‘Miss Galindo, I have a great favour to ask of you.’
‘My lady, I wish I could tell you what a pleasure it is to hear you say so,’ replied Miss Galindo, almost with tears in her eyes; so glad were we all to do anything for her ladyship, which could be called a free service and not merely a duty.
‘It is this. Mr Horner tells me that the business-letters, relating to the estate, are multiplying so much that he finds it impossible to copy them all himself, and I therefore require the services of some confidential and discreet person to copy these letters, and occasionally to go through certain accounts. Now, there is a very pleasant little sitting-room very near to Mr Horner’s office (you know Mr Horner’s office? on the other side of the stone hall?), and if I could prevail upon you to come here to breakfast and afterwards sit there for three hours every morning, Mr Horner should bring or send you the papers –’
Lady Ludlow stopped. Miss Galindo’s countenance had fallen. There was some great obstacle in her mind to her wish for obliging Lady Ludlow.
‘What would Sally do?’ she asked at length. Lady Ludlow had not a notion who Sally was. Nor if she had had a notion, would she have had a conception of the perplexities that poured into Miss Galindo’s mind, at the idea of leaving her rough forgetful dwarf without the perpetual monitorship of her mistress. Lady Ludlow, accustomed to a household where everything went on noiselessly, perfectly, and by clock-work, conducted by a number of highly-paid, well-chosen, and accomplished servants, had not a conception of the nature of the rough material from which her servants came. Besides, in her establishment, so that the result was good, no one inquired if the small economies had been observed in the production. Whereas every penny – every halfpenny, was of consequence to Miss Galindo; and visions of squandered drops of milk and wasted crusts of bread filled her mind with dismay. But she swallowed all her apprehensions down, out of her regard for Lady Ludlow, and desire to be of service to her. No one knows how great a trial it was to her when she thought of Sally, unchecked and unscolded for three hours every morning. But all she said was:
‘“Sally, go to the Deuce.” I beg your pardon, my lady, if I was talking to myself; it’s a habit I have got into of keeping my tongue in practice, and I am not quite aware when I do it. Three hours every morning! I shall be only too proud to do what I can for your ladyship; and I hope Mr Horner will not be too impatient with me at first. You know, perhaps, that I was nearly being an authoress once, and that seems as if I was destined to “employ my time in writing.”’
‘No, indeed; we must return to the subject of the clerkship afterwards, if you please. An authoress, Miss Galindo! You surprise me!’
‘But, indeed, I was. All was quite ready. Doctor Burney used to teach me music: not that I ever could learn, but it was a fancy of my poor father’s. And his daughter wrote a book, and they said she was but a very young lady, and nothing but a music-master’s daughter; so why should not I try?’
‘Well?’
‘Well! I got paper and half-a-hundred good pens, a bottle of ink, all ready –’
‘And then –’
‘O, it ended in my having nothing to say, when I sat down to write. But sometimes, when I get hold of a book, I wonder why I let such a poor reason stop me. It does not others.’
‘But I think it was very well it did, Miss Galindo,’ said her ladyship. ‘I am extremely against women usurping men’s employments, as they are very apt to do. But perhaps, after all, the notion of writing a book improved your hand. It is one of the most legible I ever saw.’
‘I despise z’s without tails,’ said Miss Galindo, with a good deal of gratified pride at my lady’s praise. Presently, my lady took her to look at a curious old cabinet, which Lord Ludlow had picked up at the Hague; and while they were out of the room on this errand, I suppose the question of remuneration was settled, for I heard no more of it.
When they came back, they were talking of Mr Gray. Miss Galindo was unsparing in her expressions of opinion about him: going much farther than my lady – in her language, at least.
‘A little blushing man like him, who can’t say bo to a goose without hesitating and colouring, to come to this village – which is as good a village as ever lived – and cry us down for a set of sinners, as if we had all committed murder and that other thing! – I have no patience with him, my lady. And then, how is he to help us to heaven, by teaching us our a b, ab – b a, ba? And yet, by all accounts, that’s to save poor children’s souls. O, I knew your ladyship would agree with me. I am sure my mother was as good a creature as ever breathed the blessed air; and if she’s not gone to heaven, I don’t want to go there; and she could not spell a letter decently. And does Mr Gray think God took note of that?’
‘I was sure you would agree with me, Miss Galindo,’ said my lady. ‘You and I can remember how this talk about education – Rousseau, and his writings – stirred up the French people to their Reign of Terror, and all those bloody scenes.’
‘I’m afraid that Rousseau and Mr Gray are birds of a feather,’ replied Miss Galindo, shaking her head. ‘And yet there is some good in the young man, too. He sat up all night with Billy Davis, when his wife was fairly worn out with nursing him.’
‘Did he, indeed!’ said my lady, her face lighting up, as it always did when she heard of any kind or generous action, no matter who performed it. ‘What a pity he is bitten with these new revolutionary ideas, and is so much for disturbing the established order of society!’
When Miss Galindo went, she left so favourable an impression of her visit on my lady, that she said to me with a pleased smile:
‘I think I have provided Mr Horner with a far better clerk than he would have made of that lad Gregson in twenty years. And I will send the lad to my lord’s grieve, in Scotland, that he may be kept out of harm’s way.’
But something happened to the lad before this purpose could be accomplished.
Chapter X
THE NEXT MORNING, Miss Galindo made her appearance, and, by some mistake, unusual in my lady’s well-trained servants, was shown into the room where I was trying to walk; for a certain amount of exercise was prescribed for me, painful although the exertion had become.
She brought a little basket along with her; and while the footman was gone to inquire my lady’s wishes (for I don’t think that Lady Ludlow expected Miss Galindo so soon to assume her clerkship; nor, indeed, had Mr Horner any work of any kind ready for his new assistant to do), she launched out into conversation with me.
‘It was a sudden summons, my dear! However, as I have often said to myself, ever since an occasion long ago, if Lady Ludlow ever honours me by asking for my right hand, I’ll cut it off, and wrap the stump up so tidily she shall never find out it bleeds. But, if I had had a little more time, I could have mended my pens better. You see, I have had to sit up pretty late to get these sleeves made’ – and she took out of her basket a pair of brown-holland over-sleeves, very much such as a grocer’s apprentice wears – ‘and I had only time to make seven or eight pens, out of some quills Farmer Thomson gave me last autumn. As for ink, I’m thankful to say, that’s always ready; an ounce of steel filings, an ounce of nutgall, and a pint of water (tea, if you’re extravagant, which, thank Heaven! I’m not), put all in a bottle, and hang it up behind the house door, so that the whole gets a good shaking every time you slam it to – and even if you are in a passion and bang it, as Sally and I often do, it is all the better for it – and there’s my ink ready for use; ready to write my lady’s will with, if need be.’
‘O, Miss Galindo!’ said I, ‘don’t talk so; my lady’s will! and she not dead yet.’
‘And if she were, what would be the use of talking of making her will! Now, if you were Sally, I should say, “Answer me that, you goose!” But, as you’re a relation of my lady’s, I must be civil, and only say, “I can’t think how you can talk so like a fool!” To be sure, poor thing, you’re lame!’
I do not know how long she would have gone on; but my la
dy came in, and I, released from my duty of entertaining Miss Galindo, made my limping way into the next room. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid of Miss Galindo’s tongue, for I never knew what she would say next.
After a while my lady came, and began to look in the bureau for something; and as she looked she said:
‘I think Mr Horner must have made some mistake, when he said he had so much work that he almost required a clerk, for this morning he cannot find anything for Miss Galindo to do; and there she is, sitting with her pen behind her ear, waiting for something to write. I am come to find her my mother’s letters, for I should like to have a fair copy made of them. O, here they are! don’t trouble yourself, my dear child.’
When my lady returned again, she sat down and began to talk of Mr Gray.
‘Miss Galindo says she saw him going to hold a prayer-meeting in a cottage. Now, that really makes me unhappy, it is so like what Mr Wesley used to do in my younger days; and since then we have had rebellion in the American colonies and the French Revolution. You may depend upon it, my dear, making religion and education common – vulgarizing them, as it were – is a bad thing for a nation. A man who hears prayers read in the cottage where he has just supped on bread and bacon, forgets the respect due to a church: he begins to think that one place is as good as another, and, by and by, that one person is as good as another; and after that, I always find that people begin to talk of their rights, instead of thinking of their duties. I wish Mr Gray had been more tractable, and had left well alone. What do you think I heard this morning? Why, that the Home Hill estate, which niches into the Hanbury property, was bought by a Baptist baker from Birmingham!’
‘A Baptist baker!’ I exclaimed. I had never seen a Dissenter, to my knowledge; but, having always heard them spoken of with horror, I looked upon them almost as if they were rhinoceroses. I wanted to see a live Dissenter, I believe, and yet I wished it were over. I was almost surprised when I heard that any of them were engaged in such peaceful occupations as baking.
‘Yes! so Mr Horner tells me. A Mr Lambe, I believe. But, at any rate, he is a Baptist, and has been in trade. What with his schismatism and Mr Gray’s methodism, I am afraid all the primitive character of this place will vanish.’
From what I could hear, Mr Gray seemed to be taking his own way; at any rate, more than he had done when he first came to the village, when his natural timidity had made him defer to my lady, and seek her consent and sanction before embarking in any new plan. But newness was a quality Lady Ludlow especially disliked. Even in the fashions of dress and furniture, she clung to the old, to the modes which had prevailed when she was young; and, though she had a deep personal regard for Queen Charlotte (to whom, as I have already said, she had been maid-of-honour), yet there was a tinge of Jacobitism about her, such as made her extremely dislike to hear Prince Charles Edward called the Young Pretender, as many loyal people did in those days, and made her fond of telling of the thorn-tree in my lord’s park in Scotland, which had been planted by bonny Queen Mary herself, and before which every guest in the Castle of Monkshaven was expected to stand bare-headed, out of respect to the memory and misfortunes of the royal planter.
We might play at cards, if we so chose, on a Sunday; at least, I suppose we might, for my lady and Mr Mountford used to do so often when I first went. But we must neither play cards, nor read, nor sew, on the fifth of November and on the thirtieth of January, but must go to church, and meditate all the rest of the day – and very hard work meditating was. I would far rather have scoured a room. That was the reason, I suppose, why a passive life was seen to be better discipline for me than an active one.
But I am wandering away from my lady, and her dislike to all innovation. Now, it seemed to me, as far as I heard, that Mr Gray was full of nothing but new things, and that what he first did was to attack all our established institutions, both in the village and the parish, and also in the nation. To be sure, I heard of his ways of going on principally from Miss Galindo, who was apt to speak more strongly than accurately.
‘There he goes,’ she said, ‘clucking up the children just like an old hen, and trying to teach them about their salvation and their souls, and I don’t know what – things that it is just blasphemy to speak about out of church. And he potters old people about reading their Bibles. I am sure I don’t want to speak disrespectfully about the Holy Scriptures, but I found old Job Horton busy reading his Bible yesterday. Says I, “What are you reading, and where did you get it, and who gave it you?” So he made answer, “That he was reading Susannah and the Elders, for that he had read Bel and the Dragon till he could pretty near say it off by heart, and they were two as pretty stories as ever he had read, and that it was a caution to him what bad old chaps there were in the world.” Now, as Job is bed-ridden, I don’t think he is likely to meet with the Elders, and I say that I think repeating his Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, and, maybe, throwing in a verse of the Psalms, if he wanted a bit of a change, would have done him far more good than his pretty stories, as he called them. And what’s the next thing our young parson does? Why, he tries to make us all feel pitiful for the black slaves, and leaves little pictures of negroes about, with the question printed below, “Am I not a man and a brother?” just as if I was to be hail-fellow-well-met with every negro footman. They do say he takes no sugar in his tea, because he thinks he sees spots of blood in it. Now I call that superstition.’
The next day it was a still worse story.
‘Well, my dear! and how are you? My lady sent me in to sit a bit with you, while Mr Horner looks out some papers for me to copy. Between ourselves, Mr Steward Horner does not like having me for a clerk. It is all very well he does not; for, if he were decently civil to me, I might want a chaperone, you know, now poor Mrs Horner is dead.’ This was one of Miss Galindo’s grim jokes. ‘As it is, I try to make him forget I’m a woman. I do everything as shipshape as a masculine man-clerk. I see he can’t find a fault – writing good, spelling correct, sums all right. And then he squints up at me with the tail of his eye, and looks glummer than ever, just because I’m a woman – as if I could help that. I have gone good lengths to set his mind at ease. I have stuck my pen behind my ear, I have made him a bow instead of a curtsy, I have whistled – not a tune, I can’t pipe up that – nay, if you won’t tell my lady, I don’t mind telling you that I have said “Confound it!” and “Zounds!” I can’t get any farther. For all that, Mr Horner won’t forget I am a lady, and so I am not half the use I might be, and if it were not to please my Lady Ludlow, Mr Horner and his books might go hang (see how natural that came out!). And there is an order for a dozen nightcaps for a bride, and I am so afraid I shan’t have time to do them. Worst of all, there’s Mr Gray taking advantage of my absence to seduce Sally!’
‘To seduce Sally! Mr Gray!’
‘Pooh, pooh, child! There’s many a kind of seduction. Mr Gray is seducing Sally to want to go to church. There has he been twice at my house, while I have been away in the mornings, talking to Sally about the state of her soul and that sort of thing. But when I found the meat all roasted to a cinder, I said, “Come, Sally, let’s have no more praying when beef is down at the fire. Pray at six o’clock in the morning and nine at night, and I won’t hinder you.” So she sauced me, and said something about Martha and Mary, implying that, because she had let the beef get so overdone that I declare I could hardly find a bit fit for Nancy Pole’s sick grandchild, she had chosen the better part. I was very much put about, I own, and perhaps you’ll be shocked at what I said – indeed, I don’t know if it was right myself – but I told her I had a soul as well as she, and if it was to be saved by my sitting still and thinking about salvation and never doing my duty, I thought I had as good a right as she had to be Mary, and save my soul. So, that afternoon, I sat quite still, and it was really a comfort, for I am often too busy, I know, to pray as I ought. There is first one person wanting me, and then another, and the house and the food and the neighbours to
see after. So, when tea-time comes, there enters my maid with her hump on her back, and her soul to be saved. “Please, ma’am, did you order the pound of butter?” – “No, Sally,” I said, shaking my head, “this morning I did not go round by Hale’s farm, and this afternoon I have been employed in spiritual things.”
‘Now, our Sally likes tea and bread-and-butter above everything, and dry bread was not to her taste.
‘“I’m thankful,” said the impudent hussy, “that you have taken a turn towards godliness. It will be my prayers, I trust, that’s given it you.”
‘I was determined not to give her an opening towards the carnal subject of butter, so she lingered still, longing to ask leave to run for it. But I gave her none, and munched my dry bread myself, thinking what a famous cake I could make for little Ben Pole with the bit of butter we were saving; and when Sally had had her butterless tea, and was in none of the best of tempers because Martha had not bethought herself of the butter, I just quietly said:
‘“Now, Sally, to-morrow we’ll try to hash that beef well, and to remember the butter, and to work out our salvation all at the same time, for I don’t see why it can’t all be done, as God has set us to do it all.” But I heard her at it again about Mary and Martha, and I have no doubt that Mr Gray will teach her to consider me a lost sheep.’
I had heard so many little speeches about Mr Gray from one person or another, all speaking against him, as a mischief-maker, a setter-up of new doctrines, and of a fanciful standard of life (and you may be sure that, where Lady Ludlow led, Mrs Medlicott and Adams were certain to follow, each in their different ways showing the influence my lady had over them), that I believe I had grown to consider him as a very instrument of evil, and to expect to perceive in his face marks of his presumption, and arrogance, and impertinent interference. It was now many weeks since I had seen him, and when he was one morning shown into the blue drawing-room (into which I had been removed for a change), I was quite surprised to see how innocent and awkward a young man he appeared, confused even more than I was at our unexpected tête-à-tête. He looked thinner, his eyes more eager, his expression more anxious, and his colour came and went more than it had done when I had seen him last. I tried to make a little conversation, as I was, to my own surprise, more at my ease than he was; but his thoughts were evidently too much preoccupied for him to do more than answer me with monosyllables.