CHAPTER XXIII
BETSY'S TALE
Now I scarcely know whether it would be more clear to put into narrativewhat I heard from Betsy Bowen, now Wilhelmina Strouss, or to let hertell the whole in her own words, exactly as she herself told it thento me. The story was so dark and sad--or at least to myself it soappeared--that even the little breaks and turns of lighter thought orlivelier manner, which could scarcely fail to vary now and thenthe speaker's voice, seemed almost to grate and jar upon its sombremonotone. On the other hand, by omitting these, and departing fromher homely style, I might do more of harm than good through failing toconvey impressions, or even facts, so accurately. Whereas the gist andcore and pivot of my father's life and fate are so involved (thoughnot evolved) that I would not miss a single point for want of time ordiligence. Therefore let me not deny Mrs. Strouss, my nurse, the rightto put her words in her own way. And before she began to do this shetook the trouble to have every thing cleared away and the trays broughtdown, that her boarders (chiefly German) might leave their plates and bedriven to their pipes.
"If you please, Miss Castlewood," Mrs. Strouss said, grandly, "do you ordo you not approve of the presence of 'my man,' as he calls himself?--animproper expression, in my opinion; such, however, is their nature. Hecan hold his tongue as well as any man, though none of them are verysure at that. And he knows pretty nigh as much as I do, so far as hisEnglish can put things together, being better accustomed in German. Forwhen we were courting I was fain to tell him all, not to join him underany false pretenses, miss, which might give him grounds against me."
"Yes, yes, it is all vere goot and true--so goot and true as can be."
"And you might find him come very handy, my dear, to run of any kind ofmessages. He can do that very well, I assure you, miss--better than anyEnglishman."
Seeing that he wished to stay, and that she desired it, I begged himto stop, though it would have been more to my liking to hear the talealone.
"Then sit by the door, Hans, and keep off the draught," said hisWilhelmina, kindly. "He is not very tall, miss, but he has goodshoulders; I scarcely know what I should do without him. Well, now, tobegin at the very beginning: I am a Welshwoman, as you may have heard.My father was a farmer near Abergavenny, holding land under Sir WatkinWilliams, an old friend of your family. My father had too many girls,and my mother scarcely knew what to do with the lot of us. So some of uswent out to service, while the boys staid at home to work the land. Oneof my sisters was lady's-maid to Lady Williams, Sir Watkin's wife, atthe time when your father came visiting there for the shooting of themoor-fowl, soon after his marriage with your mother. What a sweet goodlady your mother was! I never saw the like before or since. No soonerdid I set eyes upon her but she so took my fancy that I would have goneround the world with her. We Welsh are a very hot people, they say--notcold-blooded, as the English are. So, wise or foolish, right, wrong, orwhat might be, nothing would do for me but to take service, if Icould, under Mrs. Castlewood. Your father was called Captain Castlewoodthen--as fine a young man as ever clinked a spur, but without any boastor conceit about him; and they said that your grandfather, the old lord,kept him very close and spare, although he was the only son. Now thismust have been--let me see, how long ago?--about five-and-twenty years,I think. How old are you now, Miss Erema? I can keep the weeks betterthan the years, miss."
"I was eighteen on my last birthday. But never mind about the time--goon."
"But the time makes all the difference, miss, although at the timewe may never think so. Well, then, it must have been better thansix-and-twenty year agone; for though you came pretty fast, in theLord's will, there was eight years between you and the first-born babe,who was only just a-thinking of when I begin to tell. But to come backto myself, as was--mother had got too many of us still, and she was gladenough to let me go, however much she might cry over it, as soon as LadyWilliams got me the place. My place was to wait upon the lady first,and make myself generally useful, as they say. But it was not verylong before I was wanted in other more important ways, and having beenbrought up among so many children, they found me very handy with thelittle ones; and being in a poor way, as they were then--for people, Imean, of their birth and place--they were glad enough soon to make headnurse of me, although I was under-two-and-twenty.
"We did not live at the old lord's place, which is under the hillslooking on the river Thames, but we had a quiet little house inHampshire; for the Captain was still with his regiment, and only came toand fro to us. But a happier little place there could not be, with theflowers, and the cow, and the birds all day, and the children runninggradually according to their age, and the pretty brook shining in thevalley. And as to the paying of their way, it is true that neither ofthem was a great manager. The Captain could not bear to keep his prettywife close; and she, poor thing, was trying always to surprise him withother presents besides all the beautiful babies. But they never were indebt all round, as the liars said when the trouble burst; and if theyowed two or three hundred pounds, who could justly blame them?
"For the old lord, instead of going on as he should, and widening hispurse to the number of the mouths, was niggling at them always foroffense or excuse, to take away what little he allowed them. The Captainhad his pay, which would go in one hand, and the lady had a little moneyof her own; but still it was cruel for brought-up people to have nothingbetter to go on with. Not that the old lord was a miser neither; but itwas said, and how far true I know not, that he never would forgive yourfather for marrying the daughter of a man he hated. And some went so faras to say that if he could have done it, he would have cut your fatherout of all the old family estates. But such a thing never could Ibelieve of a nobleman having his own flesh and blood.
"But, money or no money, rich or poor, your father and mother, I assureyou, my dear, were as happy as the day was long. For they loved oneanother and their children dearly, and they did not care for anymixing with the world. The Captain had enough of that when put away inquarters; likewise his wife could do without it better and better atevery birth, though once she had been the very gayest of the gay, whichyou never will be, Miss Erema.
"Now, my dear, you look so sad and so 'solid,' as we used to say, thatif I can go on at all, I must have something ready. I am quite an oldnurse now, remember. Hans, go across the square, and turn on the lefthand round the corner, and then three more streets toward the right, andyou see one going toward the left, and you go about seven doors down it,and then you see a corner with a lamp-post."
"Vilhelmina, I do see de lamp-post at de every corner."
"That will teach you to look more bright, Hans. Then you find a shopwindow with three blue bottles, and a green one in the middle."
"How can be any middle to three, without it is one of them?"
"Then let it be two of them. How you contradict me! Take this littlebottle, and the man with a gold braid round a cap, and a tassel with atail to it, will fill it for four-pence when you tell him who you are."
"Yes, yes; I do now comprehend. You send me vhere I never find de vay,because I am in de vay, Vilhelmina!"
I was most thankful to Mrs. Strouss for sending her husband (howevergood and kind-hearted he might be) to wander among many shops ofchemists, rather than to keep his eyes on me, while I listened to thingsthat were almost sure to make me want my eyes my own. My nurse had seen,as any good nurse must, that, grown and formed as I might be, the natureof the little child that cries for its mother was in me still.
"It is very sad now," Mrs. Strouss began again, without replying to mygrateful glance; "Miss Erema, it is so sad that I wish I had never begunwith it. But I see by your eyes--so like your father's, but softer, mydear, and less troublesome--that you will have the whole of it out, ashe would with me once when I told him a story for the sake of anotherservant. It was just about a month before you were born, when thetrouble began to break on us. And when once it began, it never stoppeduntil all that were left ran away from it. I have read in the newspapersmany
and many sad things coming over whole families, such as theycall 'shocking tragedies;' but none of them, to my mind, could be moregalling than what I had to see with my very own eyes.
"It must have been close upon the middle of September when old LordCastlewood came himself to see his son's house and family at Shoxford.We heard that he came down a little on the sudden to see to the truth ofsome rumors which had reached him about our style of living. It was thefirst time he had ever been there; for although he had very often beeninvited, he could not bear to be under the roof of the daughter, as hesaid, of his enemy. The Captain, just happening to come home on leavefor his autumn holiday, met his father quite at his own door--the verylast place to expect him. He afterward acknowledged that he was notpleased for his father to come 'like a thief in the night.' However,they took him in and made him welcome, and covered up their feelingsnicely, as high-bred people do.
"What passed among them was unknown to any but themselves, except sofar as now I tell you. A better dinner than usual for two was ready, tocelebrate the master's return and the beginning of his holiday; and theold lord, having travelled far that day, was persuaded to sit down withthem. The five eldest children (making all except the baby, for you wasnot born, miss, if you please) they were to have sat up at table, aspretty as could be--three with their high cushioned stools, and two intheir arm-chairs screwed on mahogany, stuffed with horsehair, and withrods in front, that the little dears might not tumble out in feeding,which they did--it was a sight to see them! And how they would give toone another, with their fingers wet and shining, and saying, 'Oo, datfor oo.' Oh dear, Miss Erema, you were never born to see it! What ablessing for you! All those six dear darlings laid in their littlegraves within six weeks, with their mother planted under them; and theonly wonder is that you yourself was not upon her breast.
"Pay you no heed to me, Miss Erema, when you see me a-whimpering in andout while I am about it. It makes my chest go easy, miss, I do assureyou, though not at the time of life to understand it. All they childrenwas to have sat up for the sake of their dear father, as I said justnow; but because of their grandfather all was ordered back. And backthey come, as good as gold, with Master George at the head of them, andasked me what milk-teeth was. Grandpa had said that 'a dinner was nodinner if milk-teeth were allowed at it.' The hard old man, with his ownteeth false! He deserved to sit down to no other dinner--and he neverdid, miss.
"You may be sure that I had enough to do to manage all the littleones and answer all their questions; but never having seen a live lordbefore, and wanting to know if the children would be like him beforeso very long, I went quietly down stairs, and the biggest of my dearspeeped after me. And then, by favor of the parlor-maid--for they keptneither butler nor footman now--I saw the Lord Castlewood, sitting athis ease, with a glass of port-wine before him, and my sweet mistress(the Captain's wife, and your mother, if you understand, miss) doing hervery best, thinking of her children, to please him and make the politeto him. To me he seemed very much to be thawing to her--if you canunderstand, miss, what my meaning is--and the Captain was looking atthem with a smile, as if it were just what he had hoped for. From my owneyesight I can contradict the lies put about by nobody knows who, thatthe father and the son were at hot words even then.
"And I even heard my master, when they went out at the door, vainlypersuading his father to take such a bed as they could offer him.And good enough it would have been for ten lords; for I saw nothingwonderful in him, nor fit to compare any way with the Captain. But hewould not have it, for no other reason of ill-will or temper, but onlybecause he had ordered his bed at the Moonstock Inn, where his coach andfour were resting.
"'I expect you to call me in the morning, George,' I heard him say, asclear as could be, while his son was helping his coat on. 'I am glad Ihave seen you. There are worse than you. And when the times get better,I will see what I can do.'
"With him this meant more than it might have done; for he was not a manof much promises, as you might tell by his face almost, with his noseso stern, and his mouth screwed down, and the wrinkles the wrong way forsmiling. I could not tell what the Captain answered, for the door bangedon them, and it woke the baby, who was dreaming, perhaps, about hislordship's face, and his little teeth gave him the wind on his chest,and his lungs was like bellows--bless him!
"Well, that stopped me, Miss Erema, from being truly accurate in mytestimony. What with walking the floor, and thumping his back, andrattling of the rings to please him--when they put me on the Testament,cruel as they did, with the lawyers' eyes eating into me, and both myears buzzing with sorrow and fright, I may have gone too far, with myheart in my mouth, for my mind to keep out of contradiction, wishful asI was to tell the whole truth in a manner to hurt nobody. And withoutany single lie or glaze of mine, I do assure you, miss, that I did moreharm than good; every body in the room--a court they called it, and nobigger than my best parlor--one and all they were convinced that I wouldswear black was white to save my master and mistress! And certainly Iwould have done so, and the Lord in heaven thought the better of me, forthe sake of all they children, if I could have made it stick together,as they do with practice."
At thought of the little good she had done, and perhaps the greatmischief, through excess of zeal, Mrs. Strouss was obliged to stop, andput her hand to her side, and sigh. And eager as I was for every wordof this miserable tale, no selfish eagerness could deny her need ofrefreshment, and even of rest; for her round cheeks were white, and herfull breast trembled. And now she was beginning to make snatches at myhand, as if she saw things she could only tell thus.