LITMIR.BIZ

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      I think Miss Galindo’s desertion to Mr Gray’s opinions in this matter hurt my lady just a little bit; but she only said –

      “Of course, if the parishoners wish for it, Mr Gray must have his Sunday school. I shall, in that case, withdraw my opposition. I am sorry I cannot alter my opinions as easily as you.”

      My lady made herself smile as she said this. Miss Galindo saw it was an effort to do so. She thought a minute before she spoke again.

      “Your ladyship has not seen Mr Gray as intimately as I have done. That’s one thing. But, as for the parishioners, they will follow your ladyship’s lead in everything; so there is no chance of their wishing for a Sunday school.”

      “I have never done anything to make them follow my lead, as you call it, Miss Galindo,” said my lady, gravely.

      “Yes, you have,” replied Miss Galindo, bluntly. And then, correcting herself, she said, “Begging your ladyship’s pardon, you have. Your ancestors have lived here time out of mind, and have owned the land on which their forefathers have lived ever since there were forefathers. You yourself were born amongst them, and have been like a little queen to them ever since, I might say, and they’ve never known your ladyship do anything but what was kind and gentle; but I’ll leave fine speeches about your ladyship to Mr Crosse. Only you, my lady, lead the thoughts of the parish; and save some of them a world of trouble, for they could never tell what was right if they had to think for themselves. It’s all quite right that they should be guided by you, my lady, – if only you would agree with Mr Gray.”

      “Well,” said my lady, “I told him only the last day that he was here, that I would think about it. I do believe I could make up my mind on certain subjects better if I were left alone, than while being constantly talked to about them.”

      My lady said this in her usual soft tones; but the words had a tinge of impatience about them; indeed, she was more ruffled than I had often seen her; but, checking herself in an instant she said –

      “You don’t know how Mr Horner drags in this subject of education apropos of everything. Not that he says much about it at any time: it is not his way. But he cannot let the thing alone.”

      “I know why, my lady,” said Miss Galindo. “That poor lad, Harry Gregson, will never be able to earn his livelihood in any active way, but will be lame for life. Now, Mr Horner thinks more of Harry than of any one else in the world, – except, perhaps, your ladyship.” Was it not a pretty companionship for my lady? “And he has schemes of his own for teaching Harry; and if Mr Gray could but have his school, Mr Horner and he think Harry might be schoolmaster, as your ladyship would not like to have him coming to you as steward’s clerk. I wish your ladyship would fall into this plan; Mr Gray has it so at heart.”

      Miss Galindo looked wistfully at my lady, as she said this. But my lady only said, drily, and rising at the same time, as if to end the conversation –

      “So Mr Horner and Mr Gray seem to have gone a long way in advance of my consent to their plans.”

      “There!” exclaimed Miss Galindo, as my lady left the room, with an apology for going away; “I have gone and done mischief with my long, stupid tongue. To be sure, people plan a long way ahead of today; more especially when one is a sick man, lying all through the weary day on a sofa.”

      “My lady will soon get over her annoyance,” said I, as it were apologetically. I only stopped Miss Galindo’s self-reproaches to draw down her wrath upon myself.

      “And has not she a right to be annoyed with me, if she likes, and to keep annoyed as long as she likes? Am I complaining of her, that you need tell me that? Let me tell you, I have known my lady these thirty years; and if she were to take me by the shoulders, and turn me out of the house, I should only love her the more. So don’t you think to come between us with any little mincing, peacemaking speeches. I have been a mischief making parrot, and I like her the better for being vexed with me. So goodbye to you, Miss; and wait till you know Lady Ludlow as well as I do, before you next think of telling me she will soon get over her annoyance!” And off Miss Galindo went.

      I could not exactly tell what I had done wrong; but I took care never again to come in between my lady and her by any remark about the one to the other; for I saw that some most powerful bond of grateful affection made Miss Galindo almost worship my lady.

      Meanwhile, Harry Gregson was limping a little about in the village, still finding his home in Mr Gray’s house; for there he could most conveniently be kept under the doctor’s eye, and receive the requisite care, and enjoy the requisite nourishment. As soon as he was a little better, he was to go to Mr Horner’s house; but, as the steward lived some distance out of the way, and was much from home, he had agreed to leave Harry at the house; to which he had first been taken, until he was quite strong again; and the more willingly, I suspect, from what I heard afterwards, because Mr Gray gave up all the little strength of speaking which he had, to teaching Harry in the very manner which Mr Horner most desired.

      As for Gregson the father – he – wild man of the woods, poacher, tinker, jack of all trades – was getting tamed by this kindness to his child. Hitherto his hand had been against every man, as every man’s had been against him. That affair before the justice, which I told you about, when Mr Gray and even my lady had interested themselves to get him released from unjust imprisonment, was the first bit of justice he had ever met with; it attracted him to the people, and attached him to the spot on which he had but squatted for a time. I am not sure if any of the villagers were grateful to him for remaining in their neighbourhood, instead of decamping as he had often done before, for good reasons, doubtless, of personal safety. Harry was only one out of a brood of ten or twelve children, some of whom had earned for themselves no good character in service: one, indeed, had been actually transported, for a robbery committed in a distant part of the county; and the tale was yet told in the village of how Gregson the father came back from the trial in a state of wild rage, striding through the place, and uttering oaths of vengeance to himself, his great black eyes gleaming out of his matted hair, and his arms working by his side, and now and then tossed up in his impotent despair. As I heard the account, his wife followed him, child laden and weeping. After this, they had vanished from the country for a time, leaving their mud hovel locked up, and the door key, as the neighbours said, buried in a hedge bank. The Gregsons had reappeared much about the same time that Mr Gray came to Hanbury. He had either never heard of their evil character, or considered that it gave them all the more claims upon his Christian care; and the end of it was, that this rough, untamed, strong giant of a heathen was loyal slave to the weak, hectic, nervous, self-distrustful parson. Gregson had also a kind of grumbling respect for Mr Horner: he did not quite like the steward’s monopoly of his Harry: the mother submitted to that with a better grace, swallowing down her maternal jealousy in the prospect of her child’s advancement to a better and more respectable position than that in which his parents had struggled through life. But Mr Horner, the steward, and Gregson, the poacher and squatter, had come into disagreeable contact too often in former days for them to be perfectly cordial at any future time. Even now, when there was no immediate cause for anything but gratitude for his child’s sake on Gregson’s part, he would skulk out of Mr Horner’s way, if he saw him coming; and it took all Mr Horner’s natural reserve and acquired self-restraint to keep him from occasionally holding up his father’s life as a warning to Harry. Now Gregson had nothing of this desire for avoidance with regard to Mr Gray. The poacher had a feeling of physical protection towards the parson; while the latter had shown the moral courage, without which Gregson would never have respected him, in coming right down upon him more than once in the exercise of unlawful pursuits, and simply and boldly telling him he was doing wrong, with such a quiet reliance upon Gregson’s better feeling, at the same time, that the strong poacher could not have lifted a finger against Mr Gray, though it had been to save himself from being apprehended and taken to the lock-ups the very next hour. He had rather listened to the parson’s bold words with an approving smile, much as Mr Gulliver might have hearkened to a lecture from a Lilliputian. But when brave words passed into kind deeds, Gregson’s heart mutely acknowledged its master and keeper. And the beauty of it all was, that Mr Gray knew nothing of the good work he had done, or recognised himself

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