My Lady Ludlow (17 page)

"She never made any inquiry about him," said my lady. "She must have
known that he was dead; though how, we never could tell. Medlicott
remembered afterwards that it was about, if not on—Medlicott to this day
declares that it was on the very Monday, June the nineteenth, when her
son was executed, that Madame de Crequy left off her rouge and took to
her bed, as one bereaved and hopeless. It certainly was about that time;
and Medlicott—who was deeply impressed by that dream of Madame de
Crequy's (the relation of which I told you had had such an effect on my
lord), in which she had seen the figure of Virginie—as the only light
object amid much surrounding darkness as of night, smiling and beckoning
Clement on—on—till at length the bright phantom stopped, motionless,
and Madame de Crequy's eyes began to penetrate the murky darkness, and to
see closing around her the gloomy dripping walls which she had once seen
and never forgotten—the walls of the vault of the chapel of the De
Crequys in Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; and there the two last of the
Crequys laid them down among their forefathers, and Madame de Crequy had
wakened to the sound of the great door, which led to the open air, being
locked upon her—I say Medlicott, who was predisposed by this dream to
look out for the supernatural, always declared that Madame de Crequy was
made conscious in some mysterious way, of her son's death, on the very
day and hour when it occurred, and that after that she had no more
anxiety, but was only conscious of a kind of stupefying despair."

"And what became of her, my lady?" I again asked.

"What could become of her?" replied Lady Ludlow. "She never could be
induced to rise again, though she lived more than a year after her son's
departure. She kept her bed; her room darkened, her face turned towards
the wall, whenever any one besides Medlicott was in the room. She hardly
ever spoke, and would have died of starvation but for Medlicott's tender
care, in putting a morsel to her lips every now and then, feeding her, in
fact, just as an old bird feeds her young ones. In the height of summer
my lord and I left London. We would fain have taken her with us into
Scotland, but the doctor (we had the old doctor from Leicester Square)
forbade her removal; and this time he gave such good reasons against it
that I acquiesced. Medlicott and a maid were left with her. Every care
was taken of her. She survived till our return. Indeed, I thought she
was in much the same state as I had left her in, when I came back to
London. But Medlicott spoke of her as much weaker; and one morning on
awakening, they told me she was dead. I sent for Medlicott, who was in
sad distress, she had become so fond of her charge. She said that, about
two o'clock, she had been awakened by unusual restlessness on Madame de
Crequy's part; that she had gone to her bedside, and found the poor lady
feebly but perpetually moving her wasted arm up and down—and saying to
herself in a wailing voice: 'I did not bless him when he left me—I did
not bless him when he left me!' Medlicott gave her a spoonful or two of
jelly, and sat by her, stroking her hand, and soothing her till she
seemed to fall asleep. But in the morning she was dead."

"It is a sad story, your ladyship," said I, after a while.

"Yes it is. People seldom arrive at my age without having watched the
beginning, middle, and end of many lives and many fortunes. We do not
talk about them, perhaps; for they are often so sacred to us, from having
touched into the very quick of our own hearts, as it were, or into those
of others who are dead and gone, and veiled over from human sight, that
we cannot tell the tale as if it was a mere story. But young people
should remember that we have had this solemn experience of life, on which
to base our opinions and form our judgments, so that they are not mere
untried theories. I am not alluding to Mr. Horner just now, for he is
nearly as old as I am—within ten years, I dare say—but I am thinking of
Mr. Gray, with his endless plans for some new thing—schools, education,
Sabbaths, and what not. Now he has not seen what all this leads to."

"It is a pity he has not heard your ladyship tell the story of poor
Monsieur de Crequy."

"Not at all a pity, my dear. A young man like him, who, both by position
and age, must have had his experience confined to a very narrow circle,
ought not to set up his opinion against mine; he ought not to require
reasons from me, nor to need such explanation of my arguments (if I
condescend to argue), as going into relation of the circumstances on
which my arguments are based in my own mind, would be."

"But, my lady, it might convince him," I said, with perhaps injudicious
perseverance.

"And why should he be convinced?" she asked, with gentle inquiry in her
tone. "He has only to acquiesce. Though he is appointed by Mr. Croxton,
I am the lady of the manor, as he must know. But it is with Mr. Horner
that I must have to do about this unfortunate lad Gregson. I am afraid
there will be no method of making him forget his unlucky knowledge. His
poor brains will be intoxicated with the sense of his powers, without any
counterbalancing principles to guide him. Poor fellow! I am quite
afraid it will end in his being hanged!"

The next day Mr. Horner came to apologize and explain. He was
evidently—as I could tell from his voice, as he spoke to my lady in the
next room—extremely annoyed at her ladyship's discovery of the education
he had been giving to this boy. My lady spoke with great authority, and
with reasonable grounds of complaint. Mr. Horner was well acquainted
with her thoughts on the subject, and had acted in defiance of her
wishes. He acknowledged as much, and should on no account have done it,
in any other instance, without her leave.

"Which I could never have granted you," said my lady.

But this boy had extraordinary capabilities; would, in fact, have taught
himself much that was bad, if he had not been rescued, and another
direction given to his powers. And in all Mr. Horner had done, he had
had her ladyship's service in view. The business was getting almost
beyond his power, so many letters and so much account-keeping was
required by the complicated state in which things were.

Lady Ludlow felt what was coming—a reference to the mortgage for the
benefit of my lord's Scottish estates, which, she was perfectly aware,
Mr. Horner considered as having been a most unwise proceeding—and she
hastened to observe—"All this may be very true, Mr. Horner, and I am
sure I should be the last person to wish you to overwork or distress
yourself; but of that we will talk another time. What I am now anxious
to remedy is, if possible, the state of this poor little Gregson's mind.
Would not hard work in the fields be a wholesome and excellent way of
enabling him to forget?"

"I was in hopes, my lady, that you would have permitted me to bring him
up to act as a kind of clerk," said Mr. Horner, jerking out his project
abruptly.

"A what?" asked my lady, in infinite surprise.

"A kind of—of assistant, in the way of copying letters and doing up
accounts. He is already an excellent penman and very quick at figures."

"Mr. Horner," said my lady, with dignity, "the son of a poacher and
vagabond ought never to have been able to copy letters relating to the
Hanbury estates; and, at any rate, he shall not. I wonder how it is
that, knowing the use he has made of his power of reading a letter, you
should venture to propose such an employment for him as would require his
being in your confidence, and you the trusted agent of this family. Why,
every secret (and every ancient and honourable family has its secrets, as
you know, Mr. Horner) would be learnt off by heart, and repeated to the
first comer!"

"I should have hoped to have trained him, my lady, to understand the
rules of discretion."

"Trained! Train a barn-door fowl to be a pheasant, Mr. Horner! That
would be the easier task. But you did right to speak of discretion
rather than honour. Discretion looks to the consequences of
actions—honour looks to the action itself, and is an instinct rather
than a virtue. After all, it is possible you might have trained him to
be discreet."

Mr. Horner was silent. My lady was softened by his not replying, and
began as she always did in such cases, to fear lest she had been too
harsh. I could tell that by her voice and by her next speech, as well as
if I had seen her face.

"But I am sorry you are feeling the pressure of the affairs: I am quite
aware that I have entailed much additional trouble upon you by some of my
measures: I must try and provide you with some suitable assistance.
Copying letters and doing up accounts, I think you said?"

Mr. Horner had certainly had a distant idea of turning the little boy, in
process of time, into a clerk; but he had rather urged this possibility
of future usefulness beyond what he had at first intended, in speaking of
it to my lady as a palliation of his offence, and he certainly was very
much inclined to retract his statement that the letter-writing, or any
other business, had increased, or that he was in the slightest want of
help of any kind, when my lady after a pause of consideration, suddenly
said—

"I have it. Miss Galindo will, I am sure, be glad to assist you. I will
speak to her myself. The payment we should make to a clerk would be of
real service to her!"

I could hardly help echoing Mr. Horner's tone of surprise as he said—

"Miss Galindo!"

For, you must be told who Miss Galindo was; at least, told as much as I
know. Miss Galindo had lived in the village for many years, keeping
house on the smallest possible means, yet always managing to maintain a
servant. And this servant was invariably chosen because she had some
infirmity that made her undesirable to every one else. I believe Miss
Galindo had had lame and blind and hump-backed maids. She had even at
one time taken in a girl hopelessly gone in consumption, because if not
she would have had to go to the workhouse, and not have had enough to
eat. Of course the poor creature could not perform a single duty usually
required of a servant, and Miss Galindo herself was both servant and
nurse.

Her present maid was scarcely four feet high, and bore a terrible
character for ill-temper. Nobody but Miss Galindo would have kept her;
but, as it was, mistress and servant squabbled perpetually, and were, at
heart, the best of friends. For it was one of Miss Galindo's
peculiarities to do all manner of kind and self-denying actions, and to
say all manner of provoking things. Lame, blind, deformed, and dwarf,
all came in for scoldings without number: it was only the consumptive
girl that never had heard a sharp word. I don't think any of her
servants liked her the worse for her peppery temper, and passionate odd
ways, for they knew her real and beautiful kindness of heart: and,
besides, she had so great a turn for humour that very often her speeches
amused as much or more than they irritated; and on the other side, a
piece of witty impudence from her servant would occasionally tickle her
so much and so suddenly, that she would burst out laughing in the middle
of her passion.

But the talk about Miss Galindo's choice and management of her servants
was confined to village gossip, and had never reached my Lady Ludlow's
ears, though doubtless Mr. Horner was well acquainted with it. What my
lady knew of her amounted to this. It was the custom in those days for
the wealthy ladies of the county to set on foot a repository, as it was
called, in the assize-town. The ostensible manager of this repository
was generally a decayed gentlewoman, a clergyman's widow, or so forth.
She was, however, controlled by a committee of ladies; and paid by them
in proportion to the amount of goods she sold; and these goods were the
small manufactures of ladies of little or no fortune, whose names, if
they chose it, were only signified by initials.

Poor water-colour drawings, indigo and Indian ink; screens, ornamented
with moss and dried leaves; paintings on velvet, and such faintly
ornamental works were displayed on one side of the shop. It was always
reckoned a mark of characteristic gentility in the repository, to have
only common heavy-framed sash-windows, which admitted very little light,
so I never was quite certain of the merit of these Works of Art as they
were entitled. But, on the other side, where the Useful Work placard was
put up, there was a great variety of articles, of whose unusual
excellence every one might judge. Such fine sewing, and stitching, and
button-holing! Such bundles of soft delicate knitted stockings and
socks; and, above all, in Lady Ludlow's eyes, such hanks of the finest
spun flaxen thread!

And the most delicate dainty work of all was done by Miss Galindo, as
Lady Ludlow very well knew. Yet, for all their fine sewing, it sometimes
happened that Miss Galindo's patterns were of an old-fashioned kind; and
the dozen nightcaps, maybe, on the materials for which she had expended
bona-fide money, and on the making-up, no little time and eye-sight,
would lie for months in a yellow neglected heap; and at such times, it
was said, Miss Galindo was more amusing than usual, more full of dry
drollery and humour; just as at the times when an order came in to X.
(the initial she had chosen) for a stock of well-paying things, she sat
and stormed at her servant as she stitched away. She herself explained
her practice in this way:—

"When everything goes wrong, one would give up breathing if one could not
lighten ones heart by a joke. But when I've to sit still from morning
till night, I must have something to stir my blood, or I should go off
into an apoplexy; so I set to, and quarrel with Sally."

Such were Miss Galindo's means and manner of living in her own house. Out
of doors, and in the village, she was not popular, although she would
have been sorely missed had she left the place. But she asked too many
home questions (not to say impertinent) respecting the domestic economies
(for even the very poor liked to spend their bit of money their own way),
and would open cupboards to find out hidden extravagances, and question
closely respecting the weekly amount of butter, till one day she met with
what would have been a rebuff to any other person, but which she rather
enjoyed than otherwise.