Agnes Grey (10 page)

At her next visit to Wellwood House, I went so far as to say I was glad to see her looking so well. The effect of this was magical: the words, intended as a mark of civility, were received as a flattering compliment; her countenance brightened up, and from that moment she became as gracious and benign as heart could wish—in outward semblance at least; and from what I now saw of her, and what I heard from the children, I knew that in order to gain her cordial friendship, I had but to utter a word of flattery at each convenient opportunity; but this was against my principles; and for lack of this, the capricious old dame soon deprived me of her favour again, and I believe did me much secret injury.

She could not greatly influence her daughter-in-law against me, because, between that lady and herself, there was a mutual dislike—chiefly shewn by her, in secret detractions and calumniations, by the other, in an excess of frigid formality in her demeanour; and no fawning flattery of the elder could thaw away the wall of ice which the younger interposed between them. But with her son the old lady had better success: he would listen to all she had to say, provided she could sooth his fretful temper, and refrain from irritating him by her own asperities; and I have reason to believe, that she considerably strengthened his prejudice against me. She would tell him that I shamefully neglected the children, and even his wife did not attend to them as she ought, and that he must look after them himself or they would all go to ruin.

Thus urged, he would frequently give himself the trouble of watching them from the windows during their play; at times, he would follow them through the grounds, and too often came suddenly upon them while they were dabbling in the forbidden well, talking to the coachman in the stables, or revelling in the filth of the farm-yard—and I meanwhile, stupidly standing by, having previously exhausted my energy in vain attempts to get them away; often too he would unexpectedly pop his head into the school-room while the young people were at meals and find them spilling their milk over the table and themselves, plunging their fingers into their own, or each others’ mugs, or quarrelling over their victuals like a set of tiger’s cubs. If I were quiet at the moment, I was conniving at their disorderly conduct, if, (as was frequently the case,) I happened to be exalting
^o
my voice to enforce order, I was using undue violence, and setting the girls a bad example by such ungentleness of tone and language.

I remember one afternoon in Spring, when, owing to the rain, they could not go out; but, by some amazing good fortune, they had all finished their lessons, and yet abstained from running down to tease their parents—a trick that annoyed me greatly, but which, on rainy days, I seldom could prevent their doing; because, below, they found novelty and amusement—especially when visiters were in the house, and their mother, though she bid me keep them in the school-room, would never chide them for leaving it, or trouble herself to send them back; but today they appeared satisfied with their present abode, and what is more wonderful still, seemed disposed to play together without depending on me for amusement, and without quarrelling with each other. Their occupation was a somewhat puzzling one: they were all squatted together on the floor by the window, over a heap of broken toys, and a quantity of birds’ eggs, or rather egg-shells, for the contents had luckily been abstracted; these shells, they had broken up, and were pounding into small fragments, to what end, I could not imagine; but, so long as they were quiet, and not in positive mischief, I did not care; and, with a feeling of unusual repose, I sat by the fire, putting the finishing stitches to a frock for Mary Ann’s doll, intending, when that was done, to begin a letter to my mother. But, suddenly, the door opened, and the dingy head of Mr. Bloomfield looked in.

“All very quiet here! What are you doing?” said he.

“No harm
to-day,
at least,” thought I.

But he was of a different opinion. Advancing to the window, and seeing the children’s occupation, he testily exclaimed—

“What in the world are you about?”

“We’re grinding egg-shells, papa!” cried Tom.

“How
dare
you make such a mess, you little d-ls? Don’t you see what confounded work you’re making of the carpet?” (the carpet was a plain, brown drugget.
^p
) “Miss Grey, did you know what they were doing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“ You knew
it?”

“Yes.”

“You
knew
it! and you actually sat there, and permitted them to go on, without a word of reproof!”

“I didn’t think they were doing any harm.”

“Any harm! Why look there! Just look at that carpet, and see—was there ever anything like it in a christian house before ? No wonder your room is not fit for a pigsty—no wonder your pupils are worse than a litter of pigs!-no wonder—Oh! I declare, it puts me quite past my patience!” and he departed, shutting the door after him with a bang that made the children laugh.

“It puts
me
quite past my patience too!” muttered I, getting up; and, seizing the poker, I dashed it repeatedly into the cinders, and stirred them up with unwonted energy; thus easing my irritation, under pretence of mending the fire.

After this, Mr. Bloomfield was continually looking in to see if the school-room was in order; and, as the children were continually littering the floor with fragments of toys, sticks, stones, stubble, leaves, and other rubbish which I could not prevent their bringing, or oblige them to gather up, and which the servants refused to “clean after them,” I had to spend a considerable portion of my valuable leisure moments, on my knees upon the floor, in painsfully reducing things to order. Once, I told them that they should not taste their supper till they had picked up everything from the carpet; Fanny might have hers when she had taken up a certain quantity, Mary Ann, when she had gathered twice as many, and Tom was to clear away the rest.

Wonderful to state, the girls did their part; but Tom was in such a fury that he flew upon the table, scattered the bread and milk about the floor, struck his sisters, kicked the coals out of the coal-pan, attempted to overthrow the table and chairs, and seemed inclined to make a Douglas-larder
^q
of the whole contents of the room; but I seized upon him, and, sending Mary Ann to call her mamma, held him in spite of kicks, blows, yells, and execrations, till Mrs. Bloomfield made her appearance.

“What is the matter with my boy?” said she.

And when the matter was explained to her, all she did was to send for the nursery-maid to put the room in order, and bring Master Bloomfield his supper.

“There now,” cried Tom, triumphantly, looking up from his viands with his mouth almost too full for speech. “There now, Miss Grey! you see I have got my supper in spite of you: and I haven’t picked up a single thing!”

The only person in the house whose had any real sympathy for me was the nurse; for she had suffered like afflictions, though in a smaller degree, as she had not the task of teaching, nor was she so responsible for the conduct of her charge.

“Oh, Miss Grey!” she would say, “you have some trouble with them childer!”

“I have indeed, Betty; and I dare say you know what it is.”

“Ay, I do so! But I don’t vex myself o‘er ’em as you do. And then, you see, I hit ‘em a slap sometimes; and them little uns-I gives ’em a good whipping now and then—there’s nothing else ull do for ’em, as what they say. Howsoever, I’ve lost my place for it.”

“Have you, Betty? I heard you were going to leave.”

“Eh, bless you, yes! Missis gave me warning a three-wik sin’. She told me afore Christmas how it mud be, if I hit ’em again; but I couldn’t hold my hand off ’em at nothing-I know not how you do, for Miss Mary Ann’s worse by the half nor her sisters!”

B
esides the old lady, there was another relative of the family, whose visits were a great annoyance to me—this was “uncle Robson,” Mrs. Bloomfield’s brother, a tall, self-sufficient fellow, with dark hair and sallow complexion like his sister, a nose that seemed to disdain the earth, and little grey eyes, frequently half closed, with a mixture of real stupidity and affected contempt of all surrounding objects. He was a thick-set, strongly built man, but he had found some means of compressing his waist into a remarkably small compass, and that, together with the unnatural stiffness of his form, showed that the lofty-minded, manly Mr. Robson, the scorner of the female sex, was not above the foppery of stays.

He seldom deigned to notice me; and, when he did, it was with a certain supercilious insolence of tone and manner, that convinced me he was no gentleman, though it was intended to have a contrary effect. But it was not for that I disliked his coming, so much as for the harm he did the children—encouraging all their evil propensities, and undoing, in a few minutes, the little good it had taken me months of labour to achieve.

Fanny and little Harriet, he seldom condescended to notice; but Mary Ann was something of a favourite. He was continually encouraging her tendency to affectation, (which I had done my utmost to crush,) talking about her pretty face, and filling her head with all manner of conceited notions concerning her personal appearance, (which I had instructed her to regard as dust in the balance compared with the cultivation of her mind and manners); and I never saw a child so susceptible of flattery as she was. Whatever was wrong, in either her or her brother, he would encourage by laughing at, if not by actually praising; and people little know the injury they do to children by laughing at their faults, and making a pleasant jest of what their true friends have endeavoured to teach them to hold in grave abhorrence.

Though not a positive drunkard, Mr. Robson habitually swallowed great quantities of wine, and took with relish an occasional glass of brandy and water. He taught his nephew to imitate him in this to the utmost of his ability,
¹
and to believe that the more wine and spirits he could take, and the better he liked them, the more he manifested his bold and manly spirit, and rose superior to his sisters. Mr. Bloomfield had not much to say against it, for his favourite beverage was gin and water, of which he took a considerable portion every day, by dint of constant sipping—and to that, I chiefly attributed his dingy complexion and waspish temper.

Mr. Robson likewise encouraged Tom’s propensity to persecute the lower creation, both by precept and example. As he frequently came to course or shoot over his brother-in-law’s grounds, he would bring his favourite dogs with him, and he treated them so brutally that, poor as I was, I would have given a sovereign any day to see one of them bite him, provided the animal could have done it with impunity. Sometimes, when in a very complacent mood, he would go a bird-nesting with the children, a thing that irritated and annoyed me exceedingly, as, by frequent and persevering attempts, I flattered myself I had partly shown them the evil of this pastime, and hoped, in time, to bring them to some general sense of justice and humanity; but ten minutes’ bird-nesting with uncle Robson, or even a laugh from him at some relation of their former barbarities, was sufficient, at once, to destroy the effect of my whole elaborate course of reasoning and persuasion. Happily, however, during that Spring, they never, but once, got anything but empty nests, or eggs—being too impatient to leave them till the birds were hatched; that once, Tom, who had been with his uncle into the neighbouring plantation, came running in high glee into the garden with a brood of little callow nestlings in his hands.

Mary Ann and Fanny, whom I was just bringing out, ran to admire his spoils, and to beg each a bird for themselves.

“No, not one!” cried Tom. “They’re all mine. Uncle Robson gave them to me—one, two, three, four, five—you shan’t touch one of them! no, not one for your lives!” continued he, exultantly, laying the nest on the ground, and standing over it, with his legs wide apart, his hands thrust into his breeches-pockets, his body bent forward, and his face twisted into all manner of contortions in the ecstacy of his delight.

“But you shall see me fettle ‘em off.
^r
My word, but I
will
wallop ’em! See if I don’t now! By gum! but there’s rare sport for me in that nest.”

“But, Tom,” said I. “I shall not allow you to torture those birds. They must either be killed at once, or carried back to the place you took them from, that the old birds may continue to feed them.”

“But you don’t know where that is, madam. It’s only me and uncle Robson that knows that.”

“But if you don’t tell me, I shall kill them myself—much as I hate it.”

“You daren’t. You daren’t touch them for your life! because you know papa and mamma, and uncle Robson would be angry. Ha, hah! I’ve caught you there, Miss!”

“I shall do what I think right in a case of this sort, without consulting any one. If your papa and mamma don’t happen to approve of it, I shall be sorry to offend them, but your uncle Robson’s opinions, of course, are nothing to me.”

So saying—urged by a sense of duty—at the risk of both making myself sick, and incurring the wrath of my employers—I got a large flat stone, that had been reared up for a mouse-trap by the gardener, then, having once more vainly endeavoured to persuade the little tyrant to let the birds be carried back, I asked what he intended to do with them. With fiendish glee he commenced a list of torments, and while he was busied in the relation, I dropped the stone upon his intended victims, and crushed them flat beneath it.

Loud were the outcries, terrible the execrations, consequent upon this daring outrage; uncle Robson had been coming up the walk with his gun, and was, just then, pausing to kick his dog. Tom flew towards him, vowing he would make him kick me instead of Juno. Mr. Robson leant upon his gun, and laughed excessively at the violence of his nephew’s passion, and the bitter maledictions and opprobrious epithets he heaped upon me.