“All right, love,” returned Mr. Lygon, kissing her. “And what have you been doing?”
“O, nothing,” replied Clara, in anything but a tone of pleasure.
“She said that you had particularly desired her, when on the hill, to keep out of the sun,” said Mrs. Berry, as they entered, “and therefore I presumed that I should be acting in accordance with your wishes in detaining her in the house.”
Poor Clara! She had little thought, when rattling out her hill experiences, before chilled down by Mrs. Berry and Mr. Fox, that her casual mention of her papa’s hint was to be made a solemn justification for spoiling her afternoon. But this was one of Mrs. Berry’s habitual unfairnesses to helpless persons. That form of cowardly unkindness is one of the earliest shocks which children undergo, and by no means the lightest. I am far from sure that the shabby woman who decoys a child up an alley and steals its shoes, does not deserve a month less at hard labour than her well-dressed sister who steals a child’s confidences, and rolls them up into a stone to smite it.
“You found the person at the Marfield telegraph intelligent, I hope?” said Mrs. Berry, point-blank.
“I thought over the business again, during the drive,” said Mr. Lygon, “and came to the conclusion that the message would do as well in a letter.”
“Oh! then you did not go to Marfield,” said Mrs. Berry. She would have liked to ascertain more, but time was precious. “Then I will get you the writing-case, so that the letter may be dispatched by our boy, who goes into Lipthwaite at five o’clock.”
She hastened from the room, and her knowledge of the localities enabled her to intercept Mr. Berry as he came from the stables.
“Oh! you here!” she said. “Why did not you let Sykes take the chaise round?”
“I didn’t see Sykes.”
“Mr. Lygon told Clara that he sent off his message all right,” said Mrs. Berry.
“What was the good of his telling her that?” thought the lawyer; who, being out of business, was now opposed to all unnecessary falsifications. “Well, my dear,” he said, “is it any such feat of genius to dispatch a telegraphic message?”
“I do not know why you cannot answer me without a sneer, Mr. Berry. Is there anything unreasonable in my being interested in what your friend does?”
“Quite the reverse, my dear,” said her husband, endeavouring to come into the house. “Your attention is extremely hospitable, and I hope that your dinner, by-and-by, will be equally worthy of your estimable character.”
Now, Mrs. Berry could with pleasure have fired a hot shot in reply to this, but as she would have gained nothing thereby, she reserved her fire, and only said—
“I dare say that the dinner will be satisfactory, Mr. Berry, and if I mentioned the telegraph, I suppose that after the intimation I ventured to give in reference to Mrs. Letts, my presumption is not unpardonable.”
“My dear, your expenditure of syllables is almost an extravagance,” said Mr. Berry, coolly, making his way past her not very exuberant form, and going into the house.
She was not generous, but she would willingly have given a not very small sum of money to have obtained from Mr. Berry a distinct statement that the message had been dispatched. For during the absence of her husband and Mr. Lygon she had accidentally mentioned their errand to a tradesman to whom she had been speaking in the kitchen, and he had expressed regret that the gentlemen should have gone to Marfield, as the telegraph instrument there had been out of order for some days, and the people were coming from London to repair it on Saturday.
Not that Mr. Berry would have very much cared about being confronted with this kind of contradiction, for after an endeavour of some years to make her as frank and free-spoken as himself, and after many efforts to rout out all her nests and treasures of petty mysteries, and to let in the sunshine of perfect matrimonial trust and confidence, he had given up the game, allowing the thin lips to speak or be silent, as they pleased; and for his own part, he had dropped into the habit of telling her, as he said, “as much truth as was good for her.”
But she would have had a good casus belli against Mr. Lygon, whom she was learning to regard with very unfriendly eyes. However, she had got something yet, to make him uncomfortable with.
Mrs. Berry returned to the room, bringing the writing-case.
“There, Mr. Lygon, now you can write your letter, and the boy shall wait for it.”
“Confound the woman, boring,” was Mr. Lygon’s savage remark to himself—a set of words supposed to be about as often thought and as seldom uttered as any form of petition which has been devised for the use of man.
He dragged the note-paper before him, and was just going to write something, anything, to go off to town to a fellow employé,—it was less trouble than declining,—when the lady proceeded,
“And here, just direct this envelope for me. I must write a few words to Laura, assuring her that her little girl is all right and safe with me, and that the longer she stays the better. I forget what you called the place in Hertfordshire—Edgington, was it?”
She never forgot anything, and knew quite well that he had said Herefordshire and Long Edgecombe, but there was no trick here; it was simply that the lying woman was in the habit of lying plausibly.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Lygon, kindly, while overflowing with sudden wrath and some apprehension at the proposed proceeding. “Yes, she will be glad to hear. And yet I hardly know whether you had better direct to the country, as there is a whole series of cross-posts, and there is no saying when she will get the letter.”
“Well, it is only a penny, if it follows her back to London,” said Mrs. Berry, “and the chance oi her hearing is worth that. I have been a mother, Mr. Lygon, and I know what it is to have news of one’s children in absence.”
Arthur Lygon, in no respect softened by this