark, in the depths whereof lay wrecked hopes and terrible memories; she had heard of existences lost on those great streams, of corpses which the currents carried down to the vast ocean; she vaguely comprehended that there were rapids and pools, contrary currents, cruel storms to be encountered by some human ships, but it was all vague to her—vague as the story in a book.

She had experienced trouble, but only such trouble as comes with the morning, the clouds and mists whereof vanish under the beams of the mid-day sun. Of that different sorrow which falls on humanity when the darkness of evening is closing upon man’s onward course, when there is no noonday to follow, and only the night left in which to travel darkly, her life held no knowledge. She was like Berrie Down Hollow, sweet, natural, unaffected; and Berrie Down would have seemed strange without her, while she might, at a first introduction, scarcely have seemed so entirely in keeping with any place away from Berrie Down.

She was the sun of that house, at any rate;—even Arthur knew things were “never the same” when she went visiting; and, at the moment I ask you to look out on the view from the drawing-room windows of Berrie Down Hollow, you may see the Squire seated under the shade of a chestnut-tree, reading the Times, and inwardly chafing over his wife’s absence, and wondering whether, for certain, she will return from London that evening, and bring Mrs. Ormson with her.

Mr. Dudley likes Mrs. Ormson, and he does not much like her daughter Bessie, an exceedingly pretty girl, who sits on the turf at his feet, spelling the other side of the sheet, resting her round cheek on her hand the while.

All the young Dudleys, his brothers and sisters, his own son and his own daughter, were harmless in comparison to Bessie Ormson, who had a will of her own which she asserted, and opinions of her own which she stuck to, and who was staying at Berrie Down for a couple of months, as though, Squire Dudley remarked to his wife, “the house had not enough people in it without her.”

CHAPTER III.
THE FAMILY HISTORY.

If Berrie Down “had enough people in it without Miss Ormson,” Squire Dudley could scarcely in common justice lay the blame at any other door than his own, considering that of his own free will he had at a comparatively early period of his and their lives encumbered himself with the maintenance of five half-brothers and sisters, which fact it was impossible either for him or them to forget, seeing never a day passed that he did not rehearse to some one how this charge had crippled and kept him back in life.

“Other men,” he declared, “found it hard enough to maintain wife and family of their own; but here was he, provided by his own father with a family large enough to drag down any man.”

“It is a comfort your step-mother married, at all events, Arthur,” observed Miss Ormson, “or you would have been in the workhouse long ago. The last straw, is it not so? you dear grumbling old camel.”

And that was all the sympathy he got. Can it be wondered at, therefore, if Squire Dudley thought every man’s hand was raised against him?

To explain Miss Ormson’s speech, it is, however, necessary to enter into a slight history of the Dudley family, who had really owned Berrie Down for more years than any person believed, and were stated by tradition to have been great people at an indefinitely remote period, when the father of the first Lord Kemms was a goldsmith in the City, lending money to grateful princes, who, contrary to all Solomon’s experience, proved themselves worthy of the trust.

From that time until the day when this story commences, the Dudleys had been Dudleys of Berrie Down; but, unhappily, while the trading Baldwins were making, the aristocratic Dudleys were spending, and thus it came to pass that each successive owner of Berrie Down left not merely that place, but also less money, to the man who came after him than his predecessor had done.

Accordingly, in the course of many deceases and successions, the money dwindled down to nothing.

When there was not a shilling left beyond whatever amount the land might produce to keep up the family dignity, Berrie Down descended to Major Dudley, Arthur’s father, who, on the strength of his landed property, half-pay, handsome face, and good address, married first, Janet, third daughter of Arthur Hope, Esquire, of Copt Hall, Essex, who was possessed of a moderate fortune, and a still more moderate show of good looks, and who brought one son, the Arthur of my story, into the world; and secondly, when Arthur had attained the age of seventeen, Laura, daughter of Maddox Cuthbert, silk merchant, Manchester warehouseman and alderman in the city of London.

Miss Cuthbert, it was supposed, would have money on her father’s death; but that supposition proved so utterly incorrect, that the only dowry the second Mrs. Dudley brought her husband resolved itself into a pretty face and five children.

How many more arrows, male and female, might have been thrust into the Dudley quiver, had Major Dudley not opportunely retired into the family vault, situate in Fifield churchyard, was a question Arthur Dudley declared only the Lord above could answer. As things fell out, however, no more sons or daughters came to the Hollow, while to Arthur descended the family estate and his mother’s small fortune, which latter barely sufficed to pay the debts Major Dudley left behind him. On the other hand, Mrs. Dudley No. 2 found, when her husband died, that she had nothing to begin the world again upon excepting the dowry, afore honourably mentioned, of good looks—somewhat the worse for wear—and five children, whose ages ranged from nine years old downwards.

At this period Arthur Dudley was seven-and-twenty, and master of the position.

He could have turned his step-mother and her family adrift on the world; but, instead of doing so, he adopted his brothers and sisters and his father’s widow, who, three years after old Squire Dudley’s death, made a second very poor investment of her good looks, and married, greatly to Arthur’s chagrin, a Doctor Marsden, possessed of a very small practice in one of the London suburbs. This gentleman fancied Mrs. Dudley would make him a good managing wife, and was also under the delusion that her family—people known and respected within sound of Bow bells—might prove useful to him and advance his prospects.

Those were the days in which the young Squire was spending much time at Copt Hall, wooing his heiress. Those were the days in which he thought “The Hollow” might be converted into a great place; in which he looked at life through rose-tinted glass; in which he believed he could afford to be both proud and generous—for all of which reasons, and also because he did not choose that his father’s children should be beholden for anything to a “trumpery apothecary,” he took upon himself the burden of feeding, boarding, and educating five sturdy and rebellious juvenile Dudleys.

For this act of liberality, society generally patted him on the back, and said he was a fine fellow. Had he turned the children of his father’s second marriage out of the gates of Berrie Down Hollow, society, on the other hand, would have remembered that he had got the property, while the younger children were left penniless, and rated him for his inhumanity accordingly; but, as matters stood, everyone in the first blush of the affair forgot this fact, and pronounced Arthur to be the most generous fellow in the universe.

And so, theoretically, perhaps he was; just one of those men who will give an old horse the run of his paddock, but refuse to pay five shillings a week for his run in the paddock of any other person.

Nevertheless, he shared with his brothers and sisters the produce of his fields, the fat of his pastures, and for two years more they roamed wild about Berrie Down—a troop of hardy young colts, unbroken, untrained, uneducated, uncared-for.

The most enthusiastic American could have desired no more complete democracy than the household at “The Hollow,” where, as is usual in all democracies, the classes governed in other communities, were rulers of the place.

At their own sweet wills, the servants went and came; by fits and starts the labourers hedged and ditched, and ploughed and sowed. When it pleased them to do so, the younger Dudleys assembled at the presumed meal hours; when the fancy took them to do otherwise, they carried their luncheon and dinner away to remote parts of the farm, or feasted in kitchen and dairy on their return.

In vain, friends and even acquaintances entered remonstrances concerning the manners, habits, and appearance, of the unkempt, untaught, uncared-for, romping, impudent, mischievous young gipsies at “The Hollow.” Even the two smallest of the band, a boy and girl, twins, only seven years of age, were, so the Rector of Fifield assured Arthur, going headlong to destruction. Robbing birds’-nests, pelting ducks, stealing fruit, trampling down the ripe grain, climbing trees, wading in the brook, setting terriers on cats, chasing sheep, jeering at the passers-by, these children, the good man declared, in all such occupations were not alone. Wherever they went, Satan accompanied them; and having arrived at this pleasant conclusion, it was only natural he should, even with tears in his eyes, entreat Arthur to stretch forth his hand and save the little ones from being lost, body and soul.

The opinion of the Rector, modified to a certain extent, was the opinion of the neighbourhood generally.

Since time began, such a lot of bright-eyed, fearless, active, unmanageable young “limbs” had never, so the country-people declared, been seen in Hertfordshire. They were at once the terror and admiration of all who frequented the roads and lanes round Berrie Down. Keen of tongue, swift of foot, careless of danger, the children roamed o’er common and lea and field. They were to be met with in the woods that lay westward of the Hollow, watching the squirrels, and almost emulating their agility. As for the miller, he declared his heart was always in his mouth, thinking some of them would be drowned. When the mowers were at work, at the risk of their legs the children followed close, hoping to rifle the corncrake’s nest; when the wheat-stacks were moved, the five were always at hand to hiss on the terriers, to prevent either rat or mouse effecting its escape. They stayed with the threshers in the barn; they were here, there, everywhere; they chased the calves, they milked the cows, they rode the horses; they were a herd of sunburnt, freckled, hold, romping, cruel and yet tenderhearted boys and girls, who made bitter lamentation over the death of a favourite rabbit, although they robbed nests, and carried off young birds, and tormented cats, and utterly detested vermin and all creeping reptiles; and scandalized at the fact of five such natures “running to waste,”—so society phrased it,—people urged upon their brother the desirability of some alteration being effected in his establishment.

All in vain. Squire Dudley, the heiress’ hope having vanished, cursed his luck audibly, but refused to attempt to mend it.

“Send them to school, indeed,” he said to Mrs. Ormson, the second Mrs. Dudley’s eldest sister—“send them to school! I have trouble enough now to make both ends meet, without, increasing my expenses.”

“Why do you not marry, then?” she asked; in reply to which inquiry Arthur Dudley only shook his head. He had been disappointed in his matrimonial schemes, and the world just then looked very black to him.

“Unless a wife brought something in her hand towards keeping herself,” he observed at length, “I am afraid that remedy would prove worse than the disease.”

“Nonsense!” retorted Mrs. Ormson, decidedly. “A wife would very soon set things to rights, prevent waste, see that the people you employ did their duty, and keep the children in order. You want a managing woman at the head of your establishment. If my hands were not so tied, I would remain and look after matters for you myself.”

“I wish you would,” sighed Arthur; and he was in earnest; for there were two people on earth in whom he believed—one, Mrs. Ormson, “a most superior woman,” and the other an old housekeeper who had lived at Berrie Down Hollow in the better days, when Mrs. Dudley No. 1 was alive, who had packed up and departed when the advent of Mrs. Dudley No. 2 was announced, but who still came occasionally to see him, and lament over “Master Arthur’s evil fortune in having all those owdacious boys and girls cast like mites into the family treasury.”

“You are quite right, Piggott,” said Mrs. Ormson, to whom, in a moment of forgetfulness, the woman once confided this opinion; “for the children are indeed a widow’s mites. Your remark does credit alike to your wit and to your scriptural knowledge.”

“I reads my Bible, mum,” observed Piggott, who had a secret distrust of Mrs. Ormson.

“A very proper thing for a person in your station,” returned the lady. “I always like servants who read their Bible. It teaches them honesty, and prevents their striving to be equal with their masters and mistresses. Reading the Scriptures has made you the invaluable woman you are, Piggott. I only wish poor Mr. Arthur had some one like you to manage his house for him. Do you think he could not make it worth your while to——?”

“Thank you, mum,” interrupted Mrs. Piggott, hastily; “but I would rather be excused. Master Arthur, mum, was good enough to wish me to come and take the management, after his step-mamma’s marriage; but a parcel of young children is a thing as I never was accustomed to.” And although Mrs. Piggott was too polite to add anything in disparagement of Mrs. Ormson’s nephews and nieces, still there was a look in her face which that lady rightly interpreted to mean, “More especially such a set of romping, mischievous, riotous, ill-conditioned young imps as there are in this house.”

After that, Mrs. Ormson abandoned all idea of a housekeeper for Arthur.

“Your case is a hard one, Arthur, I fear,” she said, “when even Piggott will not help you out of your scrape. Clearly you must marry—let me look out a wife for you. I know so many nice girls, suitable in every respect, and several with money too. You know you ought to marry a rich woman, that is, if you can get one to marry you.”

“There’s the difficulty,” remarked Arthur, thinking of the faithless heiress.

“Well, let me see what I can do,” implored Mrs. Ormson, who devoutly believed the Almighty had sent her into the world to set right the things He had unintentionally left wrong at the creation. “When are you coming to London?”

“Next month; to stay a day or two with Dick Travers.”

“Then give me a few days at the same time, and, before the summer is over, there will be a mistress at Berrie Down. Mark my words.”

Whether Squire Dudley marked her words may be doubted; but he verified them, in a manner Mrs. Ormson little anticipated, by going to Dick Travers’, by being persuaded to accompany that gentleman to visit his aunt Mrs. Travers, “who has three pretty daughters, and a niece staying with her; the finest girl I ever saw,” finished Mr. Richard Travers. “No nonsense about her; up to everything—ready for anything. Can make a dress, and dance in it afterwards; sit up all night with the old lady, and come down to breakfast next morning fresh as a daisy. Just the girl I’d marry, if I could scrape together money enough to buy the license; but she is too poor for me, Dudley, or for you either, for that matter. A wife with only a few hundreds is a luxury only to be indulged in by a very rich man.”

“She comes of good people,” he went on,—“the Bells of Layford. They have money among them, though, I am sorry to say, but little of it has fallen to her share. More’s the pity! Daughter of the late Rector of Layford—mother dead also—two sisters in heaven with father and mother—not an incumbrance of any kind. Well, it is of no use; you cannot afford it, I suppose, any more than I can.”

“I cannot,” agreed Arthur Dudley, as gravely as though Mr. Travers had made some serious proposition to him; and then straight away he went and did the very thing he had said in all earnestness he could not afford.

She struck his fancy—that pretty girl with the quaint name; sweet Heather Bell, as Mr. Travers always called her.

“The name was a fancy of her godfather, an eccentric bachelor,” the lady explained. “She was the youngest of three daughters, and the other two were christened, respectively, ‘Lily’ and ‘Rose.’ ‘Call this one “Heather,”’ said Mr. Stewart, who loved Scotland and her purple mountains; ‘she will grow up like the heather, perhaps—strong, hardy, a wild flower, worth a hundred of your garden rarities. Call her Heather, and I will remember her name to her advantage.’ So she was christened Heather,” went on Mrs. Travers, “and she lived and grew up as you see, while the two other daughters drooped and died. Unhappily, soon after her birth, Mr. Bell quarrelled with her godfather, who has since utterly ignored Heather’s existence. It is a pretty name for a girl; don’t you think so, Mr. Dudley?”

Mr. Dudley did, and thought, moreover, that Heather was considerably prettier than her name, influenced by which opinion he went again and again to London, and betook himself day after day to Mrs. Travers’ pleasant house, where he found order and competence, bright faces, and always a cordial welcome.

After the riot and confusion at the Hollow, that well-arranged house seemed to Arthur a sort of earthly heaven.

In comparison with the Travers’, Mrs. Ormson’s nice young ladies seemed a little affected and self-conscious; and, therefore, during the course of his frequent visits to London, he proved rather negligent of his relative.

The Misses Travers were all engaged: one to a north country baronet, another to a barrister, the third to a reverend gentleman, who was subsequently appointed bishop somewhere at the world’s end. Miss Bell, however, was heart-whole, and Mrs. Travers, who laboured in common with many other people under a delusion with regard to Arthur Dudley’s worldly means, never wearied of singing her niece’s praises in the ears of the young Squire. What a daughter she had been—what a wife she would make—what a treasure she had proved during the whole of her (Mrs. Travers’) illness!

“When the dear girls were married,” Mrs. Travers went on to hope, “she trusted Heather would be thrown into society where she would meet with a husband worthy of her.”

All of which made the man to whom she spoke eager to win the girl for himself; and accordingly, to cut a long story short, before the summer was over Mrs. Ormson’s prediction was verified by Miss Bell and her poor little fortune of six hundred pounds becoming the property of Arthur Dudley, Esquire, of Berrie Down Hollow, to have and to hold for ever.

By degrees that gentleman had worked himself up into the belief that the day of his wedding would prove the turning-point in his luck. What benefits he expected fate would present him with on the occasion of his marriage, it would be difficult to say; but certainly he thought there were long arrears of forgotten gifts owing to him that might be gracefully paid by Providence on so auspicious an occasion.

For some inscrutable reason, however, Providence decided on still remaining Arthur Dudley’s debtor. His lands yielded no double crops; he found it unnecessary to build larger barns for the produce of his fields; his oxen were not stronger to labour, and his sheep did not bring forth thousands and tens of thousands on the green slopes of Berrie Down.

His life continued to be still a “miss,” money grew no more plentiful, his stock failed to increase; indoors, indeed, there was comfort and regularity; but what signified indoor comfort to a man who had hoped to represent the county, and to stand on an equal footing with Lord Kemms?

No longer, certainly, were the younger Dudleys a terror to the neighbourhood, a vision of very horror to cat, and bird, and beast; but while they had to be clothed and maintained, where was there cause for gratulation? Worst of all, no one, except Mrs. Ormson, sympathized with him save Heather; and even Heather laboured under the delusion that she was bound to sympathize with other people besides her husband.

After seven years of marriage, Squire Dudley gratefully decided, in his inmost heart, that he ought to have remained single, and, leaving Berrie Down, gone forth into the world to push his fortune.

What, perhaps, established him in this opinion was the contemplation of Compton Raidsford’s great house on the road to South Kemms.

From the drawing-room windows of Berrie Down Hollow he could see that bran new mansion staring him in the face. It stood on a slight hill, beyond the mill, over the fields, across the road, and then over more fields; but still he could see it, and, when the wind was from the west, hear the sound of the gong which announced to all whom the intelligence might interest that the Raidsfords were about to sit down to luncheon or dinner, as the case might be.

If a man like Compton Raidsford, who had risen from the ranks, could make money enough in London to build such a palace, and to keep it up when built, what might not Arthur Dudley have achieved?

With all the veins of his heart the Squire hated the merchant who drove off to Palinsbridge in his carriage and pair, and rode out with his daughters, who sat their horses, so Arthur affirmed, with as much grace and elegance as sacks of sand.

It was well known that Mr. Raidsford had started in life as boy in the workshop of Messrs. Fairland and Wright, engineers, Stangate, at the moderate salary of five shillings per week; and perhaps the only speech Bessie Ormson ever made, which thoroughly met with Squire Dudley’s approval, was the rather ill-natured one, that “most probably Mr. Raidsford preferred a gong to a bell, on account of early associations connected with the latter.”

“It would have been a fine thing for me, Bessie, if I had sprung from the gutter, with no absurd social conventionalities keeping me back,” he sighed; in answer to which remark, Bessie Ormson only shrugged her shoulders and pulled a little grimace.

The man who could not achieve success at Berrie Down Hollow was not likely, in Miss Ormson’s opinion, to have ever reared Mr. Raidsford’s palace out of five shillings a week; and, as a rule, she was in no way backward about expressing this conviction. For which reason—although she was extremely pretty, and had higher spirits and more life about her than any other guest who ever came to stay at Berrie Down—Mr. Dudley could very well have dispensed with her presence.

More especially at the juncture when you, reader, are invited to walk across the lawn, sloping away from the drawing-room windows to the Hollow—for Heather had then been absent from home for nearly a fortnight, staying with Mrs. Marsden, whose health was anything but satisfactory—and during the whole of that time the house had been, in Arthur’s opinion, at sixes and sevens, and Mr. Dudley’s personal comforts somewhat neglected.

All of which formed a text from which Bessie preached a sermon—always beginning, never-ending—on the difference of Berrie Down with and without a mistress.

“I never believed the woman lived who could make me agree with Solomon, till I met your wife, Arthur,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“That I am certain now of the truth of that which he never could have known from his own experience, that a woman may be to her husband, ‘Far Above Rubies.’”

“Humph!” ejaculated Squire Dudley; and he went out, disgusted with Bessie, the wisest of men, and the world in general.

CHAPTER IV.
HEATHER.

Let me place the picture of Berrie Down before you once again, before proceeding with my story.

In the stillness of the summer evening, look upon Arthur Dudley’s home, as the few passers-by pause occasionally to gaze, so that you may stamp the stage and its accessories on your memory ere the characters I would group together come prominently forward, and commence acting the unexciting story it is proposed to tell.

There is the house, with its many windows festooned by westeria and clematis, roses and magnolia; the house, with its red-tiled roof, with its grotesque chimneys, with its cheerful drawing-room, with its sunny bedchambers. There is the lawn, smooth shaven and green, on which the sunlight falls in broad, golden patches, sloping down sharply to the Hollow, where the blackberry bushes, and the broom, and the low underwood, form a mass of tangled wildness. Beyond there is the stream, and a little to the left Mr. Scrotter’s modest flour-mill; then come fields, where cows are lying and sheep browsing, and away in the distance stands Mr. Raidsford’s mansion, with trees about it—trees that are merged in, and seem to form a part of, the woods and plantations surrounding Kemms’ Park.

The lawn at Berrie Down is studded with fine old timber. Through the air pigeons are wheeling, on the ridge-tiles they are cooing; two or three dogs are lying basking in the sun; at one of the open windows of the drawing-room a cat is seated, gravely surveying the landscape, and perhaps at the same time prospectively viewing supper, or retrospectively thinking of her latest depredations in the dairy. There is a great peace in the scene—a peace which it requires a person to have been out in the hurry and turmoil of the world fully to comprehend. There is a repose in the landscape: in the way the sunbeams fall and rest upon the grass; in the monotonous cooing of the pigeons; in the attitudes of the cattle; in the murmur of the stream; in the stillness of the mill; in the faint rustling of the leaves; in the very perfume of the flowers; in the soft fanning of the breeze; in the grouping of the human figures in the landscape.

It would be a scene that for you, friend, and you, worn and weary with the noise and rush and excitement of this great Babylon—where we are all speeding so fast through life—to look upon with longing gaze, to remember afterwards with aching hearts; but people in the country view these things otherwise, and, accordingly, it was with far different feelings to any you would experience at sight of such a sunset, that Squire Dudley occasionally lifted his eyes to look towards the glowing west, ere dropping them again on the Times, the news in which Miss Ormson, seated on the ground at his feet, was kind enough to share with him.

Over the grass were scattered five other Dudleys, ranging in age from fifteen years upwards; one of whom, Alick, came up to his brother, and interrupted his study of the price of shares with—

“I wonder what time mother will get home; have you really no idea by which train she is coming?”

“Not the slightest,” said Arthur, laying down his paper, somewhat to the discomfiture of the young lady, who had been interesting herself with an “Extraordinary Elopement” paragraph; “and how often, Alick, am I to tell you not to call Heather ‘mother.’ It is not enough that I have to support you all, but you must persist in calling my wife, who is almost as young as Agnes, ‘mother.’ Mother, indeed! I detest such childishness!”

“If I had a mother like Heather, I should call her mother, and nothing else,” interposed Bessie, from her lowly position on the grass. “Don’t be silly, Arthur; let your brothers and sisters speak of your wife as they have found her.”

“But it irritates me,” persisted the Squire; “while they were young, it did not so much matter; now, however, when they are all growing up into men and women, the name sounds absurd. Heather does not look a day older than Agnes.”

“That is the beauty of the thing,” returned his opponent. “If Heather looked fifty, or even as old as you do, the charm would be dispelled.”

“Thank you for the implied compliment,” he returned, reddening. It was a sore point with him that his youth was gone, that his life had borne no fruit; and, even had the world prospered with him, it is not a pleasant thing for a man to be told he looks old by a pretty girl!

“Well, you know, Arthur,” said the same girl, frank as she was pretty, “you never will look so young as your wife. In the first place, she is ten years younger than you; and in the second, you ought to take a leaf out of her book, and learn contentment. You ought to cease grumbling and making yourself and other people wretched. You ought to think yourself lucky you have got Berrie Down Hollow, instead of always wishing you were Lord Chancellor, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or King of England, or something of that kind.”

“What has all this got to do with my brothers and sisters calling my wife their mother?” he asked. “They have got a mother of their own, and one mother ought to be quite enough for any person.”

“Mine is one too many for me,” remarked Bessie, with a shrug and a pout; evading at the same time the newspaper wherewith Arthur made believe to deal her a rebuking blow. “It is the truth, and I tell her so a dozen times a week. As for Mrs. Marsden, if you wanted Alick and the rest of them to feel that devotion towards her which you seem to think I ought to feel for my respected mother, why did you not let them go with her when she left Berrie Down? That was your grand mistake, Arthur; if you had given them so much a year and your blessing——”

“Bessie, I allow no one to interfere in my family concerns,” interrupted Arthur with dignity.

“Yes, you do,” persisted the young lady, “you allow mamma to do so; and as I know I shall not have a chance of speaking out my mind when once she comes, I have been trying latterly to make the best of my opportunities. Let me tell you all the benefits you would have derived from such an arrangement.”

“I wish to goodness, Bessie, you would keep your opinions to yourself; you are enough to drive a man mad.”

“And you are enough to drive a woman mad,” she returned, still looking up at him with a provoking smile on her face. “Ah, well, you have got your troubles, and I suppose I shall have mine, if I live long enough. Now, Alick, what are you waiting to say?”

“That if Arthur wants me to give up calling Heather mother, I will do so,” spoke the lad. “I know he has fed and clothed us, and——”

“Hang the boy,” interrupted Squire Dudley, pettishly, “call her what you like, only let me hear no more about it;” and Arthur and his companion resumed their study of the Times, while Alick, with his head bent a little, walked slowly down the lawn in the direction of the Hollow.

Suddenly there rang a glad cry after him of, “Alick, Alick, she’s come,” in answer to which the lad only waved his hand and ran on to the tangle of broom and bramble bushes, from out of which he brought a little girl, whom he bore in triumph on his shoulder up the hill.

It was a pretty scene, looking at it from the Hollow, on which the evening sunbeams fell.

The house formed the background of the picture, and for foreground there was the grassy slope, where were gathered around Mrs. Dudley and Mrs. Ormson all those who had been awaiting their coming.

A bustle and stir succeeded the previous stillness; there was a rustle of women’s dresses, a hum of women’s voices. There was much kissing and rejoicing, much fondling over and welcoming of Heather, who, at length, disengaging herself from the detaining group of loving hands, went towards her husband, standing a little outside the circle, and said—

“They won’t let me speak a word to you, Arthur. How have you been all this time? Have you missed me very much?” And as the others had greeted her, so she now addressed him with a little tremor in her voice, with tears of gladness at being home again standing in her eyes.

From a short distance, Bessie Ormson, who had duly presented her cheek to Heather’s travelling companion, and received in return a maternal kiss, contemplated this performance, and as she did so, stamped her foot impatiently on the ground.

“Have you forgotten me, Heather?” she asked, coming forward and putting her hand almost shyly in Mrs. Dudley’s. “There comes Lally,” she added, pointing down the hill towards Alick, who advanced at a run, while the child from her triumphant position clapped her little palms exultingly, calling out—

“Faster! faster! mamma, mamma!”

Panting for breath, Alick Dudley put Lally into her mother’s arms. “Me first, me first,” she cried, clinging to Heather, and debarring with true feminine ingratitude the gallant knight, who had brought her safely up the hill, from all benefits derivable from the meeting.

“You dreadful child—you bold, exacting little child,” exclaimed Bessie, taking her away by force. “Do you think no one has any right to your mamma but yourself? don’t you see I leave my mamma; why can’t you be as good as I am? Oh! you naughty little puss. I would not have red hair, Lally; I would not have shilling curls all over my head. I would sell them if I had them, and wear a wig.”

Whereupon Lally in great glee declared her hair was not red, but “dolden;” and that Bessie had ugly hair.

“I have what, chatterbox?” demanded Bessie. “Say that again—only say it, and I will carry you down the hill and bury you among the blackberries. I will shake you to pieces; I will kill you with kisses. Now, is not my hair beautiful?”

“No, it is ugly,” persisted Lally; and then there ensued a fierce contradiction between the two, which ended in Bessie first making believe to smother the child, and then kissing her, as it may be questioned whether Bessie Ormson had ever kissed any other creature in her life.

“I love ’oo,” said Miss Lally, as a sequence to this performance, putting two of her fingers in her mouth, and surveying society generally with the profoundest composure.

“And don’t you love me, pet?” inquired Mrs. Ormson, venturing upon the hazardous experiment of testing the strength of a child’s affections in the presence of strangers,—“don’t you love me?”

“No, Lally don’t,” was the reply.

“Not if I have brought you something very nice from London?” persisted Mrs. Ormson.

Lally stretched out her little hand for the bonbons, but declined to compromise herself by expressing any attachment for the donor.

“Now, do you not love me?” asked Mrs. Ormson, persuasively.

Lally thought the matter over, and decided in the negative.

“If you do not love my mamma, you must give her the bonbons back, Lally,” suggested Bessie; and she made a feint of taking the sweets away, which drew forth such a wail from the child as attracted public attention to the trio.

“Hush, hush, hush!” exclaimed Bessie. “I would not have believed you could have been so naughty. There, kiss mamma, and make friends with her. You are to give me half those bonbons, you know!”

To which arrangement Lally demurred; but, eventually, being greatly under the dominion of Miss Ormson’s superior will, with much trouble of mind she consented to this division; and under the cedar-tree she and Bessie parted the spoil.

Such high matters are not, however, to be lightly settled; and they were still engaged in deciding who was to have the odd sweetmeat, when, looking up from her lap where the treasures were laid in two heaps, Bessie saw Mrs. Dudley standing beside her.

“Come in, dear,” said Heather, “the dew is beginning to fall, you will catch cold;” and as she spoke she laid her hand gently on Bessie’s shoulder.

Bessie turned and pressed her lips to the white soft fingers; then she tossed the two heaps into one, and saying to Lally, “You shall have them all,” rose and faced Mrs. Dudley.

“I saw Gilbert yesterday,” observed the latter.

“Yes?”

The monosyllable Mrs. Dudley understood to be interrogative.

“And I asked him to come down here.”

“Thank you very much; he will be glad to do so.”

“I like him greatly.”

“He is greatly to be liked?” and Bessie, as she said this, slipped her hand, which was cold as ice, into Mrs. Dudley’s.

“And devoted to you,” went on Heather.

“I wish I were more worthy his devotion,” answered Bessie.

“I wish I could understand you,” was Mrs. Dudley’s answer, after a pause.

“I do not think there is much to understand,” said Bessie; but her heart gave a great leap as she spoke, for she knew she was telling a truthful woman a falsehood.

“I only meant that you strike me as being a little odd at times,” remarked Heather, gently.

“Not more odd than you strike me as being,” was the reply. Then, noticing that her companion seemed surprised, she went on, “Cannot you comprehend? won’t you comprehend that to a girl brought up as I have been, a woman such as you are is an enigma, a wonder, a never-ending, always beginning puzzle?”

“What do you mean?” Heather paused in their walk back towards the house as she asked this question; and I should like you to take your first look at her as she stands thus intent and unconscious.

Hair of the mellowest, darkest auburn, out of which the original red still gleamed in the sunlight; eyes brown, and deep and tender; the fairest, softest, womanliest complexion; teeth white and regular; a full and somewhat large mouth, parted as she waited for Bessie’s reply.

Altogether a firm face, and yet gentle—the face of a woman who had not known much sorrow, and yet whom you instinctively felt could endure patiently almost any amount of trouble which she might be called upon to bear; the face of a woman who had from her earliest years thought of others first, of herself last; the face of a woman whom, once married, a man would know it was hopeless for him to love with a sinful passion, but who would be a man’s good friend, his very right hand, in time of need; a face in which there was “help;” a face, which no person who had once seen it ever quite forgot, which you could not fancy changing and altering like the countenances of much more beautiful women.

It was the inner loveliness of her nature, its purity, its steadfastness, its pitiful tenderness which made her seem so exceeding fair. It was the gentleness and the charity, the patience and the unselfishness abiding in her, which shone in her eyes and drew people towards her.

It was a calm, good, happy face at the first glance, and yet, when any one with a right understanding of human faces came to look into it closely, there was a sadness underlying the happiness—an expression of which I should find it difficult to convey an idea, were it not that the same half-sad, half-worn look is to be observed on the countenances of those whose constitutions are being undermined by undeveloped disease, i.e., by disease which unconsciously to themselves exists in their bodies, and is insidiously sapping their health.

A man says he is well, and he feels well; and yet a doctor, looking in his face, can tell that some part of the mortal machinery is out of gear, and that ere long there will come a crash which shall reveal the secret of where the mischief has been brewing; and in like manner, if anything be wrong about a human being’s life, if utterly unknown to him or herself, there is a want in it—a vacuum; a stream of affection running to waste; twining tendrils involuntarily searching about for something to cling to; if there be a mental hunger, which has not even sufficient self-knowledge to cry aloud for food; if there be a thirsting for love, which the poor draught presented fails to satisfy; if there exist aspirations higher and holier, loftier and grander, than can be fulfilled by the “daily round, the common task;” if there be an undefined feeling that the best part of the nature, bestowed by the Almighty, has never been comprehended, never called out—then, when the face of that man or that woman is in repose, there will lie brooding upon it a look of sadness, which sets the mind of an observer at work, marvelling where the inner life is out of joint—what the mental disease may be—which, unsuspected even by the patient, is eating the heart out of the fruit, the wheat out of the ripe ear of grain.

And it was perhaps this second look in Heather Dudley’s face—the unconscious pathos of her expression when her features were in repose, which rendered her countenance so interesting.

After all, it is not when the sunlight is streaming over the landscape that the scene appeals most to our hearts; it is the shadow lying across the hillside, the cloud darkling on the water, the shades of evening creeping stealthily down upon the bay, which gives that mournful, melancholy pathetic look to the face of Nature, that touches us like a minor chord in music, like the sound of a plaintive melody, and awakens in our souls a powerful though often almost unconscious response.

In the twilight, when all harsh outlines are smoothed down, our dreams and our realities can walk forth hand in hand together, and there is but small discrepancy to be observed between them; and in like manner, when the shadow of sorrow rests upon the face of a friend, our hearts travel out to meet his. Before the wind comes and the rain descends, we can behold the approaching presence of the storm walking upon the waters, and involuntarily we stretch forth our hands towards the bark which is sailing on, dreaming of no peril, unthinking of danger.

The sunshine in Heather Dudley’s face was always pleasant to look upon; and yet Bessie felt it was the inevitable shadow which attracted her, which made her cherish a love for this woman she had never felt for any other woman on earth.

Well enough Miss Ormson knew Heather’s life was, according to the teaching of this world’s lore, a wasted one. Well enough; for the girl, though young, had lived in society, and had seen sufficient to teach her that, in all respects—socially, domestically, conjugally, pecuniarily—Heather might have done better; might have married a man who could have set her up as an idol in his heart, and thanked God for every misfortune, for every apparent mischance which had led him, by strange and devious paths, to the point where he met, and wooed, and wed Heather Bell.

And Heather herself had never discovered this fact. Though there would come that terribly plaintive look over her sweet face, that anxious, sorrowful, forecasting expression into her eyes, still she was a happy woman.

All this swept vaguely through Bessie Ormson’s mind, even while she replied, nervously—

“I cannot answer your question if you stand looking at me. Let us walk on, and I will try to tell you. Between us there is a gulf placed, and I stretch out my hands vainly trying to cross it. You are all candour and truth; I am all reserve and deceit——”

“Do not say that,” interrupted Mrs. Dudley.

“But I will say it,” she persisted, passionately. “You shall not think better of me than I deserve. You shall not imagine I am a girl like your girls—that I am a woman such as you are. Sometimes, sitting on the grass quietly by myself, I think about myself. Of course it is folly; but I do it, and wonder what I should have been like had my lot been cast at Berrie Down. I have seen nothing in my life but planning and scheming and shamming—nothing till I came here. Amongst you all, I dream of a different life to any I have ever known. I feel like a fallen angel on a short visit to Paradise. How you look at me! How stupid it is to talk about oneself! Shall we go in?”

“One moment,” Heather said. She had a clear, sweet voice, in which there was a great virtue of leisure. It was the voice of a woman whose life had not been hurried by anxiety, by passion, by excitement, or by over-work. It was one the melody of which never seemed out of time, never taken too fast. “One moment. Are you really unhappy, Bessie? Is there anything I could do, to——”

“To help me, you mean,” broke in the other, rapidly. “No one can do that. Am I unhappy? What cause have I for unhappiness? Am I not engaged—almost settled?”

“But do you love Gilbert?” asked Mrs. Dudley.

“Love him! Yes, I do, as well as married people usually love—perhaps better,” answered Bessie, and she laughed and dropped the bonbons; and then Lally and she picked them up out of the grass, and while she kept her face bent down, Bessie was thinking she could tell Mrs. Dudley one or two things which it might not have been pleasant for that lady to hear.

“Lally and I are great friends,” she said, irrelevantly. “I have put her to bed every night since you went away, and sang her to sleep afterwards. She is the only person who ever encored my music. Don’t you love ‘Ritornella,’ Lally? Don’t you delight in ‘Her dark hair hung loothe?’”

“Iss,” said Lally, readily.

“Agnes adopted Leonard in your absence, and has been really quite affecting in her maternal solicitude about that young gentleman; but Lally and I agreed nobody could comb out her hair so well as I—nobody tell her one-half so many fairy tales. I fear we have not kept such good hours as we ought; but she looks none the worse for it, does she?”

And Bessie, taking up the child, turned the little freckled face towards the light, and putting her hand under Lally’s chin, waited for the mother’s opinion on the appearance of her first-born.

Heather, however, never spoke; there was something the matter with her she could not have put into words; there shot a pang through her heart such as had never disturbed it before, and involuntarily almost she stretched out her arms towards her little girl, who struggled into her mother’s embrace in spite of Bessie’s teasing efforts to detain her.

“Well, Miss Lally, you’ll see whether I will shake down cherries for you to-morrow! If any one had told me, I would not have believed you could have deserted poor Bessie. You promised to be true to me for life. You are a deceitful little monkey, and I won’t love you a bit.”

In answer to which Lally rejoicingly first slapped Bessie’s cheeks, and then pulled her hair, and finally offered her mouth, so full of sweetmeats that she experienced a difficulty in closing it, to the end that they might kiss and be friends.

“No, I won’t kiss you, indeed,” said Bessie. “I won’t kiss an uncertain little puss who is everybody’s Joe.” Whereupon Lally declared in a voice choked with sentiment and sugar-plums, “Se isn’t bodies Joes.”

All this time Heather kept silence, holding the child tight as she could to her heart.

The sun had set, and as their faces were turned from the west, it seemed to her that they were walking out of the light into darkness.

She never said to the child, “Don’t you love me, are you not mamma’s pet?” for she could not, at the moment, have borne to draw a comparison between Lally’s attachment for Bessie and Lally’s attachment for herself.

If Heather had a sin, it was inordinate affection for that child; if it can ever be criminal for a mother to love her first-born too much, then Heather was a grievous wrong-doer. She loved her son, but she loved Lally more; loved the absurd little girl who, though christened Lily, had grown up as unlike one as can possibly be imagined; so unlike that, not to offend the unities, it had been unanimously decided, in family conclave, that Lily should be changed to Lally.

“Lily, indeed!” sneered Mrs. Ormson; “an orange lily, perhaps.” But the red hair, that would curl in “shilling curls,” as Bessie said, was dearer to Heather than her boy’s darker locks, and she loved every inch of the child’s body—the fair freckled face, the sunburnt arms, the plump little neck, the restless feet—with a love which was terrible, as all great affection is, in its intensity.

“It was sinful,” Mrs. Ormson declared, “the way in which Heather spoiled that child!” But if this were so, there were other sinners in the house besides Mrs. Dudley, for Lally was the pet and plaything of every man, woman, and child about the place; unless, indeed, it might be her father, who, reversing all ordinary rules, concentrated what affection he had to spare for any one on his son, whom he made, as Bessie unhesitatingly informed him, “a disagreeable little pest.”

Perhaps, however, it was not the father who made the child disagreeable so much as nature. Very little of Heather’s generous unselfishness seemed to have descended to her second-born. It appeared as though to Lally had fallen most of her mother’s good qualities, while Leonard inherited Mr. Dudley’s good looks; for Leonard was what is called a “beautiful boy,” and all her best friends could say in favour of Lally was that, very probably, she would grow up into a handsome woman yet.

There was no pride about Miss Lally; she was as ready to accept affection from the odd man that cleaned the knives and boots, as from stately Mrs. Piggott, who, having made overtures to Heather, soon after that young lady’s marriage, had returned to her old dominions and reigned supreme at Berrie Down, over kitchen, and dairy, and larder. To Lally, nothing in the way of attention or amusement came amiss; from the feeding of the chickens to the milking of the cows, from bull’s-eyes to bonbons, from a tour round the premises, seated in a barrow wheeled by Ned, the odd man previously mentioned, to a gallop undertaken on the shoulders of that willing steed Alick, Lally was equally agreeable to, and gratified with all. She was so utterly cosmopolitan in her ideas, that Squire Dudley’s pride was daily offended by her utter want of conservatism. She was so easily pleased, and she found so many people willing to please her, that he came seriously to the conclusion there must be something wrong in the child’s mental constitution—some want in her brains, as he expressed it. “I saw her absolutely one day last winter,” he told Mrs. Ormson, “with about two pounds of salt in her lap, being wheeled round the walks by Ned, in search of birds; ‘because you know, papa,’ she said, ‘if I can once put salt on their tails, we shall be able to catch them.’”

Whereupon Mrs. Ormson lifted her hands and eyes to heaven, and declared, “Heather will never stop till she has made that child a perfect idiot.”

“I sent Ned to his work and Lally into the house,” proceeded Arthur, “but it is of no use my speaking. Five minutes afterwards she was on Alick’s shoulder, and he was carrying the salt for her in a bag tied round his neck.”

“Poor Heather, she will find out her mistake some day,” sighed Mrs. Ormson.

“But it is not Heather alone,” went on Mr. Dudley. “Everybody is the same; everybody makes a perfect idol of Lally, while Leonard mopes about alone. Where could you find a better child than he is? He will walk with me from here to the mill and never say a word, while Lally’s tongue never ceases from morning till night. Sometimes I think she is in fifty places at once, for wherever I go I hear her.”

“It is very sad,” observed Mrs. Ormson, “the child will be perfectly ruined.”

And there can be no doubt but that the lady believed she was speaking the literal truth. She did, indeed, consider Lally an utter mistake—her very existence an oversight on the part of Providence.

“A nice, quiet, pretty little girl, who would sit still in the nursery, with her doll and her picturebook,” was Mrs. Ormson’s idea of the correct style of thing in the scheme of creation; but a child with red hair, with a face covered with freckles, exactly like a turkey’s egg, with reddish-brown eyes, with legs that, in the course of the longest summer-day, never grew weary of carrying her from parlour to kitchen, from garden to Hollow, from Hollow to meadow; a child who had no “pretty ways,” according to Mrs. Ormson’s reading of juvenile attractiveness; who would not learn anything, nor keep her frocks clean; clearly the Almighty had not consulted Mrs. Ormson before He sent Lally Dudley into the world, or such a mistake never would have been committed, not even to please Heather, to whom the little girl was sun, moon, stars, and planets.

And because her heart was bound up in the child, Heather could not bear that another should come in her place, and attract Lally towards her as Bessie had done. With the “other children,” as Mrs. Dudley still continued to call her husband’s brothers and sisters, it did not matter; with the servants also it was of no consequence, for they were all of the one household, all after a fashion members of one family; but here was a stranger—daughter to a woman whom Heather did not much like—a girl whom in her inmost heart Heather distrusted—making friendly overtures to Lally, which Lally accepted with even more than her ordinary readiness, with an increase of her wonted gracious affability.

Was what Bessie said true—was Lally everybody’s Joe? Did she not care for her mother so very, very much, after all? For the first time in her married life there came swelling up in Heather’s heart a spirit of antagonism—a desire to quarrel; but, before she reached the house, she conquered herself and said—

“Your mamma declares I spoil Lally. I wonder what she will think about you.”

“She can think what she likes, as she usually does,” answered Bessie, making a movement as if to take Lally from her mother. She had been in the habit of carrying the child off to bed every night, and it came natural to her now to do so, though Heather was at home once more.

She forgot she had been but at best a self-constituted viceroy, and that the rightful queen had returned to take possession of her own again; but the involuntary backward step with which Heather repulsed her intention was like a revelation to Bessie. The woman she had regarded as perfect, was but flesh and blood, after all. She could feel jealous, and she did, and she meant to keep Lally all to herself for the future, and never to permit a stranger’s hand to be laid, if she could help it, on the child.

But Bessie was not one to bear such a proceeding patiently. “Don’t depose me,” she said, in a tone which was one-half of entreaty, half of banter. “It won’t be for long. Am not I going to a home of my own, where I shall have something else to do than sing lullabies to other people’s children? Besides, it will do you good; you are a little inclined to be jealous. Never fear, I won’t take Lally’s love from you; I could not do it if I would, and I would not if I could. Let me sing her to sleep still, please do. She won’t need much rocking to-night;” and she held out her arms to Lally, who tumbled headlong into them, only sufficiently awake to clutch at her mother’s sleeve and entreat her to “come too.”

“I will come up when you are in bed, pet,” said Mrs. Dudley, turning aside into the dining-room, while the girl slowly ascended the broad staircase, humming “Isabelle” while she carried her light burden step by step up to that pleasant chamber with the snowy draperies, with the wide prospect, with its windows half-covered with roses and greenery, which came back to Bessie Ormson’s memory in dreams when she was far away both from Hertfordshire and Heather.

After a little time Mrs. Dudley followed her, and kissed the children, and then stood looking at them lingeringly till she said she must go down to supper.

“Lally will be fast asleep in two minutes,” remarked Bessie, “then I will follow you.” But the minutes passed, and still no Bessie put in her appearance at the “old-fashioned meal,” as Mrs. Ormson styled supper.

“Shall I tell Bessie?” asked Agnes Dudley; and she was about leaving the room when Heather stopped her.

“I will go, love,” she said, just touching the girl’s cheek with her hand in passing.

She had tender, caressing ways, this woman, whose life was still all before her. No one felt neglected when she entered. Her nature was to consider the very dumb animals,—to leave nothing outside the circle within which she stood; and feeling that she might have been a little inconsiderate towards Bessie, she went to seek her, meaning to make amends, to thank her for all her kindness to Lally.

Very softly she opened the door—softly as a mother does who fears to wake her children; for a moment she looked in and hesitated; then, even more softly than she had come, she closed the door and stole along the corridor perplexed and sorrowful.

In the twilight she had seen Bessie kneeling on the floor beside Lally’s bed. She held one of the little girl’s hands tight in hers, and her face was buried in the counterpane. There was no need for singing then. Lally was fast asleep: the busy feet were still, the tireless tongue silent, the curly head quiet enough on the pillow, and Bessie, whom nobody ever beheld depressed in spirits, who was always either laughing or jesting, scolding or teasing, talking or devising some mischief, was sobbing in the gathering darkness as though her very heart were breaking.

If Heather had ever thought any hard thoughts about her visitor, they were swept out of her mind then; if she had ever felt doubts of the girl, those doubts gave place to sympathy and pity; if she had ever felt there was something in Bessie Ormson which she did not comprehend, which she would rather not comprehend, that sensation of repulsion was changed into an earnest desire to understand her thoroughly, into a conviction that in places the stream was dark only because it ran deep.

Vaguely and instinctively all this came into Heather Dudley’s heart. As she retraced her steps along the corridor, she could not have told any one the reason of the great change which had come over her; but a great change, nevertheless, had been effected during the moment she stood looking at the kneeling figure, prostrated in a very abandonment of grief.

From that hour, through good report and through evil, when appearances were in her favour, and when appearances were all against her, unconsciously almost to herself, Heather Dudley loved Bessie Ormson.

In her grief, in her agony of sorrow, in her clinging attachment to Lally, in her passion of despair, of hopelessness, of loneliness, of regret, of indecision, Heather’s heart clave to that of her guest, and her soul was from thenceforth knit to Bessie, as was the soul of Jonathan with the soul of David.

CHAPTER V.
AT SUPPER.

Although Mrs. Ormson, being in her own estimation a great lady, followed the fashions and affected London hours, still, to do her justice, supper was one of those ancient customs it delighted her to see kept up in her nephew’s house.

“I only wish, my dear,” she said to Heather, “we could do as we liked in town, and I would have supper every night of my life instead of that late dinner, which is neither, as Mr. Ormson says, fish, flesh, nor fowl. Now, what can be more cosy and comfortable than this?” and the lady complacently surveyed the supper-table, whereon was spread a meal that might indeed have caused one of Mr. Ormson’s late dinners to hide its diminished head with a sense of grievous humiliation.