Chapter 2

‘I understand,’ said Mrs. Poulter, ‘that Helen is a Dissenter.’

Miss Taggart, as the reader has been told, was not particularly fond of Mrs. Poulter and Mr. Goacher, but to stay with Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard was impossible. She had also once or twice received a hint from Miss Toller that perhaps she had better suit herself elsewhere, as the minute attention she demanded to her little needs, of which there were many, was trying both to mistress and servant.

Miss Toller was promptly informed that three of her lodgers were going at the end of the month.

‘I hope, Mrs. Poulter, that you are not dissatisfied. I have no doubt I shall soon be able to obtain assistance.’

_Mrs. P._ ‘Our reasons, Miss Toller, had better not be communicated; they are sufficient. Against you personally we have nothing to object.’

_Miss T._ ‘Have you searched the box which I understand has been left?’

_Miss Toller_. ‘Have you missed anything, ma’am?’

_Miss T._ ‘Not at present. I might discover my loss when it was too late.’

_Mr. G._ ‘It would be better for the protection of all of us.’

_Miss Toller_. ‘I couldn’t do it for worlds; you’ll pardon me for saying so. I’d sooner you left me without paying me a farthing. Helen may have her faults, but she is as honest as—.’ Miss Toller’s voice trembled and she could not finish the sentence.

_Mrs. P._ ‘Have you any reason to suspect any—any improper relationship?’

_Miss Toller_. ‘I do not quite understand you.’

_Mr. G._ ‘Pardon me, Mrs. Poulter, it is my duty to relieve you of that inquiry. Mrs. Poulter cannot be explicit. Do you surmise that Helen is compelled to conceal?—you will comprehend me, I am sure. I need not add anything more.’

The poor landlady, habitually crushed by the anticipation of quarter-day into fear of contradiction or offence, flamed up with sudden passion. ‘Sir,’ she cried, ‘Helen is my friend, my dearest friend. How dare you!—you a clergyman! I let you and Mrs. Poulter know that she is as pure and good as you are—yes, and a thousand times better than you are with your hateful insinuations. I shalt be thankful to see the last of you!’ and she flung herself out of the room.

‘What do you think of that?’ said Mrs. Poulter. ‘It is beyond comment. We cannot remain another night.’ Mr. Goacher and Miss Taggart agreed, and Miss Taggart was commissioned at once to engage rooms. When she had gone Mr. Goacher was compelled to explain that he was in a difficulty.

‘Of course, my dear Mrs. Poulter, after this open insult I must go at once, but unhappily I am rather behind-hand in my payments to Miss Toller. Remittances I expected have been delayed.’

‘How much do you owe her?’

‘I believe it is now about fifteen pounds. Her disgraceful conduct discharges us from any liability beyond to-day. Might I beg the loan of twenty pounds from you?—say for a fortnight. It is a favour I could not dream of soliciting from anybody but Mrs. Poulter.’

It was most inconvenient to Mrs. Poulter to advance twenty pounds at that moment. But she had her own reasons for not wishing that Mr. Goacher should imagine she was straitened.

‘I believe I can assist you.’

Mr. Goacher dropped on his knees and took the lady’s hand, kissing it fervently.

‘My dear madam, may I take this opportunity, in this position, of declaring what must be obvious to you, that my heart—yes, my heart—has been captured and is yours? Identity of views on almost every subject, social and religious, personal attachment beyond that felt to any other woman I ever beheld—have we not sufficient reasons, if you can but respond to my emotion, to warrant an Eden for us in the future?’

‘Mr. Goacher, you take me by surprise. I cannot conceal my regard for you, but you will not expect an answer upon a matter of such moment until I have given it most mature consideration. Miss Taggart will be here directly: I think I hear the bell.’

Mr. Goacher slowly rose: Miss Taggart appeared and announced that the rooms were secured.

To end this part of the story, it may be added that in about a fortnight Mr. Goacher’s throat was quite well, and he announced to Mrs. Poulter his intention of resuming active work in the Church. The marriage, therefore, was no longer delayed.

A little while afterwards Mrs. Goacher discovered that her husband had been a missionary in the service of the Church Missionary Society and had consequently been Low, that he had been returned a little damaged in character; and that resumption of active work was undesirable.

Mrs. Mudge had lunch and tea with a friend. When she came back Miss Toller told her what had happened.

‘I dare say you’ll blame me. It was wrong to let my temper get the better of me, but I could not help it.’

‘Help it? The wonder to me is you’ve stood it so long. I couldn’t stand them; I should have left if they hadn’t. Have they paid you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, that Goacher? Then he borrowed it!’ and Mrs. Mudge laughed till she cried.

The day wore on and no carrier came for the box. After dinner Miss Toller told Mrs. Mudge she must go out for a few minutes to get a charwoman; that she would take the latch-key, and that nobody would call. She had gone about a quarter of an hour when there was a ring at the bell. Mrs. Mudge went to the door and, behold, there was Helen!

‘The Lord have mercy on us! Why did you run away so suddenly?’

‘Don’t ask me. Never you say a word about it to me. I’m a sinner: where’s Miss Toller?’

Helen listened in silence as Mrs. Mudge told her the eventful history of the last twelve hours. She went upstairs: Miss Toller’s bedroom door was open, and on the drawers she saw a little packet tied up with blue silk.

It was addressed ‘for dear Helen.’ She tore it open, and there was a locket and in it was her beloved mistress’s hair—the mistress to whom she had been so cruel, who had so nobly defended her. She threw herself on the bed and her heart almost broke. Suddenly she leaped up, flew down into the kitchen, and began washing up the plates and dishes. Miss Toller was away for nearly an hour; her search for a charwoman was unsuccessful, and she came back dejected. Helen rushed to meet her and they embraced one another.

‘O Miss Toller, forgive me! When I saw you sitting with that Poulter and that Goacher, the Devil got the better of me, but—’

‘Hush, my dear; I oughtn’t to have gone, and never any more from this day call me Miss Toller. Call me Mary, always from this day—you promise me?’ and Miss Toller kissed Helen’s quivering lips.

Miss Toller did all she could to get other boarders, but none came and she had a hard time. It was difficult for her sometimes to find a dinner for herself and Helen. Good Mrs. Mudge was delicately considerate and often said, ‘that meat need not come up again,’ and purposely ordered more than she and Miss Everard could eat, but the butcher’s bill and the milk bill were not paid so regularly as heretofore. Worse than privation, worse than debt, was the vain watching for inquiries and answers to her advertisement. What would become of her? Where could she go? Three more boarders she must have or she could not live, and there was no prospect of one. If by great good luck she could obtain three, they might not stay and the dismal struggle would begin again. Lodging-house keepers are not the heroines of novels and poems, but if endurance, wrestling with adversity, hoping in despair, be virtues, the eternal scales will drop in favour of many underground basements against battlefields. At last, after one or two pressing notices from landlord and rate-collector, Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard were informed that Russell House was to be given up. She and Helen must seek situations as servants.

Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard went away at the end of the month. On the dining-room table after they had gone Miss Toller found two envelopes directed to her. Inside were some receipts. Mrs. Mudge had paid all the rent due to the end of Miss Toller’s term, and Miss Everard the taxes. Next week Miss Toller had the following letter from her father:—

‘MY DEAR MARY,—This is to tell you that your stepmother departed this life last Tuesday fortnight. She was taken with a fit on the Sunday. On Tuesday morning she came to herself and wished us to send for the parson. He was here in an hour and she made her peace with God. I did not ask you to the funeral as you had been so long away. My dear Mary, I cannot live alone at my age. I was sixty-five last Michaelmas, and I want you back in the old house. Let bygones be bygones. I shall always be, your affectionate father,

‘THOMAS TOLLER.

‘_PS._—You can have the same bedroom you had when your own mother was alive.’

The furniture, modern stuff, was sold, every stick of it, and Miss Toller rejoiced when the spring sofa and chairs which had been devoted to Poulters and Goachers and Taggarts were piled up in the vans. The nightmares of fifteen years hid themselves in the mats and carpets.

Helen and she standing at the dresser ate their last meal in the dingy kitchen of Russell House. It was nothing but sandwiches, but it was the most delicious food they had tasted there. It is a mistake if you are old to go back to the village in which you were born and bred. Ghosts meet you in every lane and look out from the windows. There are new names on the signboard of the inn and over the grocer’s shop. A steam-engine has been put in the mill, and the pathway behind to the mill dam and to the river bank has been closed. The people you see think you are a visitor. The church is restored, and there is a brand new Wesleyan chapel. Better stay where you are and amuse yourself by trying to make flowers grow in your little, smoky, suburban back-garden. But Miss Toller and Helen were not too old. Mr. Toller met them at the station with a four-wheeled chaise. Before the train had quite stopped, Helen caught sight of somebody standing by the cart which was brought for the luggage. ‘It’s Tom! it’s Tom!’ she screamed; and it was Tom himself, white-headed now and a little bent. She insisted on walking with him by the side of his horse the whole four miles to their journey’s end. He was between forty and fifty when she went away and had been with Mr. Toller ever since—‘tried a bit at times,’ he confessed, ‘with the second missus.’ ‘She’s with God, let us hope,’ said Tom, ‘and we’ll leave her alone.’

They came to Barton Sluice. Flat and unadorned are the fields there, and the Nen is slow, but it was their own land, they loved it, and they were at rest. They fell into their former habits, and the talk of crops, of markets, of the weather, and of their neighbours was sweet. Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard came now and then to see them in summer time, and when Mr. Toller slept with his fathers, his daughter and Helen remained at the farm and managed it between them.

ESTHER

BLACKDEEP FEN, 24_th_ _November_ 1838.

MY DEAR ESTHER,—This is your birthday and your wedding-day, and I have sent you a cake and a knitted cross-over, both of which I have made myself. I can still knit, although my eyes fail a bit. I hope the cross-over will be useful during the winter. Tell me, my dear, how you are. Twenty-eight years ago it is since you came into the world. It was a dark day with a cold drizzling rain, but at eleven o’clock at night you were born, and the next morning was bright with beautiful sunshine. Some people think that Blackdeep must always be dreary at this time of year, but they are wrong. I love the Fen country. It is my own country. This house, as you know, has belonged to your father’s forefathers for two hundred years or more, and my father’s old house has been in our family nearly as long. I could not live in London; but I ought not to talk in this way, for I hold it to be wrong to set anybody against what he has to do. Your brother Jim is the best of sons. He sits with me in the evening and reads the paper to me. He goes over to Ely market every week. He has his dinner at the ordinary, where many of the company drink more than is good for them, but never once has he come home the worse for liquor. I had a rare fright a little while ago. I thought there was something between him and one of those Stanton girls at Ely. I saw she was trying to catch him. It is all off now. She is a town girl, stuck-up, spends a lot of money on her clothes, and would have been no wife for Jim. She would not have been able to put her hand to anything here. She might have broken my heart, for she would have tried to draw Jim away from me. I don’t believe, my dearest child, in wedded love which lessens the love for father and mother. When you were going to be married what agony I went through! It was so wicked of me, for it was jealousy with no cause. I thank God you love me as much as ever. I wish I could see you again at Homerton, but the journey made me so ill last winter that I dare not venture just yet.—Your loving mother,

RACHEL SUTTON.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 27_th_ _Nov._ 1838.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,—The cake was delicious: it tasted of Blackdeep, and the cross-over will be most useful. It will keep me warm on cold days, and the love that came with it will thicken the wool. But, mother, it is not a month ago since you sent me the stockings. You are always at work for me. You are just like father. He gave us things not only on birthdays, but when we never looked out for them. Do you remember that week when wheat dropped three shillings a quarter? He had two hundred quarters which he might have sold ten days earlier. He was obliged to sell them at the next market and lost thirty pounds, but he had seen at Ely that day a little desk, and he knew I wanted a desk, and he bought it for me with a fishing-rod and landing-net for Jim.

My husband said he could not think of anything I needed and wrote me a cheque for two pounds.

O! that you could come here, and yet I am certain you must not. My heart aches to have you. In my day-dreams I go over the long miles to Blackdeep, through Ware, through Royston, through Cambridge, through every village, and then I feel how far away you are. I turned out of the room the other day the chair in which you always sat. I could not bear to see it empty. Charles noticed it had gone and ordered it to be brought back. He may have suspected the reason why I put it upstairs. My dearest, dearest mother, never fear that my affection for you can become less. Sometimes after marriage a woman loves her mother more than she ever loved her before.

It is a black fog here and not a breath of air is stirring. How different are our fogs at Blackdeep! They may be thick, but they are white and do not make us miserable. I never shall forget when I was last in Fortyacres and saw the mist lying near the river, and the church spire bright in the sunlight. The churchyard and the lower part of the church were quite hidden.

What a mercy Jim was not trapped by Dolly, for I suppose it was she. Jim is not the first she has tried to get. You are quite right. She might have broken your heart, and I am sure she would have broken Jim’s, for she is as hard as a millstone.—Your loving child,

ESTHER.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP FEN, 3_rd_ _December_ 1838.

Your letter made me feel unhappy. I am afraid something is on your mind. What is the matter? I was not well before I went to Homerton the last time, but maybe it was not London that upset me. If you cannot leave, I shall come. Let me hear by the next post.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 5_th_ _December_ 1838.

I told Charles I was expecting you. He said that your sudden determination seemed odd. ‘Your mother,’ he added, ‘is a woman who acts upon impulses. She ought always to take time for consideration. This is hardly the proper season for travelling.’ I asked him if he would let me go to Blackdeep. He replied that, unless there was some particular reason for it, my proposal was as unwise as yours. What am I to do? A particular reason! It is a particular reason that I pine for my mother. Can there be any reason more particular than a longing for the sight of a dear face, for kisses and embraces? You must counsel me.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP, 15_th_ _December_ 1838.

As Charles imagines I am carried away by what he calls impulses, I did not answer your letter at once, and I have been thinking as much as I can. I am not a good hand at it. Your dear father had a joke against me. ‘Rachel, you can’t think; but never mind, you can do much better without thinking than other people can with it.’ I wish I had gone straight to you at once, and yet it was better I did not. It would have put Charles out, and this would not have been pleasant for either you or me. I would not have you at Blackdeep now for worlds. The low fever has broken out, and to-day there were two funerals. Parson preached a sermon about it; it was a judgment from God. Perhaps it is, but why did it take your father three years ago? It is all a mystery, and it looks to me sometimes as if here on earth there were nothing but mystery. I have just heard that parson is down with the fever himself.

Do let me have a long letter at once.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 20_th_ _December_ 1838.

A Mrs. Perkins has been here. She sat with me for an hour. She spends her afternoons in going her rounds among her friends, as she calls them, but she does not care for them, nor do they care for her. She looks and speaks like a woman who could not care for anybody, and yet perhaps there may be somewhere a person who could move her.

I am so weary of the talk of my neighbours. It is so different from what we used to have at Blackdeep. Oh me! those evenings when father came in at dark, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornley came afterwards and we had supper at eight, and father and Mr. Thornley smoked their pipes and drank our home-brewed ale and we had all the news—how much Mr. Thornley had got for his malt, how that pig-headed old Stubbs wouldn’t sell his corn, and how when he began to thresh it and the ferrets were brought, a hundred rats were killed and bushels of wheat had been eaten.

You ask me what is the matter. I do not deny I am not quite happy, but it would be worse than useless to dwell upon my unhappiness and try to give you reasons for it. London, in the winter, most likely does not suit me. I shall certainly see you in the spring, and then I hope I shall be better.

* * * * *

BLACKDEEP FEN, _Christmas Day_, 1838.

As a rule it is right to hide our troubles, but it is not right that you should hide yours from me. You are my firstborn child and my only daughter. There are girls who are very good, but between their mothers and them there is a wall. They do what they are bid; they are kind, but that is all. They live apart from those that bore them. I would not give a straw for such duty and love. I gathered one of our Christmas roses this morning. We have taken great care to keep them from being splashed and spoilt. There was not a speck on it. I put it in water and could not take my eyes off it. Its white flower lay spread open and I could look right down into it. I thought of you. When you were a little one—ay, and after you were out of short frocks—you never feared to show me every thought in your mind, you always declared that if you had wished to hide anything from me, it would have been of no use to try. What a blessing that was to me! How dreadful it would be if, now that you are married, you were to change! I am sure you will not and cannot.

* * * * *

HOMERTON, 1_st_ _January_ 1839.

The New Year! What will happen before the end of it? I feel as if it must be something strange. I have just read your last letter again, and I cannot hold myself in. My dearest mother, I confess I am wretched. It might be supposed that misery like mine would express itself with no effort, but it is not so: it would be far easier to describe ordinary things. I am afraid also to talk about it, lest that which is dim and shapeless should become more real.