Volume I Part 12 (1/2)
”But Agnes ... Miss Willoughby I mean, ... are you sure she will come back with her aunt to-morrow?”
”I am sure I can't say, ma'am, ... but I think she will; for I well remember Mrs. Barnaby said with her grand way, ... 'We will walk over to-morrow if the weather be anyways fine.'”
Miss Compton now seemed sunk in profound meditation, of which Mrs. Sims fully hoped to reap the fruits; but once more she was disappointed, for when Miss Compton again spoke, it was only to say,--
”I want to see Agnes Willoughby, Mrs. Sims, and I do not want to see Mrs. Barnaby. Do you think you could manage this for me, if I come here again to-morrow?”
”I am sure, ma'am,” replied Mrs. Sims, looking a little surprised and a little puzzled--”I am sure there is nothing that I am not in duty bound to do for you, if done it can be; and if you will be pleased to say how the thing shall be managed, I will do my part with a right good will to make everything go as you wish.”
This was a very obliging reply, but it shewed Miss Compton that she must trust to her own ingenuity for discovering the ways and means for putting her design in practice. After thinking about it a little, and looking round upon the locale, she said,--
”I will tell you how it must be. I will be here to-morrow before the time you have named to them, and you shall place me in this room. When Mrs. Barnaby is engaged in talking to the girl and her father, take Agnes by the hand and lead her in to me, saying, if you will, that you have something you wish her to see, ... which will be no more than the truth. If Mrs. Barnaby happens to hear this, and offers to follow, then, as you value my friends.h.i.+p, close the door and lock it,--never mind what she thinks of it.... I will take care her anger shall do you no harm.”
”Oh dear, ma'am! I'm not the least afraid of Mrs. Barnaby's anger, ...
nor do I expect she will take any notice. She seems so very hot upon having that great awkward hoyden, Betty Jacks, that I don't think, when she is engaged with the father about it, she will be likely to take much heed of Miss Agnes and me. But at any rate, Miss Compton, I'll take good care, ma'am, that she shan't come a-near you. And now, ma'am, will you be so good as to tell me if you think I shall be doing a sin letting this idle hussy set off travelling with her?”
”No sin at all, Mrs. Sims,” replied Miss Compton with decision. ”Let the girl be what she may, depend upon it she is quite ...” but here she stopped; adding a minute after, ”Do go, Mrs. Sims, and see if farmer Wright's cart is come back.”
A few minutes more brought the humble vehicle to the door, when the heiress climbed to her accustomed place in it, and gave herself up to meditation so unusually earnest, as not only to defeat all the good farmer's respectful attempts at conversation, but to occupy her for one whole hour after her return, and that so completely as to prevent her from opening her half-read volume, though that volume was Walter Scott's.
Thoughts and schemes were working and arranging themselves in her head, which were, in truth, important enough to demand some leisure for their operations. This ”_beauty if ever there was one_,” this poor motherless and father-forgotten Agnes, this inevitable heiress of the Compton acres, ought she, because she had found her short and fat two years before, to abandon her to the vulgar patronage of the hateful Mrs.
Barnaby? A blush of shame and repentance mantled her pale cheek as this question presented itself, and she acknowledged to her own heart the sin and folly of the prejudice which had led her to turn away from the only being connected with her, to whom she could be useful. She remembered, too, in this hour of self-examination and reproach, that the father of this ill-treated girl was a gentleman; and that she ought, therefore, to have been kindly fostered by the last of the Comptons as a representative more worthy to revive their antiquated claims to patrician rank, than could have been reasonably expected from any descendant of her brother Josiah.
These thoughts having been sufficiently dwelt upon, examined, and acknowledged to be just, the arrangement of her future conduct was next to be considered; and, notwithstanding the singularly secluded life she had led, the little lady was far from being ignorant of the entire change it would be her duty to make in the whole manner of her existence, should she decide upon taking Agnes Willoughby from Mrs.
Barnaby, and becoming herself her sole guardian and protectress.
Could she bear this?... and could she afford it? The little, weak-looking, but wirey frame of the spinster, had a spirit within it of no inconsiderable firmness; and the first of these questions was soon answered by a mentally e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed ”I WILL,” which, in sincerity and intensity of purpose, was well worth the best vow ever breathed before the altar. For the solution of the other, the old lady turned to her account books, and found the leading items in the column of receipts to be as follows:--
By annual rent from the Compton Basett farm 600 By interest on 12,000_l._ in the Three per Cents 360 By interest on 1800_l._ lent on mortgage at 5_l._ per cent. 90 By interest on 6000_l._ lent on mortgage at 4_l._ per cent. 240 By interest on 2500_l._ lent on mortgage at 5_l._ per cent. 125 ----- 1415
Of this income, (the last item of which, however, had been entered only three weeks before, being the result of the latest appropriation of her savings,) Miss Compton spent not one single farthing, nor had done so since the payment in advance of three hundred and fifty pounds to Mrs.
Wilmot for the education and dress of Agnes. In fact, the profits arising from the honey she sold, fully furnished all the cash she wanted; as her stipulated supplies from the farm amounted very nearly to all that her ascetic table required.... She used neither tea nor wine, milk supplying their place.... She had neither rent, taxes, nor servants, to pay; and her toilet, though neat to admiration, cost less than any lady would believe possible, who had not studied the enduring nature of stout and simple habiliments, when worn as Miss Compton wore them.
Such being the facts, it might be imagined that a schedule like the above would have appeared to such a possessor of such an income a sufficient guarantee against any possible pecuniary embarra.s.sment from inviting one young girl to share it with her. But Miss Compton, as she sat in her secluded bower, had for years been looking out upon the fas.h.i.+onable world through the powerful though somewhat distorting _lunette d'approche_ furnished by modern novels; and if she had acquired no other information thereby, she at least had learned to estimate with some tolerable degree of justness the difference between the expense of living in the world, and out of it.
”If I do adopt her, and make her wholly mine,” thought she, ”it shall not be for the purpose of forming her into a rich country-town miss....
She shall be introduced into the world, ... she shall improve whatever talents Nature may have given her by lessons from the best masters; ...
her dress shall be that of a well-born woman of good fortune, and she shall be waited upon as a gentlewoman ought to be. Can I do all this, and keep her a carriage besides, for fourteen hundred a-year?... No!...”
was uttered aloud by the deeply meditative old lady. ”What then was she to decide upon? Should she wait for two more years before she declared her intentions, and by aid of the farther sum thus saved enable herself to reach the point she aimed at?” Something that she took for prudence very nearly answered ”YES,” but was checked by a burst of contrary feeling that again found vent in words,--”And while I am saving hundreds of pounds, may she not be acquiring thousands of vulgar habits that may again quench all my hopes?... No; it shall be done at once.” So at length she laid her head on her pillow resolved to take her heiress immediately under her own protection ... (provided always that the examination which was to take place on the morrow should not prove that the Wisett style of beauty was unbearably predominant,) and that having arranged with her honest tenant some fair equivalent for her profitable apiary, her lodgings, and her present allowances, she should take her at once to London, devote one year to the completion of her education, and leave it to fate and fortune to decide what manner of life they should afterwards pursue.
For a little rustic old woman who had never in her life travelled beyond the county town of her native s.h.i.+re, this plan was by no means ill concocted, and must, I think, display very satisfactorily to all unprejudiced eyes the great advantages to be derived from a long and diligent course of novel-reading, as, without it, Miss Compton would, most a.s.suredly, never have discovered that fourteen hundred a-year was insufficient to supply the expenses of herself and her young niece.
But, alas!... All this wisdom was destined to be blighted in the bud.