The Maidens' Lodge Part 9

"Well, I don't know," said Rhoda uneasily, for Mrs Dorothy had translated her thought into rather too plain language.

"Ah, my dear, that is because you would love to climb a little yourself," said Mrs Dorothy, smilingly, "and you apprehend no inconveniency from it. But, child, 'tis the weariest work in all the world--except it be climbing from earth to heaven. To climb on men's ladders is mostly as a squirrel climbs in its cage,--round and round; you think yourself going vastly higher, but those that stand on the firm ground and watch you see that you do but go round. But to climb up Jacob's ladder, whereof the Lord stands at the top, it will be other eyes that behold you climbing up, when in your own eyes you have not bettered yourself by a step. Climb as high as you will there, dear maids!--but never mind the ladders that go round. They are infinitely disappointing. I know it, for I have climbed them."

"Well, Mrs Dolly, do go on, now, and tell us all about it, there's a good soul!" said Rhoda.

Little Mrs Dorothy was executing some elaborate knitting. She went on with it for a few seconds in silence.

"I was but sixteen," she said, quietly, "when my mother came to visit me. I could not remember seeing her before: and very frighted was I of the grand gentlewoman, for so she seemed to me, that rustled into the farmhouse kitchen in silken brocade, and a velvet tippet on her neck.

She was evenly disappointed with me. She thought me stiff and gloomy; and I thought her strange and full of vanities. 'In three years' time, Dolly,' quoth she, 'thou wilt be nineteen, and I will then have thee up to Town, and thou shalt see somewhat of the world. Thou art not ill-favoured,' quoth she,--'twas my mother that said this, my dears,"

modestly interpolated Mrs Dorothy,--"and I dare say thou wilt be the Town talk in a week. 'Tis pity there is no better world to have thee into!--and thy father as sour and Puritanical as any till of late, save the mark!--but there, 'we must swim with the tide,' saith she. ''Tis a long lane that has no turning.' Ah me! but the lane had turned ere I was nineteen."

"Why, Mrs Dolly, the Restoration must have been that very year,"

observed Rhoda.

"That very year," repeated Mrs Dorothy. "'Twas in April I quitted Farmer Ingham's house, and was fetched up to London; and in May came the King in, and was shortly thereafter crowned."

"If it please you," asked Phoebe, speaking for the first time of her own accord, "were you glad to go, Madam?"

"Well, my dear, I was partly glad and partly sorry. I was sorrowful to take leave of mine old friends, little knowing if I should ever see them again or no; yet, like an untried maid, I was mightily set up with the thought of seeing London, and the lions, and Whitehall, and the like.

Silly maid that I was! I had better have shed tears for the last than for the first."

"What thought you the finest thing in London?" said Rhoda. "But tell us, what thought you of London altogether?"

"Why, the first thing I thought of was the size and the noise," answered Mrs Dorothy. "It seemed to me such a great overgrown town, so different from Saint Albans; and so many carts and wheelbarrows always rattling over the stones; and so many folks in the streets; and all the strange cries of a morning. I thought my father a very strange, cold man, of whom I was no little afraid; and my mother was sadly disappointed that I did not roll my eyes, and had not been taught to dance."

"Why did they ever leave you at a farmhouse?" inquired Rhoda, rather scornfully.

"_I_ cannot entirely say, my dear; but I think that was mainly my father's doing. My poor father!"

And Mrs Dorothy's handkerchief was hastily pa.s.sed across her eyes.

"The first night I came," she said, "my mother had a large a.s.sembly in her withdrawing-chamber. There were smart-dressed ladies fluttering of their fans, and gentlemen in all the colours of the rainbow; and I, foolish maid! right well pleased when one and another commended my country complexion, or told me something about my fine eyes: when all at once came a heavy hand on my shoulder, and my father saith, 'Dorothy, I would speak with you.' I followed him forth, not a little trembling lest he should be about to chide me; but he led me into his own closet, and shut the door. He bade me sit, and leaning over the fire himself, he said nought for a moment. Then saith he, 'Dorothy, you heard Mr Debenham speak to you?' 'Yes, Sir,' quoth I. 'And what said he, child?' goes on my father, gently. I was something loth to repeat what he had said; for it was what I, in my foolish heart, thought a very fine speech about Mrs Doll's fine eyes, that glistered like stars. Howbeit, my father waited quiet enough; and having been well bred to obey by Farmer Ingham, I brought it out at last. 'Did you believe it, Dorothy?'

saith my father. 'Did you think he meant it?' I did but whisper, 'Yes, Sir,' for I could not but feel very much ashamed. 'Then, Dorothy,'

saith he, 'the first lesson you will do well to learn in London is that men and women do not always mean it when they flatter you. And he does not. Ah!' saith my father, fetching a great sigh,--''tis easy work for fathers to say such things, but not so for maidens to believe them.

There is one other thing I would have you learn, Dorothy.' 'Yes, Sir,'

quoth I, when he stayed. He turned him around, and looked in my face with his dark eyes, that seemed to burn into me, and he saith, 'Learn this, Dorothy,--that 'tis the easiest thing in all the world for a man to drift away from G.o.d. Ay, or a woman either. You may do it, and never know that you have done it,--for a while, at least. David was two full years ere he found it out. Oh Dorothy, take warning! I was once as innocent as you are. I have drifted from G.o.d, oh my child, how far!

The Lord keep you from a like fate.' I was fairly affrighted, for his face was terrible. An hour after, I saw him dealing the cards at ombre, with a look as bright and mirthful as though he knew not grief but by name."

Phoebe looked up with eyes full of meaning. "Did he never come back?"

"Dear child," said Mrs Dorothy, turning to her, "hast thou forgot that the Good Shepherd goeth after that which was lost, until He find it? He came back, my dear. But it was through the Great Plague and the Great Fire."

It was evident for a few minutes that Mrs Dorothy was wrestling with painful memories.

"Well, and what then?" said Rhoda, who wanted the story to go on, and was afraid of what she called preaching.

"Well!" resumed the old lady, more lightly, "then, for three days in the week I had a dancing-master come to teach me; and twice in the week a music-master; and all manner of new gowns, and my hair dressed in a mult.i.tude of curls; and my mother's maid to teach me French, and see that I carried myself well. And when this had gone on a while, my mother began to carry me a-visiting when she went to see her friends.

For above a year she used a hackney coach; but then my father was made Doctor, and had a great church given him that was then all the mode; and my Lady Jennings came up to Town, and finding he had parts, she began to take note of him, and would carry him in her coach to the Court; and my mother would then set up her own coach, the which she did. And at length, the summer before I was one-and-twenty, my Lady Jennings, without the privity of my father, offered my mother to have me a maid to one of the Ladies in Waiting on the Queen. From this place, said she, if I played my cards well, and was liked of them above me, I might come in time to be a Maid of Honour."

"O rare!" exclaimed Rhoda. "And did you, Mrs Dolly?"

"Yes, child," slowly answered Mrs Dorothy. "I did so."

Rhoda's face was sparkling with interest and pleasure. Phoebe's was shadowed with forebodings, of a sad end to come.

"The night ere I left home for the Court," pursued the old lady, "my mother held long converse with me. 'Thou art mightily improved, Dolly,'

saith she, 'since thy coming to London; but there is yet a stiff soberness about thee, that thou wilt do well to be rid of. Thou shouldst have more ease, child. Do but look at thy cousin Jenny, that is three years younger than thou, and yet how will she rattle to every man that hath a word of compliment to pay her!' But after she had made an end, my father called me into his closet. 'Poor Dorothy!' he said.

'The bloom is not all off the peach yet. But 'tis going, child--'tis fast going. I feared this. Poor Dorothy!'"

"Oh, dear!" said Rhoda. "You were not going to a funeral, Mrs Dolly!"

"Ah, child! maybe, if I had, it had been the better for me. The wise man saith, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.'"

"But pray, what harm came to you, Mrs Dorothy?"

"No outward bodily harm at all, my dear. Yet even that was no thanks to me. It was 'of the Lord's compa.s.sion,' seeing He had a purpose of mercy toward me. But, ah me! what inward and spiritual harm! Mrs Rhoda, my dear, I saw sights and heard sayings those two years I dwelt in the Court which I would give the world, so to speak, only to forget them now."

"What were they, Mrs Dorothy?" asked Rhoda, eagerly sitting up.

"Think you I am likely to tell you, child? No, indeed!"

"But what sort of harm did they to you, Mrs Dolly?"

"Child, I learned to think lightly of sin. People did not talk of sin there at all; the words they used were crime and vice. Every wrong doing was looked on as it affected other men: if it touched your neighbour's purse or person, it was ill; if it only grieved his heart, then 'twas a little matter. But how it touched G.o.d was never so much as thought on. There might have been no G.o.d in Heaven, so little account was taken of Him there."

"Now do tell us. Mrs Dolly, what the Queen was like, and the King,"

said Rhoda, yawning. "And how many Maids of Honour were there? Just tell us all about it."

"There were six," replied the old lady, taking up her knitting, which she had dropped in her earnestness a minute before. "And Mrs Sanderson was their mother. I reckon you will scarce know that always a married gentlewoman goeth about with these young damsels, called the Mother of the Maids, whose work it is to see after them."

"And keep them from everything jolly!" exclaimed Rhoda. "Now, that's a shame! Wouldn't it be fun to bamboozle that creature? I protest I should enjoy it!"

"O Mrs Rhoda! Mrs Rhoda!"

"I should, of all things, Mrs Dolly! But now, what were the King and Queen like? Was she very beautiful?"

[Note: Charles the Second and Catherine of Braganza.]

"No," said Mrs Dorothy, "she was not. She had pretty feet, fine eyes, and very lovely hair. 'Twas rich brown on the top of her head, and descending downward it grew into jet black. For the rest, she was but tolerable. In truth, her teeth wronged her by sticking too far out of her mouth; but for that she would have been lovelier by much."

"Horrid!" said Rhoda. "I forget where she came from, Mrs Dolly?"

"She came from Portingale, my dear, being daughter to the King of that country, and her name was Catherine."

"And what was the King like?"

"When he was little, my dear, his mother, Queen Mary, used to say he was so ugly a baby that she was quite ashamed of him. He was better-favoured when he grew a man; he had good eyes, but a large Mouth."

[Note: Queen Mary was Henrietta Maria, always termed Queen Mary during her own reign.]