The Bertrams (76 page)

"We can't keep our carriage, certainly, aunt."

"Then you mean to accept him?"

"Yes, aunt."

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! What will you do when the children come?"

"We must make the best of it, aunt."

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! And you will have his mother with you always."

"If so, then we should not be so very poor; but I do not think that that is what Arthur means."

There was not much more said about it between them; and at last, in the seclusion of her own bedroom, Adela wrote her letter.

"Littlebath, Tuesday night.

"Dear Arthur,—I received your letter this morning; but as you were so kind as to give me a day to answer it, I have put off doing so till I could be quite alone. It will be a very simple answer. I value your love more than anything in the world. You have my whole heart. I hope, for your sake, that the troubles which you speak of will not be many; but whatever they may be, I will share them. If I can, I will lessen them.

"I hope it is not unmaidenly to say that I have received your dear letter with true delight; I do not know why it should be. We have known each other so long, that it is almost natural that I should love you. I do love you dearly, dearest Arthur; and with a heart thankful for God's goodness to me, I will put my hand in yours with perfect trust—fearing nothing, then, as far as this world is concerned.

"I do not regard the poverty of which you speak, at least not for my own sake. What I have of my own is, I know, very little. I wish now that I could make it more for you. But, no; I will wish for nothing more, seeing that so much has been given to me. Everything has been given to me when I have your love.

"I hope that this will not interfere with your
mother's Comfort. If anything now could make me unhappy, it would be that she should not be pleased at our prospects. Give her my kindest, kindest love; and tell her that I hope she will let me look on her as a mother.

"I will write to Mary very soon; but bid her write to me first. I cannot tell her how happy, how very happy I really am, till she has first wished me joy.

"I have, of course, told aunt Penelope. She, too, says something about poverty. I tell her it is croaking. The honest do not beg their bread; do they, Arthur? But in spite of her croaking, she will be very happy to see you on Monday, if it shall suit you to come. If so, let me have one other little line. But I am so contented now, that I shall hardly be more so even to have you here.

"God bless you, my own, own, own dearest

"Ever yours with truest affection,

"A
DELA
."

And I also hope that Adela's letter will not be considered unmaidenly; but I have my fears. There will be those who will say that it is sadly deficient in reserve; Ah! had she not been reserved enough for the last four or five years? Reserve is beautiful in a maiden if it be rightly timed. Sometimes one would fain have more of it. But when the heart is full, and when it may speak out; when time, and circumstances, and the world permit—then We should say that honesty is better than reserve. Adela's letter was honest on the spur of the moment. Her reserve had been the work of years.

Arthur, at any rate, was satisfied. Her letter seemed to him to be the very perfection of words. Armed with that he would face his mother, though she appeared armed from head to foot in the Stapledean panoply. While he was reading his letter he was at breakfast with them all; and when he had finished it for the second time, he handed it across the table to his mother.

"Oh! I suppose so," was her only answer, as she gave it him back.

The curiosity of the girls was too great now for the composure of their silent dignity. "It is from Adela," said Mary; "what does she say?"

"You may read it," said Arthur, again handing the letter across the table.

"Well, I do wish you joy," said Mary, "though there will be so very little money."

Seeing that Arthur, since his father's death, had, in fact, supported his mother and sisters out of his own income, this reception of his news was rather hard upon him. And so he felt it.

"You will not have to share the hardships," he said, as he left the room; "and so you need not complain."

There was nothing more said about it that morning; but in the evening, when they were alone, he spoke to his sister again. "You will write to her, Mary, I hope?"

"Yes, I will write to her," said Mary, half ashamed of herself.

"Perhaps it is not surprising that my mother should be vexed, seeing the false position in
which both she and I have been placed; partly by my fault, for I should not have accepted the living under such conditions."

"Oh, Arthur, you would not have refused it?"

"I ought to have done so. But, Mary, you and the girls should be ready to receive Adela with open arms. What other sister could I have given you that you would have loved better?"

"Oh, no one; not for her own sake—no one half so well."

"Then tell her so, and do not cloud her prospects by writing about the house. You have all had shelter and comfort hitherto, and be trustful that it will be continued to you."

This did very well with his sister; but the affair with his mother was much more serious. He began by telling her that he should go to Littlebath on Monday, and be back on Wednesday.

"Then I shall go to Bowes on Wednesday," said Mrs. Wilkinson. Now we all know that Bowes is a long way from Staplehurst. The journey has already been made once in these pages. But Mrs. Wilkinson was as good as her word.

"To Bowes!" said Arthur.

"Yes, to Bowes, sir; to Lord Stapledean. That is, if you hold to your scheme of turning me out of my own house."

"I think it would be better, mother, that we should have two establishments."

"And, therefore, I am to make way for you and that—"viper, she was going to say again; but looking into her son's face, she became somewhat more merciful—"for you," she said, "and that chit!"

"As clergyman of the parish, I think that I ought Jo live in the parsonage. You, mother, will have so much the larger portion of the income."

"Very well. There need be no more words about it. I shall start for Bowes on next Wednesday." And so she did.

Arthur wrote his "one other little line." As it was three times as long as his first letter, it shall not be printed. And he did make his visit to Littlebath. How happy Adela was as she leant trustingly on his arm, and felt that it was her own! He stayed, however, but one night, and was back at Staplehurst before his mother started for Bowes.

CHAPTER XLIII

ANOTHER JOURNEY TO BOWES

M
RS
. W
ILKINSON
did not leave her home for her long and tedious journey without considerable parade. Her best new black silk dress was packed up in order that due honour might be done to Lord Stapledean's hospitality, and so large a box was needed that Dumpling and the four-wheeled carriage were hardly able to take her to the railway-station. Then there arose the question who should drive her. Arthur offered to do so; but she was going on a journey of decided hostility as regarded him, and under
such circumstances she could not bring herself to use his services even over a portion of the road. So the stable-boy was her charioteer.

She talked about Lord Stapledean the whole evening before she went. Arthur would have explained to her something of that nobleman's character if she would have permitted it, But she would not. When he hinted that she would find Lord Stapledean austere in his manner, she answered that his lordship no doubt had had his reasons for being austere with so very young a man as Arthur had been. When he told her about the Bowes hotel, she merely shook her head significantly. A nobleman who had been so generous to her and hers as Lord Stapledean would hardly allow her to remain at the inn.

"I am very sorry that the journey is forced upon me," she said to Arthur, as she sat with her bonnet on, waiting for the vehicle.

"I am sorry that you are going, mother, certainly," he had answered; "because I know that it will lead to disappointment."

"But I have no other course left open to me," she continued. "I cannot see my poor girls turned out houseless on the world." And then, refusing even to lean on her son's arm, she stepped up heavily into the carriage, and seated herself beside the boy.

"When shall we expect you, mamma?" said Sophia.

"It will be impossible for me to say; but I shall be sure to write as soon as I have seen his lordship. Goodbye to you, girls." And then she was driven away.

"It is a very foolish journey," said Arthur.

"Mamma feels that she is driven to it," said Sophia.

Mrs. Wilkinson had written to Lord Stapledean two days before she started, informing his lordship that it had become very necessary that she should wait upon him on business connected with the living, and therefore she was aware that her coming would not be wholly unexpected. In due process of time she arrived at Bowes, very tired and not a little disgusted at the great expense of her journey. She had travelled but little alone, and knew nothing as to the cost of hotels, and not a great deal as to that of railways, coaches, and post-chaises. But at last she found herself in the same little inn which had previously received Arthur when he made the same journey.

"The lady can have a post-chaise, of course," said the landlady, speaking from the bar. "Oh, yes, Lord Stapledean is at home, safe enough. He's never very far away from it to the best of my belief."

"It's only a mile or so, is it?" said Mrs. Wilkinson.

"Seven long miles, ma'am," said the landlady.

"Seven miles! dear, dear. I declare I never was so tired in my life. You can put the box somewhere behind in the post-chaise, can't you?"

"Yes, ma'am; we can do that. Be you a-going to stay at his lordship's, then?"

To this question Mrs. Wilkinson made an ambiguous answer. Her confidence was waning, now that she drew near to the centre of
her aspirations. But at last she did exactly as her son had done before her. She said she would take her box; but that it was possible she might want a bed that evening. "Very possible," the landlady said to herself.

"And you'll take a bite of something before you start, ma'am," she said, out loud. But, no; it was only now twelve o'clock, and she would be at Bowes Lodge a very little after one. She had still sufficient confidence in Lord Stapledean to feel sure of her lunch. When people reached Hurst Staple Vicarage about that hour, there was always something for them to eat. And so she started.

"It was April now; but even in April that bleak northern fell was very cold. Nothing more inhospitable than that road could be seen. It was unsheltered, swept by every blast, very steep, and mercilessly oppressed by turnpikes. Twice in those seven miles one-and-sixpence was inexorably demanded from her.

"But I know one gate always clears the other, when they are so near," she argued.

"Noa, they doant," was all the answer she received from the turnpike woman, who held a baby under each arm.

"I am sure the woman is robbing me," said poor Mrs. Wilkinson.

"No, she beant," said the post-boy. They are good hearty people in that part of the world; but they do not brook suspicion, and the courtesies of life are somewhat neglected. And then she arrived at Lord Stapledean's gate.

"Be you she what sent the letter?" said the woman at the lodge, holding it only half open.

"Yes, my good woman; yes," said Mrs. Wilkinson, thinking that her troubles were now nearly over. "I am the lady; I am Mrs. Wilkinson."

"Then my lord says as how you're to send up word what you've got to say." And the woman still stood in the gateway.

"Send up word!" said Mrs. Wilkinson.

"Yees. Just send up word. Here's Jock can rin up."

"But Jock can't tell his lordship what I have to say to him. I have to see his lordship on most important business," said she, in her dismay.

"I'm telling you no more than what my lord said his ain sell. He just crawled down here his ain sell. 'If a woman comes,' said he, 'don't let her through the gate till she sends up word what she's got to say to me.'" And the portress looked as though she were resolved to obey her master's orders.

"Good heavens! There must be some mistake in this, I'm sure. I am the clergyman of Staplehurst—I mean his widow. Staplehurst, you know; his lordship's property."

"I didna know nothing aboot it."

"Oh, drive on, post-boy. There must be some mistake. The woman must be making some dreadful mistake."

At last the courage of the lodge-keeper gave way before the importance of the post-chaise, and she did permit Mrs. Wilkinson to proceed.

"Mither," said the woman's eldest hope, "you'll cotch it noo."

"Eh, lad; weel. He'll no hang me." And so the woman consoled herself.

The house called Bowes Lodge looked damper and greener, more dull, silent, and melancholy, even than it had done when Arthur made his visit The gravel sweep before the door was covered by weeds, and the shrubs looked as though they had known no gardener's care for years. The door itself did not even appear to be for purposes of ingress and egress, and the post-boy had to search among the boughs and foliage with which the place was overgrown before he could find the bell. When found, it sounded with a hoarse, rusty, jangling noise, as though angry at being disturbed in so unusual a manner.

But, rusty and angry as it was, it did evoke a servant—though not without considerable delay. A cross old man did come at last, and the door was slowly opened. "Yes," said the man. "The marquis was at home, no doubt. He was in the study. But that was no rule why he should see folk." And then he looked very suspiciously at the big trunk, and muttered something to the post-boy, which Mrs. Wilkinson could not hear.

"Will you oblige me by giving my card to his lordship—Mrs. Wilkinson? I want to see him on very particular business. I wrote to his lordship to say that I should be here."

"Wrote to his lordship, did you? Then it's my opinion he won't see you at all."