At Mosely Mistress Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing—though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise—hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town treasures, which little country girls, sick or well, dearly love. Fiddy's eyes were glancing already; but she did not leave off holding Mistress Betty's hand in order to try on her mittens, or to turn the handle of the musical box. And Mistress Betty finally learned, with some panic and palpitation, which she was far too sensible and stately a woman to betray, that the Justice was not [Page 97]gone—that Master Rowland, in place of examining the newly-excavated Italian cities, or dabbling in state treason in France, was no further off than Larks' Hall, confined there with a sprained ankle: nobody being to blame, unless it were Granny, who had detained Master Rowland to the last moment, or Uncle Rowland himself, for riding his horse too near the edge of the sandpit, and endangering his neck as well as his shin-bones. However, Mistress Betty did not cry out that she had been deceived, or screech distractedly, or swoon desperately (though the last was in her constitution), neither did she seem to be brokenhearted by the accident.
But Granny's reception of her was the great event of the day. Granny was a picture, in her grey gown and "clean white hood nicely plaited," seated in her wicker seat "fronting the south, and commanding the washing-green." Here Granny was amusing herself picking gooseberries—which the notable Prissy was to convert into gooseberry-fool, one of the dishes projected to grace the town lady's supper—when Mistress Betty was led towards her.
It was always a trying moment when a stranger at Mosely was presented to old Madam Parnell. The Parnells had agreed, for one thing, that it would be most proper and judicious, as Mistress Betty had quitted the stage—doubtless in some disappointment of its capabilities, or condemnation of the mode in which it was conducted,—to be chary in theatrical illusions, to drop the theatrical sobriquet Lady Betty, and hail their guest with the utmost ceremony and sincerity as Mistress Lumley. But Granny [Page 98]turned upon her visitor a face still fresh, in its small, fine-furrowed compass, hailed her as Lady Betty on the spot, and emphatically expressed all the praise she had heard of her wonderful powers; regretting that she had not been in the way of witnessing them, and declaring that as they escaped the snares and resisted the temptations of her high place, they did her the utmost honour, for they served to prove that her merits and her parts were equal. Actually, Granny behaved to Lady Betty as to a person of superior station, and persisted in rising and making room for the purpose of sharing with her the wicker seat; and there they sat, the old queen and the young.
Young madam had been quite determined that, as Uncle Rowland was so unfortunate as to be held by the foot at Larks' Hall from his tour, he should not risk his speedy recovery by hobbling over to Mosely, when she could go herself or send Prissy every morning to let him know how the invalid was. But the very day after Mistress Betty's arrival old madam secretly dispatched Tim, the message-boy, to desire the squire to order out the old coach, and make a point of joining the family party either at dinner or at supper. Young madam was sufficiently chagrined; but then the actress and the squire met so coldly, and little Fiddy was flushing up into a quiver of animation, and Mistress Betty was such delightful company in the slumbrous country parsonage.
It is pleasant to think of the doings of the Parnells, the witcheries of Mistress Betty, and the despotism of old madam, during the next month. Indeed, Mistress Betty was so reverent, so charitable, so kind, so gentle as well as [Page 99]blithe under depressing influences, and so witty under stagnation, that it would have been hard to have lived in the same house with her and have been her enemy: she was so easily gratified, so easily interested; she could suit herself to so many phases of this marvellous human nature. She listened to the Vicar's "argument" with edification, and hunted up his authorities with diligence. She scoured young madam's lutestring, and made it up in the latest and most elegant fashion of nightgowns, with fringes and buttons, such as our own little girls could match. She made hay with Prissy and Fiddy, and not only accomplished a finer cock than weak Fiddy and impatient Priss, but surpassed the regular haymakers. And she looked, oh! so well in her haymaker's jacket and straw hat—though young madam was always saying that her shape was too large for the dress, and that the slight hollows in her cheeks were exaggerated by the shade from the broad-brimmed flapping straw.
Of course Mistress Betty performed in the "Traveller" and "Cross Purposes," and gave out riddles and sang songs round the hearth of a rainy evening, or about the cherrywood table in the arbour, of a cloudless twilight, much more pat than other people—that was to be looked for; but then she also played at love after supper, loo and cribbage for a penny the game—deeds in which she could have no original superiority and supremacy—with quite as infectious an enthusiasm.
To let you into a secret, young madam was in horror at one time that Dick Ashbridge was wavering in his allegiance to her white rosebud, Fiddy; so enthralling was [Page 100]this scarlet pomegranate, this purple vine. But one evening Mrs. Betty turned suddenly upon the mad boy, to whom she had been very soft, saying that he bore a great resemblance to her cousin's second son Jack, and asked how old he was? and did he not think of taking another turn at college? This restored the boy to his senses in a trice, and she kissed Mistress Fiddy twice over when she bade her good night.
But old madam and Lady Betty were the chief pair of friends. Granny, with her own sway in her day, and her own delicate discrimination, acute intellect, and quick feelings, was a great enough woman not to be jealous of a younger queen, but to enjoy her exceedingly. Madam Parnell had seen the great world as well as Lady Betty, and never tired of reviving old recollections, comparing experiences, and tracing the fates of the children and grandchildren of the great men and women her contemporaries. Prissy and Fiddy vowed over and over again, that the stirring details were more entertaining than any story-book. For this reason, Granny took a personal pride in Lady Betty's simplest feat, as well as in her intellectual crown, and put her through every stage of her own particular recipes for cream cheese and pickled walnuts.
"The dickons!" cried a Somerset yeoman: "The Lon'on madam has opened the five-barred gate that beat all the other women's fingers, and gathered the finest elder-flowers, and caught the fattest chicken; and they tell me she has repeated verses to poor crazed Isaac, till she has lulled him into a fine sleep. 'Well done, Lon'on!' cries I; 'luck to the fine lady:' I never thought to wish [Page 101]success to such a kind." Granny, too, cried, "Well done, Lon'on! Luck to the fine lady!" If all Helens were but as pure, and true, and tender as Lady Betty!
Granny would have Lady Betty shown about among the neighbours, and maintained triumphantly that she read them, Sedleys, Ashbridges, and Harringtons, as if they were characters in a printed book—not that she looked down on them, or disparaged them in any way; she was far more tolerant than rash, inexperienced Prissy and Fiddy. And Granny ordered Lady Betty to be carried sight-seeing to Larks' Hall, and made minute arrangements for her to inspect Granny's old domain, from garret to cellar, from the lofty usher-tree at the gate to the lowly
"Plaintain ribbed that heals the reapers' wound"
in the herb-bed. No cursory inspection would suffice her: the pragmatical housekeeper and the rosy milkmaids had time to give up their hearts to Lady Betty like the rest. Master Rowland, as in courtesy bound, limped with the stranger over his helmets and gauntlets, his wooden carvings, his black-letter distich; and, although she was not overflowing in her praises, she had seen other family pictures by Greuze, and she herself possessed a fan painted by Watteau, to which he was vastly welcome if he cared for such a broken toy.
She fancied the head of one of the Roman emperors to be like his Grace of Montague; she had a very lively though garbled familiarity with the histories of the veritable Brutus and Cassius, Coriolanus, Cato, Alexander, and other mighty, picturesque, cobbled-up ancients, into whose [Page 102]mouths she could put appropriate speeches; and she accepted a loan of his 'Plutarch's Lives,' "to cl............