THERE are two houses in my neighbourhood which illustrate so curiously two phases of life, that everybody on the Green, as well as myself, has been led into the habit of classing them together. The first reason of this of course is, that they stand together; the second, that they are as unlike in every way as it is possible to conceive. They are about the same size, with the same aspect, the same green circle of garden surrounding them; and yet as dissimilar as if they had been brought out of two different worlds. They are not on the Green, though they are undeniably a part of Dinglefield, but stand on the Mercot Road, a broad country road with a verdant border of turf and fine trees shadowing over the hedgerows. The Merridews live in the one, and in the other are Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella. The house of the two ladies, which has been already described, is as perfect in all its arrangements as if it were a palace: a silent, soft, fragrant, dainty place, surrounded by lawns like velvet; full of flowers in perfect bloom, the finest kinds, succeeding each other as the seasons change. Even in autumn, when the winds are blowing, you never see a fallen leaf about, or the least symptom of untidiness. They have enough servants for everything that is wanted, and the servants are as perfect as the flowers—noiseless maids and soft-voiced men. Everything goes like machinery, with an infallible regularity; but like machinery oiled and deadened, which emits no creak nor groan. This is one of the things upon which Mrs. Spencer specially prides herself.
And just across two green luxuriant hedges, over a lawn which is not like velvet, you come to the Merridews’. It is possible if you passed it on a summer day that, notwithstanding the amazing superiority of the other, you would pause longer, and be more amused with a glance into the enclosure of the latter house. The lawn is not the least like velvet; probably it has not been mown for three weeks at least, and the daisies are irrepressible. But there, tumbled down in the midst of it, are a bunch of little children in pinafores—‘all the little ones,’ as Janet Merridew, the eldest daughter, expresses herself, with a certain soft exasperation. I would rather not undertake to number them or record their names, but there they are, a knot of rosy, round-limbed, bright-eyed, living things, some dark and some fair, with an amazing impartiality; but all chattering as best they can in nursery language, with rings of baby laughter, and baby quarrels, and musings of infinite solemnity. Once tumbled out here, where no harm can come to them, nobody takes any notice of the little ones. Nurse, sitting by serenely under a tree, works all the morning through, and there is so much going on indoors to occupy the rest.
Mr. and Mrs. Merridew, I need not add, had a large family—so large that their house overflowed, and when the big boys were at home from school, was scarcely habitable. Janet, indeed, did not hesitate to express her sentiments very plainly on the subject. She was just sixteen, and a good child, but full of the restless longing for something, she did not know what, and visionary discontent with her surroundings, which is not uncommon at her age. She had a way of paying me visits, especially during the holidays, and speaking more frankly on domestic subjects than was at all expedient. She would come in, in summer, with a tap on the glass which always startled me, through the open window, and sink down on a sofa and utter a long sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave!’ she would say, ‘what a good thing you never had any children!’ taking off, as she spoke, the large hat which it was one of her grievances to be compelled to wear.
‘Is that because you have too many at home?’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, far too many; fancy, ten! Why should poor papa be burdened with ten of us? and so little money to keep us all on. And then a house gets so untidy with so many about. Mamma does all she can, and I do all I can; but how is it possible to keep it in order? When I look across the hedges to Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella’s and see everything so nice and so neat I could die of envy. And you are always so shady, and so cool, and so pleasant here.’
‘It is easy to be neat and nice when there is nobody to put things out of order,’ said I; ‘but when you are as old as I am, Janet, you will get to think that one may buy one’s neatness too dear.’
‘Oh, I delight in it!’ cried the girl. ‘I should like to have everything nice, like you; all the books and papers just where one wants them, and paper-knives on every table, and ink in the ink-bottles, and no dust anywhere. You are not so dreadfully particular as Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella. I think I should like to see some litter on the carpet or on the lawn now and then for a change. But oh, if you could only see our house! And then our things are so shabby: the drawing-room carpet is all faded with the sun, and mamma will never have the blinds properly pulled down. And Selina, the housemaid, has so much to do. When I scold her, mamma always stops me, and bids me recollect we can’t be as nice as you other people, were we to try ever so much. There is so much to do in our house. And then those dreadful big boys!’
‘My dear,’ said I, ‘ring the bell, and we will have some tea; and you can tell Jane to bring you some of that strawberry jam you are so fond of—and forget the boys.’
‘As if one could!’ said Janet, ‘when they are all over the place—into one’s very room, if one did not mind; their boots always either dusty or muddy, and oh, the noise they make! Mamma won’t make them dress in the evenings, as I am sure she should. How are they ever to learn to behave like Christians, Mrs. Mulgrave, if they are not obliged to dress and come into the drawing-room at night?’
‘I dare say they would run out again and spoil their evening clothes, my dear,’ I said.
‘That is just what mamma says,’ cried Janet; ‘but isn’t it dreadful to have always to consider everything like that? Poor mamma, too—often I am quite angry, and then I think—perhaps she would like a house like Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella’s as well as I should, if we had money enough. I suppose in a nice big house with heaps of maids and heaps of money, and everything kept tidy for you, one would not mind even the big boys.’
‘I think under those circumstances most people would be glad to have them,’ said I.
‘I don’t understand how anybody can like boys,’ said Janet, with reflective yet contemptuous emphasis. ‘A baby-boy is different. When they are just the age of little Harry, I adore them; but those great long-legged creatures, in their big boots! And yet, when they’re nicely dressed in their evening things,’ she went on, suddenly changing her tone, ‘and with a flower in their coats—Jack has actually got an evening coat, Mrs. Mulgrave, he is so tall for his age—they look quite nice; they look such gentlemen,’ Janet concluded, with a little sisterly enthusiasm. ‘Oh, how dreadful it is to be so poor!’
‘I am sure you are very fond of them all the same,’ said I, ‘and would break your heart if anything should happen to them.’
‘Oh, well, of course, now they are there one would not wish anything to happen,’ said Janet. ‘What did you say I was to tell Jane, Mrs. Mulgrave, about the tea? There now! Selina has never the time to be as nice as that—and Richards, you know, our man—— Don’t you think, really, it would be better to have a nice clean parlour-maid than a man that looks like a cobbler? Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella are always going on about servants,—that you should send them away directly when they do anything wrong. But, you know, it makes a great difference having a separate servant for everything. Mamma always says, “They are good to the children, Janet,” or, “They are so useful and don’t mind what they do.” We put up with Selina because, though she’s not a good housemaid, she is quite willing to help in the nursery; and we put up with nurse because she gets through so much sewing; and even the cook—— Oh, dear, dear! it is so disagreeable. I wish I were—anybody but myself.’
Just at this moment my maid ushered in Mrs. Merridew, hastily attired in a hat she wore in the garden, and a light shawl wrapped round her. There was an anxious look in her face, which indeed was not very unusual there. She was a little flushed, either by walking in the sunshine or by something on her mind.
‘You here, Janet,’ she said, when she had shaken hands with me, ‘when you promised me to practise an hour after luncheon? Go, my dear, and do it now.’
‘It is so hot. I never can play in the middle of the day; and oh, mamma, please it is so pleasant here,’ pleaded Janet, nestling herself close into the corner of the sofa.
‘Let her stay till we have had some tea,’ I said. ‘I know she likes my strawberry jam.’
Mrs. Merridew consented, but with a sigh; and then it was that I saw clearly she must have something on her mind. She did not smile, as usual, with the indulgent mother’s smile, half disapproving, yet unwilling to thwart the child. On the contrary, there was a little constraint in her air as she sat down, and Janet’s enjoyment of the jam vexed her, and brought a little wrinkle to her brow. ‘One would think you had not eaten anything all day,’ she said with a vexed tone, and evidently was impatient of her daughter’s presence, and wished her away.
‘Nothing so nice as this,’ said Janet, with the frank satisfaction of her age; and she went on eating her bread and jam quite composedly, until Mrs. Merridew’s patience was exhausted.
‘I cannot have you stay any longer,’ she said at length. ‘Go and practise now, while there is no one in the house.’
‘Oh, mamma!’ said Janet, beginning to expostulate; but was stopped short by a look in her mother’s eye. Then she gathered herself up reluctantly, and left the paradise of my little tea-table with the jam. She went out pouting, trailing her great hat after her; and had to be stopped as she stepped into the blazing sunshine, and commanded to put it on. ‘It is only a step,’ said the provoking girl, pouting more and more. And poor Mrs. Merridew looked so worried, and heated, and uncomfortable as she went out and said a few energetic words to her naughty child. Poor soul! Ten different wills to manage and keep in subjection to her own, besides all the other cares she had upon her shoulders. And that big girl who should have been a help to her, standing pouting and disobedient between the piano she did not care for, and the jam she loved.— Sometimes such a little altercation gives one a glimpse into an entire life.
‘She is such a child,’ Mrs. Merridew said, coming in with an apologetic, anxious smile on her face. She had been fretted and vexed, and yet she would not show it to lessen my opinion of her girl. Then she sank down wearily into that corner of the sofa from which Janet had been so unwillingly expelled. ‘The truth is, I wanted to speak to you,’ she said, ‘and could not while she was here. Poor Janet! I am afraid I was cross, but I could not help it. Something has occurred to-day which has put me out.’
‘I hope it is something I can help you in,’ I said.
‘That is why I have come: you are always so kind; but it is a strange thing I am going to ask you this time,’ she said, with a wistful glance at me. ‘I want to go to town for a day on business of my own; and I want it to be supposed that it is business of yours.’
The fact was, it did startle me for the moment—and then I reflected like lightning, so quick was the process (I say this that nobody may think my first feeling hard), what kind of woman she was, and how impossible that she should want to do anything that one need be ashamed of. ‘That is very simple,’ I said.
Then she rose hastily, and came up to me and gave me a sudden kiss, though she was not a demonstrative woman. ‘You are always so understanding,’ she said, with the tears in her eyes; and thus I was committed to stand by her, whatever her difficulty might be.
‘But you sha’n’t do it in the dark,’ she went on; ‘I am going to tell you all about it. I don’t want Mr. Merridew to know, and in our house it is quite impossible to keep anything secret. He is on circuit now; but he would hear of “the day mamma went to town” before he had been five minutes in the house. And so I want you to go with me, you dear soul, and to let me say I went with you.’
‘That is quite simple,’ I said again; but I did feel that I should like to know what the object of the expedition was.
‘It is a long story,’ she said, ‘and I must go back and tell you ever so much about myself before you will understand. I have had the most dreadful temptation put before me to-day. Oh, such a temptation! resisting it is like tearing one’s heart in two; and yet I know I ought to resist. Think of our large family, and poor Charles’s many disappointments, and then, dear Mrs. Mulgrave, read that.’
It was a letter written on a large square sheet of thin paper which she thrust into my hand: one of those letters one knows a mile off, and recognizes as lawyers’ letters, painful or pleasant, as the case may be; but more painful than pleasant generally. I read it, and you may judge of my astonishment to find that it ran thus:—
‘DEAR MADAM,—We have the pleasure to inform you that our late client, Mr. John Babington, deceased on the 10th of May last, has appointed you by his will his residuary legatee. After all his special bequests are paid, including an annuity of a hundred a year to his mother, with remainder to Miss Babington, his only surviving sister, there will remain a sum of about £10,000, at present excellently invested on landed security, and bearing interest at four and a half per cent. By Mr. Babington’s desire, precautions have been taken to bind it strictly to your separate use, so that you may dispose of it by will or otherwise, according to your pleasure, for which purpose we have accepted the office of your trustees, and will be happy to enter fully into the subject, and put you in possession of all details, as soon as you can favour us with a private interview.
‘We are, madam,
‘Your obedient servants,
‘FOGEY, FEATHERHEAD & DOWN.’
‘A temptation!’ I cried; ‘but, my dear, it is a fortune; and it is delightful: it will make you quite comfortable. Why, it will be nearly five hundred a year.’
I feel always safe in the way of calculating interest when it is anything approaching five per cent.; five per cent. is so easily counted. This great news took away my breath.
But Mrs. Merridew shook her head. ‘It looks so at the first glance,’ she said; ‘but when you hear my story you will think differently.’ And then she made a little uncomfortable pause. ‘I don’t know whether you ever guessed it,’ she added, looking down, and doubling a new hem upon her handkerchief, ‘but I was not Charles’s equal when we married: perhaps you may have heard——?
Of course I had heard: but the expression of her countenance was such that I put on a look of great amazement, and pretended to be much astonished, which I could see was a comfort to her mind.
‘I am glad of that,’ she said, ‘for you know—I could not speak so plainly to you if I did not feel that, though you are so quiet now, you must have seen a great deal of the world—you know what a man is. He may be capable of marrying you, if he loves you, whatever your condition is—but afterwards he does not like people to know. I don’t mean I was his inferior in education, or anything of that sort,’ she added, looking up at me with a sudden uneasy blush.
‘You need not tell me that,’ I said; and then another uneasiness took possession of her, lest I should think less highly than was right of her husband.
‘Poor Charles!’ she said; ‘it is scarcely fair to judge him as he is now. We have had so many cares and disappointments, and he has had to deny himself so many things—and you may say, Here is his wife, whom he has been so good to, plotting to take away from him what might give him a little ease. But oh, dear Mrs. Mulgrave, you must hear before you judge!’
‘I do not judge,’ I said; ‘I am sure you must have some very good reason; tell me what it is.’
Then she paused, and gave a long sigh. She must have been about forty, I think, a comely, simple woman, not in any way a heroine of romance; and yet she was as interesting to me as if she had been only half the age, and deep in some pretty crisis of romantic distress. I don’t object to the love stories either: but middle age has its romances too.
‘When I was a girl,’ said Mrs. Merridew, ‘I went to the Babingtons as Ellen’s governess. She was about fifteen and I was not more than twenty, and I believe people thought me pretty. You will laugh at me, but I declare I have always been so busy all my life, that I have never had any time to think whether it was true: but one thing I know, that I was a very good governess. I often wish,’ she added, pausing, with a half comic look amid her trouble, ‘that I could find as good a governess as I was for the girls. There was one brother, John, and one other sister, Matilda; and Mr. Merridew was one of the visitors at the house, and was supposed to be paying her attention. I never could see it, for my part, and Charles declares he never had any such idea; but they thought so, I know. It is quite a long story. John had just come home from the University, and was pretending to read for the bar, and was always about the house; and the end was that he fell in love with me.’
‘Of course,’ said I.
‘I don’t know that it was of course. I was so very shy, and dreaded the sound of my own voice; but he used to come after us everywhere by way of talking to Ellen, and so got to know me. Poor John! he was the nicest, faithful fellow—the sort of man one would trust everything to, and believe in and respect, and be fond of—but not love. Of course Charles was there too. It went on for about a year, such a curious, confused, pleasant, painful—— I cannot describe it to you—but you know what I mean. The Babingtons had always been kind to me; of course they were angry when they found out about John, but then when they knew I would not marry him, they were kinder than ever, and said I had behaved so very well about it. I was a very lonely poor girl; my mother was dead, and I had nowhere to go; and instead of sending me away, Mrs. Babington sent him away—her own son, which was very good of her you know. To be sure I was a good governess, and they never suspected Charles of coming for me, nor did I. Suddenly, all at once, without the least warning, he found me by myself one day, and told me. I was a little shocked, thinking of Matilda Babington! but then he declared he had meant nothing. And so—— When the Babingtons heard of it, they were all furious; even Ellen, my pupil, turned against me. They sent me away as if I had done something wicked. It was very, very hard upon me; but yet I scarcely wonder, now I think of it. That was why we married so early and so imprudently. Mrs. Mulgrave, I dare say you have often wondered why it was?’
I had to put on such looks of wonder and satisfied curiosity as I could; for the truth was, I had known the outlines of the story for years, just as every one knows the outlines of every one else’s story; especially such parts of it as people might like to be concealed. I cannot understand how anybody, at least in society, or on the verge of society, can for a moment hope to have any secrets. Charles Merridew was a cousin of Mr. Justice Merridew, and very well connected, and of course it was known that he married a governess; which was one reason why people were so shy of them at first when they came to the Green.
‘I begin to perceive now why this letter should be a temptation to you,’ I said; ‘you think Mr. Merridew would not like——’
‘Oh, it is not that,’ she said. ‘Poor Charles! I don’t think he would mind. The world is so hard, and one makes so little head against it. No, it is because of Mrs. Babington. I heard she lost all her money some years ago, and was dependent on her son. And what can she do on a hundred a year? A hundred a year! Only think of it, for an old lady always accustomed to have her own way. It is horribly unjust, you know, to take it from her, his mother, who was always so good to him; and to give it to me, whom he has not seen for nearly twenty years, and who gave him a sore heart when he did know me. I could not take advantage of it. It is a great temptation, but it would be a great sin. And that is why,’ she added, with a sudden flush on her face, looking at me, ‘I should rather—manage it myself—under cover of you—and—not let Charles know.’
She looked at me, and held me with her eye, demanding of me that I should understand her, and yet defying me to think any the worse of Charles. She was afraid of her husband—afraid that he would clutch at the money without any consideration of the wrong—afraid to trust him with the decision. She would have me understand her without words, and yet she would not have me blame Mr. Merridew. She insisted on the one and defied me to the other; an inconsistent, unreasonable woman! But I did my best to look as if I saw, and yet did not see.
‘Then you want to see the lawyers?’ I said.
‘I want to see Mrs. Babington,’ was her answer. ‘I must go to them and explain. They are proud people, and probably would resist—or they may be otherwise provided for. If that was the case I should not hesitate to take it. Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave, when I look at all the children, and Janet there murmuring and grumbling, don’t you think it wrings my heart to put away this chance of comfort? And poor Charles working himself out. But it could not bring a blessing. It would bring a curse; I cannot take the bread out of the mouth of the old woman who was good to me, even to put it into that of my own child.’
And here two tears fell out of Mrs. Merridew’s eyes. At her age people do not weep abundantly. She gave a little start as they fell, and brushed them off her dress, with, I don’t doubt, a sensation of shame. She to cry like a baby, who had so much to do! She left shortly after, with an engagement to meet me at the station for the twelve o’clock train next day. I was going to town on business, and had asked her to go with me—this was what was to be said to all the world. I explained myself elaborately that very evening to Mrs. Spencer and Lady Isabella, when I met them taking their walk after dinner.
‘Mrs. Merridew is so kind as to go with me,’ I said; ‘she knows so much more about business than I do.’ And I made up my mind that I would go to the Bank and leave my book to be made up, that it might not be quite untrue.
‘Fancy Mrs. Mulgrave having any business!’ said Lady Isabella. ‘Why don’t you write to some man, and make him do it, instead of all the trouble of going to town?’
‘But Mrs. Merridew is going with me, my dear,’ I said; and nobody doubted that the barrister’s wife, with so much experience as she had, and so many things to do, would be an efficient help to me in my little affairs.
THE house we went to was a house in St. John’s Wood. Everybody knows the kind of place. A garden wall, with lilacs and laburnums, all out of blossom by this time, and beginning to look brown and dusty, waving over it; inside, a little bright suburban garden, full of scarlet geraniums, divided by a white line of pavement, dazzlingly clean, from the door in the wall to the door of the house; and a stand full of more scarlet geraniums in the little square hall. Mrs. Merridew became very much agitated as we approached. It was all that I could do to keep her up when we had rung the bell at the door. I think she would have turned and gone back even then had it been possible, but, fortunately, we were admitted without delay.
We were shown into a pretty shady drawing-room, full of old furniture, which looked like the remnants of something greater, and at which she gazed with eyes of almost wild recognition, unconsciously pressing my arm, which she still held. Everything surrounding her woke afresh the tumult of recollections. She was not able to speak when the maid asked our names, and I was about to give them simply, and had already named my own, when she pressed my arm closer to her, and interposed all at once—
‘Say two ladies from the country anxious to speak with her about business. She might not—know—our names.’
‘Is it business about the house, ma’am?’ said the maid with some eagerness.
‘Yes, yes; it is about the house,’ said Mrs. Merridew, hastily. And then the door closed, and we sat waiting, listening to the soft, subdued sounds in the quiet house, and the rustle of the leaves in the garden. ‘She must be going to let it,’ my companion said hoarsely; and then rose from the chair on which she had placed herself, and began to move about the room with agitation, looking at everything, touching the things with her hands, with now and then a stifled exclamation. ‘There is where we used to sit, Ellen and I,’ she said, standing by a sofa, before which a small table was placed, ‘when there was company in the evenings. And there Matilda—oh, what ghosts there are about! Matilda is married, thank Heaven! but if Ellen comes, I shall never be able to face her. Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave, if you would but speak for me!’
At this moment the door was opened. Mrs. Merridew shrank back instinctively, and sat down, resting her hand on the table she had just pointed out to me. The new-comer was a tall, full figure, in deep mourning, a handsome woman of five-and-thirty, or thereabouts, with bright hair, which looked all the brighter from comparison with the black depths of her dress, and a colourless, clear complexion. All the colour about her was in her hair. Though she had no appearance of unhealthiness, her very lips were pale, and she came in with a noiseless quiet dignity, and the air of one who felt she had pain to encounter, yet felt able to bear it.
‘Pardon me for keeping you waiting,’ she said; and then, with a somewhat startled glance, ‘I understood you wanted to see—the house.’
My companion was trembling violently; and I cleared my throat, and tried to clear up my ideas (which was less easy) to say something in reply. But before I had stammered out half-a-dozen words Mrs. Merridew rose, and made one or two unsteady steps towards the stranger.
‘Ellen,’ she cried, ‘don’t you know me?’ and stopped there, standing in the centre of the room, holding out appealing hands.
Miss Babington’s face changed in the strangest way. I could see that she recognized her in a moment, and then that she pretended to herself not to recognize her. There was the first startled, vivid, indignant glance, and then a voluntary mist came over her eyes. She gazed at the agitated woman with an obstinately blank gaze, and then turned to me with a little bow.
‘Your friend has the advantage of me,’ she said; ‘but you were saying something? I should be glad, if that was what you wanted, to show you over the house.’
It would be hard to imagine a more difficult position than that in which I found myself; seated between two people who were thus strangely connected with each other by bonds of mutual injury, and appealed to for something meaningless and tranquillizing, to make the intercourse possible. I did the best I could on the spur of the moment.
‘It is not so much the house,’ I said, ‘though, if you wish to let it, I have a friend who is looking for a house; but I think there was some other business Mrs. Merridew had; something to say——’
‘Mrs. Merridew!’ said Miss Babington, suffering the light once more to come into her eyes; and then she gave her an indignant look. ‘I think this might have been spared us at least.’
‘Ellen,’ said Mrs. Merridew, speaking very low and humbly—‘Ellen, I have never done anything to you to make you so hard against me. If I injured your sister, it was unwittingly. She is better off than I am now. You were once fond of me, as I was of you. Why should you have turned so completely against me? I have come in desperation to ask a hearing from you, and from your mother, Ellen. God knows I mean nothing but good. And oh, what have I ever done?—what harm?’
Miss Babington had seated herself, still preserving her air of dignity, but without an invitation by look or gesture to her visitor to be seated; and in the silent room, all so dainty and so sweet with flowers, with the old furniture in it, which reminded her of the past, the culprit of twenty years ago stood pleading between one of those whom she was supposed to have wronged and myself, a most ignorant and uneasy spectator. Twenty years ago! In the meantime youth had passed, and the hard burdens of middle age had come doubled and manifold upon her shoulders. Had she done nothing in the meantime that would tell more heavily against her than that girlish inadvertence of the past? Yet here she stood—not knowing, I believe, for the moment, whether she was the young governess in her first trouble, or the mother of all those children, acquainted with troubles so much more bitter—among the ghosts of the past.
‘I would much rather not discuss the question,’ said Miss Babington, still seated, and struggling hard to preserve her calm. ‘All the grief and vexation we have owed to you in this house cannot be summed up in a moment. The only policy, I think, is to be silent. Your very presence here is an offence to us. What else could it be?’
‘I should never have come,’ said Mrs. Merridew, moved by a natural prick of resentment, ‘but for what I have just heard—— I should never have returned to ask for pardon where I had done no wrong—had it not been for this—this that I feel to be unjust. Your poor brother John——’
‘Stop!’ cried the other, her reserve failing. ‘Stop, oh! stop, you cruel woman! He was nothing to you but a toy to be played with—but he was my brother, my only brother; and you have made him an undutiful son in his very grave.’
The tears were in her eyes, her colourless face had flushed, her soft voice was raised; and Mrs. Merridew, still standing, listened to her with looks as agitated—when all at once the door was again opened softly. The aspect of affairs