Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Miss Martin Thorpe had asked, and been answered, as to the length of time which would elapse before her guardian Sir Charles Temple, and her cousin Mr. Algernon Heathcote, would have crossed the channel which divides England from the continent of Europe. The interval was not long; for Sir Charles knew that he had already exceeded the time which his mother had calculated upon for his absence, and therefore lost as little more as possible in rejoining her.

  During the three days allowed by her calculations as necessary to elapse before the travellers reached Dover, Sophia permitted Major Heathcote to speculate upon the most advisable time, and the most advisable manner, for the household of Bamboo Cottage to be transferred to their future quarters at Thorpe-Combe. She also permitted the excellent Mrs. Heathcote to say a great deal about the advantages of taking their own two capital maids of allwork with them. She only looked languid and absent, too, when the mode of going being discussed it was proposed that she should, as by far the most luxurious division of the march, be accommodated with a post-chaise, containing only Mrs. Heathcote and two of the young ladies, who were subsequently to be sent to school, besides herself; the rest of the party being to get on by the help of stages and waggons as well as they might.

  But on the fourth morning —

  “Then up and spoke that lady fair;”

  and what she said surprised her hearers quite as much, perhaps, from the remarkable civility and gentleness with which she spoke as by the purport of the words themselves.

  “Pray, dear Mrs. Heathcote, do not trouble yourself any farther,” she said “about my journey.... It is excessively kind of you, but I have always had the greatest possible dislike to sitting idle, while others do that on which I ought to be employed myself. I have already taken steps respecting my removal to the Combe, which will spare you all farther trouble. I wrote yesterday to that decent woman, Mrs. Barnes, who is still, as I learned from Sir Charles Temple, in charge of the place. As she appears, by what I hear, to be amply provided for, it is possible she may not wish to continue in service; and, if so, I must provide myself with another housekeeper: but, for the present, I am prepared to make some sacrifice rather than not retain her. I shall consult her about the other members of my establishment, and thereby spare you all trouble and fatigue on the subject.”

  Mrs. Heathcote looked up. For half a minute, her gentle eye rested on the firm-set but tranquil features of the heiress, but it was a sealed volume to her; and she turned her looks upon her husband. He, good man, held his lips very nearly in the form necessary for producing a whistle, but nothing of the kind was made audible; and, instead of it, he very quietly said, “And how do you mean to go, my dear?”

  “I have ordered Barnes to send the carriage for me, which was used to convey Mrs. Heathcote and the Misses Wilkyns to church when we were at Thorpe-Combe,” replied the young lady, with great civility.

  “That is an enormous heavy carriage, my dear child, to be brought fifty miles, and back again. You might as well travel by a baggage-waggon, Sophy,” said the major.

  “I have allowed them a day to bring it here, and one pair of post-horses will do it easily, as the distance is divided into three stages; and, for myself, I shall get on as well as I can with four. I am as fully aware, as you can be, my dear sir, of the atrocious inconvenience of so lumbering a vehicle; but, as long as I continue a minor, I shall not attempt to do anything more than have this old equipage lined and painted, with my lozenge upon it. This will make it decent and respectable, and for the present I shall attempt nothing farther.”

  There was a silence of a minute or two.

  “I suppose you will wish me and the two girls to go with you, at any rate, my dear, won’t you?” said Mrs. Heathcote.

  “No, dear madam, no,” replied Miss Martin Thorpe, with equal civility and decision; “I shall not wish to trouble you to leave your own mansion till I have had the pleasure of preparing mine to receive you. I will not fail to write as soon as my house is in a proper state for me to have this satisfaction.”

  “But surely, Sophy, you don’t mean to go travelling about the country by yourself — with nobody but your four horses and the post-boys? I don’t think that will look respectable at all.”

  “You are quite right, Mrs. Heathcote, and I trust I shall always have the satisfaction of perceiving that you approve all I do,” replied the young lady. “I have not entirely wasted my time since I became the possessor of Mr. Thorpe’s property. It is a position which I am well aware renders discretion and forethought absolutely necessary. Without it, I should be running into more scrapes than you would find it easy to get me out of, with all the kindness that I know you feel for me: and I shall consider it as my first duty to prevent my guardians from having any unnecessary trouble about me or my affairs.”

  “We sha’n’t think it any trouble, my dear,” replied the major, kindly, “to see that everything goes right and proper; and I never doubted that your conduct would be everything that was regular and discreet. But, as your aunt says, dear Sophy, you must not think of posting from Clevelands to Thorpe-Combe quite by yourself.”

  “I have no thought of doing anything of the kind,” replied Miss Martin Thorpe, with the air of being a little offended at the supposition.

  “And whom, then, do you mean to take with you, Sophia?” demanded Mrs. Heathcote.

  “My own maid, Mrs. Heathcote. I have hired a person so every way respectable, that I have the pleasure of feeling certain you must approve the selection. I dare say you remember Mrs. Roberts, the mantua-maker, at King’s-Cross?”

  “Certainly, I do: it was she who made all our mourning.”

  “The same,” replied the young lady. “I have walked over to her two or three times during the last week about another dress or two; and, upon my asking her if she could recommend me a good lady’s-maid, she immediately answered that she had lived for several years in that capacity herself.... that she did not find the mantua-making business answer in this small neighbourhood, and that she would like, if I approved it, to take the place herself. She gave me a reference to Mr. Mills the clergyman’s wife, to whom I went immediately. It appears that she has known her, almost all her life, and she gives her a most excellent character. I therefore hired her immediately.... I hope you approve this, Mrs. Heathcote?”

  “I cannot say that there seems to be anything to disprove in it, Sophy,” replied Mrs. Heathcote. “I am only surprised how such a young person as you are should ever have the thought to set about such a business so cleverly; I can’t think how it came into your head.”

  “The want of what I sought suggested the manner of seeking it,” replied Sophia, with composure. “I presume this is the case with most people. It certainly is with me.”

  “And what day have you settled to go, Sophy?” inquired the Major, winking his eyes and rubbing his forehead, as if feeling absolutely giddy from the variety of perfectly new information which be had received.

  “The day after to-morrow,” she replied.

  Having nothing more to communicate at present, Miss Martin Thorpe arose as soon as she had answered this question, and left the room.

  “What an extraordinary girl, to be sure!” exclaimed the Major after the door was closed... “I don’t see that there is a single article to be found fault with in all she has done and said.... and yet.... I should not quite like our Florence to do the same.”

  “God forbid! There is something downright unnatural in her way of going on, to my fancy,” replied his wife. “I am not her guardian, thank God!.... or I promise you I should be dreadfully puzzled as to what I ought to say or do. If she were to be caught doing anything wild and thoughtless, like other girls of her age, one might set that to rights, easy enough.... but now, she positively frightens me, by seeming to know so unaccountably well how to do right.”

  “At any rate, my dear, we must not make a formal complaint against her on that score,” returned the Major, laughing. “If she were your c
hild, or mine either, Poppsy, there might be some reason perhaps, in our not liking to see her want and wish for our counsel so little as this independent young lady seems to do.. but as it is, I protest I see no cause to complain, though there may be a little to wonder.”

  “You shall not hear me complain, dear Major,” replied his sweet-tempered wife.... “nor do I think I shall wonder long, at anything which Miss Martin Thorpe can either say or do. How glad I am that dear Florence has got her own thoughts, and her own hopes, to fill up her dear kind heart.... This grand lady of ours would just put her out, and extinguish her for ever, if it were not for this.”

  Miss Martin Thorpe appeared most judiciously to have communicated to her guardian and his lady exactly as much as it concerned them to know, without troubling them with any details with which they had nothing to do. Thus, for example, they were made perfectly aware that the removing themselves and their belongings to Thorpe-Combe, was a business with which she had nothing to do; that no servant of theirs was to be admitted there; and that they were not to quit their present home, for the one to which she had covenanted to admit them, till such time as she should give them a signal that the hour was come for them to approach her. She did not deem it necessary to say a word about the man-servant whom she had also hired, with very good recommendations, at King’s-Cross, because she knew that her guardian would not deem it necessary to exercise his authority, in order to learn whether she were provided with such an attendant, or not. Neither did she occupy either his time or her own, in explaining the manner in which she had contrived to get two travelling trunks well-arranged and perfectly supplied with straps, and so forth. All she did trouble him to listen to, beyond what has been already stated, were the following words, spoken with great civility, but at the same time with an air of cool authority, which certainly suggested no idea of doubt, as to the demand they contained being complied with.

  “I had the pleasure of learning, either from yourself, sir, or from Sir Charles Temple, that my late uncle, Mr. Thorpe, left money in the bank of Messrs. Smith and Jones, at Hereford, to the amount of twelve hundred pounds. It is, of course, upon this sum that I must get you to draw for my immediate expenses; and I will thank you, sir, immediately to give me a cheque for the amount of the first quarter of the income allowed me, namely, for six hundred and twenty-five pounds.”

  “Sophy Martin is, certainly, a very extraordinary girl,” was the thought that made him fix his eyes upon her, for a moment, after she had ceased speaking.... “It is not over likely that she ever saw a cheque for a hundred pounds in her life; and, to hear her, one might think that she had been born mistress of thousands.” His meditations, however, caused no delay in the execution of her command, and he sat down without answering her a word, and did what was required of him.

  “I take it for granted, Major Heathcote,” said the young lady, as she received the cheque, “that it is Mr. Westley my late uncle’s attorney, who has furnished you with that cheque-book; and I presume that, at the same time he procured it, he announced to the firm the power vested in you for drawing upon them?”

  “I presume so, Miss Thorpe,” replied the Major, showing himself, for the first time, in a slight degree provoked at the tone of magnificent independence which his ward had thought fit to assume. But his temper rendered it absolutely impossible that he should retain any such feeling long; the moment after he had called her Miss Martin Thorpe, he repented of it, and, in order to make friends again with himself, he added, “But that is too large a cheque, my dear, for you to get rid of, if you have anything to pay here. You talked of having bought a gown, did not you, Sophy? Will you like to have a little smaller money from me? you can pay me, you know, when we all get to Thorpe-Combe.”

  The kind-hearted Major was quite right in supposing that the young lady would want a few pounds before she left Clevelands, but quite wrong in conceiving that she had any intention of being obliged to him for it. Nothing, indeed, could have been more unlikely; for, had she not still possessed, untouched, the ten golden sovereigns which the late Mr. Thorpe had presented to her for card-money, plus fifty shillings more, which she had won either with him or from him, she would have paid any creditors she might have had at Clevelands or King’s Cross their travelling expenses to Thorpe-Combe twice over, rather than compromise the dignity which it was her object to establish in the eyes of her guardian. She, therefore, replied to him, “I thank you, sir. I have no occasion to trouble you;” and probably to prevent any further unnecessary discussion upon her affairs, she rose, cheque in hand, and left the room.

  “Won’t that be the last time I shall concern myself about her, beyond what I am bound to do?” muttered the Major, as she disappeared. “And yet, God help me! that looks as if I was growing confoundedly ill-tempered; for what has the girl said or done, that is really wrong? Nothing, positively nothing, from the very first minute of her heiress-ship to the present. And yet, it seems to me, that I should have liked her fifty times better, if she had been cutting the maddest capers that ever came into a young head, turned by good luck. But beyond all doubt, I ought to be ashamed of myself... a pretty sort of a disciplinarian I must be, to be sure,.... and I an old soldier, with nine boys and girls to manage!”

  Thus muttering and whistling by turns, the puzzled guardian made his way to the presence of the wife of his bosom, and determined to consult her on the paradox working within him.

  “Oh! here you are, Poppsy,... needle and shears as usual. That’s all right, for I want to talk to you for five minutes; and I want you, my dear, to scold me into good humour if you can.

  I am positively ashamed of myself, good wife, I am indeed; and I don’t want you to give me absolution, but to bring me round again to common sense, if it is possible I give you my honour, wife, that five minutes ago, I felt as if I could have flogged Sophy Martin for no earthly reason that I know of, but because she did not want to borrow five pounds, or so, of me. Am I not a pretty guardian?”

  Without checking the movement of the “iron bar,” she was manoeuvring so profitably, Mrs. Heathcote shook her head, and then replied, “You had better not come to me, Major, if you want to be preached into dutiful behaviour to that.... to Miss Martin Thorpe, as our dear comical-looking Sir Charles is so fond of calling her. I don’t remember that ever I disliked anybody so much in all my life, as I do that girl. Ungrateful...”

  “For goodness’ sake don’t use that word, wife!” interrupted the Major, with very unusual severity of accent; a for it is exactly that which staggers me. We shall prove ourselves the vilest, meanest-hearted mortals, wife, that ever pretended to do a kind act, if we suffer this idea of gratitude to come into our heads. Did we ever expect, either of us, when we took in poor Jane’s motherless and fatherless girl, that we were to be paid for it, either in deed or words? Did we, wife?”

  “No, certainly, Major. But that’s no excuse for her treating us all as if she was a duchess accidentally fallen into the midst of us and wishing to get away again, as fast as she can.”

  “I am not asking for your opinion about her, my dear,” replied the Major, with one of his usual twinkling smiles; “perhaps I might have been clever enough to guess it, without troubling you, as Miss Sophia says, about the matter. What I want of you is, that you should help me to make up my mind not to be as crabbed as an old invalid with a dozen balls in him, because this young lady happens to have a stiff style of speech, that does not quite hit my fancy. The truth is, Poppsy, that I can’t bear to despise myself; and I am considerably more frightened now than I was at Brussels, when the drums stopped the fiddles just before we took our little trot to Waterloo, lest the notion that she was any way obliged to us should have got into my head, and that I should be looking out, day and night for her gratitude. I’d rather be shot, Mrs. Heathcote, than turn out such a pitiful fellow before my own eyes.”

  “I have something of the same feeling, I suspect, Major; and so it may be that you are not very far from right in fearing to give way to wh
at I am sure I should hate as much as you could do,” said Mrs. Heathcote gravely, and suspending the threading of her needle for at least half a minute, while she looked anxiously into her husband’s face. “God forbid such thoughts should ever come into our heads, Major! Heaven is my witness that I would not have her gratitude, if she were as full of it as an egg is full of meat, and I don’t and I won’t believe that it is her want of it that makes me.... what shall I call it, Major?.... so ready to quarrel with everything she does.”

  “Ah, well! It’s plain enough to me, my dear, that, dislike it or not, it is just that thought which lies at the bottom of both our hearts, and I am heartily glad we have spoken together about it; for now, observe, Poppsy, that we both of us must make a resolution, both of us, but particularly me, as her guardian, never to be ready to quarrel with her, even in our own hearts, just for the manner in which she does anything. For that can only come from one of two things: either from folly, that makes us dislike just what we have not been used to; or else, from that confounded feeling about ingratitude, which I won’t suffer either in you or myself. It is so damnably pitiful. Therefore, look here, my dear. Let us never find fault with her manner, let it be as stiff and grand as it will; always watching at the same time, like guardians ought, that she never does anything which in act and deed might be wrong or detrimental to herself.... and the devil of it is, Poppsy,” he added, shaking his head with very evident self-condemnation, “the devil of it is, my dear, that though I know in my own mind that she is not a bit likely to go wrong in anything, but quite the contrary, I don’t like her at all the better for it.”