Читать книгу A Tale of a Lonely Parish - F. Marion Crawford - Страница 6

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"Augustin, my dear, this is very exciting," said Mrs. Ambrose, as she handed the cheque to her husband for inspection and returned the letter to its envelope, preparatory to marking it for future reference; and when, as has been said, she had written upon the outside the words—Goddard, Cottage, and had put it away she turned upon her husband with an inquiring manner peculiar to her. Mr. Ambrose was standing before the window, looking out at the rain and occasionally glancing at the cheque he still held in his hand.

"Just like a woman to send a cheque to 'bearer' through the post," he remarked, severely. "However since I have got it, it is all right."

"I don't think it is all right, Augustin," said his wife. "We are taking a great responsibility in bringing her into the parish. I am quite sure she is a dissenter or a Romanist or something dreadful, to begin with."

"My dear," answered the vicar, mildly, "you make very uncharitable suppositions. It seems to me that the most one can say of her is that she is very unhappy and that she does not write very good English."

"Oh, I have no doubt she is very unhappy. But as you say we must not be uncharitable. I suppose you will have to write about the cottage."

"I suppose so," said Mr. Ambrose doubtfully. "I cannot send her back the money, and the cottage is certainly to let."

He deposited the cheque in the drawer of his writing-table and began to walk up and down the room, glancing up from time to time at his wife who was lifting one after another the ornaments which stood upon the chimney-piece, in order to ascertain whether Susan had dusted underneath them. She had many ways of assuring herself that people did their work properly.

"No," said she, "you cannot send her back the money. But it is a very solemn responsibility. I hope we are doing quite right."

"I certainly would not hesitate to return the cheque, my dear, if I thought any harm would come of Mrs. Goddard's living here. But I don't think there is any reason to doubt her story."

"Of course not. It was in the Standard, so there is no doubt about it. I only hope no one else reads the papers here."

"They read them in the kitchen," added Mrs. Ambrose presently, "and they probably take a paper at the Duke's Head. Mr. Boosey is rather a literary character."

"Nobody will suppose it was that Goddard, my dear," said the vicar in a reassuring tone of voice.

"No—you had better write about the cottage."

"I will," said the vicar; and he forthwith did. And moreover, with his usual willingness to give himself trouble for other people, he took a vast deal of pains to see that the cottage was really habitable. It turned out to be in very good condition. It was a pretty place enough, standing ten yards back from the road, beyond the village, just opposite the gates of the park; a little square house of red brick with a high pointed roof and a little garden. The walls were overgrown with creepers which had once been trained with considerable care, but which during the last two years had thriven in untrimmed luxuriance and now covered the whole of the side of the house which faced the road. So thickly did they grow that it was with difficulty that the windows could at first be opened. The vicar sighed as he entered the darkened rooms. His daughter had lived in the cottage when she first married the young doctor who had now gone to London, and the vicar had been, and was, very fond of his daughter. He had almost despaired of ever seeing her again in Billingsfield; the only glimpses of her he could obtain were got by going himself to town, for the doctor was so busy that he always put off the projected visit to the country and his wife was so fond of him that she refused to go alone. The vicar sighed as he forced open the windows upon the lower floor and let the light into the bare and empty rooms which had once been so bright and full of happiness. He wondered what sort of person Mrs. Goddard would turn out to be upon nearer acquaintance, and made vague, unconscious conjectures about her furniture as he stumbled up the dark stairs to the upper story.

He was not left long in doubt. The arrangements were easily concluded, for the cottage belonged to the estate in Chancery and the lawyer in charge was very busy with other matters. The guarantee afforded by the vicar's personal application, together with the payment of a year's rent in advance so far facilitated matters that four days after she had written to Mr. Ambrose the latter informed Mrs. Goddard that she was at liberty to take possession. The vicar suggested that the Billingsfield carrier, who drove his cart to London once a week, could bring her furniture down in two trips and save her a considerable expense; Mrs. Goddard accepted this advice and in the course of a fortnight was installed with all her goods in the cottage. Having completed her arrangements at last, she came to call upon the vicar's wife.

Mrs. Goddard had not changed since she had first visited Billingsfield, five months earlier, though little Eleanor had grown taller and was if possible prettier than ever. Something of the character of the lady in black may have been gathered from the style of her letter to Mr. Ambrose; that communication had impressed the vicar's wife unfavourably and had drawn from her husband a somewhat compassionate remark about the bad English it contained. Nevertheless when Mrs. Goddard came to live in Billingsfield the Ambroses soon discovered that she was a very well-educated woman, that she appeared to have read much and to have read intelligently, and that she was on the whole decidedly interesting. It was long, however, before Mrs. Ambrose entirely conquered a certain antipathy she felt for her, and which she explained after her own fashion. Mrs. Goddard was not a dissenter and she was not a Romanist; on the contrary she appeared to be a very good churchwoman. She paid her bills regularly and never gave anybody any trouble. She visited the vicarage at stated intervals, and the vicarage graciously returned her visits. The vicar himself even went to the cottage more often than Mrs. Ambrose thought strictly necessary, for the vicar was strongly prejudiced in her favour. But Mrs. Ambrose did not share that prejudice. Mrs. Goddard, she said, was too effusive, talked too much about herself and her troubles, did not look thoroughly straightforward, probably had foreign blood. Ay, there was the rub—Mrs. Ambrose suspected that Mrs. Goddard was not quite English. If she was not, why did she not say so, and be done with it?

Mrs. Goddard was English, nevertheless, and would have been very much surprised could she have guessed the secret cause of the slight coldness she sometimes observed in the manner of the clergyman's wife towards her. She herself, poor thing, believed it was because she was in trouble, and considering the nature of the disaster which had befallen her, she was not surprised. She was rather a weak woman, rather timid, and if she talked a little too much sometimes it was because she felt embarrassed; there were times, too, when she was very silent and sad. She had been very happy and the great catastrophe had overtaken her suddenly, leaving her absolutely without friends. She wanted to be hidden from the world, and by one of those strange contrasts often found in weak people she had suddenly made a very bold resolution and had successfully carried it out. She had come straight to a man she had never seen, but whom she knew very well by reputation, and had told him her story and asked him to help her; and she had not come in vain. The person who advised her to go to the Reverend Augustin Ambrose knew that there was not a better man to whom she could apply. She had found what she wanted, a sort of deserted village where she would never be obliged to meet any one, since there was absolutely no society; she had found a good man upon whom she felt she could rely in case of further difficulty; and she had not come upon false pretences, for she had told her whole story quite frankly. For a woman who was naturally timid she had done a thing requiring considerable courage, and she was astonished at her own boldness after she had done it. But in her peaceful retreat, she reflected that she could not possibly have left England, as many women in her position would have done, simply because the idea of exile was intolerable to her; she reflected also that if she had settled in any place where there was any sort of society her story would one day have become known, and that if she had spent years in studying her situation she could not have done better than in going boldly to the vicar of Billingsfield and explaining her sad position to him. She had found a haven of rest after many months of terrible anxiety and she hoped that she might end her days in peace and in the spot she had chosen. But she was very young—not thirty years of age yet—and her little girl would soon grow up—and then? Evidently her dream of peace was likely to be of limited duration; but she resigned herself to the unpleasant possibilities of the future with a good grace, in consideration of the advantages she enjoyed in the present.

Mrs. Ambrose was at home when Mrs. Goddard and little Eleanor came to the vicarage. Indeed Mrs. Ambrose was rarely out in the afternoon, unless something very unusual called her away. She received her visitor with the stern hospitality she exercised towards strangers. The strangers she saw were generally the near relations of the young gentlemen whom her husband received for educational purposes. She stood in the front drawing-room, that is to say, in the most impressive chamber of that fortress which is an Englishman's house. It was a formal room, arranged by a fixed rule and the order of it was maintained inflexibly; no event could be imagined of such terrible power as to have caused the displacement of one of those chairs, of one of those ornaments upon the chimney-piece, of one of those engravings upon the walls. The walls were papered with one shade of green, the furniture was covered with material of another shade of green and the well-spared carpet exhibited still a third variety of the same colour. Mrs. Ambrose's sense of order did not extend to the simplest forms of artistic harmony, but when it had an opportunity of impressing itself upon inanimate objects which were liable to be moved, washed or dusted, its effects were formidable indeed. She worshipped neatness and cleanliness; she left the question of taste to others. And now she stood in the keep of her stronghold, the impersonation of moral rectitude and of practical housekeeping.

Mrs. Goddard entered rather timidly, followed by little Eleanor whose ideas had been so much disturbed by the recent change in her existence, that she had grown unusually silent and her great violet eyes were unceasingly opened wide to take in the growing wonders of her situation. Mrs. Goddard was still dressed in black, as when John Short had seen her five months earlier. There was something a little peculiar in her mourning, though Mrs. Ambrose would have found it hard to define the peculiarity. Some people would have said that if she was really a widow her gown fitted a little too well, her bonnet was a little too small, her veil a little too short. Mrs. Ambrose supposed that those points were suggested by the latest fashions in London and summed up the difficulty by surmising that Mrs. Goddard had foreign blood.

"I should have called before," said the latter, deeply impressed by the severe appearance of the vicar's wife, "but I have been so busy putting my things into the cottage—"

"Pray don't think of it," answered Mrs. Ambrose. Then she added after a pause, "I am very glad to see you." She appeared to have been weighing in her conscience the question whether she could truthfully say so or not. But Mrs. Goddard was grateful for the smallest advances.

"Thank you," she said, "you are so very kind. Will you tell Mr. Ambrose how thankful I am for his kind assistance? Yes, Nellie and I have had hard work in moving, have not we, dear?" She drew the beautiful child close to her and gazed lovingly into her eyes. But Nellie was shy; she hid her face on her mother's shoulder, and then looked doubtfully at Mrs. Ambrose, and then hid herself again.

"How old is your little girl?" asked Mrs. Ambrose more kindly. She was fond of children, and actually pitied any child whose mother perhaps had foreign blood.

"Eleanor—I call her Nellie—is eight years old. She will be nine in January. She is tall for her age," added Mrs. Goddard with affectionate pride. As a matter of fact Nellie was small for her years, and Mrs. Ambrose, who was the most truthful of women, felt that she could not conscientiously agree in calling hex tall. She changed the subject.

"I am afraid you will find it very quiet in Billingsfield," she said presently.

"Oh, I am used—that is, I prefer a very quiet place. I want to live very quietly for some years, indeed I hope for the rest of my life. Besides it will be so good for Nellie to live in the country—she will grow so strong."

"She looks very well, I am sure," answered Mrs. Ambrose rather bluntly, looking at the child's clear complexion and bright eyes. "And have you always lived in town until now, Mrs. Goddard?" she asked.

"Oh no, not always, but most of the year, perhaps. Indeed I think so."

Mrs. Goddard felt nervous before the searching glance of the elder woman.

Mrs. Ambrose concluded that she was not absolutely straightforward.

"Do you think you can make the cottage comfortable?" asked the vicar's wife, seeing that the conversation languished.

"Oh, I think so," answered her visitor, glad to change the subject, and suddenly becoming very voluble as she had previously been very shy. "It is really a charming little place. Of course it is not very large, but as we have not got very many belongings that is all the better; and the garden is small but extremely pretty and wild, and the kitchen is very convenient; really I quite wonder how the people who built it could have made it all so comfortable. You see there are one—two—the pantry, the kitchen and two rooms on the ground floor and plenty of room upstairs for everybody, and as for the sun! it streams into all the windows at once from morning till night. And such a pretty view, too, of that old gate opposite—where does it lead to, Mrs. Ambrose? It is so very pretty."

"It leads to the park and the Hall," answered Mrs. Ambrose.

"Oh—" Mrs. Goddard's tone changed. "But nobody lives there?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh no—it is in Chancery, you know."

"What—what is that, exactly?" asked Mrs. Goddard, timidly. "Is there a young heir waiting to grow up—I mean waiting to take possession?"

"No. There is a suit about it. It has been going on for forty years my husband says, and they cannot decide to whom it belongs."

"I see," answered Mrs. Goddard. "I suppose they will never decide now."

"Probably not for some time."

"It must be a very pretty place. Can one go in, do you think? I am so fond of trees—what a beautiful garden you have yourself, Mrs. Ambrose."

"Would you like to see it?" asked the vicar's wife, anxious to bring the visit to a conclusion.

"Oh, thank you—of all things!" exclaimed Mrs. Goddard. "Would not you like to run about the garden, Nellie?"

The little girl nodded slowly and stared at Mrs. Ambrose.

"My husband is a very good gardener," said the latter, leading the way out to the hall. "And so was John Short, but he has left us, you know."

"Who was John Short?" asked Mrs. Goddard rather absently, as she watched Mrs. Ambrose who was wrapping herself in a huge blue waterproof cloak and tying a sort of worsted hood over her head.

"He was one of the boys Mr. Ambrose prepared for college—such a good fellow. You may have seen him when you came last June, Mrs. Goddard?"

"Had he very bright blue eyes—a nice face?"

"Yes—that is, it might have been Mr. Angleside—Lord Scatterbeigh's son—he was here, too."

"Oh," said Mrs. Goddard, "perhaps it was."

"Mamma," asked little Nellie, "what is Laws Catterbay?"

"A peer, darling."

"Like the one at Brighton, mamma, with a band?"

"No, child," answered the mother laughing. "P, double E, R, peer—a rich gentleman."

"Like poor papa then?" inquired the irrepressible Eleanor.

Mrs. Goddard turned pale and pressed the little girl close to her side, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

"You must not ask foolish questions, darling—I will tell you by and by."

"Papa was a rich gentleman," objected the child.

Mrs. Goddard looked at Mrs. Ambrose, and the ready tears came into her eyes. The vicar's wife smiled kindly and took little Nellie by the hand.

"Come, dear," she said in the motherly tone that was natural to her when she was not receiving visitors. "Come and see the garden and you can play with Carlo."

"Can't I see Laws Catterbay, too?" asked the little girl rather wistfully.

"Carlo is a great, big, brown dog," said Mrs. Ambrose, leading the child out into the garden, while Mrs. Goddard followed close behind. Before they had gone far they came upon the vicar, arrayed in an old coat, his hands thrust into a pair of gigantic gardening gloves and a battered old felt hat upon his head. Mrs. Goddard had felt rather uncomfortable in the impressive society of Mrs. Ambrose and the sight of the vicar's genial face was reassuring in the extreme. She was not disappointed, for he immediately relieved the situation by asking all manner of kindly questions, interspersed with remarks upon his garden, while Mrs. Ambrose introduced little Nellie to the acquaintance of Carlo who had not seen so pretty a little girl for many a day, and capered and wagged his feathery tail in a manner most unseemly for so clerical a dog.

So it came about that Mrs. Goddard established herself at Billingsfield and made her first visit to the vicarage. After that the ice was broken and things went on smoothly enough. Mrs. Ambrose's hints concerning foreign blood, and her husband's invariable remonstrance to the effect that she ought to be more charitable, grew more and more rare as time went on, and finally ceased altogether. Mrs. Goddard became a regular institution, and ceased to astonish the inhabitants. Mr. Thomas Reid, the sexton, was heard to remark from time to time that he "didn't hold with th'm newfangle fashins in dress;" but he was a regular old conservative, and most people agreed with Mr. Abraham Boosey of the Duke's Head, who had often been to London, and who said she did "look just A one, slap up, she did!"

Mrs. Goddard became an institution, and in the course of the first year of her residence in the cottage it came to be expected that she should dine at the vicarage at least once a week; and once a week, also, Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose went up and had tea with her and little Eleanor at the cottage. It came to pass also that Mrs. Goddard heard a vast deal of talk about John Short and his successes at Trinity, and she actually developed a lively interest in his career, and asked for news of him almost as eagerly as though he had been already a friend of her own. In very quiet places people easily get into the sympathetic habit of regarding their neighbours' interests as very closely allied to their own. The constant talk about John Short, the vicar's sanguine hopes for his brilliant future, and Mrs. Ambrose's unlimited praise of his moral qualities, repeated day by day and week by week produced a vivid impression on Mrs. Goddard's mind. It would have surprised her and even amused her beyond measure had she had any idea that she herself had for a long time absorbed the interest of this same John Short, that he had written hundreds of Greek and Latin verses in her praise, while wholly ignorant of her name, and that at the very time when without knowing him, she was constantly mentioning him as though she knew him intimately well, he himself was looking back to the one glimpse he had had of her, as to a dream of unspeakable bliss.