My Lady Ludlow (24 page)

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 Connington 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 his one-legged captain, coming to dot-and-go-one over the
estate. I suppose he will look after the labourers through a spy-glass.
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 has 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 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
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."