Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/181

 than of myself, and as one with myself. I have learned, since I came here, that to understand what poverty really means one must see the details of wealth. We have only a general idea of a fine house and grounds, a luxurious table and a lot of servants. The general idea seems very grand and attractive, but when one sees it all in working order, when one can find out the cost of each department, the price of every article, the scale on which it is all kept up, not for show, but for every day use, then the real meaning of wealth, the awful difficulty of attaining it, realise themselves to one's mind. The Creswell girls know nothing about the mechanism of their splendid home, not much about even their personal expenses. 'Uncle gives us a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and tells us we may send him in any reasonable number of bills besides,' Maud told me. And it is quite true. They keep no accounts. I checked her maid's book for Gertrude, warning her not to let her servant see her ignorance, and she says she does not think she ever had some of the things put down. Just think of that! No dyeing old dresses black for mourning for them, and turning rusty crape! Not that that sort of thing signifies, the calculation is on too large a scale for such small items, they only illustrate the whole story of poverty. The housekeeper and I are quite friendly. She has a notion that ladies ought to understand economy, and she is very civil. She has explained everything to me, and I find the sums which pass through her hands alone would be a fortune to us. There are twenty servants in the house and stables, and their 'hall' is a sight! When I think of the shabby dining-room in which my dear father used to receive his friends—great people, too, sometimes, but not latterly—I do feel that human life is a very unfair thing.

"The great wide hall, floored with marble, and ornamented with pictures, and lamps on pedestals, and stags'-heads, and all the things one sees in pictures of halls, is in the centre of the house, and has a dark carved oak gallery all round it, on which numerous rooms open, but on the ground-floor there is a grand dining-room, and a smaller room where we breakfast, a billiard-room, a splendid library (all my father's books are in it now, and look nothing in the crowd); an ante-room, where people wait who come on business to Mr. Creswell (all his business seems to consist in disposing surplus money to advantage), and at the back of all, opening on the most beautiful flower-garden you can conceive, an immense conservatory. This is a great pleasure to mamma; there are no painful associations with such flowers for her; my father never gave her such bouquets as Gertrude brings to the breakfast-table every morning, and presents to her with a kiss, which her uncle seems to think particularly gracious and kind, for he always smiles at her.

"Indeed, he smiles a good deal at every one, for he is a very good-natured, amiable, and kindly man, and seems to think little of his wealth. I am sure he is dreadfully imposed upon—indeed, I have found out many instances of it. How happy he could make us if he would! I dare say he would not miss the money which would make us comfortable. But I must not think of such a thing. No one could afford to give so much as it would be wise to marry on, and we never should be happy if we were not wise. I don't think Mr. Creswell has a trouble in the world, except his son Tom, and I am not sure that he is a trouble to him—for he doesn't talk much about himself—but I am quite sure he ought to be. The boy is as graceless, selfish, heartless a cub, I think, as ever lived. I remember your thinking him very troublesome and disobedient in school, and he certainly is not better at home, where he has many opportunities of gratifying his evil propensities not afforded him by school. He is very much afraid of me, short a time as I have been here, that is quite evident; and I am inclined to think one reason why Mr. Creswell likes my being here so much is the influence I exercise over Tom. Very likely he does not acknowledge that to himself as a reason, perhaps he does not even know it, but I can discern it, and also that it is a great relief to the girls. They are very kind to Tom, who worries their lives out, I am sure, when they are alone; but 'schoolmaster's daughter' was always an awful personage in the old days, and makes herself felt now, very satisfactorily though silently. I fancy Tom will turn out to be the crook in his father's lot when he grows up. He is an unmannerly, common creature, not to be civilised by all the comfort and luxury of home, or softened by all the gentleness and indulgence of his father. He is doing nothing just now; he did not choose to remain with papa's successor, and is running wild until he can be placed with a private tutor—some clergyman who takes only two or three pupils.