Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  *This is a true anecdote.

  “La, miss,” said Barbara’s maid, when she found her mistress in a passion upon her return from Susan’s, “I only wondered you did her the honour to set your foot within her doors. What need have you to trouble her for news about the Abbey folks, when your own papa has been there all the morning, and is just come in, and can tell you everything?”

  Barbara did not know that her father meant to go to the Abbey that morning, for Attorney Case was mysterious even to his own family about his morning rides. He never chose to be asked where he was going, or where he had been; and this made his servants more than commonly inquisitive to trace him.

  Barbara, against whose apparent childishness and real cunning he was not sufficiently on his guard, had often the art of drawing him into conversation about his visits. She ran into her father’s parlour; but she knew, the moment she saw his face, that it was no time to ask questions; his pen was across his mouth, and his brown wig pushed oblique upon his contracted forehead. The wig was always pushed crooked whenever he was in a brown or rather, a black study. Barbara, who did not, like Susan, bear with her father’s testy humour from affection and gentleness of disposition, but who always humoured him from artifice, tried all her skill to fathom his thoughts, and when she found that it would not do, she went to tell her maid so, and to complain that her father was so cross there was no bearing him.

  It is true that Attorney Case was not in the happiest mood possible; for he was by no means satisfied with his morning’s work at the Abbey. Sir Arthur Somers, the NEW MAN, did not suit him, and he began to be rather apprehensive that he should not suit Sir Arthur. He had sound reasons for his doubts.

  Sir Arthur Somers was an excellent lawyer, and a perfectly honest man. This seemed to our attorney a contradiction in terms; in the course of his practice the case had not occurred; and he had no precedents ready to direct his proceedings. Sir Arthur was also a man of wit and eloquence, yet of plain dealing and humanity. The attorney could not persuade himself to believe that his benevolence was anything but enlightened cunning, and his plain dealing he one minute dreaded as the masterpiece of art, and the next despised as the characteristic of folly. In short, he had not yet decided whether he was an honest man or a knave. He had settled accounts with him for his late agency, and had talked about sundry matters of business. He constantly perceived, however, that he could not impose upon Sir Arthur; but the idea that he could know all the mazes of the law, and yet prefer the straight road, was incomprehensible.

  Mr. Case, having paid Sir Arthur some compliments on his great legal abilities, and his high reputation at the bar, he coolly replied, “I have left the bar.” The attorney looked in unfeigned astonishment, that a man who was actually making 3,OOO pounds per annum at the bar should leave it.

  “I am come,” said Sir Arthur, “to enjoy that kind of domestic life in the country which I prefer to all others, and amongst people whose happiness I hope to increase.” At this speech the attorney changed his ground, flattering himself that he should find his man averse to business, and ignorant of country affairs. He talked of the value of land, and of new leases.

  Sir Arthur wished to enlarge his domain, and to make a ride round it. A map of it was lying upon the table, and Farmer Price’s garden came exactly across the new road for the ride. Sir Arthur looked disappointed; and the keen attorney seized the moment to inform him that “Price’s whole land was at his disposal.”

  “At my disposal! how so?” cried Sir Arthur, eagerly; “it will not be out of lease, I believe, these ten years. I’ll look into the rent roll again; perhaps I am mistaken.”

  “You are mistaken, my good sir, and you are not mistaken,” said Mr. Case, with a shrewd smile. “In one sense, the land will not be out of lease these ten years, and in another it is out of lease at this present time. To come to the point at once, the lease is, ab origine, null and void. I have detected a capital flaw in the body of it. I pledge my credit upon it, sir, it can’t stand a single term in law or equity.”

  The attorney observed, that at these words Sir Arthur’s eye was fixed with a look of earnest attention. “Now I have him,” said the cunning tempter to himself.

  “Neither in law nor equity,” repeated Sir Arthur, with apparent incredulity. “Are you sure of that, Mr. Case?”

  “Sure! As I told you before, sir, I’d pledge my whole credit upon the thing — I’d stake my existence.”

  “THAT’S SOMETHING,” said Sir Arthur, as if he was pondering upon the matter.

  The attorney went on with all the eagerness of a keen man, who sees a chance at one stroke of winning a rich friend, and of ruining a poor enemy. He explained, with legal volubility and technical amplification, the nature of the mistake in Mr. Price’s lease. “It was, sir,” said he, “a lease for the life of Peter Price, Susanna his wife, and to the survivor or survivors of them, or for the full time and term of twenty years, to be computed from the first day of May then next ensuing. Now, sir, this, you see, is a lease in reversion, which the late Sir Benjamin Somers had not, by his settlement, a right to make. This is a curious mistake, you see, Sir Arthur; and in filling up those printed leases there’s always a good chance of some flaw. I find it perpetually; but I never found a better than this in the whole course of my practice.”

  Sir Arthur stood in silence.

  “My dear sir,” said the attorney, taking him by the button, “you have no scruple of stirring in this business?”

  “A little,” said Sir Arthur.

  “Why, then, that can be done away in a moment. Your name shall not appear in it at all. You have nothing to do but to make over the lease to me. I make all safe to you with my bond. Now, being in possession, I come forward in my own proper person. SHALL I PROCEED?”

  “No — you have said enough,” replied Sir Arthur.

  “The case, indeed, lies in a nutshell,” said the attorney, who had by this time worked himself up to such a pitch of professional enthusiasm, that, intent upon his vision of a lawsuit, he totally forgot to observe the impression his words made upon Sir Arthur.

  “There’s only one thing we have forgotten all this time,” said Sir

  Arthur.

  “What can that be, sir?”

  “That we shall ruin this poor man.”

  Case was thunderstruck at these words, or rather, by the look which accompanied them. He recollected that he had laid himself open before he was sure of Sir Arthur’s REAL character. He softened, and said he should have had certainly more CONSIDERATION in the case of any but a litigious, pig-headed fellow, as he knew Price to be.

  “If he be litigious,” said Sir Arthur, “I shall certainly be glad to get him fairly out of the parish as soon as possible. When you go home, you will be so good, sir, as to send me his lease, that I may satisfy myself before we stir in this business.”

  The attorney, brightening up, prepared to take leave; but he could not persuade himself to take his departure without making one push at Sir Arthur about the agency.

  “I will not trouble you, Sir Arthur, with this lease of Price’s,” said

  Case; “I’ll leave it with your agent. Whom shall I apply to?”

  “TO MYSELF, sir, if you please,” replied Sir Arthur.

  The courtiers of Louis the Fourteenth could not have looked more astounded than our attorney, when they received from their monarch a similar answer. It was this unexpected reply of Sir Arthur’s which had deranged the temper of Mr. Case, and caused his wig to stand so crooked upon his forehead, and which had rendered him impenetrably silent to his inquisitive daughter Barbara.

  After having walked up and down his room, conversing with himself, for some time, the attorney concluded that the agency must be given to somebody when Sir Arthur should have to attend his duty in Parliament; that the agency, even for the winter season, was not a thing to be neglected; and that, if he managed well, he might yet secure it for himself. He had often found that small timely presents worked wonderfully upon
his own mind, and he judged of others by himself. The tenants had been in the reluctant but constant practice of making him continual petty offerings; and he resolved to try the same course with Sir Arthur, whose resolution to be his own agent, he thought, argued a close, saving, avaricious disposition. He had heard the housekeeper at the Abbey inquiring, as he passed through the servants, whether there was any lamb to be gotten? She said that Sir Arthur was remarkably fond of lamb, and that she wished she could get a quarter for him. Immediately he sallied into his kitchen, as soon as the idea struck him, and asked a shepherd, who was waiting there, whether he knew of a nice fat lamb to be had anywhere in the neighbourhood.

  “I know of one,” cried Barbara. “Susan Price has a pet lamb that’s as fat as fat could be.” The attorney easily caught at these words, and speedily devised a scheme for obtaining Susan’s lamb for nothing.

  It would be something strange if an attorney of his talents and standing was not an over-match for Simple Susan. He prowled forth in search of his prey. He found Susan packing up her father’s little wardrobe; and when she looked up as she knelt, he saw that she had been in tears.

  “How is your mother to-day, Susan?” inquired the attorney.

  “Worse, sir. My father goes to-morrow.”

  “That’s a pity.”

  “It can’t be helped,” said Susan, with a sigh.

  “It can’t be helped — how do you know that?” said Case.

  “Sir, DEAR sir!” cried she, looking up at him, and a sudden ray of hope beamed in her ingenuous countenance.

  “And if YOU could help it, Susan?” said he. Susan clasped her hands in silence, more expressive than words. “You CAN help it, Susan.” She started up in an ecstasy. “What would you give now to have your father at home for a whole week longer?”

  “Anything! — but I have nothing.”

  “Yes, but you have, a lamb,” said the hard-hearted attorney.

  “My poor little lamb!” said Susan; “but what can that do?”

  “What good can any lamb do? Is not lamb good to eat? Why do you look so pale, girl? Are not sheep killed every day, and don’t you eat mutton? Is your lamb better than anybody else’s, think you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Susan, “but I love it better.”

  “More fool you,” said he.

  “It feeds out of hand, it follows me about; I have always taken care of it; my mother gave it to me.”

  “Well, say no more about it, then,” he cynically observed; “if you love your lamb better than both your father and your mother, keep it, and good morning to you.”

  “Stay, oh stay!” cried Susan, catching the skirt of his coat with an eager, trembling hand;—”a whole week, did you say? My mother may get better in that time. No, I do not love my lamb half so well.” The struggle of her mind ceased, and with a placid countenance and calm voice, “take the lamb,” said she.

  “Where is it?” said the attorney.

  “Grazing in the meadow, by the river side.”

  “It must be brought up before night-fall for the butcher, remember.”

  “I shall not forget it,” said Susan, steadily.

  As soon, however, as her persecutor turned his back and quitted the house, Susan sat down, and hid her face in her hands. She was soon aroused by the sound of her mother’s feeble voice, who was calling Susan from the inner room where she lay. Susan went in; but did not undraw the curtain as she stood beside the bed.

  “Are you there, love? Undraw the curtain, that I may see you, and tell me; — I thought I heard some strange voice just now talking to my child. Something’s amiss, Susan,” said her mother, raising herself as well as she was able in the bed, to examine her daughter’s countenance.

  “Would you think it amiss, then, my dear mother,” said Susan, stooping to kiss her—”would you think it amiss, if my father was to stay with us a week longer?”

  “Susan! you don’t say so?”

  “He is, indeed, a whole week; — but how burning hot your hand is still.”

  “Are you sure he will stay?” inquired her mother. “How do you know? Who told you so? Tell me all quick.”

  “Attorney Case told me so; he can get him a week’s longer leave of absence, and he has promised he will.”

  “God bless him for it, for ever and ever!” said the poor woman, joining her hands. “May the blessing of heaven be with him!”

  Susan closed the curtains, and was silent. She COULD NOT SAY AMEN. She was called out of the room at this moment, for a messenger was come from the Abbey for the bread-bills. It was she who always made out the bills, for though she had not a great number of lessons from the writing-master, she had taken so much pains to learn that she could write a very neat, legible hand, and she found this very useful. She was not, to be sure, particularly inclined to draw out a long bill at this instant, but business must be done. She set to work, ruled her lines for the pounds, shillings and pence, made out the bill for the Abbey, and despatched the impatient messenger. She then resolved to make out all the bills for the neighbours, who had many of them taken a few loaves and rolls of her baking. “I had better get all my business finished,” said she to herself, “before I go down to the meadow to take leave of my poor lamb.”

  This was sooner said than done, for she found that she had a great number of bills to write, and the slate on which she had entered the account was not immediately to be found; and when it was found the figures were almost rubbed out. Barbara had sat down upon it. Susan pored over the number of loaves, and the names of the persons who took them; and she wrote and cast up sums, and corrected and re-corrected them, till her head grew quite puzzled.

  The table was covered with little square bits of paper, on which she had been writing bills over and over again, when her father came in with a bill in his hand. “How’s this, Susan?” said he. “How can ye be so careless, child? What is your head running upon? Here, look at the bill you were sending up to the Abbey? I met the messenger, and luckily asked to see how much it was. Look at it.”

  Susan looked and blushed; it was written, “Sir Arthur Somers, to John Price, debtor, six dozen LAMBS, so much.” She altered it, and returned it to her father; but he had taken up some of the papers which lay upon the table. “What are all these, child?”

  “Some of them are wrong, and I’ve written them out again,” said Susan.

  “Some of them! All of them, I think, seem to be wrong, if I can read,” said her father, rather angrily, and he pointed out to her sundry strange mistakes. Her head, indeed, had been running upon her poor lamb. She corrected all the mistakes with so much patience, and bore to be blamed with so much good humour, that her father at last said, that it was impossible ever to scold Susan, without being in the wrong at the last.

  As soon as all was set right, Price took the bills, and said he would go round to the neighbours, and collect the money himself; for that he should be very proud to have it to say to them, that it was all earned by his own little daughter.

  Susan resolved to keep the pleasure of telling him of his week’s reprieve till he should come home to sup, as he had promised to do, in her mother’s room. She was not sorry to hear him sigh as he passed the knapsack, which she had been packing up for his journey. “How delighted he will be when he hears the good news!” said she, to herself; “but I know he will be a little sorry too for my poor lamb.”

  As Susan had now settled all her business, she thought she could have time to go down to the meadow by the river side to see her favourite; but just as she had tied on her straw hat the village clock struck four, and this was the hour at which she always went to fetch her little brothers home from a dame-school near the village. She knew that they would be disappointed, if she was later than usual, and she did not like to keep them waiting, because they were very patient, good boys; so she put off the visit to her lamb, and went immediately for her brothers.

  CHAPTER II.

  Ev’n in the spring and playtime of the year,

&nbs
p; That calls th’ unwonted villager abroad,

  With all her little ones, a sportive train,

  To gather king-cups in the yellow mead,

  And prink their heads with daisies.

  Cowper.

  The dame-school, which was about a mile from the hamlet, was not a showy edifice; but it was reverenced as much by the young race of village scholars as if it had been the most stately mansion in the land; it was a low roofed, long, thatched tenement, sheltered by a few reverend oaks, under which many generations of hopeful children had gambolled in their turn.

  The close shaven green, which sloped down from the hatch-door of the schoolroom, was paled round with a rude paling, which, though decayed in some parts by time, was not in any place broken by violence.

  The place bespoke order and peace. The dame who governed was well obeyed, because she was just and well beloved, and because she was ever glad to give well earned praise and pleasure to her little subjects.

  Susan had once been under her gentle dominion, and had been deservedly her favourite scholar. The dame often cited her as the best example to the succeeding tribe of emulous youngsters. She had scarcely opened the wicket which separated the green before the schoolroom door from the lane, when she heard the merry voices of the children, and saw the little troup issuing from the hatchway, and spreading over the green.