Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Mrs. Goddard was English, nevertheless, and would have been very much surprised could she have guessed the secret cause of the slight coldness she sometimes observed in the manner of the clergyman’s wife towards her. She herself, poor thing, believed it was because she was in trouble, and considering the nature of the disaster which had befallen her, she was not surprised. She was rather a weak woman, rather timid, and if she talked a little too much sometimes it was because she felt embarrassed; there were times, too, when she was very silent and sad. She had been very happy and the great catastrophe had overtaken her suddenly, leaving her absolutely without friends. She wanted to be hidden from the world, and by one of those strange contrasts often found in weak people she had suddenly made a very bold resolution and had successfully carried it out. She had come straight to a man she had never seen, but whom she knew very well by reputation, and had told him her story and asked him to help her; and she had not come in vain. The person who advised her to go to the Reverend Augustin Ambrose knew that there was not a better man to whom she could apply. She had found what she wanted, a sort of deserted village where she would never be obliged to meet any one, since there was absolutely no society; she had found a good man upon whom she felt she could rely in case of further difficulty; and she had not come upon false pretences, for she had told her whole story quite frankly. For a woman who was naturally timid she had done a thing requiring considerable courage, and she was astonished at her own boldness after she had done it. But in her peaceful retreat, she reflected that she could not possibly have left England, as many women in her position would have done, simply because the idea of exile was intolerable to her; she reflected also that if she had settled in any place where there was any sort of society her story would one day have become known, and that if she had spent years in studying her situation she could not have done better than in going boldly to the vicar of Billingsfield and explaining her sad position to him. She had found a haven of rest after many months of terrible anxiety and she hoped that she might end her days in peace and in the spot she had chosen. But she was very young — not thirty years of age yet — and her little girl would soon grow up — and then? Evidently her dream of peace was likely to be of limited duration; but she resigned herself to the unpleasant possibilities of the future with a good grace, in consideration of the advantages she enjoyed in the present.

  Mrs. Ambrose was at home when Mrs. Goddard and little Eleanor came to the vicarage. Indeed Mrs. Ambrose was rarely out in the afternoon, unless something very unusual called her away. She received her visitor with the stern hospitality she exercised towards strangers. The strangers she saw were generally the near relations of the young gentlemen whom her husband received for educational purposes. She stood in the front drawing-room, that is to say, in the most impressive chamber of that fortress which is an Englishman’s house. It was a formal room, arranged by a fixed rule and the order of it was maintained inflexibly; no event could be imagined of such terrible power as to have caused the displacement of one of those chairs, of one of those ornaments upon the chimney-piece, of one of those engravings upon the walls. The walls were papered with one shade of green, the furniture was covered with material of another shade of green and the well-spared carpet exhibited still a third variety of the same colour. Mrs. Ambrose’s sense of order did not extend to the simplest forms of artistic harmony, but when it had an opportunity of impressing itself upon inanimate objects which were liable to be moved, washed or dusted, its effects were formidable indeed. She worshipped neatness and cleanliness; she left the question of taste to others. And now she stood in the keep of her stronghold, the impersonation of moral rectitude and of practical housekeeping.

  Mrs. Goddard entered rather timidly, followed by little Eleanor whose ideas had been so much disturbed by the recent change in her existence, that she had grown unusually silent and her great violet eyes were unceasingly opened wide to take in the growing wonders of her situation. Mrs. Goddard was still dressed in black, as when John Short had seen her five months earlier. There was something a little peculiar in her mourning, though Mrs. Ambrose would have found it hard to define the peculiarity. Some people would have said that if she was really a widow her gown fitted a little too well, her bonnet was a little too small, her veil a little too short. Mrs. Ambrose supposed that those points were suggested by the latest fashions in London and summed up the difficulty by surmising that Mrs. Goddard had foreign blood.

  “I should have called before,” said the latter, deeply impressed by the severe appearance of the vicar’s wife, “but I have been so busy putting my things into the cottage—”

  “Pray don’t think of it,” answered Mrs. Ambrose. Then she added after a pause, “I am very glad to see you.” She appeared to have been weighing in her conscience the question whether she could truthfully say so or not. But Mrs. Goddard was grateful for the smallest advances.

  “Thank you,” she said, “you are so very kind. Will you tell Mr. Ambrose how thankful I am for his kind assistance? Yes, Nellie and I have had hard work in moving, have not we, dear?” She drew the beautiful child close to her and gazed lovingly into her eyes. But Nellie was shy; she hid her face on her mother’s shoulder, and then looked doubtfully at Mrs. Ambrose, and then hid herself again.

  “How old is your little girl?” asked Mrs. Ambrose more kindly. She was fond of children, and actually pitied any child whose mother perhaps had foreign blood.

  “Eleanor — I call her Nellie — is eight years old. She will be nine in January. She is tall for her age,” added Mrs. Goddard with affectionate pride. As a matter of fact Nellie was small for her years, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was the most truthful of women, felt that she could not conscientiously agree in calling hex tall. She changed the subject.

  “I am afraid you will find it very quiet in Billingsfield,” she said presently.

  “Oh, I am used — that is, I prefer a very quiet place. I want to live very quietly for some years, indeed I hope for the rest of my life. Besides it will be so good for Nellie to live in the country — she will grow so strong.”

  “She looks very well, I am sure,” answered Mrs. Ambrose rather bluntly, looking at the child’s clear complexion and bright eyes. “And have you always lived in town until now, Mrs. Goddard?” she asked.

  “Oh no, not always, but most of the year, perhaps. Indeed I think so.”

  Mrs. Goddard felt nervous before the searching glance of the elder woman.

  Mrs. Ambrose concluded that she was not absolutely straightforward.

  “Do you think you can make the cottage comfortable?” asked the vicar’s wife, seeing that the conversation languished.

  “Oh, I think so,” answered her visitor, glad to change the subject, and suddenly becoming very voluble as she had previously been very shy. “It is really a charming little place. Of course it is not very large, but as we have not got very many belongings that is all the better; and the garden is small but extremely pretty and wild, and the kitchen is very convenient; really I quite wonder how the people who built it could have made it all so comfortable. You see there are one — two — the pantry, the kitchen and two rooms on the ground floor and plenty of room upstairs for everybody, and as for the sun! it streams into all the windows at once from morning till night. And such a pretty view, too, of that old gate opposite — where does it lead to, Mrs. Ambrose? It is so very pretty.”

  “It leads to the park and the Hall,” answered Mrs. Ambrose.

  “Oh—” Mrs. Goddard’s tone changed. “But nobody lives there?” she asked suddenly.

  “Oh no — it is in Chancery, you know.”

  “What — what is that, exactly?” asked Mrs. Goddard, timidly. “Is there a young heir waiting to grow up — I mean waiting to take possession?”

  “No. There is a suit about it. It has been going on for forty years my husband says, and they cannot decide to whom it belongs.”

  “I see,” answered Mrs. Goddard. “I suppose they will never decide no
w.”

  “Probably not for some time.”

  “It must be a very pretty place. Can one go in, do you think? I am so fond of trees — what a beautiful garden you have yourself, Mrs. Ambrose.”

  “Would you like to see it?” asked the vicar’s wife, anxious to bring the visit to a conclusion.

  “Oh, thank you — of all things!” exclaimed Mrs. Goddard. “Would not you like to run about the garden, Nellie?”

  The little girl nodded slowly and stared at Mrs. Ambrose.

  “My husband is a very good gardener,” said the latter, leading the way out to the hall. “And so was John Short, but he has left us, you know.”

  “Who was John Short?” asked Mrs. Goddard rather absently, as she watched Mrs. Ambrose who was wrapping herself in a huge blue waterproof cloak and tying a sort of worsted hood over her head.

  “He was one of the boys Mr. Ambrose prepared for college — such a good fellow. You may have seen him when you came last June, Mrs. Goddard?”

  “Had he very bright blue eyes — a nice face?”

  “Yes — that is, it might have been Mr. Angleside — Lord Scatterbeigh’s son — he was here, too.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Goddard, “perhaps it was.”

  “Mamma,” asked little Nellie, “what is Laws Catterbay?”

  “A peer, darling.”

  “Like the one at Brighton, mamma, with a band?”

  “No, child,” answered the mother laughing. “P, double E, R, peer — a rich gentleman.”

  “Like poor papa then?” inquired the irrepressible Eleanor.

  Mrs. Goddard turned pale and pressed the little girl close to her side, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

  “You must not ask foolish questions, darling — I will tell you by and by.”

  “Papa was a rich gentleman,” objected the child.

  Mrs. Goddard looked at Mrs. Ambrose, and the ready tears came into her eyes. The vicar’s wife smiled kindly and took little Nellie by the hand.

  “Come, dear,” she said in the motherly tone that was natural to her when she was not receiving visitors. “Come and see the garden and you can play with Carlo.”

  “Can’t I see Laws Catterbay, too?” asked the little girl rather wistfully.

  “Carlo is a great, big, brown dog,” said Mrs. Ambrose, leading the child out into the garden, while Mrs. Goddard followed close behind. Before they had gone far they came upon the vicar, arrayed in an old coat, his hands thrust into a pair of gigantic gardening gloves and a battered old felt hat upon his head. Mrs. Goddard had felt rather uncomfortable in the impressive society of Mrs. Ambrose and the sight of the vicar’s genial face was reassuring in the extreme. She was not disappointed, for he immediately relieved the situation by asking all manner of kindly questions, interspersed with remarks upon his garden, while Mrs. Ambrose introduced little Nellie to the acquaintance of Carlo who had not seen so pretty a little girl for many a day, and capered and wagged his feathery tail in a manner most unseemly for so clerical a dog.

  So it came about that Mrs. Goddard established herself at Billingsfield and made her first visit to the vicarage. After that the ice was broken and things went on smoothly enough. Mrs. Ambrose’s hints concerning foreign blood, and her husband’s invariable remonstrance to the effect that she ought to be more charitable, grew more and more rare as time went on, and finally ceased altogether. Mrs. Goddard became a regular institution, and ceased to astonish the inhabitants. Mr. Thomas Reid, the sexton, was heard to remark from time to time that he “didn’t hold with th’m newfangle fashins in dress;” but he was a regular old conservative, and most people agreed with Mr. Abraham Boosey of the Duke’s Head, who had often been to London, and who said she did “look just A one, slap up, she did!”

  Mrs. Goddard became an institution, and in the course of the first year of her residence in the cottage it came to be expected that she should dine at the vicarage at least once a week; and once a week, also, Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose went up and had tea with her and little Eleanor at the cottage. It came to pass also that Mrs. Goddard heard a vast deal of talk about John Short and his successes at Trinity, and she actually developed a lively interest in his career, and asked for news of him almost as eagerly as though he had been already a friend of her own. In very quiet places people easily get into the sympathetic habit of regarding their neighbours’ interests as very closely allied to their own. The constant talk about John Short, the vicar’s sanguine hopes for his brilliant future, and Mrs. Ambrose’s unlimited praise of his moral qualities, repeated day by day and week by week produced a vivid impression on Mrs. Goddard’s mind. It would have surprised her and even amused her beyond measure had she had any idea that she herself had for a long time absorbed the interest of this same John Short, that he had written hundreds of Greek and Latin verses in her praise, while wholly ignorant of her name, and that at the very time when without knowing him, she was constantly mentioning him as though she knew him intimately well, he himself was looking back to the one glimpse he had had of her, as to a dream of unspeakable bliss.

  It never occurred to Mr. Ambrose’s mind to tell John in the occasional letters he wrote that Mrs. Goddard had settled in Billingsfield. John, he thought, could take no possible interest in knowing about her, and moreover, Mrs. Goddard herself was most anxious never to be mentioned abroad. She had come to Billingsfield to live in complete obscurity, and the good vicar had promised that as far as he and his wife were concerned she should have her wish. To tell even John Short, his own beloved pupil, would be to some extent a breach of faith, and there was assuredly no earthly reason why John should be told. It might do harm, for of course the young fellow had made acquaintances at Cambridge; he had probably read about the Goddard case in the papers, and might talk about it. If he should happen to come down for a day or two he would probably meet her; but that could not be avoided. It was not likely that he would come for some time. The vicar himself intended to go up to Cambridge for a day or two after Christmas to see him; but the winter flew by and Mr. Ambrose did not go. Then came Easter, then the summer and the Long vacation. John wrote that he could not leave his books for a day, but that he hoped to run down next Christmas. Again he did not come, but there came the news of his having won another and a more important scholarship; the news also that he was already regarded as the most promising man in the university, all of which exceedingly delighted the heart of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose, and being told with eulogistic comments to Mrs. Goddard, tended to increase the interest she felt in the existence of John Short, so that she began to long for a sight of him, without exactly knowing why.

  Gradually, too, as she and her little girl passed many peaceful days in the quiet cottage, the sad woman’s face grew less sorrowful. She spoke of herself more cheerfully and dwelt less upon the subject of her grief. She had at first been so miserable that she could hardly talk at all without referring to her unhappy situation though, after her first interview with Mrs. Ambrose, no one had ever heard her mention any details connected with her trouble. But now she never approached the subject at all. Her face lost none of its pathetic beauty, it is true, but it seemed to express sorrow past rather than present. Meanwhile little Nellie grew daily more lovely, and absorbed more and more of her mother’s attention.

  CHAPTER IV.

  EVENTS OF SUCH stirring interest as the establishment of Mrs. Goddard in Billingsfield rarely come alone; for it seems to be in the nature of great changes to bring other changes with them, even when there is no apparent connection whatever between them. It took nearly two years for Billingsfield to recover from its astonishment at Mrs. Goddard’s arrival, and before the excitement had completely worn off the village was again taken off its feet by unexpected news of stupendous import, even as of old Pompeii was overthrown by a second earthquake before it had wholly recovered from the devastation caused by the first. The shock was indeed a severe one. The Juxon estate was reported to be out of Chancery, and a new squire was coming to take up his res
idence at the Hall.

  It is not known exactly how the thing first became known, but there was soon no doubt whatever that it was true. Thomas Reid, the sexton, who remembered that the old squire died forty years ago come Michaelmas, and had been buried in a “wonderful heavy” coffin, Thomas Reid the stern censor of the vicar’s sermons, a melancholic and sober man, so far lost his head over the news as to ask Mr. Ambrose’s leave to ring the bells, Mr. Abraham Boosey having promised beer for the ringers. Even to the vicar’s enlightened mind it seemed fitting that there should be some festivity over so great an event and the bells were accordingly rung during one whole afternoon. Thomas Reid’s ringers never got beyond the first “bob” of a peal, for with the exception of the sexton himself and old William Speller the wheelwright, who pulled the treble bell, they were chiefly dull youths who with infinite difficulty had been taught what changes they knew by rote and had very little idea of ringing by scientific rule. Moreover Mr. Boosey was liberal in the matter of beer that day and the effect of each successive can that was taken up the stairs of the old tower was immediately apparent to every one within hearing, that is to say as far as five miles around.

  The estate was out of Chancery at last. For forty years, ever since the death of the old squire, no one had rightfully called the Hall his own. The heir had lived abroad, and had lived in such an exceedingly eccentric manner as to give ground for a suit de lunatico inquirendo, brought by another heir. With the consistency of judicial purpose which characterises such proceedings the courts appeared to have decided that though the natural possessor, the eccentric individual who lived abroad, was too mad to be left in actual possession, he was not mad enough to justify actual possession in the person of the next of kin. Proceedings continued, fees were paid, a certain legal personage already mentioned came down from time to time and looked over the estate, but the matter was not finally settled until the eccentric individual died, after forty years of eccentricity, to the infinite relief and satisfaction of all parties and especially of his lawful successor Charles James Juxon now, at last, “of Billingsfield Hall, in the county of Essex, Esquire.”