скачать книгу бесплатно
"Your husband is good to you?"
"There is no one in the world like him; he is the best, the noblest, the most unselfish of men!" But here, with a sudden feeling of remorse, she stopped. The contrast between her bright home and the gloomy home of her sister struck her with painful force; to speak of the joys of the one seemed to accentuate the miseries of the other.
"Go on, dear," said Mrs. Farebrother, gently; "it does not hurt me, indeed it does not; I have grown so used, in other homes, to what you see around you here that custom has made it less bitter than it once was. It makes me happy to hear of your happiness, and it holds out a glad prospect that my dear child, when she grows up, may have a little share in it."
"She shall, she shall; I promise it solemnly."
"Thank you, dear. So you must go on telling me of your good husband. He is still in his bank?"
"Yes, dear; and hopes for a rise before long. He is always full of hope, and that is worth a great deal – it means so much! He thinks of nothing but his home, and those in it. He dotes upon the children."
"The dear children! Are they well and strong?"
"Yes, dear; and they grow prettier and prettier every day."
"You must kiss them fondly for me, and give them my dear love."
"I will be sure to. You must not talk any more just now; you are tired out. Try and sleep."
"I think I shall be able. God bless you, dear!"
"God bless you, dearest!"
In a few moments, the tension of anxious watching and waiting being over, Mrs. Farebrother slept. Her sister gazed at her solicitously and mournfully. At such a time the cherished memories of old are burdened with a sadness which weighs heavily upon the heart.
"She is not so ill as she fancies, is she?"
It was Miser Farebrother who spoke to her. She rose softly, and led him from the bed, so that their conversation should not disturb the sufferer.
"Why did you not send me a telegram instead of a letter?"
"A telegram!" he cried. "Do you think I am made of money?"
"I am not thinking of your money: I am thinking of my sister. What does the doctor say?"
"The doctor!" he exclaimed. "I have none."
Gentle-natured as she was, she looked at him in horror.
"You have none – and my sister dying!"
"It is not true," he whined, thinking of the inconvenience such an event would cause him; "it cannot be true. She was well a few days ago. I cannot afford doctors. You are all in a conspiracy to rob me!"
"I was told as I came along that this great house is yours."
"Yes, it is – my property, my own."
"And a great deal of land around, and everything in the place."
"Yes, it is – all mine, all mine!" And then, with a sudden suspicion, "Do you intend to dispute it?"
"Heaven forbid! What is it to do with me – except that when you speak of ruin to me, and of not being able to afford a doctor, you are speaking what is false. Why did you marry?"
"I don't know," he replied, wringing his hands, "I don't know. I ought never to have done it. I ought to have lived alone, with nobody to keep but myself."
"It would have been better for my poor sister. But she is your wife, and I shall not allow her to suffer as she is suffering without seeking medical assistance. I have never been in this neighbourhood, and know nothing about it. Where is the nearest doctor?"
"I can't tell you; I am almost as much a stranger here as you are."
"There must be one not very far off. Who was the lad who opened the door for me when I came to-night?"
"My servant, Tom Barley. What do you want him for? He is asleep by this time. He has work to do the first thing in the morning."
"Where does he sleep?"
"Outside; in the stable."
"I shall find it. You must write a few words on paper for me."
"I'll do nothing of the sort. You shan't force me to put my name to anything. Do you think I am not up to such tricks?"
"If you don't do as I say I will bring a lawyer here as well as a doctor."
This woman possessed a sweet and gentle nature, and nothing but the evidence of an overwhelming wrong could have so stirred it to sternness. Miser Farebrother was terrified at the threat of bringing a lawyer into the house; and as he had given way to his wife earlier in the day, so now was he compelled by his fears to give way to her sister. He wrote as she directed:
"Mr. Farebrother, of Parksides, urgently requests the doctor to come immediately to his house to see Mrs. Farebrother, who, he fears, is seriously ill."
He fought against two words – "urgently," because it might cause the doctor to make a heavier charge; and "seriously," because a construction that he had been neglectful might be placed on it. But his sister-in-law was firm, and he wrote as she dictated.
"I will send the lad with it," said Miser Farebrother.
"I will send him myself," said his sister-in-law. "There must not be a moment's delay."
There was no need for her to seek Tom Barley in the stable; he was sitting up in the kitchen below.
She gave him the letter, and desired him to run as fast as he could to the village and find a doctor, who was to come back with him. If the doctor demurred, and wanted to put it off till the following day, he was to be told that it was a matter of life and death.
Tom Barley was visibly disturbed when he heard this.
"Who is it, lady?" he asked. "His honour's wife, or the baby?"
"His wife. You're a kind-hearted lad, and won't waste a moment, will you?"
"No, lady; trust me."
He was not above taking the sixpence she offered him, and he ran out of the house like a shot.
Within the hour he was back with the doctor, whose looks were grave as he examined his patient.
"There is hope, doctor?" said Mrs. Farebrother's sister. "Tell me there is hope!"
He shook his head, and gently told her she must prepare for the worst.
"She is past prescribing for," he said. "I can do nothing for her. She has been for some time in a decline."
The sentence being passed, she had no room in her heart for any other feeling than pity for her dying sister. In the sunrise, when the sweet air was infusing strength into fresh young life, the end came. Mrs. Farebrother whispered to her sister that she wished to speak to her husband alone. Thoroughly awed, he sat by her side. She made no reference to the past; she uttered no reproaches. She spoke only of their child, and begged him to be good to her. He promised all that she asked of him.
"You will get some good woman into the house to take care of her?" she said.
"Yes; I promise."
"And my sister must see her whenever she wishes to do so."
"Yes."
"And when our dear one is old enough and strong enough you will let her go to my sister, and stop with her a little now and then? It will do her good to mix with children of her own age."
"Yes; I promise."
"As you deal by her, so will you be dealt by. May Heaven prosper you in all worthy undertakings! Kiss me. Let there be peace and forgiveness between us."
He kissed her, and sat a little apart while she and her sister, their cheeks nestling, exchanged their last words.
"Look after my treasure," whispered the mother.
"I will, dear, as tenderly and carefully as if she were one of my own."
"You must come here and see her sometimes; he has promised that you may; and when she grows up you will let her come to you?"
"She will always be lovingly welcome. My home is hers if she should ever need one."
"God bless you! May your life be prosperous and ever happy!"
Before noon she drew her last breath, and Parksides was without a mistress.
CHAPTER IV
PHŒBE AND THE ANGELS
It did not long remain so. In less than a fort-night after Mrs. Farebrother's death a housekeeper was installed in Parksides. Her name was Mrs. Pamflett, and her age thirty. Being called "Mrs.," the natural inference was that she was either wife or widow; but as no questions were put to her on this point there were none to answer, and it certainly did not appear to be anybody's business but her own. Miser Farebrother, being entirely wrapped up in his money-bags, gave the entire household into the care of Mrs. Pamflett, one of its items being the motherless child Phœbe. A capable housekeeper, thrifty, careful, and willing to work, Miser Farebrother was quite satisfied with her performance of her duties; but she was utterly unfit to rear a child so young as Phœbe, for whom, it must be confessed, she had no particular love, and Phœbe would have fared badly in many ways had it not been for her aunt.
Mrs. Lethbridge lived in London, in the not very aristocratic neighbourhood of Camden Town. She and Phœbe's mother had been married on the same day – one to a man whose miserly habits were unknown, and had, indeed, not at that time grown into a confirmed disease; the other to a bank clerk, who was expected to keep up the appearance of a gentleman, and fitly rear and educate a family, upon a salary of a hundred and eighty pounds a year. Fortunately for him and his wife, their family was not numerous, consisting of one son and one daughter. With Miser Farebrother they had nothing in common; he so clearly and unmistakably discouraged their attempts to cement an affectionate or even a friendly intimacy that they had gradually and surely dropped away from each other. This was a great grief to the sisters, but the edict issued by Miser Farebrother was not to be disputed.
"I will not allow your sister or her husband to come to the house," he had said to his wife when, in the early days of their married life, she remonstrated with him; later on she had not the courage or the spirit to expostulate against his harsh decrees, to which she submitted with a breaking heart. "They are a couple of busybodies, and you can tell them so if you please, with my compliments."
Mrs. Farebrother did not tell her sister what her husband called them, but she wrote and said that for the sake of peace they had better not come to see her. The Lethbridges mournfully acquiesced; indeed, they had no alternative: they could not force themselves into the house of a man who would not receive them.
"But if we can't go to her," said Mrs. Lethbridge, "Laura" – which was Mrs. Farebrother's Christian name – "can come to us."
This, also, after a little while, Miser Farebrother would not allow.
"I will not," he said, "have my affairs talked about by people who are not friendly to me."
"That is your fancy," said Mrs. Farebrother; "they would be very happy if you would allow them to be friendly."
"Of course," he sneered, "so that they could poke their heads into my business. I tell you I will not have it."
She sighed, and submitted; and thereafter, when she and her sister met, it was by appointment in a strange place. Even these rare meetings, upon their being discovered, were prohibited, and thus Miser Farebrother succeeded in parting two sisters who loved each other devotedly.
"Whatever Laura saw in that miserly bear," said Mrs. Lethbridge, indignantly, to her husband, "to marry him is a mystery I shall never be able to discover."
But this mystery is of a nature common enough in the matrimonial market, and may be attributed to thousands of ill-assorted couples.
It was plainly Miser Farebrother's intention to discourage Mrs. Lethbridge's visits to Parksides after the death of his wife; promises were in no sense sacred to him, even death-bed promises, unless their performance was necessary to his interests, and in this instance he very soon decided that it was not.
"You perceive," he said to Mrs. Lethbridge, "that I have a housekeeper to look after the child. You are giving yourself a deal of unnecessary trouble trudging down here – for what? To ascertain whether she is properly dressed? You see she is. Whether she has enough to eat? She looks well enough, doesn't she? Don't you think you had better devote yourself to your own domestic affairs instead of prying into mine? Your husband must be very rich that you can afford to pay railway fares and cab fares to come to a house where you are not wanted."
This, in effect, was the sum of his efforts to prevent her from visiting Parksides; and his sneers and slighting allusions, made from time to time, were successful in curtailing her visits to his house during the young childhood of little Phœbe. They were not successful, however, in putting a stop to them altogether, until Phœbe was fourteen years of age, from which time her intercourse with her relatives was maintained by the young girl's visits to Camden Town – happy visits, lasting seldom less than two or three days. Until Phœbe was fourteen, her aunt came down to Parksides only once in every three months. Occasionally Mrs. Lethbridge caught a glimpse of Miser Farebrother, whose welcome, if he gave her one at all, was of the surliest; and as between her and Mrs. Pamflett a strong and silent antipathy had been contracted from their first interview, Mrs. Lethbridge's visits could not be said to be of the pleasantest. But for the sake of her dead sister, whom she had so fondly loved, and of the motherless child, whose sweet ways endeared her to the good aunt, she bore with all the slights that were put upon her; and although she spoke of them at home to her husband, she never mentioned them to her children.
From two to fourteen years of age, Phœbe may be said to have grown up almost in loneliness. Her father rarely noticed her, and Mrs. Pamflett, a peculiar, strange, and silent woman, evinced no desire for her society. The child's nature was sweet and susceptible enough to have given an ample return for proffered affection, and, although she was not at the time aware of it (such speculations being too profound for her young mind), she had great cause for gratitude that her life was not entirely deprived of it. It has unhappily often happened that sweet waters have been turned bitter by unsympathetic contact, and this might have been the case with our Phœbe, had it not been for Mrs. Lethbridge and Tom Barley. Mrs. Lethbridge had made herself so loved by her niece that her visits came to be eagerly looked forward to by the girl, and to be all the more enjoyed because they were rare. Her love for the child was manifested as much, if not more, in her absence than in her presence. When Phœbe could read or spell through written hand, Mrs. Lethbridge wrote letters to her, to which the child replied. Phœbe's letters were slipped unstamped in the post-office by Tom Barley, and for a long time she was not aware of the unfair expense to which her aunt was being put, and for which Miser Farebrother alone was responsible. Mrs. Lethbridge never mentioned it to her niece. Then there were the books which Mrs. Lethbridge brought or sent – a source of so much delight and exquisite enjoyment that the remembrance of those youthful days was with Phœbe a sweet remembrance through all her life.
Living in a certain sense alone in a great mansion, it is not to be wondered at that a current of romance was formed in the young girl's nature. Neglected and uncared for as she was by those immediately about her, there was no restriction upon her movements through the old house. Certain rooms were prohibited to her, Mrs. Pamflett's room and her father's bedroom, which served also as an office. To this latter apartment, when she passed fourteen years of age, Phœbe was sometimes called – otherwise she was forbidden to enter it. With these exceptions she was free to wander whither she would, and she would often pass hours together in a room never occupied by the household, and which had an irresistible fascination for her. It was of octagonal shape, and there were faded paintings on the walls and rotting tapestries. Originally it was most likely used as a library, for it contained book-cases and large pieces of furniture, a table, two secretaries, and a huge chair, so heavy that Phœbe could not even move it. The carvings about the room and upon the furniture were strangely grotesque – fantastic heads and faces, animals such as were never seen in nature, and uncouth forms of men which had no existence save in the feverish imaginations of the designers. These contorted shapes and grotesque faces might have been supposed to be sufficiently repulsive to cause a sensitive child to avoid them, but in truth they were in themselves an attraction to Phœbe, who discovered no terrors in them to affright her. There was, however, in the room an attraction of a more congenial kind, in which grace, harmony, proportion, and a most exquisite beauty were conspicuous. High up in a corner, opposite a window which faced the west, was a carving of angels' heads, hanging over, as it were, and looking down upon the spectator. Devoid of natural colour as they were, so grand and wondrous had been the skill of the carver that it was as though a multitude of joyous, rosy-cheeked children were bending down to obtain a view of a scene as delightful as they themselves presented. The lips smiled, the eyes sparkled, the faces beamed with life. This marvel, cut out of brown wood, was, indeed, something more than the perfection of art and grace – it was an enchantment which made the heart glad to behold. And in the evening, when the effulgent radiances of a glorious sunset shone upon the wonder and played about it, touching the dainty faces with alluring light, it filled even the soul of our young child with a holy joy.
This was Phœbe's favourite room; and here she would sit and read, and sometimes stand, with folded hands, looking upward at the enchanting group, with the sunset's colours upon them; and in her eyes would dwell a rapture which made her as lovely as the fairest of the faces she gazed upon. Thus she grew up to a graceful and beautiful womanhood, encompassed by sweet and grand imaginings which purified her soul.
CHAPTER V
MRS. PAMFLETT RECOMMENDS A NEW CLERK TO THE MISER
Long before this, Tom Barley had grown to manhood's estate: the only estate of which he was owner and was ever likely to possess. But, although he had no landed property of his own to look after, he had an object in life. He conceived it to be his particular privilege to protect Phœbe, to run of her errands, and to be in a general way her willing and cheerful slave. Had he been able to intelligently and logically express himself upon the point in the early years of his connection with Miser Farebrother, it would have been ascertained that he founded his position upon the facts that he had held Phœbe in his arms upon her first introduction to Parksides, that he had been smiled upon by her mother, that he had attended the poor lady's funeral as an important and very genuine mourner, and that, besides, he was in the service of Miser Farebrother, who had promised to make his fortune. Later on, these unexpressed motives were merged into an absorbing devotion for the young girl, for whom he grew to entertain a kind of worship which removed her from his estimate of the ordinary mortal. A rough-and-ready knight he, ready to sacrifice himself at any moment for the queen of his idolatry. She, it must be confessed, received his homage very willingly, and as though it were rightly her due, and, unconsciously to herself, she richly repaid him for his services: by allowing him to initiate her into woodland wonders with which he had made himself familiar, by constant smiles and bright looks, by accepting the assistance of his hands when she crossed tumble-down stiles, and in a hundred other general ways of faith and belief in him which were a finer reward to Tom Barley than money could have been. Of this latter commodity he had little enough. The twopence a week which Miser Farebrother paid him was all he ever received from his employer, in addition to scraps of food from the kitchen upon which he managed to subsist. But, living in civilized society, clothing was a prescribed necessity, and was not to be obtained upon eight-and-eightpence a year. Tom dropped a hint or two, but Miser Farebrother was oblivious, and callous to the peeping of flesh through tatters.
"You extravagant dog," he said, "I did not undertake to clothe you. Look at me: I can't afford fine new clothes! Go and hang about the village, when you've nothing to do here, and look for an odd job. That's the way to earn honest pennies. Many a millionaire began with less. And, Tom," he added, "when you've saved a few shillings, I dare say I can find an old pair of trousers that I'll sell you cheap."
Tom profited by the suggestion, and in a little while found the way to earn a good many honest pennies. Miser Farebrother fished out of his scanty wardrobe some tattered garments, which he disposed of to Tom, and it was then that the lad exhibited himself in a new character, which drove the miser to desperation. He bargained with his master and beat him down to the last penny; Tom was not devoid of shrewdness, and he was beginning to understand the miser.
"If every man was as generous as I am," grumbled Miser Farebrother, at the conclusion of their first barter, "he'd soon be on the road to ruin."
"They're full of holes," said Tom, turning the clothes over and examining them ruefully. The miser would not allow him to handle them until the bargain was completed and the money safe in his pocket: "look here, and here!"
"Look here, and here, you dog!" retorted Miser Farebrother. "Do I charge you anything for their being too big for you? Can't you cut off the bottoms of the trousers, and patch the knees with the extra bits? You ought to give the pieces back to me; but I make you a present of them."
Tom was quick enough at taking a hint. Being thrown upon his own resources, and imbued with the cheerfulest of spirits, he soon became proficient with the needle, and, by patching here and darning there, managed to maintain a tolerably decent appearance. He might have done better, had he not been afflicted by an insatiable hungering for brandy-balls, which, at three a penny, was a temptation not to be resisted whenever he had a copper to spare. To see him rolling one in his mouth was a picture of unalloyed bliss.
Mrs. Pamflett and he were not good friends, and an incident which will be presently related did not dispose them more favourably to each other. He was more fortunate with Mrs. Lethbridge. This good-hearted woman had noticed his unselfish devotion to Phœbe, and he won her favour thereby. Many a small silver bit found its way from her pocket to his; and more than once she bore with her to Parksides a little parcel containing a waistcoat, or an undershirt, or a couple of pairs of socks, which had served their time at home, but which were not so utterly worn out as not to be useful to Tom. He was very grateful for these gifts, and showed his appreciation of them by forcing a brandy-ball upon her now and then. She went further. Impressed by Phœbe's constant praise of the young fellow, and recognizing that the girl had near her, when she was absent, a stanch and faithful champion, ever ready to protect and defend her, she took Tom Barley into her confidence.
"Can you read, Tom?" she asked.
"Yes, lady," he replied. "Square letters – not round uns. And I can write 'em."
