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BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY
of
A PLOT IN PRIVATE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
THE first place I got when I began going out to service was not a
very profitable one. I certainly gained the advantage of learning
my business thoroughly, but I never had my due in the matter of
wages. My master was made a bankrupt, and his servants suffered
with the rest of his creditors
My second situation, however, amply compensated me for my want of
luck in the first. I had the good fortune to enter the service of
Mr. and Mrs. Norcross. My master was a very rich gentleman. He
had the Darrock house and lands in Cumberland, an estate also in
Yorkshire, and a very large property in Jamaica, which produced,
at that time and for some years afterward, a great income. Out in
the West Indies he met with a pretty young lady, a governess in
an English family, and, taking a violent fancy to her, married
her, though she was a good five-and-twenty years younger than
himself. After the wedding they came to England, and it was at
this time that I was lucky enough to be engaged by them as a
servant.
I lived with my new master and mistress three years. They had no
children. At the end of that period Mr. Norcross died. He was
sharp enough to foresee that his young widow would marry again,
and he bequeathed his property so that it all went to Mrs.
Norcross first, and then to any children she might have by a
second marriage, and, failing that, to relations and friends of
his own. I did not suffer by my master's death, for his widow
kept me in her service. I had attended on Mr. Norcross all
through his last illness, and had made myself useful enough to
win my mistress's favor and gratitude. Besides me she also
retained her maid in her service--a quadroon woman named
Josephine, whom she brought with her from the West Indies. Even
at that time I disliked the half-breed's wheedling manners, and
her cruel, tawny face, and wondered how my mistress could be so
fond of her as she was. Time showed that I was right in
distrusting this woman. I shall have much more to say about her
when I get further advanced with my story.
Meanwhile I have next to relate that my mistress broke up the
rest of her establishment, and, taking me and the lady's maid
with her, went to travel on the Continent.
Among other wonderful places we visited Paris, Genoa, Venice,
Florence, Rome, and Naples, staying in some of those cities for
months together. The fame of my mistress's riches followed her
wherever she went; and there were plenty of gentlemen, foreigners
as well as Englishmen, who were anxious enough to get into her
good graces and to prevail on her to marry them. Nobody
succeeded, however, in producing any very strong or lasting
impression on her; and when we came back to England, after more
than two years of absence, Mrs. Norcross was still a widow, and
showed no signs of wanting to change her condition.
We went to the house on the Yorkshire estate first; but my
mistress did not fancy some of the company round about, so we
moved again to Darrock Hall, and made excursions from time to
time in the lake district, some miles off. On one of these trips
Mrs. Norcross met with some old friends, who introduced her to a
gentleman of their party bearing the very common and very
uninteresting name of Mr. James Smith.
He was a tall, fine young man enough, with black hair, which grew
very long, and the biggest, bushiest pair of black whiskers I
ever saw. Altogether he had a rakish, unsettled look, and a
bounceable way of talking which made him the prominent person in
company. He was poor enough himself, as I heard from his servant,
but well connected--a gentleman by birth and education, though
his manners were so free. What my mistress saw to like in him I
don't know; but when she asked her friends to stay with her at
Darrock, she included Mr. James Smith in the invitation. We had a
fine, gay, noisy time of it at the Hall, the strange gentleman,
in particular, making himself as much at home as if the place
belonged to him. I was surprised at Mrs. Norcross putting up with
him as she did, but I was fairly thunderstruck some months
afterward when I heard that she and her free-and-easy visitor
were actually going to be married! She had refused offers by
dozens abroad, from higher, and richer, and better-behaved men.
It seemed next to impossible that she could seriously think of
throwing herself away upon such a hare-brained, headlong,
penniless young gentleman as Mr. James Smith.
Married, nevertheless, they were, in due course of time; and,
after spending the honeymoon abroad, they came back to Darrock
Hall.
I soon found that my new master had a very variable temper. There
were some days when he was as easy, and familiar, and pleasant
with his servants as any gentleman need be. At other times some
devil within him seemed to get possession of his whole nature. He
flew into violent passions, and took wrong ideas into his head,
which no reasoning or remonstrance could remove. It rather amazed
me, considering how gay he was in his tastes, and how restless
his habits were, that he should consent to live at such a quiet,
dull place as Darrock. The reason for this, however, soon came
out. Mr. James Smith was not much of a sportsman; he cared
nothing for indoor amusements, such as reading, music, and so
forth; and he had no ambition for representing the county in
parliament. The one pursuit that he was really fond of was
yachting. Darrock was within sixteen miles of a sea-port town,
with an excellent harbor, and to this accident of position the
Hall was entirely indebted for recommending itself as a place of
residence to Mr. James Smith.
He had such an untiring enjoyment and delight in cruising about
at sea, and all his ideas of pleasure seemed to be so closely
connected with his remembrance of the sailing trips he had taken
on board different yachts belonging to his friends, that I verily
believe his chief object in marrying my mistress was to get the
command of money enough to keep a vessel for himself. Be that as
it may, it is certain that he prevailed on her, some time after
their marriage, to make him a present of a fine schooner yacht,
which was brought round from Cowes to our coast-town, and kept
always waiting ready for him in the harbor.
His wife required some little persuasion before she could make up
her mind to let him have the vessel. She suffered so much from
sea-sickness that pleasure-sailing was out of the question for
her; and, being very fond of her husband, she was naturally
unwilling that he should engage in an amusement which took him
away from her. However, Mr. James Smith used his influence over
her cleverly, promising that he would never go away without first
asking her leave, and engaging that his terms of absence at sea
should never last for more than a week or ten days at a time. Accordingly, my mistress, who
was the kindest and most unselfish woman in the world, put her
own feelings aside, and made her husband happy in the possession
of a vessel of his own.
While my master was away cruising, my mistress had a dull time of
it at the Hall. The few gentlefolks there were in our part of the
county lived at a distance, and could only come to Darrock when
they were asked to stay there for some days together. As for the
village near us, there was but one person living in it whom my
mistress could think of asking to the Hall, and that person was
the clergyman who did duty at the church.
This gentleman's name was Mr. Meeke. He was a single man, very
young, and very lonely in his position. He had a mild,
melancholy, pasty-looking face, and was as shy and soft-spoken as
a little girl--altogether, what one may call, without being
unjust or severe, a poor, weak creature, and, out of all sight,
the very worst preacher I ever sat under in my life. The one
thing he did, which, as I heard, he could really do well, was
playing on the fiddle. He was uncommonly fond of music--so much
so that he often took his instrument out with him when he went
for a walk. This taste of his was his great recommendation to my
mistress, who was a wonderfully fine player on the piano, and who
was delighted to get such a performer as Mr. Meeke to play duets
with her. Besides liking his society for this reason, she felt
for him in his lonely position; naturally enough, I think,
considering how often she was left in solitude herself. Mr.
Meeke, on his side, when he got over his first shyness, was only
too glad to leave his lonesome little parsonage for the fine
music-room at the Hall, and for the company of a handsome,
kind-hearted lady, who made much of him, and admired his
fiddle-playing with all her heart. Thus it happened that,
whenever my master was away at sea, my mistress and Mr. Meeke
were always together, playing duets as if they had their living
to get by it. A more harmless connection than the connection
between those two never existed in this world; and yet, innocent
as it was, it turned out to be the first cause of all the
misfortunes that afterward happened.
My master's treatment of Mr. Meeke was, from the first, the very
opposite of my mistress's. The restless, rackety, bounceable Mr.
James Smith felt a contempt for the weak, womanish, fiddling
little parson, and, what was more, did not care to conceal it.
For this reason, Mr. Meeke (who was dreadfully frightened by my
master's violent language and rough ways) very seldom visited at
the Hall except when my mistress was alone there. Meaning no
wrong, and therefore stooping to no concealment, she never
thought of taking any measures to keep Mr. Meeke out of the way
when he happened to be with her at the time of her husband's
coming home, whether it was only from a riding excursion in the
neighborhood or from a cruise in the schooner. In this way it so
turned out that whenever my master came home, after a long or
short absence, in nine cases out of ten he found the parson at
the Hall.
At first he used to laugh at this circumstance, and to amuse
himself with some coarse jokes at the expense of his wife and her
companion. But, after a while, his variable temper changed, as
usual. He grew sulky, rude, angry, and, at last, downright
jealous of Mr. Meeke. Though too proud to confess it in so many
words, he still showed the state of his mind clearly enough to my
mistress to excite her indignation. She was a woman who could be
led anywhere by any one for whom she had a regard, but there was
a firm spirit within her that rose at the slightest show of
injustice or oppression, and that resented tyrannical usage of
any sort perhaps a little too warmly. The bare suspicion that her
husband could feel any distrust of her set her all in a flame,
and she took the most unfortunate, and yet, at the same time, the
most natural way for a woman, of resenting it. The ruder her
husband was to Mr. Meeke the more kindly she behaved to him. This
led to serious disputes and dissensions, and thence, in time, to
a violent quarrel. I could not avoid hearing the last part of the
altercation between them, for it took place in the garden-walk,
outside the dining-room window, while I was occupied in laying
the table for lunch.
Without repeating their words--which I have no right to do,
having heard by accident what I had no business to hear--I may
say generally, to show how serious the quarrel was, that my
mistress charged my master with having married from mercenary
motives, with keeping out of her company as much as he could, and
with insulting her by a suspicion which it would be hard ever to
forgive, and impossible ever to forget. He replied by violent
language directed against herself, and by commanding her never to
open the doors again to Mr. Meeke; she, on her side, declaring
that she would never consent to insult a clergyman and a
gentleman in order to satisfy the whim of a tyrannical husband.
Upon that, he called out, with a great oath, to have his horse
saddled directly, declaring that he would not stop another
instant under the same roof with a woman who had set him at
defiance, and warning his wife that he would come back, if Mr.
Meeke entered the house again, and horsewhip him, in spite of his
black coat, all through the village.
With those words he left her, and rode away to the sea-port where
his yacht was lying. My mistress kept up her spirit till he was
out of sight, and then burst into a dreadful screaming passion of
tears, which ended by leaving her so weak that she had to be
carried to her bed like a woman who was at the point of death.
The same evening my master's horse was ridden back by a
messenger, who brought a scrap of notepaper with him addressed to
me. It only contained these lines:
"Pack up my clothes and deliver them immediately to the bearer.
You may tell your mistress that I sail to-night at eleven o'clock
for a cruise to Sweden. Forward my letters to the post-office,
Stockholm."
I obeyed the orders given to me except that relating to my
mistress. The doctor had been sent for, and was still in the
house. I consulted him upon the propriety of my delivering the
message. He positively forbade me to do so that night, and told
me to give him the slip of paper, and leave it to his discretion
to show it to her or not the next morning.
The messenger had hardly been gone an hour when Mr. Meeke's
housekeeper came to the Hall with a roll of music for my
mistress. I told the woman of my master's sudden departure, and
of the doctor being in the house. This news brought Mr. Meeke
himself to the Hall in a great flutter.
I felt so angry with him for being the cause--innocent as he
might be--of the shocking scene which had taken place, that I
exceeded the bounds of my duty, and told him the whole truth. The
poor, weak, wavering, childish creature flushed up red in the
face, then turned as pale as ashes, and dropped into one of the
hall chairs crying--literally crying fit to break his heart. "Oh,
William," says he, wringing his little frail, trembling white
hands as helpless as a baby, "oh, William, what am I to do?"
"As you ask me that question, sir," says I, "you will excuse me,
I hope, if, being a servant, I plainly speak my mind
notwithstanding. I know my station well enough to be aware that,
strictly speaking, I have done wrong, and far exceeded my duty,
in telling you as much as I have told you already; but I would go
through fire and water, sir," says I, feeling my own eyes getting
moist, "for my mistress's sake. She has no relation here who can
speak to you; and it is even better that a servant like me should
risk being guilty of an impertinence, than that dreadful and
lasting mischief should arise from the right remedy not being
applied at the right time. This is what I should do, sir, in your
place. Saving your presence, I should leave off crying; and go
back home and write to Mr. James Smith, saying that I would not,
as a clergyman, give him railing for railing, but would prove how
unworthily he had suspected me by ceasing to visit at the Hall
from thi s time forth, rather than be a cause of dissension
between man and wife. If you will put that into proper language,
sir, and will have the letter ready for me in half an hour's
time, I will call for it on the fastest horse in our stables,
and, at my own risk, will give it to my master before he sails
to-night. I have nothing more to say, sir, except to ask your
pardon for forgetting my proper place, and for making bold to
speak on a very serious matter as equal to equal, and as man to
man."
To do Mr. Meeke justice, he had a heart, though it was a very
small one. He shook hands with me, and said he accepted my advice
as the advice of a friend, and so went back to his parsonage to
write the letter. In half an hour I called for it on horseback,
but it was not ready for me. Mr. Meeke was ridiculously nice
about how he should express himself when he got a pen into his
hand. I found him with his desk littered with rough copies, in a
perfect agony about how to turn his phrases delicately enough in
referring to my mistress. Every minute being precious, I hurried
him as much as I could, without standing on any ceremony. It took
half an hour more, with all my efforts, before he could make up
his mind that the letter would do. I started off with it at a
gallop, and never drew rein till I got to the sea-port town.
The harbor-clock chimed the quarter past eleven as I rode by it,
and when I got down to the jetty there was no yacht to be seen.
She had been cast off from her moorings ten minutes before
eleven, and as the clock struck she had sailed out of the harbor.
I would have followed in a boat, but it was a fine starlight
night, with a fresh wind blowing, and the sailors on the pier
laughed at me when I spoke of rowing after a schooner yacht which
had got a quarter of an hour's start of us, with the wind abeam
and the tide in her favor.
I rode back with a heavy heart. All I could do now was to send
the letter to the post-office, Stockholm.
The next day the doctor showed my mistress the scrap of paper
with the message on it from my master, and an hour or two after
that, a letter was sent to her in Mr. Meeke's handwriting,
explaining the reason why she must not expect to see him at the
Hall, and referring to me in terms of high praise as a sensible
and faithful man who had spoken the right word at the right time.
I am able to repeat the substance of the letter, because I heard
all about it from my mistress, under very unpleasant
circumstances so far as I was concerned.
The news of my master's departure did not affect her as the
doctor had supposed it would. Instead of distressing her, it
roused her spirit and made her angry; her pride, as I imagine,
being wounded by the contemptuous manner in which her husband had
notified his intention of sailing to Sweden at the end of a
message to a servant about packing his clothes. Finding her in
that temper of mind, the letter from Mr. Meeke only irritated her
the more. She insisted on getting up, and as soon as she was
dressed and downstairs, she vented her violent humor on me,
reproaching me for impertinent interference in the affairs of my
betters, and declaring that she had almost made up her mind to
turn me out of my place for it. I did not defend myself, because
I respected her sorrows and the irritation that came from them;
also, because I knew the natural kindness of her nature well
enough to be assured that she would make amends to me for her
harshness the moment her mind was composed again. The result
showed that I was right. That same evening she sent for me and
begged me to forgive and forget the hasty words she had spoken in
the morning with a grace and sweetness that would have won the
heart of any man who listened to her.
Weeks passed after this, till it was more than a month since the
day of my master's departure, and no letter in his handwriting
came to Darrock Hall.
My mistress, taking this treatment more angrily than sorrowfully,
went to London to consult her nearest relations, who lived there.
On leaving home she stopped the carriage at the parsonage, and
went in (as I thought, rather defiantly) to say good-by to Mr.
Meeke. She had answered his letter, and received others from him,
and had answered them likewise. She had also, of course, seen him
every Sunday at church, and had always stopped to speak to him
after the service; but this was the first occasion on which she
had visited him at his house. As the carriage stopped, the little
parson came out, in great hurry and agitation, to meet her at the
garden gate.
"Don't look alarmed, Mr. Meeke," says my mistress, getting out.
"Though you have engaged not to come near the Hall, I have made
no promise to keep away from the parsonage." With those words she
went into the house.
The quadroon maid, Josephine, was sitting with me in the rumble
of the carriage, and I saw a smile on her tawny face as the
parson and his visitor went into the house together. Harmless as
Mr. Meeke was, and innocent of all wrong as I knew my mistress to
be, I regretted that she should be so rash as to despise
appearances, considering the situation she was placed in. She had
already exposed herself to be thought of disrespectfully by her
own maid, and it was hard to say what worse consequences might
not happen after that.
Half an hour later we were away on our journey. My mistress
stayed in London two months. Throughout all that long time no
letter from my master was forwarded to her from the country
house.
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