My Lady Ludlow (25 page)

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. Brooks;
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, amused. "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 the 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.

"No," Miss Galindo said; "my own dear lady, you may be as angry with me
as you like, but don't offer me money. Think of six-and-twenty years
ago, and poor Arthur, and as you were to me then! Besides, I wanted
money—I don't disguise it—for a particular purpose; and when I found
that (God bless you for asking me!) I could do you a service, I turned it
over in my mind, and I gave up one plan and took up another, and it's all
settled now. Bessy is to leave school and come and live with me. Don't,
please, offer me money again. You don't know how glad I have been to do
anything for you. Have not I, Margaret Dawson? Did you not hear me say,
one day, I would cut off my hand for my lady; for am I a stock or a
stone, that I should forget kindness? O, I have been so glad to work for
you. And now Bessy is coming here; and no one knows anything about
her—as if she had done anything wrong, poor child!"

"Dear Miss Galindo," replied my lady, "I will never ask you to take money
again. Only I thought it was quite understood between us. And you know
you have taken money for a set of morning wrappers, before now."

"Yes, my lady; but that was not confidential. Now I was so proud to have
something to do for you confidentially."

"But who is Bessy?" asked my lady. "I do not understand who she is, or
why she is to come and live with you. Dear Miss Galindo, you must honour
me by being confidential with me in your turn!"

I had always understood that Miss Galindo had once been in much better
circumstances, but I had never liked to ask any questions respecting her.
But about this time many things came out respecting her former life,
which I will try and arrange: not however, in the order in which I heard
them, but rather as they occurred.

Miss Galindo was the daughter of a clergyman in Westmoreland. Her father
was the younger brother of a baronet, his ancestor having been one of
those of James the First's creation. This baronet-uncle of Miss Galindo
was one of the queer, out-of-the-way people who were bred at that time,
and in that northern district of England. I never heard much of him from
any one, besides this one great fact: that he had early disappeared from
his family, which indeed only consisted of a brother and sister who died
unmarried, and lived no one knew where,—somewhere on the Continent, it
was supposed, for he had never returned from the grand tour which he had
been sent to make, according to the general fashion of the day, as soon
as he had left Oxford. He corresponded occasionally with his brother the
clergyman; but the letters passed through a banker's hands; the banker
being pledged to secrecy, and, as he told Mr. Galindo, having the
penalty, if he broke his pledge, of losing the whole profitable business,
and of having the management of the baronet's affairs taken out of his
hands, without any advantage accruing to the inquirer, for Sir Lawrence
had told Messrs. Graham that, in case his place of residence was revealed
by them, not only would he cease to bank with them, but instantly take
measures to baffle any future inquiries as to his whereabouts, by
removing to some distant country.

Sir Lawrence paid a certain sum of money to his brother's account every
year; but the time of this payment varied, and it was sometimes eighteen
or nineteen months between the deposits; then, again, it would not be
above a quarter of the time, showing that he intended it to be annual,
but, as this intention was never expressed in words, it was impossible to
rely upon it, and a great deal of this money was swallowed up by the
necessity Mr. Galindo felt himself under of living in the large, old,
rambling family mansion, which had been one of Sir Lawrence's rarely
expressed desires. Mr. and Mrs. Galindo often planned to live upon their
own small fortune and the income derived from the living (a vicarage, of
which the great tithes went to Sir Lawrence as lay impropriator), so as
to put-by the payments made by the baronet, for the benefit of
Laurentia—our Miss Galindo. But I suppose they found it difficult to
live economically in a large house, even though they had it rent free.
They had to keep up with hereditary neighbours and friends, and could
hardly help doing it in the hereditary manner.

One of these neighbours, a Mr. Gibson, had a son a few years older than
Laurentia. The families were sufficiently intimate for the young people
to see a good deal of each other: and I was told that this young Mr. Mark
Gibson was an unusually prepossessing man (he seemed to have impressed
every one who spoke of him to me as being a handsome, manly, kind-hearted
fellow), just what a girl would be sure to find most agreeable. The
parents either forgot that their children were growing up to man's and
woman's estate, or thought that the intimacy and probable attachment
would be no bad thing, even if it did lead to a marriage. Still, nothing
was ever said by young Gibson till later on, when it was too late, as it
turned out. He went to and from Oxford; he shot and fished with Mr.
Galindo, or came to the Mere to skate in winter-time; was asked to
accompany Mr. Galindo to the Hall, as the latter returned to the quiet
dinner with his wife and daughter; and so, and so, it went on, nobody
much knew how, until one day, when Mr. Galindo received a formal letter
from his brother's bankers, announcing Sir Lawrence's death, of malaria
fever, at Albano, and congratulating Sir Hubert on his accession to the
estates and the baronetcy. The king is dead—"Long live the king!" as I
have since heard that the French express it.

Sir Hubert and his wife were greatly surprised. Sir Lawrence was but two
years older than his brother; and they had never heard of any illness
till they heard of his death. They were sorry; very much shocked; but
still a little elated at the succession to the baronetcy and estates. The
London bankers had managed everything well. There was a large sum of
ready money in their hands, at Sir Hubert's service, until he should
touch his rents, the rent-roll being eight thousand a-year. And only
Laurentia to inherit it all! Her mother, a poor clergyman's daughter,
began to plan all sorts of fine marriages for her; nor was her father
much behind his wife in his ambition. They took her up to London, when
they went to buy new carriages, and dresses, and furniture. And it was
then and there she made my lady's acquaintance. How it was that they
came to take a fancy to each other, I cannot say. My lady was of the old
nobility,—grand, compose, gentle, and stately in her ways. Miss Galindo
must always have been hurried in her manner, and her energy must have
shown itself in inquisitiveness and oddness even in her youth. But I
don't pretend to account for things: I only narrate them. And the fact
was this:—that the elegant, fastidious countess was attracted to the
country girl, who on her part almost worshipped my lady. My lady's
notice of their daughter made her parents think, I suppose, that there
was no match that she might not command; she, the heiress of eight
thousand a-year, and visiting about among earls and dukes. So when they
came back to their old Westmoreland Hall, and Mark Gibson rode over to
offer his hand and his heart, and prospective estate of nine hundred a-
year, to his old companion and playfellow, Laurentia, Sir Hubert and Lady
Galindo made very short work of it. They refused him plumply themselves;
and when he begged to be allowed to speak to Laurentia, they found some
excuse for refusing him the opportunity of so doing, until they had
talked to her themselves, and brought up every argument and fact in their
power to convince her—a plain girl, and conscious of her plainness—that
Mr. Mark Gibson had never thought of her in the way of marriage till
after her father's accession to his fortune; and that it was the
estate—not the young lady—that he was in love with. I suppose it will
never be known in this world how far this supposition of theirs was true.
My Lady Ludlow had always spoken as if it was; but perhaps events, which
came to her knowledge about this time, altered her opinion. At any rate,
the end of it was, Laurentia refused Mark, and almost broke her heart in
doing so. He discovered the suspicions of Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo,
and that they had persuaded their daughter to share in them. So he flung
off with high words, saying that they did not know a true heart when they
met with one; and that although he had never offered till after Sir
Lawrence's death, yet that his father knew all along that he had been
attached to Laurentia, only that he, being the eldest of five children,
and having as yet no profession, had had to conceal, rather than to
express, an attachment, which, in those days, he had believed was
reciprocated. He had always meant to study for the bar, and the end of
all he had hoped for had been to earn a moderate income, which he might
ask Laurentia to share. This, or something like it, was what he said.
But his reference to his father cut two ways. Old Mr. Gibson was known
to be very keen about money. It was just as likely that he would urge
Mark to make love to the heiress, now she was an heiress, as that he
would have restrained him previously, as Mark said he had done. When
this was repeated to Mark, he became proudly reserved, or sullen, and
said that Laurentia, at any rate, might have known him better. He left
the country, and went up to London to study law soon afterwards; and Sir
Hubert and Lady Galindo thought they were well rid of him. But Laurentia
never ceased reproaching herself, and never did to her dying day, as I
believe. The words, "She might have known me better," told to her by
some kind friend or other, rankled in her mind, and were never forgotten.
Her father and mother took her up to London the next year; but she did
not care to visit—dreaded going out even for a drive, lest she should
see Mark Gibson's reproachful eyes—pined and lost her health. Lady
Ludlow saw this change with regret, and was told the cause by Lady
Galindo, who of course, gave her own version of Mark's conduct and
motives. My lady never spoke to Miss Galindo about it, but tried
constantly to interest and please her. It was at this time that my lady
told Miss Galindo so much about her own early life, and about Hanbury,
that Miss Galindo resolved, if ever she could, she would go and see the
old place which her friend loved so well. The end of it all was, that
she came to live there, as we know.