CHAPTER XXXVI.

VISITORS AT MOAT GRANGE.

Autumn weather lay on the world and on Netherleigh.

Things were coming to a revolt. Never were poor tenant-farmers so ground down and oppressed as those on the estate of Moat Grange. Rents were raised, fines imposed, expenses, properly belonging to landlords, refused to be paid or allowed for. Oscar Dalrymple was ruling with a hand of iron, hard and cruel.

At least, Oscar had the credit of it. In point of fact, he was perhaps a little ashamed of the existing state of things, and would have somewhat altered it if he could. A year ago Oscar had let the whole estate to a sort of agent, a man named Pinnett, and Pinnett was playing Old Gooseberry with everything.

That was the expressive phrase, whatever it might mean, the indignant people used. They refused to lay the blame on Pinnett, utterly refused to recognize him in the matter; arguing, perhaps rightly, that unless he had Mr. Dalrymple's sanction to harsh measures, he could not exercise them, and that Mr. Dalrymple was, therefore, alone to blame. Most likely Oscar had no resource but to sanction it all, tacitly at any rate.

As to the Grange itself, the mansion, it was now the dreariest of the dreary. It had not been let with the estate, and Oscar and his wife still lived in it. Two maids were kept, and a man for outdoor work--the garden and the poultry. Most of the rooms were locked up. Selina would unlock the doors sometimes and open the shutters; and pace about the lonely floors, and wish she had not been guilty of the folly which had led to these wretched retrenchments. Things indoors and out were growing worse day by day.

One morning John Lee called at the Grange: a respectable man, whose name you cannot have forgotten. He had rented all his life, and his father before him, under the Dalrymples.

"Sir," he began to Oscar, without circumlocution, "I have come up about that paper which has been sent to me by Jones, your lawyer. It's a notice that next Michaelmas, when my lease will expire, the rent is to be raised."

"Well?" said Mr. Dalrymple.

"A pound an acre. _A pound an acre_," repeated the farmer, with increased emphasis. "Jones must have made a mistake, sir."

"I fancy not. But Jones is not my lawyer, you know; he is Mr. Pinnett's."

"We don't want to have anything to do with Mr. Pinnett, or to hear his name, sir. I have always rented under the Dalrymples; and I hope to do it still, sir, with your leave."

"You know, Lee, that Pinnett has a lease of the whole estate. What he proposes is no doubt fair. Your farm will well bear the increased rent he means to put on it."

"Increased by a pound an acre!" cried the farmer, in his excitement. "No, sir; it won't bear it, for I'll never pay it."

"I am sorry for that, Mr. Lee, because it will leave Pinnett only one alternative: to substitute in its place a notice to quit."

"To quit! to quit the farm!" reiterated Lee, in his astonishment. "Why, it has been my home all my life, sir, and it was my father's before me. I was born on that farm, Mr. Dalrymple, years and years before you ever came into the world, and I mean to die on it. I have spared neither money nor labour to bring it to its present flourishing condition."

"My good sir, I say as you do, that the land is flourishing: sufficiently so to justify the advanced rent Pinnett proposes. Two of you were here yesterday on this same errand--Watkins and Rumford."

"They have spent money on their farms, too, expecting to reap future benefit. You see, we never thought of Mr. Dalrymple's dying young, and----"

"Are you speaking of young Robert Dalrymple?"

"No, no, poor fellow: of his father. Mr. Dalrymple did die young, so to say; you can't call a man under fifty old. His death, and his son's close upon it, brought you, sir, to rule over us, and I am sorry to say your rule's a very hard one."

"It will not be made easier," curtly replied Oscar Dalrymple, who was getting angry. "And I will not detain you longer, Mr. Lee," he added, rising. "Your time is valuable."

"And what is to be my answer, sir?"

"It no longer lies with me to give an answer, Lee, and I must request that you do not refer to me again. Pinnett's answer will no doubt be that you must renew the lease at the additional rent demanded, or else give up the farm."

Farmer Lee swung away in a passion. In turning out of the first field he met two ladies: one young and very pretty, the other getting to look old; her thin features were white and her hair was grey. They were Mrs. Dalrymple and Mary Lynn. Close upon Mrs. Dalrymple's recovery from her accident, which turned out to have been not at all formidable, she caught a violent cold; it laid her up longer than a cold had ever laid her up before, and seemed to have tried her greatly. Mary Lynn had now just come again to Netherleigh to stay a week or two with her.

"Is it you, ma'am!" cried the farmer, touching his hat. "I'm glad to see you out again."

"At one time I thought I never should be out again," she answered; "I am very weak still. And how are you, Mr. Lee?"

"Middling, ma'am. Anything but well just now, in temper." And the farmer touched upon his grievances, spoke of the interview he had just held at the Grange, and of its master's harshness.

"_Is_ it right to us, ma'am?" he wound up with. "_Is_ it just, Miss Lynn?" turning to that young lady. "Ah, if poor young Mr. Robert had but lived! We should have had no oppression then."

Mary turned away her face, blushing almost to tears with unhappy remembrances. Robert! Robert!

"I do believe it will come to a revolt!" said the farmer to Mrs. Dalrymple. "Not with us tenants; you know better than to think that likely, ma'am; but with those people at the cottages. They are getting ripe for it."

"Ay," she answered, in a low, grieved tone. "And the worst of it, Mr. Lee, the worst to me is, that I am powerless for help or remedy."

"We cannot quite think--it is impossible to think or believe, that Mr. Oscar Dalrymple should have put all control out of his power. Therefore, his refusing to interfere with Pinnett seems all the more harsh. You must see that, ma'am."

"I have no comfort, no advice to give," she whispered, putting her hand into Mr. Lee's as she turned away. For Mrs. Dalrymple could not bear to speak of the existing state of things, the trouble that had come of Selina's folly and Oscar's rule.

Yet Oscar was kind to her. Continuously so. In no way would he allow her income, that which he allowed her, to be in the slightest degree diminished. He pinched himself, but he would not pinch poor Mrs. Dalrymple. Over and over again had she wished Reuben to leave her, but Oscar would not hear of it. Neither, for the matter of that, would Reuben. He did not want wages, he said, but he would not desert his mistress in her premature old age, her sickness, and her sorrow. A small maid only was kept in addition to Reuben; and the man had degenerated (as he might have called it but for his loyalty) to little better than a man-of-all-work. He stood behind the ladies now at a respectful distance, having stopped when they stopped.

The grievance alluded to by Mr. Lee, ready to ripen into open revolt, had nothing to do with the tenant-farmers. It was this. In a very favourable position on the estate, as regarded situation, stood a cluster of small dwellings. They were for the most part very poor, some of them little better than huts, but they commanded a lovely view. They were inhabited by labourers employed on the land, and were called the Mill Cottages: a mill, done away with now, having formerly stood close by.

One fine day it had struck the new man, Pinnett--looking about here and there to discover some means of adding to the profits he meant to make off the land--that if these cottages were taken down and handsome dwellings erected in their place, it would be a great improvement, pecuniarily and artistically, for such houses would let directly in this picturesque locality. No sooner thought of than resolved upon. Miles Pinnett was not a man to linger over his plans, and he gave these small tenants notice to quit.

It was rebelled against. Some of the men had been in the cottages as long as Farmer Lee had been in his farm, and to be ordered to leave seemed a terrible hardship. It no doubt increased the difficulty that there were no other small dwellings on the estate the men could go into: all others were already occupied: and, if they left these, they must go to a distance whence they would have a two or three miles' walk to their day's work. And so, encouraged perhaps by the feeling pervading the neighbourhood, of sympathy with them and opposition to Pinnett, the men, one and all, refused to go out. The next step would be ejectment; and it was looked for day by day.

For all this, Oscar Dalrymple suffered in opinion. Pinnett could not go to such lengths, oppress them as he was oppressing, against the will of the owner, Mr. Dalrymple, argued the community, rich and poor. Perhaps he could not. But how it really was, no one knew, or what power Mr. Dalrymple had put out of his own hands, and into Pinnett's, when he leased him the demesne.

Farmer Lee's visit to Moat Grange was paid in the morning. In the afternoon the Grange had another visitor--Lady Adela Netherleigh.

Adela had not lingered long at her mother's in London. After a few weeks' sojourn she came down to Netherleigh Rectory, invited by the Rector and his wife, her sister Mary. They had gone to London for a day, had been struck with compassion at Adela's evident state of mental suffering, and they asked her to return with them for a little change.

"It is not change I want," she had answered, speaking to Lady Mary. "What I want is peace. Perhaps I shall find it with you, Mary, at the Rectory."

Lady Mary Cleveland hesitated. Peace? The word posed her.

"Adela," she said, "we should be very glad to have you, and there is plenty of room for you and Darvy. But, as to peace--I don't know about that. The Rectory is full of children great and small, and I'm afraid it is noisy and bustling from morning till night."

Adela smiled faintly. The peace her heart craved for was not that imparted by the absence of noise. She might feel all the better for having the bustle of children about her; it might draw her at moments out of her own sorrow. But another thought struck her.

"My----" husband, she had been about to say, but changed the words. "Sir Francis is not staying at Court Netherleigh? Is he?"

"No. It is said he means to take up his abode there later; he is not there yet."

"Then I will come to you, Mary. And I will stay with you for months and months if I like it--and you must allow me to contribute towards your housekeeping as Sir Sandy and Harriet did."

Lady Mary winced a little at that, but she did not say no. With all those children--she had two of her own now--and the Rector's moderate income, they could not be rich.

So Adela and Darvy went down with them to Netherleigh. That was in summer, now it was autumn: and, so far as could be seen or judged, the change had not as yet effected much for her. Adela seemed just as before; wan, weary, sick, and sorry.

And yet, there was a change in a certain degree. The bitter rebellion at her fate had partly passed from her mind, and therefore its traces had left her face. The active repining in which her days had been spent was giving place to a sort of hopeless resignation. She strove to accept her punishment, strove to bear it, to be patient and gentle always, hardly ever ceasing day or night to beseech God to blot out the past from the book of the Recording Angel. The sense of shame, entailed by her conduct of long years, had not lifted itself in the least degree; nay, it seemed to grow of a deeper scarlet as time went on. Sometimes she would think if she could trample upon herself and annihilate all power of remembrance, she would do it gladly; but that would not stamp it out of her ever-living soul. Adela had erred; wilfully, cruelly, persistently; and if ever retribution came home to a woman, it surely had come to her.

On this same day, when the sky was blue and the afternoon sun lay on the green fields at Netherleigh, Lady Adela went out, and turned her languid steps towards Moat Grange. Selina had called to see her at the Rectory several times; each time Adela had promised to pay return visits, and had not yet done so. The direct road lay, as the reader may perhaps remember, through the village and past Court Netherleigh. Lingeringly would her eyes look on the house whenever this happened, lingeringly they rested on it now. The home, in which she had spent so many happy days with Aunt Margery, was closed to her for ever. Of all people in the living world, she was the only one debarred from entering it. Very rarely indeed was Sir Francis at Netherleigh. It had been supposed that he meant to take up his abode in it for the autumn months; but this appeared to be a mistake; when he did come it was but for a flying visit of a few hours. Mr. Cleveland privately told his wife that he believed Sir Francis stayed away from the place because Adela was in it.

Selina was in the larger of the two drawing-rooms when Adela reached the Grange. Selina rarely used it now, her husband never, but she had gone into it this afternoon. Opening the shutters and the window, she sat there making herself a lace collar. The time had gone by when she could order these articles of a Madame Damereau, and pay a fabulous price for them.

Adela untied her bonnet strings and took off her gloves as she sat down opposite Selina. Not strong now, the walk had greatly tired her. Selina could but notice how fragile and delicate she looked, as the light from the window fell upon her face. The once rounded cheeks were wasted, their bright colour had faded to the faintest tinge of pink; from the once lustrous eyes shone only sadness.

"Let me get you something, Adela," cried Selina, impulsively. "A cup of tea--I will make it for you directly. Of wine--well, I am not sure, really, that we possess any. I can ask Oscar."

"Not anything, not anything," returned Adela, "I could not take it. Thank you all the same. As to my looks--I look as I always do."

"Ah me," sighed Selina, "it is a weary life. A weary life, Adela, for you and for me."

"If that were all--its weariness--it might be better borne," murmured Adela. "And yet I do try to bear," she added, pushing her pretty brown hair from her aching brow, and for once induced to speak of her troubles to this friend, who had suffered too--though not as she had. "But there is the remorse as well, you see. Oh, how wrong, how foolish, how _wicked_ we were!--at least _I_ was. Do you ever think of our past folly, Selina?--of the ease and happiness we then held in our hands, and flung away?"

"We have paid for it," said Selina. "Yes, I do sometimes think of the past, Adela; and then I wonder at the folly of women. See to what folly has reduced me!--to drag out a dead-alive existence in a semi-prison, for the Grange is no better now, with never a friend to stay with me, or a shilling to spend. And all for the sake of a few fine bonnets and gowns! Would you believe it," she added, laughing, "that the costly things have not half come to an end yet?"

"Just for _that?_" dissented Adela, in her pain, and losing sight of Selina's trouble in her own. "If it had been for nothing more than that!"

"Well, well, we have paid for it, I say. Bitterly and cruelly."

"_I_ have. You have not."

"No?" somewhat indifferently returned Selina, her attention partly given to her lace again, for she was never serious long together. "How do you make that out?"

"You have your husband still. Poverty with him, with one we love, must carry little sting with it. But for me--my whole life is one of never-ending loneliness, without a future, without hope. Do you know what fanciful thought came to me the other night?" she went on, after a pause. "I have all sorts of fanciful ideas when I sit alone in the twilight. I thought that life might be so much happier if God gave us a chance once of beginning it all over again from the first. Just once, when we found out what dreadful mistakes we had been making."

"And we should make the same again, though we began it fifty times over, Adela. Unless we could carry back with us our dearly-bought experience."

Adela sighed. "Yes, I suppose so. God would have so ordered it had it been well for us. He knows best. But there are some women who seem never to make mistakes, who go on their way smoothly and happily."

"Placing themselves under God's guidance, I imagine," returned Selina. "That's what my mother says to me, when she lectures me on the past."

Adela's eyes filled with tears. "Yes, yes," she murmured, meekly, recalling that it was what she had been striving to do for some little time now--to hold on her way, under submission to God.

The conversation turned into other channels, and by-and-by, when Adela was rested, she rose to leave. Selina accompanied her into the hall.

"Won't you just say 'How d'you do' to my husband?" she cried, opening the door of their common sitting-room. "He is here."

Adela made no objection, and followed Selina. Oscar was standing in the bay window, facing the door. And some one else, towering nearly a head above him, was standing at his side.

Sir Francis Netherleigh.

They stood, the husband and wife, face to face. With a faint cry, Adela put up her hands, as if to ward off the sight--as if to bespeak pardon in all humility for herself, for her intrusion--and disappeared again, whiter than death. It was rather an awkward moment for them all. Selina disappeared after her, and shut the door.

"Is Lady Adela ill?" asked Sir Francis of Oscar, the question breaking from him involuntarily in the moment's impulse--for she did, indeed, look fearfully so.

"Ay," replied Oscar, "ill with remembrance. Repentance has made her sick unto death. Remorse has told upon her."

But Sir Francis said no more.

Adela had departed across the fields with the best speed she could command. About half-way home she came upon Mr. Cleveland, seated on a stile and whistling softly.

"Those two young rascals of mine"--alluding to two of his little sons--"seduced me from my study to help fly their kites," he began to Adela. "Here I follow them, to the appointed field, and find them nowhere, little light-headed monkeys! But, my dear, what's the matter with you?" he added, with fatherly kindness, as he remarked her pale, troubled face. "You look alarmed."

"I have just seen my husband," she panted, her breath painfully short. All the old pain that she had been striving to subdue had come back again; the sight of him, whom she now passionately loved, had stirred distressing emotion within her.

"Well?" said Mr. Cleveland.

"Did you know he was at Netherleigh?"

"He came down today."

"He was in the bay-parlour with Oscar, and I went into it. It has agitated me."

"But why should it agitate you?" rejoined the old Rector, who was very matter-of-fact. "It seems to me that you ought to accustom yourself to bear these chance meetings with equanimity, child. You can scarcely expect to go through life without seeing him now and then."

Adela bent her head to the stile and broke into sobs. Mr. Cleveland laid his protecting hand upon her shoulder.

"My dear! my dear! Strive to be calm. Surely a momentary sight of him ought not to put you into this state. Is it that you still dislike him so much?"

"Dislike him!" she exclaimed, the contrast between the word and the truth striking her painfully, and causing her to say more than she would have said. "I am dying for his forgiveness; dying to show him how true is my remorse; dying because I lost him."

The Rector did not quite see what answer to make to this. He held his tongue, and Adela resumed.

"I wish I was a Roman Catholic!"

The good man, evangelical Protestant, felt as if his gray hair were standing on end with surprise. "Oh, hush!" said he. "You don't know what you are saying."

"I do wish it," she sobbed. "I could then go into a convent, and find peace."

"Peace!" echoed Mr. Cleveland. "No, child, don't let your imagination run away with that idea. It is a false one. No woman, entering a convent in the frame of mind you seem to be entertaining, could expect peace, or find it."

"Any way, I should feel more at rest: I should _have_ to bear life then, you know. And, oh, I was trying to do so: I was indeed trying!"

Thoroughly put out, the Rector made no comment. Perhaps would not trust himself to make any.

"I suppose there are no such things as Protestant convents, or sisterhoods," she went on, "that receive poor creatures who have no longer any place in this world?"

"Not to my knowledge," sharply spoke Mr. Cleveland, as he jumped off the stile. "It is time we went home, Adela."

They walked away side by side. Gaining the Rectory--a large, straggling, red-brick building, its old walls covered with time-honoured ivy--Adela ascended to her chamber, and shut herself in with her grief.

How scornfully her husband must despise her!--despise her for her past shame and sin; despise her in her present contemptible humiliation, she reflected, a low moan escaping her--he so pure and upright in all his ways, so good and generous and noble! Oh that she could hide to the end from him and from the world!

Lifting her trembling hands, her despairing face, Adela breathed a faint petition that the Most High would be pleased to vouchsafe to her somewhat of His heavenly comfort, or take her out of the tribulation that she could so hardly battle with.