My Lady Ludlow (22 page)

As for Miss Galindo, she was utterly and entirely a partisan of Mr.
Gray's, almost ever since she had begun to nurse him during his illness.

"You know, I never set up for reasonableness, my lady. So I don't
pretend to say, as I might do if I were a sensible woman and all
that,—that I am convinced by Mr. Gray's arguments of this thing or
t'other. For one thing, you see, poor fellow! he has never been able to
argue, or hardly indeed to speak, for Doctor Trevor has been very
peremptory. So there's been no scope for arguing! But what I mean is
this:—When I see a sick man thinking always of others, and never of
himself; patient, humble—a trifle too much at times, for I've caught him
praying to be forgiven for having neglected his work as a parish priest,"
(Miss Galindo was making horrible faces, to keep back tears, squeezing up
her eyes in a way which would have amused me at any other time, but when
she was speaking of Mr. Gray); "when I see a downright good, religious
man, I'm apt to think he's got hold of the right clue, and that I can do
no better than hold on by the tails of his coat and shut my eyes, if
we've got to go over doubtful places on our road to Heaven. So, my lady,
you must excuse me if, when he gets about again, he is all agog about a
Sunday-school, for if he is, I shall be agog too, and perhaps twice as
bad as him, for, you see, I've a strong constitution compared to his, and
strong ways of speaking and acting. And I tell your ladyship this now,
because I think from your rank—and still more, if I may say so, for all
your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you've a right to be
first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can't exactly call
it, for I don't see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than
I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I'm to shut my eyes, and leap over
the ditch to the side of education. I've told Sally already, that if she
does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, I'll
teach her her lessons; and I've never caught her with old Nelly since."

I think Miss Galindo's desertion to Mr. Gray's opinions in this matter
hurt my lady just a little bit; but she only said—

"Of course, if the parishoners wish for it, Mr. Gray must have his Sunday-
school. I shall, in that case, withdraw my opposition. I am sorry I
cannot alter my opinions as easily as you."

My lady made herself smile as she said this. Miss Galindo saw it was an
effort to do so. She thought a minute before she spoke again.

"Your ladyship has not seen Mr. Gray as intimately as I have done. That's
one thing. But, as for the parishioners, they will follow your
ladyship's lead in everything; so there is no chance of their wishing for
a Sunday-school."

"I have never done anything to make them follow my lead, as you call it,
Miss Galindo," said my lady, gravely.

"Yes, you have," replied Miss Galindo, bluntly. And then, correcting
herself, she said, "Begging your ladyship's pardon, you have. Your
ancestors have lived here time out of mind, and have owned the land on
which their forefathers have lived ever since there were forefathers. You
yourself were born amongst them, and have been like a little queen to
them ever since, I might say, and they've never known your ladyship do
anything but what was kind and gentle; but I'll leave fine speeches about
your ladyship to Mr. Crosse. Only you, my lady, lead the thoughts of the
parish; and save some of them a world of trouble, for they could never
tell what was right if they had to think for themselves. It's all quite
right that they should be guided by you, my lady,—if only you would
agree with Mr. Gray."

"Well," said my lady, "I told him only the last day that he was here,
that I would think about it. I do believe I could make up my mind on
certain subjects better if I were left alone, than while being constantly
talked to about them."

My lady said this in her usual soft tones; but the words had a tinge of
impatience about them; indeed, she was more ruffled than I had often seen
her; but, checking herself in an instant she said—

"You don't know how Mr. Horner drags in this subject of education apropos
of everything. Not that he says much about it at any time: it is not his
way. But he cannot let the thing alone."

"I know why, my lady," said Miss Galindo. "That poor lad, Harry Gregson,
will never be able to earn his livelihood in any active way, but will be
lame for life. Now, Mr. Horner thinks more of Harry than of any one else
in the world,—except, perhaps, your ladyship." Was it not a pretty
companionship for my lady? "And he has schemes of his own for teaching
Harry; and if Mr. Gray could but have his school, Mr. Horner and he think
Harry might be schoolmaster, as your ladyship would not like to have him
coming to you as steward's clerk. I wish your ladyship would fall into
this plan; Mr. Gray has it so at heart."

Miss Galindo looked wistfully at my lady, as she said this. But my lady
only said, drily, and rising at the same time, as if to end the
conversation—

"So Mr. Horner and Mr. Gray seem to have gone a long way in advance of my
consent to their plans."

"There!" exclaimed Miss Galindo, as my lady left the room, with an
apology for going away; "I have gone and done mischief with my long,
stupid tongue. To be sure, people plan a long way ahead of to-day; more
especially when one is a sick man, lying all through the weary day on a
sofa."

"My lady will soon get over her annoyance," said I, as it were
apologetically. I only stopped Miss Galindo's self-reproaches to draw
down her wrath upon myself.

"And has not she a right to be annoyed with me, if she likes, and to keep
annoyed as long as she likes? Am I complaining of her, that you need
tell me that? Let me tell you, I have known my lady these thirty years;
and if she were to take me by the shoulders, and turn me out of the
house, I should only love her the more. So don't you think to come
between us with any little mincing, peace-making speeches. I have been a
mischief-making parrot, and I like her the better for being vexed with
me. So good-bye to you, Miss; and wait till you know Lady Ludlow as well
as I do, before you next think of telling me she will soon get over her
annoyance!" And off Miss Galindo went.

I could not exactly tell what I had done wrong; but I took care never
again to come in between my lady and her by any remark about the one to
the other; for I saw that some most powerful bond of grateful affection
made Miss Galindo almost worship my lady.

Meanwhile, Harry Gregson was limping a little about in the village, still
finding his home in Mr. Gray's house; for there he could most
conveniently be kept under the doctor's eye, and receive the requisite
care, and enjoy the requisite nourishment. As soon as he was a little
better, he was to go to Mr. Horner's house; but, as the steward lived
some distance out of the way, and was much from home, he had agreed to
leave Harry at the house; to which he had first been taken, until he was
quite strong again; and the more willingly, I suspect, from what I heard
afterwards, because Mr. Gray gave up all the little strength of speaking
which he had, to teaching Harry in the very manner which Mr. Horner most
desired.

As for Gregson the father—he—wild man of the woods, poacher, tinker,
jack-of-all trades—was getting tamed by this kindness to his child.
Hitherto his hand had been against every man, as every man's had been
against him. That affair before the justice, which I told you about,
when Mr. Gray and even my lady had interested themselves to get him
released from unjust imprisonment, was the first bit of justice he had
ever met with; it attracted him to the people, and attached him to the
spot on which he had but squatted for a time. I am not sure if any of
the villagers were grateful to him for remaining in their neighbourhood,
instead of decamping as he had often done before, for good reasons,
doubtless, of personal safety. Harry was only one out of a brood of ten
or twelve children, some of whom had earned for themselves no good
character in service: one, indeed, had been actually transported, for a
robbery committed in a distant part of the county; and the tale was yet
told in the village of how Gregson the father came back from the trial in
a state of wild rage, striding through the place, and uttering oaths of
vengeance to himself, his great black eyes gleaming out of his matted
hair, and his arms working by his side, and now and then tossed up in his
impotent despair. As I heard the account, his wife followed him, child-
laden and weeping. After this, they had vanished from the country for a
time, leaving their mud hovel locked up, and the door-key, as the
neighbours said, buried in a hedge bank. The Gregsons had reappeared
much about the same time that Mr. Gray came to Hanbury. He had either
never heard of their evil character, or considered that it gave them all
the more claims upon his Christian care; and the end of it was, that this
rough, untamed, strong giant of a heathen was loyal slave to the weak,
hectic, nervous, self-distrustful parson. Gregson had also a kind of
grumbling respect for Mr. Horner: he did not quite like the steward's
monopoly of his Harry: the mother submitted to that with a better grace,
swallowing down her maternal jealousy in the prospect of her child's
advancement to a better and more respectable position than that in which
his parents had struggled through life. But Mr. Horner, the steward, and
Gregson, the poacher and squatter, had come into disagreeable contact too
often in former days for them to be perfectly cordial at any future time.
Even now, when there was no immediate cause for anything but gratitude
for his child's sake on Gregson's part, he would skulk out of Mr.
Horner's way, if he saw him coming; and it took all Mr. Horner's natural
reserve and acquired self-restraint to keep him from occasionally holding
up his father's life as a warning to Harry. Now Gregson had nothing of
this desire for avoidance with regard to Mr. Gray. The poacher had a
feeling of physical protection towards the parson; while the latter had
shown the moral courage, without which Gregson would never have respected
him, in coming right down upon him more than once in the exercise of
unlawful pursuits, and simply and boldly telling him he was doing wrong,
with such a quiet reliance upon Gregson's better feeling, at the same
time, that the strong poacher could not have lifted a finger against Mr.
Gray, though it had been to save himself from being apprehended and taken
to the lock-ups the very next hour. He had rather listened to the
parson's bold words with an approving smile, much as Mr. Gulliver might
have hearkened to a lecture from a Lilliputian. But when brave words
passed into kind deeds, Gregson's heart mutely acknowledged its master
and keeper. And the beauty of it all was, that Mr. Gray knew nothing of
the good work he had done, or recognized himself as the instrument which
God had employed. He thanked God, it is true, fervently and often, that
the work was done; and loved the wild man for his rough gratitude; but it
never occurred to the poor young clergyman, lying on his sick-bed, and
praying, as Miss Galindo had told us he did, to be forgiven for his
unprofitable life, to think of Gregson's reclaimed soul as anything with
which he had had to do. It was now more than three months since Mr. Gray
had been at Hanbury Court. During all that time he had been confined to
his house, if not to his sick-bed, and he and my lady had never met since
their last discussion and difference about Farmer Hale's barn.

This was not my dear lady's fault; no one could have been more attentive
in every way to the slightest possible want of either of the invalids,
especially of Mr. Gray. And she would have gone to see him at his own
house, as she sent him word, but that her foot had slipped upon the
polished oak staircase, and her ancle had been sprained.

So we had never seen Mr. Gray since his illness, when one November day he
was announced as wishing to speak to my lady. She was sitting in her
room—the room in which I lay now pretty constantly—and I remember she
looked startled, when word was brought to her of Mr. Gray's being at the
Hall.

She could not go to him, she was too lame for that, so she bade him be
shown into where she sat.

"Such a day for him to go out!" she exclaimed, looking at the fog which
had crept up to the windows, and was sapping the little remaining life in
the brilliant Virginian creeper leaves that draperied the house on the
terrace side.

He came in white, trembling, his large eyes wild and dilated. He
hastened up to Lady Ludlow's chair, and, to my surprise, took one of her
hands and kissed it, without speaking, yet shaking all over.

"Mr. Gray!" said she, quickly, with sharp, tremulous apprehension of some
unknown evil. "What is it? There is something unusual about you."

"Something unusual has occurred," replied he, forcing his words to be
calm, as with a great effort. "A gentleman came to my house, not half an
hour ago—a Mr. Howard. He came straight from Vienna."

"My son!" said my dear lady, stretching out her arms in dumb questioning
attitude.

"The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the
Lord."

But my poor lady could not echo the words. He was the last remaining
child. And once she had been the joyful mother of nine.

I am ashamed to say what feeling became strongest in my mind about this
time; next to the sympathy we all of us felt for my dear lady in her deep
sorrow, I mean; for that was greater and stronger than anything else,
however contradictory you may think it, when you hear all.

It might arise from my being so far from well at the time, which produced
a diseased mind in a diseased body; but I was absolutely jealous for my
father's memory, when I saw how many signs of grief there were for my
lord's death, he having done next to nothing for the village and parish,
which now changed, as it were, its daily course of life, because his
lordship died in a far-off city. My father had spent the best years of
his manhood in labouring hard, body and soul, for the people amongst whom
he lived. His family, of course, claimed the first place in his heart;
he would have been good for little, even in the way of benevolence, if
they had not. But close after them he cared for his parishioners, and
neighbours. And yet, when he died, though the church-bells tolled, and
smote upon our hearts with hard, fresh pain at every beat, the sounds of
every-day life still went on, close pressing around us,—carts and
carriages, street-cries, distant barrel-organs (the kindly neighbours
kept them out of our street): life, active, noisy life, pressed on our
acute consciousness of Death, and jarred upon it as on a quick nerve.