Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 2

Mr. Aubrey was not long in paying his promised visit to Mr. Neville, accompanied by Mrs. Aubrey. 'Twas a long and not very agreeable walk for them towards St. George's in the East; and on reaching a small row of neat houses, only one story high, and being shown into Mr. Neville's very little sitting-room, they found Mrs. Neville lying on a little rickety sofa near the fire, looking very ill, and Mr. Neville sitting before her, with a number of books on the table, and pen, ink, and paper, with which he was occupied preparing his next Sunday's sermon; but there was also a slip of paper on the table of a different description, and which had occasioned both of them great distress; viz. a rather peremptory note from their medical man, touching the payment of his "trifling account" of £14 odd. Where poor Neville was to obtain such a sum, neither he nor his wife knew: they had already almost deprived themselves of necessary food and clothing to enable them to appease another urgent creditor; and this new and sudden demand of an old claim, had indeed grievously disquieted them. They said nothing about it to Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey, who soon made themselves at home, and by their unaffected simplicity and cordiality of manner, relieved their humble hosts from all anxiety. They partook of tea, in a sufficiently homely and frugal style; and before they rose to go they exacted a promise, that, as soon as Mrs. Neville should have recovered, they would both come and spend a long day in Vivian Street. They soon became very intimate; and, Mrs. Neville's health at length being such as to preclude her from attending at all to her needle, the reader will possibly think none the less of Mrs. Aubrey and Kate, when he hears that they insisted on taking that task upon themselves, (a matter in which they were becoming somewhat expert,) and many and many an hour did these two charming women spend, both in Vivian Street and at Mrs. Neville's, in relieving her from her labors—particularly in preparing her slight stock of winter clothing. And now that I am on this point, I may as well mention another not less amiable trait in Kate; that, hearing of a girl's school about to be founded in connection with the church which they attended, and in support of which several ladies had undertaken to prepare various little matters, such as embroidery, lace, pictures, and articles of fancy and ornament, Kate also set to work with her pencil and brushes. She was a very tasteful draughtswoman, and produced four or five such delicate and beautiful sketches, in water color, of scenes in and about Yatton, as made her a very distinguished contributor to the undertaking; each of her sketches producing upwards of two guineas. She also drew a remarkably spirited crayon sketch of the pretty little head of Charles—who accompanied her to the place where her contributions were deposited, and delivered it in with his own hand.—Thus, in short, were this sweet and amiable family rapidly reconciling themselves to their altered circumstances—taking real pleasure in the new scenes which surrounded them, and the novel duties devolving upon them; and as their feelings became calmer, they felt how true it is that happiness in this world depends not upon mere external circumstances, but upon THE MIND—which, contented and well regulated, can turn everything around it into a source of enjoyment and thankfulness—making indeed the wilderness to bloom and blossom as the rose.

They kept up—especially Kate—a constant correspondence with good old Dr. Tatham; who, judging from the frequency and the length of his letters, which were written with a truly old-fashioned distinctness and uniformity of character, must have found infinite pleasure in his task. So also was it with Kate, who, if she had even been writing to her lover—nay, between ourselves, what would Mr. Delamere have given to have had addressed to himself one of the long letters, crossed down to the very postscript, full of sparkling delicacy, good nature, and good sense, which so often found their way to the "Rev. Dr. Tatham, Vicarage, Yatton, Yorkshire!" They were thus apprised of everything of moment that transpired at Yatton, to which their feelings clung with unalienable affection. Dr. Tatham's letters had indeed almost always a painful degree of interest attached to them. From his frequent mention of Mr. Gammon's name—and almost equally favorable as frequent—it appeared that he possessed a vast ascendency over Mr. Titmouse, and was, whenever he was at Yatton, in a manner, its moving spirit. The doctor represented Titmouse as a truly wretched creature, with no more sense of religion than a monkey; equally silly, selfish, and vulgar—unfeeling and tyrannical wherever he had an opportunity of exhibiting his real character.

It exquisitely pained them, moreover, to find pretty distinct indications of a sterner and stricter rule being apparent at Yatton, than had ever been known there before, so far as the tenants and villagers were concerned. Rents were now required to be paid with the utmost punctuality; many of them were raised, and harsher terms introduced into their leases and agreements. In Mr. Aubrey's time a distress or an action for rent was a thing literally unheard of in any part of the estate; but nearly a dozen had occurred since the accession of Mr. Titmouse. If this had been at the instance of the ruling spirit, Mr. Gammon personally had certainly got none of the odium of the proceeding; every letter announcing a resort to hostile measures expressly purporting to be authorized by Mr. Titmouse himself; Mr. Gammon on most of such occasions, putting in a faint word or two in favor of the tenant, but ineffectually. The legal proceedings were always conducted in the name of "Bloodsuck and Son," whose town agents were, "Quirk, Gammon, and Snap;" but their names never came under the eye of the defendants! No longer could the poor villagers, and poorer tenants, reckon on their former assistance from the Hall in the hour of sickness and distress: cowslip wine, currant wine, elderberry wine, if made, were consumed in the Hall. In short, there was a discontinuance of all those innumerable little endearing courtesies, and charities, and hospitalities, which render a good old country mansion the very heart of the neighborhood. The doctor in one of his letters, intimated, with a sort of agony, that he had heard it mentioned by the people at the Hall as probable, that Mr. Titmouse—the little Goth—would pull down that noble old relic, the turreted gateway; but that Mr. Gammon was vehemently opposed to such a measure; and that, if it were preserved after all, it would be entirely owing to the taste and the influence of that gentleman. Had Dr. Tatham chosen, he could have added a fact which would indeed have saddened his friends—viz. that the old sycamore, which had been preserved at the fond entreaties of Kate, and which was hallowed by so many sad and tender associations, had been long ago removed, as a sort of eyesore: Mr. Gammon had, in fact, directed it to be done; but he repeatedly expressed to Dr. Tatham, confidentially, his regret at such an act on the part of Titmouse. The doctor could also have told them that there had been a dog-fight in the village, at which Mr. Titmouse was present! Persons were beginning to make their appearance too, at Yatton, of a very different description from any who had been seen there in the time of the Aubreys—persons, now and then, of loose, and wild, and reckless characters. Mr. Titmouse would often get up a fight in the village, and reward the victor with five or ten shillings! Then the snug and quiet little "Aubrey Arms" was metamorphosed into the "Titmouse Arms" and another set up in opposition to it, and called "The Toper's Arms;" and it was really painful to see the increasing trade driven by each of them. They were both full every night, and often during the day also; and the vigilant, and affectionate, and grieved eye of the good vicar noticed several seats in the church, which had formerly been occupied every Sunday morning and afternoon, to be—empty! In his letters, he considerately sank the grosser features of Titmouse's conduct, which would have only uselessly grieved and disgusted his beloved correspondents. He informed them, however, from time to time, of the different visitors at the Hall, particularly of the arrival and movements of their magnificent kinsfolk, the Earl of Dreddlington and Lady Cecilia, the Marquis Gants-Jaunes de Millefleurs and Mr. Tuft—the novel state and ceremony which had been suddenly introduced there—at which they all ceased reading for a moment, and laughed, well knowing the character of Lord Dreddlington. At length, some considerable time after Mr. Titmouse's grand visitors had been at the Hall, there came a letter from Dr. Tatham, sent by a private hand, and not reaching Vivian Street till the evening, when they were sitting together, after dinner, as usual, and which contained intelligence that was received in sudden silence, and with looks of astonishment; viz. that Mr. Titmouse had become the acknowledged suitor of the Lady Cecilia!! Mr. Aubrey, after a moment's pause, laughed more heartily than they had heard him laugh for many months—getting up, at the same time, and walking once or twice across the room—Mrs. Aubrey and Miss Aubrey gazed at each other for a few moments, without speaking a word; and you could not have told whether their fair countenances showed more of amusement or of disgust at the intelligence. "Well! it is as I have often told you, Kate," commenced Mr. Aubrey, after a while resuming his seat, and addressing his sister with an air of good-humored raillery; "you've lost your chance—you've held your head so high. Ah, 'tis all over now—and our fair cousin is mistress of Yatton!"

"Indeed, Charles," quoth Kate, earnestly, "I do think it's too painful a subject for a joke."

"Why, Kate!—You must bear it as well"–

"Pho, pho—nonsense, Charles! To be serious—did you ever hear anything so shocking as"–

"Do you mean to tell me, Kate," commenced her brother, assuming suddenly such a serious air as for a moment imposed on his sister, "that to become mistress of dear old Yatton—which was offered to you, you know—you would not have consented, when it came to the point, to become—Mrs. Titmouse?" For an instant, Kate looked as if she would have made, in the eye of the statuary, an exquisite model of beautiful disdain—provoked by the bare idea even, and put forward, as she knew, in raillery only. "You know, Charles," said she at length, calmly, her features relaxing into a smile, "that if such a wretch had ten thousand Yattons, I would, rather than marry him—oh!"—she shuddered—"spring from Dover cliff into the sea!"

"Ah, Kate, Kate!" exclaimed her brother, with a look of infinite pride and fondness. "Even supposing for a moment that you had no prev"–

"Come, Charles, no more nonsense," said Kate, patting his cheek, and slightly coloring.

"I say, that even if"–

"Only fancy," interrupted Kate, "Lady Cecilia—Titmouse! I see her before me now. Well, I protest it is positively insufferable; I could not have thought that there was a woman in the whole world—why"—she paused, and added laughingly, "how I should like to see their correspondence!"

"What!" said Mrs. Aubrey, with a sly smile, first at her husband, and then at Kate, "as a model for a certain other correspondence that I can imagine—eh, Kate!"

"Nonsense, nonsense, Agnes!—what a provoking humor you are both in this evening," interrupted Kate, with a slight pettishness; "what we've heard makes me melancholy enough, I assure you!"

"I suppose that about the same time that Lady Cecilia Titmouse goes to court," said her brother, "so will the Honorable Mrs. Dela"–

"If you choose to tease me, Charles, of course I cannot help it," quoth Kate, coloring still more; but it required no very great acuteness to detect that the topic was not excessively offensive.

"Mrs. De"–

"Have done, Charles!" said she, rising; and, putting her arm round his neck, she pressed her fair hand on his mouth; but he pushed it aside laughingly.

"Mrs. De—Dela—Delamere," he continued.

"I will finish it for you, Charles," said Mrs. Aubrey, "the Honorable Mr. and Mrs. Delamere"–

"What! do you turn against me too?" inquired Kate, laughing very good-humoredly.

"I wonder what her stately Ladyship's feelings were," said Aubrey, after a pause, "the first time that her elegant and accomplished lover saluted her!!"

"Eugh!" exclaimed both Kate and Mrs. Aubrey, in a breath, and with a simultaneous shudder of disgust.

"I dare say poor old Lord Dreddlington's notion is, that this will be a fine opportunity for bringing about his favorite scheme of reuniting the families—Heaven save the mark!" said Mr. Aubrey, just as the twopenny postman's knock at the door was heard; and within a few moments' time the servant brought up-stairs a letter addressed to Mr. Aubrey. The very first glance at its contents expelled the smile from his countenance, and the color from his cheek: he turned, in fact, so pale, that Mrs. Aubrey and Kate also changed color—and came and stood with beating hearts, and suddenly suspended breath, one on each side of him, looking over the letter while he was reading it. As I intend presently to lay a copy of it before the reader, I shall first state a few circumstances, which will make it appear that this same letter may be compared to a shell thrown into a peaceful little citadel, by a skilful, though distant and unseen engineer—in short, I mean Mr. Gammon.