Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

“Well now! so much the worse for them; but that was not the point I came to talk about. Do you know, my dear, I am perfectly miserable in my mind about you. I can’t sleep at nights for thinking about the impossibility of your living on, all by your own self, in this great palace of a house.”

  Miss Brotherton turned away her head, and resting her elbow on the mass of cushions that were piled beside her on the sofa, concealed her eyes with her hand, while her neighbour proceeded to discuss her condition.

  “Did you ever hear of such a thing in your whole life, my dear? No, never! that’s quite certain. It is quite out of the question, and impossible; and to speak out the whole truth at once, it is not in any way decent.”

  Something a little approaching to a start, produced a slight movement in Miss Brotherton. Mrs. Gabberly proceeded.

  “Well now, my dear! I have been thinking that what you must do, is to find out among your friends and acquaintance, some respectable person in the situation of a gentlewoman to live with you. Somebody already known in the neighbourhood, would be the most desirable, because then you would not have the trouble of introducing her; for of course it will be in no wise proper for so young a person as you are to visit about, even in the country, without a proper chaperone.”

  Again the cushions were slightly moved, but this time it was not a start, but a shudder which caused it.

  “Well now, my dear Mary!” resumed the friendly Mrs. Gabberly; “what do you think about it?”

  “It requires longer time than I have yet had, before I can answer your question, Mrs. Gabberly,” replied the young lady.

  “Well now! that’s very true, and very discreet, and sensible; and God forbid, my dear, that I should make you do any thing in a hurry. Only you must not forget that every body will be on the look out to observe what you do. Depend upon it, that they won’t wait to make their remarks — that’s all.”

  The heiress retained her meditative position, but said nothing.

  “Don’t you think what I have said is true, my dear?”

  Mary bowed her head, but without changing the position of the hand which concealed her face.

  “I wish she would look up at me,” thought Mrs. Gabberly; “I might guess then, perhaps, if there was any chance for me.”

  “It would be a comfort, as well as a protection, wouldn’t it, my dear, to have a kind, affectionate friend, always near you!”

  Mary bowed again.

  “Well now! I wish you would open your dear heart, and speak out. Tell me, don’t you feel very lonesome, when you sit down to dinner?”

  “I have been long used to that, Mrs. Gabberly.”

  “Yes; but then you had not got to think all the time, as I am sure you must do now, that there was nobody near you; that there was nobody in the whole great house but your own self, besides the, servants; that there was nobody to drink your health; nobody to say won’t you take a little bit more, my dear? Nobody to say isn’t this very nice? Nobody to give you a nod and a smile when you look up. Nobody to ask, ‘Shall I peel an orange for you, my dear?’ or, ‘Shall I mix your strawberries and cream, my love?’ Now isn’t this all dismal?”

  “Very dismal, ma’am!” replied the young lady in a voice that showed plainly enough, that the picture was not an indifferent one.

  “Well now! that’s saying something; and I can’t help thinking, dear Mary! I can’t help saying, that it has come into my head, that if—”

  “Mrs. Gabberly!” cried Miss Brotherton, starting suddenly up.

  “I must now beg you to leave me. You have described my situation so forcibly, that I feel more than ever the necessity of making some arrangement that may better it. But I will not do this without reflection. Leave me, now. I thank you for your kind concern, and when next you call upon me, you shall find that what you have said has not been disregarded.”

  “Well now, that’s all right, and I’ll go directly. Shall it be tomorrow, dear, that I call again?”

  “No, ma’am, if you please, not till next Saturday.”

  “Saturday? Why, my dear, this is only Monday — it is a great while for me to live in such suspense about you, dearest.”

  “No, ma’am, not very long. Saturday it must be if you please; and I shall be happy if you will stay and dine here on that day.”

  “Thank you, my dear. I shall like that very, very much indeed. And then we can talk every thing over, my dear Mary. God bless you, my love. Take care of yourself, dearest, till Saturday; and just let me say one word in your ear at parting. Remember, that there is nobody in the whole wide world that loves you as much as I do.”

  Miss Brotherton submitted herself passively to the embrace which followed; and when the door closed after her affectionate neighbour, she stood, as it seemed, patiently, while her sharp, short, retreating footsteps were heard along the spacious corridor, and when they were heard no more she applied her hand to the bell. But something made her pause ere she rang it, and stepping to a window, that opened upon a balcony filled with skilfully-shaded exotics, she peeped forth from among them, till the active-moving little figure of Mrs. Gabberly trudging along the drive below, became visible, and then the heiress turned again to the bell-rope, and pulled it vigorously.

  “Tell nurse Tremlett — tell Mrs. Tremlett to be so kind as to come to me immediately,” was the order given to the servant who answered it.

  After the interval of a few minutes, during which Miss Brotherton stood with her arm resting on the mantelpiece, with a countenance and attitude of deep meditation, the door opened again, and a pale, thin, little old woman entered, who, had not her wrinkles and gray locks betrayed her, might have passed for five-and-twenty, so active and nicely moulded was her little person. But despite her still clear and bright black eye, her face showed that she could not honestly count less than twice that sum of years.

  “Come in, dear nurse!” said Miss Brotherton kindly, “come in, and sit down by me.”

  The old woman obeyed this command without further ceremony; and, by her manner of doing it, showed plainly that it was not an uncommon one.

  “What have you been about, my child?” said she, “you don’t look well.”

  “I dare say not,” replied Mary abruptly, “I have been bored and plagued, nurse Tremlett; and now I am going to bore and plague you, in order to comfort myself.”

  For all answer, the chartered nurse put her arm round the young lady’s neck, and gave her a very loving kiss.

  “Nay, it is very true, Mrs. Tremlett; and no joke in it, I do assure you. I am going to make a terrible change in your manner of life, my dear old woman. I am going to make a state-prisoner of you.”

  “You may plague and puzzle your old nurse as much as you like, my darling, so you will but smile and look a little less dismal than you have done of late. And what is it you are going to do to me, Miss Mary? I dare say it is nothing that I shall think very hard.”

  “I don’t know that, Mrs. Tremlett,” replied Mrs. Brotherton very gravely.

  “Mrs. Tremlett, and Mrs. Tremlett,” said the old woman, looking earnestly at her, “what does that mean, Miss Mary? — I don’t like it.”

  “I know you won’t like it. But you must bear that, and a great deal more, my dear old friend. You must make up your mind to lead a new life altogether; and I am very much afraid that you will not like the change.”

  “Oh! goodness, Miss Mary, what is it you mean? You are not going to send me away from you, are you?”

  “Is that the worst thing I could do to vex you?” said the young lady, very cordially returning the caress she had received; “you need not be afraid of that, at any rate. The misfortune I threaten is of quite a different kind.”

  “Well, then I shan’t mind it; let it be what it will. But I don’t think it is any thing very bad, my dear; for you look as if you were ready to laugh, though you try to look grave, and talk of a misfortune.”

  “It will be no misfortune to me, I assure you, but quite the contrary. I shall like it very much, and tha
t is the reason you see me ready to smile; and if you will be a dear good woman, and make no difficulties about it, all will go well. Mrs. Gabberly has been here, nurse Tremlett; and she tells me that I must immediately take some elderly lady into the house, to sit with me and take care of me; because, as she says, I am too young to live alone, and that all the neighbourhood will be making remarks upon me.”

  “Well, my dear, and I dare say she says no more than, the truth. Your great fortune, and your prettiness, and all that, will certainly bring many and many an eye upon you, my dear child; and, of course, it won’t do for you to go on without having some steady lady of a companion like, to be living with you.”

  “But I hate ail ladies that would come to live as a companion like” replied the young lady. “What should I do with a Miss Mogg, trotting about after me, to ask if I wanted my smelling-bottle, or my pug-dog? And that is not the worst that could happen to me either. As sure as you are there, nurse Tremlett, Mrs. Gabberly has made up her mind to come and live here as my companion herself!”

  “And you would not like that, by your manner, my dear? I do think she is rather too bustling and busy for you. You are such a reader that you would not like any one that was over talkative and fidgety about you. But don’t fret yourself for that, dear; you must make some civil sort of excuse to Mrs. Gabberly. You are clever enough to find one, I dare say.”

  “Yes, nurse Tremlett, I think I am — I have found one already.”

  “That’s very right, Miss Mary; and what shall you say to her, my dear?”

  “I shall tell her that you are going to live with me as my companion.”

  “Nonsense, dear! That is the joke, is it, that you were looking so merry about?”

  “Mrs. Tremlett, I am not jesting in any way,” replied Miss Brotherton, very gravely; “and I entreat you to listen to my proposal as seriously as I make it. I am friendless, very friendless, dear nurse; and trust me, with all my money, I am greatly to be pitied’ Why, in addition to the misfortune of not having a relation in the world, should I be doomed to the misery of hiring a stranger to pester me with her presence from morning to night? It is a penance that I cannot, and will not endure. Yet I know that all people will say, that I ought not to sit up here alone to receive company, and I do not wish to be spoken of as a person who either knows not or values not propriety. But if you will do what I desire, Mrs. Tremlett, you may save me from this, and from what I perhaps should unhappily consider as a greater misfortune still, namely, the being forced to pass my life with a person whose presence was a pain to me.”

  Tears flowed down the cheeks of the heiress as she spoke; and the devoted servant who sat beside her, though absolutely confounded by the strange proposal, could find no words to utter in ‘opposition to it.

  “Dear nurse! — you will not forsake me, then?” said Mary, smiling through her tears. “There’s a dear soul — you will let me have my own way in everything — about your dress, you know, and all that? It will be worth any thing in the world to see Mrs. Gabberly, when she first beholds you sitting up in state in the drawing-room!”

  From the moment the old woman had perceived that her beloved, but wilful darling, was not only serious, but sorrowful, and that, too, concerning no imaginary grief, but from the contemplation of the truly melancholy isolation of her condition, all disposition to resist her vanished; and yet nurse Tremlett was perfectly capable of perceiving all the inconveniences likely to arise on both sides from so strange a scheme. But even while such thoughts silently took possession of her, leaving perhaps some legible traces on her countenance, her young mistress looked so kindly and so coaxingly in her face, as if at once reading and deprecating all she had to say, that she felt nothing was left for her but obedience.

  “Do what you will with me, my dear,” said she, with a fond smile and a shake of the head, that seemed to say, “I know you must have your own way, Mary.”

  And thus was conceived and established a mode of life for the pretty heiress, which left her as completely uncontrolled as to all she did, and all she said, as if nurse Tremlett still occupied her quarters in what was once called the nursery, but had since become the favoured nurse’s sitting-room.

  Mary’s delight in dressing and drilling the old woman for her new duties, was childish and excessive; and most triumphant was the satisfaction with which she perceived that rich black silks, and delicate white crape, performed their office upon her nice little person so effectually, as to give her quite as much the air of a gentlewoman, as the majority of those who were likely to meet her.

  So, on the following Saturday,’ Mrs. Gabberly found Miss Brotherton no longer the solitary occupant of her elegant boudoir, but with a remarkably well-dressed elderly lady, seated in the most luxurious of all the newly-invented chairs which decorated the apartment, with a small work-table before her; while on the footstool at her feet, sat the heiress, looking a vast deal more happy than she had ever before seen her.

  The mystification did not last long. The eyes of Mrs. Gabberly were of that happy fabric, which enables the owner to retain for ever the memory of every face they have ever looked upon; and it was with heightened colour, and no very sweet expression of countenance, that she exclaimed, “Soh! you have taken your old nurse, Tremlett, to sit with you?”

  “My nurse no longer, but my most kind friend, Mrs. Gabberly, who has affectionately consented to forsake many of her former comforts, in order to be useful to me. You will perceive, ma’am, that your advice has not been lost upon me.”

  “Well now! that is a strange whim, Miss Brotherton. But of course, you are not serious in trying to make me believe that it is your intention to let nurse Tremlett assist you in receiving your company. If it be so, I think it but fair to tell you at once, as my experience is rather greater than yours, that not one single soul among all our rich folks, will care to visit you at all. I don’t wish to affront you, nurse Tremlett; but you won’t contradict what I say, I am quite sure of that.”

  Mrs. Tremlett showed herself an apt scholar, for she bowed her head, went on with her knitting, and said nothing.

  If she was silent, however, Miss Brotherton was not. “Listen to me, ma’am, if you please, for a few minutes, while I explain to you my ideas on the subject; and having done so, I desire that it may never be alluded to again. I am left, Mrs. Gabberly, as I dare say you know — exceedingly well, in the possession of an ample fortune, with unlimited power to spend it as I please. Now I do not please to spend any part of it in putting myself under circumstances that I should feel annoying to me. For this reason I will not hire a gentlewoman — in all human probability of much higher birth than myself — to watch my caprices, and endure my whims.

  If any one now in existence really loves me, it is Mrs. Tremlett; and I, too, most sincerely love her; therefore I flatter myself, that drawing tighter the tie that has long united us, will occasion pain to neither. If the obscure tradition I have heard respecting my grandfather be correct, he received much kindness when travelling the country as an itinerant tinker from Mrs. Tremlett’s father, then a flourishing farmer in Yorkshire. So you perceive, Mrs. Gabberly, that I am really honoured by the association. But if any one should fancy the contrary — if any one should feel that the luxuries of my house and table — the only attractions I know of, by which I may nope to draw my neighbours round me — if any should feel that the value of these are lessened by the presence of Mrs. Tremlett, they must give them up. For the price I shall put upon my good dinners and fine balls, will be the most courteous and kind politeness to that dear and valued friend. And now that we have Anally and for ever dismissed this subject, will you tell me if I may hope for the pleasure of your company at dinner to-day, Mrs. Gabberly?”

  From this period, Mrs. Tremlett never quitted Mary Brotherton, excepting when the heiress accommodated Lady Clarissa Shrimpton by the use of her carriage, when they were both going to visit at the same mansion; an arrangement which had often taken place during the late Mrs. Brotherton’
s lifetime, and which was of such very obvious mutual convenience, that one was rarely invited without the other.

  Miss Brotherton by degrees recovered her natural high spirits, and though she not unfrequently felt the weight of-great loneliness, she was rapidly learning to enjoy her independence. She read a great deal, though nobody knew any thing about it. She dearly loved flowers, and often assisted in their culture with her own hands, despite her half-dozen gardeners. She laid out whole miles of gravel walks in her own grounds with almost as much skill as went to form the Cretan labyrinth, in order that she might walk, and walk, and walk, without passing her own lodge-gates, and sol running the risk of being called “imprudent” She still indulged herself, and with no sparing licence, in caricaturing her neighbours; and, if all the truth must be told, derived no small portion of amusement from the variety of modes she adopted to assure the almost innumerable pretenders to her hand, that it was not in her power to reward their valuable and flattering attachments.

  Such was Mary Brotherton’s condition when she complied with Lady Clarissa Shrimpton’s request, to drive over to Dowling Lodge the day after they had dined there. Upon this occasion, as upon many previous ones, the young lady, for lack of other amusement, occupied herself in selecting subjects for her merry pencil. The best excuse to be offered for her offences in this line is, that nobody but Mrs. Tremlett ever saw her saucy productions; so that assuredly they gave pain to no one — and when the heart is empty, and the head full, much allowance must be made for such freaks and fancies.

  While laying up stores of sketches from Sir Matthew, Lady Clarissa, and the poet, her eye suddenly became fixed upon the beautiful child who had been brought in for general examination. Like most other ready limners of the human face, Miss Brotherton had considerable skill in physiognomy, and ere she had long gazed on the pretty, nicely-dressed, little boy, she felt persuaded that in spite of his gay habit de fête, the child was ill at ease, and under great discomfort.

  It is difficult for persons residing at a distance, and not “to the manner born,” to conceive the extraordinary degree of ignorance in which the ladies of the great manufacturing families are brought up, as to the real condition of the people employed in the concern from whence their wealth is derived.