Chapter IX: The Villagers

"Let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the labourer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along,
Of the great army of the poor."
LONGFELLOW.

THE old servants hardly knew what to make of their young mistress the next morning. She came downstairs apparently in the best of spirits, but full of plans and innovations that sorely perplexed and disconcerted them.

She told Rachael she would in future like afternoon tea in the drawing-room every afternoon at five o'clock, dinner not a minute sooner than half-past seven. She uncovered the drawing-room chairs and couches, and tossed the holland covers into the bottom of the linen cupboard. She brought in flowering plants from the greenhouse, and disposed of them in every corner of the room. Calling the small boy into her service, she wheeled out the round table into an empty bedroom, and by dint of banishing some articles of furniture and altering others, had soon completely transformed the drawing-room.

Abigail looked on in silent horror. This masterful young woman, with bright careless smile and quick peremptory tones, was not the same girl that had trembled at her voice in bygone days! Heather worked on indifferent to her frown, and directly after her lunch, walked down to the farm to see George Thatcher and his wife.

For a good two hours, she perambulated round the premises, talking business matters over with the farmer, and jotting down in her note-book the repairs that were absolutely necessary, those that could wait, and the respective cost of each.

"Be you comin' in to see the missus?" asked George, shyly, after their talk was done. "She do be expectin' to see you, miss."

"Yes; I will come."

And Heather followed him into a spotlessly clean kitchen.

Annie, a fair, gentle-faced young woman, rose up from some needlework with a blushing smile.

"Eh, miss, 'tis nice to see you here again."

"Yes," said Heather, brightly, as she shook hands, and then stooped to kiss a bonny child of two years old playing at his mother's feet. "I feel as if I haven't been away so long, after all. And yet, when I see Tommy, it does seem strange; he was a baby in arms when I left."

"How is Miss Bluebell? 'Tis a disappointment not to see her. Will she be coming home soon?"

"Not just yet. She is going to Norway with some friends in a yacht. Well, Annie, how do you think I look?"

"Beautiful, miss."

There was no mistaking the hearty admiration in Annie's face and tone.

Heather laughed lightly, and George, who had swung his little son upon his shoulder, now turned and looked at her.

"We were hearing you went to see the Queen," he said a little doubtfully.

"Yes, we had the honour of kissing her hand, and making our curtsey to her."

"There now," broke in Annie, "I knew it were true. Some said one thing and some another, and old Watty would have it that you must have a Lady before your name to go to Buckingham Palace. I says to him,—

"'Our young ladies are as high as any other ladies in the land, though they have kept theirselves so quiet.'

"And he was as obstinate as a donkey that the Queen's visitors were duchesses and countesses, and lords and ladies, and no plain misses could ever get near her. Did you have tea or dinner with her, miss? And how did she look? Did she ask you any questions?"

Heather tried to explain. And her experience at her first drawing-room greatly raised her in the estimation of the farmer and his wife, though it all seemed very unreal and puzzling to them.

She chatted on to them, and then, as milking-time came round, she took her leave and hastened homewards.

Poor Heather! She was making valiant struggles to so occupy her time that she would have no room for thought. But now as she was walking through the green meadows, it all came back with a rush.

"I don't know how I shall be able to bear it," she murmured to herself; "it seems so dreadful to be quite alone. Bluebell will be surrounded by friends; I am without a soul to speak to. I feel inclined to fly back to them all, and yet I will not. It is my duty to stay here, and I will. And I will try to be as cheerful as I can."

She returned to the house, found some pleasure in showing Abigail how to place tea in the drawing-room, and then took her solitary cup in state, thinking idly how much she would like to see the door open and some of her London friends and acquaintances appear.

Half an hour after, she was out again, this time wending her step towards the village. She stopped first at a very small thatched cottage with a bright flower garden in front. She lifted the latch of the door quietly, and went in.

For a moment, she thought that no one was in the tiny kitchen; then from behind an old settle popped a bright-eyed little woman. Very old and feeble she looked, and for a minute she peered up in alarm at her visitor. This young lady, in her dainty white dress and hat, seemed a stranger.

"Mary, don't you know me?"

"Ay, ay, bless your sweet voice; it can't be no other but Miss Heather!"

And here the old woman seized hold of the delicately gloved hands, and tears dropped fast upon them.

"I thought ye were swallowed up in the big town, and had forgotten us altogether. Ay, my dear, 'tis good to see you again. Abigail has come in with my bit o' money every Saturday, but she never seemed to have no tidings to tell of—leastways, not from you and Miss Bluebell. And 'twas only last Saturday she shakes her head and says,—

"'Ye mustn't be surprised, Mrs. Scrivens, if ye gets no more siller for a bit. The young ladies are badly off, and times is not what they were, and maybe this is the last I can bring ye!'

"To be sure, when she'd gone, ye could have knocked me down with a feather! For ye know my past, Miss Heather, dear, how with six children and a husband that died when the eldest were but seven, and one little one a cripple, and the other lost his sight through blastin', and one o' the girls takin' consummation and dwindlin' down to a skellikon, and me givin' of her a proper funeral, and then a helpin' my own sister who come to sad want, bein' one who couldn't help herself—well, I didn't put savin's by, 'tweren't to be expected, were it? And havin' had the help from your dear grandmother so many years, my faith was rather took aback, so to speak.

"I sat in the corner here, and I thinks o' 'Lijah and the ravens, and then I asks my Father not to let me come to want, and I casts about in my mind what I could do without, and how I could earn a few pence. All this week I've give up my ha'porth o' milk, and the bit o' meat I has on the Wednesday, and I've kept half the bit o' drippin' Mrs. Styles from next door gives me, to go towards nex' week. 'Tis hard to be eckycomical with so little, but 'twas harder to tell old Ralph he might come to-morrer bein' Saturday, and strip my bit o' garden of all my bits o' flowers and take 'em and sell 'em in the market. And then he tells me Abigail had brought him the same message, and he and me had a good weep together, and then he said the Lord 'ud provide, and went away with a solemn shake o' his head, and he's goin' to try his cabbages in the market, but they be a poor lot. Ralph never was a gardener; he allays were so took up wi' books an' such like."

Old Mary stopped for breath. She had poured out her story with smiles and tears, and Heather felt a little choke in her throat as she thought of the luxury in which she had been living, and the contrast of her life with this one.

"You shall not want the money, Mary. I have brought it to you myself this afternoon. I did not think Abigail had told you of our difficulties, but she did not know last Saturday that I was coming home."

"Praise the Lord! He has not failed me. Now, Miss Heather, just you kneel down and let us thank Him for His goodness. Ay, I have been mistrustin' of Him, and He just brought you back to us Hisself when He knew we couldn't a get on without you!"

Down on the uneven stone floor knelt Heather, with the little woman sniffing and ejaculating beside her. But it was not Heather's voice broke the silence that fell on them, she felt too humiliated and ashamed to utter a word. It was Mary who sobbed out her thanksgiving with many tears, and when they got up from their knees, and the old woman poured forth blessings on her head, Heather rather sadly hushed her.

"I am ashamed you should have had a day's anxiety about it, Mary. I must go and see Ralph. Good-bye."

She left her, after placing a little packet in her hand, and found the old man at his garden gate reading the local newspaper. Ralph was rather a character. He prided himself upon his knowledge of the world and its ways. He would quote noted politicians in his talk, and even crowned heads, as if they were intimate friends of his own. His geography was vague, his history and all general knowledge was taken from the papers. The more ignorant of the villagers gaped with open mouths at his utterances when he had his paper in his hand. Without it, he was as lost as a lame man without a stick, or a short-sighted man without his spectacles!

"Let us see now," he would say with a wise shake of his head, "what the young Emperor of Germany has been saying to his ministers last Friday. I misdoubted his wisdom in that affair in Chiny, but he allays has been too precipitous with his tongue. He reminds me of his gran'-feyther in that affair of the war with the Frenchies. And here's trouble again in Indy. Well, well, if there's fightin't here, 'twill have to be the sailors this time. There be all our soldiers wanted for Africa, Lord Salisbury says, and they can't be fightin' on two sides of our island at once!"

He looked up as Heather approached.

"Good arternoon, miss," he cried joyously. "Well, there! I have a bin concerned about you! Right glad to see ye back, miss; and ye be lookin' up foine too! Missis Abigail she be so close and mournful like at your Lunnon visit, that I has high words with her on the subjec' last time she were round. I sez to her,—

"'Missis,' I sez, 'the young birds allays leaves their nest. 'Tis the way of all nature; how else should they learn to fly?' I sez! 'And when they be took up by her gracious Majesty, and be brought to see her in the Palace,' I sez, 'they that knows 'em ought to be that joyful that they should have the honour of being invited, that they should be werry thankful they ever left their home.' I sez—

"But there, miss, my tongue do run on! I was a just calculatin' from the paper what my bits o' vegetables might fetch in the market."

"Yes," said Heather, hastily, "I have heard, Ralph, but you needn't be afraid your money will stop. Now I am home again I will see that it does not."

The old man looked at her.

"Then 'twas only Missis Abigail's croaks? Well, I do be truly thankful! I never gives in, for 'tis a long lane that has no turnin', and there's many a slip 'twix the cup and the lip, but this mornin' I had a heerd how Mrs. Scrivens were a scrapin' together, and I felt if the choice lay betwixt my paper and the house, well, it must be the house I goes to, for a man is little better than a beast if he don't know the news of the day!"

Heather laughed, and stayed chatting to the old man for some time. They discussed politics, and Heather gave him many bits of information about London and its ways. Before she went, he asked her gravely—

"And has Miss Bluebell got a husband? We heerd tell so. And haven't you a lover, miss? There allays are plenty dangling about town, they say."

"No, I haven't one yet, Ralph, neither has Miss Bluebell a husband! Now I must go. Good-bye."

One more old friend she met on the way home, and this was Watty Clark, the postman. He was striding along, his long white beard reaching to his waist, and the post-bag swinging to and fro. He looked the picture of health and activity, though he had passed his seventy-fifth year. His chief characteristic was a great belief in himself and utter disbelief in every one and everything else. It was he who had thrown a doubt on "our young ladies going to see the Queen," and now he stopped to look rather queerly at Heather as she greeted him.

"Well, Watty, did you think we were never coming back?"

"Never," he said with a shake of his head, "and there's only half of ye now without Miss Bluebell. I allays said she wouldn't never come back; she were too fond of excitement and such like."

"Did you think better of me?"

"Ah well, I've heard say the reason, and I gives ye the credit of meanin' well, but ye won't keep it up. 'Tisn't to be expected ye will, and ye'll be pinin' for city life before many weeks be out! Lasses are the same all the world over. They be no good for hard grindin' work and duty; they just flitter flutters by and takes the cream, and leaves the skim for them who ain't so flighty as theirselves."

"Now, if you are rude to me, I shall not come and see you, and bring you some medicine for your cough, as I used to do."

"Are you going to start yer medicine-shop agen, miss?"

The old man's tone was eager.

"Yes," said Heather. "Every Saturday morning I will see any one who comes up."

"Ah then, I'll bring up my wife's nephew, Fred. He's had gatherin' on his thumb, poor little chap, and maybe ye'll be able to do somethin'. He's bin cryin' out at nights latterly. Not that I has faith in doctorin'. Natur' is our best doctor, but the missus is whinin' over him, and I can't abear to see women's tears. I reckon she'll cheer up, if she thinks you'll take him in hand; she's such a one for believin' in everybody!"

He passed on chuckling and muttering to himself, and Heather, now that she was alone, lost her bright keen look, and wistful curves came to her lips.

"I must keep busy, that is the only thing; if only I need not think! But now I shall have a long lonely evening and no one to speak to. If I feel it like this to-day, when everything is so fresh, what shall I do in a few weeks' time! Watty says I shan't keep it up. Well, I am determined I shall. I shall brace myself for duty, and let pleasure go. After all, I have had a good turn of enjoying myself. Now I will live for others, and leave myself out of the question. I must try and imagine I never had a sister; lots of girls live lonely lives, why should not I be able to do it? Or just supposing Bluebell were dead, how much more dreadful it would be!"

Reasoning and philosophizing thus, Heather reached home, and filled up the rest of her time that evening by writing a long letter to her absent sister.

When she went to her room, she took up her Bible thoughtfully, and commenced reading it, as she had not done for a long time. She had an uneasy feeling that her religion had not stood the test it had been subjected to. As she looked back and remembered the days when she realized the love and nearness of God, she now seemed far away, and her heart was lifeless and cold. She read a chapter with difficulty. It seemed dreary and uninteresting; she knelt in prayer, but her thoughts wandered away to Bluebell.

Yet when she got up, she thought to herself, "I am sure I must be pleasing God by doing my duty and coming home."

And feeling rather virtuous, and very miserable, she crept into bed, sleep coming to her aid, and taking her into its embrace very soon.