My Lady Ludlow | Page 5

up to have a
will in opposition to yours--let me know, dear cousin Margaret Dawson,

and I will make arrangements for meeting the young gentlewoman at
Cavistock, which is the nearest point to which the coach will bring her.'
My mother dropped the letter, and sat silent.
"I shall not know what to do without you, Margaret."
A moment before, like a young untried girl as I was, I had been pleased
at the notion of seeing a new place, and leading a new life. But
now,--my mother's look of sorrow, and the children's cry of
remonstrance: "Mother; I won't go," I said.
"Nay! but you had better," replied she, shaking her head. "Lady Ludlow
has much power. She can help your brothers. It will not do to slight her
offer."
So we accepted it, after much consultation. We were rewarded,--or so
we thought,--for, afterwards, when I came to know Lady Ludlow, I saw
that she would have done her duty by us, as helpless relations, however
we might have rejected her kindness,--by a presentation to Christ's
Hospital for one of my brothers.
And this was how I came to know my Lady Ludlow.
I remember well the afternoon of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her
ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the
mail-coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the
ostler said, if my name was Dawson--from Hanbury Court, he believed.
I felt it rather formidable; and first began to understand what was meant
by going among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my
mother had intrusted me. I was perched up in a high gig with a hood to
it, such as in those days was called a chair, and my companion was
driving deliberately through the most pastoral country I had ever yet
seen. By-and-by we ascended a long hill, and the man got out and
walked at the horse's head. I should have liked to walk, too, very much
indeed; but I did pot know how far I might do it; and, in fact, I dared
not speak to ask to be helped down the deep steps of the gig. We were
at last at the top,--on a long, breezy, sweeping, unenclosed piece of
ground, called, as I afterwards learnt, a Chase. The groom stopped,
breathed, patted his horse, and then mounted again to my side.
"Are we near Hanbury Court?" I asked.
"Near! Why, Miss! we've a matter of ten mile yet to go."
Once launched into conversation, we went on pretty glibly. I fancy he
had been afraid of beginning to speak to me, just as I was to him; but

he got over his shyness with me sooner than I did mine with him. I let
him choose the subjects of conversation, although very often I could
not understand the points of interest in them: for instance, he talked for
more than a quarter of an hour of a famous race which a certain
dog-fox had given him, above thirty years before; and spoke of all the
covers and turns just as if I knew them as well as he did; and all the
time I was wondering what kind of an animal a dog-fox might be.
After we loft the Chase, the road grew worse. No one in these days,
who has not seen the byroads of fifty years ago, can imagine what they
were. We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the way along
the deep-rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I occasionally met
with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I could not look about
me at all, I was so much occupied in holding on. The road was too
muddy for me to walk without dirtying myself more than I liked to do,
just before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow. But by-and-by, when we
came to the fields in which the lane ended, I begged Randal to help me
down, as I saw that I could pick my steps among the pasture grass
without making myself unfit to be seen; and Randal, out of pity for his
steaming horse, wearied with the hard struggle through the mud,
thanked me kindly, and helped me down with a springing jump.
The pastures fell gradually down to the lower land, shut in on either
side by rows of high elms, as if there had been a wide grand avenue
here in former times. Down the grassy gorge we went, seeing the sunset
sky at the end of the shadowed descent. Suddenly we came to a long
flight of steps.
"If you'll run down there, Miss, I'll go round and meet you, and then
you'd better mount again, for my lady will like