The Last of the Mortimers

“Well, of course, I am very angry,” said I; “but I can’t say I agree with your godmamma either—it’s pretty enough for that matter.”

“Oh, please, don’t take any trouble about my feelings. I never meant it to be pretty,” said little Sara, quite furious.

“Nice hair is very much in a dark person’s favour. It helps the complexion and harmonises,” said Sarah, who kept always looking at the child in her smiling aggravating way. “People will soon notice the want of it in you, my dear. They will say you are very much gone off in your looks. It’s a pity you were so rash. It does make you a sad fright, whatever Milly says.”

Now, only imagine how little Sara was to bear all this, spoken just in Sarah’s whisper, which made everybody, even Ellis, who was waiting, listen close to hear what she said. It was very seldom she said so many words in one day, not to say at one speaking. She began to eat her soup when she had done her pleasant remarks. And surely I never did remark before how odd the s’s sounded in her poor lost voice. Somehow they seemed to go hissing round the table, as if every word had an s in it. It was a round table, and not very large. Sarah never would do any carving, and I got tired of always doing it. So Ellis managed for us now on the sideboard, knowing foreign ways a little, and a small table suited us best.

“Ah, my dear lady, I wish you’d take her in hand,” said Mr. Cresswell (dear, dear! it is inconceivable how injudicious some people are!); “she’s too many for me.”

“My opinion is,” said I, breaking in as well as I could, seeing that poor little Sara must come to an explosion if they kept it up, “that when a gentleman comes to visit two single ladies, he should let us know what’s going on in the world. Have you never a new curate at St. John’s to tell us of, and are all the officers just exactly as they used to be? You may all be very superior, you wise people. But I do love gossip, I am free to acknowledge. I heard your rector preached in his surplice last Sunday. How did you Evangelicals take that, Mr. Cresswell, eh? For my part, I can’t see where’s the harm in a surplice as you Low Church people do.”

“You and I will never agree in that, Miss Milly,” said Mr. Cresswell; “though, indeed, if Dr. Roberts came into the pulpit in white, I’ve my own idea as to how you’d take it. However, not to speak of surplices, the red-coats are going, I hear. We’re to have a change. The Chestnuts are coming up from Scotland, and our men are ordered to the West Indies. The Colonel doesn’t like it a bit. It’s better for him in one way, but he’s getting to like a steady friendly little society, and not to care for moving. He’s getting up in years, like the rest of us, is the Colonel. This will tell on him, you’ll see.”

“Well, to be sure, when a man’s old, he ought to retire,” said I; “there are always plenty to take his place.”

“Ah, it’s easy to talk,” said Mr. Cresswell. “It’s all very well for us to retire that have made money; but a man that has only his pay, what is he to do? He has got that poor little widow-daughter of his to keep, and Fred is very unsettled, I’m afraid, and little comfort to his father. There’s a deal of difference, Miss Milly, between full-pay and half-pay. He’d have to cut down his living one half if he retired.”

“That’s just exactly what I quarrel with in these grand times of ours,” said I; “what’s the harm of cutting down one’s living one half? My own opinion is, I’d respect a man very much that did it. Great people can do it somehow. I wish you luxurious middle-class people would learn the way. But then you don’t stand by each other when you fall into poverty. You drop your friend when he can’t ask you to dinner. You are good to his children, and patronise them, and forget they were just the same as yours a little while ago. I don’t think we’ll ever come to any good in this country till we get back to knowing how to be poor.”

“My dear lady, England never was in such splendid condition,” said Mr. Cresswell, with a smile at my ignorance. “If we’ve forgotten how to save, we’ve learned how to grow rich.”

“I know all about England,” said I; “we read the Times; don’t you tell me. I’m anything but easy about England. Making money is no substitute in the world for saving it. I tell you, the world won’t be what I call right till a gentleman may be as poor as God pleases, without being ashamed of it; and have the heart to cut down his living one-half too.”

“Well, well Miss Milly, ladies are always optimists,” said Mr. Cresswell; “but I shouldn’t like to be poor myself, nor see Sara tried with economics. She don’t understand anything about them, that’s sure.”

“The more’s the pity. What if she should marry a poor man?” said I.

“She shan’t marry a poor man, my dear lady,” said Mr. Cresswell.

Upon which Sara lighted up. I knew she would. The dear child would do anything out of contradiction.

“Rather a poor one than a rich one, papa,” cried Sara, with a little start of opposition. “Godmamma is always quite right. It’s shocking how everybody worships rich people. If we were to live in a little cottage, now, and make a dozen poor people comfortable! instead of always living in that dull old house, and having the same chairs and tables, and looking at exactly the same things every day. Godmamma! I do so want my room fresh papered. I know every tint of that pattern, till it makes me quite ill to look at it. Wouldn’t it be a thousand times more reasonable and like a Christian, if papa would stop giving stupid dinners, and taking me to stupid parties, and divide all his money with, say, a dozen poor families, and live in a sweet country cottage? It isn’t enough for us, you know, to make us great people. But it would be quite enough to give us all plenty to live upon, the dozen others and ourselves as well. Don’t you think it would be a great deal more like what a man should do, than keeping all one’s money to one’s self, like papa?”

Little Sara grew quite earnest, and her eyes sparkled as she spoke. Her father laughed inwardly under his breath, and thought it just one of her vagaries. She divide all her money with her neighbours, the extravagant little puss in velvet! But don’t suppose Sara was shamming. She was as thoughtless and as prodigal as ever a child was who knew no better. But for all that, she could have done it. She could have found out how to do it. She meant what she said.

Chapter VII

“BUT you are a very foolish, thoughtless, provoking little puss; there can’t be any mistake about it,” said I.

“Nothing of the sort, godmamma,” said Sara, “such a quantity of time was always taken up with that hair of mine; it had to be brushed out at night, however sleepy I was, and it had to be done I don’t know how many times a day. Think of wasting hours of one’s time upon one’s hair!”

“But, my dear child, you have too much time on your hands. Do you ever do anything in the world, you velvet kitten,” said I.

“If it was anybody else but you, I should be angry, godmamma,” said Sara; “but, indeed, I have tried a quantity of things. As for working, you know I won’t work—I tell everybody so plainly. What’s the good of it? I hate crochet and cushions and footstools. If I had some little children to keep all tidy, there would be some good in it; or if papa was poor I might mend his stockings—but I won’t work now, whatever anybody says.”

“I don’t see any reason why you should not keep some little children tidy, or mend papa’s stockings either, if you would like it,” said I.

“If I would like it!” cried Sara, in high wrath and indignation, “as if that was why I should do it! I don’t think there can be anything more dreadful in life than always having to do just what one likes. Now, look here, godmamma; suppose I was to mend papa’s stockings because I liked it,—oh, how Mary would giggle and laugh and rejoice over me! She has to do it, and doesn’t like it a bit, you may be sure. And suppose I were making frocks for poor children, like the Dorcas society, wouldn’t all the sensible people be on me to say how very much better it would be to have poor women make them and pay them for their work? I could only do what it’s other people’s business to do. I have got no business. The best thing wanted of me is just to sit idle from morning to night and read novels; and nobody understands me either, not even my dear old godmamma, which is hardest of all.”

“But, Sara, if you chose, you could do good; the best thing of all to do—you could–”

“Oh stop, stop, godmamma! I can’t do good. I don’t want to do good. I hate going about and talking to people; and besides, they are all, every one of them,” said Sara, with tears, half of vexation and half of sorrow, sparkling in her eyes, “a great deal better than me.”

I had not a single word to say against this; for indeed, though I said it, because of course it was the right thing to say, I can’t undertake, upon my honour, that I thought a spoiled child like Sara Cresswell was the kind of creature to be much comfort to poor men or poor women labouring hard in the sorrows of this life.

“I went once with Miss Fielding from the Rectory. There was one house,” said Sara, speaking low and getting red, “where they hadn’t so much to live on for the whole year through as papa had to pay for my dressmaker’s bill. He had just been worrying me about it that morning, so I remember. But they weren’t miserable! no more than you are, godmamma! not one half, nor a quarter, nor a hundredth part so miserable as I am! And the woman looked so cheerful and right with the baby in her arms, and all the cleaning to do—I cried and ran off home when I got out of that house. I was ashamed, just dead ashamed, godmamma, and nothing else.—Doing good!—oh!—I think if I were the little girl, coming in to hold the baby, and help to clean, I might get some good myself. But then nobody will understand me whatever I say. I don’t want to invent things to ‘employ my time.’ Employing one’s time is about as bad as improving one’s mind. I want to have something real to do, something that has to be done and nobody but me to do it; and I don’t mind in the least whether I should like it or not.”

“Well, dear,” said I, “you’re not nineteen yet; plenty of time. I dare say you’ll have your hard work some day or other, and won’t like it any more than the rest of us. Have patience, it will all come in time.”

“Then, I suppose,” said Sara, with a little toss of her provoking little head, “I had better just go to sleep till that time comes.”

“Well, my love, papa would save a good deal, no doubt, if there were no dressmaker’s bills. You inconsistent little witch! Here you tell me how disgusted you are with being a rich man’s daughter and having nothing to do, yet you cut off your hair to save time, and go on quite composedly spending as much as would keep a poor family—and more than one poor family, I suspect—on your dressmaker’s bill. Little Sara, what do you mean?”

“The two things have no connection,” said Sara, tossing her head again; “I never pretended that I wanted to save papa’s money. What’s the good of it? I like pretty things to wear, and I don’t care the very least in the world how much money papa has in the bank, or wherever he keeps it. He told me once it was my own means I was wasting, for, of course, it would be all mine when he died,” she went on, her eyes twinkling with proud tears and wounded feeling; “as if that made any difference! But I’ll tell you what, godmamma. If he was to portion out all the money to ourselves and so many other people, just enough to live upon, you’d see how happy I should be in muslin frocks. I know I should! and keep everything so snug and nice at home.”

“Oh, you deluded little child!” said I; “don’t you know there’s ever so much nasty work to do, before everything can be nice as we always have it? Should you like to be a housemaid with your little velvet paws, you foolish little kitten? You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“But I do, though—and I could scratch too,” said the wild little puss, with a glance out of her black eyes which confounded me. I thought the child had gone out of her wits altogether. No wonder her poor father called her contrairy, poor hapless man.

This conversation took place after dinner, when we two went back to the drawing-room. Mr. Cresswell had returned to Chester in his brougham, and Sarah had gone out all by herself for her drive. Perhaps little Sara, after being so aggravated at dinner, would not have gone with my sister even had she been asked; but her godmamma did not ask her. Dear, dear, what a very strange world this is! Poor Sarah chose to go out alone, driving drearily through the winterly trees and hedges; she chose always to turn aside from the village, which might have been a little cheerful, and she never dreamt of calling anywhere, poor soul! I have lived a quiet life enough, but I could not get on without a smile here and a word there, and the sight of my fellow-creatures at least. However, I have no call to censure neighbours, much less my sister. This is how Sara Cresswell and I had time for our long conversation. I broke it off short now, thinking it was about time for Sarah to come in.

“Now little Sara,” said I, “we’ll drop the question what you’re to do as a general question just now; but your godmamma will be in directly. What shall you do while you’re here? Should you like to come and set my papers straight? It’s nice, tiresome, sickening work. It always gives me a headache, but I can’t trust a servant to do it. I think it’s the very work for you.”

“But, dear godmamma, here’s a novel,” said Sara, who was sunk deep in an easy-chair, and had not the very slightest intention of obeying me, “just the very one I wanted, and I see by the first chapter that Emily is my own very favourite heroine. I’ll do it to-morrow, please—to-morrow morning, not to-day.”

“But it must be done to-day.”

“Oh, must! why must? You have only to do what you please—you are not obliged to keep time like a dressmaker or a clerk,” said Sara, reading all the while.

“Oh, you child!” said I; “suppose papa’s dinner was waiting, or his stockings to mend, would you let them stand till you had finished your novel? Oh, you deluded little thing, is that the good workwoman you would be?”

Before I had finished speaking Sara had started like a little sprite out of her chair, tossed the novel into the corner of a distant sofa, and went off like the wind to the library, where I did my business and kept my papers. I had to hurry after her as quickly as I could. A pretty job she would have made of it, had she done it alone!

Chapter VIII

IF there is one thing I dislike more than another, it is the housemaid, or even Ellis, meddling with my papers. I don’t scold a great deal, in a general way, but I will allow that I don’t spare any of them when they flutter my accounts and receipts about in setting things to rights. So in the course of nature the things get dusty; and I quite expected to see poor little Sara grow pale and give in before she was half through the year’s accounts. But nobody knows the spirit that is in that child. After she had once roused herself to do it, she held at it without an idea of yielding. I saw her look now and again at her little toys of hands, but I took no notice; and on she went at the papers manfully, putting them in as regular order as I could have done myself. It was not such a very important business after all, but still it’s a comfort to see a person set to anything with a will, especially a little spoilt wilful creature that never had anything to do but her own pleasure all her life.

Nearly an hour after we had come into the library somebody came with a gentle knock to the door; thinking it was Ellis, I said, “Come in,” without looking up, waiting for him to speak. But while I sat quietly going on with my business, with Sara close by rustling her papers, I was quite startled and shaken all at once to hear a voice close by me which I did not hear half a dozen times in a twelvemonth, the voice of Carson, Sarah’s maid.

“Bless me, what’s the matter?” I said, looking up at the sound, being really too much startled to notice what she said.

“Nothing, I hope, ma’am,” said Carson, who was very precise and particular. “But my missis is not come in, ma’am, from her drive, and I thought I’d make bold to ask if she was going anywhere as I didn’t know?”

“Sarah not come back from her drive?” said I, looking at my watch; “why, we’ve had lights this half hour, Carson; it’s getting towards five o’clock.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Carson, briefly, not allowing for my surprise, “that is just what I said.”

This pulled me up a little, as you may suppose; but I was seriously put out about Sarah, when I really saw how the matter stood.