Neighbours on the Green; My Faithful Johnny

‘She has the best possible right to it, mamma—he left it to her,’ said Ellen anxiously, over her shoulder. ‘Oh, why did you come here to vex us, when we were not interfering with you? I beg of you not to trouble my mother any more, but go away.’

Then there was a moment of hesitation. Mrs. Merridew rose slowly from her knees. She turned round to me, not looking me in the face. She said, in a hoarse voice, ‘Let us go,’ and made a step towards the door. She was shaking as if she had a fever; but she was glad. Was that possible? She had delivered her conscience—and now might not she go and keep the money which would make her children happy? But she could not look me in the face. She moved as slowly as a funeral. And yet she would have flown, if she could, to get safely away.

‘Janet, my dear,’ said the old lady, ‘come back, and let us end our talk.’

Mrs. Merridew stopped short, with a start, as if a shot had arrested her. This time she looked me full in the face. Her momentary hope was over, and now she felt for the first time the poignancy of the sacrifice which it had been her own will to make.

‘Come back, Janet,’ said Mrs. Babington. ‘As you say, it is not your money. Nothing could make it your money. You were always right-feeling when you were not aggravated. I am much obliged to you, my dear. Come and sit down here, and tell me all about yourself. Now poor John is dead,’ she went on, falling suddenly into soft weeping, like a child, ‘we ought to be friends. To think he should die before me, and I should be heir to my own boy—isn’t it sad? And such a fine young fellow as he was! You remember when he came back from the University? What a nice colour he had! And always so straight and slim, like a rush. All my children have a good carriage. You have lost your figure, Janet; and you used to have a nice little figure. When a girl is so round and plump, she is apt to get stout as she gets older. Look at Ellen, how nice she is. But then, to be sure, children make a difference. Sit down by me here, and tell me how many you have. And, Ellen, send word to the house-agent, and tell him we don’t want now to let the house; and tell Parker to get luncheon ready a little earlier. You must want something, if you have come from the country. Where are you living now? and how is Charles Merridew? Dear, dear, to think I should not have seen either of you for nearly twenty years!’

‘But, mamma, surely, surely,’ cried Ellen Babington, ‘you don’t think things can be settled like this?’

‘Don’t speak nonsense, Ellen; everything is settled,’ said the old lady. ‘You know I always had the greatest confidence in Janet’s good sense. Now, my dear, hold your tongue. A girl like you has no right to meddle. I always manage my own business. Go and look after luncheon—that is your affair.’

I do not remember ever to have seen a more curious group in my life. There was the old lady in the centre, quite calm, and sweet, and pleasant. A tear was still lingering on her eyelash; but it represented nothing more than a child’s transitory grief, and underneath there was nothing but smiles, and satisfaction, and content. She looked so pretty, so pleased, so glad to find that her comforts were not to be impaired, and yet took it all so lightly, as a matter of course, as completely unconscious of the struggle going on in the mind of her benefactress as if she had been a creature from a different world. As for Mrs. Merridew, she stood speechless, choked by feelings that were too bitter and conflicting for words. I am sure that all the advantages this money could have procured for her children were surging up before her as she stood and listened. She held her hands helplessly half stretched out, as if something had been taken out of them. Her eyes were blank with thinking, seeing nothing that we saw, but a whole world of the invisible. Her breast heaved with a breath half drawn, which seemed suspended half way, as if dismay and disappointment hindered its completion. It was all over then—her sacrifice made and accepted, and no more about it; and herself sent back to the monotonous struggle of life. On the other side of the pretty old lady stood Ellen Babington, pale and miserable, struggling with shame and pride, casting sudden glances at Mrs. Merridew, and then appealing looks at me, who had nothing to do with it.

‘Tell her, oh, tell her it can’t be!’ she cried at last, coming to me. ‘Tell her the lawyers will not permit it. It cannot be.’

And Mrs. Merridew, too, gave me one pitiful look—not repenting, but yet– Then she went forward, and laid her hand upon the old lady’s hand, which was like ivory, with all the veins delicately carved upon it.

‘Say, God bless us, at least. Say, “God bless you and your children,” once before I go.’

‘To be sure,’ said the old lady cheerfully. ‘God bless you, my dear, and all the children. Matilda has no children, you know. I should like to see them, if you think it would not be too much for me. But you are not going, Janet, when it is the first time we have met for nearly twenty years?’

‘I must go,’ said Mrs. Merridew.

She could not trust herself to speak, I could see. She put down her face and kissed the ivory hand, and then she turned and went past me to the door, without another word. I think she had forgotten my very existence. When she had reached the door she turned round suddenly, and fixed her eyes upon Ellen. She was going away, having given them back their living, without so much acknowledgment as if she had brought a nosegay. There was in her look a mute remonstrance and appeal and protest. Ellen Babington trembled all over; her lips quivered as if with words which pride or pain would not permit her to say; but she held, with both hands immovable, to the back of her mother’s chair, who, for her part, was kissing her hand to the departing visitor. ‘Good-bye; come and see us soon again,’ the old lady was saying cheerfully. And Ellen gazed, and trembled, and said nothing. Thus this strangest of visits came to an end.

She had forgotten me, as I thought; but when I came to her side and my arm was within her reach, she clutched at it and tottered so that it was all I could do to support her. I was very thankful to get her into the cab, for I thought she would have fainted on the way. But yet she roused herself when I told the man to drive back to the station.

‘We must go to the lawyer’s first,’ she said; and then we turned and drove through the busy London streets, towards the City. The clerks looked nearly baked in the office when we reached it, and the crowd crowded on, indiscriminate and monotonous. One feels one has no right to go to such a place and take any of the air away, of which they have so little. And to think of the sweet air blowing over our lawns and lanes, and all the unoccupied, silent, shady places we had left behind us! Such vain thoughts were not in Mrs. Merridew’s head. She was turning over and over instead a very different kind of vision. She was counting up all she had sacrificed, and how little she had got by it; and yet was going to complete the sacrifice, unmoved even by her thoughts.

I confess I was surprised at the tone she took with the lawyer. She said ‘Mr. Merridew and myself’ with a composure which made me, who knew Mr. Merridew had no hand in it, absolutely speechless. The lawyer remonstrated as he was in duty bound, and spoke about his client’s will; but Mrs. Merridew made very little account of the will. She quoted her husband with a confidence so assured that even I, though I knew better, began to be persuaded that she had communicated with him. And thus the business was finally settled. She had recovered herself by the time we got into the cab again. It is true that her face was worn and livid with the exertions of the day, but still, pale and weary as she was, she was herself.

‘But, my dear,’ I said, ‘you quoted Mr. Merridew, as if he knew all about it; and what if he should not approve?’

‘You must not think I have no confidence in my husband,’ she said quickly; ‘far from that. Perhaps he would not see as I do now. He would think of our own wants first. But if it comes to his ears afterwards, Charles is not the man to disown his wife’s actions. Oh, no, no; we have gone through a great deal together, and he would no more bring shame upon me, as if I acted when I had no right to act—than—I would bring shame upon him; and I think that is as much as could be said.’

And then we made our way back to the station; but she said nothing more till we got into the railway-carriage, which was not quite so noisy as our cab.

‘It would have been such a thing for us,’ she said then, half to herself. ‘Poor Charles! Oh, if I could but have said to him, “Don’t be so anxious; here is so much a year for the children.” And Jack should have gone to the University. And there would have been Will’s premium at once’ (i.e., to Mr. Willoughby, the engineer). ‘The only thing that I am glad of is that they don’t know. And then Janet; she breaks my heart when she talks. It is so bad for her, knowing the Fortises and all those girls who have everything that heart can desire. I never had that to worry me when I was young. I was only the governess. Janet’s talk will be the worst of all. I could have made the house so nice too, and everything. Well!—but then I never should have had a moment’s peace.’

‘You don’t regret?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Mrs. Merridew with a long sigh. And then, ‘Do you think I have been a traitor to the children?’ she cried suddenly, ‘taking away their money from them in the dark? Would Charles think me a traitor, as they do? Is it always to be my part?—always to be my part?’

‘No, no,’ I said, soothing her as best I could; but I was very glad to find my pony-carriage at the station, and to drive her home to my house and give her some tea, and strengthen her for her duties. Thus poor John Babington’s fortune was disposed of, and no one was the wiser, except, indeed, the old lady and her daughter, who were not likely to talk much on the subject. And Mrs. Merridew walked calmly across to her house in the dusk as if this strange episode of agitation and passion had been nothing more solid than a dream.

CHAPTER III

We did not meet again for some days after this, and next time I saw her, which was on Sunday at church with her children, it seemed impossible to me to believe in the reality of the strange scene we had so recently passed through together. The calm curtain of ordinary decorums and ordinary friendliness had risen for a moment from Mrs. Merridew’s unexcited existence, revealing a woman distracted by a primitive sense of justice, rending her own soul, as it were, in sunder, and doing, in spite of herself and all her best instincts, what she felt was right. That she should have any existence separate from her children had never occurred to anybody before. Yet, for one day, I had seen her resist and ignore the claims of her children, and act like an independent being. When I saw her again she was once more the mother and nothing more, casting her eyes over her little flock, cognizant, one could see, of the perfection or imperfection of every fold and line in their dresses, keeping her attention upon each, from little Matty, who was restless and could not be kept quiet, up to Janet, who sat demure, and already caught the eye of visitors as one of the prettiest girls of Dinglefield. Mrs. Merridew remarked all with a vigilant mother’s eye, and as I gazed across at her in her pew, it was all but impossible for me to believe that this was the same woman who had clung so convulsively to my arm, whose face had been so worn and hollowed out with suffering. How could it be the same woman? She who had suffered poor John Babington to love her—and then had cast him off, and married her friend’s lover instead; who had established so firm an empire over a man’s heart, that, after twenty years, he had remembered her still with such intensity of feeling. How Janet would have opened her big eyes had it been suggested to her that her mother could have any power over men’s hearts; or, indeed, could be occupied with anything more touching or important than her children’s frocks or her butcher’s bills! I fear I did not pay much attention to the service that morning. I could not but gaze at them, and wonder whether, for instance, Mr. Merridew himself, who had come back from circuit, and was seated respectably with his family in church, yawning discreetly over Mr. Damerel’s sermon, remembered anything at all, for his part, of Matilda Babington or her brother. Probably he preferred to ignore the subject altogether—or, perhaps, would laugh with a sense of gratified vanity that there had been ‘a row,’ when the transference of his affections was discovered. And there she sat by his side, who had—had she betrayed his confidence? was she untrue to him in being this time true to her friends? The question bewildered me so that my mind went groping about it and about it. Once, I fear, she had been false to those whose bread she ate, and chosen love instead of friendship. Now was she false to the nearest of ties, the closest of all relationships, sitting calmly there beside him with a secret in her mind of which he knew nothing? ‘Falsely true!’—was that what the woman was who looked to the outside world a mere pattern of all domestic virtues, without any special interest about her, a wife devoted to her husband’s interest, a mother wrapped up, as people say, in her children? I could not make up my mind what to think.

‘I hope you got through your business comfortably,’ Mrs. Spencer said to me as we walked home from church.

‘With Mrs. Merridew’s assistance,’ said Lady Isabella, who was rather satirical. And the Merridews heard their own name, and stopped to join in the conversation.

‘What is that about my wife?’ he said. ‘Did Mrs. Mulgrave have Mrs. Merridew’s assistance about something? I hope it was only shopping. When you have business you should consult me. She is a goose, and knows nothing about it.’

‘I don’t think she is a goose,’ said I.

‘No, perhaps not in her own way,’ said the serene husband, laughing; ‘but every woman is a goose about business—I beg your pardon, ladies, but I assure you I mean it as a compliment. I hate a woman of business. Shopping is quite a different matter,’ he added, and laughed. Good heavens! if he had only known what a fool he looked, beside the silent woman, who gave me a little warning glance and coloured a little, and turned away her head to speak to little Matty, who was clinging to her skirts. A perfect mother! thinking more (you would have said) of Matty’s little frills and Janet’s bonnet-strings than of anything else in life.

And that was all about it. The summer went on and turned to autumn and to winter and to spring again, with that serene progression of nature which nothing obstructs; and the children grew, and the Merridews were as poor as ever, managing more or less to make both ends meet, but always just a little short somewhere, with their servants chosen on the same principle of supplementing each other’s imperfect service as that which Janet had announced to me. For one thing, they kept their servants a long time, which I have noticed is characteristic of households not very rich nor very ‘particular.’ When you allow such pleas to tell in favour of an imperfect housemaid as that she is good to the children, or does not mind helping the cook, there is no reason why Mary, if she does not marry in the meantime, should not stay with you a hundred years. And the Merridews’ servants accordingly stayed, and looked very friendly at you when you went to call, and did their work not very well, with much supervision and exasperation (respectively) on the part of the mother and daughter. But the family was no poorer, though it was no richer. The only evidence of our expedition to town which I could note was, that it had produced a new pucker on Mrs. Merridew’s brow. She had looked sufficiently anxious by times before, but the new pucker had something more than anxiety in it. There was a sense of something better that might have been; a sense of something lost—a suspicion of bitterness. How all this could be expressed by one line on a smooth white forehead I cannot explain; but to me it was so.

Now and then, too, a chance allusion would be made which recalled what had happened still more plainly. For instance, I chanced to be calling one afternoon, when Mr. Merridew came home earlier than usual from town. We were sitting over our five-o’clock tea, with a few of the children scrambling about the floor and Janet working in the corner. He took up the ordinary position of a man who has just come home, with his back to the fire, and regarded us with that benevolent contempt which men generally think it right to exhibit for women over their tea; and everything was so ordinary and pleasant, that I for one was taken entirely by surprise, and nearly let fall the cup in my hand when he spoke.

‘I don’t know whether you saw John Babington’s death in the Times three or four months ago, Janet,’ he said, ‘did you? Why did you never mention it? It is odd that I should not have heard. I met Ellen to-day coming out of the Amyotts, where I lunched, in such prodigious mourning that I was quite startled. All the world might have been dead to look at her. And do you know she gave me a look as if she would have spoken. All that is so long past that it’s ridiculous keeping up malice. I wish you would call next time you are in town to ask for the old lady. Poor John’s death must have been a sad loss to them. I hear there was some fear that he had left his property away from his mother and sister. But it turned out a false report.’

I did not dare to look at Mrs. Merridew to see how she bore it; but her voice replied quite calmly without any break, as if the conversation was on the most ordinary subject—

‘Where did you manage to get so much news?’

‘Oh, from the Amyotts,’ he said, ‘who knew all about it. Matilda, you know, poor girl’ (with that half laugh of odious masculine vanity which I knew in my heart he would be guilty of), ‘married a cousin of Amyott’s, and is getting on very well, they say. But think over my suggestion, Janet. I think at this distance of time it would be graceful on your part to go and call.’

‘I cannot think they would like to see me now,’ she said in a low voice. Then I ventured to look at her. She was seated in an angular, rigid way, with her shoulders and elbows squared to her work, and the corners of her mouth pursed up, which would have given to any cursory observer the same impression it did to her husband.

‘How hard you women are!’ he said. ‘Trust you for never forgiving or forgetting. Poor old lady, I should have thought anybody would have pitied her. But however it is none of my business. As for Ellen, she is a very handsome woman, though she is not so young as she once was. I should not wonder if she were to make a good marriage even now. Is it possible, Janet, after being so fond of her—or pretending to be, how can I tell?—that you would not like to say a kind word to Ellen now?’

‘She would not think it kind from me,’ said Mrs. Merridew, still rigid, never raising her eyes from her work.

‘I think she would: but at all events you might try,’ he said. All her answer was to shake her head, and he went away to his dressing-room shrugging his shoulders and nodding his head in bewildered comments to himself on what he considered the hard-heartedness of woman. As for me, I kept looking at her with sympathetic eyes, thinking that at least she would give herself the comfort of a confidential glance. But she did not. It seemed that she was determined to ignore the whole matter, even to me.

‘I wish papa would take as much interest in us poor girls at home as he does in people that don’t belong to him,’ said Janet. ‘Mamma, I never can piece this to make it long enough. It may do for Marian’ (who was her next sister), ‘but it will never do for me.’

‘You are so easily discouraged,’ said Mrs. Merridew. ‘Let me look at it. You girls are always making difficulties. Under the flounce your piecing, as you call it, will never be seen. Those flounces,’ she added, with a little laugh, which I knew was hysterical, ‘are blessings to poor folks.’

‘I am sure I don’t think there is anything to laugh at,’ said poor Janet, almost crying: ‘when you think of Nelly Fortis and all the other girls, with their nice dresses all new and fresh from the dressmaker’s, and no trouble; while I have only mamma’s old gown, that she wore when she was twenty, to turn, and patch, and piece—and not long enough after all!’

‘Then you should not grow so,’ said her mother, ‘and you ought to be thankful that the old fashion has come in again, and my old gown can be of use.’ But as she spoke she turned round and gave me a look. The tears were in her eyes, and that pucker, oh, so deeply marked, in her forehead. I felt she would have sobbed had she dared. And then before my eyes, as, I am sure, before hers, there glided a vision of Ellen Babington in her profound mourning, rustling past Mr. Merridew on the stairs, with heaps of costly crape, no doubt, and that rich black silk with which people console themselves in their first mourning. How could they take it all without a word? The after-pang that comes almost inevitably at the back of a sacrifice, was tearing Mrs. Merridew’s heart. I felt it go through my own, and so I knew. She had done it nobly, but she could not forget that she had done it. Does one ever forget?

And then as I went home I fell into a maze again. Had she a right to do it? To sit at table with that unsuspicious man, and put her arm in his, and be at his side continually, and all the time be false to him? Falsely true! I could not get the words out of my mind.

CHAPTER IV

I do not now remember how long it was before I saw in the Times the intimation of old Mrs. Babington’s death. I think it must have been about two years: for Janet was eighteen, and less discontented with things in general, besides being a great deal more contented than either her friends or his desired, with the civilities of young Bischam from the Priory, who was always coming over to see his aunt, and always throwing himself in the girl’s way. He had nothing except his commission and a hundred and fifty a year which his father allowed him, and she had nothing at all; and, naturally, they took to each other. It is this that makes me recollect what year it was. We had never referred to the matter in our frequent talks, Mrs. Merridew and I. But after the intimation in the Times, she herself broke the silence. She came to me the very next day. ‘Did you see it in the papers?’ she asked, plunging without preface into the heart of the subject: and I could not pretend not to understand.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I saw it;’ and then stopped short, not knowing what to say.

She had got a worn-out look in these two years, such as all the previous years in which I had known her had not given. The pucker was more developed on her forehead; she was less patient and more easily fretted. She had grown thin, and something of a sharp tone had come into her soft, motherly voice. By times she would be almost querulous; and nobody but myself knew in the least whence the drop of gall came that had so suddenly shown itself in her nature. She had fretted under her secret, and over her sacrifice—the sacrifice which had never been taken any notice of, but had been calmly accepted as a right. Now she came to me half wild, with the look of a creature driven to bay.