a formal but friendly letter came to mistress betty, when her life was one of long dusty exertion, and her heart was very thirsty and parched. the shabby-genteel world and the tradesman's life, unless in exceptional cases of great wealth, were different things a hundred and fifty years ago from what they are now. the villas at twickenham, the rural retreats, the gardens, the grottos, the books, the harpsichords, the water-colour drawings, belonged to the quality, or to the literary lions: to lady mary or pope, horace walpole or his young friends the berrys. the half-pay officer's widow, the orphan of the bankrupt in the south sea business, the wife and family of the moderately flourishing haberdasher, or coach-builder, or upholsterer—the tobacconist rose far above the general level—were cooped up in the city dwellings, and confined to gossip, fine clothes, and good eating if they could afford them. a walk in the city gardens, a trip to richmond hill, and the shows, were their pastimes, and mr. steele's 'christian hero,' 'an advice to a daughter,' and de foe's 'history of the plague,' were their mental delectation.
but mistress betty had the soul of a martyr; she had resigned herself to sinking down into the star of cousin ward's set, who went on holidays to the play—mostly honest, fat and fatuous, or jaunty and egotistical folk, who admired the scenery and the dresses, but could no more have made a play to themselves than they could have [page 91]drawn the cartoons. she helped cousin ward, not only with her purse, but with a kinswoman's concern in her and hers: she assisted to wash and dress the children of a morning; she took a turn at cooking in the middle of the day; she helped to detain master ward at the tea-table, and to keep his wig and knee-buckles from too early an appearance and too thorough a soaking of his self-conceit and wilfulness at his tavern; and she heard the lads their lessons, while she darned their frills before supper.
then arrived the summons, over which mistress betty, a little worn by voluntary adversity, shed "a power" of joyful tears. to travel down into somersetshire, and stroll among the grass in the meadows, and the gorse on the commons, which she had not seen for twelve months; to feed the calves, and milk the cows, and gather the eggs, and ride dapple, and tie up the woodbine, and eat syllabub in a bower; to present "great frieze coats" and "riding-hoods" to a dozen of the poorest old men and women in the parish; to hear prayers in a little grey church, through whose open windows ivy nodded, and before whose doors trees arched in vistas; to see her sweet little prissy and fiddy, who had taken such a fancy to her, and the vicar, and madam, and granny, and find them all perfectly agreeable, and not slighting her or doubting her because she had been a woman of fashion and an actress; and master rowland well disposed of elsewhere; larks' hall deserted by its master—the brave, generous, enamoured squire—heigho! mistress betty, for all her candour, good humour, and cordiality, had her decent pride, and would not have thrown herself at any man's head.
[page 92]somersetshire, in spite of bath, was as antediluvian a hundred and fifty years ago as the lanes and coombes of devonshire. larks' hall, foxholes, bearwood, the vicarage of mosely, and their outlying acquaintances, their yeomen and their labourers, lived as old-fashioned and hearty a life as if the battle of sedgemoor had never been fought.
down in somersetshire, among its orchards, nutteries, and blackberry thickets, poor little mistress fiddy was drooping, as girls would pine sometimes, even in the days of will shakspeare, ere cloth-yard shafts were abolished from merry england, when there were still mayings among the hyacinths, and milkmaids' dances under the thorns, and mummings when the snow fell. and dick ashbridge shot and fished in the most disconsolate abandonment, though the girl yet ran past him "like a ghost" when the beetle and bat were abroad, and he was still mooning about the vicarage meadows.
neither of them knew for certain, and nobody could predict exactly, that she would live to wed dick, bear him children, and leave him a sorrowful widower, whose heart was chastened—not torn. no; nor could the good folk in somersetshire understand how closely lady betty and little fiddy were bound up together, and how little fiddy was to return lady betty's kindness, in the days when the little girl should be the teacher, and the fine woman the scholar, and the lesson to be learnt came from regions beyond the stars.
in the meantime, fiddy was a sick, capricious, caressed darling in a cambric cap and silk shawl, on whom fond [page 93]friends were waiting lovingly: whom nobody in the world, not even the doctor, the parish clerk, or the housekeeper at larks' hall, dreamt of subjecting to the wholesome medicine of contradiction—unless it might be granny, when she came in with her staff in her hand. she would laugh at their excess of care, and order them to leave off spoiling that child; but even granny herself would let fall a tear from her dim eyes when she read the register of the child's age in the family bible.
"ah!" sighs whimsical little mistress fiddy, "if only lady betty were here—great, good, kind, clever, funny, beautiful lady betty—who cured me that night at bath, papa and mamma, i would be well again. she knows the complaint; she has had it herself; and her face is so cheering, her wit so enlivening, and she reads the lessons so solemnly and sweetly. o mamma! send for mistress betty; she will come at once; she does not play now; the prints say so. she will be the better of the country air too. send for mistress betty to mosely."
madam was in a difficulty. an actress at the vicarage! and master rowland had been so rash. he had dropped hints, which, along with his hurried visit to london, had instilled dim, dark suspicions into the minds of his appalled relations of the whirlpool he had just coasted, they knew not how: they could not believe the only plain palpable solution of the fact. and granny had inveighed against women of fashion and all public characters, ever since uncle rowland took that jaunt to town, whence he returned so glum and dogged. but then, again, how could the mother deny her ailing fiddy? and this brilliant mistress [page 94]betty from the gay world might possess some talisman unguessed by the quiet folks at home. little fiddy had no real disease, no settled pain: she only wanted change, pleasant company, and diversion, and would be plump and strong again in no time. and mistress betty had retired from the stage now; she was no longer a marked person: she might pass anywhere as mistress lumley, who had acted with success and celebrity, and withdrawn at the proper moment, with the greatest dignity and discretion. and master rowland was arranging his affairs to make the grand tour in the prime of life: his absence would clear away a monstrous objection. what would the vicar say? what would granny say?
the vicar ruled his parish, and lectured in the church; but in the parsonage he thought very much as madam did, and was only posed when old madam and young madam pulled him different ways.
and granny! why, to madam's wonder, granny required no wheedling, but—apprised of the deliberation, by the little minx prissy, who in fiddy's illness attended on granny—she sent for madam before madam even knew that the proposal had been so much as mooted to her, and struck her stick on the ground in her determined way, and insisted that mistress betty should be writ for forthwith and placed at the head of the child's society. granny, who had soundly rated fine ladies and literary women not two days before! it was very extraordinary; but granny must have her way. the children paid her affectionate duty, young madam did her half-grateful, half-vexed homage, the vicar and master rowland deferred to her in [page 95]her widowhood and dependence, and with little less grace and reverence than what she had taught them to practise when they were lads under tutelage. she was, in fact, the fully accredited mistress of larks' hall.
and granny, in reality, presided at the vicarage; not oppressively, for she was one of those sagacious magnates who are satisfied with the substance of power without loving its show. notwithstanding, she prevented the publication of more than two calf-skin volumes at a time of the vicar's sermons; she turned madam aside when she would have hung the parlour with gilt leather, in imitation of foxholes; and she restricted the little girls to fresh ribbons once a month, and stomachers of their own working. and so, when granny decreed that mistress betty was to be invited down to mosely, there was no more question of the propriety of the measure that there would have been of an act of council given under the tudors; the only things left to order were the airing of the best bedroom, the dusting of the ebony furniture, and the bleaching on the daisies of old madam's diamond quilt.
down to somersetshire went mistress betty, consoling cousin ward with the gift of a bran-new mantua and a promise of a speedy return, and braving those highwaymen who were for ever robbing king george's mail; but the long, light midsummer nights were in their favour, and their mounted escort had to encounter no paladins of the road in scarlet coats and feathered hats.
mistress betty's buoyant spirit rose with the fresh air, the green fields, and the sunshine. she was so obliging and entertaining to an invalid couple among her fellow-[page 96]travellers, an orange nabob from india and his splendid wife, that they declared she had done them more good than they would derive from the pump-room, the music, and the cards, to which they were bound. they asked her address, and pressed her to pay them a visit; when they would have certainly adopted her, and bequeathed to her their plum. as it was, half-a-dozen years later, when, to her remorse, she had clean forgotten their existence, they astounded her by leaving her a handsome legacy; which, with the consent of another party concerned—one who greatly relished the mere name of the bequest, as a proof that nobody could ever resist lady betty—she shared with a cross-grained grand-nephew whom the autocratic pair had cut off with a shilling.
