The Cranford Chronicles

  Day after day Mr Smithson seemed to grow more fidgety, more annoyed at the state of affairs. Like every one else employed by Lady Ludlow, as far as I could learn, he had an hereditary tie to the Hanbury family. As long as the Smithsons had been lawyers, they had been lawyers to the Hanburys; always coming in on all great family occasions, and better able to understand the characters, and connect the links of what had once been a large and scattered family, than any individual thereof had ever been.

  As long as a man was at the head of the Hanburys, the lawyers had simply acted as servants, and had only given their advice when it was required. But they had assumed a different position on the memorable occasion of the mortgage: they had remonstrated against it. My lady had resented this remonstrance, and a slight unspoken coolness had existed between her and the father of this Mr Smithson ever since.

  I was very sorry for my lady. Mr Smithson was inclined to blame Mr Horner for the disorderly state in which he found some of the outlying farms, and for the deficiencies in the annual payment of rents. Mr Smithson had too much good feeling to put this blame into words; but my lady’s quick instinct led her to reply to a thought, the existence of which she perceived; and she quietly told the truth, and explained how she had interfered repeatedly to prevent Mr Horner from taking certain desirable steps, which were discordant to her hereditary sense of right and wrong between landlord and tenant. She also spoke of the want of ready money as a misfortune that could be remedied, by more economical personal expenditure on her own part; by which individual saving, it was possible that a reduction of fifty pounds a year might have been accomplished. But as soon as Mr Smithson touched on larger economies, such as either affected the welfare of others, or the honour and standing of the great House of Hanbury, she was inflexible. Her establishment consisted of somewhere about forty servants, of whom nearly as many as twenty were unable to perform their work properly, and yet would have been hurt if they had been dismissed; so they had the credit of fulfilling duties, while my lady paid and kept their substitutes. Mr Smithson made a calculation, and would have saved some hundreds a year by pensioning off these old servants. But my lady would not hear of it. Then, again, I know privately that he urged her to allow some of us to return to our homes. Bitterly we should have regretted the separation from Lady Ludlow; but we would have gone back gladly, had we known at the time that her circumstances required it: but she would not listen to the proposal for a moment.

  ‘If I cannot act justly towards every one, I will give up a plan which has been a source of much satisfaction; at least, I will not carry it out to such an extent in future. But to these young ladies, who do me the favour to live with me at present, I stand pledged. I cannot go back from my word, Mr Smithson. We had better talk no more of this.’

  As she spoke, she entered the room where I lay. She and Mr Smithson were coming for some papers contained in the bureau. They did not know I was there, and Mr Smithson started a little when he saw me, as he must have been aware that I had overheard something. But my lady did not change a muscle of her face. All the world might overhear her kind, just, pure sayings, and she had no fear of their misconstruction. She came up to me, and kissed me on the forehead, and then went to search for the required papers.

  ‘I rode over the Conington farms yesterday, my lady. I must say I was quite grieved to see the condition they are in; all the land that is not waste is utterly exhausted with working successive white crops. Not a pinch of manure laid on the ground for years. I must say that a greater contrast could never have been presented than that between Harding’s farm and the next fields – fences in perfect order, rotation crops, sheep eating down the turnips on the waste lands – everything that could be desired.’

  ‘Whose farm is that?’ asked my lady.

  ‘Why, I am sorry to say, it was on none of your ladyship’s that I saw such good methods adopted. I hoped it was, I stopped my horse to inquire. A queer-looking man, sitting on his horse like a tailor, watching his men with a couple of the sharpest eyes I ever saw, and dropping his h’s at every word, answered my question, and told me it was his. I could not go on asking him who he was; but I fell into conversation with him, and I gathered that he had earned some money in trade in Birmingham, and had bought the estate (five hundred acres, I think he said), on which he was born, and now was setting himself to cultivate it in downright earnest, going to Holkham and Woburn, and half the country over, to get himself up on the subject.’

  ‘It would be Brooke, that dissenting baker from Birmingham,’ said my lady in her most icy tone. ‘Mr Smithson, I am sorry I have been detaining you so long, but I think these are the letters you wished to see.’

  If her ladyship thought by this speech to quench Mr Smithson she was mistaken. Mr Smithson just looked at the letters, and went on with the old subject.

  ‘Now, my lady, it struck me that if you had such a man to take poor Horner’s place, he would work the rents and the land round most satisfactorily. I should not despair of inducing this very man to undertake the work. I should not mind speaking to him myself on the subject, for we got capital friends over a snack of luncheon that he asked me to share with him.’

  Lady Ludlow fixed her eyes on Mr Smithson as he spoke, and never took them off his face until he had ended. She was silent a minute before she answered.

  ‘You are very good, Mr Smithson, but I need not trouble you with any such arrangements. I am going to write this afternoon to Captain James, a friend of one of my sons, who has, I hear, been severely wounded at Trafalgar, to request him to honour me by accepting Mr Horner’s situation.’

  ‘A Captain James! A captain in the navy! going to manage your ladyship’s estate!’

  ‘If he will be so kind. I shall esteem it a condescension on his part; but I hear that he will have to resign his profession, his state of health is so bad, and a country life is especially prescribed for him. I am in some hopes of tempting him here, as I learn he has but little to depend on if he gives up his profession.’

  ‘A Captain James! an invalid captain!’

  ‘You think I am asking too great a favour,’ continued my lady. (I never could tell how far it was simplicity, or how far a kind of innocent malice, that made her misinterpret Mr Smithson’s words and looks as she did.) ‘But he is not a post-captain, only a commander, and his pension will be but small. I may be able, by offering him country air and a healthy occupation, to restore him to health.’

  ‘Occupation! My lady, may I ask how a sailor is to manage land? Why, your tenants will laugh him to scorn.’

  ‘My tenants, I trust, will not behave so ill as to laugh at any one I choose to set over them. Captain James has had experience in managing men. He has remarkable practical talents, and great common sense, as I hear from every one. But, whatever he may be, the affair rests between him and myself. I can only say I shall esteem myself fortunate if he comes.’

  There was no more to be said, after my lady spoke in this manner. I had heard her mention Captain James before, as a middy who had been very kind to her son Urian. I thought I remembered then, that she had mentioned that his family circumstances were not very prosperous. But, I confess, that little as I knew of the management of land, I quite sided with Mr Smithson. He, silently prohibited from again speaking to my lady on the subject, opened his mind to Miss Galindo, from whom I was pretty sure to hear all the opinions and news of the household and village. She had taken a great fancy to me, because she said I talked so agreeably. I believe it was because I listened so well.

  ‘Well, have you heard the news,’ she began, ‘about this Captain James? A sailor – with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear, deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his successor? My dear, I have often thought of the postman’s bringing me a letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss in heaven. But, really, I think Mr Horner may be thankful he has got out of the reach of news; or else he would hear of Mr Smithson’s having made up to the Birmingham baker, and of
this one-legged Captain, coming to dot-and-go-one over the estate. I suppose he will look after the labourers through a spyglass. I only hope he won’t stick in the mud with his wooden leg; for I, for one, won’t help him out. Yes, I would,’ said she, correcting herself; ‘I would, for my lady’s sake.’

  ‘But are you sure he has a wooden leg?’ asked I. ‘I heard Lady Ludlow tell Mr Smithson about him, and she only spoke of him as wounded.’

  ‘Well, sailors are almost always wounded in the leg. Look at Greenwich Hospital! I should say there were twenty one-legged pensioners to one without an arm there. But say he has got half-a-dozen legs, what is he to do with managing land? I shall think him very impudent if he comes, taking advantage of my lady’s kind heart.’

  However, come he did. In a month from that time, the carriage was sent to meet Captain James; just as three years before it had been sent to meet me. His coming had been so much talked about that we were all as curious as possible to see him, and to know how so unusual an experiment, as it seemed to us, would answer. But, before I tell you anything about our new agent, I must speak of something quite as interesting, and I really think quite as important. And this was my lady’s making friends with Harry Gregson. I do believe she did it for Mr Horner’s sake; but, of course, I can only conjecture why my lady did anything. But I heard one day, from Mary Legard, that my lady had sent for Harry to come and see her, if he was well enough to walk so far; and the next day he was shown into the room he had been in once before under such unlucky circumstances.

  The lad looked pale enough, as he stood propping himself up on his crutch, and the instant my lady saw him, she bade John Footman place a stool for him to sit down upon while she spoke to him. It might be his paleness that gave his whole face a more refined and gentle look; but I suspect it was that the boy was apt to take impressions, and that Mr Horner’s grave, dignified ways, and Mr Gray’s tender and quiet manners, had altered him; and then the thoughts of illness and death seem to turn many of us into gentlemen, and gentlewomen, as long as such thoughts are in our minds. We cannot speak loudly or angrily at such times; we are not apt to be eager about mere worldly things, for our very awe at our quickened sense of the nearness of the invisible world, makes us calm and serene about the petty trifles of to-day. At least, I know that was the explanation Mr Gray once gave me of what we all thought the great improvement in Harry Gregson’s way of behaving.

  My lady hesitated so long about what she had best say, that Harry grew a little frightened at her silence. A few months ago it would have surprised me more than it did now; but since my lord her son’s death, she had seemed altered in many ways – more uncertain and distrustful of herself, as it were.

  At last she said, and I think the tears were in her eyes: ‘My poor little fellow, you have had a narrow escape with your life since I saw you last.’

  To this there was nothing to be said but ‘Yes;’ and again there was silence.

  ‘And you have lost a good, kind friend, in Mr Horner.’

  The boy’s lips worked, and I think he said, ‘Please, don’t.’ But I can’t be sure; at any rate, my lady went on:

  ‘And so have I – a good, kind friend, he was to both of us; and to you he wished to show his kindness in even a more generous way than he has done. Mr Gray has told you about his legacy to you, has he not?’

  There was no sign of eager joy on the lad’s face, as if he realised the power and pleasure of having what to him must have seemed like a fortune.

  ‘Mr Gray said as how he had left me a matter of money.’

  ‘Yes, he has left you two hundred pounds.’

  ‘But I would rather have had him alive, my lady,’ he burst out, sobbing as if his heart would break.

  ‘My lad, I believe you. We would rather have had our dead alive, would we not? and there is nothing in money that can comfort us for their loss. But you know – Mr Gray has told you – who has appointed us all our times to die. Mr Horner was a good, just man; and has done well and kindly, both by me and you. You perhaps do not know’ (and now I understood what my lady had been making up her mind to say to Harry, all the time she was hesitating how to begin) ‘that Mr Horner, at one time, meant to leave you a great deal more; probably all he had, with the exception of a legacy to his old clerk, Morrison. But he knew that this estate – on which my forefathers had lived for six hundred years – was in debt, and that I had no immediate chance of paying off this debt; and yet he felt that it was a very sad thing for an old property like this to belong in part to those other men, who had lent the money. You understand me, I think, my little man?’ said she, questioning Harry’s face.

  He had left off crying, and was trying to understand, with all his might and main; and I think he had got a pretty good general idea of the state of affairs; though probably he was puzzled by the term ‘the estate being in debt.’ But he was sufficiently interested to want my lady to go on; and he nodded his head at her, to signify this to her.

  ‘So Mr Horner took the money which he once meant to be yours, and has left the greater part of it to me, with the intention of helping me to pay off this debt I have told you about. It will go a long way, and I shall try hard to save the rest, and then I shall die happy in leaving the land free from debt.’ She paused. ‘But I shall not die happy in thinking of you. I do not know if having money, or even having a great estate and much honour, is a good thing for any of us. But God sees fit that some of us should be called to this condition, and it is our duty then to stand by our posts, like brave soldiers. Now, Mr Horner intended you to have this money first. I shall only call it borrowing it from you, Harry Gregson, if I take it and use it to pay off the debt. I shall pay Mr Gray interest on this money, because he is to stand as your guardian, as it were, till you come of age; and he must fix what ought to be done with it, so as to fit you for spending the principal rightly when the estate can repay it you. I suppose, now, it will be right for you to be educated. That will be another snare that will come with your money. But have courage, Harry. Both education and money may be used rightly, if we only pray against the temptations they bring with them.’

  Harry could make no answer, though I am sure he understood it all. My lady wanted to get him to talk to her a little, by way of becoming acquainted with what was passing in his mind; and she asked him what he would like to have done with his money, if he could have part of it now? To such a simple question, involving no talk about feelings, his answer came readily enough.

  ‘Build a cottage for father, with stairs in it, and give Mr Gray a school-house. O, father does so want Mr Gray for to have his wish! Father saw all the stones lying quarried and hewn on Farmer Hale’s land; Mr Gray had paid for them all himself. And father said he would work night and day, and little Tommy should carry mortar, if the parson would let him, sooner than that he should be fretted and frabbed as he was, with no one giving him a helping hand or a kind word.’

  Harry knew nothing of my lady’s part in the affair; that was very clear. My lady kept silence.

  ‘If I might have a piece of my money, I would buy land from Mr Brooke: he has got a bit to sell just at the corner of Hendon Lane, and I would give it to Mr Gray; and, perhaps, if your ladyship thinks I may be learned again, I might grow up into the schoolmaster.’

  ‘You are a good boy,’ said my lady. ‘But there are more things to be thought of, in carrying out such a plan, than you are aware of. However, it shall be tried.’

  ‘The school, my lady?’ I exclaimed, almost thinking she did not know what she was saying.

  ‘Yes, the school. For Mr Horner’s sake, for Mr Gray’s sake, and last, not least, for this lad’s sake, I will give the new plan a trial. Ask Mr Gray to come up to me this afternoon about the land he wants. He need not go to a Dissenter for it. And tell your father he shall have a good share in the building of it, and Tommy shall carry the mortar.’

  ‘And I may be schoolmaster?’ asked Harry, eagerly.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said my lady, amus
ed. ‘It will be some time before that plan comes to pass, my little fellow.’

  And now to return to Captain James. My first account of him was from Miss Galindo.

  ‘He’s not above thirty; and I must just pack up my pens and my paper, and be off; for it would be the height of impropriety for me to be staying here as his clerk. It was all very well in the old master’s days. But here am I, not fifty till next May, and this young, unmarried man, who is not even a widower! O, there would be no end of gossip. Besides, he looks as askance at me as I do at him. My black silk gown had no effect. He’s afraid I shall marry him. But I won’t; he may feel himself quite safe from that. And Mr Smithson has been recommending a clerk to my lady. She would far rather keep me on; but I can’t stop. I really could not think it proper.’

  ‘What sort of a looking man is he?’

  ‘O, nothing particular. Short, and brown, and sunburnt. I did not think it became me to look at him. Well, now for the nightcaps. I should have grudged any one else doing them, for I have got such a pretty pattern!’

  But, when it came to Miss Galindo’s leaving, there was a great misunderstanding between her and my lady. Miss Galindo had imagined that my lady had asked her as a favour to copy the letters, and enter the accounts, and had agreed to do the work without a notion of being paid for so doing. She had, now and then, grieved over a very profitable order for needlework passing out of her hands on account of her not having time to do it, because of her occupation at the Hall; but she had never hinted this to my lady, but gone on cheerfully at her writing as long as her clerkship was required. My lady was annoyed that she had not made her intention of paying Miss Galindo more clear, in the first conversation she had had with her; but I suppose that she had been too delicate to be very explicit with regard to money matters; and now Miss Galindo was quite hurt at my lady’s wanting to pay her for what she had done in such right-down good-will.