She kept three maidservants, and a man came in every day to clean the knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could live with her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises, and as to dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether broke down; but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that their places were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want for aught, when once the good opinion of Miss Stanbury had been earned. When once she believed in her servant there was nobody like that servant. There was not a man in Exeter could clean a boot except Giles Hickbody,—and if not in Exeter, then where else? And her own maid Martha, who had lived with her now for twenty years, and who had come with her to the brick house when she first inhabited it, was such a woman that no other servant anywhere was fit to hold a candle to her. But then Martha had great gifts,—was never ill, and really liked having sermons read to her.
Such was Miss Stanbury, who had now discarded her nephew Hugh. She had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so, and had repeatedly given him to understand, that in the event of her death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose to let it all go back to the Burgess family. With the Burgess family she had kept up no sustained connection, it being quite understood that she was never to be asked to meet the only one of them now left in Exeter. Nor was it as yet known to any one in what manner the money was to go back, how it was to be divided, or who were to be the recipients. But she had declared that it should go back, explaining that she had conceived it to be a duty to let her own relations know that they would not inherit her wealth at her death.
About a week after she had sent back poor Hugh’s letter with the endorsement on it as to unworthy bread, she summoned Martha to the back parlour in which she was accustomed to write her letters. It was one of the theories of her life that different rooms should be used only for the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed pens and ink up into the bedrooms, and had she ever heard that any guest in her house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant personal attack upon that guest, whether male or female, which would have surprised that guest. Poor Hugh would have got on better with her had he not been discovered once smoking in the garden. Nor would she have writing materials in the drawing-room or dining-room. There was a chamber behind the dining-room in which there was an inkbottle, and if there was a letter to be written, let the writer go there and write it. In the writing of many letters, however, she put no confidence, and regarded penny postage as one of the strongest evidences of the coming ruin.
“Martha,” she said, “I want to speak to you. Sit down. I think I am going to do something.” Martha sat down, but did not speak a word. There had been no question asked of her, and the time for speaking had not come. “I am writing to Mrs. Stanbury, at Nuncombe Putney; and what do you think I am saying to her?”
Now the question had been asked, and it was Martha’s duty to reply.
“Writing to Mrs. Stanbury, ma’am?”
“Yes, to Mrs. Stanbury.”
“It ain’t possible for me to say, ma’am, unless it’s to put Mr. Hugh from going on with the newspapers.”
“When my nephew won’t be controlled by me, I shan’t go elsewhere to look for control over him; you may be sure of that, Martha. And remember, Martha, I don’t want to have his name mentioned again in the house. You will tell them all so, if you please.”
“He was a very nice gentleman, ma’am.”
“Martha, I won’t have it; and there’s an end of it. I won’t have it. Perhaps I know what goes to the making of a nice gentleman as well as you do.”
“Mr. Hugh, ma’am,—”
“I won’t have it, Martha. And when I say so, let there be an end of it.” As she said this, she got up from her chair, and shook her head, and took a turn about the room. “If I’m not mistress here, I’m nobody.”
“Of course you’re mistress here, ma’am.”
“And if I don’t know what’s fit to be done, and what’s not fit, I’m too old to learn; and, what’s more, I won’t be taught. I’m not going to have my house crammed with radical incendiary stuff, printed with ink that stinks, on paper made out of straw. If I can’t live without penny literature, at any rate I’ll die without it. Now listen to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I have asked Mrs. Stanbury to send one of the girls over here.”
“To live, ma’am?” Martha’s tone as she asked the question, showed how deeply she felt its importance.
“Yes, Martha; to live.”
“You’ll never like it, ma’am.”
“I don’t suppose I shall.”
“You’ll never get on with it, ma’am; never. The young lady’ll be out of the house in a week; or if she ain’t, somebody else will.”
“You mean yourself.”
“I’m only a servant, ma’am, and it don’t signify about me.”
“You’re a fool.”
“That’s true, ma’am, I don’t doubt.”
“I’ve sent for her, and we must do the best we can. Perhaps she won’t come.”
“She’ll come fast enough,” said Martha. “But whether she’ll stay, that’s a different thing. I don’t see how it’s possible she’s to stay. I’m told they’re feckless, idle young ladies. She’ll be so soft, ma’am, and you,—”
“Well; what of me?”
“You’ll be so hard, ma’am!”
“I’m not a bit harder than you, Martha; nor yet so hard. I’ll do my duty, or at least I’ll try. Now you know all about it, and you may go away. There’s the letter, and I mean to go out and post it myself.”
Chapter VIII.
“I Know It Will Do”
Miss Stanbury carried her letter all the way to the chief post-office in the city, having no faith whatever in those little subsidiary receiving houses which are established in different parts of the city. As for the iron pillar boxes which had been erected of late years for the receipt of letters, one of which,—a most hateful thing to her,—stood almost close to her own hall door, she had not the faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination. She could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a respectable post-office instead of chucking them into an iron stump,—as she called it,—out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after it. Positive orders had been given that no letter from her house should ever be put into the iron post. Her epistle to her sister-in-law, of whom she never spoke otherwise than as Mrs. Stanbury, was as follows:—
The Close, Exeter, 22nd April, 186—.
My Dear Sister Stanbury,
Your son, Hugh, has taken to courses of which I do not approve, and therefore I have put an end to my connection with him. I shall be happy to entertain your daughter Dorothy in my house if you and she approve of such a plan. Should you agree to this, she will be welcome to receive you or her sister,—not her brother,—in my house any Wednesday morning between half-past nine and half-past twelve. I will