My Lady Ludlow (27 page)

Captain James might be very sensible, and all that; but not even my lady
could call him a substitute for the old familiar friends. He was a
thorough sailor, as sailors were in those days—swore a good deal, drank
a good deal (without its ever affecting him in the least), and was very
prompt and kind-hearted in all his actions; but he was not accustomed to
women, as my lady once said, and would judge in all things for himself.
My lady had expected, I think, to find some one who would take his
notions on the management of her estate from her ladyship's own self; but
he spoke as if he were responsible for the good management of the whole,
and must, consequently, be allowed full liberty of action. He had been
too long in command over men at sea to like to be directed by a woman in
anything he undertook, even though that woman was my lady. I suppose
this was the common-sense my lady spoke of; but when common-sense goes
against us, I don't think we value it quite so much as we ought to do.

Lady Ludlow was proud of her personal superintendence of her own estate.
She liked to tell us how her father used to take her with him in his
rides, and bid her observe this and that, and on no account to allow such
and such things to be done. But I have heard that the first time she
told all this to Captain James, he told her point-blank that he had heard
from Mr. Smithson that the farms were much neglected and the rents sadly
behind-hand, and that he meant to set to in good earnest and study
agriculture, and see how he could remedy the state of things. My lady
would, I am sure, be greatly surprised, but what could she do? Here was
the very man she had chosen herself, setting to with all his energy to
conquer the defect of ignorance, which was all that those who had
presumed to offer her ladyship advice had ever had to say against him.
Captain James read Arthur Young's "Tours" in all his spare time, as long
as he was an invalid; and shook his head at my lady's accounts as to how
the land had been cropped or left fallow from time immemorial. Then he
set to, and tried too many new experiments at once. My lady looked on in
dignified silence; but all the farmers and tenants were in an uproar, and
prophesied a hundred failures. Perhaps fifty did occur; they were only
half as many as Lady Ludlow had feared; but they were twice as many,
four, eight times as many as the captain had anticipated. His openly-
expressed disappointment made him popular again. The rough country
people could not have understood silent and dignified regret at the
failure of his plans, but they sympathized with a man who swore at his
ill success—sympathized, even while they chuckled over his discomfiture.
Mr. Brooke, the retired tradesman, did not cease blaming him for not
succeeding, and for swearing. "But what could you expect from a sailor?"
Mr. Brooke asked, even in my lady's hearing; though he might have known
Captain James was my lady's own personal choice, from the old friendship
Mr. Urian had always shown for him. I think it was this speech of the
Birmingham baker's that made my lady determine to stand by Captain James,
and encourage him to try again. For she would not allow that her choice
had been an unwise one, at the bidding (as it were) of a dissenting
tradesman; the only person in the neighbourhood, too, who had flaunted
about in coloured clothes, when all the world was in mourning for my
lady's only son.

Captain James would have thrown the agency up at once, if my lady had not
felt herself bound to justify the wisdom of her choice, by urging him to
stay. He was much touched by her confidence in him, and swore a great
oath, that the next year he would make the land such as it had never been
before for produce. It was not my lady's way to repeat anything she had
heard, especially to another person's disadvantage. So I don't think she
ever told Captain James of Mr. Brooke's speech about a sailor's being
likely to mismanage the property; and the captain was too anxious to
succeed in this, the second year of his trial, to be above going to the
flourishing, shrewd Mr. Brooke, and asking for his advice as to the best
method of working the estate. I dare say, if Miss Galindo had been as
intimate as formerly at the Hall, we should all of us have heard of this
new acquaintance of the agent's long before we did. As it was, I am sure
my lady never dreamed that the captain, who held opinions that were even
more Church and King than her own, could ever have made friends with a
Baptist baker from Birmingham, even to serve her ladyship's own interests
in the most loyal manner.

We heard of it first from Mr. Gray, who came now often to see my lady,
for neither he nor she could forget the solemn tie which the fact of his
being the person to acquaint her with my lord's death had created between
them. For true and holy words spoken at that time, though having no
reference to aught below the solemn subjects of life and death, had made
her withdraw her opposition to Mr. Gray's wish about establishing a
village school. She had sighed a little, it is true, and was even yet
more apprehensive than hopeful as to the result; but almost as if as a
memorial to my lord, she had allowed a kind of rough school-house to be
built on the green, just by the church; and had gently used the power she
undoubtedly had, in expressing her strong wish that the boys might only
be taught to read and write, and the first four rules of arithmetic;
while the girls were only to learn to read, and to add up in their heads,
and the rest of the time to work at mending their own clothes, knitting
stockings and spinning. My lady presented the school with more spinning-
wheels than there were girls, and requested that there might be a rule
that they should have spun so many hanks of flax, and knitted so many
pairs of stockings, before they ever were taught to read at all. After
all, it was but making the best of a bad job with my poor lady—but life
was not what it had been to her. I remember well the day that Mr. Gray
pulled some delicately fine yarn (and I was a good judge of those things)
out of his pocket, and laid it and a capital pair of knitted stockings
before my lady, as the first-fruits, so to say, of his school. I
recollect seeing her put on her spectacles, and carefully examine both
productions. Then she passed them to me.

"This is well, Mr. Gray. I am much pleased. You are fortunate in your
schoolmistress. She has had both proper knowledge of womanly things and
much patience. Who is she? One out of our village?"

"My lady," said Mr. Gray, stammering and colouring in his old fashion,
"Miss Bessy is so very kind as to teach all those sorts of things—Miss
Bessy, and Miss Galindo, sometimes."

My lady looked at him over her spectacles: but she only repeated the
words "Miss Bessy," and paused, as if trying to remember who such a
person could be; and he, if he had then intended to say more, was quelled
by her manner, and dropped the subject. He went on to say, that he had
thought it is duty to decline the subscription to his school offered by
Mr. Brooke, because he was a Dissenter; that he (Mr. Gray) feared that
Captain James, through whom Mr. Brooke's offer of money had been made,
was offended at his refusing to accept it from a man who held heterodox
opinions; nay, whom Mr. Gray suspected of being infected by Dodwell's
heresy.

"I think there must be some mistake," said my lady, "or I have
misunderstood you. Captain James would never be sufficiently with a
schismatic to be employed by that man Brooke in distributing his
charities. I should have doubted, until now, if Captain James knew him."

"Indeed, my lady, he not only knows him, but is intimate with him, I
regret to say. I have repeatedly seen the captain and Mr. Brooke walking
together; going through the fields together; and people do say—"

My lady looked up in interrogation at Mr. Gray's pause.

"I disapprove of gossip, and it may be untrue; but people do say that
Captain James is very attentive to Miss Brooke."

"Impossible!" said my lady, indignantly. "Captain James is a loyal and
religious man. I beg your pardon Mr. Gray, but it is impossible."

Like many other things which have been declared to be impossible, this
report of Captain James being attentive to Miss Brooke turned out to be
very true.

The mere idea of her agent being on the slightest possible terms of
acquaintance with the Dissenter, the tradesman, the Birmingham democrat,
who had come to settle in our good, orthodox, aristocratic, and
agricultural Hanbury, made my lady very uneasy. Miss Galindo's
misdemeanour in having taken Miss Bessy to live with her, faded into a
mistake, a mere error of judgment, in comparison with Captain James's
intimacy at Yeast House, as the Brookes called their ugly square-built
farm. My lady talked herself quite into complacency with Miss Galindo,
and even Miss Bessy was named by her, the first time I had ever been
aware that my lady recognized her existence; but—I recollect it was a
long rainy afternoon, and I sat with her ladyship, and we had time and
opportunity for a long uninterrupted talk—whenever we had been silent
for a little while she began again, with something like a wonder how it
was that Captain James could ever have commenced an acquaintance with
"that man Brooke." My lady recapitulated all the times she could
remember, that anything had occurred, or been said by Captain James which
she could now understand as throwing light upon the subject.

"He said once that he was anxious to bring in the Norfolk system of
cropping, and spoke a good deal about Mr. Coke of Holkham (who, by the
way, was no more a Coke than I am—collateral in the female line—which
counts for little or nothing among the great old commoners' families of
pure blood), and his new ways of cultivation; of course new men bring in
new ways, but it does not follow that either are better than the old
ways. However, Captain James has been very anxious to try turnips and
bone manure, and he really is a man of such good sense and energy, and
was so sorry last year about the failure, that I consented; and now I
begin to see my error. I have always heard that town bakers adulterate
their flour with bone-dust; and, of course, Captain James would be aware
of this, and go to Brooke to inquire where the article was to be
purchased."

My lady always ignored the fact which had sometimes, I suspect, been
brought under her very eyes during her drives, that Mr. Brooke's few
fields were in a state of far higher cultivation than her own; so she
could not, of course, perceive that there was any wisdom to be gained
from asking the advice of the tradesman turned farmer.

But by-and-by this fact of her agent's intimacy with the person whom in
the whole world she most disliked (with that sort of dislike in which a
large amount of uncomfortableness is combined—the dislike which
conscientious people sometimes feel to another without knowing why, and
yet which they cannot indulge in with comfort to themselves without
having a moral reason why), came before my lady in many shapes. For,
indeed I am sure that Captain James was not a man to conceal or be
ashamed of one of his actions. I cannot fancy his ever lowering his
strong loud clear voice, or having a confidental conversation with any
one. When his crops had failed, all the village had known it. He
complained, he regretted, he was angry, or owned himself a — fool, all
down the village street; and the consequence was that, although he was a
far more passionate man than Mr. Horner, all the tenants liked him far
better. People, in general, take a kindlier interest in any one, the
workings of whose mind and heart they can watch and understand, than in a
man who only lets you know what he has been thinking about and feeling,
by what he does. But Harry Gregson was faithful to the memory of Mr.
Horner. Miss Galindo has told me that she used to watch him hobble out
of the way of Captain James, as if to accept his notice, however good-
naturedly given, would have been a kind of treachery to his former
benefactor. But Gregson (the father) and the new agent rather took to
each other; and one day, much to my surprise, I heard that the "poaching,
tinkering vagabond," as the people used to call Gregson when I first had
come to live at Hanbury, had been appointed gamekeeper; Mr. Gray standing
godfather, as it were, to his trustworthiness, if he were trusted with
anything; which I thought at the time was rather an experiment, only it
answered, as many of Mr. Gray's deeds of daring did. It was curious how
he was growing to be a kind of autocrat in the village; and how
unconscious he was of it. He was as shy and awkward and nervous as ever
in any affair that was not of some moral consequence to him. But as soon
as he was convinced that a thing was right, he "shut his eyes and ran and
butted at it like a ram," as Captain James once expressed it, in talking
over something Mr. Gray had done. People in the village said, "they
never knew what the parson would be at next;" or they might have said,
"where his reverence would next turn up." For I have heard of his
marching right into the middle of a set of poachers, gathered together
for some desperate midnight enterprise, or walking into a public-house
that lay just beyond the bounds of my lady's estate, and in that extra-
parochial piece of ground I named long ago, and which was considered the
rendezvous of all the ne'er-do-weel characters for miles round, and where
a parson and a constable were held in much the same kind of esteem as
unwelcome visitors. And yet Mr. Gray had his long fits of depression, in
which he felt as if he were doing nothing, making no way in his work,
useless and unprofitable, and better out of the world than in it. In
comparison with the work he had set himself to do, what he did seemed to
be nothing. I suppose it was constitutional, those attacks of lowness of
spirits which he had about this time; perhaps a part of the nervousness
which made him always so awkward when he came to the Hall. Even Mrs.
Medlicott, who almost worshipped the ground he trod on, as the saying is,
owned that Mr. Gray never entered one of my lady's rooms without knocking
down something, and too often breaking it. He would much sooner have
faced a desperate poacher than a young lady any day. At least so we
thought.