Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles

Cyril looked rather shame-faced.

"You will go to Mr. Ashley's, Cyril. But I wish you to remember, to remember always, that the ultimate advantages will depend upon yourself and your conduct. Become a good man, and there's little doubt they will be yours; turn out indifferently, and there's not the slightest chance for you."

"I shan't succeed to any of Ashley's money, I suppose?" complacently questioned Cyril, who somewhat ignored the conditions, and saw himself in prospective Mr. Ashley's successor.

"It is impossible to say what you may succeed to," replied Mr. Dare, in so significant a tone as to surprise Cyril. "Henry Ashley's I should imagine to be a doubtful life; should anything happen to him, Mary Ashley will, of course, inherit all. And he will be a fortunate man who shall get into her good graces and marry her."

It was a broad hint to a boy like Cyril. "She's such a proud thing, that Mary Ashley!" grumbled he.

"She is a very sweet child," was the warm rejoinder of Mr. Dare. And Cyril went upstairs again to his jam and his interrupted tea.

Meanwhile the evening went on, and the drawing-room was waiting for Lord Hawkesley. Mrs. Dare and Adelaide were waiting for him—waiting anxiously in elegant attire. Mr. Dare did not seem to care whether he came or not; and Julia, who was buried in an easy chair with her book, would have preferred, of the two, that he stayed away. Between eight and nine he arrived. A little man; young, fair, with light eyes and sharp features, a somewhat cynical expression habitually on his lips. Helstonleigh, in its gossip, conjectured that he must be making young Anthony Dare useful to him in some way or other, or he would not have condescended to the intimacy. For Lord Hawkesley, a proud man by nature, had been reared as an earl's son and heir; which meant an exclusiveness far greater in those days than it is in these. This was the third evening visit he had paid to Mrs. Dare. Had Adelaide's good looks any attraction for him? She was beginning to think so, and to weave visions upon the strength of it. Entrenched as the Dares were in their folly and assumption, Adelaide was blind to the wide social gulf that lay between herself and Viscount Hawkesley.

She sat down at the piano at his request and sang an Italian song. She had a good voice, and her singing was better than her Italian accent. Lord Hawkesley stood by her and looked over the music.

"I like your style of singing very much," he remarked to her when the song was over. "You must have learnt of a good master."

"Comme ça," carelessly rejoined Adelaide. As is the case with many more young ladies who possess a superficial knowledge of French, she thought it the perfection of good taste to display as much of it as she did know. "I had the best professor that Helstonleigh can give; but what are Helstonleigh professors compared with those of London? We cannot expect first-rate talent here."

"Do you like London?" asked Lord Hawkesley.

"I was never there," replied Adelaide, feeling the confession, when made to Lord Hawkesley, to be nothing but a humiliation.

"Indeed! You would enjoy a London season."

"Oh, so much! I know nothing of the London season, except from books. A contrast to your lordship, you will say," she added, with a laugh. "You must be almost tired of it; désillusionné."

"What's that in English?" inquired Lord Hawkesley, whose French studies, as far as they had extended, had been utterly thrown away upon him. Labouring under the deficiency, he had to make the best of it, and did it with a boast. "Used up, I suppose you mean?"

Adelaide coloured excessively. She wondered if he was laughing at her, and made a mental vow never to speak French to a lord again.

"Will you think me exacting, Miss Dare, if I trespass upon you for another song?"

Adelaide did not think him exacting in the least. She was ready to sing as long as he pleased.

CHAPTER V.

CHARLOTTE EAST'S PRESENT

Towards dusk, that same evening, Charlotte East went over to Mrs. Buffle's for some butter. After she was served, Mrs. Buffle—who was a little shrimp of a woman, with a red nose—crossed her arms upon the counter and bent her face towards Charlotte's. "Have you heered the news?" asked she. "Mary Ann Cross is going to make a match of it with Ben Tyrrett."

"Is she?" said Charlotte. "They had better wait a few years, both of them, until they shall have put by something."

"They're neither of them of the putting-by sort," returned Mrs. Buffle. "Them Crosses is the worst girls to spend in all the Fair: unless it's Carry Mason. She don't spare her back, she don't. The wonder is, how she gets it."

"Young girls will dress," observed Charlotte, carelessly.

Mrs. Buffle laughed. "You speak as if you were an old one."

"I feel like one sometimes, Mrs. Buffle. When children are left, as I and Robert were, with a baby brother to bring up, and hardly any means to do it upon, it helps to steady them. Tom–"

Eliza Tyrrett burst in at the door, with a violence that made its bell twang and tinkle. "Half-a-pound o' dips, long-tens, Dame Buffle, and be quick about it," was her order. "There's such a flare-up, in at Mason's."

"A flare-up!" repeated Mrs. Buffle, who was always ripe and ready for a dish of scandal, whether it touched on domestic differences, or on young girls' improvidence in the shape of dress. "Is Mason and her having a noise?"

"It's not him and her. It's about Carry. Hetty Mason locked Carry up this afternoon, and Mason never came home at all to tea; he went and had some beer instead, and a turn at skittles, and she wouldn't let Carry out. He came in just now, and his wife told him a whole heap about Carry, and Mason went up to the cock-loft, undid the door, and threatened to kick Carry down. They're having it out in the kitchen, all three."

"What has Carry done?" asked Mrs. Buffle eagerly.

"Perhaps Charlotte East can tell," said Eliza Tyrrett, slyly. "She has been thick with Carry lately. I am not a-going to spoil sport."

Charlotte took up her butter, and bending a severe look of caution on the Tyrrett girl, left the shop. Anthony Dare's reputation was not a brilliant one, and the bare fact of Caroline Mason's allowing herself to walk with him would have damaged her in the eyes of Honey Fair. As well keep it, if possible, from Mrs. Buffle and other gossips.

As Charlotte crossed to her own door, she became conscious that some one was flying towards her in the dusk of the evening: a woman with a fleet foot and panting breath. Charlotte caught hold of her. "Caroline, where are you going?"

"Let me alone, Charlotte East"—and Caroline's nostrils were working, her eyes flashing. "I have left their house for ever, and am going to one who will give me a better."

Charlotte held her tight. "You must not go, Caroline."

"I will," she defiantly answered. "I have chosen my lot this night for better or for worse. Will I stay to be taunted without a cause? To be told I am what I am not? No! If anything should happen to me, let them reproach themselves, for they have driven me on to it."

Charlotte tried her utmost to restrain the wild girl. "Caroline," she urged, "this is the turning-point in your life. A step forward, and you may have passed it beyond recall; a step backwards, and you may be saved for ever. Come home with me."

Caroline in her madness—it was little else—turned her ghastly face upon Charlotte. "You shan't stop me, Charlotte East! You go your way, and I'll go mine. Shall Mark and she go on at me without cause, I say, calling me false names?"

"Come home with me, Caroline. You shall stay with me to-night; you shan't go back to Hetty. My bed's not large, but it will hold us."

"I won't, I won't!" she uttered, struggling to be free.

"Only for a minute," implored Charlotte. "Come in for a minute until you are calm. You are mad just now."

"I am driven to it. There!"

With a jerk she wrenched herself from Charlotte's grasp, passion giving her strength: and she flew onwards and was lost in the dark night. Charlotte East ran home. Her brothers were there. "Tom," said she, "put this butter in the cupboard for me;" and out she went again. At the end of Honey Fair, a road lay each way. Which should she take? Which had Caroline taken?

She chose the one to the right—it was the most retired—and went groping about it for twenty minutes. As it happened, as such things generally do happen, Caroline had taken the other.

In a sheltered part of that, which lay back, away from the glare of the gas lamps, Caroline had taken refuge. She had expected some one would be there to meet her; but she found herself mistaken. Down she sat on a stone, and her wild passion began to diminish.

Nearly half an hour afterwards, Charlotte found her there. Caroline was talking to Anthony Dare, who had just come up. Charlotte grasped Caroline.

"You must come with me, Caroline."

"Who on earth are you, and what do you want intruding here?" demanded Anthony Dare, turning round with a fierce stare on Charlotte.

"I am Charlotte East, sir, if it is any matter to you to know my name, and I am a friend of Caroline Mason's. I am here to take her out of harm's way."

"There's nothing to harm her here," haughtily answered young Anthony. "Mind your own business."

"I am afraid there is one thing to harm her, sir, and that's you," said brave Charlotte. "You can't come among us people in Honey Fair for any good. Folks bent on good errands don't need to wait till dark before they pay their visits. You had better give up prowling about this place, Mr. Anthony Dare. Stay with your equals, sir; with those that will be a match for you."

"The woman must be deranged!" uttered Anthony, going into a terrible passion. "How dare you presume to say such things to me?"

"How dare you, sir, set yourself out to work ill?" retorted Charlotte. "Come along, Caroline," she added to the girl, who was now crying bitterly. "As for you, sir, if you mean no harm, as you say, and it is necessary that you should condescend to visit Honey Fair, please to pay your visits in the broad light of day."

No very pleasant word broke from Anthony Dare. He would have liked to exterminate Charlotte. "Caroline," foamed he, "order this woman away. If I could see a policeman, I'd give her in charge."

"Sir, if you dare attempt to detain her, I'll appeal to the first passer-by. I'll tell them to look at the great and grand Mr. Anthony Dare, and to ask him what he wants here, night after night."

Even as Charlotte spoke, footsteps were heard, and two gentlemen, talking together, advanced. The voice of one fell familiarly on the ear of Anthony Dare, familiarly on that of Charlotte East. The latter uttered a joyful cry.

"There's Mr. Ashley! Loose her, sir, or I'll call to him."

To have Mr. Ashley "called to" on the point would not be altogether agreeable to the feelings of young Anthony. "You fool!" he exclaimed to Charlotte East, "what harm do you suppose I meant, or thought of? You must be a very strange person yourself, to get such a thing into your imagination. Good night, Caroline."

And turning on his heel haughtily, Anthony Dare stalked off in the direction of Helstonleigh. Mr. Ashley passed on, having noticed nothing, and Charlotte East wound her arm round the sobbing girl, subdued now, and led her home.

Anthony went straight to Pomeranian Knoll, and threw himself on to a sofa in a very ill humour. Lord Hawkesley was occupied with Adelaide and her singing, and paid little attention to him.

At the close of the evening they left together, Anthony going out with Lord Hawkesley, and linking arms as they proceeded towards the Star Hotel, Lord Hawkesley's usual quarters when in Helstonleigh.

"I have got two hundred out of the governor," began Anthony in a confidential tone. "He will give me the cheque to-morrow."

"What's two hundred, Dare?" slightingly spoke his lordship. "It's nothing."

"It was of no use trying for more to-night. The two hundred will stop present worry, Hawkesley; the future must be provided for when it comes." And they walked on with a quicker step.

Mrs. Dare had looked at her watch as they departed. It was half-past eleven. She said she supposed they might as well be going to bed, and Mr. Dare roused himself. For the last half-hour he had been half-asleep; quite asleep he did not choose to fall, in the young man's presence. A viscount to Lawyer Dare was a viscount. "Where's Herbert?" asked he, stretching himself. Master Herbert, Joseph answered, had had supper served (not being able to recover from the short allowance at dinner), and had gone to bed. The rest, excepting Adelaide, had gone before, free from want, from care, full of the good things of this life. The young Halliburtons, their cousins once removed, had knelt and thanked God for the day's good, even though that day to them had been what all their days were now, one of poverty and privation. Not so the Dares. As children, for they were not in a heathen land, they had been taught to say their prayers at night; but as they grew older, the custom was suffered to fall into disuse. The family attended church on Sundays, fashionably attired, and there ended their religion.

To bed and to sleep went they, all the household, old and young—Joseph, the manservant, excepted. Sleepy Joseph stretched himself in a large chair to wait the return of Mr. Anthony: sleepy Joseph had so to stretch himself most nights. Mr. Anthony might come in in an hour's time, or Mr. Anthony might not come in until it was nearly time to commence the day's duties in the morning. It was all a chance; as poor Joseph knew to his cost.

Nine o'clock was the breakfast hour at Mr. Dare's, and the family were in general pretty punctual at it. On the following morning they were all assembled at the meal, Anthony rather red about the eyes, when Ann, the housemaid, entered.

"Here's a parcel for you, Mr. Anthony."

She held in her arms a large untidy sort of bundle, done round with string. Anthony turned his wondering eyes upon it.

"That! It can't be for me."

"A boy brought it and said it was for you, sir," returned Ann, letting the cumbersome parcel fall on a chair. "I asked if there was any answer, and he said there was not."

"It must be from your tailor, Anthony," said Mrs. Dare.

Anthony's consequence was offended at the suggestion. "My tailor send me a parcel done up like that!" repeated he. "He had better! He would get no more of my custom."

"What an extraordinary direction!" exclaimed Julia, who had got up, and drawn near, in her curiosity: "'Young Mister Antony Dare!' Just look, all of you."

Anthony rose, and the rest followed, except Mr. Dare, who was busy with a county paper, and paid no attention. A happy thought darted into Minny's mind. "I know!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Cyril and George are playing Anthony a trick, like the one they played Miss Benyon."

Anthony, too hastily taking up the view thus suggested, and inwardly vowing a not agreeable chastisement to the two, as soon as they should rush in to breakfast from school, took out his penknife and severed the string. The paper fell apart, and the contents rolled on to the floor.

What on earth were they? What did they mean? A woman's gown, tawdry but pretty; a shawl; a neck-scarf, with gold-coloured fringe; two pairs of gloves, the fingers worn into holes; a bow of handsome ribbon; a cameo brooch, fine and false; and one or two more such articles, not new, stood disclosed. The party around gazed in sheer amazement.

"If ever I saw such a collection as this!" exclaimed Mrs. Dare. "It is a woman's clothing. Why should they have been sent to you, Anthony?"

Anthony's cheek wore rather a conscious colour just then. "How should I know?" he replied. "They must have been directed to me by mistake. Take the rags away, Ann"—spurning them with his foot—"and throw them into the dust-bin. Who knows what infected place they may have come from?"

Mrs. Dare and the young ladies shrieked at the last suggestion, gathered their skirts about them, and retired as far as the limits of the room allowed. Some enemy of malicious intent must have done it, they became convinced. Ann—no more liking to be infected with measles or what not than they—seized the tongs, gingerly lifted the articles inside the paper, dragged the whole outside the door, and called Joseph to carry them to the receptacle indicated by Mr. Anthony.

Charlotte East had thought she would not do her work by halves.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FEAR GROWING GREATER

We must leap over some months. A story, you know, cannot stand still, any more than we can.

Spring had come round. The sofa belonging to Mrs. Reece's parlour was in Mrs. Halliburton's, and Janey was lying on it—her blue eyes bright, her cheeks hectic, her fair curls falling in disorder. Through autumn, through winter, it had appeared that Dobbs's prognostications of evil for Jane were not to be borne out, for she had recovered from the temporary indications of illness, and had continued well; but, with the early spring weather, Jane failed, and failed rapidly. The cough came back, and great weakness grew upon her. She was always wanting to be at rest, and would lie about anywhere. Spreading a cloak on the floor, with a pillow for her head, Janey would plant herself between her mother and the fire, pulling the cloak up on the side near the door. One day Dobbs came in and saw her there.

"My heart alive!" uttered Dobbs, when she had recovered her surprise; "what are you lying down there for?"

"I am tired," replied Janey; "and there's nowhere else to lie. If I put three chairs together, it is not comfortable, and the pillow rolls off."

"There's the sofa in our room," said Dobbs. "Why don't you lie on that?"

"So I do, you know, Dobbs; but I want to talk to mamma sometimes."

Dobbs disappeared. Presently there was a floundering and thumping heard in the passage, and the sofa was propelled in by Dobbs, very red with the exertion. "My missis is indignant to think that the child should be upon the floor," cried she, wrathfully. "One would suppose some folks were born without brains, or the sofa might have been asked for."

"But, Dobbs," said Janey—and she was allowed to "Dobbs" as much as she pleased, unreproved—"what am I to lie on in your room?"

"Isn't there my easy chair, with the high foot-board in front—as good as a bed when you let it out?" returned Dobbs, proceeding to place Janey comfortably on the sofa. "And now let me say what I came in to say, when the sight of that child on the cold floor sent me shocked out again," she added, turning to Jane. "My missis's leg is no better to-day, and she has made up her mind to have Parry. It's erysipelas, as sure as a gun. Every other spring, about, she's laid up with it in her legs, one or the other of 'em. Ten weeks I have known her in bed with it–"

"The very best preventive to erysipelas is to take an occasional warm bath," interrupted Jane.

The suggestion gave immense offence to Dobbs. "A warm bath!" she uttered, ironically. "And how, pray, should my missis take a warm bath? Sit down in a mashing-tub, and have a furnace of boiling water turned on to her? Those new-fangled notions may do for Londoners, but they are not known at Helstonleigh. Warm baths!" repeated Dobbs, with increased scorn: "hadn't you better propose a water-bed at once? I have heard that they are inventing them also."

"I have heard so, too," pleasantly replied Jane.

"Well, my missis is going to have Parry up, and she intends that he shall see Janey and give her some physic—if physic will be of use," added Dobbs, with an incredulous sniff. "My missis says it will. She puts faith in Parry's physic as if it was gold; it's a good thing she's not ill often, or she'd let herself be poisoned if quantity could poison her! And, Janey, you'll take the physic, like a precious lamb; and heaps of nice things you shall have after it, to drive the taste out. Warm baths!" ejaculated Dobbs, as she went out, returning to the old grievance. "I wonder what the world's coming to?"

Mr. Parry was called in, and soon had his two regular patients there. Mrs. Reece was confined to her bed with erysipelas in her leg; and if Janey seemed better one day, she seemed worse the next. The surgeon did not say what was the matter with Jane. He ordered her everything good in the shape of food; he particularly ordered port wine. An hour after the latter order had been given Dobbs appeared, with a full decanter in her hand.

"It's two glasses a day that she is to take—one at eleven and one at three," cried she without circumlocution.

"But, indeed, I cannot think of accepting so costly a thing from Mrs. Reece as port wine," interrupted Jane, in consternation.

"You can do as you like, ma'am," said Dobbs with equanimity. "Janey will accept it; she'll drink her two glasses of wine daily, if I have to come and drench her with it. And it won't be any cost out of my missis's pocket, if that's what you are thinking of," logically proceeded Dobbs. "Parry says it will be a good three months before she can take her wine again; so Janey can drink it for her. If my missis grudged her port wine or was cramped in pocket, I should not take my one glass a day, which I do regular."

"I can never repay you and Mrs. Reece for your kindness and generosity to Jane," sighed Mrs. Halliburton.

"You can do it when you are asked," was Dobbs's retort. "There's the wing and merrythought of a fowl coming in for her dinner, with a bit of sweet boiled pork. I don't give myself the ceremony of cloth-laying, now my missis is in bed, but just eat it in the rough; so the child had better have hers brought in here comfortably, till my missis is down again. And, Janey, you'll come upstairs to tea to us; I have taken up the easy chair."

"Thank you very much, Dobbs," said Janey.

"And don't you let them cormorants be eating her dinners or drinking her wine," said Dobbs, fiercely, as she was going out. "Keep a sharp look-out upon 'em."

"They would not do it!" warmly replied Jane. "You do not know my boys yet, if you think they would rob their sick sister."

"I know that boys' stomachs are always on the crave for anything that's good," retorted Dobbs. "You might skin a boy if you were forced to it, but you'd never drive his nature out of him; and that's to be always eating!"

So she had even this help—port wine! It seemed almost beyond belief, and Jane lost herself in thought.

"Mamma, you don't hear me!"

"Did you speak, Janey?"

"I say I think Dobbs got that fowl for me. Mrs. Reece is not taking meat, and Dobbs would not buy a fowl for herself. She will give me all the best parts, and pick the bones herself. You'll see. How kind they are to me! What should I have done, mamma, if I had only our plain food? I know I could not eat it now."

"God is over us, my dear child," was Jane's reply. "It is He who has directed this help to us: never doubt it, Jane. Whether we live or die," she added pointedly, "we are in His hands, and He orders all things for the best."

"Can to die be for the best?" asked Janey, sitting up to think over the question.

"Why, yes, my dear girl; certainly it is, if God wills it. How often have I talked to you about the rest after the grave! No more tears, no more partings. Which is best—to be here, or to go to that rest? Oh, Janey! we can put up surely with illness and with crosses here, if we may only attain to that. This world will last only for a little while at best; but that other will abide for ever and for ever."

A summons from Mr. Parry's boy: Miss Halliburton's medicine had arrived. Miss Halliburton made a grievous face over it, when her mamma poured the dose out. "I never can take it! It smells so nasty!"

Jane held the wine-glass towards her, a grave, kind smile upon her face. "My darling, it is one of earth's little crosses; try and not rebel against it. Here's a bit of Patience's jam left, to take after it."

Janey smiled bravely as she took the glass. "It was not so bad as I thought, mamma," said she, when she had swallowed it.

"Of course not, Janey; nothing is that we set about with a brave heart."

But, with every good thing, Janey did not improve. Her mother shrank from admitting the fact that was growing only too palpable; and Dobbs would come in and sit looking at Janey for a quarter of an hour together, never speaking.