Mrs. J. H. Riddell

“ The poor wasted arms, and little white face, and thin slight figure, had a pleading pitifulness about them, which the child’s eager desire for exercise, her unquenched vivacity, made more pathetic still.
Whatever Lally saw any other creature doing, that she desired to essay also. She wanted to run after the lambs, and scamper like the dogs, and be out over the fields with Cuthbert, and trotting behind Agnes and Mrs. Piggott, to dairy, and poultry-yard, and paddock; but it was not to be! The spirit was there—strong, restless, excitable as ever; but the body was changed. ”

“ Dear Heather; oh! dear, dear Heather! I know cleverer women do greater things than your imagination ever compassed—that they write books and paint pictures, that they compose music and preach sermons, that they scribble reviews and manage warehouses, that they are owners of various business establishments in the City, and serve writs to unsuspecting debtors; and yet I doubt if all these mementoes of women’s work and women’s talents would rest so long in the mind as one sweet word from you! ”

“ And stooping, she put her lips to Lally’s hand, which lay outside the coverlet, and kissed it softly. When she lifted her head, Lucy saw that her eyes were full of tears.
“Bessie, Bessie, darling, what is the matter?” she whispered, putting her arms round her cousin’s neck, and striving to detain her; but Bessie gently disengaged herself from the embrace, and saying, “we shall waken Lally; there is nothing the matter with me,” left the room—her face buried in her handkerchief, sobbing, sobbing as she went. Lucy would have followed her, but Bessie motioned her not to do so. ”

“ Before he could answer her, Arthur had to turn his head away, and fix his eyes on the dancing fire-light. Passing through the world’s long picture gallery, it is oftentimes not the great paintings, not the court ceremonials, not the huge sea pieces, not the representations of battle-fields, not the important portraits and the historical incidents which are photographed on our memories, which are stamped on our mental retina so indelibly, that through the years they are never forgotten. ”

“ Strange things often ride beside a man, keep his company in the night watches, walk with him along the familiar paths; strange things the ghosts of “what has been,” the shadows of “what is to be;” and it was most probably a mixture of both these phantoms that caused Squire Dudley to spur his horse, shying in the moonlight—on—and to push forward more rapidly under the elms and the beeches, beside the hedgerows, bare of flower and leaf, across the gleaming brook—home. ”

“ I do not know much about wickedness myself, Alick,” she added, with that sweet simplicity that made her seem so inexpressibly innocent to people who did know much about that wicked world, which was a terra incognita to Heather Dudley; “but I hope, dear, that a person may be as good in London as in the country; that you will not be led away, nor fall into expensive habits, nor associate with undesirable people, if only for my sake, Alick.” ”

“ He had bought a splendid house out at Ealing, and was fitting it up regardless of expense. In Stanley Crescent he gave the most wonderful parties that it had ever entered into Mrs. Dudley’s imagination to conceive could be given by any one not possessed of a ducal revenue. She had thought the furniture in Lincoln’s Inn Fields far and away more expensive than any Mr. Black should have persuaded Arthur into purchasing, but the promoter assured her it was “all right; upon his sacred word of honour, it had not cost a sixpence more than Dudley was perfectly justified in spending.” ”

“ She could not be blind to the fact that, as a rule, they had bought stock dear and sold it cheap—that what Alick had often said, “Arthur is neither master nor man: neither master to give orders and see them carried out, nor man to obey orders if given by anybody else,” was true.
There was no fairy mist hanging before her mental vision now. Like Mr. Stewart, she feared the person who could not make money at Berrie Down, plainly and economically as they had lived for years, would not be likely to make or to keep much money elsewhere. ”

“ Sickness had caught her one day, when his advent was least looked for—caught and put her in a cage, which would not permit her to move far in any direction, against the bars of which the little restless heart fluttered and beat only to its own hurt—a cage from which no human hand could release her, though loving friends were all around, and kindly eyes, often with tears in them, regarded the impatient child. ”

“ His father had made a most imprudent choice of a wife without money or connection, who brought five children into the world that I,” said Arthur, “have had to clothe, educate, and support. That is what has kept me a poor man. For thirteen years I have had that burden to carry. You cannot wonder at my being as I am. One of the boys has now got a situation, but he is only earning thirty pounds a year, and that will not do much towards keeping him. You perceive how necessary it is for me to add to my income. With my own children growing up, it is impossible for me to avoid feeling uneasy.” ”

“ The scenes of great account at which we have been present, on which we have gazed, in which, perchance, we have been actors, pale and fade away from the canvas of our brains; but so long as memory remains, there are slight gestures and passing expressions which recur to us again and again, and which will recur, till life leave us and the mould be heaped up over the spot where we lie. ”

“ Black walked beside, enjoying her astonishment, and kindly acting as cicerone to her inexperienced country understanding.
“Now, is not this better than grubbing on?” he triumphantly inquired, when, seated in his carriage, they were driving back to Lincoln’s Inn. “This is what a man can do who is not afraid, who feels his own strength, and is sure of being able to keep his feet under him. Ay, and by Jove, Dudley shall do as well yet as I have done! He deserves to do well, and so do you, Mrs. Dudley; for a more sensible woman, and one less under the dominion of prejudice, I never met. ”

“ Gentlemen, as a rule, admired Heather, and regretted that any trouble should fall upon her; and, added to all these causes of compassion, there was a strong feeling in the small community round about Berrie Down that Mrs. Dudley was a victim—an unappreciated victim, moreover; that she must have had a hard time of it with those boys and girls, and that “proud, useless husband,” and that it was quite time somebody took her up and made her position more endurable.
The world’s pity is usually abundant in inverse proportion to the necessity that exists for it to be vouchsafed at all. ”

“ The tone of a voice, the look in a face, the pressure of a hand, a chance word spoken in love or in anger, a stray sentence in a book—these things stay with us when, to our thinking, weightier matters are forgotten, when the passions and the sorrows, the struggles and the successes of the years departed have come to be in our recollections but as a flower which has bloomed—a leaf which has faded. ”

“ In acknowledgment of all this instruction, Harry, pulling a face at Bessie, that young lady forthwith unceremoniously marched him off and gave him in charge of Cuthbert, who grumbled a little over the trust.
Human nature is much the same on Christmas as on any other day in the week, and every creature in Berrie Down—Heather herself not excepted—felt Harry Marsden to be a burden and a tax. ”

“ Bessie always answered, “Christmas has not come yet; you are to get well, you know, and be carried downstairs to eat your plum pudding. Little girls who sham sickness are not to have any good things at all. You are to be taken into the drawing-room and kissed under the misletoe—kissed till you are black and blue, you bad child, for all the trouble and anxiety you have caused us.” ”

“ MR. STEWART’S PROPOSAL. The woman who would rule her household well, had need to be endowed by Heaven with almost every virtue. She should be quick to perceive and slow to act; not given to rash judgments, nor easily moved to anger. She should be patient and long-suffering. She should remember that she is an absolute autocrat in her small domain, and be merciful accordingly. Her servants are but after all as children, who have no claim to a parent’s care and affection. ”

“ MR. BLACK WRITES HIS PROSPECTUS. Amidst the anxieties of making salads, the desire to convert Heather from the evils and dangers of English cookery, skirmishes with Mrs. Ormson, criticisms on Bessie, and the personal enjoyment of such luxuries as ripe fruit, coffee of her own manufacture, chocolate and claret ad libitum, Miss Hope by no means forgot Mr. Black’s commercial scheme, and the efforts she felt confident he was making to induce Arthur to embark in it with him.
A woman sharp and clever enough in her generation, she was yet no match, either in sharpness or cleverness, for Mr. Black. ”

“ When the back has become used to the pack, and the world’s collar has ceased to gall, the horse, let it be ever so old, will amble along the familiar road, without whip or spur to urge him on. It is the colts who turn aside, who long for the idle days and the green pastures, for the meadows where the holiday-folks are making merry, and the silvery streams flowing through the midst. ”

“ Or it is a lottery, and the people come up to draw. Only a doll, only an idiot, a shrew, a tyrant, a faithless husband, a coquettish wife, a plausible pretender: a woman all paint and padding, all affectation and extravagance,—a man polished enough in his manners, yet coarse and repulsive in the ordinary course of every-day domestic life! ”

“ No more gallops for Lally on any one’s shoulder—no more charming excursions in Ned’s wheelbarrow—no more clambering up ladders, and lofty thrones on the top of haystacks and corn-ricks—no more playing at hide-and-seek in the hollow—no more running after the ducks, and shrill laughter at seeing them take to the water in order to escape the pursuit of their tiny persecutor—no more searchings after hens that had stolen 275away to lay—no more of these old happinesses for Lally. ”

“ The man or woman who enjoys one pleasure keenly is not likely to be insensible to another; and therefore, although Heather’s first love was her last, still she made herself very contented in London—was amused with the excitement and the variety that surrounded her; went to concerts and theatres with all the pleasure a young girl might have evinced, and conducted herself, on the whole, not merely to the satisfaction of her husband, but also to that of Mr. Black. ”

“ It is difficult for a man, such as Arthur Dudley, exactly to realise the fact that lending his name may eventually prove the hardest day’s work he ever did in his life; in truth, it is a fact difficult for any one unacquainted with business, to understand theoretically. ”

“ Then Alick looked up, but his eyes fell under Heather’s scrutiny.
“Alick, tell me this instant what is the matter,” she said. In a moment her fancy conjured up all sorts of horrors—her husband was dead, there had been a railway collision, perhaps. Thought is sometimes as quick in our waking moments as in our dreams; and her imagination flew to him over all the miles that intervened between them. “You have heard bad news,” she went on. “Is it about Arthur; is he ill?” ”

“ If work were not to them prayer, it was, at all events, pleasure. It would have been a weary 52life to those lads, lounging about the Hollow, taking purposeless walks, rising in the morning to do nothing, going to bed at night after having performed no task, executed no duty; but, as matters stood, each season brought its labours with it to them. They loved the place, and they loved Heather, and they loved work.
What need is there to say more? because of all these reasons, Berrie Down looked the Berrie Down we have visited. ”

“ Dudley’s mind.
Outside of lunatic asylums, amongst the decorous and unexcitable people to be met with in society, or when we take our walks abroad, we are told, by those who profess to know their fellow-creatures thoroughly, that such impulsive, devoted, unselfish creatures exist; but Heather’s imagination never soared to such heights of passionate self-sacrifice.
They were married, and the time for even thinking of parting with Arthur being past for ever, all she could do was to try to make him as happy as possible. ”