NEXT day that change upon Sarah’s whole appearance continued, and throughout the whole week. She was like herself once more. Carson made no more stealthy expeditions out of doors before my sister set out on her drive. Sarah did not stir in her chair and eye me desperately when the door opened. She even seemed to fall deaf again with that old, soft, slight hardness of hearing which I used to suspect in her. There was no pressure on her heart to startle her ears.
While I in the meantime tried my best to think nothing about it, tried to turn a blank face towards what might happen, and to take the days as they came. I have not come to be fifty without having troubles in plenty. For the last dozen years, to be sure, there had been only common embarrassments. The fewer people one has to love, the fewer pleasures and joys are possible, the less grow our sorrows. It is cold comfort, but it is a fact notwithstanding. Grief and delight go hand in hand in full lives; when we are stinted down into a corner both fall off. We suffer less, we enjoy less; we suffer nothing, we enjoy nothing in time, only common pricks and vexations, which send no thrill to the slumbering heart. So we had been living for years; happy enough, nothing to disturb us; or not happy at all, if you choose to take that view of the subject; true either way. Not such a thing as real emotion lighting upon our house, only secondary feelings; no love to speak of, but kindness; no joy, but occasional pleasure; no grief, but sometimes regret. A very composed life, which had been broken in upon quite suddenly by a bewildering shadow,—tragic fear, doubt, alarm,—sudden mystery no ways explainable, or madness explainable but hopeless. In this pause of dismay and doubt, while the dark, unknown, inexplicable figure had turned away from the door a little, it was hard to turn from its fascination and go quietly back to that quiet life.
Little Sara Cresswell came much about me in the library in those days; she interested herself in my business much; she tried to interfere with my work and help me, as the kitten called it. All the outlays on the estate, the works that were going on, the improvements I loved to set a-going—which did not all come to anything,—and the failures, of which to be sure there were plenty—pleased the impatient creature mightily. I was considered rather speculative and fanciful among the Cheshire squires; they did not approve of my goings on; they thought me a public nuisance for preserving no game, and making a fuss about cottages. But I am sorry to say little Sara did not agree with the squires. She thought my small bits of improvements very slow affairs indeed; she grew indignant at my stinginess and contracted ideas. She thought any little I did were just preliminary attempts not worth mentioning. When was I to begin the work in earnest she wanted to know?
“What work, Sara?”
“What work? Why, here are you, godmamma, an old lady—you will never grow any wiser or any better than you are,” cried the intolerable child. “You can’t get any more good out of all that belongs to the Park than just your nice little dinners, and teas, and the carriage, and the servants, and, perhaps, half-a-dozen dresses in the year,—though I do believe three would be nearer true,—and to keep all these farms, and fields, and meadows, and orchards, and things, all for godmamma Sarah and you! Don’t you feel frightened sometimes when you wake up suddenly at night?”
“You saucy little puss!—why?” cried I.
“To think of the poor,” said Sara, with a solemn look. She held herself straight up, and looked quite dignified as she turned her reproving eyes on me. “Quantities of families without any homes, quantities of little children growing up worse than your pigs, godmamma, quantities of people starving, and living, and crowding, and quarrelling in black streets not as broad as this room, with courts off from them, like those horrid, frightful places in Liverpool. While out here you are living in your big rooms, in your big house, with the green park all round and round you, and farmers, and gardeners, and cottagers, and servants, and all sorts of people, working to make you comfortable; with more money than you know what to do with, and everything belonging to yourself, and nobody to interfere with you. And why have you any right to it more than them?”
Little Sara’s figure swelled out, and her dark eyes shone bright as she was speaking. It took away my breath. “Are you a Chartist, child?” I cried.
“I think I am a Socialist,” said Sara, very composedly; “but I don’t quite know. I think we should all go shares. I have told you so a dozen times, godmamma. Suppose papa has twelve hundred a year,—I do believe he has a great deal more,—isn’t it dreadful? and all, not out of the ground like yours, but from worrying people into lawsuits and getting them into trouble. Well, suppose it was all divided among a dozen families, a hundred a year. People can live very comfortably, I assure you, godmamma, upon a hundred a year.”
“Who told you, child?” said I.
“The curate has only eighty,” said Sara; “his wife dresses the baby and makes all its things herself, and they have very comfortable little dinners. The window in my old nursery—the end window you know—just overlooks their little parlour. They look so snug and comfortable when the baby is good. To be sure it must be a bore taking one’s dinner with the baby in one’s lap; and I am sure she is always in a fright about visitors coming. I think it would be quite delightful to give them one of papa’s hundreds a year.”
“In addition to their eighty?” said I. “Why, then, there is an end of going shares.”
Sara coughed and stammered for a moment over this, quite at fault; but not being troubled either about logic or consistency, soon plunged on again as bold as ever.
“Whatever you say, godmamma, people can live quite comfortable on a hundred a year. I have reckoned it all up; and I don’t see really any reason why anybody should have more. Only fancy what a quantity of hundreds a year you and godmamma Sarah might distribute if you would. And, instead of that, you only build a few cottages and give a few people work—work! as if they had not as good a right as anybody to their living. People were not born only to work, and to be miserable, and to die.”
“People were born to do a great many harder things than you think for, Sara,” said I. “Do you think I am going to argue with a little velvet kitten like you? I advise you to try your twelve families on the twelve hundreds a year. But what do you suppose you would do if your godmamma and I, having no heirs, left the Park to you, and you had your will, and might do what you pleased?”
What put this into my head I cannot say; but I gave it utterance on the spur of the moment. Sara stared at me for a moment, with her pretty mouth falling a little open in astonishment. Then she jumped up and clapped her hands. “Do, godmamma!” she cried out, “oh do; such a glorious scatter I should make! everybody should have enough, and we’d build the loveliest little chapel in existence to St. Millicent, if there is such a saint. I have always thought it would be perfectly delightful to be a great heiress. Godmamma, do!”
To see her all sparkling with delight and eagerness quite charmed me. Had she ever heard a hint of being left heiress to the Park, of course she must have looked wretched and conscious. Anybody would that had thought of such a great acquisition. Sara had not an idea of that. She thought it the best fun possible. She clapped her hands and cried, “Do, godmamma!” She was as bold as an innocent young lion, without either guile or fear.
“It should be tied down so that you could not part with a single acre, nor give away above five pounds at a time,” said I.
“Ah!” said Sara, thoughtfully; “I dare say there would be a way of cheating you somehow though, godmamma,” she said, waking up again with a touch of malice. “People are always cheated after they are dead. I knew a dear old lady that would not have her portrait taken for anybody but one friend whom she loved very much; but, what do you think? after she was gone they found the wicked wretch of a photographic man that kept the thing,—the negative they call it,—and printed scores of portraits, and let everybody have one. I would have given my little finger to have had one; but to go and cheat her, and baulk her after she was dead, and all for love, that is cruel. I would rather go against what you said right out, godmamma, than go against what I knew was in your heart.”
“Ah, Sara, you don’t know anything about it,” said I. “If you had a great deal of money all to yourself, and could do anything you liked with it,—as heaven knows you may have soon enough!—and were just as foolish with it as you intend, how disgusted you would be with your charity, to be sure, after a while! What a little misanthrope you would grow! What mercenary, discontented wretches you would think all the people! I think I can see you fancying how much good you are doing, and yet doing only harm instead. Then that disagreeable old fellow, experience, would take you in hand. The living are cheated as well as the dead. We are all cheated, and cheat ourselves. Nothing would make me go and have my portrait taken; but I don’t deny if I found out that people had got it spontaneously, and handed it about among themselves all for love, I should not be angry. You are a little goose. You don’t know what manner of spirit you are of.”
“It is very easy talking, godmamma,” said Sara. “I was watching yesterday when godmamma Sarah went out for her drive. The groom and the boy were hard at work ever so long with the carriage and horses before it was ready. I saw them out of the window of Alice’s room while she was mending my dress for me. Then came old Jacob to the door with the carriage. Then came godmamma Sarah leaning on Carson’s arm to go downstairs. So there were two great horses and four human creatures,—three men and a woman,—all employed for ever so long to give one old lady a half-hour’s drive, when a walk would have done her twenty times as much good,” concluded the child hastily, under her breath.
“You speak in a very improper manner;—an old lady! You ought to have more respect for your godmamma,” said I, indignantly. “Your godmamma has nothing that is not perfectly suitable to her condition of life.”
“But godmamma Sarah is an old lady, whether I am respectful or not,” said the girl stoutly. “When I see ladies driving about I wonder at them. Two great horses that could fight or plough; and two great men that might do the same; and all occupied about one lady’s drive! If I were queen I would do away with drives! Ah! shouldn’t I like to be Semiramis, the Semiramis of the story, that persuaded the king to let her be queen for a day, and turned everything upside down, and then——”
“Cut off the king’s head. Would you do it, Sara, after he had trusted you?” said I.
Sara came to a sudden pause. “I would not mind about cutting off his head; but, to be sure, being trusted is different. As if it were not a story, not a word true! But please, godmamma,” cried the wild creature, making me a curtsey, “don’t leave me the Park. I don’t want to be trusted, please. I want to have my own way.”
Which was the truest word she ever said.