CHAPTER III
THE NEW TENANTS ARRIVE, AND ONE DEPARTS
At the appointed hour a cart drew up at the gates of Parksides, in which, in addition to the driver, were Miser Farebrother and his wife and child. Tom Barley was waiting for them, and he darted forward to assist. Miser Farebrother alighted first, and receiving the child from his wife, looked rather helplessly about him, Mrs. Farebrother not being strong enough to alight without help.
"Can you hold a child?" asked Miser Farebrother of Tom Barley.
"Yes, your honour," replied Tom, eagerly; and he took the child, a little girl scarcely two years old, and cuddled it close to him.
The mother looked anxiously at the lad, and the moment her feet touched the ground she relieved him of the charge. The moonlight shone upon the group, and Tom Barley gazed in wonder at the lady's beautiful face and the pretty babe. Desiring Tom to assist the driver in the removal of the necessary household articles he had brought with him in the cart, Miser Farebrother led the way into the house, which they entered through the door at the back. As he was lighting a candle, Mrs. Farebrother sighed and shivered.
"It is very lonely," she murmured.
"It is very comfortable," he retorted; "a palace compared to the place we have left. You will get well and strong here."
She shook her head, and said, in a tone so low that the words did not reach her husband's ears, "I shall never get well."
"What is that you say?" he cried, sharply. She did not reply. "Instead of grumbling and trying not to make the best of things," he continued, "it would be more sensible of you to light the fire and make me a cup of tea. Here's plenty of wood, and here's a fireplace large enough to burn a ton of coals a day. I must see to that. Now bustle about a bit; it will do you good. I am always telling you that you ought to be more energetic and active."
"Is there no servant in the house?" she asked, wearily. She had taken off her mantle, and having wrapped her child in it and laid her down, was endeavouring to obey her husband's orders. "You said you had one."
"So I have, a man-servant. I engaged him expressly for you."
"The boy at the gate?"
"Yes; and here he is, loaded. That's right, Tom; be sharp and willing, and you'll die a rich man."
Tom Barley was sharp enough to perceive that Mrs. Farebrother was too weak for the work she was endeavouring to perform, and willing enough to step to her assistance.
"May I light the fire?" he asked, timidly.
She nodded, and sinking into a chair, lifted her child from the floor and nursed her. Seeing her thus engaged, and Tom busy on his knees, Miser Farebrother ran out, and he and the driver between them carried in the rest of the things, the most important being the miser's desk, which he had conveyed at once to the bedroom above. His mind was easier when he saw that precious depository in a place of safety.
Meanwhile Tom Barley was proving himself a most cheerful and capable servant.
"When his honour told me," he whispered, "that he was coming here late at night with you and the baby – a little girl, ain't it? – I thought it would be chilly without a fire, so I cleaned out the fireplace and the chimbley, and got a lot of wood together. There's plenty of it – enough to last a lifetime. Don't you move, now; I can make tea. Used to make mother's. Where's the things? In the basket? Yes; here they are. Here's the kittle, and here's the tea, in a bloo' paper; and here's the teapot; and here's two cups; and here's a bottle of milk and some sugar. It's a blazing fire – ain't it? That's the best of dry wood. The kittle'll bile in a minute – it's biling already!"
From time to time the delicate woman gave him a grateful look, which more than repaid him, and caused him to double his exertions to make her comfortable. By the time the tea was made, Miser Farebrother had completed the removal of the goods, and had settled with the driver, after a good deal of grumbling at the extortionate demand.
"You can go, Tom," he said to the lad. "Be up early in the morning and make the fire."
"Good-night, your honour."
"Did you hear me tell you to go?" exclaimed Miser Farebrother.
Tom Barley received a kind look from Mrs. Farebrother as he left the room, and he went away perfectly happy.
In another hour the house was quiet and the light extinguished. Miser Farebrother was in secure possession of Parksides, and he fell asleep in the midst of a calculation of how much money he would save in rent in the course of the next twenty years. Other calculations also ran through his head in the midst of his fitful slumbers – calculations of figures and money, and interest, and sharp bargains with needy men, clients he was bleeding to his own profit. No thought in which figures and money did not find a place did he bestow upon the more human aspect of his life, in which there was to be almost immediately an important change.
Within a fort-night of her entrance into the desolate house Mrs. Farebrother lay upon her death-bed. She had been weak and ailing for months past, and the night's journey from London, no less than the deep unhappiness which, since her marriage, had drawn the roses from her cheeks and made her heart heavy and sad, now hastened her end. As she lay upon the ancient stately bed from which she was never to rise, a terrible loneliness fell upon her. Her darling child was by her side, mercifully asleep; her husband was moving about the apartment; the sunbeams falling through the window brought no comfort to the weary heart – all was so desolate, so desolate! In a trembling voice she called her husband to her.
"Well?" he asked.
"I must see my sister," she said.
"I will not have her," he cried. "You are well enough without her. I will not have her here!"
"I am well enough – to die!" she murmured. "I must see my sister before I go."
"You are frightening yourself unnecessarily," said Miser Farebrother, fretfully. "You are always full of fancies, and putting me to expense. You never had the slightest consideration for me – not the slightest. You think of nobody but yourself."
"I am frightened of this place," she found strength to say. "I cannot, I will not, die here alone! I must see my sister, I must see my sister!"
Still he made no movement to comply with her request.
"If you do not send for her at once," said his wife, "I will get up and go from the house and die in the roadway. God will give me strength to do it. I must see my sister, I must see my sister!"
Awed, if not convinced, and fearful, too, lest any disturbance which it was in his power to avoid might bring him into unfavourable notice, and interfere with his cherished plans, he said, reluctantly, "I will send for her."
"You are not deceiving me? You are not promising what you do not intend to perform?"
"I will send for her, I tell you."
"If you do not," she said – and there was a firmness in her weak tones which was not without its effect upon him – "misfortune will attend you all the days of your life. Nothing you do will prosper."
He was superstitious, and believed in omens; and this sounded like a prophecy, the warning of which he dared not neglect. His wife's eyes followed him as he stepped to his desk and sat down and wrote. Presently he left the room, and went in search of Tom Barley, to whom he gave a letter, bidding him to post it in the village. Grumbling at what he had done, he returned to his wife.
"Is my sister coming?" she asked.
"I have written to her," he replied. "Go to sleep and rest. You will be better in the morning."
"Yes," she sighed, as she pressed her child close to her bosom, "I shall be better in the morning. Oh, my sweet flower! my heart's treasure! Guard her, gracious Lord! Make her life bright and happy – as mine once promised to be! I could have given love for love; but it was denied to me. Not mine the fault – not mine, not mine!"
The day waned, the evening shadows fell, and night came on. Upon a table at some distance from the bed was one thin tallow candle, the feeble flame of which flickered dismally. During the long weary hours Mrs. Farebrother did not sleep; she dozed occasionally; but the slightest sound aroused her. In her light slumbers she dreamt of incidents in her happy girlhood before she was married – incidents apparently trivial, but not really so because of the sweet evidences of affection which made them memorable: a song, a dance, a visit to the sea-side, a ramble in fragrant woods; innocent enjoyments from which sprang fond imaginings never to be realized. Betweenwhiles, when she was awake, the gloom of the room and the monstrous shadows thrown by the dim light upon portions of the walls and ceilings distressed her terribly, and she needed all her strength of mind to battle against them. In these transitions of sensation were expressed all the harmonies and discordances of mortal life. Bitter to her had been their fruit!
An hour before midnight she heard the sound of carriage wheels without, and she sat straight up in her bed from excitement, and then fell back exhausted.
"It is my sister," she said, faintly, to her husband. "Let her come up at once. Thank God, she is here in time!"
Her sister bent fondly and in great grief over her. Between these two existed a firm and faithful affection, but the circumstances of Mrs. Farebrother's marriage had caused them to see very little of each other of late years.
"Attend to my darling Phœbe," whispered Mrs. Farebrother; "there is no female servant in the house. Oh, I am so glad you have come before it was too late!"
"Do not say too late, my dearest," said her sister; but her heart was faint within her as she gazed upon the pallid face and the thin wasted hands; "there are happy years before you."
"Not one, not one!" murmured Mrs. Farebrother.
"Why did you not send for me before?"
The dying woman made no reply, and her sister undressed little Phœbe, and placed her in a cot by the mother's bedside. Then she smoothed the sheets and pillows, and sat quietly, with her sister's hand in hers.
"It is like old times," murmured Mrs. Farebrother, wistfully. "You were always good to me. Tell me, my dear – put your head close to mine – oh, how sweet, how sweet! Were it not for my darling child I should think that Heaven was shining upon me!"
"What is it you want to know, dear? You were about to ask me something."
"Yes, yes. Tell me – are you happy at home?"
"Very happy."
"Truly and indeed?"
"Truly and indeed. We are not rich, but that does not matter."
"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.